The U.S. may be streets ahead in the development of driverless cars, but there is one area where Russia could still overtake, Russian technology experts believe. Their secret weapon? That tried-and-tested historical ally, General Winter. For it’s one...
For centuries, ambitious young people have gone into law believing they would never be in want of work: the world will always need lawyers, so the thinking went. In the 21 st century, amid growing predictions that many human jobs will soon be outsourced to...
There is one topic that seems guaranteed to create a traffic jam along the usually uncongested road leading to the Skolkovo innovation centre, and that topic is blockchain and cryptocurrencies. This week, bitcoin approached a value per coin of $10,000, and...
While recycling, a rejection of plastic bags and other eco-friendly initiatives are now a way of life in many European countries, Russia – the biggest country in the world – lags woefully behind in this area. This year was declared the Year of Ecology...
A proposal sent to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to use artificial intelligence to improve Russia’s legal system made the headlines this week, but this process is in fact already underway. Robot-lawyers, the use of blockchain to create smart contracts...
“A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man's brow,” the Roman poet Ovid wrote two millennia ago. The world may have changed a lot since...
VLADIVOSTOK — On his way back to Moscow from a tour of the United States in 1959, Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev stopped off in Russia’s Far Eastern port city of Vladivostok. Inspired by what he had just seen in America and the basic parallels between...
Russia’s official position on the potentially lucrative field of asteroid mining is that it is outlawed by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which declares that space is “the province of mankind,” and that its use and exploration must “benefit...
“Study, study, and study some more!” is one of the most often cited sayings of revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin. One hundred years after Lenin’s Bolshevik coup, Russia is undergoing another revolution. This time, it’s digital rather...
The Open Innovations forum kicked off on Monday morning at the Skolkovo innovation centre, attracting an estimated 18,000 people from all over the world to Russia’s biggest conference and exhibition devoted to homegrown innovative tech solutions. ...
The Skolkovo innovation city is gearing up to host the biggest Open Innovations forum that Russia has yet seen on October 16-18, featuring tech stars, government representatives, entrepreneurs, businesspeople and futurologists from around the world. International...
Banks, power stations and cryptocurrency exchanges are the most likely targets for hacking in the near future, the cybersecurity company Group-IB said Tuesday, presenting its Hi-Tech Crime Trends 2017 report at a conference. Ilya Sachkov, CEO of Group...
Ordinary people have an unprecedented opportunity to make their voices heard concerning the development of their place of residence, whether it be a sprawling metropolis or a remote village, and should take every opportunity to use that voice, visitors to the...
When Vitalik Buterin, founder of the Ethereum blockchain platform, was about six years old, he already knew the value of Pi to about 30 digits. “Here people teach children to memorise Pushkin poems; I learned 3.14159265359… ” the 23-year...
If you’re stuck for ideas of where to go on holiday this summer, how about visiting a mythical world you once saw in a dream? Or how about spending some time on Mars? If you’re looking for something more earthly but can’t face a long-haul...
The occasions when it’s justifiable to trot out the well-worn opening lines of Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” (“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”) are few and far between, but their...
Skolkovo’s resident cybercrime sleuths Group-IB have helped Russia’s Interior Ministry catch a gang of hackers suspected of using a Trojan virus to steal money from more than one million bank accounts via mobile banking apps, the ministry said Monday...
Countries across the globe are scrambling to learn lessons from last week’s global cyberattack, and Russia is no exception. Cybersecurity experts hope that the publicity from the ransomware attack may have a positive outcome by making individuals and...
Pekka Viljakainen describes himself as a “Finnish stallion.” His other nickname is “The Bulldozer.” In his mission to instill a culture of entrepreneurship in Russia and transform its economy, the indefatigable Finnish businessman has...
Would you agree to your court case being decided upon by a robot judge? In surveys in which people were asked precisely this question, the highest proportion of positive reactions came from Russia, according to Ekaterina Schulmann, a political scientist . ...
The Skolkovo Foundation will spend the next few years focusing on developing tech entrepreneurship in Russia’s regions, the foundation’s chairman of the board told a meeting of its scientific advisory council on Tuesday. Nobel prize winners...
“Will robots take over?” and “Will robots take our jobs?” are the most frequent robot predictions searched for on Google. The internet, alas, does not always have accurate answers. But if anyone knows what the future holds in store for...
There was a distinct feeling of déjà vu at the second InSpace forum held in Moscow on Friday, where one year after the original event , the main players in Russia’s space industry pondered the same existential questions that had dominated...
For any Russian company with international aspirations, the Asian markets are the modern Klondike - and not just because strained relations with the West have made it more difficult for some Russian enterprises to do business there. Asia will be the future...
This year’s Open Innovations Startup Tour , the Skolkovo Foundation’s annual roving quest for talented tech startups across Russia and neighbouring countries, began Monday in the northern city of Yakutsk, just a few hundred kilometres below the...