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'Big risk': California farmers hit by drought change planting plans

Joe Del Bosque is leaving a third of his 2,000-acre farm near Firebaugh, California, unseeded this year due to extreme drought. Yet, he hopes to access enough water to produce a marketable melon crop.
Source: reuters.com

Greta Thunberg aims to change how food is produced

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has set her sights on changing how the world produces and consumes food in order to counteract a trio of threats: carbon emissions, disease outbreaks and animal suffering.
Source: reuters.com

Facebook faces prospect of 'devastating' data transfer ban after Irish ruling

Ireland's data regulator can resume a probe that may trigger a ban on Facebook's transatlantic data transfers, the High Court ruled on Friday, raising the prospect of a stoppage that the company warns would have a devastating impact on its business.
Source: reuters.com

US passes emergency waiver over fuel pipeline cyber-attack

The US acts to keep fuel flowing after its largest pipeline was hit by a ransomware cyber-attack. "Cyber-security firm Digital Shadows says the Colonial attack has come about due to the pandemic - with more engineers remotely accessing control systems for the pipeline from home. James Chappell, co-founder...
Source: bbc.com

Taking an invention from idea to the marketplace

Lockdown spurred many people to invent new products, but how did they get to market?
Source: bbc.com

IEA issues 'dire warning' on CO2 emissions as it predicts 5% rise

Global CO2 emissions from energy are seen rising nearly 5% this year, suggesting the economic rebound from COVID-19 could be "anything but sustainable" for the climate, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday.
Source: reuters.com

World's wealthiest (and 'business as usual') 'at heart of climate problem'

"These [polluter elite] are people who fly most, drive the biggest cars most and live in the biggest homes which they can easily afford to heat, so they tend not to worry if they’re well insulated or not. … They’re also the sort of people who could really afford good insulation and solar panels...
Source: bbc.com

Why 2021 Is Graph Data Science's Year for the Enterprise -

Graph data science is becoming increasingly important to business delivering deep insights into data and driving new business cases.
Source: enterprisetimes.co.uk

Build for a crisis: Ideas for the future of local news

Enjoyed this story of the ingenuity of local newspapers when struck with the crisis of extreme weather. What does it say for our other complex technology and business layers? When crisis strikes perhaps that's when you find the lowest common tech that works and exactly what purpose you are using it for....
Source: niemanlab.org

Major employers scrap plans to cut back on offices - KPMG

Most major global companies no longer plan to reduce their use of office space after the coronavirus pandemic, though few expect business to return to normal this year, a survey by accountants KPMG showed on Tuesday.
Source: reuters.com

Using GPT-2 to generate Tweets

blog post image Last summer I blogged about using a Deep Neural Network to generate tweets but only used 3200 of my tweets. Since then I've used Twitter's archive mechanism to retrieve ALL my tweets (just over 30,000) to train a network. Not any old network - the GPT-2 model from OpenAI. This 'finetuning' of an existing...

Opinion: The UK has a huge rubbish problem – but building new waste incinerators isn’t the answer

Some take waste directly from businesses, but the vast majority burn the contents of our wheelie bins – and around 12 per cent of that is plastic
Source: independent.co.uk

Singapore 'bubble' business hotel welcomes first guests

Singapore has launched a travel "bubble" business hotel that allows executives to do face-to-face meetings without a risk of exposure to the coronavirus, in one of the world's first such facilities.
Source: reuters.com

UK businesses caught buying five-star Google reviews

Consumer group Which? staged a sting operation to investigate fake Google reviews in the UK.
Source: bbc.com

'Deepfake is the future of content creation'

Deepfake, or AI-generated videos, are increasingly being used commercially.
Source: bbc.com

Volvo Cars to go fully electric by 2030

"The Swedish firm is to phase out all models with internal combustion engines over the next few years."
Source: bbc.com

Stripe acquires Nigeria's Paystack for over $200 million to expand its footprint in Africa

Africa is a great opportunity for ecommerce in coming decades and Nigeria's Paystack has been growing fast. "Stripe is a San Francisco-based fintech startup that provides payments infrastructure for businesses. Its software and APIs are used by millions of companies of all sizes to accept payments,...
Source: techstartups.com

God Is Dead. So Is the Office. These People Want to Save Both: Divinity consultants are designing sacred rituals for corporations

God Is Dead. So Is the Office. These People Want to Save Both: Divinity consultants are designing sacred rituals for corporations and their spiritually depleted employees.
Source: nytimes.com

Seaweed: The food and fuel of the future?: The farming of seaweed is accelerating as firms exploit its fast growth and green

Seaweed: The food and fuel of the future?: The farming of seaweed is accelerating as firms exploit its fast growth and green credentials.
Source: bbc.com

Will we still need the term "digital transformation"?

3 ways digital businesses can enable the Great Reset: Updating business models for a digital-first world, led by purpose, is now an imperative for almost every company. "In the coming years, it is possible that no one will speak of “digital transformation” because the term will have become irrelevant:...
Source: weforum.org