Tag Archives: tech
#439832 This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From ...
NEUROSCIENCE
How the World’s Biggest Brain Maps Could Transform Neuroscience
Alison Abbott | Nature
“To truly understand how the brain works, neuroscientists also need to know how each of the roughly 1,000 types of cell thought to exist in the brain speak to each other in their different electrical dialects. With that kind of complete, finely contoured map, they could really begin to explain the networks that drive how we think and behave.”
GENE THERAPY
A Gene-Editing Experiment Let These Patients With Vision Loss See Color Again
Rob Stein | NPR
“Carlene Knight’s vision was so bad that she couldn’t even maneuver around the call center where she works using her cane. …But that’s changed as a result of volunteering for a landmark medical experiment. …Knight is one of seven patients with a rare eye disease who volunteered to let doctors modify their DNA by injecting the revolutionary gene-editing tool CRISPR directly into cells that are still in their bodies.”
INTERFACES
Light Field Lab Shows off Solidlight High-Res Holographic Display
Dean Takahashi | VentureBeat
“…the company [says] it is the highest-resolution holographic display ever designed. And yes, the little chameleon that I saw floating in the air looked a lot better than the pseudo-hologram of Princess Leia in the original Star Wars movie. While it’s not hard to beat the vision of holograms in a movie from 1977, it has taken an extraordinarily long time to create real holograms that look good.”
TRANSPORTATION
Airless Tires Are Finally Coming in 2024: Here’s Why You’ll Want a Set
Brian Cooley | CNET
“Nails become minor annoyances and sidewall cuts that usually render a tire unrepairable are no longer possible. There would be no need to check tire inflation (you’ve probably ignored my admonitions to do that anyway) and we’d say goodbye to spare tires, jacks and inflation kits that most drivers view as mysterious objects anyway. Blowouts that cause thousands of crashes a year would be impossible.”
FUTURE
These 5 Recent Advances Are Changing Everything We Thought We Knew About Electronics
Ethan Siegel | Big Think
“As we race to miniaturize electronics, to monitor more and more aspects of our lives and our reality, to transmit greater amounts of data with smaller amounts of power, and to interconnect our devices to one another, we quickly run into the limits of these classical technologies. But five advances are all coming together in the early 21st century, and they’re already beginning to transform our modern world. Here’s how it’s all going down.”
TECH
The Facebook Whistleblower Says Its Algorithms Are Dangerous. Here’s Why.
Karen Hao | MIT Technology Review
“Frances Haugen’s testimony at the Senate hearing today raised serious questions about how Facebook’s algorithms work—and echoes many findings from our previous investigation. …We pulled together the most relevant parts of our investigation and other reporting to give more context to Haugen’s testimony.”
COMPUTING
D-Wave Plans to Build a Gate-Model Quantum Computer
Frederic Lardinois | TechCrunch
“For more than 20 years, D-Wave has been synonymous with quantum annealing. …But as the company announced at its Qubits conference today, a superconducting gate-model quantum computer—of the kind IBM and others currently offer—is now also on its roadmap. D-Wave believes the combination of annealing, gate-model quantum computing and classic machines is what its businesses’ users will need to get the most value from this technology.”
ENERGY
The Decreasing Cost of Renewables Unlikely to Plateau Any Time Soon
Doug Johnson | Ars Technica
“Past projections of energy costs have consistently underestimated just how cheap renewable energy would be in the future, as well as the benefits of rolling them out quickly, according to a new [University of Oxford] report. …if solar, wind, and the myriad other green energy tools followed the deployment trends they are projected to see in the next decade, in 25 years the world could potentially see a net-zero energy system.”
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The Turbulent Past and Uncertain Future of Artificial Intelligence
Eliza Strickland | IEEE Spectrum
“Today, even as AI is revolutionizing industries and threatening to upend the global labor market, many experts are wondering if today’s AI is reaching its limits. …Yet there’s little sense of doom among researchers. Yes, it’s possible that we’re in for yet another AI winter in the not-so-distant future. But this might just be the time when inspired engineers finally usher us into an eternal summer of the machine mind.”
INTERNET
Facebook and Google’s New Plan? Own the Internet
James Ball | Wired UK
“The name ‘cloud’ is a linguistic trick—a way of hiding who controls the underlying technology of the internet—and the huge power they wield. Stop to think about it for a moment and the whole notion is bizarre. The cloud is, in fact, a network of cables and servers that cover the world: once the preserve of obscure telecoms firms, it is now, increasingly, owned and controlled by Big Tech—with Google and Facebook claiming a lion’s share.”
SPACE
The Moon Didn’t Die as Soon as We Thought
Tatyana Woodall | MIT Technology Review
“The moon may have been more volcanically active than we realized. Lunar samples that China’s Chang’e 5 spacecraft brought to Earth are revealing new clues about volcanoes and lava plains on the moon’s surface. In a study published [Thursday] in Science, researchers describe the youngest lava samples ever collected on the moon.”
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#439798 This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From ...
ROBOTICS
How DeepMind Is Reinventing the Robot
Tom Chivers | IEEE Spectrum
“Having conquered Go and protein folding, the company turns to a really hard problem. …To get to the next level, researchers are trying to fuse AI and robotics to create an intelligence that can make decisions and control a physical body in the messy, unpredictable, and unforgiving real world.”
NANOTECH
Microscopic Metavehicles Are Pushed and Steered by Light
Ben Coxworth | New Atlas
“Although solar-powered devices are now fairly common, Swedish scientists have created something a little different. They’ve built tiny ‘metavehicles’ that are mechanically propelled and guided via waves of light. …[It’s] hoped that the technology may someday be utilized in applications such as moving micro-particles through solutions inside of or adjacent to cells.”
3D PRINTING
How an 11-Foot-Tall 3D Printer Is Helping to Create a Community
Debra Kamin | The New York Times
“When New Story broke ground on the village in 2019, it was called the world’s first community of 3D printed homes. Two years and a pandemic later, 200 homes are either under construction or have been completed, 10 of which were printed on site by Icon’s Vulcan II printer. Plans for roads, a soccer field, a school, a market and a library are in the works.”
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Why OpenAI’s Codex Won’t Replace Coders
Thomas Smith | IEEE Spectrum
“If you’re a software developer yourself—or your company has spent tons of money hiring them—you can breathe easy. Codex won’t replace human developers any time soon, though it may make them far more powerful, efficient, and focused.”
FUTURE
Humans Can’t Be the Sole Keepers of Scientific Knowledge
Iulia Georgescu | Wired
“It’s clear that we do not really know what we know, because nobody can read the entire literature even in their own narrow field (which includes, in addition to journal articles, PhD theses, lab notes, slides, white papers, technical notes, and reports). …To solve this problem we need to make science papers not only machine-readable but machine-understandable, by (re)writing them in a special type of programming language. In other words: Teach science to machines in the language they understand.”
SCIENCE FICTION
Dune Foresaw—and Influenced—Half a Century of Global Conflict
Andy Greenberg | Source
“…reading Dune a half century later, when many of Herbert’s environmental and psychological ideas have either blended into the mainstream or gone out of style—and in the wake of the disastrous fall of the US-backed government in Afghanistan after a 20-year war—it’s hard not to be struck, instead, by the book’s focus on human conflict: an intricate, deeply detailed world of factions relentlessly vying for power and advantage by exploiting every tool available to them.”
SPACE
Space Policy Is Finally Moving Into the 21st Century
Tatyana Woodall | MIT Technology Review
“This week, the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research held its annual Outer Space Security Conference in Geneva, Switzerland (participants had the option to attend virtually or in person). For two days, diplomats, researchers, and military officials from around the world met to discuss threats and challenges, arms control, and space security. Their conversations provided a window into what new space policies might look like.”
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#439748 This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From ...
BIOTECH
A New Company With a Wild Mission: Bring Back the Woolly Mammoth
Carl Zimmer | The New York Times
“A team of scientists and entrepreneurs announced on Monday that they have started a new company to genetically resurrect the woolly mammoth. The company, named Colossal, aims to place thousands of these magnificent beasts back on the Siberian tundra, thousands of years after they went extinct.”
TECH
Alphabet’s Project Taara Laser Tech Beamed 700TB of Data Across Nearly 5km
Richard Lawler | The Verge
“Sort of like fiber optic cables without the cable, FSOC can create a 20Gbps+ broadband link from two points that have a clear line of sight, and Alphabet’s moonshot lab X has built up Project Taara to give it a shot. They started by setting up links in India a few years ago as well as a few pilots in Kenya, and today X revealed what it has achieved by using its wireless optical link to connect service across the Congo River from Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo and Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”
TRANSPORTATION
EV Startup Lucid’s First Car Can Travel 520 Miles on a Full Battery—Beating Tesla by 115 Miles
Tim Levin | Business Insider
“When Lucid Motors’ hotly anticipated first cars reach customers later this year, they’ll become the longest-range electric vehicles on the road. …The startup’s debut sedan, the Air Dream Edition R, has earned a range rating of 520 miles from the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s the longest range rating the agency has ever awarded.”
ENERGY
Self-Sustaining Solar House on Wheels Wants To Soak up the Sun
Doug Johnson | Ars Technica
“The vehicle has the aerodynamic tear-drop shape of other solar-powered vehicles and sports a series of solar panels on its roof. However, it also has additional roofing that slides up when stationary, making it easier to stand inside to cook or sleep. …To showcase its creation, Solar Team Eindhoven will begin to drive the vehicle 3,000 kilometers from Eindhoven to the southern tip of Spain this Sunday.”
SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY
Biology Starts to Get a Technological Makeover
Steve Lohr | The New York Times
“Proponents of synthetic biology say the field could reprogram biology to increase food production, fight disease, generate energy and purify water. The realization of that potential lies decades in the future, if at all. But it is no longer the stuff of pure science fiction because of advances in recent years in biology, computing, automation and artificial intelligence.”
TRANSPORTATION
Michelin’s Airless Passenger Car Tires Get Their First Public Outing
Loz Blain | New Atlas
“GM will begin offering [Michelin’s airless] Uptis [tires] as an option on certain models ‘as early as 2024,’ and the partnership is working with US state governments on regulatory approvals for street use, as well as with the federal government. At IAA Munich recently, the Uptis airless tire got its first public outing, in which ‘certain lucky members of the public’ had a chance to ride in a Mini Electric kitted out with a set.”
SCIENCE
Biologist Rethink the Logic Behind Cells’ Molecular Signals
Phillip Ball | Quanta
“Biologists often try to understand how life works by making analogies to electronic circuits, but that comparison misses the unique qualities of cellular signaling systems. …[The] signaling systems of complex cells are nothing like simple electronic circuits. The logic governing their operation is riotously complex—but it has advantages.”
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#439704 This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From ...
COMPUTING
The $150 Million Machine Keeping Moore’s Law Alive
Will Knight | Wired
“The technology will be crucial for making more advanced smartphones and cloud computers, and also for key areas of emerging technology such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and robotics. ‘The death of Moore’s law has been greatly exaggerated,’ del Alamos says. ‘I think it’s going to go on for quite some time.’i”
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
These Super-Efficient, Artificial Neurons Do Not Use Electrons
Payal Dhar | IEEE Spectrum
“[Though] artificial intelligence has come a long way, these systems are still far from matching the brain’s energy efficiency. …’The human brain…needs only 20 watts [to function], essentially [as much as] a light bulb,’ says Paul Robin, one of the scientists on the study. ‘Computers need much more energy. Our idea is that maybe the reason why our brain is so much more efficient is that it uses ions and not electrons to function.’i”
FUTURE
Artificial Intelligence and the ‘Gods Behind the Masks’
Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan | Wired
“In an excerpt from AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future, Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan explore what happens when deepfakers attack the deepfakes. …Touching on impending breakthroughs in computer vision, biometrics, and AI security, it imagines a future world marked by cat-and-mouse games between deepfakers and detectors, and between defenders and perpetrators.”
ENERGY
This Wildly Reinvented Wind Turbine Generates Five Times More Energy Than Its Competitors
Elissaveta M. Brandon | Fast Company
“Unlike traditional wind turbines, which consist of one pole and three gargantuan blades, the so-called Wind Catcher is articulated in a square grid with over 100 small blades. At 1,000 feet high, the system is over three times as tall as an average wind turbine, and it stands on a floating platform that’s anchored to the ocean floor.”
ROBOTICS
Segway’s New Lawn Robot Uses GPS to Cut Your Grass
David Watsky | CNET
“While it’s not the first robotic lawnmower, the Navimov’s value proposition against a competitive set is that it doesn’t require boundary cords as with most other devices in the category. Rather, it relies on something called the Exact Fusion Locating System—also known as ‘GPS’—to allow ‘precise positions and systematic mowing patterns’ in an effort you get you that perfectly manicured lawn without having to, ya know, actually mow it.”
SPACE
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Finally Scooped Up a Piece of Mars
Neel V. Patel | MIT Technology Review
“The rover bounced back from a failed attempt and acquired a sample of rock and soil that could reveal the secrets of ancient life on Mars. …[It] marks the first time a sample has ever been recovered on the planet. …Collecting samples is one of the marquee goals of the mission. Perseverance is equipped with 43 collection tubes, and NASA hopes to fill them all with rock and soil samples from Mars to one day bring back to Earth.”
ETHICS
The Fight to Define When AI Is ‘High Risk’
Khari Johnson | Wired
“The AI Act is one of the first major policy initiatives worldwide focused on protecting people from harmful AI. If enacted, it will classify AI systems according to risk, more strictly regulate AI that’s deemed high risk to humans, and ban some forms of AI entirely, including real-time facial recognition in some instances. In the meantime, corporations and interest groups are publicly lobbying lawmakers to amend the proposal according to their interests.”
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Posted in Human Robots
#439600 This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From ...
ROBOTICS
CyberDog Is a New Ominous-Looking Robot From Xiaomi
James Vincent | The Verge
“Looking at pictures of CyberDog…it’s clear Xiaomi isn’t pitching the machine as a rival to Aibo, Sony’s own robot canine. While Aibo is small and cute, CyberDog is sleek and futuristic—even a little menacing. …Xiaomi says CyberDog is nimble enough to perform backflips, has a maximum payload of 3kg, and can trot along at speeds of 3.2m/s (compared to Spot’s 1.6m/s).”
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Can AI Make a Better Fusion Reactor?
Rebecca Sohn | IEEE Spectrum
“The challenge, and it’s a big one, would be to accelerate the worldwide quest to tame instabilities in hot plasmas and ultimately provide a source of sustainable, and carbon-free power. …[The University of Lisbon’s] Diogo Ferreira recently collaborated with colleagues working on the Joint European Torus (JET) in the UK in a study that detailed three different uses for AI, machine learning, and deep learning models for fusion research.”
TRANSPORTATION
Joby Aviation Makes Its Public Trading Debut on the NYSE
Aria Alamalhodaei | TechCrunch
“Joby is developing a five-seat electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, which it unveiled to much anticipation in February. The company, which has backing from Toyota and JetBlue, has released a slew of announcements in recent months as it geared up for the public listing. ‘A lot of people talk about us as a secretive company,’ Bevirt said in an interview with TechCrunch. ‘We’re not actually a secretive company, we just choose to do the work and then show our work, rather than talking about it and then doing it.’i”
ENVIRONMENT
The UN Climate Report: All Is Not Well—But All Is Not Lost
Matt Simon | Wired
“i‘Is it still possible to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees? The answer is yes,’ [coauthor Maisa Rojas Corradi, the director of the Center for Climate and Resilience Research at the University of Chile] said. ‘But unless there are immediate, rapid, and large-scale reduction of all greenhouse gases, limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees will be beyond the reach.’i”
INNOVATION
Without Code for DeepMind’s AI, This Lab Wrote Its Own
Grace Huckins | Wired
“The Google subsidiary solved a fundamental problem in biology but didn’t promptly share its solution. So a University of Washington team tried to re-create it. …Baker thinks that questions about information sharing between academia and industry will only grow more pressing. Problems in artificial intelligence require enormous time and resources to solve, and companies like DeepMind have access to personnel and computing power on a scale unimaginable for a university lab.”
SECURITY
AI Wrote Better Phishing Emails Than Humans in a Recent Test
Lily Hay Newman | Wired
“At the Black Hat and Defcon security conferences in Las Vegas this week, a team from Singapore’s Government Technology Agency presented a recent experiment in which they sent targeted phishing emails they crafted themselves and others generated by an AI-as-a-service platform to 200 of their colleagues …They were surprised to find that more people clicked the links in the AI-generated messages than the human-written ones—by a significant margin.”
COMPUTING
The Most Important Personal Computers in History, Ranked
Luke Dormehl | IEEE Spectrum
“Forty years ago this week, the iconic IBM PC made its debut, cementing the personal computer as a mainstream product category to be reckoned with. Within a few years, America—and the world—went computer wild, with home computers suddenly the province of ordinary people. But which desktop computers go down as the most influential of all time? Here are 10 that changed the game.”
SCIENCE
Physicists Create a Bizarre ‘Wigner Crystal’ Made Purely of Electrons
Karmela Padavic-Callaghan | Quanta
“In 1934, Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, theorized a strange kind of matter—a crystal made from electrons. …Physicists tried many tricks over eight decades to nudge electrons into forming these so-called Wigner crystals, with limited success. In June, however, two independent groups of physicists reported in Nature the most direct experimental observations of Wigner crystals yet.”
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