Author Archives: mea

How microwaves could help you surf the Internet at the speed of light

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The drawback with microwave is low bandwidth. To get around that, their solution would rely on the microwave network between cities for web and data traffic for which minimal latency is important. Other things for which latency isn’t as critical, like video consumption (which is currently 78% of web traffic), could continue to use existing infrastructure, so congestion wouldn’t be an issue. Traditional fiber would be used to bring data to users up to 100km away from the microwave endpoints; even at that distance, the latency introduced by fiber would be minimal.

Source: How microwaves could help you surf the Internet at the speed of light | ITworld

IBM Shows First Full Error Detection for Quantum Computers

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Quantum computers must overcome the challenge of detecting and correcting quantum errors before they can fulfill their promise of sifting through millions of possible solutions much faster than classical computers.

Source: IBM Shows First Full Error Detection for Quantum Computers – IEEE Spectrum

Detecting quantum errors is anything but straightforward. Classical computers can detect and correct their bit-flip errors by simply copying the same bit many times and taking the correct value from the majority of error-free bits. By comparison, the fragility of quantum states in qubits means that trying to directly copy them can have the counterproductive effect of changing the quantum state.

New Device Could Greatly Improve Speech and Image Recognition

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Holography is a technique based on the wave nature of light which allows the use of wave interference between the object beam and the coherent background. It is commonly associated with images being made from light, such as on driver’s licenses or paper currency. However, this is only a narrow field of holography.

Holography has been also recognized as a future data storing technology with unprecedented data storage capacity and ability to write and read a large number of data in a highly parallel manner.

Source: UCR Today: New Device Could Greatly Improve Speech and Image Recognition

Poker pros win against AI, but experts peg match as statistical draw

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“Beating humans isn’t really our goal; it’s just a milestone along the way,” Sandholm said. “What we want to do is create an artificial intelligence that can help humans negotiate or make decisions in situations where they can’t know all of the facts.”

Source: Poker pros win against AI, but experts peg match as statistical draw – Techie News

“The advances made in Claudico over Tartanian7 in just eight months were huge,” Les said, a rate of improvement that suggests the AI might need only another year before it clearly plays better than the pros.

Chrome passes 25% market share, IE and Firefox slip

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Between March and April, here is how the browser market changed, according to the latest figures from Net Applications:

  • Internet Explorer: down 0.71 points to 55.83 percent
  • Chrome: up 0.69 points to 25.68 percent
  • Firefox: down 0.19 points to 11.70 percent
  • Safari: up 0.12 points to 5.12
  • Opera: up 0.05 points to 0.48 percent

Source: Chrome passes 25% market share, IE and Firefox slip | VentureBeat | Dev | by Emil Protalinski

Opportunity Logs Sol 4000, Digs Spirit of St. Louis Crater

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It has been written many times in these pages, and it begs repeating: this rover was sent on a 90-day expedition, with the mission success mobility objective of driving 600 meters. In March, Opportunity completed 42.195 kilometers or 26.2 miles. It’s the first marathon “run” on another planet. And in April – the 4000th sol. “This rover just keeps giving and giving,” said Planetary Society President Jim Bell, professor of astronomy and planetary scientist at Arizona State University and lead scientist on the MERs’ panoramic cameras (Pancams).

Source: Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Opportunity Logs Sol 4000, Digs Spirit of St. Louis Crater | The Planetary Society

Tesla Battery Economics: On the Path to Disruption

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At the utility scale, it may actually be even more disruptive. Tesla appears to be selling the utility scale models at < $250 / kwh. Multiple utility studies suggest that such a price should replace natural gas peakers and drive gigantic grid-level deployments.

Source: Tesla Battery Economics: On the Path to Disruption | Ramez Naam

Tentative Conclusion: The battery is right on the verge of being cost effective to buy across most of the US for day/night arbitrage. And it’s even more valuable if outages come at a high economic cost.

Human Pros Dominating Poker AI

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At the halfway point of the “Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence” poker competition between software developed at Carnegie Mellon University and four of the world’s best players, the nod unquestionably goes to the humans.

The CMU computer program, Claudico, is playing a total of 80,000 hands of Heads-Up No-limit Texas Hold’em against Doug Polk, Dong Kim, Bjorn Li and Jason Les. And after 42,100 hands, the humans had a cumulative lead of 626,892 chips.

Source: Human Pros Dominating Poker AI – Robotics Trends

Looks like poker may be more difficult than chess and Jeopardy.

2 million lines of code process new air traffic system

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The Federal Aviation Administration this week said it had completed the momentous replacement of 40-year old main computer systems that control air traffic in the US.

Known as En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM), the system is expected to increase air traffic flow, improve automated navigation and strengthen aircraft conflict detection services, with the end result being increased safety and less flight congestion.

Source: FAA: 2 million lines of code process new air traffic system | Network World