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Category: internet – Page 301

Today’s high-speed wired communication networks use lasers to carry information through optical fibers, but wireless networks are currently based on radio frequencies or microwaves. In an advance that could one day make light-based wireless communications ubiquitous, researchers from Facebook Inc.’s Connectivity Lab have demonstrated a conceptually new approach for detecting optical communication signals traveling through the air.

The team described the new technology, which could pave the way for fast optical wireless networks capable of delivering internet service to far-flung places, in Optica, The Optical Society’s journal for high impact research.

Bridging the Digital Divide

Facebook’s Connectivity Lab develops technologies aimed at providing affordable internet services to the approximately 4 billion people in the world who cannot currently access it. “A large fraction of people don’t connect to the internet because the wireless communications infrastructure is not available were they live, mostly in very rural areas of the world,” said Tobias Tiecke, who leads the research team. “We are developing communication technologies that are optimized for areas where people live far apart from each other.”

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Luv it; more believers.

Quantum computers promise to enable faster, far more complex calculations than today’s silicon chip-based computers. But they also raise the possibility that future computers could retroactively break the security of any digital communications that exist today, which is why Google is experimenting with something called “post-quantum cryptography.”

While quantum computer development remains in its early stages, some such computers are already in operation. In theory, future generations of quantum computers could “decrypt any Internet communication that was recorded today, and many types of information need to remain confidential for decades,” software engineer Matt Braithwaite wrote yesterday in a post on Google’s security blog. “Thus even the possibility of a future quantum computer is something that we should be thinking about today.”

Preventing potential nightmares for cryptographers and security organizations will require post-quantum cryptography, Braithwaite said. But Google is far from the only organization researching the possibilities.

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Science and the internet have an uneasy relationship: Science tends to move forward through a careful and tedious evaluation of data and theory, and the process can take years to complete. In contrast, the internet community generally has the attention span of Dory, the absent-minded fish of “Finding Nemo”(and now “Finding Dory”) — a meme here, a celebrity picture there — oh, look … a funny cat video.

Thus people who are interested in serious science should be extremely cautious when they read an online story that purports to be a paradigm-shifting scientific discovery. A recent example is one suggesting that a new force of nature might have been discovered. If true, that would mean that we have to rewrite the textbooks.

As a physicist, I’d like to shed a disciplined scientific light on the claim.

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The warning from QuintessenceLabs’ CTO John Leisoboer is stark. “When sufficiently powerful quantum computers become generally available,” he says, “it’s guaranteed to break all existing cryptographic systems that we know of.”

In other words, he adds, “Everything that we’re doing today will be broken.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Google’s Chrome security software engineer Matt Braithwaite who wrote in a blog post earlier this month that “a hypothetical, future quantum computer would be able to retrospectively decrypt any internet communication that was recorded today”.

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Profusa (South San Francisco, CA) has won a $7.5 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Army Research Office for further development of its tissue integrated biosensor technology, the company said Tuesday.

The U.S. military sees value in the technology improving mission efficiency through real-time monitoring of combat soldier health status.

“Profusa’s vision is to replace a point-in-time chemistry panel that measures multiple bio­markers, such as oxygen, glucose, lactate, urea, and ions with a biosensor that provides a continuous stream of wireless data,” Ben Hwang, PhD, Profusa’s chairman and CEO, said in a news release.

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If you’ve been online at any point in the past week, you’ve probably come to realize that Pokémon Go is in the midst of a full-fledged internet takeover. It’s the top app in the iOS App Store, and just yesterday, it was revealed that people are using Pokémon Go more than they are social media apps like WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat.

But it turns out it was more loved than any of us realized, as by certain metrics, Pokémon Go is more popular than one of the main pillars of the internet: porn.

This weekend, video game industry analyst ZhugeEX discovered that according to Google Trends, people are searching for Pokémon Go more than they are for pornography. Take a look at the data for yourself here, or check out the screenshot below:

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Last week an entry for the Best Illusion of the Year Contest called the Ambiguous Cylinder Illusion from Japan’s Kokichi Sugihara confused and delighted viewers all over the world. The video showed six plastic cylinders stuck together, and when they were placed in front of a mirror they inexplicably became squares. When the cylinders were rotated, the reflection finally turned into cylinders, only to have the actual plastic cylinders become squares. As if the amazing visual trick wasn’t impressive enough, Sugihara then outdid himself by adding several different types of groupings even more complicated and unbelievable than the original. It left almost everyone who saw it scratching their heads, and the internet was pretty desperate for answers.

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Enjoy this VFX Sci-Fi Short Film… 2046. A new energy source, created to solve the world’s energy crisis, is believed to have deadly side effects. When The Signal’s inventor chooses to help a girl warn the public, he gains an unlikely ally to save the world from his own creation. Starring Michael Ealy and Grace Phipps, Written and Directed by Marcus Stokes!

On the web — http://www.thesignalmovie.com

This live action short film was shot in downtown Los Angeles over a weekend. The post production and visual effects took considerably longer and were done by the writer/director Marcus Stokes and a few additional VFX artists.

Starring: michael ealy, grace phipps, doc duhame, casey adams, zack duhame, brian buccellato, ciera payton, and gonzalo escudero.

Writer/director/vfx supervisor: marcus stokes executive producer: tim story producer: chris harding cinematographer: larry blanford editor: melissa lawson sound editor: stephen hunter flick music producer: bear mccreary composer: michael beach, jonathan ortega stunt coordinator: casey adams

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