The Robopocalypse Cometh: IBM's Cyberbrain Smart as a Cat, Getting Smarter If the Matrix or I, Robot's view of artificial intelligence sent chilly shivers down your spine, then prepare for frostbite: IBM's artificial brain is now as smart as a cat--just a stop or two down the line from human powers. Speaking at the SC09 high-performance computing conference this week, IBM representatives from the cognitive computing team will be unveiling all the technical details behind their successes with large-scale cortical simulation and brain-like emulation. But it boils down quite neatly to news that the team has, for the first time, performed an in-computer simulation of a brain's workings at a near-instantaneous speed. The magic is all done in software, with particularly clever program elements that emulate the biochemical and electrical activity of neurons and synapses in real flesh-and-blood brains. Which is where the other bit of IBM's research comes in. Making cyberbrains more like real human ones means better understanding how our brains work. [Via VentureBeat]
5 Bizarre Killing Sprees that Never Got Solved When you think about unsolved murder sprees, it’s usually cases like Jack the Ripper or The Zodiac Killer—the ones with movies and dozens of books about them. But they’re not the only ones. They’re not even the weirdest ones. Here are five bizarre killing sprees that never got solved… The Chicago Tylenol Murders In the fall of 1982, people with headaches and menstrual cramps all over Chicago were fucked if they reached for the Tylenol bottle. The same day (what timing!) Chicago police informed Johnson & Johnson, who immediately put on the skids and issued a mass recall of Tylenol throughout the area . Even with the recalls, though, it was too late for three other people who ingested the tainted pills. No one was ever caught and no motives ever uncovered, but one dumbass, a con-man/accountant (which is either the weirdest or best job combination we’ve ever heard of) by the name of James W. Bible John The 60s were a time of peace, free love and deranged killings in Glasgow, Scotland.
3D holograms enter the fourth dimension - tech - 03 November 2010 Video: Holograms go 4D Holography has just gained a fourth dimension, bringing the prospect of Star Wars-style holographic telepresence into the real world. Ever since Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks made the first laser holograms in 1963, holography has been the future of three-dimensional imaging. Once created, a hologram can be illuminated to create a pattern of light waves that replicates the light reflected by the original object, generating a 3D image without the need for special glasses. As such, holography seems an ideal medium for three-dimensional telepresence, like the famous "hologram" of Princess Leia in the first Star Wars movie. During its 2008 presidential election night coverage, CNN's coverage used what appeared to be holographic technology, with anchor Wolf Blitzer talking face-to-face with a virtual 3D correspondent, Jessica Yellin – but the impressive visuals were added to the camera feed rather than being projected live onto the studio floor. Plastic pictures
Artificial Intelligence Is Coming to the iPhone, And It's Going to Change Everything Let me start off by saying this: Your phone is not suddenly going to gain sentience and become Skynet. However, your phone is about to become a whole lot smarter, thanks to Apple and its new artificial intelligence Assistant. The hype surrounding Tuesday's Apple iPhone event is at an all-time high. The real star of Tuesday's show will not be the hardware, though. Assistant is the successor to Siri, the iPhone app that helped users with their daily tasks with natural language voice commands. The technology that powered Siri was born from SRI's CALO project, the largest artificial intelligence project in U.S. history. Two months after its launch, Apple acquired Siri for more than $200 million. What Assistant Will Do On Tuesday, Siri will be reborn as Assistant. Say you're in a new city and you're really craving Chinese. Instead of searching for the taxi company's number, Assistant will find it for you. The key though is that Assistant will learn. "This is real AI with real market use.
Universal robotic gripper Robert Barker/University Photography The human hand is an amazing machine that can pick up, move and place objects easily, but for a robot, this "gripping" mechanism is a vexing challenge. Opting for simple elegance, researchers from Cornell, the University of Chicago and iRobot Corp. have created a versatile gripper using everyday ground coffee and a latex party balloon, bypassing traditional designs based on the human hand and fingers. They call it a universal gripper, as it conforms to the object it's grabbing, rather than being designed for particular objects, said Hod Lipson, Cornell associate professor of mechanical engineering and computer science. The research is a collaboration between the groups of Lipson, Heinrich Jaeger at the University of Chicago, and Chris Jones at iRobot. John Amend The robotic gripper conforms to the shape of the item it is lifting. "This is one of the closest things we've ever done that could be on the market tomorrow," Lipson said.
$1.6 million just bought the world’s most expensive dog. Big Splash, or “Hong Dong” in Chinese, is an 11-month-old Red Tibetan Mastiff. He already stands nearly three-feet-high at the shoulder and weighs more than 180lbs. He was recently purchased by an unidentified Chinese coal baron. Racetrack memory will make computers 100,000 times faster - Tucson Technology Researchers at the Laboratory of Nanomagnetism and Spin Dynamics are working on a form of memory that will work 100,000 times faster than today’s hard drives. Not only are they faster, they are also far more efficient. Current computers take an average of 2-3 minutes to transfer information from the hard disk to the RAM. This new technology would allow for computers to boot up instantly and retrieve data 100,000 times more rapidly. In addition to lightning fast speeds it is also extremely efficient. EPFL explains how it works: Like the tried and true VHS videocassette, the proposed solution involves data recorded on magnetic tape. EPFL is currently working with IBM to create a prototype. For more info: EPFL
Manchester United signs 5-year-old kid Charlie Jackson’s footwork was the thing that impressed Manchester United soccer scouts. Of course, his ball control had likely improved with his legs freshly freed from the diapers. Jackson was spotted by the powerhouse British side at age three, toying with his opponents in a community “Footytotz” program. There, the tousle-headed tot, already touted as a potential superstar, will play with kids at least a year older than him. But Jackson, who’s a fan of arch-rival Manchester City, had mixed feelings about the situation. “He was mortified that he was having to train with United,” his father Andy told the U.K.’s Daily Mail. “But he seems to be getting over that a bit now.” Jackon’s training with Manchester United’s junior squad hits even closer to the cradle than an arrangement made last summer by Real Madrid. Big-time European clubs have long recruited young players. The team’s superstar,Lionel Messi, was signed by the club at 13.
Amp Up a Laser Pointer From Wired How-To Wiki Illustration by Lab Partners Your laser pointer could be doing so much more than highlighting PowerPoint slides and blowing your cat's mind. It could be sculpting ice, sparking campfires, or searing one bad mofo on your leather jacket. Here's how to give a standard pointer a power upgrade. This article is a wiki. 1 Disassemble the unit by removing the batteries, opening the housing, and taking out the laser module. 2 Search the circuit board for a variable resistor. 3 To intensify the beam, use a small screwdriver to gently tighten the resistor. 4 Reassemble and aim your potent pointer at safe targets like ice, wood, or plastic. Contributed by Terrence Russell
The world’s fastest supercomputer The world’s fastest supercomputer August 30th, 2011 allfromweb Twice a year, the world’s top 500 supercomputers are announced. Let’s take a closer look at the Jaguar, the fastest supercomputer in the world today. Quick data about the Jaguar * Performance: 1.759 petaflops (theoretical maximum: 2.33 petaflops) * Processors: 37,376 six-core AMD Opteron 2.6 GHz * Processor cores: 224,256 * Total RAM: 300 terabyte * Total disc space: 10 petabyte * System type: Cray XT5 * Operating system: Cray custom version of SUSE Linux One petaflops is the equivalent of one thousand trillion operations per second, which means the Jaguar is capable of a theoretical maximum performance of 2,330,000,000,000,000 operations per second. The computing power of the Jaguar is used by scientists to run simulations of climate changes and effects, supernovas, and a number of other compute-intensive applications. Source: here You can leave a response , or trackback from your own site.
Light Touch projector makes any surface a touchscreen A previously little-known company from the UK called Light Blue Optics has demoed a projector at CES which allows users to interact with the light image as if it were a touchscreen. The Light Touch throws a 10-inch image at WVGA resolution at incredibly short distances thanks to the holographic projection technology involved. At the same time the infra-red touch sensitive system allows users to interact with social networks, multimedia sharing and any other applications that can use the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth support in the device to connect to the Internet. It comes with 2GB of onboard flash memory, a microSD card slot for expanding the storage and the battery life will last 2 hours. Expect to hear more from this one on the OEM front as interest grows. UPDATE: Two years on and although Light Blue Optics doesn't seem to have come up with the goods, others have. - Prodigy projection keyboard iPhone case turns any surface into a keyboard