Energy
Trump: US 'locked and loaded' against attackers of Saudi oil facility 'depending on verification'
The attack, which knocked out more than half of the Saudi oil output, may force the U.S. to tap into its own oil reserves to keep the markets well supplied. President Trump on Sunday suggested U.S. investigators had "reason to believe" they knew who launched crippling attacks against a key Saudi oil facility, and vowed that America was "locked and loaded depending on verification." While he did not specify who he believed was responsible for Saturday's drone attacks, U.S. investigators previously have pointed the finger at Iran. "Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked. There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!" the president tweeted. Earlier Sunday, Trump authorized the use of emergency oil reserves in Texas and other states after Saudi oil processing facilities were attacked, sparking fears of a spike in oil prices when markets reopen Monday.
Truthful and Faithful Monetary Policy for a Stablecoin Conducted by a Decentralised, Encrypted Artificial Intelligence
The Holy Grail of a decentralised stablecoin is achieved on rigorous mathematical frameworks, obtaining multiple advantageous proofs: stability, convergence, truthfulness, faithfulness, and malicious-security. These properties could only be attained by the novel and interdisciplinary combination of previously unrelated fields: model predictive control, deep learning, alternating direction method of multipliers (consensus-ADMM), mechanism design, secure multi-party computation, and zero-knowledge proofs. For the first time, this paper proves: - the feasibility of decentralising the central bank while securely preserving its independence in a decentralised computation setting - the benefits for price stability of combining mechanism design, provable security, and control theory, unlike the heuristics of previous stablecoins - the implementation of complex monetary policies on a stablecoin, equivalent to the ones used by central banks and beyond the current fixed rules of cryptocurrencies that hinder their price stability - methods to circumvent the impossibilities of Guaranteed Output Delivery (G.O.D.) and fairness: standing on truthfulness and faithfulness, we reach G.O.D. and fairness under the assumption of rational parties As a corollary, a decentralised artificial intelligence is able to conduct the monetary policy of a stablecoin, minimising human intervention.
Self-boosted Time-series Forecasting with Multi-task and Multi-view Learning
Nguyen, Long H., Pan, Zhenhe, Openiyi, Opeyemi, Abu-gellban, Hashim, Moghadasi, Mahdi, Jin, Fang
A robust model for time series forecasting is highly important in many domains, including but not limited to financial forecast, air temperature and electricity consumption. To improve forecasting performance, traditional approaches usually require additional feature sets. However, adding more feature sets from different sources of data is not always feasible due to its accessibility limitation. In this paper, we propose a novel self-boosted mechanism in which the original time series is decomposed into multiple time series. These time series played the role of additional features in which the closely related time series group is used to feed into multi-task learning model, and the loosely related group is fed into multi-view learning part to utilize its complementary information. We use three real-world datasets to validate our model and show the superiority of our proposed method over existing state-of-the-art baseline methods.
A gentle grip on gelatinous creatures
Jellyfish are about 95% water, making them some of the most diaphanous, delicate animals on the planet. But the remaining 5% of them have yielded important scientific discoveries, like green fluorescent protein (GFP) that is now used extensively by scientists to study gene expression, and life-cycle reversal that could hold the keys to combating aging. Jellyfish may very well harbor other, potentially life-changing secrets, but the difficulty of collecting them has severely limited the study of such "forgotten fauna." The sampling tools available to marine biologists on remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) were largely developed for the marine oil and gas industries, and are much better-suited to grasping and manipulating rocks and heavy equipment than jellies, often shredding them to pieces in attempts to capture them. Now, a new technology developed by researchers at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and Baruch College at CUNY offers a novel solution to that problem in the form of an ultra-soft, underwater gripper that uses hydraulic pressure to gently but firmly wrap its fettuccini-like fingers around a single jellyfish, then release it without causing harm.
Vector will use artificial intelligence to predict power outages during storms in Auckland
Vector is going to start using artificial intelligence to predict where storms will cause power outages. The Auckland lines company has partnered with IBM to pilot the new system, a first for the country, next month. It uses satellite imagery and artificial intelligence to show areas where trees might be encroaching on power lines. It can then suggest the locations most at risk of outages. Vector already uses artificial intelligence to manage electricity demand and network data across its network, since it partnered with Israeli technology company mPrest in 2017.
Damage from Iran-linked drone attack on Saudi oil facility captured in satellite images
Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Pregent says he believes without a doubt that Iran was involved in the attacks on Saudi oil facilities. Saudi oil sites attacked on Saturday -- in a drone assault linked to Iran -- were seen to have sustained damage after satellite images released Sunday captured char marks and smoke billowing from the world's largest oil processing facility. The weekend attack ignited huge fires at Saudi Aramco's Abqaiq oil processing facility and interrupted about 5.7 million barrels of crude oil production -- over 5 percent of the world's daily supply. U.S. satellite images appeared to show approximately 17 points of impact on key infrastructure at the site after the attack. While Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels have since claimed responsibility for the attack, the U.S. has accused Iran of launching the assault.
Attack on Saudi oil sites raises risks amid U.S.-Iran tensions; Mike Pompeo already blames Tehran
DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES โ A weekend drone attack on Saudi Arabia that cut into global energy supplies and halved the kingdom's oil production threatened Sunday to fuel a regional crisis, as Iran denied U.S. allegations it launched the assault and tensions remained high over Tehran's collapsing nuclear deal. Iran called the U.S. claims "maximum lies," while a commander in its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard reiterated its forces could strike U.S. military bases across the Mideast with their arsenal of ballistic missiles. A prominent U.S. senator suggested striking Iranian oil refineries in response to the assault, claimed by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels, on Saudi Arabia's largest oil processing facility. "Because of the tension and sensitive situation, our region is like a powder keg," warned Guard Brig. "When these contacts come too close, when forces come into contact with one another, it is possible a conflict happens because of a misunderstanding."
Elon Musk wants to read your mind
We all know Elon Musk to be a very ambitious guy. I mean, seriously, the guy has a company which specializes in electric car manufacturing, you've heard of Tesla, right? He also runs an aerospace manufacturing and space transportation services company called SpaceX. I am sure you've heard about it in the news or somewhere else. SolarCity, a solar energy company, now owned by Tesla.
Defiant Iran blasts Pompeo's Saudi-attack accusations as 'blind and futile comments'
The attack comes after Iran exceeded their enriched uranium stockpile limit in the nuclear deal. An Iranian official responded Sunday after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pointed at the nation's government in Tehran following Saturday's drone attacks on Saudi Arabia oil facilities. "The Americans adopted the'maximum pressure' policy against Iran, which, due to its failure, is leaning towards'maximum lies'," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said, according to the Associated Press. On Saturday, Pompeo charged that Iran's government in Tehran ordered "nearly 100 attacks" on a Saudi refinery and oilfield, further alleging that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif pretending "to engage in diplomacy." On Sunday, Mousavi dismissed Pompeo's remarks as "blind and futile comments."