Daily Archives: October 3, 2021

Annie Kapnick joins Reporters Committee as litigation fellow – Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Posted: October 3, 2021 at 2:00 am

In September, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press welcomed Annie Kapnick as a litigation fellow, a role in which she will draft friend-of-the-court briefs, conduct legal research and assist with the organizations litigation efforts.

While a student at Harvard Law School, Annie says she became interested in First Amendment litigation and its intersection with technology.

I was looking for an organization that focuses on a broad range of media litigation topics, including complex technology-related First Amendment issues, and a commitment to increasing government transparency, she said. The Reporters Committee has an excellent litigation team, theyre working on some really exciting issues and have their toe in all the important cases that are happening right now in the First Amendment arena.

Before attending law school, Annie worked in finance for three years. The experience working in the corporate world helped her realize her desire to work at a nonprofit organization.

I wanted to find a career I could actually be passionate about, and feel like I had more impact on the world, Annie said. I think working at a nonprofit specifically was something that was always a goal of mine going into law school.

A New York native, Annie graduated from Stanford University in 2015 with a B.S. in management science and engineering, with interdisciplinary honors in international security studies. She then returned to New York to work in finance, before attending Harvard Law School, where she was executive submissions editor of the National Security Journal, a James Vorenberg Equal Justice Summer Fellow and a research assistant for Professor Martha Minow.

She graduated cum laude this past May before joining the Reporters Committee.

Annie Kapnick is not admitted to practice law.

The Reporters Committee regularly files friend-of-the-court briefs and its attorneys represent journalists and news organizations pro bono in court cases that involve First Amendment freedoms, the newsgathering rights of journalists and access to public information. Stay up-to-date on our work by signing up for our monthly newsletter and following us on Twitter or Instagram.

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Are Human Rights Violations Becoming More Difficult to Hide? – Columbia University

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Jaffer also reminded participants that in the weeks after 9/11, the U.S. government rounded up hundreds of immigrants, most of them Arab or South Asian, almost all of them Muslim, falsely intimating to the public that they were connected in some way to the attacks. In the months and years that followed, the courts granted the government new authorities, creating national security exceptions to important human rights protections. All of us should have been quicker to recognize that those were not national security exceptionsthat they were effectively Muslim exceptions, he said.

Part of the challenge at the time, suggested Elisa Massimino, former president and CEO of Human Rights First, was that following the attacks the government deliberately hid its true agenda. She recalled a visit to the Justice Department shortly after 9/11 to discuss with officials those individuals being rounded up: We were looking for some sign that there was a strategy related to national security behind any of it. We said, Surely you're not just randomly rounding up people who are Muslim or [who] seem Muslim to somebody and hoping that you're going to catch some terrorists. And that is precisely what they were doing.

But, as Massimino added: I think my navet was really that there was some level of competence inside the government on these issues. And that early meeting just completely stripped that away. There was no strategy behind that. It was just fear-driven prejudice.

ACLUs Executive Director Anthony Romero expressed similar bitterness over the governments framing of national security policies as part of the fight against terrorism in order to bypass conventions for international human rights and domestic law enforcement. The war on terror paradigm was one we fought. But I wish we had just never fallen prey to the use of it, he said. Once [we had] the full evidence of the commission of torture and the fact that [the government] had acted so unlawfully we should have impeached the bunch of them.

Added Roth: The one point where I think we made a mistake is that we allowed the discussion to be exclusively about torture, rather than ... cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment. [We should have] gotten people to think about humane treatment, you know, do you want the cop in your local precinct interrogating you with these techniques?

The panelists link between national security and policing did suggest that, amid burgeoning social justice movements and intersectional awareness, a more effective response may be possible.

The context [after 9/11] was really around the surveillance of Muslim communities, argued panelist Linda Sarsour, co-chair of the 2017 Womens March and former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York. [There were] a lot of moments where the movement could have initially engaged in solidarity and looking at the connections between national security and the policing apparatus in the United States, and how it impacts people of color. We could have had one big whole conversation that really could have built a lot of power.

Sarsour concluded: What I hope that we have now is this idea that we can't have these silo fights anymore. We're not going to talk about criminal justice reform without also talking about national security reform.

A. Adam Glenn is a writer/editor at the Knight First Amendment Institute.

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Conspiracy Theories and Your Clearance: Should You Be Worried if You Get Banned from YouTube Like Robert Kennedy Jr. – ClearanceJobs

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This week, video sharing service YouTube announced that it would take steps to remove content from prominent COVID-19 vaccine skeptics including Joseph Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. As first reported by The Washington Post, under its new policies, YouTube will ban any videos that make the claim that commonly used vaccines approved by health officials are ineffective or dangerous.

The video service has already enacted similar measures against accounts that have been sharing misinformation about COVID-19.

Developing robust policies takes time, Matt Halprin, YouTubes vice president of global trust and safety told the paper of record. We wanted to launch a policy that is comprehensive, enforceable with consistency and adequately addresses the challenge.

YouTube and other social media platforms have long been used to share conspiracy theories, and many of these from flat earth to the moon landing to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (uncle of the aforementioned Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) have been considered essentially harmless, even if those making and potentially watching them were actual believers.

However, some of the more recent conspiracies to gain traction have included the infamous pizzagate, which served as the catalyst for the QAnon movement, and of course COVID-19 fromits origins as well as vaccines. For the most part, this type of information has been allowed, even if in some cases it has been tagged as potentially misleading.

This week however, YouTube has stepped up to ban the spread of what it calls COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.

Working closely with health authorities, we looked to balance our commitment to an open platform with the need to remove egregious harmful content, YouTube said in a Wednesday statement posted to its blog. Weve steadily seen false claims about the coronavirus vaccines spill over into misinformation about vaccines in general, and were now at a point where its more important than ever to expand the work we started with Covid-19 to other vaccines.

The question is of course what sets one conspiracy apart from another?

Well, that is up to the platform to draw the line, and that can be difficult, but it generally seems to be where people could get hurt or sick, said Dr. Kurt Braddock, assistant professor of Public Communication at the School of Communication, American University.

The platform may be slow to react, but they do seem to move when there is the potential for violence such as after the January 6 riots at the Capitol, Braddock told ClearanceJobs.

There have also been concerns in the past year that as more Americans get their news and information from social media that not enough has been done to stop the spread of misinformation and even disinformation. However, here is where the platforms have in recent months increased the efforts to stop the spread of content they see as misleading or potentially harmful.

Social media platforms removal of high-profile individuals spreading disinformation has a discernible effect on what general users see online, explained Dr. Saif Shahin, assistant professor, School of Communication at American University.

A few influential accounts tend to drive the bulk of online traffic as what they post is recirculated by hundreds or thousands of other accounts or by malicious bots. Facebook reported a marked decrease in exposure to disinformation after it began clamping down during last years election. In my own research, I have found this to have happened on Twitter as well, Shahain added.

One common complaint from users on the social platforms has been that this is a form of censorship or that it somehow violates ones First Amendment rights. Neither argument holds water, said the experts.

YouTube is a privately-owned platform, of course; its parent company is Google. As such, the First Amendment does not apply to it, because the First Amendment only applies to the government, said Bob Jarvis, lawyer and professor of Law at Nova Southeastern University.

Thus, while the government cannot ban speech except in very specific circumstances, such as speech that imperils national security private individuals and companies are free to ban any speech they wish for any reason, or no reason, at all, Jarvis told ClearanceJobs. The foregoing is not debatable it is, as lawyers like to say, black letter law.Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 held that even when a private company provides a platform for others to speak a traditional government function the First Amendment does not apply.

However, there will still be those that attempt to argue that the platforms are so universally used that blocking anyone is still a form of censoring.

Any kind of argument about this being First Amendment or about censorship remains a non-starter, and those who believe these videos want to have a debate, but that isnt the case, added Braddock. These companies can do what they want to do.

However, a case could be made that even if it is legally true, it may not always be in the best interest of the greater good.

Credibility of all content suffers in this dystopian age. Now that carriers openly affirm that they eliminate select material to protect it from criticism, everyone must doubt what we read and wonder what was omitted, warned Jim Purtilo, associate professor of computer science at the University of Maryland.

Science is the greatest victim of all, Purtilo told ClearanceJobs. Science is driven by disciplined questions and data, so when corporations or officials aggressively quash our opportunity to challenge views they diminish the quality of our conclusions. The crucible of science burns away nonsense and gives us greater confidence in what remains; censorship stops this quality improvement process in its tracks.

While activity on social media can potentially reflect badly on ones character, unless that activity could put an individual in a compromising situation, it may not actually impact security clearance. That is true even if said activity resulted in that person being banned from a platform such as YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook.

It is highly unlikely the ban itself would impact someones security clearance, said attorney Bradley P. Moss, Esq, of the Law Offices of Mark Zaid.

What the person did to get banned, on the other hand, is a different situation, but even that is still pretty farfetched, Moss told ClearanceJobs.

Even if its unlikely to impact your security clearance, posting conspiracy theories probably isnt a good way to land a job.

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Researchers in Graz control robots with their thoughts – TheMayor.EU

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Researchers in Graz control robots with their thoughts

The team at TU Graz made a significant breakthrough in neuroprosthetics using thoughts and a non-neurochip method to control robotic arms

Yesterday, the Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) reported a major breakthrough in neurotechnology for the first time test subjects were able to non-invasively control a robotic arm just by thinking about it. The experiments were done in real-time and the subjects did not use implants or neural chips, but a simple EEG cap, measuring their brain activity.

This research holds great potential for paraplegics precisely because it is non-invasive. The neuroprosthetics uses a technology called Brain-Computer Interfaces (BICs) to measure brain activity and concert that to electrical signals.

According to Gernot Mller-Putz, head of the Institute of Neurotechnology in TU Graz explained that the mere idea of movement triggers a measurable change in brain activity. What researchers needed to do was pinpoint the specific change and relate that to a specific movement.

It also turns out that hand-eye coordination is key to fluid precise motions. Mller-Putz was quoted in a press release explaining that "itis important that users are allowed to use their eyes to follow the trajectory of the robotic arm. The visual information helps to capture the intention to move. The interfering signals from the eye itself, however, have to be calculated from the electrical activity.

The BIC also has a built-in error detection system. Essentially, the interface measures, recognises and corrects errors based on brain activity. Once it has detected an error it either corrects the motion or goes back into the starting position.

The test subjects, participating in the trials were paraplegic and according to Mller-Putz, they were able to replicate the successful trial runs several times.

The researchers went a step further and implemented a kinetic feedback system to go with everything else. What this means is that a subject can feel the movement of the robotic arm as if it were attached to their body. This is done with the help of vibration transmitters, stuck to the skin on the shoulder blade. Theoretically, this means that it is possible for someone who is completely disabled to feel movement again.

Furthermore, Mller-Putz and the team have decided to set the bar for the future even higher, as one of their distant goals is to find applications for the technology in the neck area. For now, however, their immediate pursuit is to decode brain activity even better and perfect the movement of the arm.

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Here’s a Top Cryptocurrency Stock to Buy Now – Motley Fool

Posted: at 1:59 am

Whenever there's a high risk, there's almost always a chance for a high reward. In a time when regulators around the world are cracking down on the burgeoning cryptocurrency space, there's one company that's not only undeterred by setbacks but is thriving. Of course, I'm talking about Silvergate Capital(NYSE:SI), whose stock has returned 603.8% in the past year.

Heck, the cryptocurrency bank even bestedBitcoin's 477.4% return during the same period. So why is Silvergate so popular all of a sudden? Let's find out.

Image source: Getty Images.

Silvergate is a waypoint into the mysterious cryptocurrency realm. The company has four major areas of operations:

The company currently provides such services to 93 cryptocurrency exchanges and 771 institutional investors such as hedge funds. Notable clients include Binance.us,Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets,PayPal, andCME Group. It also has 360 customers engaged in activities such as crypto mining or building decentralized finance services.

During the second quarter of 2021, Silvergate facilitated a whopping $239.6 billion worth of transfers on its network, recognizing $11.3 million in revenue. Both represent significant increases over the $22.4 billion in SEN transactions and $2.4 million in revenue it brought in Q2 2020. Like any other bank, the company lends out money while only using a portion of its deposit as collateral in a process called fractional reserve banking. Total leverage increased more than tenfold in the past year to $258.5 million worth of loans in Q2.

Under the current international banking regulations (Basel III), a bank's capital must be at least 8% of its risk-weighted total assets (loans, mortgages, etc.). This is called the risk-based capital ratio (RBC). It ensures that a sudden stock sell-off or rise in default rates wouldn't wipe out a bank's capital due to the latter's leverage. The higher the ratio, the healthier the bank, but the less its profits due to less leverage.

Major U.S. banks typically have an RBC of 15% and possess a net interest margin (NIM) of between 2% to 5%. However, it's clear that Silvergate is a very conservative bank as its RBC stands at a whopping 48% while possessing a NIM of 1%. So there's definitely a lot of room for the company to leverage up and beef up its returns. What's more, its default rate stands at roughly 0%, compared to 0.05% for its competitor banks.

With the rise of the $172.15 billion decentralized finance (DeFi) industry, there are now more opportunities than ever for investors to buy and hold cryptos and earn fixed income with them. As a result, expect continued massive demand for Silvergate's fiat-crypto services. And don't forget about its ability to expand its loan portfolio and increase interest profits, either. Overall, I'd consider this a high-flying crypto stock to buy, even at 38 times earnings going forward.

This article represents the opinion of the writer, who may disagree with the official recommendation position of a Motley Fool premium advisory service. Were motley! Questioning an investing thesis -- even one of our own -- helps us all think critically about investing and make decisions that help us become smarter, happier, and richer.

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IMF warns of global risks from unregulated cryptocurrency boom – The Guardian

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Tougher regulation is needed to prevent the rapid growth in cryptocurrencies leading to financial instability, defrauding of consumers and the funding of terrorism, the International Monetary Fund has said.

The Washington-based IMF said the 10-fold increase in the market value of crypto assets digital or virtual currencies to more than $2tn since early 2020 required more active and collaborative supervision by governments.

In a chapter from its forthcoming Global Financial Stability Report, the IMF said many of the new cryptocurrencies lacked robust governance and risk practices.

Cryptocurrencies are an alternative way of making payments to cash or credit cards. The technology behind it allows the money to be sent directly to others without it having to pass through the banking system. For that reason they are outside the control of governments and are unregulated by financial watchdogs and transactions can be made in a way that keeps you reasonably pseudonymous.

If you own a crypto-asset you control a secret digital key that you can use to prove to anyone on the network that a certain amount of that asset is yours. If you spend it, you tell the entire network that you have transferred ownership of it, and use the same key to prove that you are telling the truth. Over time, the history of all those transactions becomes a lasting record of who owns what: that record is called the blockchain.

Bitcoin was one of the first and biggest cryptocurrencies and has been on a wild ride since its creation in 2009, sometimes surging in value as investors have piled in and occasionally crashing back down. Dogecoin which started as a joke has also seen a stratospheric rise in value.

Sceptics warn that the lack of central control make crypto-assets ideal for criminals and terrorists, while libertarian monetarists enjoy the idea of a currency with no inflation and no central bank.

The whole concept of cryptocurrencies has been criticised for its ecological impact, with "mining" for new coins requiringvast energy reserves and the associated carbon footprintof the whole system.

Richard Partington and Martin Belam

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Dimitris Drakopoulos, Fabio Natalucci and Evan Papageorgiou, authors of the chapter, said in a blog that crypto exchanges had faced significant disruptions during periods of market turbulence. There are also several high-profile cases of hacking-related thefts of customer funds. So far, these incidents have not had a significant impact on financial stability. However, as crypto assets become more mainstream, their importance in terms of potential implications for the wider economy is set to increase, they said.

The blog noted the substantial risks to consumers from inadequate disclosure and oversight, given that some currencies were likely created solely for speculation purposes or even outright fraud. The (pseudo) anonymity of crypto assets also creates data gaps for regulators and can open unwanted doors for money laundering, as well as terrorist financing.

The IMF also highlighted potential problems with the four-fold increase in the supply of stablecoins cryptocurrencies that aim to peg their value, usually against the US dollar to $120bn (88bn) during 2021.

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The blog said: Given the composition of their reserves, some stablecoins could be subject to runs, with knock-on effects to the financial system. The runs could be driven by investor concerns about the quality of their reserves or the speed at which reserves can be liquidated to meet potential redemptions.

Last month, China made transactions in cryptocurrencies illegal, but the IMF said emerging and developing countries appeared to be leading the way with their use. This risked damaging the ability of central banks to effectively implement monetary policy and potentially created financial stability risks, it added.

As a first step, regulators and supervisors need to be able to monitor rapid developments in the crypto ecosystem and the risks they create by swiftly tackling data gaps. The global nature of crypto assets means that policymakers should enhance cross-border coordination to minimise the risks of regulatory arbitrage and ensure effective supervision and enforcement, the IMF said.

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Face Recognition Software market to showcase strong CAGR between 2026 and 2026 – Northwest Diamond Notes

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The Global Face Recognition Software Market report provides internal and external analysis of global market patterns, large-scale financial pointers, and control aspects along with market attractiveness according to sections. The report further maps the characteristic findings of various market aspects to market sections and geography. The report is a point-by-point awareness of several perspectives, including the rate of development, recent advances, and various procedures implemented by the key momentum market players. This report depends on an aggregate investigation of information obtained through mandatory and secondary examinations. It Face Recognition Software provides an orderly way to deal with current and impending market conditions.

The business intelligence report on Face Recognition Software market attempts to clearly inform readers about critical factors such as key trends, primary growth drivers, challenges, and lucrative prospects during 2021-2026.

As per expert analysts, the industry is anticipated to amass notable returns over the forecast duration, recording at a CAGR of XX% throughout.

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The report casts light on the various segments of the market and recognizes the areas that possess robust income-generating potential. Moreover, it assists key players, new entrants, and other stakeholders in gauging the degree of competitiveness in this domain and accordingly draft strategies that promise strong returns in the ensuing years.

Key highlights of the Face Recognition Software market report

Face Recognition Software market segments included in the report:

Geographical bifurcation: North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East & Africa.

Product types: Holistic Matching Method , feature-based Method , Skin Texture Analysis , Hybrid Types and Other

Application spectrum: Corporate & Residential Security , Public Transport , Entertainment Software , Public Security & Justice , Self-service Equipment , Attendance & Conference , Financial Services and Other

Competitive dashboard: Aware (US) , BioID (DE) , Idemia (FR) , Leidos (US) , Visage Technologies (SE) , Cloudwalk (CN) , M2SYS (US) , Gemalto (NZ) , StereoVision Imaging (US) , Cognitec Systems (GE) , HID Global (US) , NEC (JP) , NVISO (BE) , Daon (US) , MEGVII (CN) , Ayonix Face Technologies (IN) , Innovatrics (SK) , HYPR (US) , Fujitsu (JP) , Kairos (US) , Animetrics (US) , id3 Technologies (FR) , Smilepass (GB) , Techno Brain (SA) , Neurotechnology (LT) , Fulcrum Biometrics (US) , FaceFirst (US) and Certibio (BR

Major Findings of the Face Recognition Software Market Report Include:

Why should you buy this Industrial Face Recognition Software Market report?

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Altcoin outlook: 6 alternative cryptocurrencies to watch in Q4 – Markets Insider

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Altcoins.

Jack Taylor/Getty Image

Growth around non-fungible tokens and decentralized finance helped prices for some altcoins soar during the third quarter, and investors are looking for the next breakout as the fourth quarter begins.

The global cryptocurrency market is again approaching the $2 trillion mark, as prices for Cardano's ada, solana and other altcoins have taken off, with cardano ada now the third most-traded crypto.

Now in the months ahead, investors will sharpen their focus on the benefits and shortfalls emerging from recent speed and efficiency upgrades on the blockchain networks of key altcoins, Ed Moya, senior currency analyst at Oanda, told Insider.

"Everyone has been focused on which altcoins are going to address that scalability concern that you have with ethereum and bitcoin," he said.

"People have to understand which businesses are going to be the leaders in NFTs or smart contracts," and other operations, he said. "I think that's where the market is and education takes some time. The industry is ripe for consolidation."

Here are six altcoins (in alphabetical order) experts tell Insider they'll be watching during the fourth quarter and beyond:

1) Avalanche (AVAX) Market Capitalization: $14.5 billionYear-to-date performance: Up 1954% at $65.94

The blockchain developed by Ava Labs is a smart contracts platform for decentralized applications and its AVAX token began trading on Coinbase Pro this past week.

Avalanche "is way faster than ethereum and it wants to be even faster, which is great because I think that's very important when it comes to finance and DeFi projects and applications," Tally Greenberg, head of business development at Allnodes, told Insider.

"It's a promising technology that basically does more for less," she said, adding that it uses a proof-of-stake system that's more energy-efficient than a proof-of-work one based on mining, she said.

Steve Ehrlich, founder and CEO of cryptocurrency-asset broker Voyager Digital, told Insider he sees Avalanche as a viable alternative to ethereum. "As soon as they start adding some projects and art on their NFT network, you'll start to see a lot more consumers buying and selling NFTs," on Avalanche, he said.

Ehrlich said Avalanche, as well as solana and cardano, are cheaper alternatives to ethereum, which has high fees for conducting transactions.

2) Boost Coin Fully diluted market capitalization: $53 million Year-to-date performance: Up 293% to $0.0505

Launched in August, Boost Coin fuels the Boost ecosystem that's centered on decentralized finance tools. Boost Swap, a decentralized exchange, is the first tool, with the company behind it saying it's similar to crypto exchanges Uniswap, SushiSwap, and PancakeSwap.

Decentralized exchanges, or DEXs, offer a peer-to-peer platform where parties use smart contracts to execute their trades and don't rely on intermediaries such as clearing houses.

"There's a lot of value in the exchanges market," Dr. Don Basile, CEO of Monsoon Blockchain, told Insider, highlighted in part by this year's trading debut of Coinbase, now a $48 billion centralized crypto exchange.

Boost's approach to connect buyers and sellers without a centralized entity is a "potentially disruptive idea," he said.

Boost can be acquired by exchanging ethereum for it using Uniswap or Boost Swap. But Basile said it's too early to say whether its price is undervalued or overvalued as the coin is just a few weeks old.

Meanwhile, Basile is also the founder of Bitcoin Latinum, which is expected to begin trading around the week of October 21. The energy-efficient cryptocurrency is aimed at delivering faster transaction speeds and lower costs to high-growth markets such as media and gaming.

3) Cardano adaMarket Capitalization: $69.3 billionYear-to-date performance: Up 1092% at $2.16

Cardano's profile and that of its ada token, have boomed in recent months. The network last month ran its alonzo upgrade that brought smart contract capability to its network, a move that could bolster its competitiveness with ethereum.

"A lot of our customers hold a lot of cardano on our platform so we see quite an increase of people being interested," in the network, Ehrlich said.

And after recently being introduced to "some pretty cool" art built on Cardano, he thinks the network will make some headway soon in the NFT space.

Moya sees a lot of investors mixed on Cardano ada after its price climbed to $3. But he added, "There are still a lot of institutional players that are eyeing it as interesting altcoin to hold."

4) Crypto.com Coin CRO Market Capitalization: $4.2 billion Year-to-date performance: Up 183% at $0.16531

Crypto.com is a cryptocurrency exchange and consumer financial services company whose Coin serves as the token for Crypto.com's Chain, a decentralized open-source blockchain launched in March.

CRO is used for staking, payments, and settlements, said Greenberg, who thinks CRO is undervalued.

"It's in use on a daily basis," in part through Crypto.com's prepaid Visa card and Crypto.com, she said, adding that its Chain network has a sustainability goal of becoming carbon negative by next year.

5) DogecoinMarket Capitalization: $27.3 billionYear-to-date performance: Up 4307% at $0.2064

Oanda's Moya put the hugely popular meme coin on his watch list to see if it eventually crashes, which he thinks would actually be a positive sign.

"There are too many coins that don't have the financing, that don't have the infrastructure in place to be a legitimate investment," he said. "It's hard to go from a meme coin to a legitimate coin."

Tesla boss Elon Musk in August backed billionaire investor Mark Cuban's claim that dogecoin is the strongest cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange. Cuban's NBA team, the Dallas Mavericks, accepts dogecoin as a payment vehicle.

6) Polygon (previously MATIC)Market Capitalization: $7.6 billionYear-to-date performance: Down 27% at $1.236

Polygon is designed to scale ethereum chains and develop the blockchain's infrastructure. It's caught the eye of Mark Cuban who earlier this year added the platform to his investment portfolio.

Polygon, originally called Matic, created the Matic token that's used on transactions on the network. Matic is also among the roughly 40 altcoins on the watch list for Allnodes' Greenberg. She sees Matic as undervalued as it has low network fees and just enough volatility to benefit trading.

"For those who are looking for a less aggressive investment strategy, there's a staking opportunity. So it's a well-round blockchain and cryptocurrency."

Polygon uses the proof-of-stake system of securing a cryptocurrency's network under which users put forward or "stake" some of their coins to gain the right to verify transactions and, in exchange, earn more coins. Greenberg said users recently could make an annual return of 13.65% on their investments, "which is huge."

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University of Jamestown offers cryptocurrency and blockchain class – Jamestown Sun

Posted: at 1:59 am

Bear said he signed up for a cryptocurrency and blockchain course after he found out the University of Jamestown was offering the class this fall.

It is interesting. It is a unique class because the ecosystem is always changing with cryptocurrency, said Bear, a junior majoring in management information systems.

University of Jamestown offered a cryptocurrency and blockchain course as a special topics class this fall. There are 15 students in the class with most being computer science and information technology majors.

Fifteen for a starting class where there was a short three-sentence course description and thats all the students knew about it, said Jakob Barnard, assistant professor in the computer science and technology department who is teaching the class. I thought it was pretty promising. It means there is interest in the topic.

The cryptocurrency and blockchain course is a special-topics class, which is a mechanism that the university uses to try new things and see how they work, said Chris Redfearn, associate provost and dean of the undergraduate college at UJ.

Cryptocurrency and blockchain are subjects that are generating a lot of interest among students and the general public, he said.

Im excited that one of our faculty members has taken this on as a course to help our students to understand this new and emerging technology, he said.

Barnard said having cryptocurrency and blockchain in the course name was important because the class is not just about cryptocurrency.

Its blockchain through the lens of cryptocurrency, he said.

Cryptocurrency is a type of digital money that can be used for payments or held as an investment similar to the stock market. Cryptocurrency is not a government currency and doesnt have a central bank, interest rates or a long history of exchange rates against other currencies.

Blockchain is decentralized and consists of records called blocks that record transactions across many computers.

Blockchain is an unchangeable record and records getting packaged together, Barnard said.

We package records together and then we link it to the previous package, which links to the previous package, he said. That makes our chain, and thats where the term blockchain comes from. Our package is called a block.

Mining is when complex mathematical problems double check that block, Barnard said.

When you own some cryptocurrency, you own a little key card to a tiny chunk of that block and everybody has checked it to agree, he said. Nobody owns that little chunk but you.

Blockchain is a new technology so it doesnt have any curricular guidance for teaching it, Barnard said. He said the Association for Computing Machinery - an educational and scientific computing society - just updated its guidance and mentions that blockchain exists as an emerging technology.

Barnard said he wants students to figure out how cryptocurrency and blockchain could apply to them and to carry that information forward to be prepared for their careers.

Barnard said the class has discussions on why cryptocurrency has value. He said the volatility of cryptocurrency prices helps drive some of the discussions in class.

He asks questions to students about cryptocurrency laws and regulations, the fluctuation in cryptocurrency prices, if it is financially worth it to mine cryptocurrency and the use of electricity to mine cryptocurrency. Then he gets students to do their own research so they can have discussions during class.

How will this impact you is kind of the big question we are trying to get the students to answer for themselves, he said. How does that impact things you might have learned down in the business department? How does exploring cryptocurrency, the news, the hype, right now if you had to do a social media campaign on it, how would that impact things?

Barnard said the university has been supportive and helpful in getting the class started. He said the university granted him a budget to get equipment for the class.

Redfearn said the class gives students an opportunity to learn about cryptocurrency and blockchain technology in a hands-on way.

It really is the best kind of learning in which students are applying the learning they get in a classroom in a real-world situation, he said. The fact that professor Barnard has developed a cryptocurrency rig and is having the students work actively with the machine, I think it is going to help them learn more about it in a concrete way.

Barnard built a cryptocurrency mining machine that has six graphic cards and runs a software program called NiceHash that picks which cryptocurrency is the most profitable to mine.

Barnard said the NiceHash software has a little bit of an overhead cost to use but he does not have to worry about managing the mining machine. NiceHash has an app that can be downloaded on a cellphone, and Barnard can make sure the mining machine is running 24/7.

The scale in which our machine is operating will allow students to see how it works and what some of the issues and challenges are related to mining and computing power and everything that goes into it, Redfearn said. I think it is a perfect machine for students to learn on.

Barnard said he will have about six months worth of cryptocurrency mining data for class discussions.

We have data that we generated with our stuff on campus, he said. We are not just grabbing magical numbers from the internet.

Barnard said he has been working with Applied Blockchain Inc. on possible partnerships with the class.

Applied Blockchain delivers cryptocurrency mining and infrastructure solutions to its customers, according to its website. The company is building a cryptocurrency hosting facility that will be located about 7 miles north of Jamestown.

Applied Blockchain has engineers and other experts who are knowledgeable about cryptocurrency and blockchain, Barnard said. He said it will be an excellent opportunity for him and students to learn from experts how they manage software and work with blockchain applications.

I can talk about small-scale run mining rigs, he said. Well, alright can your folks with our technology nowadays dial in do a Zoom call with us and explain to our students what it means to scale from six graphic cards to a massive facility and what technology is involved with that.

Redfearn said the conversations about potential partnerships with Applied Blockchain are in the preliminary stages and he is pleased that the company reached out to the university but it is too early to speculate what that may look like.

Those conversations will continue to develop over time, he said. We are interested in seeing what the possibilities are and having our students do some work there.

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University of Jamestown offers cryptocurrency and blockchain class - Jamestown Sun

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Ansu Fati is the antidote to Koeman’s nihilism – MARCA.com

Posted: at 1:58 am

Ansu Fati hadn't played at the Camp Nou for ten months, yet managed to bring everyone together much in the same way he did on his debut. Only then, when he made his first ever appearance, his only purpose was to learn while, on Sunday against Levante, he had to act as a psychologist, as a marriage counsellor and as an influencer.

That's because Ansu Fati lifted the spirits of everyone involved with the club, rubbishing Ronald Koeman's defeatist mantra of "this is all that there is" and all the sputtering of president Joan Laporta, who tries to escape the stage without a scratch. Perhaps the goal was just a sidenote, because what the kid brought to the people was hope and that, in football, is a powerful force. In the end, what Ansu did was an act of pride and rebellion. The unprecedented thing is that he was against those who rule at Barcelona.

Carlo Ancelotti was wrong, and in admitting it, he was right. He took the blame for starting Fede Valverde at right back, but why did he do it? With that decision he lost two options: an actual right back and a progressive midfielder which could have been Valverde's role, against an excellent Villarreal. There is no doubt that Real Madrid's attacking potential is abundant, even if it ran dry on Saturday.

The fact that Thibaut Courtois seems to be Real Madrid's best player every game is great news for the goalkeeper but troubling for the rest of the team. We are talking about the defensive system, not the defenders themselves. David Alaba was undoubtedly a good signing, but defensive lapses are leaving Real Madrid vulnerable on the break.

It seems clear that nobody is going to walk LaLiga Santander this season. The upper-middle class is going to fight between them and even the more modest sides like Rayo Vallecano, with Radamel Falcao, are impressing.

However, it is strange to see Atletico Madrid struggling as they are. Their inconsistency and inability to get going in most of their matches so far is unusual from them. Diego Simeone tends to correct mistakes but he's not going to let things get out of hand. It's not his style.

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Ansu Fati is the antidote to Koeman's nihilism - MARCA.com

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