Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: computing – Page 4

When used correctly, font selection usually goes unnoticed, blending seamlessly with content and reader. When the One Times Square Billboard used a retired Microsoft Word default Calibri font to usher in 2025’s “Happy New Year” message, it was immediately met with sarcastic scorn and delightful derision for the uninspired choice (at least by people who pay attention to such things). Had the font faux pas been the branding rollout of a new app, product, or company, the consequences might have been more severe.

Hanyang University researchers in Korea have attempted to take the intuition and subjective judgment out of the art of font selection. Using computational tools and network analysis to develop an objective framework for font selection and pairing in design, the researchers aim to establish foundational principles for applying typography in visual communication.

Font choice plays a critical role in visual communication, shaping readability, emotional resonance, and overall design balance across mediums. According to the researchers, designers have traditionally relied on subjective rules for font pairing, such as mixing Serif and Sans-Serif or creating contrast. These rules are difficult to formalize and often apply to only a narrow subset of fonts.

Read more | >

MIT researchers are developing techniques to make quantum gates, the basic operations of a quantum computer, as fast as possible in order to reduce the impact of decoherence. However, as gates get faster, another type of error, arising from counter-rotating dynamics, can be introduced because of the way qubits are controlled using electromagnetic waves.

Single-qubit gates are usually implemented with a resonant pulse, which induces Rabi oscillations between the qubit states. When the pulses are too fast, however, “Rabi gates” are not so consistent, due to unwanted errors from counter-rotating effects. The faster the gate, the more the counter-rotating error is manifest. For low-frequency qubits such as fluxonium, counter-rotating errors limit the fidelity of fast gates.

“Getting rid of these errors was a fun challenge for us,” says Rower. “Initially, Leon had the idea to utilize circularly polarized microwave drives, analogous to circularly polarized light, but realized by controlling the relative phase of charge and flux drives of a superconducting qubit. Such a circularly polarized drive would ideally be immune to counter-rotating errors.”

Read more | >

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattbatwings.
Discord: https://discord.gg/V5KFaF63mV
My socials: https://linktr.ee/mattbatwings.
My texture pack: https://modrinth.com/resourcepack/mattpack.

Original Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5LiOvrbVo8nPTtdXAdSmDWzu85zzdgRT
LRR: (Recommended Prerequisite) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5LiOvrbVo8keeEWRZVaHfprU4zQTCsV4

ALL WORLD DOWNLOADS can be found on my Planetminecraft: https://www.planetminecraft.com/member/mattbatwings/

Project Repo: https://github.com/mattbatwings/BatPU-2

Continue reading “How to Make a Redstone Computer from Scratch” | >

Batatia and colleagues introduce a computational framework that combines message-passing networks with the atomic cluster expansion architecture and incorporates a many-body description of the geometry of molecular structures. The resulting models are interpretable and accurate.

Read more | >

Job displacement is a serious issue everywhere, but professional computer science majors should get ready for a tightening of the belt in their field.

A Semafor article published this month, written by Reed Albergotti, shows how Amjad Masad, CEO of Replit, is enthusiastic about cutting the firm’s workforce in half, while boosting revenue something like 500% on the back of agenticAI.

Replit’s new tool can reportedly “write a working software application with nothing but a natural language prompt” and that’s going to usher in a new renaissance in computing, while costing some careerists their jobs.

Read more | >

How Symmetry Shapes the Universe: A Peek into Persistent Symmetry Breaking.

Imagine a world where certain symmetries—like the balance between left and right or up and down—are spontaneously disrupted, but this disruption persists regardless of temperature. Scientists are exploring this fascinating behavior in a special type of mathematical framework known as biconical vector models. These models examine how symmetries behave under specific conditions, especially in a universe with two spatial dimensions and one time dimension (2+1 dimensions).

This study takes a closer look at these models and reveals exciting new insights about symmetry breaking in a way that respects established physical principles. Here’s what the researchers discovered:

1. Symmetry Breaking Basics: The study confirms that symmetry can break persistently when these models are designed to include both continuous and discrete symmetry features (described by the mathematical groups O(N)×Z₂). This breaking shifts from one type of symmetry (O(N)×Z₂) to another (O(N)) as temperature rises, but only under certain conditions.

2. Precision at Zero Temperature: By using advanced computational methods, the team accurately described how these models behave when the temperature is absolute zero. Their findings are valid for a wide range of systems, provided the number of components, N, is 2 or greater.

Continue reading “Heat Destroys All Order. Except for in This One Special Case” | >

In the fascinating intersection of quantum computing and the human experience of time, lies a groundbreaking theory that challenges our conventional narratives: the D-Theory of Time. This theory proposes a revolutionary perspective on time not as fundamental but as an emergent phenomenon arising from the quantum mechanical fabric of the universe.

#TemporalMechanics #DTheory #QuantumComputing #QuantumAI

“In a sense, Nature has been continually computing the ‘next state’ of the Universe for billions of years; all we have to do — and actually all we can do — is ‘hitch a ride’ on this huge ongoing [quantum] computation.” — Tommaso Toffoli

In my new book Temporal Mechanics: D-Theory as a Critical Upgrade to Our Understanding of the Nature of Time (2025), I defend the D-Theory of Time, predicated or reversible quantum computing at large, which represents a novel framework that challenges our conventional understanding of time and computing. Here, we explore the foundational principles of D-Theory, its implications for reversible quantum computing, and how it could potentially revolutionize our approach to computing, information processing, and our understanding of the universe.

Continue reading “Exploring the Connection Between Time Perception and Quantum Computation” | >

Even so, many wonder: If the universe is at bottom deterministic (via stable laws of physics), how do these quantum-like phenomena arise, and could they show up in something as large and complex as the human brain?

Quantum-Prime Computing is a new theoretical framework offering a surprising twist: it posits that prime numbers — often celebrated as the “building blocks” of integers — can give rise to “quantum-like” behavior in a purely mathematical or classical environment. The kicker? This might not only shift how we view computation but also hint at new ways to understand the brain and the nature of consciousness.

Below, we explore why prime numbers are so special, how they can host quantum-like states, and what that might mean for free will, consciousness, and the future of computational science.

Read more | >