Researchers at the University of Colorado discovered a key technique that could lead to a smartphone battery that charges in a minute.
Category: mobile phones – Page 20
A new discovery could pave the way for supercapacitors that can charge phones and laptops in 60 seconds and electric cars in a mere ten minutes.
In a press release, the University of Colorado at Boulder announced that its researchers have achieved a breakthrough when it comes to our understanding of the way charged ion particles behave — a discovery that could be the key to figuring out the logistics for the long-anticipated energy storage capabilities of supercapacitors.
Supercapacitors have long been proposed as a means of charging electronics lightning-fast, but until now, figuring out how to increase the energy density to match or exceed those of lithium-ion batteries has, for the most part, eluded scientists. Compared to conventional batteries, which can store as much as ten times more energy than today’s supercapacitors, this technology has remained in the realm of the possible but not yet practical.
Those who know Oxford University for its literary luminaries might be surprised to learn that some of the most important reflections on emerging technologies come from its hallowed halls. While the leading tech innovators in Silicon Valley capture imaginations with their bold visions of future singularities, mind-machine melding, and digital immortality by 2045, they rarely engage as deeply with the philosophical issues surrounding such developments as their like-minded scholars over the pond. This essay will briefly highlight some of the key contributions of Oxford University’s professors Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, and Julian Savulescu to the transhumanist movement. It will also show how this movement’s focus on radical autonomy in biotechnical enhancements shapes the wider global bioethical conversation.
As the lead author of the Transhumanist FAQ, Bostrom provides the closest the movement has to an institutional catechism. He is, in a sense, the Ratzinger of Transhumanism. The first paragraph of the seminal text emphasizes the evolutionary vision of his school. Transhumanism’s incessant pursuit of radical technological transformation is “based on the premise that the human species in its current form does not represent the end of our development but rather a comparatively early phase.” Current humans are but one intriguing yet greatly improvable iteration of human existence. Think of the first iPhone and how unattractive 2007’s most cutting-edge technology is in 2024.
In particular, transhumanists encourage radical physical, cognitive, mood, moral, and lifespan enhancements. The movement seeks to defeat humanity’s perennial enemies of aging, sickness, suffering, and death. Bostrom recognizes that he is facing the same foes as Christianity and other traditional religions. Yet he is confident that Transhumanism, through science and technology, will be far more successful than outdated superstitions. Biotechnological advances are more reliable for this worldly benefit than religion’s promises of some mysterious next life. Transhumanists claim no need for “supernatural powers or divine intervention” in their avowedly “naturalistic outlook” since they rely instead on “rational thinking and empiricism” and “continued scientific, technological, economic, and human development.” Nonetheless, Bostrom and his companions recognize that not all technology is created equal.
A hacker has defaced the website of the pcTattletale spyware application, found on the booking systems of several Wyndham hotels in the United States, and leaked over a dozen archives containing database and source code data.
As Vice reported three years ago, this stalkerware app was also found leaking real-time screenshots from Android phones.
Described by its developers as an “employee and child monitoring software,” pcTattletale is a consumer-grade spyware solution that was leaking guest details and customer information captured from the hotels’ check-in systems because of an API security vulnerability, according to TechCrunch.
Researchers have developed techniques to manufacture different types of glass in space, uncovering potential for advancements in optical technology.
Thanks to human ingenuity and zero gravity, we reap important benefits from science in space. Consider smartphones with built-in navigation systems and cameras.
Such transformational technologies seem to blend into the rhythm of our everyday lives overnight. But they emerged from years of discoveries and developments of materials that can withstand harsh environments outside our atmosphere. They evolved from decades of laying foundations in basic science to understand how atoms behave in different materials under different conditions.
Still, ChatGPT operates in a mostly siloed fashion. It can’t yet venture out “into the wild” to execute online tasks. For example, if you wanted to buy a milk frother on Amazon for under $100, ChatGPT might be able to recommend a product or two, and even provide links, but it can’t actually navigate Amazon and make the purchase.
Why? Besides obvious concerns, like letting a flawed AI model go on a shopping spree with your credit card, one challenge lies in training AI to successfully navigate graphical user interfaces (GUIs), like your laptop or smartphone screen.
But even the current version of GPT-4 seems to grasp the basic steps of online shopping. That’s the takeaway of a recent preprint paper in which AI researchers described how they successfully trained a GPT-4-based agent to “buy” products on Amazon. The agent, dubbed the MM-Navigator, did not actually purchase products, but it was able to analyze screenshots of an iOS smartphone screen and specify the appropriate action and where it should click, with impressive accuracy.
Apptronik, a NASA-backed robotics company, has unveiled Apollo, a humanoid robot that could revolutionize the workforce — because there’s virtually no limit to the number of jobs it can do.
“The focus for Apptronik is to build one robot that can do thousands of different things,” Jeff Cardenas, the company’s co-founder and CEO, told Freethink. “The best way to think of it is kind of like the iPhone of robots.”
The challenge: Robots have been automating repetitive tasks for decades — instead of having a person weld the same two car parts together 100 times a day, for example, an automaker might just add a welding robot to that segment of the assembly line.
In this pivotal Spring 2024 edition of “The Xsolla Report: The State of Play,” Xsolla delves into the evolving dynamics and innovations shaping our industry, emphasizing the burgeoning realm of mobile gaming.
The new AI technology enables personalized noise-canceling headphones, which can isolate a speaker’s voice from ambient noise in real time.