Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

COVID-19 Will Accelerate March Of The Robots by Tyler Durden Tue, 06/23/2020 - 22:45 Authored by Gordon Watts via The Asia Times, Tech revolution threatens an unemployment crisis in China and developed world after gathering pace during pandemic They have been compared to quantum leaps in humanity’s historic journey. But they are more like Grand Canyon-style jumps in our evolution. During the past 200 years, technological revolutions have expanded the borders of globalization and have dragged millions of people out of poverty. Yet they have come at a price. The Fourth Industrial Revolution will be no different. Already the landscape is changing dramatically with China at the forefront of this brave, new world for some and a nightmare for others. “China is using automation on a scale like no other country. From AI news anchors on [state-run television] to one-minute [health] clinics to robot-run factories, China is using artificial intelligence and robots to take over the entire spect...

Looking Forward to the End of Humanity Covid-19 has spotlighted the promise and peril of ‘transhumanism,’ the idea of using technology to overcome sickness, aging and death. By  Adam Kirsch June 20, 2020 12:01 am ET It sounds bitterly ironic now, in the midst of a global pandemic, but not long ago some of the most forward-looking people in the world believed that humanity was close to abolishing death. “If you ask me today, is it possible to live to be 500? The answer is yes,” said Bill Maris, the founder of Google Ventures, in 2015. Three years later, biomedical researcher Aubrey de Grey estimated that “people in middle age now have a fair chance” of never dying. Eternal life through advanced technology seems like a pipe dream for a society that, until recently, had trouble manufacturing enough masks to save doctors’ and nurses’ lives. Yet Covid-19 may turn out to be just the kind of crisis needed to turbocharge efforts to create what its advocates call a “transhuman”...

Senator Accuses Google Of Posing "Tremendous Threat To Free And Fair Press" As Antitrust Probe Gets Going by Tyler Durden Tue, 06/23/2020 - 20:10 As part of an escalating probe into anti-competitive and antitrust practices by Google, Reuters reports that DOJ officials and some state attorneys general are set to meet on Friday to discuss next steps. The federal government and nearly all state attorneys general have opened investigations into allegations that the company which once upon a time said its motto was "don't be evil" has broken antitrust laws. The federal probe focuses on search bias, advertising and management of Google’s Android operating system, according to the report. Separately, in a letter sent Sunday to U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn on Tuesday said that Google and parent company, Alphabet, pose a "threat to a free and fair press in America." Addressing the Attorney General, Blackburn urges him ...

Italy Approves New Guidelines For Central Bank Digital Currency by Tyler Durden Tue, 06/23/2020 - 02:45 Central banks around the world are examining the use of digital currencies . As of recent, central banks of the U.K., Sweden, Thailand, China, and the US are studying whether there are advantages of the digital form of their fiat money. And the answer is yes, the government and banking elites will seize even more power from the people. Called central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), this "digital fiat" — digital money can be directly sent to people's bank accounts. It eliminates physical cash - which is the end game for banking elites. A CBDC gives a government complete control over its currency. This will increase their financial-surveillance over the people. When a bank fails, there will be no bank run, because people can't withdraw their money from that bank. This means when a financial crisis strikes, it will allow governments to do "bail-ins" wh...

Microsoft Issues Stunning Blow To Chrome With Bold New Browser Moves Kate O'Flaherty Senior Contributor Jun 21, 2020, 06:26am EDT Microsoft Edge is quickly growing in popularity. It’s already the  number two browser  behind Google’s Chrome, with many people seeing it as a secure and functional alternative. This week, Edge has made a raft of moves and added a bunch of new features that aim to grab more share from Chrome as the browser wars heat up. The first major Edge move is a welcome surprise in the Windows 10 May 2020 Update that will hugely improve the performance of your device. In tests so far, devices on the May 2020 Update are showing a memory usage reduction of up to 27% when browsing with Microsoft Edge, the browser’s principal PM manager, Kim Denny wrote in a  blog  this week. Google’s Chrome is based on the same  Chromium  based engine, and it suffers from huge issues with memory usage. The  news  is that Chrome  may g...

Chrome will soon be less of a memory hog in Windows 10 It's borrowing a cue from Microsoft Edge. Jon Fingas ,  June 21, 2020 Google has spent years trying to reduce  Chrome’s notorious appetite for memory , and it’ll soon offer a substantial improvement for Windows 10 users.  WindowsLatest  has  learned  (via  MSPowerUser ) that a Google engineer recently  revealed  that a future Chrome release will use a technique from  Microsoft Edge  to lower RAM usage and theoretically boost performance. Chrome will switch to “Segment Heap” memory management that, in Microsoft’s experience, cut memory use by 27 percent. The improvements in Chrome could vary wildly depending on the system, but tests indicated that it could sometimes save “hundreds of MB” in the browser and system processes. “Many-core” systems are most likely to see the largest benefit, the engineer said. You should see the feature soon after Google can build Chrome u...

How To Check If Your iPhone Is Secretly A Coronavirus Tracker by  Tyler Durden Sat, 06/20/2020 - 07:44 If you downloaded the latest iOS update back in May, and any following updates, then congratulations...your COVID-19 infection status will likely soon be tracked by state health officials as part of each state's contact tracing efforts. Many iPhone users across the US have over the past few days started to notice a new setting under the "privacy" subtab of the iPhone health app. It looks like this, and allows users to "toggle on" COVID-19 exposure logging. It's all thanks to the latest update of Apple's iOS operating system for iPhone,  iOS13.5. Some on twitter have only just noticed the toggle button, and we must note that it appears to have been quietly installed by Apple in recent days. A similar setting has been installed on Android phones. Some users questioned whether Apple will truly respect their privacy regarding their COVID-...