Technology

Bank wires worth trillions of dollars halted by US Fed’s “operational error”

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Over 3 trillion dollars in daily transactions for the world’s biggest banks were disrupted Wednesday, according to an alert status on the Fed’s website announcing a disruption in several business lines for Fedwire, FedACH, and 11 other areas affecting wire transfers, ACH transactions and check-clearing in the U.S. banking system. About 850,000 transactions each day move an average daily volume of $3.4 trillion.

“We are restoring services and are communicating with all Federal Reserve Financial Services customers about the status of operations,” says an email from the Fed explaining that Fedwire is “the premier electronic funds-transfer service that banks, businesses, and government agencies rely on for mission-critical, same-day transactions.”

By Milan Sime Martinic

New Tech Means More People Will Be Making Money From Their Intellectual Property – Russian Economic Diversification Authority

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According to Igor Drozdov, the board chairman of the Skolkovo Foundation, who spoke at Russia’s SPIEF economic forum this year, new technologies will allow more people “to earn real money using intellectual property institutions.”

He also talked about tech that would be developed in order to protect IP, describing projects similar to what Microsoft is currently working on.

“Currently, works of authorship are analyzed by humans, but as artificial intelligence technologies become more and more sophisticated, they can at one point analyze texts just like humans, making AI expert evaluation possible.”

95% of India’s Engineers Unfit for Software Development, Study Says

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Despite the large number of engineers in India, most are not fit for software development jobs, according to Aspiring Minds, a private company that does employability assessment, reported Business Line.

Aspiring Minds assessed test results when 36,000 engineering students from over 500 colleges wrote Automata (which tests software development ability). Over 2/3 could not even write code that compiles. Most of the other 1/3 wrote incorrect or inefficient code. 1.4% were found to write good code.
While the overall assessment of India’s engineer’s was this low, India’s tier I colleges fared much better than it’s tier IIIs. From India’s top 100 colleges, almost 70% of students could write compilable — even if incorrect or inefficient — code, compared with 31% for tier IIIs.
Another dimension to the assessment is the test itself, Automata, which has been criticised for poor or incorrect questions, as well as the company which is the source of the results.

Factum Arte Is Recreating Art for the Masses, as Well as Private Buyers

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A team of software designers, technicians, conservators, architects, artists, artisans, working together as Factum Arte, are recreating works of art to be used by the public. Some of their work is already used by museums. The group makes its money by also producing works in the private market.

The goal of their public efforts are to give more people the chance to understand works of art and to help preserve them.

Workers at Factum Arte are now planning to replace works of art destroyed by ISIS. Their facsimiles are made from originals removed by Europeans in earlier eras from Iraq.

Because the works are not originals, there is less concern about damaging them, so they can be placed in their original setting, giving visitors what may be a more authentic experience of them.

How close are the facsimiles to the originals? In terms of resolution, around 100 microns (1 point of information per 1/10th of a millimeter), and technology continues to improve.