Jan 23, 2020

Delta Air Lines is embarking on a multi-year collaborative effort with IBM including joining theIBM Q Networkto explore the potential capabilities of quantum computing to transform experiences for customers and employees.

"Partnering with innovative companies like IBM is one way Delta stays on the leading edge of tech to better serve our customers and our people, while drawing the blueprints for application across our industry," saidRahul Samant, Delta's CIO. "We've done this most recently with biometrics in our international terminals and we're excited to explore how quantum computing can be applied to address challenges across the day of travel."

TheIBM Q Network is a global community of Fortune 500 companies, startups, academic institutions and research labs working to advance quantum computing and explore practical applications.

Additionally, through theIBM Q Hub at NC State University, Delta will have access to the IBM Q Network's fleet of universal hardware quantum computersfor commercial use cases and fundamental research, including the recently-announced 53-qubit quantum computer, which, the company says, has the most qubits of a universal quantum computer available for external access in the industry, to date.

"We are very excited by the addition of Delta to our list of collaborators working with us on building practical quantum computing applications," said director of IBM ResearchDario Gil. "IBM's focus, since we put the very first quantum computer on the cloud in 2016, has been to move quantum computing beyond isolated lab experiments conducted by a handful of organizations, into the hands of tens of thousands of users. We believe a clear advantage will be awarded to early adopters in the era of quantum computing and with partners like Delta, we're already making significant progress on that mission."

For more information about the IBM Q Network, go to http://www.ibm.com/quantum-computing/network/overview

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Delta Partners with IBM to Explore Quantum Computing - Database Trends and Applications

Several companies are working to advance the technology, according to a new report.

The market for quantum networking is projected to reach $5.5 billion by 2025, according to a new report from Inside Quantum Technology (IQT).

While all computing systems rely on the ability to store and manipulate information in individual bits, quantum computers "leverage quantum mechanical phenomena to manipulate information" and to do so requires the use of quantum bits, or qubits, according to IBM.

SEE:Quantum computing: An insider's guide (TechRepublic)

Quantum computing is seen as the panacea for solving the problems computers are not equipped to handle now.

"For problems above a certain size and complexity, we don't have enough computational power on earth to tackle them,'' IBM said. This requires a new kind of computing, and this is where quantum comes in.

IQT says that quantum networking revenue comes primarily from quantum key distribution (QK), quantum cloud computing, and quantum sensor networks. Eventually, these strands will merge into a Quantum Internet, the report said.

Cloud access to quantum computers is core to the business models of many leading quantum computer companiessuch as IBM, Microsoft and Rigettias well as several leading academic institutions, according to the report.

Microsoft, for instance, designed a special programming language for quantum computers, called Q#, and released a Quantum Development Kit to help programmers create new applications, according to CBInsights.

One of Google's quantum computing projects involves working with NASA to apply the tech's optimization abilities to space travel.

The Quantum Internet network will have the same "geographical breadth of coverage as today's internet," the IQT report stated.

It will provide a powerful platform for communications among quantum computers and other quantum devices, the report said.

And will enable a quantum version of the Internet of Things. "Finally, quantum networks can be the most secure networks ever built completely invulnerable if constructed properly," the report said.

The report, "Quantum Networks: A Ten-Year Forecast and Opportunity Analysis," forecasts demand for quantum network equipment, software and services in both volume and value terms.

"The time has come when the rapidly developing quantum technology industry needs to quantify the opportunities coming out of quantum networking," said Lawrence Gasman, president of Inside Quantum Technology, in a statement.

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) adds unbreakable coding of key distribution to public key encryption, making it virtually invulnerable, according to the report.

QKD is the first significant revenue source to come from the emerging Quantum Internet and will create almost $150 million in revenue in 2020, the report said.

QKD's early success is due to potential usersbig financial and government organizationshave an immediate need for 100% secure encryption, the IQT report stated.

By 2025, IQT projects that revenue from "quantum clouds" are expected to exceed $2 billion.

Although some large research and government organizations are buying quantum computers for on-premise use, the high cost of the machines coupled with the immaturity of the technology means that the majority of quantum users are accessing quantum through clouds, the report explained.

Quantum sensor networks promise enhanced navigation and positioning and more sensitive medical imaging modalities, among other use cases, the report said.

"This is a very diverse area in terms of both the range of applications and the maturity of the technology."

However, by 2025 revenue from quantum sensors is expected to reach about $1.2 billion.

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Quantum networking projected to be $5.5 billion market in 2025 - TechRepublic

A new research centre with the potential to revolutionise computing, communication, sensing and imaging technologies is set to be launched by the University of Sheffield this week (22 January 2020).

The Sheffield Quantum Centre, which will be officially opened by Lord Jim ONeill, Chair of Chatham House and University of Sheffield alumnus, is bringing together more than 70 of the Universitys leading scientists and engineers to develop new quantum technologies.

Quantum technologies are a broad range of new materials, devices and information technology protocols in physics and engineering. They promise unprecedented capabilities and performance by exploiting phenomena that cannot be explained by classical physics.

Quantum technologies could lead to the development of more secure communications technologies and computers that can solve problems far beyond the capabilities of existing computers.

Research into quantum technologies is a high priority for the UK and many countries around the world. The UK government has invested heavily in quantum research as part of a national programme and has committed 1 billion in funding over 10 years.

Led by the Universitys Department of Physics and Astronomy, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering and Department of Computer Science, the Sheffield Quantum Centre will join a group of northern universities that are playing a significant role in the development of quantum technologies.

The University of Sheffield has a strong presence in quantum research with world leading capabilities in crystal growth, nanometre scale device fabrication and device physics research. A spin-out company has already been formed to help commercialise research, with another in preparation.

Professor Maurice Skolnick, Director of the Sheffield Quantum Centre, said: The University of Sheffield already has very considerable strengths in the highly topical area of quantum science and technology. I have strong expectation that the newly formed centre will bring together these diverse strengths to maximise their impact, both internally and more widely across UK universities and funding bodies.

During the opening ceremony, the Sheffield Quantum Centre will also launch its new 2.1 million Quantum Technology Capital equipment.

Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the equipment is a molecular beam epitaxy cluster tool designed to grow very high quality wafers of semiconductor materials types of materials that have numerous everyday applications such as in mobile phones and lasers that drive the internet.

The semiconductor materials also have many new quantum applications which researchers are focusing on developing.

Professor Jon Heffernan from the Universitys Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, added: The University of Sheffield has a 40-year history of pioneering developments in semiconductor science and technology and is host to the National Epitaxy Facility. With the addition of this new quantum technologies equipment I am confident our new research centre will lead to many new and exciting technological opportunities that can exploit the strange but powerful concepts from quantum science.

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University of Sheffield launches Quantum centre to develop the technologies of tomorrow - Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source

5G, AI and Quantum Computing

2020 Vision, as seen by Craig Jukes, Sales Director, Evoca UK

Theres a road map for Evoca as we enter a new decade and its all about meeting the expectations of the customer. The future is all about personalisation for the end-user. That can be anything from the way a machine looks and feels to the way a consumer pays. Their outlook now is I want to pay the way I want to pay, not the way you want me to pay and that can be anything: debit, credit, watch embedded chip whatever the future may bring. It means that our machines will have to be smarter more dynamic to accommodate that trend.

The combination of 5G, AI and Quantum Computing will be a massive game-changer that cant be overstated. In the future, everything will be based on an algorithm. The machine will know your drinking behaviour, what your favourite drinks are. Through your interaction with it, the machine will learn about you. Itll recognise where youre looking on the screen and respond accordingly.

5G, AI and Quantum Computing is not the fantasy stuff of Space 1999, which I used to watch as a kid; this is technology that is available now. The Chinese and the Americans already have quantum computing. The implications of this are mind-boggling, which is why it has a fear factor in the eyes of governments, banks, security organisations and the like. The things that we do now in order to keep us safe on the internet, including complicated passwords formed of all sorts of character numbers and symbols, will be useless in the face of the new technology.

In our world of vending, it will mean we can create new machines that interact with consumers on a far deeper level. The machine will recognise you as you approach it. It will recognise your buying behaviour to the extent that itll know what you want before you have the chance to choose. Its all about algorithms of choice, about learning the habits of each and every individual that uses the machine.

Vending machine menus will be dynamic, in that theyll adjust to the purchasing history of individual locations. For instance, if the drink of choice in any given place is a cappuccino with chocolate sprinkles, then thats the drink that will be the most prominent on the menu and the machine will promote it as the drink of choice. It will work in exactly the same way with snacks and other products that can be sold from a machine.

So, in a nutshell, the combination of 5G, AI and Quantum Computing will allow us to create machines that know what consumers want before they make their purchases.

I think that we at Evoca have available the best machines on the market, but our dedicated R&D department is already beginning to open up the possibilities that are incumbent in this New World.

In this New World, interaction between people in a retail environment will become a thing of the past. People will walk into a store and thanks to RFID and their Apple Pay account, (other methods are available!), theyll be able to choose what they want and leave without talking to anybody, in the knowledge that payment has been made automatically.

The downside of 5G, AI and Quantum Computing is of course that so many jobs that people are doing today will become redundant. Were already experiencing this in supermarkets, where theres no real need for a person to sit at a till, scan your items and facilitate payment.

The vending machines we make will change accordingly. The way we attract consumers will change, the way we serve consumers will change and the way we reward consumers will change.

Who knows where this will lead? In ten years time, a drone might be delivering coffee to your desk

More information? The Evoca web site is HERE More Evoca news on Planet Vending, HERE

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5G, AI and Quantum Computing: Who Knows Where It Will All Lead? - Planet Vending

Sure, it looks like a very fancy chandelier, but it's actually a quantum computer and it's helping Daimler develop new EV battery chemistries.

Right now, we're living in a time where electric cars are really, genuinely good. They have long range capability, can charge in reasonable amounts of time, and are being marketed by automakers as serious vehicles, not novelties or something to sell only to stay in compliance with government regulations.

Still, genuinely good isn't good enough. Thus, people are looking for ways to improve the EV experience. Motors are already superpowerful and relatively efficient, so the next meaningful jump forward will likely come on the energy storage side of things, and many companies are banking on that jump being in the form of solid-state batteries.

Why solid-state batteries? Because, in theory, they will be lighter and more compact, more energy-dense and faster charging. Oh, and they'll likely be safer too with less of a possibility of a dangerous thermal runaway like lithium-ion. Only, here's the thing: they don't really exist yet.

Enter IBM (yes, that IBM), which at the CES 2020 show in Las Vegas on Tuesday announced that it had partnered with Daimler to leverage its considerable resources and research into quantum computing to help lick this solid-state battery problem once and for all.

How exactly are quantum computers helping to solve the complex problems that will lead to solid-state battery technology? Well, as the patron saint of grumpy people who swear a lot (Samuel L. Jackson) said in Jurassic Park, "Hold onto your butts."

In the most basic sense, the quantum computers from IBM have modeled the behavior of three different lithium-containing molecules. This, in turn, allows researchers to better understand how they will affect the energy storage and discharge properties that manufacturers are looking for in batteries. Specifically, simulating these molecules will enable scientists to find their "ground state" or most stable configuration.

This simulation of simple molecules is possible on traditional supercomputers, but it takes vast amounts of computing power and time, and as the molecules being simulated get more complex, the likelihood of errors gets bigger. Quantum computing gets around this by using the ideas of superposition (think Schrodinger's cat) and entanglement (aka Einstein's "spooky action at a distance") to much more efficiently evaluate much, much more data than a traditional computer.

Right now, the most promising of these new quantum computer-assisted potential battery chemistries -- according to IBM and Daimler, of course -- is lithium-sulfur. According to the research, lithium-sulfur batteries would be more powerful, longer-lasting and cheaper (the battery holy trinity) than today's lithium-ion cells.

So does this mean that we'll be seeing electric Benzes rolling around with sweet new lithium-sulfur batteries in the next year or two? Not really -- currently, neither company has offered an ETA on the tech -- but what it does mean is that researchers now have a leg up on developing the future of energy storage, and that's pretty damned cool.

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CES 2020: IBM and Daimler teaming up for a quantum leap in battery tech - CNET

Column Just before Christmas, Google claimed quantum supremacy. The company had configured a quantum computer to produce results that would take conventional computers some 10,000 years to replicate - a landmark event.

Bollocks, said IBM - which also has big investments both in quantum computing and not letting Google get away with stuff. Using Summit, the world's largest conventional supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories in Tennessee, IBM claimed it could do the same calculation in a smidge over two days.

As befits all things quantum, the truth is a bit of both. IBM's claim is fair enough - but it's right at the edge of Summit's capability and frankly a massive waste of its time. Google could, if it wished, tweak the quantum calculation to move it out of that range. And it might: the calculation was chosen precisely not because it was easy, but because it was hard. Harder is better.

Google's quantum CPU has 54 qubits, quantum bits that can stay in a state of being simultaneously one and zero. The active device itself is remarkably tiny, a silicon chip around a centimetre square, or four times the size of the Z80 die in your childhood ZX Spectrum. On top of the silicon, a nest of aluminium tickled by microwaves hosts the actual qubits. The aluminium becomes superconducting below around 100K, but the very coldest part of the circuit is just 15 millikelvins. At this temperature the qubits have low enough noise to survive long enough to be useful

By configuring the qubits in a circuit, setting up data and analysing the patterns that emerge when the superpositions are observed and thus collapse to either one or zero, Google can determine the probable correct outcome for the problem the circuit represents. 54 qubits, if represented in conventional computer terms, would need 254 bits of RAM to represent each step of the calculation, or two petabytes' worth. Manipulating this much data many times over gives the 10 millennia figure Google claims.

IBM, on the other hand, says that it has just enough disk space on Summit to store the complete calculation. However you do it, though, it's not very useful; the only application is in random number generation. That's a fun, important and curiously nuanced field, but you don't really need a refrigerator stuffed full of qubits to get there. You certainly don't need the 27,648 NVidia Tesla GPUs in Summit chewing through 16 megawatts of power.

What Google is actually doing is known in the trade as "pulling a Steve", from the marketing antics of the late Steve Jobs. In particular, his tour at NeXT Inc, the company he started in the late 1980s to annoy Apple and produce idiosyncratic workstations. Hugely expensive to make and even more so to buy, the NeXT systems were never in danger of achieving dominance - but you wouldn't know that from Jobs' pronouncements. He declared market supremacy at every opportunity, although in carefully crafted phrases that critics joked defined the market as "black cubic workstations running NeXTOS."

Much the same is true of Google's claim. The calculation is carefully crafted to do precisely the things that Google's quantum computer can do - the important thing isn't the result, but the journey. Perhaps the best analogy is with the Wright Brothers' first flight: of no practical use, but tremendous significance.

What happened to NeXT? It got out of hardware and concentrated on software, then Jobs sold it - and himself - to Apple, and folded in some of that software into MacOS development. Oh, and some cat called Berners-Lee built something called the World Wide Web on a Next Cube.

Nothing like this will happen with Google's technology. There's no new web waiting to be borne on the wings of supercooled qubits. Even some of the more plausible things, like quantum decryption of internet traffic, is a very long way from reality - and, once it happens, it's going to be relatively trivial to tweak conventional encryption to defeat it. But the raw demonstration, that a frozen lunchbox consuming virtually no power in its core can outperform a computer chewing through enough wattage to keep a small town going, is a powerful inducement for more work.

That's Google's big achievement. So many new and promising technologies have failed not because they could never live up to expectations but because they cant survive infancy. Existing, established technology has all the advantages: it generates money, it has distribution channels, it has an army of experts behind it, and it can adjust to close down challengers before they get going. To take just one company - Intel has tried for decades to break out of the x86 CPU prison. New wireless standards, new memory technologies, new chip architectures, new display systems, new storage and security ideas - year after year, the company casts about for something new that'll make money. It never gets there.

Google's "quantum supremacy" isn't there either, but it has done enough to protect its infant prince in its superconducting crib. That's worth a bit of hype.

Sponsored: Detecting cyber attacks as a small to medium business

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Google and IBM square off in Schrodingers catfight over quantum supremacy - The Register

Only so many transistors can fit on a silicon chip. Photograph: Rowan Morgan/Alamy Stock Photo

Way back in the 1960s, Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, observed that the number of transistors that could be fitted on a silicon chip was doubling every two years. Since the transistor count is related to processing power, that meant that computing power was effectively doubling every two years. Thus was born Moores law, which for most people working in the computer industry or at any rate those younger than 40 has provided the kind of bedrock certainty that Newtons laws of motion did for mechanical engineers.

There is, however, one difference. Moores law is just a statement of an empirical correlation observed over a particular period in history and we are reaching the limits of its application. In 2010, Moore himself predicted that the laws of physics would call a halt to the exponential increases. In terms of size of transistor, he said, you can see that were approaching the size of atoms, which is a fundamental barrier, but itll be two or three generations before we get that far but thats as far out as weve ever been able to see. We have another 10 to 20 years before we reach a fundamental limit.

Weve now reached 2020 and so the certainty that we will always have sufficiently powerful computing hardware for our expanding needs is beginning to look complacent. Since this has been obvious for decades to those in the business, theres been lots of research into ingenious ways of packing more computing power into machines, for example using multi-core architectures in which a CPU has two or more separate processing units called cores in the hope of postponing the awful day when the silicon chip finally runs out of road. (The new Apple Mac Pro, for example, is powered by a 28-core Intel Xeon processor.) And of course there is also a good deal of frenzied research into quantum computing, which could, in principle, be an epochal development.

But computing involves a combination of hardware and software and one of the predictable consequences of Moores law is that it made programmers lazier. Writing software is a craft and some people are better at it than others. They write code that is more elegant and, more importantly, leaner, so that it executes faster. In the early days, when the hardware was relatively primitive, craftsmanship really mattered. When Bill Gates was a lad, for example, he wrote a Basic interpreter for one of the earliest microcomputers, the TRS-80. Because the machine had only a tiny read-only memory, Gates had to fit it into just 16 kilobytes. He wrote it in assembly language to increase efficiency and save space; theres a legend that for years afterwards he could recite the entire program by heart.

There are thousands of stories like this from the early days of computing. But as Moores law took hold, the need to write lean, parsimonious code gradually disappeared and incentives changed. Programming became industrialised as software engineering. The construction of sprawling software ecosystems such as operating systems and commercial applications required large teams of developers; these then spawned associated bureaucracies of project managers and executives. Large software projects morphed into the kind of death march memorably chronicled in Fred Brookss celebrated book, The Mythical Man-Month, which was published in 1975 and has never been out of print, for the very good reason that its still relevant. And in the process, software became bloated and often inefficient.

But this didnt matter because the hardware was always delivering the computing power that concealed the bloatware problem. Conscientious programmers were often infuriated by this. The only consequence of the powerful hardware I see, wrote one, is that programmers write more and more bloated software on it. They become lazier, because the hardware is fast they do not try to learn algorithms nor to optimise their code this is crazy!

It is. In a lecture in 1997, Nathan Myhrvold, who was once Bill Gatess chief technology officer, set out his Four Laws of Software. 1: software is like a gas it expands to fill its container. 2: software grows until it is limited by Moores law. 3: software growth makes Moores law possible people buy new hardware because the software requires it. And, finally, 4: software is only limited by human ambition and expectation.

As Moores law reaches the end of its dominion, Myhrvolds laws suggest that we basically have only two options. Either we moderate our ambitions or we go back to writing leaner, more efficient code. In other words, back to the future.

What just happened? Writer and researcher Dan Wang has a remarkable review of the year in technology on his blog, including an informed, detached perspective on the prospects for Chinese domination of new tech.

Algorithm says no Theres a provocative essay by Cory Doctorow on the LA Review of Books blog on the innate conservatism of machine-learning.

Fall of the big beasts How to lose a monopoly: Microsoft, IBM and antitrust is a terrific long-view essay about company survival and change by Benedict Evans on his blog.

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Were approaching the limits of computer power we need new programmers now - The Guardian

Steve Anderrson Saturday, 11 January 2020, 04:58 EST Modified date: Saturday, 11 January 2020, 04:58 EST

At a glance, the quantum volume is a measure of the complexity of a problem that a quantum computer can provide a solution. Quantum volume can also use to compare the performance of different quantum computers.

Ever since 2016, the IBM executives have doubled this value. In the 21st Century, Quantum computers have hailed as one of the most important innovations of the 21st century, along with potential applications in almost all fields of industries. Be it healthcare or artificial intelligence, and even financial modelling, to name a few.

Recently, quantum computers have also entered a new phase of development which can describe as practical. The first real quantum computer was launched in 2009 by Jonathan Holm. From that time, the quantum computer development has travelled a long way. At the moment, the industry driven by a handful of tech giants, including Google and IBM.

Even though IBMs latest advances viewed as significant advances, quantum computers can currently only be used for particular tasks. This indicates that they are far away from the general-purpose which classic computers serve us and to which we are used to.

Therefore, some people start worrying that the encryption technology which used to protect cryptocurrencies, for example, bitcoin may get destroyed. This worry is at least unfounded at present.

As the network is entirely built around the secure cryptographic transactions, a powerful quantum computer could eventually crack the encryption technology which used to generate Bitcoins private keys.

However, as per an article which was published by Martin Roetteler and various co-authors in June in 2017, such type of a machine requires approximately 2,500 qubits of processing power so that they can crack the 256-bit encryption technology which is used by Bitcoin.

Since the most powerful quantum computer which the world currently has only consisted of 72 qubit processors, one thing is clear that it will take several years for a quantum computer to reach the level of threatening encryption technology.

With the help of IBMs computing power which keeps doubling every year, and also the fact that Google has achieved quantum hegemony, Quantum might be working to ensure that Bitcoin can resist potential quantum computing attacks.

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Is Quantum Technology The Future Of The World? - The Coin Republic

Jeffrey Epstein in 2004.

Rick Friedman | Corbis News | Getty Images

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology said Friday that it had placed one of its tenured professors on paid administrative leave after finding that he "purposefully failed to inform MIT" that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was the source of two donations in 2012 to support the professor's research, and that the professor got a $60,000 personal gift from Epstein.

A scathing report released by MIT also found that the decision by three administrators to accept donations from Epstein, who pleaded guilty to sex crimes in Florida in 2008 one of which involved a minor girl "was the result of collective and serious errors in judgment that resulted in serious damage to the MIT community."

The report noted that even as its findings have been made public, "MIT is still without a clear and comprehensive gift policy or a process to properly vet donors." However, the university has begun to develop such a process.

Epstein, a former friend of Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, donated $850,000 to MIT from 2002 through 2017 in 10 separate gifts, the report said.

That was $50,000 more than the amount MIT has previously reported to have received from Epstein.

"The earliest gift was $100,000 given in 2002 to support the research of the late Professor Marvin Minsky, who died in 2016," MIT said as it released the report, which comes after four months of investigation of Epstein's ties to MIT conducted by the law firm Goodwin Procter.

"The remaining nine donations, all made after Epstein's 2008 conviction, included $525,000 to the Media Lab and $225,000 to" mechanical engineering professor Seth Lloyd, the report said.

The report also found that, "Unbeknownst to any members of MIT's senior leadership ... Epstein visited MIT nine times between 2013 and 2017."

"The fact-finding reveals that these visits and all post-conviction gifts from Epstein were driven by either former Media Lab director Joi Ito or professor of mechanical engineering Seth Lloyd, and not by the MIT administration or the Office of Resource Development."

Ito resigned last year after revelations about Epstein's donations to the Media Lab.

Lloyd received two donations of $50,000 in 2012, and the remaining $125,000 in 2017, according to the report.

"Epstein viewed the 2012 gifts as a trial balloon to test MIT's willingness to accept donations following his conviction" in Florida, MIT said.

"Professor Lloyd knew that donations from Epstein would be controversial and that MIT might reject them," MIT said.

"We conclude that, in concert with Epstein, he purposefully decided not to alert the Institute to Epstein's criminal record, choosing instead to allow mid-level administrators to process the donations without any formal discussion or diligence concerning Epstein."

Seth Lloyd is a professor of mechanical engineering and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Photo:Dmitry Rozhkov | Wikipedia CC

Lloyd was put on paid leave after it was found that he "purposefully failed to" tell MIT that Epstein was the source of the two earliest donations to him.

The report also found that Lloyd had "received a personal gift of $60,000 from Epstein in 2005 or 2006, which he acknowledged was deposited into a personal bank account and not reported to MIT," the university said in a press statement.

Lloyd is an influential thinker in the field of quantum mechanical engineering.

Educated at Harvard College and Cambridge University in England, Lloyd was the first person to propose a "technologically feasible design for a quantum computer," according to his resume. His 2006 book, "Programming the Universe," argues that the universe is a giant quantum computer calculating its own evolution.

"In addition to his own donations, Epstein claimed to have arranged for donations to MIT from other wealthy individuals," the report said. "In 2014, Epstein claimed to have arranged for Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates to provide an anonymous $2 million donation to the Media Lab. He also claimed that same year to have arranged for a $5 million anonymous donation to the Media Lab from Leon Black, the co-founder of Apollo Global Management. Representatives of Bill Gates have told us that Gates flatly denies that Epstein had anything to do with Gates's donation to the Media Lab."

University President L. Rafael Reif had not been aware that MIT was accepting donations from Epstein, who killed himself in a Manhattan jail in August after being arrested the prior month on federal child sex trafficking charges, according to the report.

"But the review finds that three MIT vice presidents learned of Epstein's donations to the MIT Media Lab, and his status as a convicted sex offender, in 2013," the university said in a prepared statement.

"In the absence of any MIT policy regarding controversial gifts, Epstein's subsequent gifts to the Institute were approved under an informal framework developed by the three administrators, R. Gregory Morgan, Jeffrey Newton, and Israel Ruiz."

"Since MIT had no policy or processes for handling controversial donors in place at the time, the decision to accept Epstein's post-conviction donations cannot be judged to be a policy violation," the report said.

"But it is clear that the decision was the result of collective and significant errors in judgment that resulted in serious damage to the MIT community."

Reif, in a letter addressed to the university's community, said, "Today's findings present disturbing new information about Jeffrey Epstein's connections with individuals at MIT: how extensive those ties were and how long they continued. This includes the decision by a lab director to bring this Level 3 sex offender to campus repeatedly."

"That it was possible for Epstein to have so many opportunities to interact with members of our community is distressing and unacceptable; I cannot imagine how painful it must be for survivors of sexual assault and abuse," Reif said.

"Clearly, we must establish policy guardrails to prevent this from happening again."

The report notes, "While Epstein made charitable donations before his 2008 conviction, after that conviction he may have had a second motive for his donations: to launder his reputation by associating himself with reputable individuals and institutions."

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Jeffrey Epstein scandal: MIT professor put on leave, he 'failed to inform' college that sex offender made donations - CNBC

The new decade will unfurl a bag of seismic shifts, predicts the creator of Cardano and Ethereum, Charles Hoskinson. And these changes will propel cryptocurrency and blockchain solutions to the forefront as legacy systems buckle, transform or dissolve.

In an ask-me-anything session uploaded on January 3rd, the 11th birthday of Bitcoin, Hoskinson acknowledges how the popular cryptocurrency gave him an eye-opening introduction to the world of global finance, and he recounts how dramatically official attitudes and perceptions have changed.

Every central bank in the world is aware of cryptocurrencies and some are even taking positions in cryptocurrencies. Theres really never been a time in human history where one piece of technology has obtained such enormous global relevance without any central coordinated effort, any central coordinated marketing. No company controls it and the revolution is just getting started.

And he expects its emergence to coalesce with other epic changes. In a big picture reveal, Hoskinson plots some of the major events he believes will shape the new decade.

2020 Predictions

Hoskinson says the consequences of these technologies will reach every government service and that cryptocurrencies will gain an opening once another economic collapse similar to 2008 shakes the markets this decade.

I think that means its a great opening for cryptocurrencies to be ready to start taking over the global economy.

Hoskinson adds that hes happy to be alive to witness all of the changes he anticipates, including a reorganization of the media.

This is the last decade of traditional organized media, in my view. Were probably going to have less CNNs and Fox Newses and Bloombergs and Wall Street Journals and more Joe Rogans, especially as we enter the 2025s and beyond. And I think our space in particular is going to fundamentally change the incentives of journalism. And well actually move to a different way of paying for content, curating content.

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Charles Hoskinson Predicts Economic Collapse, Rise of Quantum Computing, Space Travel and Cryptocurrency in the 2020s - The Daily Hodl