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Category: computing – Page 854

Virginia Tech’s Professor Doug Bowman comes to Apple to make VR. This should be very interesting since he won the research grant to work on the “Hololens” — could be interesting.

According to a report in the Financial Times, Apple has hired one of the leading experts on virtual and augmented reality — Virginia Tech computer science professor Doug Bowman. He was recently listed among grant winners for HoloLens research projects and is skilled in creating 3D user interfaces, reports Endgadget. He has also co-authored a book called 3D User Interfaces Theory and Practice.

He’s been working on technologies such as wearable displays and full surround display prototypes at Virginia Tech.

Apple has been building up on its VR arsenal in the recent past with a string of acquisitions in the domain, along with reports of patents and other significant hires. While much has been happening behind closed doors, analysts predict that in 2016, that is going to change. Apple will become “very aggressive on the virtual/augmented reality front through organic as well as acquisitive means in 2016 as this represents a natural next generation consumer technology that plays well into its unrivaled iPhone ecosystem,” FBR & Co analyst Daniel Ives said in an earlier report.

Continue reading “Apple hires virtual and augmented reality tech expert: Report” | >

Another article highlighting the fears around Singularity. There are so many great things that will come from Singularity such as Cancer is wiped out, improved healthcare across the board and cheaper, etc. And, there are also downsides as Gates, Musk, etc. have warned folks especially around AI.

So, what are our options and obligations around Singularity? In reality, you will not be able to stop this evolution from happening. However, each person has a right to decide how much singularity is right for their own private use. As a business or a company, there are many things to consider such as Total Cost of Ownership v. ROI, tax codes or how government will view “humanoids” v. non-humanoids as it relates to CapEx and Taxes, etc. And, the company or business needs to ensure that there are appropriate safegaurds in place in order to protect their data, etc… Also, government has an obligation to the people in general in safegaurding our rights, security, and safety.

Another, question that will continue to be raised and will increase overtime is government and business obligations to the financial welfare of the people. And, this one will become more and more complex and interesting overtime. If AI was to truly displace millions of workers; how will the countries help feed, clothe, and house millions displaced people beyond what they have done in their own country’s past? Will the countries government place a special tax structure on companies and businesses to help fund the displaced workers and their families? Or, will it be a joint partnership with business and government? It does make one wonder.

Many experts believe the single greatest threat to our existence is the so-called “singularity” when computers are as smart as we are.

Continue reading “Why you should be scared of robots” | >

In a computational reconstruction of brain tissue in the hippocampus, Salk and UT-Austin scientists found the unusual occurrence of two synapses from the axon of one neuron (translucent black strip) forming onto two spines on the same dendrite of a second neuron (yellow). Separate terminals from one neuron’s axon are shown in synaptic contact with two spines (arrows) on the same dendrite of a second neuron in the hippocampus. The spine head volumes, synaptic contact areas (red), neck diameters (gray) and number of presynaptic vesicles (white spheres) of these two synapses are almost identical. (credit: Salk Institute)

Salk researchers and collaborators have achieved critical insight into the size of neural connections, putting the memory capacity of the brain far higher than common estimates. The new work also answers a longstanding question as to how the brain is so energy efficient, and could help engineers build computers that are incredibly powerful but also conserve energy.

“This is a real bombshell in the field of neuroscience,” says Terry Sejnowski, Salk professor and co-senior author of the paper, which was published in eLife. “We discovered the key to unlocking the design principle for how hippocampal neurons function with low energy but high computation power. Our new measurements of the brain’s memory capacity increase conservative estimates by a factor of 10 to at least a petabyte (1 quadrillion or 1015 bytes), in the same ballpark as the World Wide Web.”

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Google is shifting employee responsibilities and forming its own dedicated division for virtual reality computing.

Google is forming its own dedicated division for virtual reality computing, promising some intense competition for Facebook and Microsoft.

Not only has CEO Sundar Pichai moved over a key deputy to run it, but the move also signals Google’s intent to build a viable enterprise business. Because with the executive shift, Google’s massive consumer Web applications now fall under incoming SVP Diane Greene.

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The excitement keeps growing on Quantum. Now, the “MAGIC” will happen.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. will work with Nvidia Corp. on cloud computing and artificial intelligence, and plans to enlist about 1,000 developers to work on its big-data platform during the next three years.

The arm of China’s biggest e-commerce operator, known as AliCloud, will boost investment in data analysis and machine learning, it said in a statement Wednesday. AliCloud is staking $1 billion on the belief that demand for processing and storage from governments and companies will boost growth during the next decade as its tries to compete with Amazon.com Inc. in computing services.

The investment also reflects Alibaba’s own appetite for information processing as China’s online-retail market grows to 10 trillion yuan ($1.5 billion) by 2020, according to Bain & Co. The push into of cloud computing, where software and services are provided to customers via remote data centers the size of American football fields, prompted Alibaba to open its second data center in Silicon Valley in October and prepare its first in Europe.

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Caltech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun.

The researchers, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, discovered the planet’s existence through mathematical modeling and computer simulations but have not yet observed the object directly.

“This would be a real ninth planet,” says Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy. “There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be a third. It’s a pretty substantial chunk of our solar system that’s still out there to be found, which is pretty exciting.”

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2 weeks ago, I posted a big announcement was coming; well we have officially received it. Now, the question is “WILL YOU BE READY?” Within less than 4 years (2020) Quantum will be available. Everyone needs to be planning and getting budgets and resources in place for this massive transformation that is coming within 4 years. It will be expensive, time consuming, and a lot of prep work around business and it needs to be assessed, planned, and position to onboard quickly to quantum because other countries (including hackers) are going to be on quantum as well meaning more powerful network and platforms to attack older systems. https://lnkd.in/baSZrBY

Quantum computing will change lives, society and the economy and a working system is expected to be developed by 2020 according to a leading figure in the world of quantum computing, who will talk tomorrow Jan. 21, 2016 at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.

Professor O’Brien, Director of the Centre for Quantum Photonics at the University of Bristol and Visiting Fellow at Stanford University, is part of a European Research Council (ERC) Ideas Lab delegation who have been invited to talk at the annual meeting to industrial and political leaders of the world, including Prime Minister David Cameron. The session will discuss the future of computing and how new fields of computer sciences are paving the way for the next digital revolution.

Quantum computing has the capability to unlock answers to some of humanity’s most pressing questions that are presently unsolvable with current computing technologies. In 2014, the UK government invested over £270 million in the development of quantum technologies, ensuring that the UK becomes the epicentre of a technology revolution and Professor O’Brien has been leading the development of quantum computing using light in its quantum state — the photon — as the key ingredient.

Continue reading “Quantum computing is coming — are you prepared for it?” | >