My latest TV appearance

On Fox News Live, I discussed prediction markets that the government may not be able to stop with Lauren Green:

New tech promises government-proof prediction markets

A group of developers have come up with a new concept called “Augur”, which they hope will make it nearly impossible for government to regulate “prediction markets.”

Prediction markets are websites where people bet on events like presidential elections and the Oscars. Such markets have proven popular and studies have found that the betting odds from such sites are even better at predicting election winners than polls are. But they face government regulatory hurdles, and three years ago regulators shut down the world’s largest one, Intrade.com.

Augur aims to prevent such a shutdown from happening again by being a prediction market that operates as a self-sustaining computer program which would not need a corporation to operate it.

Governments might then be unable to stop it, because there would be no company to shut down. Instead, the regulators would be up against thousands of copies of a computer program located on personal computers all over the world.

“Hundreds of thousands of computers would have to be shut down in order for the system to be shut down,” Augur spokesman Tony Sakich told FoxNews.com.

Augur is expected to launch early in 2016. This week, it launched a crowdfunding campaign that raised $1.6 million by Wednesday.

CONTINUE READING ON FOXNEWS.COM...

New Obama Internet regulations mean new taxes and less service, critics say

The Federal Communications Commission released more than 300 pages of Internet regulations Thursday, which critics say will increase the cost of Internet and slow improvements.

The regulations, which include “net neutrality” rules, were called for by President Obama and approved by a 3-to-2 vote of FCC commissioners. Opponents say the regulations are an illegal bureaucratic power grab, and that if they are allowed to stand in court they will do harm.

“The consequences: higher broadband prices, slower speeds… less innovation, and fewer options for American consumers,” Ajit Pai, a commissioner at the FCC, said in his dissent.

So in plain English, what is in all the 317 pages of new rules?

Paves the way for new taxes

The regulations talk about a new tax on Internet providers in a positive light, noting it could add “to the stability of the universal service fund,” which subsidizes building connections in unprofitable areas.

The new regulations pave the way for new taxes, because they define Internet service providers as “public utilities” – which could subject them to the many taxes levied on phone service companies.

Continue reading at FoxNews.com...

Google works to rank sites based on ‘truthfulness'

In a step that critics worry will inject political bias into search results, a Google research team released a report this month on ranking search results based on how factual websites are. They propose eventually using that to change Google rankings, which are currently based on website popularity.

The Google researchers give, as an example, websites that say President Obama was born in Kenya; such sites would be penalized in Google rankings, whereas sites that correctly say he was born in the U.S. would get a boost in rankings.

That fact is not controversial, but critics worry that this is a first step towards Google playing God and effectively censoring content it does not like. They fear that skeptics of things like climate change or more immigration (both subjects that Google founders have expressed strong feelings about) might find their websites buried if this ranking system were adopted.

Continue reading at FoxNews.com...

Botched environmental predictions for 2015

By Maxim Lott | Published January 01 | FoxNews.com

You’ve heard the warnings: Global warming could doom humanity. Overpopulation and deforestation will destroy the planet. We’re going to run out of energy.

It isn’t happening right now, experts say, but it could happen in a few decades. Yet, decades ago, experts warned that many catastrophes would happen now – by the year 2015. Yet they have not. FoxNews.com found five predictions that went astray.

1) UN overestimated global warming by 2015

Two decades ago, the UN came up with several models that all predicted that by 2015, the Earth would have warmed by at least a degree Fahrenheit. Yet in the last two decades, there has instead been virtually no warming according to satellite temperature measurements.

Most climate scientists say this is just a temporary pause and that warming will soon pick up again, though some say they now expect to see less warming in the future due to the pause.

2) All Rainforest Species Will Be Extinct

Dr. Paul Ehrich, the President of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University, got famous for his 1968 book “the Population Bomb” which predicted that increasing human populations would spell doom.

One part of that doom, he warned in his 1981 book “Extinction,” was that all rainforest species would likely soon go extinct due to environmental destruction.

“Half of the populations and species in tropical moist forests would be extinct early in the next century [the 2000s] and none would be left by 2025,” he warns on page 291. He added that that his model indicated that, on the upper bound, complete extinction would occur as soon as 2010.

Elsewhere in the book, he also wrote that his model’s assumptions were “more realistic” than those typically used and that “unless appropriate steps are taken soon… humanity faces a catastrophe fully as serious as an all-out thermonuclear war.” Continue reading at FoxNews.com to find out what Obama Science Advisor John Holdren predicted in the 1980s...

The tech behind the Keystone Pipeline

The Obama administration continues to block the controversial Keystone XL pipeline that would transport nearly 35 million gallons of oil a day from Canada to the U.S., citing environmental concerns as the reason. But according to pipeline advocates, it would use the latest technology and best safety features to prevent spills.

What is that technology and how does it work?

Advanced steel is part of it. The current part of the Keystone pipeline that already exists uses 2,638 miles of hardened steel built to “withstand impact from a 65-ton excavator with 3.5-inch teeth,” according to TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone pipeline.

Continue reading on FoxNews.com...

Google engineers say renewable energy won’t solve climate change

Can climate change be solved with technologies like wind and solar energy?

No, it can’t, according to a new report by two Google engineers, published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

The two engineers worked on an ambitious renewable energy project at Google called “RE-C” – but the project failed, and they now say that existing technologies like wind and solar are too costly to stave off climate change.

“At the start of RE-C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope,” their report reads...

Continue reading on FoxNews.com...

Betting with bitcoin: Site lets Americans gamble on elections, sports with online-only currency

The digital currency bitcoin -- once used to facilitate online drug deals -- now appears to be enabling people to get around regulations banning online betting.

Predictious.com, a new company from Ireland, offers a "prediction market" that allows people to bet on everything from the U.S. presidential election to the Olympics and the Oscars. And it’s all made possible by bitcoins.

Read more at FoxNews.com...

Russia bans bitcoins

If you’re going to the Sochi Olympics in Russia, don’t bring bitcoins. Yesterday the Russian Prosecutor General’s office released a statement that clearly prohibits Russians from using the new digital currency.

“Bitcoin is a money substitute and cannot be used by citizens and legal entities,” the agency’s press release reads.

The Russian law enforcement agency cited an existing 2002 law signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin that reads, “the official currency of the Russian Federation is the ruble. Introduction of other monetary units and money substitutes is prohibited.”

Read more at FoxNews.com...

Russian rubbish? India reportedly disappointed with stealth fighters from Moscow

Is the Russian arms industry getting soft?

Despite initial high expectations, the Indian Air Force appears to be souring on a joint development deal with Russia for a new fifth-generation fighter jet, according to the Business Standard, a major Indian business publication. The Russian prototype is "unreliable, its radar inadequate, its stealth features badly engineered,” said Indian Air Force Deputy Air Marshall S Sukumar at a Jan. 15 meeting, according to minutes obtained by the Business Standard.

Read more at FoxNews.com...

Is it safe? Radioactive Japanese wave nears US

In the wake of the deadly tsunami that hit Japan in 2011 and severely damaged a nuclear reactor, Japanese officials say the levels of radiation are safe for everyone outside the reactor area itself. But as radioactive water from the plant nears the West Coast of North America -- the water is expected to hit in 2014 -- can we be sure it's safe?

The nuclear reactor continues to leak radioactive water due to poor management, while Japanese subcontractors at the plant have admitted they intentionally under-reported radiation and that dozens of farms around Fukushima that were initially deemed safe by the government actually had unsafe levels of radioactive cesium.

Continue reading on FoxNews.com...

Tech to protect against the next hurricane Sandy

A year after tropical storm Sandy tore through the Northeast, killing more than 100 and causing $50 billion in damage, areas all over the region are devising plans to prevent similar storm damage in the future.

What will the changes look like? Proposed solutions range from physically expanding the coast of Manhattan to re-introducing oysters in certain areas in the hope that they will slow down waves.

Continue reading at FoxNews.com...

The Pentagon's biggest, baddest - and costliest - piece of hardware ever

When the USS Gerald R. Ford is finally christened, the massive aircraft carrier will be the biggest and baddest piece of Pentagon hardware ever built - and, critics note, the most expensive.

The 1,106-foot ship, under construction in Newport News, Va., has seen cost overruns push its expected price tag up some 22 percent to nearly $13 billion, with new technology dictating changes since work began in 2007. Expected to be christened on Nov. 9, the ship will be able to launch 220 air attacks per day, will hold more than 4,000 sailors and Marines, has a nuclear reactor to provide energy, and even comes with stealth features to reduce the ship’s radar profile.

Continue reading at FoxNews.com...

Exclusive: Regulations helped kill Google Reader, source says

Google plans to kill the popular Reader service today -- and government over-regulation played a big role, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The service, which allows users to see new posts from their favorite blogs and websites all on one page, has been around since 2005 and has millions of users, so the decision to end the program left many wondering: why kill it?

"You would think that it would take little effort to maintain the site, but compliance keeps the cost up," the source told FoxNews.com.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/07/01/regulations-helped-kill-google-reader-source-says/

Article on the extent of Bitcoin Regulations

The online-only currency known as "bitcoin" is a hit -- one currently trades for about $130 U.S. dollars. But regulators are less excited, fearing money laundering and tax evasion.
Continue reading at: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/05/30/how-bitcoin-could-go-legal/

Digital 'bitcoin' currency surpasses 20 national currencies in value

More than $1 billion dollars worth of a digital currency known as "bitcoins" now circulate on the web – an amount that exceeds the value of the entire currency stock of small countries like Liberia (which uses “Liberian dollars”), Bhutan (which uses the “Ngultrum”), and 18 other countries.

So what is a “bitcoin,” and why would anyone use it?

Unlike traditional currency, bitcoins are not issued by a government or even a private company. Instead, the currency is run by computer code that distributes new bitcoins at a set rate to people who devote web servers to keep the code running. The bitcoins are then bought and sold for regular U.S. dollars online.

Continue reading at FoxNews.com...

We’re trying to stop the UN from regulating the Internet, Ambassador Kramer says

A U.N. conference that kicked off today in Dubai has sparked fear of Internet censorship in the U.S. -- something U.S. Ambassador Terry Kramer said he is doing everything in his power to prevent.

“Nothing regarding the Internet do we want subject to U.N. review and regulation,” Kramer told FoxNews.com.

Continue reading at FoxNews.com...

[UPDATE ON DAY 4 OF CONFERENCE: US continues to fight proposals for UN to regulate web, Ambassador Kramer says ]

Tech startups facing unexpected challenge: the government

Could your favorite apps soon be banned in your city?

From the online taxi service Uber -- which regulators are trying to keep out of Washington, D.C. -- to Zipcar.com, tech startups are facing an unexpected challenge: government regulation.

Here are three hip new technology sites that politicians are causing trouble for.

Continue reading at FoxNews.com...

After 9/11: How to Build a Safer Skyscraper

The 9/11 attacks threw the architectural world into shock. “The age of skyscrapers is at an end,” city planner Howard Kunstler declared just after the tragedy, and Donald Trump reduced the height of a planned tower in Chicago, citing security concerns raised by 9/11.

But since the tragedy, architects have used advances in construction materials and new designs to make tall buildings safer -- and more likely to withstand a 9/11-style attack.

Continue reading at FoxNews.com...

'iPad': Analysts Expect Apple to Release Tablet Computer

Rumors about an "iPad" — an Apple "tablet" computer that would be similar to a large iPhone —are picking up steam.

Gene Munster, a highly respected senior research analyst at the investment firm Piper Jaffray, says representatives of an Asian component manufacturer told him that they had received orders from Apple for parts to build a tablet computer — a project code-named "Touch."

Continue reading at FOXNews.com