Lifeboat Foundation

In the 2002 science fiction blockbuster film “Minority Report,” Tom Cruise’s character John Anderton uses his hands, sheathed in special gloves, to interface with his wall-sized transparent computer screen. The computer recognizes his gestures to enlarge, zoom in, and swipe away. Although this futuristic vision for computer-human interaction is now 20 years old, today’s humans still interface with computers by using a mouse, keyboard, remote control, or small touch screen. However, much effort has been devoted by researchers to unlock more natural forms of communication without requiring contact between the user and the device. Voice commands are a prominent example that have found their way into modern smartphones and virtual assistants, letting us interact and control devices through speech.

Hand gestures constitute another important mode of human communication that could be adopted for human-computer interactions. Recent progress in camera systems, image analysis and machine learning have made optical-based gesture recognition a more attractive option in most contexts than approaches relying on wearable sensors or data gloves, as used by Anderton in “Minority Report.” However, current methods are hindered by a variety of limitations, including high computational complexity, low speed, poor accuracy, or a low number of recognizable gestures. To tackle these issues, a team led by Zhiyi Yu of Sun Yat-sen University, China, recently developed a new hand gesture recognition algorithm that strikes a good balance between complexity, accuracy, and applicability.

Apple is said to remove the physical SIM port from iPhones. A reputed leaker further affirms that we’ll see an eSIM-only iPhone 14 in 2022.

Xiaomi Mi 12 Pro Charging

The Xiaomi Mi 12 Pro, which will be released on December 28, is the first smartphone equipped with the Surge P1. It supports wired 120W charging, 50W wireless charging, and 10W wireless reverse charging. Xiaomi said that the 120W charging technology of the Xiaomi Mi 12 Pro has two modes: low-temperature mode, “the temperature is only 37 degrees Celsius, and the body temperature is comfortable”; the fast mode.

Meta surely won’t have a free run.

Chinese search engine giant Baidu has launched its own version of the metaverse, called Xi Rang, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported. A video released by the media outlet shows users experiencing the metaverse through virtual reality (VR) headsets and handheld controllers.

Continue reading “China Steps In the Metaverse with Baidu: Meet Xi Rang” »

Europe will soon produce a strategically vital component in the modern global economy as US semiconductor giant Intel chooses the site for a new cutting-edge chip factory.

Recent problems in global supply chains have highlighted the fundamental importance of semiconductors, which are used in a growing number of products including cars, TVs and smartphones.

Keen demand and the closure of semiconductor plants, particularly in Asia, due to pandemic disruptions led to a global chip shortage and forced car manufacturers such as Ford, Nissan and Volkswagen to scale back production.

Dystopian nightmare or a simple convenience? A Swedish company implanting microchips under the skin has is promoting its devices for use as a COVID-19 health pass in a country with thousands of early adopters.

Amanda Back uses her smartphone to scan a microchip implanted in her hand to reveal her health pass.

The new fiber battery is manufactured using novel battery gels and a standard fiber-drawing system. In a press release issued by MIT, MIT postdoc Tural Khudiyev noted that previous attempts to make batteries in fiber form were structured with key materials on the outside of the fiber. In the latest development, his system embeds the lithium and other materials inside the fiber, with a protective outside coating, creating a stable and waterproof version. He said it demonstrates that it’s possible to make a fiber battery that can be up to a kilometer long and highly durable, having many practical applications. As Khudiyev puts it, “there’s no obvious upper limit to the length. We could definitely do a kilometer-scale length.”

The 140-meter fiber produced can charge smartwatches or phones, with an energy storage capacity of 123 milliamp-hours.

“The beauty of our approach is that we can embed multiple devices in an individual fiber,” said former MIT postdoc Jung Tae Lee. The team had exhibited the integration of LED and Li-ion batteries in a single fiber, and Lee believes that more than three or four devices can be combined in such a small space in the future. “When we integrate these fibers containing multi-devices, the aggregate will advance the reaggregate of a compact fabric computer,” he added.

[Cross posted on Chi-Ning’s blog, the course is open also to non-Harvard people. Chi-Ning is my amazing grad student, who has worked on several aspects related to the course, including quantum computation and neurally-plausible computation. He assembled a great collection of guest speakers and so this course looks like it will be very exciting. Boaz]

In the following January, Harvard GSAS kindly supports me to offer a mini-course on “What is Computation? From Turing Machines to Blackholes and Neurons”. In this blog post, I’m going to share the motivation for teaching this mini-course and give an overview on what you will learn if you are interested in participating!

Computation is not an exotic word for people living in the 21st century. In high school, kids have to learn and do all sorts of computations in arithmetics (and some even start to write computer programs!). For scientists, computational methods become more and more common and sometimes even completely change the paradigm of a field. There are computers of different forms hiding in our daily life ranging from your smartphones to the toy of your pets. Also, from time to time we see excitement on the news about the development of quantum computing and artificial intelligence. Computation has become central in human civilization, however, do we really understand what computation is?

People in movies are often quick to resort to sawing off someone’s hand to get past a fingerprint scanner. A report from the Kraken Security Labs Team shows that it would be much easier—and less gruesome—to recreate someone’s fingerprint using a little bit of off-the-shelf wood glue.

Kraken notes that biometric security has become increasingly common as smartphone, tablet, and laptop manufacturers have incorporated fingerprint scanners into their products. These scanners offer a convenient way to access those devices without entering a password.

The report says a fingerprint scanner can be “hacked” by using a picture of the target’s fingerprint, creating a negative in Photoshop, printing the resulting image, and then putting some wood glue on top of the imitated fingerprint so it can be used to trick many commercial scanners.