Lifeboat Foundation

For 15 years, scientists have been baffled by the mysterious way water flows through the tiny passages of carbon nanotubes—pipes with walls that can be just one atom thick. The streams have confounded all theories of fluid dynamics; paradoxically, fluid passes more easily through narrower nanotubes, and in all nanotubes it moves with almost no friction. What friction there is has also defied explanation.

In an unprecedented mashup of fluid dynamics and quantum mechanics, researchers report in a new theoretical study published February 2 in Nature that they finally have an answer: ‘quantum friction.’

The proposed explanation is the first indication of quantum effects at the boundary of a solid and a liquid, says study lead author Nikita Kavokine, a research fellow at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ) in New York City.

Seattle-based software company Pluto VR has brought its virtual reality streaming platform PlutoSphere into Early Access.

Initially announced in February 2021, PlutoSphere allows its users to stream VR applications to a headset without the need for a local computer, in order to dramatically reduce the cost of entry for virtual reality. Instead of building a new rig around VR compatibility, you can theoretically just get a headset, then run everything from every library you own via data streaming.

Continue reading “Pluto VR debuts tech that lets you stream virtual reality to a headset without a computer” »

On November 16, during its online Quantum Summit, IBM announced that it had successfully completed initial development of the 127-qubit (quantum bit) Eagle quantum computer. Last year, IBM’s Hummingbird quantum computer handled 65 qubits, and, the year before that, the company’s Falcon quantum computer was handling calculations using 27 qubits. So the company has been steadily increasing the number of qubits that its quantum machines can handle, roughly doubling the number of operational qubits in its quantum machines on an annual basis. However, the Eagle quantum computer is the last member of IBM’s Quantum System One family. Designs have reached the limit of the cryogenic refrigerator used to cool the Josephson Junctions that hold the qubits, so IBM has had to work with Bluefors Cryogenics to develop a new, larger cryogenic platform for bigger machines.

If you don’t understand qubits or how quantum computers work, join the club. Nothing in the binary word of today’s digital computers prepares you to understand quantum computing, although there are some superficial similarities. For example, quantum computers store data in qubits just as digital computers store data in bits. However, a bit can store only a “1” or a “0.” Each qubit stores both a “1” and a “0” at the same time in a state of superposition. Consequently, information density is much higher for qubit storage.

Further, qubits can be entangled, a phenomenon that Albert Einstein once described as “spooky action at a distance.” Quantum entanglement, a property of the quantum world, was once the stuff of science fiction. However, it’s quite real and an important part of quantum computing.

Hybrid bonding opens up whole new level of performance in packaging, but it’s not the only improvement.

The first wave of chips is hitting the market using a technology called hybrid bonding, setting the stage for a new and competitive era of 3D-based chip products and advanced packages.

AMD is the first vendor to unveil chips using copper hybrid bonding, an advanced die-stacking technology that enables next-generation 3D-like devices and packages. Hybrid bonding stacks and connects chips using tiny copper-to-copper interconnects, providing higher density and bandwidth than existing chip-stacking interconnect schemes.

When I was ten years old, I discovered computers. My first machine was a PDP-10 mainframe system at the medical center where my father worked. I taught myself to write simple programs in the BASIC computer language. Like any ten-year-old, I was especially pleased to discover games on the computer. One game was simply labeled “ADVENT.” I opened it and saw:

You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.

I figured out that I could move around with commands like “go north” and “go south.” I entered the building and got food, water, keys, a lamp. I wandered outside and descended through a grate into a system of underground caves. Soon I was battling snakes, gathering treasures, and throwing axes at pesky attackers. The game used text only, no graphics, but it was easy to imagine the cave system stretching out below ground. I played for months, roaming farther and deeper, gradually mapping out the world.

Researchers have found over 20,000 instances of publicly exposed data center infrastructure management (DCIM) software that monitor devices, HVAC control systems, and power distribution units, which could be used for a range of catastrophic attacks.

Data centers house costly systems that support business storage solutions, operational systems, website hosting, data processing, and more.

The buildings that host data centers must comply with strict safety regulations concerning fire protection, airflow, electric power, and physical security.

Often, we need to power a 5V-craving project of ours on the go. So did [Burgduino], and, unhappy with solutions available, designed their own 5V UPS! It takes a cheap powerbank design and augments it with a few parts vital for its UPS purposes.

You might be tempted to reach for a powerbank when facing such a problem, but most of them have a fatal flaw, and you can’t easily tell a flawed one apart from a functioning one before you buy it. This flaw is lack of load sharing – ability to continue powering the output when a charger is inserted. Most store-bought powerbanks just shut the output off, which precludes a project running 24/7 without powering it down, and can cause adverse consequences when something like a Raspberry Pi is involved.

Understandably, [Burgduino] wasn’t okay with that. Their UPS is based on the TP5400, a combined LiIon charging and boost chip, used a lot in simple powerbanks, but not capable of load sharing. For that, an extra LM66100 chip – an “ideal diode” controller is used. You might scoff at it being a Texas Instruments part, but it does seem to be widely available and only a tad more expensive than the TP5400 itself! The design is open hardware, with PCB files available on EasyEDA and the BOM clearly laid out for easy LCSC ordering.

At Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference today, the company made a major shift in their embrace of virtual reality with several new VR announcements during the event’s opening keynote.

Though well loved, Apple’s computer lineup got somewhat left in the dust at the launch of the Rift and Vive, both of which had hardware requirements that exceeded what Apple had on offer. To that end, the company largely steered clear of talking about VR publicly.

Today marks a major shift in Apple’s public support for virtual reality. VR was a recurrent theme throughout the keynote today, highlighting their belief in the importance of the medium. Here’s an overview of everything they announced:

Although Christmas may be several weeks behind us, various colorful LED contraptions can nowadays be found in our houses at any time of year. [Tim] got his hands on an LED curtain that came with a remote control that allows the user to set not only the color of the LEDs as a whole but also to run simple animations. But these were not your standard WS2812B strips with data lines: all the LEDs were simply connected in parallel with just two wires, so how was this even possible?

[Tim] hooked up his oscilloscope to the LED strings to find out how they worked, detailing the results in a comprehensive blog post. As it turns out, the controller briefly shorts the LED strip’s supply voltage to generate data bits, similar to the way old pulse-dialing phones worked. A tiny chip integrated into each LED picks up these pulses, but retains its internal state thanks to a capacitor that keeps the chip powered when the supply line goes low.

After reverse-engineering the protocol, [Tim] went on to implement a similar design using an ATMega328P as a controller and an ATtiny10 as the LED driver. With just a few lines of code and a 100 nF buffer capacitor across the ATtiny’s power pins, [Tim] was able to turn an LED on and off by sending pulses through the supply lines. Some work still needs to be done to fully implement a protocol as used in the LED strings, but as a proof-of-concept it shows that this kind of power-line communication is possible with standard components.