БЛОГ

Archive for the ‘computing’ category: Page 857

Mar 26, 2015

Here’s How You Can Help Build a Quantum Computer

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics

Maddie Stone — GizmodoHere's How You Can Help Build a Quantum Computer

Quantum computers—theoretical machines which can process certain large and difficult problems exponentially faster than classical computers—have been a mainstay of science fiction for decades. But actually building one has proven incredibly challenging.

A group of researchers at Aarhus University believes the secret to creating a quantum computer lies in understanding human cognition. So, they’ve built computer games to study us, first.

Read more

Mar 25, 2015

Teaching programming to preschoolers

Posted by in category: computing

Larry Hardesty | MIT News OfficeThe Personal Robots Group at the Media Lab have developed an interactive robot called Dragonbot to teach young children how to program. Dragonbot has audio and video sensors, a speech synthesizer, a range of expressive gestures, and a video screen for a face that assumes various expressions. Children created programs that dictated how Dragonbot would react to stimuli.Researchers at the MIT Media Laboratory are developing a system that enables young children to program interactive robots by affixing stickers to laminated sheets of paper.

Not only could the system introduce children to programming principles, but it could also serve as a research tool, to help determine which computational concepts children can grasp at what ages, and how interactive robots can best be integrated into educational curricula.Read more

Mar 20, 2015

Can Ethereum help eliminate corruption and bureaucracy in the developing world? Could Ethereum One Day Transform Law, Finance, and Civil Society?

Posted by in categories: big data, business, complex systems, computing, disruptive technology, economics, futurism, governance, human trajectories, information science

Quoted: “Ethereum’s developers believe their project will lead to the proliferation of programs they call “smart contracts,” in which the terms of an agreement are written in code and enforced by software. These smart contracts could carry out the instructions of a complex algorithm based on data feed—such as a stock ticker. They could facilitate practically any financial transaction, such as holding money in escrow or dispersing micropayments among autonomous machines. They could be used to create a peer-to-peer gambling network, a peer-to-peer stock trading platform, a peer-to-peer social network, a prenuptial agreement, a will, a standard agreement to split a dinner check, or a public registry for keeping track of who owns what land in a city.

Gupta predicts that these smart contracts will be so cheap and versatile that they’ll do “a lot of things that today we do informally,” and take on a lot of the “donkey work of running a society.””

Read the article here > http://reason.com/blog/2015/03/19/here-comes-ethereum-an-information-techn

Mar 18, 2015

No, Really, the PC Is Dying and It’s Not Coming Back

Posted by in categories: business, computing

— Wired

A little while back, we started to hear a few voices speaking up against the drumbeat of doom. No, PCs weren’t dead. They were maybe even coming back.

Well, they’re not.

Market research outfit IDC has revised its prediction of PC shipments in 2015 downward. It’s projecting a drop of nearly 5 percent this year, worse than its earlier forecast of a 3.3 percent decline. In all, IDC expects 293.1 million PC units to ship this year.
Read more

Mar 14, 2015

Blockchain meets Artificial Intelligence

Posted by in categories: big data, bitcoin, business, complex systems, computing, cryptocurrencies, disruptive technology, information science, robotics/AI

Quoted: “The decentralized Sapience AIFX project has developed a distributed artificial intelligence system running on a cryptocurrency network. In addition, the project has implemented the first distributed database platform running entirely over the bitcoin peer-to-peer protocol, built on top of a distributed hash table with redundancy, resiliency, and multi-dimensional trie-based indexing. These technologies are the first core pieces in the Sapience AIFX platform strategy to be the market leader in the consumerization of the blockchain.

The project has implemented the first in-wallet interactive Lua shell, bringing developers unprecedented capabilities to build solutions leveraging the blockchain, multi-layer perceptron networks, and distributed data storage. The possibilities span from algorithmic trading tools to bioinformatics and data mining, and the traditional applications of deep learning.”

Read more here > http://www.pressreleaserocket.net/first-cryptocurrency-to-ut…in/104609/

Mar 9, 2015

Computers are so easy that we’ve forgotten how to create

Posted by in categories: computing, innovation, software

Samuel Arbesman — Aeon

My family’s first computer was the Commodore VIC-20. Billed by its pitchman, Star Trek’s William Shatner, as the ‘wonder computer of the 1980s’, I have many fond memories of this antiquated machine. I used to play games on it, with cassette tapes that served as primitive storage devices. One of the cassettes we bought was a Pac-Man clone that my brother and I would play. Instead of a yellow pie with a mouth, it used racing cars.

My most vivid memories are of the games whose code I typed in myself. While you could buy software for the VIC-20 (like the racecar game), a major way that people acquired software in those days was through computer code published in the pages of magazines. Want to play a fun skiing game? Then type out the computer program into your computer, line by line, and get to play it yourself. No purchase necessary. These programs were common then, but no longer. The tens of millions of lines of code that make up Microsoft Office won’t fit in a magazine. It would take shelves-worth of books.
Read more

Feb 27, 2015

Blockchains as a Granular Universal Transaction System

Posted by in categories: architecture, automation, big data, bitcoin, business, computing, cryptocurrencies, disruptive technology, economics, ethics

Quoted: “Blockchains are thus an intriguing model for coordinating the full transactional load of any large-scale system, whether the whole of different forms of human activity (social systems) or any other system too like a brain. In a brain there are quadrillions of transactions that could perhaps be handled in the universal transactional system architecture of a blockchain, like with Blockchain Thinking models.”

Read the IEET brief here > http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/swan20150217

Feb 22, 2015

How NASA uses quantum computing for space travel and robotics

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics
— GigaOM

Quantum computing is still in its infancy, even though the idea of a quantum computer was developed some thirty years ago. But there are a whole load of pioneering organizations (like Google) that are exploring how this potentially revolutionary technology could help them solve complex problems that modern-day computers just aren’t capable of doing at any useful speed.

One such organization is NASA, whose use of D-Wave Systems quantum computing machines is helping it research better and safer methods of space travel, air traffic controls and missions involving sending robots to far-off places, explained Davide Venturelli, a science operations manager at NASA Ames Research Center, Universities Space Research Association. I’ll be speaking with Venturelli on stage at Structure Data 2015 from March 18–19 in New York City and we’ll be sure to cover how NASA envisions the future of quantum computing.

Read more

Feb 19, 2015

Moore’s Law Is About to Get Weird

Posted by in category: computing

By Gabriel Popkin — Nautilus
http://static.nautil.us/5324_510731ac096ebcb3989fb1ed5b7075bb.png
I’ve never seen the computer you’re reading this story on, but I can tell you a lot about it. It runs on electricity. It uses binary logic to carry out programmed instructions. It shuttles information using materials known as semiconductors. Its brains are built on integrated circuit chips packed with tiny switches known as transistors.

In the nearly 70 years since the first modern digital computer was built, the above specs have become all but synonymous with computing. But they need not be. A computer is defined not by a particular set of hardware, but by being able to take information as input; to change, or “process,” the information in some controllable way; and to deliver new information as output. This information and the hardware that processes it can take an almost endless variety of physical forms. Over nearly two centuries, scientists and engineers have experimented with designs that use mechanical gears, chemical reactions, fluid flows, light, DNA, living cells, and synthetic cells.

Read more

Feb 9, 2015

Bitcoin’s Unique Features Lighten Up its Ambiguous Future

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, business, computing, cryptocurrencies, economics, finance

Where will Bitcoin be a few years from now?
The recently concluded Bitcoin & the Blockchain Summit in San Francisco on January 27 came up as a vivid source of both anxiety and inspiration. As speakers tackled Bitcoin’s technological limits and possible drawbacks that can be caused by impending regulations, Bitcoin advocate Andreas Antonopoulos lifted up everyone’s hope by discussing how bitcoins will eventually survive and flourish. He managed to do so with no graphics or presentations to prove his claim, just his utmost confidence and conviction that it really will no matter what.

On the currency being weak

There have been statements about Bitcoin’s technology surviving, but not the currency itself. Antonopoulos, however, argues that Bitcoin’s technology, network, and currency are interdependent with each other, which means that one element won’t work without the other. He said: “A consensus network that bases its value on the currency does not work without the currency.”

On why Bitcoin works

Continue reading “Bitcoin’s Unique Features Lighten Up its Ambiguous Future” »