When Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo shockingly defeated legendary Go player Lee Sedol in 2016, the terms artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and deep learning were propelled into the technological mainstream. 



AI is generally defined as the capacity for a computer or machine to exhibit or simulate intelligent behaviour such as&nbsp;Tesla’s self-driving carand&nbsp;Apple’s digital assistant Siri. It is a thriving field and the focus of much research and investment. Machine learning is the ability of an AI system to extract information from raw data and learn to make predictions from new data.



Deep learning combines artificial intelligence with machine learning. It is concerned with algorithms inspired by the structure and function of the brain called artificial neural networks. Deep learning has received much attention lately both in the consumer world and throughout the medical community.



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Interest in deep learning surged with the success of AlexNet, a neural network designed by Alex Krizhevsky that won the&nbsp;2012 ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge, an annual image classification competition.



Another relatively recent advancement is the use of graphical processing units (GPUs) to power deep learning algorithms. GPUs excel at computations (multiplications and additions) needed for deep learning applications, thereby lowering application processing time.



In our lab at the University of Saskatchewan we are doing interesting deep learning research related to healthcare applications — and as a professor of electrical and computer engineering, I lead the research team. When it comes to health care, using AI or machine learning to make diagnoses is new, and there has been exciting and promising progress.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Extracting blood vessels in the eye</h2>



Detecting abnormal retinal blood vessels is useful for diagnosing diabetes and heart disease. In order to provide reliable and meaningful medical interpretations, the retinal vessel must be extracted from a retinal image for reliable and meaningful interpretations. 



Although manual segmentation is possible, it is a complex, time-consuming and tedious task which requires advanced professional skills.



My research team has developed a system that can segment retinal blood vessels simply by reading a raw retinal image. It is a&nbsp;computer-aided diagnosis system that reduces the work required by eye-care specialists and ophthalmologists, and processes images 10 times faster, while retaining high accuracy.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Detecting lung cancer</h2>



Computer tomography (CT) is widely used for lung cancer diagnosis. However, because visual representations of benign (non-cancerous) and malignant (cancerous) lesions in CT scans are similar, a CT scan cannot always provide a reliable diagnosis. This is true even for a thoracic radiologist with many years of experience. 



The rapid growth of&nbsp;CT scan analysis&nbsp;has generated a pressing need for advanced computational tools to assist radiologists with the screening progress.



To improve radiologists’ diagnostic performance, we have proposed a deep learning solution. Based on our research findings, our solution outperforms experienced radiologists. Moreover, using a deep learning-based solution improves diagnostic performance overall and radiologists with less experience benefit from the system the most.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Limitations and challenges</h2>



Although great promise has been shown with deep learning algorithms in a variety of tasks across radiology and medicine, these systems are far from perfect. Obtaining high-quality annotated datasets will remain a challenge for deep learning training. Most computer vision research is based on natural images, but for healthcare applications, we need large annotated medical image datasets.



Another challenge from a clinical standpoint will be the time to test how well deep learning techniques perform in contrast to human radiologists.



There needs to be more collaboration between physicians and machine learning scientists. The high degree of complexity of human physiology will also be a challenge for machine learning techniques.



Another challenge is the requirements to validate a deep learning system for clinical implementation, which would likely require multi-institutional collaboration and large datasets. Finally, an efficient hardware platform is required to ensure fast processing of deep learning systems.



In the complex world of healthcare, AI tools can support human practitioners to provide faster service and more accurate diagnoses, and analyze data to identify trends or genetic information that may predispose someone to a particular disease. When saving minutes can mean saving lives, AI and machine learning may be transformative for healthcare workers and patients.



&#8211;Seokbum Ko; Professor, University of Saskatchewan



&#8211;The Conversation

Virtual reality concept.

Faster, More Accurate Diagnoses: Healthcare Applications Of AI Research

The U.S. government has disclosed more of its case against WikiLeaks cofounder Julian Assange. It hinges on a claim he and Chelsea Manning worked together to crack a password for a computer storing sensitive government files.



An&nbsp;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5913205-Assange-Affidavit.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">affidavit</a>&nbsp;unsealed Monday outlining the case against Assange said he conspired with Manning when they discussed working together to crack a password &#8220;related to two computers with access to classified national security information.&#8221; More specifically, the password belonged to a user called FTP (not to be confused with an FTP server) on two Windows computers that Manning could access from a base in Iraq, the government said.



The FTP account wasn&#8217;t associated with any specific individual, and the government alleged that if Manning had used it to pilfer files and hand them over to Wikileaks, she could have foiled investigators looking into who was behind the leaks. 



&#8220;Although there is no evidence that the password to the FTP user was obtained, had Manning done so, she would have been able to take steps to procure classified information under a username that did not belong to her,&#8221; the affidavit read. &#8220;Such measures would have frustrated attempts to identify the source of the disclosures to WikiLeaks.&#8221;



The alleged conspiracy to crack the password took place in March 2010, two months after she&#8217;d walked out of the Iraq base with classified war reports from Iraq and Afghanistan. She was later convicted and served seven years in jail for downloading tens of thousands U.S. military documents and diplomatic cables.



How passwords are cracked



The reason any password had to be cracked in the first place was the use of what&#8217;s known as a &#8220;hash.&#8221; Microsoft&#8217;s Windows operating system doesn’t store passwords in plain text. That’s to prevent hackers who find a way on to the computer from seeing and stealing them. Instead, Microsoft makes life harder for cybercriminals and snoops by turning that plain text into scrambled code. That string of letters and numbers is known as a &#8220;hash value&#8221; and it&#8217;s created when an algorithm is applied to the plain text of the password.



For an attacker to get at the plain text it&#8217;s possible to do a so-called &#8220;brute force attack.&#8221; The process for this is basic: The hacker creates a huge list of guessed passwords through the same hashing algorithm used by Windows to find a matched hash value for the hidden password. Once the same hash value is calculated, the password has been found.



 Sometimes a password will be too complex for guessing to work in a short enough time frame. That’s where &#8220;rainbow tables&#8221; come in. These contain a massive number of hash values for previously calculated passwords. Hackers use them to do a quick comparison of the hash they have with the ones in the table, in the hopes that it&#8217;s already been seen before and a match is available.



&#8220;In computing terms we call this a time/memory trade-off. Rather than spend time on a task, we pre-calculate parts of it and store them somewhere, essentially trading time for memory,&#8221; says Tom Wyatt, senior penetration tester at cybersecurity provider Bulletproof. &#8220;These tables can be calculated or downloaded from various online sources, and it simply boils down to paying for storage for it all; even in 2010 this was fairly cheap and entirely possible.&#8221;



But Microsoft goes one step further in protecting those hash values by splitting them in two, storing the parts in separate files. Here&#8217;s where a little trick comes in handy: A hacker might be able to recover those two separate pieces by rebooting a Windows PC using a CD with the Linux operating system. Back in 2010, it was possible to do that and recover the full hash value.



Ken Munro, a penetration tester with Pen Test Partners, told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;the technique still works, as long as there’s no additional layer of security over it, such as full disc encryption. &#8220;Whilst the technique still works, it&#8217;s quite rare to find systems that don&#8217;t now have full disc or similar encryption,&#8221; he added. (Microsoft hadn&#8217;t responded to a request for comment at the time of publication). According to the government&#8217;s telling of the story, evidence suggests Manning tried, and very possibly failed, with this technique. In a footnote in the affidavit, the government said Manning hadn&#8217;t provided Assange with the full hash, only one of the two halves required.



It&#8217;s alleged Manning passed what she thought was a hash value to Assange. The Wikileaks chief then said he would pass it on to a specialist in cracking, according to chats over the Jabber encrypted communications app, as provided in the affidavit. But, as per the investigators&#8217; claims, there was some confusion: Manning said she wasn&#8217;t even sure what she handed to Assange was the hash value they wanted. Assange messaged Manning to ask if there were &#8220;any more hints&#8221; about the hash and that he&#8217;d had &#8220;no luck so far,&#8221; according to the government account. From there it&#8217;s unclear what happened. The government admits it didn&#8217;t know whether the password was ever cracked.



Not that it changes much for Assange: The charge is that of conspiracy. If he did offer assistance to help Manning gain access to U.S. government systems and encouraged the then intelligence analyst to leak files, the charge still stands. Manning, who served seven years in jail before being pardoned by President Barack Obama, is back behind bars for refusing to testify in the investigation into Wikileaks. Her lawyer had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.



Assange&#8217;s lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, couldn&#8217;t be reached for comment at the time of publication. She told&nbsp;Sky News&nbsp;yesterday that the indictment against her client showed &#8220;the kinds of communications journalists have with sources all the time.&#8221; Following Assange&#8217;s arrest, however, various journalists have said on Twitter that any incitement to hack organizations or steal documents was far from normal and risked breaking the law.



Meanwhile, the fallout from Assange&#8217;s arrest continues. According to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecuador-wikileaks/ecuador-says-hacking-attempts-doubled-after-it-ended-assange-asylum-idUSKCN1RR25Y" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Reuters</a>, Ecuador&#8217;s telecommunications vice minister Patricio Real said the government&#8217;s networks had been hit by a mass of cyberattacks after it decided to revoke Assange&#8217;s asylum status. He claimed various government websites had been slammed by 40 million hacking attempts per day, double the number it typically sees.



-Thomas Brewster; Forbes Staff

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Here’s How The US Claims The Assange-Manning Conspiracy Worked

Email and smart phones can be stressful. Academics are calling this constant work connection&nbsp;“technostress”. Consequently, many European countries are now offering employees the&nbsp;“right to disconnect”.



The way email is used is complex, it cannot simply be labelled as “good” or “bad” and research shows that&nbsp;personality, the type of work people do and their goals can influence the way they react to email.



Good practice with email use is not just about limiting the amount of emails sent, but improving the quality of communication.



Here are ten tips to reduce the stress of email at work:



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">1. Get the subject line right</h4>



Use clear and actionable subject lines.



The subject line should communicate exactly what the email is about in six to ten words, to allow the recipient to prioritise the email without even opening it. On mobile devices, many people only see the first 30 characters of a subject line. So keep it short. But make it descriptive enough to give an idea of what the email is about from just the subject line.



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<h4 class="wp-block-heading">2. Ask yourself: is email the right medium?</h4>



Are you in the same office? Could you go and speak to the person? Could you call? Often these other forms of communication can avoid the inefficient back and forth of emailing.



Instant messaging and video calling platforms like&nbsp;Slack&nbsp;and&nbsp;Skype&nbsp;could be more appropriate for quick internal back and forth messaging. Also, remember that most of the advice below applies to all types of electronic communication.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">3. Don’t email out of office hours</h4>



Research shows&nbsp;that out-of-hours emails make it harder for people to recover from work stress.



Try and influence your company culture by avoiding sending or replying to emails outside your normal working hours.



Management should lead by example and avoid contacting their staff outside of their normal working hours.&nbsp;Some workplaces&nbsp;even switch off email access to employees out of hours. Consider implementing this while keeping a backup phone system for emergency contact only.



New research&nbsp;has also shown that just the expectation of 24-hour contact can negatively affect employee health.



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<h4 class="wp-block-heading">4. Use the delay delivery option</h4>



Some&nbsp;people&nbsp;like integrating their work and family lives and often continue working from home during their off-job time. If you are one of these people, or if you work across time zones, consider using the delay delivery option so your emails do not send until the next working day and do not interfere with other people’s off-job time.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">5. Keep it positive</h4>



Think about the quality of email communication. Not just the quantity. Changes to email use should also focus on the quality of what is being sent and take into consideration the emotional reaction of the recipient.



Research suggests&nbsp;that conflicts are far easier to escalate and messages to be misinterpreted when communicated via email. Therefore, if it is bad news, think back to rule #2: is email the right medium?



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">6. Try ‘no email Friday’</h4>



In order to shift company culture and get people thinking about other methods of communication than email, try a&nbsp;“no email Friday”&nbsp;on the first Friday of every month, or maybe even every week. This is an initiative suggested by experts from the&nbsp;National Forum for Health and Wellbeing at Work, and is being used by businesses&nbsp;around the globe. Employees are encouraged to arrange face-to-face meetings or pick up the phone – or just get on top of the many emails they already have in their inbox on that day.



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/lists/2018/12/18/the-12-biggest-career-crashes-of-2018/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="The 12 Biggest Career Crashes Of 2018 (opens in a new tab)">The 12 Biggest Career Crashes Of 2018</a>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">7. Make your preferences known</h4>



Research has shown&nbsp;that not only too much but also too little email can cause stress due to a mismatch between the communication preferences of different people. Some people may like being emailed and cope much better with high email traffic than other means of communication. For these people, reducing the amount of emails they receive may cause more stress than it alleviates.



So consider people’s individual differences and make yours known. Add your preferred contact preferences to your email signature whether it is email, text or instant messages or a phone call.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">8. Consider a holiday ‘bounce back’</h4>



Having a backlog of emails that builds up over the week appears to be one of the&nbsp;most commonly mentioned sources of technostress&nbsp;for workers. Think about setting up a system where emails are bounced back to the sender when someone is on holiday, with an alternative contact email for urgent requests. This would let you come back to a manageable inbox.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">9. Have a separate work phone</h4>



Make this the only mobile device you can access work emails on, which gives you the freedom to switch it off after work hours. Also consider turning off email&nbsp;“push”&nbsp;(this is where your email server sends each new email to your phone when it arrives at the server) and instead choose a regular schedule (such as once per hour) for emails to be delivered to your phone (this also increases battery life).



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">10. Avoid late night screen time</h4>



Research suggests&nbsp;that late night smart phone use reduces our ability to get to sleep and also leads to constant thoughts and stress about work. This in turn reduces your sleep quality. Make the bed a phone-free zone to improve your&nbsp;sleep hygiene.



<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113670/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important">



-The Conversation



-Ricardo Twumasi; Lecturer in Organisational Psychology, University of Manchester



-Cary Cooper; 50th Anniversary Professor of Organisational Psychology and Health, University of Manchester



&#8211;Lina Siegl; PhD Researcher, University of Manchester

GettyImages-1004712242

10 Rules Of Email That Will Reduce Your Stress Levels

On Saturday, the world&#8217;s largest aircraft, the Stratolaunch, made its first complete test flight. The aircraft flew for about two and a half hours over the Mojave desert, reaching a speed of 189 miles per hour and an altitude of 17,000 feet.



The aircraft was created by the Stratolaunch Systems Corporation, which was founded by the late Paul Allen. The purpose of the plane isn&#8217;t normal commercial travel, but rather to carry rockets into high altitudes, then launch those rockets from the plane itself.



&#8220;What a fantastic first flight,&#8221; Jean Floyd, CEO of Stratolaunch, said in a statement. &#8220;Today’s flight furthers our mission to provide a flexible alternative to ground launched systems.&#8221;



Scaled Composites, which was acquired by Northrop Grummon in 2007, worked on the design and build of the Stratolaunch aircraft. Saturday&#8217;s test flight was piloted by Scaled Composites test pilots Evan Thomas and Chris Guarente.



&#8220;I honestly could not have hoped for more on a first flight especially of an airplane of this complexity and this uniqueness,&#8221; Thomas said in a press briefing following the flight.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5cb2313d4bbe6f63d2f3d607/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Stratolaunch in flight"/><figcaption>Stratolaunch in flight on Saturday, April 13 Picture: STRATOLAUNCH SYSTEMS CORPORATION</figcaption></figure>



The Stratolaunch aircraft was first announced in 2011, and is the largest plane ever built out of composite materials. Its wingspan is 385 feet, the longest of any aircraft that has ever flown, including the Spruce Goose, which had a wingspan of about 320 feet. By comparison, a Boeing 747 has a wingspan of about 212 feet &#8211; making the Stratolaunch plane nearly twice the size. It&#8217;s propelled by six PW4056 turbofan engines, and is actually capable of launching multiple rockets on a single flight, up to about 500,000 pounds.



Airplane-launched rockets seemed at one point to be a good bet as a way of providing more convenient flights into space. Scaled Composites won the Ansari X Prize for launching the first private, reusable spacecraft into space in June of 2004. That effort was backed by Paul Allen, and this approach was not only adopted by Stratolaunch but also by Richard Branson&#8217;s Virgin Galactic.



However, it&#8217;s taken much longer than expected to develop these types of spaceflight. Virgin Galactic only first reached a space-approaching altitude&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2018/12/13/virgin-galactic-reaches-space-for-the-first-time-ever/#38e67f731c35" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">at the end of 2018</a>&nbsp;&#8211; 14 years after that first Scaled Composite flight &#8211; though it hopes to be providing passenger service as early as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2018/12/14/with-virgin-galactics-latest-flight-has-space-tourism-finally-arrived/#706850b443d9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">later this year</a>. Stratolaunch at one time was developing a rocket for its aircraft, but abandoned that effort earlier this year.



Rather than launch its own rockets, Stratolaunch has shifted strategy to be a platform for other aircraft-launched rockets. In particular, for Northrop Grummon&#8217;s&nbsp;Pegasus family of rockets. First demonstration Pegasus flights off of the Stratolaunch plane are scheduled for 2020.



Though they&#8217;ve taken longer to develop, the arrival of private plane-launched rockets via Virgin and Stratolaunch may be well-timed, as more satellite startups&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2018/11/21/pint-sized-space-race-miniature-rockets-are-starting-to-crowd-launch-pads/#766ce56830b5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">are looking for options&nbsp;</a>to get satellites into space on their own timetable. Rockets launched from airplanes have more flexibility in terms of timing than their counterparts that launch from the ground, which may be a critical factor for companies looking to build up constellations in a hurry.



-Alex Knapp; Forbes Staff

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The World’s Largest Airplane Takes Flight. Next Stop? Outer Space

Dennis Muilenburg has earned a reputation as a high-energy CEO, bicycling 140 miles a week, sometimes taking groups of employees along for high-speed bonding sessions. The 55-year-old may need every ounce of energy he’s got as he faces one of the worst crises for Boeing in over 50 years: two crashes that killed 346 people, linked to the automated flight controls of the 737 MAX and leading to the grounding of the company’s bestselling plane.



The stakes for Boeing, and its CEO,&nbsp;are huge. The 737 accounts for 33% of Boeing’s revenue and almost 50% of its profit, according to Berenberg analyst Andrew Gollan.&nbsp;Deliveries have been halted since the plane was taken out of service worldwide after the March 10 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane, airlines are demanding compensation, and the company faces scrutiny from Congress, a Department of Transportation inquiry and a federal criminal probe. The stock (BA) has fallen 10%. Lawsuits filed by relatives of the dead and shareholders could take years to conclude.



Over the past few weeks, the 34-year Boeing veteran has been traveling heavily to shore up support from airline customers and investors. An aerospace engineer by training, Muilenburg has kept a close eye on the Boeing team rewriting the faulty flight control program; last week he went up in a plane that tested out its effectiveness.



But many observers are giving Boeing and Muilenburg poor marks for their public handling of the crisis. Until late last week, Muilenburg was largely invisible and the company’s public statements, while expressing sympathy for family and friends of the deceased, were short on substance.



“I give them a B,” says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor of leadership at the Yale School of Management. Muilenburg needs to put a human face on Boeing, he says, and get out in public and engage with the media to try to correct misperceptions and address the many questions about what went wrong, even if he doesn’t have ready answers to offer. &nbsp;



Muilenburg hasn’t shown the media sophistication of his predecessor, Jim McNerney, who’d previously helmed GE’s prized aircraft engine division and 3M. “He’s got a catastrophe as his training ground,” says Sonnenfeld.



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2019/04/04/ethiopian-crash-report-fingers-boeing-flight-control-system-but-undercuts-claim-that-pilots-followed-proper-procedures/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Preliminary reports</a>&nbsp;from the investigations into the crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 in October and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 last month suggest that the pilots of both planes struggled to counter a flight control program called MCAS that erroneously pushed the planes’ noses down due to malfunctioning angle-of-attack sensors. After Ethiopian investigators released their report last Thursday, Boeing put out a video&nbsp;<a href="https://boeing.mediaroom.com/2019-04-04-Boeing-CEO-Dennis-Muilenburg-Addresses-the-Ethiopian-Airlines-Flight-302-Preliminary-Report" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">statement by Muilenburg</a>&nbsp;in which he said Boeing accepted responsibility for the role that MCAS played as one of the “chain links” in the two accidents.



Aviation regulators in other countries have questioned the Federal Aviation Administration’s certification of the MCAS system and its initial reluctance to pull the 737 MAX out of service; several have said they won’t just take the FAA’s word that it’s safe to fly again, making it uncertain when the plane will return to the skies worldwide.



With the prospects of a quick resolution fading, Boeing announced&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2019/04/05/boeing-cutting-output-of-737s-amid-crash-investigations-and-delivery-freeze/#354bd7925c8a" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">last Friday</a>&nbsp;it would throttle back 737 production to 42 a month from 52—a sharp reversal from its plan to raise output to 57 by the summer.



Analyst Richard Epstein of Bank of America/Merrill Lynch downgraded the stock to neutral Monday, estimating that Boeing likely won’t be able to resume deliveries for six months and won’t get back on pace until 2021, reducing earnings through 2023 before interest and taxes by $13.7 billion.



Whether Muilenburg’s job is threatened or not may depend on the stock price, says Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with Teal Group.



The board is loyal to Muilenburg, observers say, and his record so far has given them little reason to doubt having signed off on then-CEO and chairman McNerney’s decision to promote him to the top job in 2015 at age 51.



<h5 class="wp-block-heading">Engineer With Focus On Financial Discipline</h5>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/1133157944/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="US-aviation-ACCIDENT-BOEING"/><figcaption>Workers stand under the wing of a Boeing 737 MAX airplane at the Boeing Renton Factory in Renton, Washington on March 27, 2019. Boeing gathered hundreds of pilots and reporters at its factory to unveil a fix to the flight software of its grounded 737AFP/GETTY IMAGES</figcaption></figure>



The hard-charging, detail-oriented engineer presented a strong contrast to McNerney, a liberal arts major at Yale and Harvard M.B.A. who rose up through the ranks at General Electric when it was a star factory under Jack Welch. Native to Iowa, Muilenburg grew up milking cows every morning on his family farm and graduated from Iowa State before going straight to work at Boeing. Health-conscious and rail thin, he drinks Diet Mountain Dew to get a calorie-free caffeine fix and has been known to order turkey sandwiches with no mayo.



Though he’s cut head count, Muilenburg has cultivated a more positive relationship with the workforce than McNerney, who clashed with the machinist’s union and infamously joked of workers “cowering” from him.



However, Muilenburg has followed in McNerney’s footsteps with a laser focus on financial discipline, including boosting profits by wringing discounts from suppliers. Muilenburg has even gone&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2018/06/06/boeings-vertical-leap-where-will-it-squeeze-suppliers-next/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a step further</a>, moving to make more components in house and aiming to more than triple sales from lucrative aftermarket maintenance and services to $50 billion a year.



Like his two predecessors, Muilenberg has continued to sweeten the pot for investors, devoting roughly 95% of operating cash flow to the company’s steadily rising dividend and share buybacks.



The stock has taken off, climbing fourfold from February 2016 to a peak of $446 at the beginning of March, compared with a 63% rise for the Dow industrials over the same period. The March selloff has only pushed the stock back to where it stood at the end of January.



But to Aboulafia, the flawed design of the MCAS flight control system, combined with the continuing problems with the KC-46 tanker and delays in the crewed space-launch program are further evidence for criticism he’s leveled at Boeing for almost two decades: that the company’s focus on shareholder rewards has come with a “deprioritization and perhaps under-resourcing of engineering.”



Boeing says it’s maintained R&amp;D spending at a steady level and has a healthy corps of 56,000 engineers.



The question of how MCAS was certified has raised concerns over whether Boeing has gained too cozy a relationship with the FAA; a wildcard going forward is whether any evidence of wrongdoing will emerge.



If whistleblowers had any damaging information we likely would have heard it by now, says Mark Dombroff, an aviation attorney at LeClairRyan and former head of the Department of Justice’s aviation division. He expects that the DoJ will seek to determine within 90 to 120 days whether there’s a case to pursue.



Aviation experts are optimistic that Boeing’s software patch and training revisions will solve the 737 MAX’s safety problems. Boeing&#8217;s disclosure this week that it logged zero orders for the MAX in March generated negative headlines, but with a whopping 15,000 total narrow-body orders placed over the past seven years, there aren’t really any&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardaboulafia/2019/04/11/boeing-airbus-orders/#68b9038b3b74" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">airlines left with sizable needs</a>, says Aboulafia, with the notable exception of Chinese carriers. Any trade deal between the U.S. and China that would change the balance of trade will likely include Boeing sales.



Boeing’s last major crisis came in 2013, when the 787 was grounded for three months due to battery fires, two years after the plane entered service following years of production snafus and spiraling costs. While the financial stakes were large, no lives were lost. The last time Boeing faced a safety crisis of a comparable nature to the current one was the mid-1960s, when four new 727 jets crashed in a span of four months.



Like then, Boeing faces the task of convincing a fearful public that the MAX will be safe to step into again. Sonnenfeld says Muilenberg needs to take a page from James Burke, the late CEO of Johnson &amp; Johnson, who pulled off the tall task of convincing Americans that Tylenol was still safe after seven people were killed by cyanide-laced capsules in 1982. “It’s going to take the CEO to be out there.”



-Jeremy Bogaisky; Forbes Staff

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Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Faces Mounting Pressure From 737 MAX Crashes

At a board retreat in Orlando, Florida, in 2006, a pair of senior Disney executives predicted a seismic shift in the media landscape — one fueled by consumers who would enjoy unprecedented access to content. Their plan? Amass strong enough entertainment brands and franchises to grab the attention of viewers awash in choices.



That insight, part of a “Disney 2015” presentation by its CFO at the time, Tom Staggs, and corporate strategist Kevin Mayer, was delivered a dozen years before Netflix briefly surpassed Disney as the world&#8217;s most valuable media company in 2018. It would inform an aggressive buying binge, in the mold of the Pixar Animation Studios deal of 2006, that would roll up some of the world&#8217;s most recognizable entertainment brands under the Disney banner — Marvel Entertainment, Lucasfilm and 21st Century Fox. These form the foundation of the coming Disney+ streaming service, which CEO Bob Iger will discuss in detail at an investor day Thursday on Disney’s manicured studio lot in Burbank, California.



Analysts say Disney’s library of blockbuster films and popular TV shows, bolstered by its recent acquisition of Fox’s film and television assets, give it a competitive advantage that should help attract subscribers — even at a time when established rivals, like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, have gained a substantial head-start.



Disney and Fox together account for 47% of the top 100 films of all time, based on domestic box office. That’s more than double the nearest competitor, Warner Bros., with 20 hit movies. The combined Disney and Fox libraries also command the largest share of the 100 most popular TV shows, as ranked by IMDB. &nbsp;



Disney plans to mine its Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars franchises for original shows that will appear exclusively on the streaming service, including a live-action Star Wars TV series&nbsp;The Mandalorian, an animated series&nbsp;Monsters At Work, with Billy Crystal and John Goodman reprising their roles as Mike and Sully, and a series based on the Marvel archer character Hawkeye, starring Jeremy Renner.



“The amalgamation of Disney’s and Fox’s libraries will create an unparalleled combination of great, hard to recreate and memorable content,” said media analyst Michael Nathanson.



Nathanson predicts Disney+ will attract 7.1 million subscribers in its first year, growing to nearly 24 million by the end of fiscal 2022.



A question remains about whether a content company like Disney will be able to match Netflix’s technological prowess. The Los Gatos-based streaming service has been able to draw from its vast trove of user data to deliver recommendations that keep its 139 million global subscribers watching, month after month, and inform programming decisions.



Disney has stumbled on previous digital endeavors, such as DisneyLife, a U.K.-based streaming service that launched in 2015, charging £10 a month for access to some 400 movies, 4,000 TV episodes as well as songs and books. Despite a price drop, it has failed to catch on with subscribers, according to numerous published accounts.



The success of Disney+ is something Iger is staking his legacy on, describing it, during a recent investor call, as “our number one priority.”



That’s a major strategic shift for Disney, which had enabled the growth of Netflix through lucrative multi-year deals, such as the one in 2012 that gave the streaming service exclusive TV rights to new and catalog films, and another, the following year, that handed Netflix access to Marvel’s muscular superhero roster — with ABC Television Studio developing original series based on comic book characters Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage.



Netflix became the de facto syndicator for a number of TV shows, noted Nathanson.



The inescapable toll of cord-cutting, fanned by popular services like Netflix, caused a re-calibration inside the Mouse House. Disney’s traditional cash cow, ESPN, has shed 13 million domestic subscribers from its peak in 20013, and Disney Channel also has lost millions of pay TV viewers.



Iger shifted course in 2017, announcing that Disney would pull its content from Netflix and launch its own service in 2019. That August, the company invested $1.58 billion to acquire a majority ownership of BAMTech, the MLB-founded video streaming technology that will power Disney+. That same year, in December, Disney announced its ground-breaking deal to acquire much of Fox, a move that would position Disney as the world&#8217;s preeminent entertainment company — and bulk up its library as it prepares to do battle with Netflix.



The $71.3 billion Fox deal, which closed in March, reunited the X-Men and Fantastic Four with the rest of the Marvel universe, added&nbsp;The Simpsons&nbsp;and&nbsp;Ice Age&nbsp;to Disney and Pixar’s animated roster, and brought James Cameron’s four sequels to the box-office blockbuster Avatar under the Disney banner. It also gave Disney a controlling interest in Hulu, a streaming service jointly owned with Comcast’s NBCUniversal and AT&amp;T’s WarnerMedia, which has amassed 25 million subscribers.



Disney announced a sweeping corporate reorganization in March of 2018, to consolidate its streaming operations under the executive who’d overseen its major acquisitions, Kevin Mayer. Previously, efforts had been fragmented among the different business units, with the film and television groups pursuing different digital strategies, say former insiders.



“Depending on how aggressively Disney intends to invest, and their willingness to accept compressed profit margins, the company has a chance to become a meaningful competitor to Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video,” wrote Brian Wieser, a long-time media analyst who now oversees business intelligence for GroupM, one of the world’s largest media buyers.



-Dawn Chmielewski; Forbes Staff

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How Disney’s Investment In Entertainment Brands Like Marvel and Star Wars Will Power The Launch Of Its New Streaming Service

He was a Los Angeles billionaire known worldwide for pushing the limits of engineering, safety and his bank account to achieve transportation breakthroughs, as well as for gossipy celebrity romances. 



He churned through executives like a buzz saw, made puzzlingly costly business decisions and invited conflict by thumbing his nose at politicians and the law. Yet he was one of the great entrepreneurs of his time.



No, it isn&#8217;t Tesla’s mercurial billionaire CEO Elon Musk, who’s locked in a legal fight with the Securities &amp; Exchange Commission that could lead to his ouster and must put the company on sound footing after burning through $5 billion since 2010 to popularize its electric cars and solar power. 



We’re talking about billionaire Howard Hughes, who at his death was among the world’s richest people. Hughes’ machinery ushered in the oil age, his investments helped popularize commercial air travel, he ran Hollywood’s biggest studios, built an enormous gaming and real estate empire, and has an imprint that stretches from satellite television to the Las Vegas strip and biomedical research.



We’re talking about billionaire Howard Hughes, who at his death was among the world’s richest people. Hughes’ machinery ushered in the oil age, his investments helped popularize commercial air travel, he ran Hollywood’s biggest studios, built an enormous gaming and real estate empire, and has an imprint that stretches from satellite television to the Las Vegas strip and biomedical research.



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As federal judge&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/03/19/sec-slams-elon-musk-for-failing-to-have-a-single-tesla-tweet-checked/#283d8f383a46" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Alison Nathan weighs the SEC’s charge</a>&nbsp;that Musk violated a 2018 settlement arising from alleged share price manipulation with tweets about taking Tesla private, it’s instructive to look back at another mercurial entrepreneur’s career and fights with regulators, because even surprise victories didn’t guarantee long-term stability for Hughes.



Born in 1905, Hughes in the 1920s inherited Hughes Tool, which made drill bits used to burrow oil wells. Uninterested in oil, he let others run the company and moved to Los Angeles to spend Toolco cash on passion projects in two emerging technologies: aviation and moviemaking. Hughes’ silent filmTwo Arabian Knights won Academy awards. During the filming of his 1930 epic Hell’s Angels, pilots died and planes crashed. 



The silver screen adventures made Hughes a celebrity. He dated Jane Russell and Katherine Hepburn and married actress Jean Peters. Likewise, Musk married British actress Talulah Riley following his divorce from author Justine (Wilson) Musk. He’s also dated actress Amber Heard and had a brief but sensational, relationship with indie singer Grimes.



Hughes’ aviation obsession led him in 1932 to create Hughes Aircraft as a division of Toolco, to siphon more profits and manufacture planes in the pursuit of flight records. By 1938 he flew around the world in record time, gaining global fame. In 1939, he paid $9 million to take control of Trans World Airlines. 



Hughes’ aircraft unit was a big military contractor during World War II, and TWA, under his ownership, brought flying into the mainstream through expansion and enormous aircraft investments. The spending even supported burgeoning aerospace conglomerates like Boeing and McDonnell Douglas.



At the time of his death in 1976, Hughes had controlled TWA, RKO, Air West and owned multiple billion-dollar businesses, six casinos and most of the undeveloped land in Las Vegas. Though he spent his last days as a recluse at Xanadu, his Bahamian estate, Hughes’ fame was worldwide, and it carries on with his Howard Hughes Medical Institute, one of America&#8217;s biggest philanthropies. For all the success, Hughes also spent much of his public life fighting with politicians and regulators.



Like Musk, the SEC targeted Hughes for manipulative financial maneuvers in his publicly traded companies, and both faced shareholder lawsuits. Unlike Musk so far, Hughes’ reckless maneuvering also meant he was often forced to put his businesses into blind trust structures, shielded from his capricious management.



Born in South Africa, Musk came to the U.S. to study physics and economics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, arriving at the dawn of the internet era in search of big opportunities. Musk later dropped out of Stanford to create a software company he eventually sold to Compaq. 



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Next he built X.Com, a Web payments company that became part of PayPal, and Musk was treated as a cofounder alongside Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman and others. When eBay bought PayPal in 2002, Musk earned a $165 million payday that bootstrapped his push into new industries. 



He began by founding the rocket company SpaceX in 2002, then in 2004 invested $6.35 million to transform Tesla from a concept on paper into the world’s leading electric car brand. He funded the residential solar energy startup SolarCity in 2006, which has since been integrated into Tesla, and in 2017 created the Boring Company as a way to advance his high-speed Hyperloop concept.



Like Hughes, Musk made daring, contrarian bets aimed at reshaping enormous industries. He, too, wanted to test the limits of corporate leadership to gain ground on incumbents like General Motors, electric utilities, oil companies and government-backed space endeavors. 



Tesla competes with an oligopoly of carmakers specializing in petroleum-powered internal combustion engines. With SpaceX he saw an opportunity to ferry satellites, cargo and astronauts into space as NASA slimmed down. SolarCity’s goal is to accelerate clean energy use and curb dependence on fossil fuels.



All three have become high-profile, multibillion-dollar businesses, but none has produced meaningful profits. They’ve also been hamstrung by Musk’s driven, but often reckless, management style.



SpaceX, a wild success now worth $30 billion, has completed numerous launches for NASA and is the leader in private space travel. Musk also set a goal of not just getting to Mars but colonizing it. At the moment, SpaceX is also reportedly under review as a federal contractor, after Musk smoked pot on comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast. 



Tesla acquired SolarCity in a 2016 merger that puzzled investors and led to accusations of self-dealing since most board members rubber-stamping the purchase were affiliated with Musk. It also triggered a class-action shareholder suit. SolarCity has disappointed so far, losing market share and moving slowly on ambitious plans to sell solar roofs and Powerwall battery storage systems. But none of Musk’s companies has become more valuable or problematic than Tesla.



Two years after its 2010 Nasdaq debut, Tesla and Musk dazzled with the electric Model S, a sleek sedan that won critical raves and blew away sales expectations. Tesla shares soared, and Musk began planning new vehicles including the Model X SUV and mass-market Model 3 sedan. But X was two years late to market, mainly because of the problematic “falcon wing” doors Musk insisted on, and the 3’s rollout was hamstrung by bottlenecks with the automated assembly line Musk envisioned. 



Tesla mostly abandoned his robotic production dream, even building Model 3’s almost by hand in a tentlike assembly line in a lot at its plant in Fremont, California. Since 2016 dozens of top Tesla executives have left, and Wall Street has grown uncomfortable with its billions of dollars in spending but weak financial position.



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Over time, Hughes became known for increasingly erratic behavior. His fame transitioned from Hollywood showmanship to mystery as he spent his later years as a recluse in a suite in Las Vegas’s Desert Inn and then at his Bahamian Xanadu. “Hughes survived three major airplane crashes and an automobile crash that put him out for two days. His head was badly banged around in all of these, and I think his mental condition can be directly attributed to those crashes,” Noah Dietrich, Hughes’ longtime accountant and confidant, told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;in 1972. Dietrich recalled a 1944 episode when he told Hughes, “You better see some doctors and do it quick.” When Hughes returned, Dietrich recalled, he said, “Noah, thanks a lot. I had a consultation with three doctors this morning and they tell me I’m right on the verge of a complete mental collapse. They tell me if I don&#8217;t get away for a while and relax&#8230;”



In 2017, Musk <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2017/07/31/amid-his-most-important-tesla-milestone-elon-musk-says-he-may-be-bipolar/#454f42f971f4" target="_blank">tweeted that he might be bipolar</a>, a surprisingly candid admission for such a public figure. But in the summer of 2018, he created unnecessary headaches with several head-scratching moves. He triggered a defamation lawsuit for recklessly calling a British man who aided the rescue of a Thai soccer team trapped in a cave a “pedo” on Twitter. In August, after receiving an investment from Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, he dropped an even bigger Twitter bombshell. “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured,” he blared to 25 million followers. After a probe, the SEC found Musk had little basis to proclaim the buyout and charged him with stock manipulation. In September, after seeking his removal as CEO, the regulator fined Musk and Tesla $40 million, had him step down as chairman and agree to have tweets containing material information reviewed by Tesla officials. Musk agreed to the terms but neglected them and expressed contempt for the SEC. “I want to be clear. I do not respect the SEC. I do not respect them,” he told 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl in December 2018. That interview, combined with an inaccurate tweet about Tesla production, led the SEC to claim he had breached the settlement.



Now it’s up to Judge Nathan, who’s presiding over the case in the federal court for the Southern District of New York, to decide Musk’s fate. On Thursday, she asked that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/04/04/elon-musk-lives-to-fight-another-day-as-judge-orders-him-to-work-out-twitter-dispute-with-sec/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Musk and the SEC try to mediate a solution,</a>&nbsp;which was an idea the entrepreneur seemed amenable to. But what if he again opts for a standoff? The most extreme outcome could force Musk out of Tesla management. Could his role at SpaceX also be curbed? Will banks who’ve lent billions to Musk pull their support? These are all scenarios that played out in Hughes’ half-century business career in aviation, film, gambling, real estate and energy.



Consider his deal to take control of Trans World Airlines, an investment that returned Hughes a fiftyfold profit. TWA also spent over a decade battling the billionaire. In 1961, it sued Hughes on antitrust grounds, accusing the mercurial businessman of using a crony as CEO to rubber-stamp $320 million in jet orders, which the airline leased from Hughes Tool and nearly caused the airline to go under. The buying binge propelled TWA into one of the world’s fastest growing airlines, but its cash needs proved to be a double-edged sword. When Hughes’ hand-picked CEO retired midway through a $265 million rescue financing, he was blindsided by a piece of fine print that allowed lenders to put his shares in trust if there were any executive departures. When the financing was completed, TWA was saved, but Hughes lost control. In came the professional management, which turned the tables by suing Hughes on antitrust grounds for the reckless aircraft orders. Hughes sold his TWA stock for $546.5 million in 1966.



Of Hughes’ management,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;said in a 1961 cover story, “On the whole, it is to be hoped that Howard Hughes will never again be able to exercise the absolute power he once held over TWA. The hope is not expressed from any high-flown considerations of economic morality or national interest. Rather, it is because Hughes is basically a distraction: No rational analysis of TWA and its prospects seems possible without soon being perverted into a discussion of this mysterious, magnetic, remarkable man.”



Even after Hughes’ sold his stake in TWA, the battle raged on, with the airline winning a $135 million judgment against the entrepreneur in 1963. For the better part of a decade, the nine-figure legal loss hung over Hughes’ empire. In 1972, an appeal by the billionaire made it to the Supreme Court, where Hughes prevailed.



That wasn’t the only airline conquest that resulted in legal trouble for Hughes. After exiting TWA, he set his sights on Air West, offering to buy the struggling airline for $81 million, or $22 a share, in a 1968 hostile takeover. Hughes won a lengthy battle and changed the airline’s name to Hughes Air West. However, in 1970 when shareholders were paid, they received just $8 a share. In 1973, Hughes and four associates were charged criminally for stock manipulation, conspiracy and wire fraud. In 1975 the SEC joined the legal battle. The suit raged on through Hughes’ death in 1976. His estate paid $30 million to the SEC in 1979 to settle the charges.



As a government contractor, Hughes invited particular scrutiny. Hughes Aircraft was notorious for missing deadlines and frustrating federal bureaucracies. During World War II, it was tasked with building a spy plane that was never delivered, though Hughes narrowly escaped death crashing a prototype in Beverly Hills. Then came notoriety. Hughes was contracted to build a plane to shuttle supplies and troops by air, instead of warships susceptible to German U-boats. His eight-engine, 750-person plywood H-4 Hercules, known nationwide as the Spruce Goose, was a marvel of ambition. But the war came and went, tens of millions were spent, and it wouldn’t fly.



In 1947, Owen Brewster, a U.S. senator from Maine who was an ally of infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy, brought Hughes to the Senate to testify on why the government spent $40 million on a plane that wasn’t delivered. To deflect accusations the was selling vaporware, Hughes organized a media event in Long Beach, California, in which he flew the Spruce Goose 33 feet in the air for about a minute, winning the public’s support and eventually ending Brewster’s political career. But to remain a government contractor, he was forced in 1953 to spin off Hughes Aircraft and put it in a trust, which was called the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. When Hughes died in 1976, he was among the world’s richest people, and nearly everything he owned was under a legal cloud.



Hughes’ divestiture of Hughes Aircraft in 1953, Forbes reported in a 1984 feature, wasn’t without upside. “The suspicion has been that the whole affair was a tax move designed to keep Howard Hughes in sole control while paying no taxes,” wrote reporter Allan Dodds Frank. The Hughes estate sold Hughes Aircraft–which evolved into a coveted giant in satellite TV that birthed DirecTV–to General Motors in 1985 for $5 billion. 



The sale turned the institute into a top philanthropy and a leader in genetics and biomedical research: It has distributed $22 billion and 28 of its current and former scientists have been awarded Nobel prizes. In a 1972 exclusive interview with Forbes, Dietrich, Hughes’ accountant, revealed that the billionaire had probably paid just $20,000 a year in taxes. 



Dietrich himself spent years in a legal battle over undelivered bonus pay Hughes promised him if he stayed amid constant turnover. And though Dietrich’s tell-all to Forbes was mostly critical, the loyal adviser conceded, “Hughes did have a certain amount of mechanical genius.”



While Musk received most of the credit for Tesla’s early breakthrough with Model S, he benefited from an able team that included veteran auto engineers Peter Rawlinson and Nick Sampson; battery expert Kurt Kelty; George Blankenship, who designed Tesla’s stores; and government affairs pro Diarmuid O’Connell. None of them are still with Tesla. And while Musk gained billions from SpaceX, it’s been ably run (with minimal turnover) by president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell. It’s a contrast to Musk’s Model 3 “production hell” in 2018, when he spent many nights sleeping on a sofa in Tesla’s Fremont factory or jetting off to promote subterranean transit tunneling services by his Boring Co.



For all the similarities between the two men, there are also major differences. Hughes hardly ever relied on outside money to finance his whims. In his 20s, he smartly took 100% ownership of Hughes Tool and thus could plunder its cash without having to answer to anyone. Musk, on the other hand, magnified his PayPal windfall with enormous sums of other people’s money, on public stock markets and in private markets. He answers not only to public shareholders and venture capitalists in all of his endeavors but also to bankers, who’ve provided billions in margin debt to maintain large Tesla and SpaceX holdings as they’ve raised capital.



As much as Tesla and SpaceX’s combined $80 billion market cap is a marvel–and Musk’s newer ventures like Hyperloop and Boring Co. set impressive goals–they have yet to profit on their industry-changing intentions. Much of Musk’s empire is still based on undelivered promises anchored to time-bound investor expectations.



-Antoine Gara; Forbes Staff



-Alan Ohnsman; Forbes Staff



-With assistance from Susan Radlauer

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Crazy Aviators: The Eerie Similarities Between Billionaire Howard Hughes And Elon Musk

Mobile money services have not been very successful in South
Africa. The new products for micro-payments must address the larger ecosystem
of banks and retailers.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



Cash is still king in Africa and most parts of the world.
Yet, we cannot ignore the continued growth of mobile offerings on the African
continent, from the uptake of smartphones, app usage, or digital and mobile
payment solutions. 



Today, it is possible to open a bank account from a
smartphone or feature phone, and for small businesses to set up payment
solutions directly from mobile devices. As technologies advance for
micro-entrepreneurs, so too for micro-payments. 



A new form of payment aimed at ‘paying it forward’, be it to
a car guard, gardener, or a donation, has been introduced by South African
startup Jini Guru, called uKheshe, which means ‘cash’ in Zulu. 



The service allows a receiver to accept a tip or payment once a physical card with a QR code is scanned through the uKheshe app, by the sender.



The money accumulated can be cashed out at any Pick n Pay
outlet in South Africa, making it an essential solution for those who don’t
have bank accounts. The cards, attached to a lanyard, are of no cost and distributed
freely; anyone can order a batch online, only incurring courier fees. 



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Guru first started working with Pick n Pay about five years
ago, which resulted in the startup building and integrating its mobile wallet
and rewards platform with the supermarket’s new smart banking capabilities back
in 2017. 



“The mobile money marketplace in South Africa has been
riddled with several failures and false starts over the last 15 years,” says
uKheshe founder Jason Penton. 



“We looked at these mistakes, registered our FSP [Financial
Service Providers] and focussed on building a solution for the unbanked that
could uplift and increase their earning capability, and after various
iterations, and around a year of red-tape and coding, we were ready to share
uKheshe with South Africa.” 



uKheshe has two types of users: the receiver who is equipped
with a QR code, compatible with a feature phone; and the payer who has a
smartphone with the app installed to make quick payments.



The receiver, upon obtaining a free uKheshe QR code, can
register via a USSD menu easily on a feature phone, and thereafter, check
balances; withdraw; and transfer funds. “The users are charged a R5 a month
admin fee ,” Penton says. 



Withdrawal fees from Pick n Pay will cost R5, which is much
lower than ATM fees; and those who purchase goods at the supermarket will pay a
R2 fee.



Similarly, M-Pesa, one of the biggest success stories from
Kenya and Tanzania, is a virtual banking system that allows users to transact
with a SIM card by making payments and transfers via SMS, through Safaricom.
The popular service, however, did not find the same success in South Africa,
and was discontinued in 2016.



MD of World Wide Worx Arthur Goldstuck says M-Pesa in South Africa was launched in partnership with an elite bank, Nedbank, then with an almost unknown bank, and finally hidden away in USSD menus. “They [M-Pesa] did everything wrong, and the timing of the launch wouldn’t have saved them.”



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“uKheshe is probably making a mistake in its pricing, since
it is being punted as an ideal way to tip the poor, it is baffling that the
cost of withdrawal is practically the size of a standard tip,” Goldstuck says.
“Again, with its emphasis on the poor, the R2 cost of payment for transactions
suggests little understanding of the limited resources of the poor.” 



But the company says another key proposition is that uKheshe
card holders can transfer money to each other at no cost. “We see potential for
an entire sub-economy evolving where uKheshe value is exchanged between users,”
adds Penton. 



“As a registered financial services provider, there are
regulations in place to prevent money laundering and transferring large sums of
money without being traced in the banking system,” says Penton on the account
of the system being abused. 



“We have a daily withdrawal limit of R3,000 ($220) and a
monthly limit of R24,000 ($1,760). All sources of money into our system have to
come from a banked individual and all transfers out are limited to the
daily/monthly caps, in line with regulations,” he says.



Given that the majority of mobile money services have
previously been a failure in South Africa, Goldstuck says the fundamental
difference between markets within Africa is that South Africa already has an
extensive and highly-efficient money transfer system through retail outlets,
and people both trust and understand it.



“Furthermore, South Africa has a high-banked population,
with more than 70% of adults having a bank account. In East Africa, fewer than
10% had a financial instrument before M-Pesa came along.” 



A downside to these new products is that they are specific
to one retailer, says Goldstuck. “They need to be interchangeable and brand
agnostic, so that they can be used elsewhere, which requires an ecosystem that
incorporates most banks and retail chains; and right now, we have deals rather
than ecosystems.” 



More competition is expected in South Africa as mobile operator MTN is set to relaunch its Mobile Money service in the first quarter of 2019. The service currently has more than24 million active subscribers in more than 20 markets.



&#8211; Nafisa Akabor

ukhese

How Mobile Solutions Are Paying It Forward

Apple aficionados have learned to wait for the end of its product announcements for the most tantalizing news: the &#8220;one more thing&#8221; that Steve Jobs would toss off, almost as an afterthought, and send the audience into a frenzy.



This time, the finale of Apple&#8217;s long-anticipated announcement launching its Apple TV+ video subscription service Monday in Cupertino — the signature moment that brought some in the audience to their feet — took human form. Oprah Winfrey strode on stage wearing Apple-white and, as the applause died down, responded with a comically understated, &#8220;Hi.&#8221;



Winfrey talked publicly for the first time about her multi-year deal with Apple — a partnership CEO Tim Cook has referenced frequently, if vaguely, on earnings calls with the Wall Street analysts. 



The talk show host turned media executive said she&#8217;s working on a documentary dealing with the sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, currently titled&nbsp;Toxic Labor,&nbsp;and an untitled multi-part series exploring mental health issues.



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&#8220;The Apple platform has allowed me to do what I do in a whole new way — connecting people and taking it to a whole new level, because they have a billion pockets y&#8217;all,&#8221; Winfrey said, a reference to the 1.4 billion Apple devices in use around the world that some analysts believe give its streaming service a competitive edge over established rivals, such as Netflix.



Winfrey was the headliner at an event packed with Hollywood celebrities. Director Steven Spielberg took the stage for his inaugural appearance at an Apple event to talk about his revival of the anthology series&nbsp;Amazing Stories.&nbsp;



Actors Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston touted their new project,&nbsp;The Morning Show,&nbsp;which explores the power and gender dynamics of morning news shows — an opportunity so appealing, the&nbsp;Friends&nbsp;star said it brought her back to TV.



Director J.J. Abrams shared the stage with Grammy-nominated artist Sara Bareilles to tout their collaboration on&nbsp;Little Voice,&nbsp;a show about a young, flawed artist finding her voice. Kumail Nanjiani of the HBO series&nbsp;Silicon Valley&nbsp;will explore immigrant stories in the series&nbsp;Our Little America.&nbsp;Even&nbsp;Sesame Street&nbsp;staple Big Bird stepped into the spotlight to announce a children&#8217;s series called&nbsp;Helpsters.



READ MORE |<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/current-affairs/2019/01/30/apple-lowers-some-iphone-prices-outside-us-to-offset-strong-dollar/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Apple Lowers Some iPhone Prices Outside US To Offset Strong Dollar (opens in a new tab)">Apple Lowers Some iPhone Prices Outside US To Offset Strong Dollar</a>



Apple spelled out its broad ambitions for the forthcoming streaming service, saying it had partnered with the most accomplished storytellers as it seeks to define Apple TV+ as a home for quality entertainment. The tech company did more showing than telling at the Steve Jobs Theater Monday — each celebrity presentation was notably devoid of trailers.



It&#8217;s possible that the marking impresarios at Apple are holding their promotional firepower until a date closer to the Apple TV+ launch. Today&#8217;s event serves as a placeholder, staking Apple&#8217;s claim on the TV landscape ahead of the Walt Disney Co.&#8217;s April 11 investor briefing to discuss details of the Disney+ streaming service, or the television industry&#8217;s Upfront presentations, showcasing the fall schedule.



The Apple TV+ service will launch sometime this fall — though pricing has not been announced. It will be available through an updated version of the Apple TV app that&#8217;s already on millions of iPhones, iPads and Apple TV streaming devices. A new version of the app, due out in May, will work like a cable-TV service, where users can choose which TV channels they want to pay for and watch, including HBO, Showtime and Starz.



On the same day as Apple&#8217;s big announcement for original programming,&nbsp;Bloomberg reported&nbsp;that Google has cancelled plans for big budget scripted shows on YouTube. Google&nbsp;denied claims&nbsp;from Bloomberg sources that said the tech giant stopped accepting pitches for original scripts, but confirmed plans to launch ad-supported programming alongside YouTube Premium, $11.99-per-month ad-free access to YouTube Music and original content.



-Dawn Chmielewski; Forbes Staff

Apple Holds Product Launch Event In Cupertino

Apple Brings Out Hollywood’s Heavyweights To Kick Off Its Apple TV+ Streaming Service

We are now well into 2019. It is scary how time flies, it
only seemed like yesterday many of us were still on holiday, planning our new
year resolutions. Well, hopefully by now, your resolutions have become your
daily habits. But there is a resolution that you may have overlooked.



I am talking about resolving to stay relevant and re-skill yourself for the future of work. The good news is that it is not too late, and there is no time like the present to start. There is no better time to make a ‘fourth industrial resolution’.



We live in a time where disruptive technologies and trends
such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics
and virtual reality (VR) will change the way we work. 



Are you equipped for this change?



Education has always been a powerful tool, but never has
that been truer. I am not talking about the traditional, outdated, boring type
of education. Please don’t rush to get an MBA or a new colleague degree. 



READ MORE |<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2019/03/11/the-businesses-of-the-future-20-new-wealth-creators-on-the-african-continent/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Businesses Of The Future: 20 New Wealth Creators On The African Continent (opens in a new tab)">Businesses Of The Future: 20 New Wealth Creators On The African Continent</a>



Try to pursue relevant and ongoing education aligned to the
times. There are hundreds of free or low-cost resources online that could help
you with this. 



Platforms such aUdemy have some top-quality courses,
Codecademy will help you code (although the benefits thereof are debateable),
and Trend Hunter will help you keep up to date with the latest products and
companies being launched globally.



Some companies have amazing learning and development teams
that push great learning initiatives to their people. If yours does so, embrace
these. If they don’t, push them to support you in your plans to grow your
knowledge, in the right way.



The right type of education



So, what is the right way? 



1. Understand the uses of new technologies. You can win in this era even if you are not a digital guru. It is not necessarily the person who has a doctorate in artificial intelligence that will become the billionaire, but the person who uses some creative or lateral thinking, one who spots a new way to use the technology that no one before had thought of.&nbsp; 



Most people don’t understand the inner workings of their smartphones but know how to use them to improve their lives. 



In the same way, it is more important for most people to
understand what can be done with AI, Blockchain, VR, IoT, etc than to
understand the inner workings of these new technologies. 



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2019/03/03/banks-are-promoting-female-chatbots-to-help-customers-raising-concerns-of-stereotyping/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Banks Are Promoting ‘Female’ Chatbots To Help Customers, Raising Concerns Of Stereotyping (opens in a new tab)">Banks Are Promoting ‘Female’ Chatbots To Help Customers, Raising Concerns Of Stereotyping</a>



2. Update your toolset of daily digital enablers – I have
helped employees and leaders in top companies throughout South Africa and have
been astounded by the lack of knowledge of new smart digital tools that can be
used to complete tasks faster, cheaper and better than ever before. 



Companies are still overpaying for services, because they
don’t know any better. For example, some are paying large amounts for research
that can be found for free online, for instance, by using sites like Moat or
SimilarWeb. 



3. Learn what is happening globally, in all industries.
Don’t just focus on your industry. You can get amazing ideas by exploring
outside your confines. 



Stop only going to your same-old, staid industry
conferences. Commit to exploring across the board. 



Learn about what is being created in different fields and apply that thinking to create new solutions.



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2019/02/24/internet-in-our-bodies/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Internet In Our Bodies? (opens in a new tab)">Internet In Our Bodies?</a>



Make a real change



Most of those reading this won’t make a real commitment to
get ready for the future. I am not naïve – I know this. In fact, most people
probably quickly scrolled through the article, or just read the headline. 



But this is why it is even more important for you to be the
one who listens to my advice. 4IR will have many victims. Don’t be a victim, be
one of the people who actively takes control of their future. 



It may not be January the 1st but there is no better time to
make a fourth industrial resolution. 



– The writer is the CEO of 1064 Degrees.com. He is also a keynote speaker and author of ‘Exponential Potential’.

Robot working at desk, 3D Rendering

The Robots Are Coming:  How To Stay Relevant And  Re-Skill Yourself

Professor Sally Smith, Dean of School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University, was in South Africa to share how tech can revolutionize education and what Africa can learn.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



With the Fourth&nbsp;
Industrial Revolution gaining speed, the nature of work and economic
activity is set to dramatically change. One woman is on a mission to prepare
the education system for such changes.



Professor Sally Smith, the Dean of School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University, traveled from Scotland to South Africa to share her know-how, as one of the speakers at the Future of the Education Summit in Johannesburg.



Hosted by Africa Business News, the summit brought together thought-leaders and professors from all over the world. Smith met FORBES AFRICA a day before the summit to speak about her experiences in the education industry for 26 years:



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2019/02/26/technology-is-useful-but-drones-alone-wont-save-africas-elephants/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="OPINION | Technology Is Useful, But Drones Alone Won’t Save Africa’s Elephants (opens in a new tab)">OPINION | Technology Is Useful, But Drones Alone Won’t Save Africa’s Elephants</a>



1.What trends have you picked up in the sector over the years?



In terms of technology, it has been very fast-moving so the big challenge for universities is conducting research and translating that into useful programs for students when they graduate. 



In terms of the kind of trends and developments, we have seen huge growth in areas such as creative computing. There have been developments around designing meaningful interactions with computers, and that’s no longer just [limited to] a desktop computer; that will be your mobile phone, it’ll be augmented reality systems, virtual reality systems and other recent trends like cyber security. 



READ MORE |<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2019/03/06/4-ways-to-develop-employment-ready-graduates/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="4 Ways To Develop Employment-Ready Graduates (opens in a new tab)">4 Ways To Develop Employment-Ready Graduates</a>



With more of our lives being conducted online, there’s a need to make sure we secure our data security, our identity is secure and businesses as well need to protect themselves. Those have been really interesting ways in which I have seen a big change in recent years.



 And the other thing that has changed is there has been a lot of growth in AI. Some of those kinds of machine learning tools are now being put to wider use than ever before by things like self-driving cars. So that’s an area of great interest now to our students and when they graduate to apply these algorithms.



2.What do you think are the challenges in this sector?



One of the things we’ve been disappointed with in much of
the western world is how few women are interested in studying computer science
and it has been fairly constant at sub-20% of our undergraduate program since I
have been in academia. And we have really been unable to make any great inroads
into changing that.



3.What differences have you picked up between education in Scotland and South Africa?



Making sure graduates have the right skills to go to work,
and part of that is getting work experience and it’s a challenge for all of us
to make the case for businesses to take on a student so they can take on
relevant work experience before they graduate. Some of the challenges I have
seen around are about trying to get those partnerships. 



4.How do you see collaborations of universities around the world with the 4th Industrial Revolution? 



Yes, I think there are fantastic ways we collaborate over research and a lot of the big funds now are only interested in collaborations where we can draw on the strengths of universities from different countries and I think that the same will be true about teaching. 



READ MORE |<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2018/12/21/the-use-of-this-technology-could-ensure-every-single-person-is-fed/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Is This Technology the Answer to World Hunger? (opens in a new tab)">Is This Technology the Answer to World Hunger?</a>



At the moment, we are competing with each other but if we can put great programs together that draw on the strength of different universities, there’s a future for more collaborative work.



5.How can the private sector help upskill young people?



We’ve introduced a new way in which people can get degree level qualifications in the UK and degree level apprenticeships. Industry will employ someone and they attend university 20% of the time and work towards their degree while they are in work. 



So that is a new way to make sure the degree is appropriate for employers and these programs are employer-led so employers are part of designing the program. The other project we have is a digital skills partnership which is where we try and get industry and lecturers to work more closely together on things like developing curriculum.

RC1D8A621010

5 Ways Tech Can Revolutionize Education

Meet Amy. And also Debbie, Inga, Mia, Erica, Eva and Cora. 



These aren’t the members of a new, all-female rock group, but names that several large banks have been giving to their automated digital assistants. 



So-called chatbots have become a useful cost-cutting tools for companies with large subscriber bases (think banks, insurance firms and mobile phone operators). As they replace human call-center workers, such bots will help save banks an estimated $7.3 billion in operational costs by 2023, Juniper Research predicts. 



But the proliferation of bots with female names raises questions about whether they might also perpetuate gender stereotypes, particularly around the notion of women in the role of assistants. That criticism has already been levelled at Amazon’s digital assistant Alexa and Apple’s Siri. 



Now a Forbes analysis of Europe’s 10 biggest banks ranked by assets shows that at least three have deployed chatbots with female names on their websites and apps. HSBC has a chatbot named Amy; Deutsche Bank&#8217;s Debbie helps market traders; ING of the Netherlands has Inga, a chatbot that will &#8220;respond with empathy&#8221; to customer problems such as losing a card.



ING&#8217;s other chatbot Marie, available to retail customers on Facebook Messenger, was given the name &#8220;because it conjures up an image of someone who is helpful and friendly,&#8221; Tim Daniels, a programme manager for ING was quoted as saying on the bank&#8217;s website. (ING has a male chatbot named Bill, aimed at dealing with corporate customers.)



Among the other lenders, Santander, Barclays and Societe Generale appear to have unnamed chatbot assistants. Credit Agricole has an internal chatbot with a male name: Hector. 



Female chatbots abound in other regions and industries. Bank of America recently deployed a digital assistant called Erica, while Mia, the chatbot released by Australian digital bank UBank, was described by the company earlier this month as “empathetic,” “fun” and “a little bit cheeky.” 



IPSoft, a New York-based software company that sells chatbot technology to banks like Sweden’s SEB as well as mobile network giant Vodafone, has its own white-label version of a customer-facing chatbot, named Amelia.



IPSoft’s CEO Chetan Dube denied that the chatbot’s name perpetuated stereotypes, when asked by Forbes during an interview in December, and said it instead highlights “the thought leadership that is represented in females.&#8221;



&#8220;She was the first female aviator that tried to go around the world,” Dube added, referring to the 1930&#8217;s aviator Amelia Earhart. 



Forbes revealed earlier this month that Vodafone was measuring the success of its chatbots on how many staff could be replaced by the software. While that may be an uncomfortable metric, the more worrying consequence of chatbots, according to four industry experts questioned by Forbes, is the risk that they could reinforce certain stereotypes.



“Gender bias is an increasingly serious issue in chatbot design, especially for voice-based chatbots,” says John Taylor, CEO of action.ai, a British startup that makes chatbot software for banks and travel companies. “These assistants often perform tasks that many view as menial.” 



Vitor Shereiber, a language specialist at the German language-learning app Babbel, says that focus-group testing might lead companies to assign a gender to a chatbot on the notion that it makes customer feel more comfortable. 



But, he adds, bots could spread unrealistic expectations of how women should present themselves professionally, just as photoshopped pictures have done for women’s perceptions of their bodies.



Part of the challenge for companies is finding a balance between automating customer service without putting customers off. PwC recently described chatbots as being able to “massively enhance customer delight and loyalty” because of their “personal touch.” 



Taylor suggests software designers should try creating more chatbots with male names and male voices. 



On the sidelines of a technology conference in London on Wednesday, Seth Juarez, an artificial-intelligence engineer based in Redmond, Washington takes it a step further. He calls Siri up on is iPhone to ask the time, and a male voice responds. 



“I make it a guy specifically because I find it morally reprehensible that all of the service-based bots are female, and all the intelligence based bots [like IBM’s Watson] are named after dudes.” 



He added that artificial intelligence generally shouldn’t be anthropomorphised. Chatbots should be used to manage &#8220;cheap thoughts,&#8221; or “stuff that a human would do robotically” rather than on more complex issues. “I would leave those problems to humans.” 



-Parmy Olson;Forbes Staff

684529362

Banks Are Promoting ‘Female’ Chatbots To Help Customers, Raising Concerns Of Stereotyping

Daimler and BMW deepened their alliance on Thursday to share spiraling development costs for highly automated driving technologies, even as each carmaker pursues separate efforts to develop fully self-driving cars. 



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



The enormous cost of designing and building computer-powered vehicles has already prompted Honda to pool its efforts with General Motors, while Volkswagen is pursuing talks with Ford about an alliance on autonomous cars.



BMW and Daimler deepened their alliance for similar reasons, said Michael Hafner, head of automated driving at Mercedes-Benz research and development said in a blog post which accompanied a joint press release by the companies on Thursday.



“We have learned that the development of these systems is a bit like climbing a mountain,” he said.



“Taking the first few meters from the base station to the summit seems easy. But the closer you come to the goal, the thinner the air around you becomes, the more strength is required for each further step, and the more complex become the challenges you have to resolve.”



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/economy/2019/01/31/tesla-cfo-leaves-as-automaker-promises-profits-and-cheaper-cars/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Tesla CFO Leaves as Automaker Promises Profits and Cheaper Cars (opens in a new tab)">Tesla CFO Leaves as Automaker Promises Profits and Cheaper Cars</a>



It made sense to distribute the technological and financial challenges of automated driving, Hafner said, so BMW and Daimler will jointly develop technology to enable automated driving on highways.



 “Initially, the focus will be on advancing the development of next-generation technologies for driver assistance systems, automated driving on highways and parking features,” the companies said in the statement.



“In addition, the two partners plan to discuss the possibility of extending their collaboration to cover higher levels of automation, both on highways and in urban areas.”



BMW and Daimler’s move comes as even deep pocketed technology companies struggle to gain traction in autonomous driving. Apple Inc said on Wednesday it planned to lay off 190 employees in its self-driving car program, Project Titan.



READ MORE |<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2019/01/25/apple-dismisses-over-200-staff-from-autonomous-vehicle-group/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Apple Dismisses Over 200 Staff From Autonomous Vehicle Group (opens in a new tab)">Apple Dismisses Over 200 Staff From Autonomous Vehicle Group</a>



The market for advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous vehicles is expected to grow to $96 billion in 2025 and $290 billion in 2035 from about $3 billion in 2015, according to Goldman Sachs.



BMW and Daimler already cooperate in high-definition mapping with HERE and in the area of procurement, and earlier this month unveiled a joint ride-hailing, parking and electric car charging business.



They said on Thursday their new partnership will center on so-called level 3 and level 4 automated driving technologies, including cars that still require steering wheels and drivers.



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2018/03/27/automation-doom-gloom/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)">Is Automation All Doom And Gloom?</a>



Daimler will pursue a separate development alliance for level 5 robotaxis between its luxury brand Mercedes-Benz and supplier Robert Bosch. Level 5 cars require no driver.



BMW, for its part, continues its development alliance for robotaxis with Israeli autonomous vehicle tech company Mobileye and chip maker Intel, with the aim of putting autonomous cars on the road by 2021. -Reuters



-Edward Taylor

HP1EEBS1BZ460

BMW And Daimler Pool Resources On Automated Driving Technology

It’s a balmy 80 degrees on a mid-December day in Singapore, and something is puzzling Allen Day, a 41-year-old data scientist. Using the tools he has developed at Google, he can see a mysterious concerted usage of artificial intelligence on the blockchain for Ethereum. 



Ether is the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency (after bitcoin and XRP), and it still sports a market cap of some $11 billion despite losing 83% of its value in 2018. Peering into its blockchain—the distributed database of transactions underpinning the cryptocurrency—Day detects a “whole bunch” of “autonomous agents” moving funds around “in an automated fashion.” 



While he doesn’t yet know who has created the AI, he suspects they could be the agents of cryptocurrency exchanges trading among themselves in order to artificially inflate ether’s price. 



“It’s not really just single agents doing things on their own,” Day says from Google’s Asia-Pacific headquarters. “They’re forming with other agents to have some larger group effect.” 



Day’s official title is senior developer advocate for Google Cloud, but he describes his role as “customer zero” for the company’s cloud computing efforts. 



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="The Coffee Farmers Betting On Blockchain To Boost Business (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/entrepreneurs/2019/02/19/the-coffee-farmers-betting-on-blockchain-to-boost-business/" target="_blank">The Coffee Farmers Betting On Blockchain To Boost Business</a>



As such it’s his job to anticipate demand before a product even exists, and he thinks making the blockchain more accessible is the next big thing. 



Just as Google enabled (and ultimately profited) from making the internet more usable 20 years ago, its next billions may come from shining a bright light on blockchains. If Day is successful, the world will know whether blockchain’s real usage is living up to its hype.



Danish researcher Thomas Silkjaer is using Google&#8217;s BigQuery to map publicly available information about XRP cryptocurrency addresses. The craters represent some of cryptocurrency&#8217;s largest exchanges.



Last year Day and a small team of open-source developers quietly began loading data for the entire Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains into Google’s big-data analytics platform, BigQuery. Then, with the help of lead developer Evgeny Medvedev, he created a suite of sophisticated software to search the data.



In spite of a total lack of publicity, word of the project spread quickly among crypto-minded coders. In the past year, more than 500 projects were created using the new tools, trying to do everything from predicting the price of bitcoin to analyzing wealth disparity among ether holders. 



When it comes to cloud computing, Google is far behind Amazon and Microsoft. Last year Google pocketed an estimated $3 billion in revenue from cloud ser­vices. Amazon and Microsoft, meanwhile, generated about $27 billion and $10 billion, respectively.



Day is hoping that his project, known as Blockchain ETL (extract, transform, load), will help even the playing field. But even here Google is trying to catch up. Amazon entered blockchain in a big way in 2018 with a suite of tools for building and managing distributed ledgers. 



READ MORE |<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wealth/2019/02/01/blockchain-startups-showed-no-signs-of-life-in-2018/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Blockchain Startups Showed No “Signs Of Life” In 2018 (opens in a new tab)">Blockchain Startups Showed No “Signs Of Life” In 2018</a>



Microsoft got into the space in 2015, when it released tools for Ethereum’s blockchain. It now hosts a range of services as part of its Azure Blockchain Workbench. But while Amazon and Microsoft are focusing on making it easier to build blockchain apps, Day is focusing on exposing how blockchains are actually being used, and by whom. 



“In the future, moving more economic activity on chain won’t just require a consensus level of trust,” says Day, referring to the core validating mechanism of blockchain technology. 



“It will require having some trust in knowing about who it is you’re actually interacting with.” In other words, if blockchain is to go mainstream, some of its beloved anonymity features will have to be abandoned.



A native of Placer County, California, Day got his first computer at the age of 5 and a few years later started writing simple programs. A fascination with volcanoes and dinosaurs turned his interest to life sciences, and he ultimately graduated from the University of Oregon with a dual degree in biology and Mandarin in 2000. From there he headed to UCLA to pursue a doctorate in human genetics and helped build a computer program to browse the genome.



 This Silkjaer image uses data for the XRP cryptocurrency to show the movement of funds across the entire ledger of transactions, culminating in a snapshot of funds in an actual user&#8217;s wallet.



It was at UCLA where Day began relying on distributed computing, a concept that is core to blockchains, which store their data on a large network of individual computers. In the early 2000s Day needed to analyze the massive amounts of data that make up the human genome. To solve this problem he hooked many small computers together, vastly increasing their power. 



“Distributed-systems technology has been in my tool kit for a while,” Day says.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“I could see there were interesting characteristics of blockchains that could run a global supercomputer.” </blockquote>



Hired in 2016 to work in the health and bio­informatics areas of Google, Day segued to blockchains, the hottest distributed-computing effort on the planet. But the talents he had honed—sequencing genomes for infectious diseases in real time and using AI to increase rice yields—were not easily applied to decoding blockchain. 



Before Day and Medvedev released their tools, just searching a blockchain required specialized software called “block explorers,” which let users hunt only for specific transactions, each labeled with a unique tangle of 26-plus alphanumeric characters. Google’s Blockchain ETL, by contrast, lets users make more generalized searches of entire ecosystems of transactions.



To demonstrate how customers could use Blockchain ETL to make improvements to the crypto economy, Day has used his tools to examine the so-called hard fork, or an irrevocable split in a blockchain database, that created a new cryptocurrency—bitcoin cash—from bitcoin in the summer of 2017. 



This particular split was the result of a Hatfield and McCoy “war” within the bitcoin community between a group who wanted to leave bitcoin as it was and another who wanted to develop a currency that, like cash, was cheaper and faster to use for small payments. 



Using Google’s BigQuery, Day discovered that bitcoin cash, rather than increasing so-called micro-transactions, as the defecting developers claimed, was actually being hoarded among big holders of bitcoin cash.



 “I’m very interested to quantify what’s happening so that we can see where the legitimate use cases are for blockchain,” Day says. “Then we can move to the next use case and develop out what these technologies are really appropriate for.”



Day’s work is inspiring others. Tomasz Kolinko is a Warsaw-based programmer and the creator of a service that analyzes smart contracts, a feature of certain blockchains that is designed to transparently enforce contractual obligations like collateralized loans but with less reliance on third parties, like lawyers. Kolinko was frustrated with his blockchain queries.



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In December, Kolinko met Day at a hackathon in Singapore. Within a month of the meeting, Kolinko was using Google’s tools to search for a smart contract feature called a “selfdestruct,” designed to limit a contract’s life span. Using his own software in conjunction with Day’s, Kolinko took 23 seconds to search 1.2 million smart contracts—something that would have taken hours before. 



The result: Almost 700 of them had left open a selfdestruct feature that would let anyone instantly kill the smart contract, whether that person was authorized or not. “In the past you couldn’t just easily check all the contracts that were using it,” Kolinko says. “This tool is both the most scary and most inspiring I’ve ever built.” 



Day is now expanding beyond bitcoin and ethereum. Litecoin, zcash, dash, bitcoin cash, ethereum classic and dogecoin are being added to BigQuery. Independent developers are loading their own crypto data sets on Google. 



Last August, a Dutch developer named Wietse Wind uploaded the entire 400 gigabytes of transaction data from Ripple’s XRP blockchain, another popular cryptocurrency, into BigQuery. 



Wind’s data, which he updates every 15 minutes, prompted a Danish designer named Thomas Silkjaer to create a heat map of crypto flows. The resulting colorful orb reveals at a glance more than a million crypto wallets, including big ex­changes like Binance and London’s crypto debit card startup Wirex, which are neck deep in XRP transactions. 



“Google has been a bit of a sleeping giant in blockchain,” says BlockApps CEO Kieren James-Lubin, who is partnering with Google to sell enterprise blockchain apps. 



In addition to Day’s work, Google has filed numerous patents related to the blockchain, including one in 2018 to use a “lattice” of interoperating blockchains to increase security, a big deal in a world where untold millions of crypto have been stolen by hackers. 



The company is also pushing its developers to build apps on the Ethereum blockchain, and Google’s venture arm, GV, has made a number of significant investments in crypto startups. 



The giant, it seems, is waking up.



-Michael del Castillo; Forbes Staff

1130303166

Navigating Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP: How Google Is Quietly Making Blockchains Searchable

Technology has made a tremendous difference in the world, in areas as diverse as health and education, and pretty much everything in between.



But is technology the weapon that will ultimately eradicate animal poaching and save various species from eradication? It’s not a silver bullet, but it certainly has potential. 



That’s why Vulcan – a company started by the late Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft – has produced a tech platform called EarthRanger to monitor protected wildlife areas by drawing in big data from cameras, animal collars and vehicle sensors. Other platforms such as SMART – a spatial monitoring and reporting tool – have also started to gain traction and operate in similar ways to EarthRanger.



Vulcan is known in the conservation world for sponsoring the Great Elephant Census. The census revealed that there are probably fewer than 400 000 savannah elephants left in the wild across Africa. It also revealed a decline of 8% a year between 2007 and 2014, largely due to poaching, either to supply the illegal ivory trade or the bushmeat trade.



A census is useful because it provides a snapshot in time and highlights the urgency of the problem. Elephants are a keystone species, environmental engineers who play irreplaceable roles in maintaining ecological integrity. They’re also incredibly intelligent. Losing them is not an option. But we need more than occasional snapshots to aid conservation efforts.



New technologies, however &#8211; as a step beyond census counting &#8211; are merely a tool. Their efficacy ultimately depends on the value to the end user. A sound overarching vision and buy-in from users on the ground is also critical. At present, data collection and analysis practices vary from site to site. Without best-practice standards in this respect, all the cleverly collected data in the world may make little difference.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Drones: a silver bullet? </h4>



Drones can provide real-time information on animal movements and numbers in ways that traditional surveys cannot. This enhances platforms like SMART and EarthRanger. Drones are not delayed by heavy forest cover. They also don’t need human comforts: they don’t have to be fed, as field technicians do during aerial surveys, and don’t get tired like pilots do.



Moreover, they can detect snares and, in combination with remote sensors and camera traps, identify potential poaching behaviour. Because they can fly often, they put usable information into the hands of rangers, who can plan patrols more preemptively and effectively. This means that anti-poaching resources can be allocated more efficiently. It also means that experts far removed from day-to-day operations can analyse the data for interesting patterns.



This all sounds good. But, in a 2015 paper, I applied a basic game theory model – a “river-crossing” game – to the problem of elephant conservation. It showed that ivory demand reduction requires more capital allocation if anti-poaching initiatives are to be successful. A World Bank analysis later showed that only a small portion of global funding goes towards this goal. More research is also required to make demand reduction campaigns more effective.



The research is a reminder that demand for illicit wildlife products ultimately drives poaching, and even the best technologies can only go so far in complementing anti-poaching efforts.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">A multi-pronged approach </h4>



One serious spanner in the faith conservationists place in technology is that it can be equally effectively employed by poaching syndicates. As I pointed out in my paper, if an MI-17 helicopter arrives with poachers firing into a herd with extreme precision (as reportedly happened in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2012) no amount of drone-driven anti-poaching efforts can stop the slaughter.



On a field research trip to the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania in 2017, I interviewed the head of the World Wide Fund for Nature’s programme there, who happened to be running a training programme for park rangers to use new drones. Wisely, the organisation’s roadmap to zero poaching in the Selous recognises that technology is just one among several pillars necessary to achieving significant poaching reduction.



Without the others – including community buy-in, cooperation between various players at different levels, and improved prosecution and conviction outcomes – technology is just a buzzword.



Concerted global efforts to overcome the current challenges associated with anti-poaching technology are crucial for ensuring better results. At the same time, we have to recognise that poaching syndicates also have access to the best technology. If both sides simply become more efficient, we’re still going to lose our wildlife heritage.



For this reason, one cannot overemphasise the importance of effective demand reduction, a more unified approach among range states (countries that have elephant populations), and conservation-driven development from local communities.



Technology can be a valuable arrow in conservation quivers – but alone, it cannot halt the loss of the continent’s elephants. -The Conversation



-Ross Harvey Senior Researcher in Natural Resource Governance (Africa), South African Institute of International Affairs



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