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Category: mobile phones – Page 227

RoboHon, Sharp’s dubiously useful but definitely adorable phone that walks around on two legs and projects you happy images when you’re sad and alone in your bedroom, is actually making its way to market. Sharp announced today that the phone/robot/thing will see release on May 26th in Japan, with preorders now open. It has a 2-inch screen on its back and runs Android 5.0.

The last time I wrote about RoboHon I expressed hope that Sharp can “get this weird little guy onto the market for a reasonable price.” That, uh, appears to have been difficult; RoboHon is selling for 198,000 yen, or about $1,800, before you get into service fees. But hey, you can’t put a price on true friendship — I hope to evaluate RoboHon’s conversational skills, punctuality, and Myers-Briggs personality type in the near future.

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Hmm… That would explain Alzheimer disease — It’d be like some sort of unabashedly evil version of a smart phone data caps!

Or not.

wink

NEW YORK — Is the universe just an enormous, fantastically complex simulation? If so, how could we find out, and what would that knowledge mean for humanity?

These were the big questions that a group of scientists, as well as one philosopher, tackled on April 5 during the 17th annual Isaac Asimov Debate here at the American Museum of Natural History. The event honors Asimov, the visionary science-fiction writer, by inviting experts in diverse fields to discuss pressing questions on the scientific frontiers.

Continue reading “Is the Universe a Simulation? Scientists Debate” | >

One of the biggest rumors surrounding the iPhone 7 is that Apple is adding a second camera module (at least on the Plus model), and it makes a lot more sense than you might realize.

After all, other manufacturers have already caught on. LG’s G5 comes with a ultra-wide angle lens, Huawei’s new P9 sports a dedicated black-and-white camera, and HTC beat everyone to the punch with the One M8’s depth-sensing camera a couple of years ago.

Our biggest ever edition of TNW Conference is fast approaching! Join 10,000 tech leaders this May in Amsterdam.

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Just A Rather Very Intelligent System, or as it is more commonly known, JARVIS, is a highly advanced personal digital assistant. And it could be your best friend of tomorrow.

Among all of the fictional artificial intelligence (AI) systems, by far, the coolest one has to be Tony Stark’s JARVIS—It can not only control everything for Iron Man, it’s also a highly intuitive and sentient entity that has become part and parcel of his Tony Stark’s way of life.

Now, Microsoft has announced that they are planning to create something similar—a highly advanced personal digital assistant—which will be available as smartphone application. Find out more about what it can do by checking out this video, and dive into Just A Rather Very Intelligent System…

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Samsung is exploring the development of a contact lens that can project images directly into the users’ eye, take photographs and connect wirelessly to a smartphone, a patent application has revealed.

The South Korean copyright authority has published a 29-page application made by the consumer electronics firm two years ago, reported the technology blog Sammobile, offering a rare insight into a science fiction vision of a future technology that could be closer than we think.

The lens could overlay internet-connected services directly into the user’s line of sight, in an example of what is known as augmented reality. It could also discreetly – even covertly – take photographs. The device would be controlled by eye movements or blinking, according to the patent, and it would connect with a smartphone.

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Beautiful future lays ahead in QC.

Quantum physics not only explains how matter behaves at the subatomic level, but is also used to create many devices in our everyday lives, from lasers and transistors to GPS and mobile phones. The next wave of innovation could lead to unbreakable encryption and computers that are up to one million times faster. On 6 April, Parliament’s Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA) unit organised a workshop to discuss with experts the potential of these new quantum technologies.

Exploiting the quirks of the quantum world

Quantum theory looks at matter at the subatomic level — down to electrons. And that behaviour, compared to our everyday world, is very strange. For example, an electron can be in different places at the same time, a phenomenon known as superposition. Or it can interact with another particle at a large distance thanks to an effect called “entanglement”.

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Samsung’s dream of creating smart contact lenses capable of capturing images and shooting videos has just drawn closer. However, the patent reveals that Samsung has been working on the concepts and not necessarily the actual product which they trademarked as Gear Blink, which was filed in both South Korea and the U.S.

‘The analysis component of the contact lens can process the raw image data of the camera to determine processed image data indicating that the blind person is approaching intersection with a crosswalk and establish that there is a vehicle approaching the intersection’. It could very well be a smart contact lens. It’s a contact lens that consists of a small display, camera, RF antenna, and sensors to detect eye movement.

SamMobile states that the “lenses can provide a more natural way to provide augmented reality than smart glasses”. While the display projects images directly into the eye of the person wearing the contacts, an external device like a smartphone is needed for processing.

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At a time when PCs have become rather boring and the market has stagnated, the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) has become more interesting and not for what it has traditionally done (graphical user interface), but for what it can do going forward. GPUs are a key enabler for the PC and workstation market, both for enthusiast seeking to increase graphics performance for games and developers and designers looking to create realistic new videos and images. However, the traditional PC market has been in decline for several years as consumer shift to mobile computing solutions like smartphones. At the same time, the industry has been working to expand the use of GPUs as a computing accelerator because of the massive parallel compute capabilities, often providing the horsepower for top supercomputers. NVIDIA has been a pioneer in this GPU compute market with its CUDA platform, enabling leading researchers to perform leading edge research and continue to develop new uses for GPU acceleration.

Now, the industry is looking to leverage over 40 years of GPU history and innovation to create more advanced computer intelligence. Through the use of sensors, increased connectivity, and new learning technique, researchers can enable artificial intelligence (AI) applications for everything from autonomous vehicles to scientific research. This, however, requires unprecedented levels of computing power, something the NVIDIA is driven to provide. At the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California, NVIDIA just announced a new GPU platform that takes computing to the extreme. NVIDIA introduced the Telsa P100 platform. NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang described the Tesla P100 as the first GPU designed for hyperscale datacenter applications. It features NVIDIA’s new Pascal GPU architecture, the latest memory and semiconductor process, and packaging technology – all to create the densest compute platform to date.

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