Lifeboat Foundation

Your own search engine butler.

Many people are familiar with facial recognition systems that unlock smartphones and game systems or allow access to our bank accounts online. But the current technology can require boxy projectors and lenses. Now, researchers report in Nano Letters a sleeker 3D surface imaging system with flatter, simplified optics. In proof-of-concept demonstrations, the new system recognized the face of Michelangelo’s David just as well as an existing smartphone system.

3D surface imaging is a common tool used in smartphone facial recognition, as well as in computer vision and autonomous driving. These systems typically consist of a dot projector that contains multiple components: a laser, lenses, a light guide and a diffractive optical element (DOE).

The DOE is a special kind of lens that breaks the laser beam into an array of about 32,000 infrared dots. So, when a person looks at a locked screen, the facial recognition system projects an array of dots onto most of their face, and the device’s camera reads the pattern created to confirm the identity. However, dot projector systems are relatively large for small devices such as smartphones. So, Yu-Heng Hong, Hao-Chung Kuo, Yao-Wei Huang and colleagues set out to develop a more compact facial recognition system that would be nearly flat and require less energy to operate.

The first reviews for Vision Pro are live, highlighting a ton of great, good and not-so-great things about Apple’s first mixed reality headset.

The $3,500 Vision Pro is set to launch on February 2nd, but it seems the first reviews are already out from a select number of outlets, including CNET, The Verge, The Wall Street Journal, and CNBC.

Continue reading “The First Apple Vision Pro Reviews Are Here” »

As demands for computing resources continue to increase rapidly, scientists and engineers are looking for ways to build faster systems for processing information. One possible solution is to use patterns of electron spins, called spin waves, to transfer and process information much more rapidly than in conventional computers. So far, a major challenge has been in manipulating these ultrafast spin waves to do useful work.

In a significant leap forward, researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and MIT have developed a pioneering method to precisely manipulate these ultrafast spin waves using tailored light pulses. Their findings are detailed in two studies in Nature Physics, led by MIT graduate student Zhuquan Zhang, University of Texas at Austin postdoctoral researcher Frank Gao, MIT’s professor of chemistry Keith Nelson and UT Austin assistant professor of physics Edoardo Baldini.

A key component underlying our smartphones, the internet and cloud computing is magnetic data recording technology for storing and retrieving vast amounts of information. This technology hinges on the manipulation of the magnetic spin states (up and down) in ferromagnetic materials, representing the binary bits “0” and “1.” These spins are minuscule magnets, whose alignment determines the material’s magnetic properties.

Larger antennas and better beamforming are routing calls through orbit.

By 2020, the number of smartphone users in the world is expected to reach almost 2.9 billion — nearly doubling in six years from about 1.6 billion in 2014. Technology companies and researchers have been directly and indirectly imbuing smartphones with additional capabilities, including spectroscopy for biological and medical applications, among other uses (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The Changhong H2 is the first consumer device with an integrated imaging spectrometer. Courtesy of Consumer Physics.

Opera revealed today that it will launch a new AI-powered browser built on its own engine for iOS in Europe. The Norway-based company announced the change following the news that Apple is going to allow alternative browser engines to run on iOS as a result of the requirements of the European Digital Markets Act (DMA). The changes will allow developers to offer browsers that are not based on the WebKit browser engine.

Apple currently requires third-party browsers to use WebKit, which is the same browser engine that underpins its own Safari browser. In order to comply with the DMA, Apple will begin allowing developers to submit non-WebKit-based browsers, for both web browser apps and for developers offering in-app browsers for displaying web pages within their iOS apps.

Opera says the changes will allow it to provide iPhone users with an AI-powered alternative to Safari.

If you use Android, this might come in handy except for the lab of encryption. Hopefully iPhone copies this and it says a standard that’s regulated.

AI could change Google’s Messages app in a big way.

As Pedro Pacheco of Gartner, another consultancy, points out, Chinese firms are also managed differently. They are less risk averse and move faster than foreign firms, quickly updating tech and introducing new models to keep customers interested. Treating new cars like consumer-tech products, such as smartphones, extends to ditching duds quickly. Li Auto now ceases production of new models in a matter of months if they do not sell well.

EV startups such as Li Auto, NIO and Xpeng were all founded by tech billionaires who, like Tesla’s Elon Musk, regard their firms as tech companies that happen to make cars. In fact, lots of Chinese tech firms are getting involved in the car industry. Whereas Apple has mulled such a venture long and indecisively, Xiaomi, a big Chinese smartphone-maker, unveiled its first vehicle in December (a fancy and expensive saloon). It plans to make cheaper models in future with the immodest goal of becoming one of the world’s top five carmakers in 15–20 years. Huawei, a telecoms firm, and Baidu, a search engine, have also teamed up with car firms to make vehicles.