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Mar 25, 2016

Has DOD hit its limit on sharing spectrum?

Posted by in category: futurism

A new DARPA challenge seeks to help defense and commercial wireless users cohabitate on airwaves, but DOD’s CIO warns “there is a physical limitation to how fast we can move” to free up frequencies.

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Mar 25, 2016

Lockheed Martin joins race to build hypersonic jetliners, weapons

Posted by in category: space

DARPA, NASA spend millions to develop the needed technologies to go really fast.

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Mar 25, 2016

A Xerox Machine for Super Solar Panels

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

Researchers at Xerox PARC are working on a way to cheaply print efficient solar cells at a large scale.

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Mar 25, 2016

The robot takeover is inevitable

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Blue Prism (LON: PRSM) — Proactive speaks to a leading mind in the field of artificial intelligence to talk about the latest developments in robotic process automation.

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Mar 25, 2016

Unlocking the gates to quantum computing

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics

Researchers from Griffith University and the University of Queensland have overcome one of the key challenges to quantum computing by simplifying a complex quantum logic operation. They demonstrated this by experimentally realising a challenging circuit — the quantum Fredkin gate — for the first time.

“The allure of quantum computers is the unparalleled processing power that they provide compared to current technology,” said Dr Raj Patel from Griffith’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics.

“Much like our everyday computer, the brains of a quantum computer consist of chains of logic gates, although quantum logic gates harness quantum phenomena.”

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Mar 25, 2016

Microsoft takes chatbot tayandyou offline after offensive Tweets

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Artificial-intelligence software designed by Microsoft to tweet like a teenage girl has been suspended after it began spouting offensive remarks.

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Mar 25, 2016

Nuclear fusion needs a ‘Wright brothers’ moment, says firm closing on the target

Posted by in categories: climatology, nuclear energy, sustainability

Nuclear fusion needs a “Wright brothers” moment, to convince the world of its promise of unlimited clean and safe energy and so unlock significant private investment, according to a physicist whose says his company is closing in on that goal.

David Kingham, the chief executive of Tokamak Energy, has announced his company’s target of producing its first electricity by 2025 and feeding power into the grid by 2030, as well as investment from the UK’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

Harnessing the nuclear energy which powers the sun has long been touted as the ultimate solution to the challenge of powering the world while halting climate change. But, as fusion sceptics often say, the reality has stubbornly remained a decade or two away for many years.

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Mar 25, 2016

The Race Is On to Control Artificial Intelligence, and Tech’s Future

Posted by in categories: computing, robotics/AI

Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft are using high salaries and games pitting humans against computers to try to claim the standard on which all companies will build their A.I. technology.

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Mar 25, 2016

The EmDrive Finally Will Undergo Peer Review

Posted by in category: space travel

The unbelievable drive that’s nominally connected to NASA is reportedly about to be analyzed by others in the industry.

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Mar 25, 2016

Movie review: Virtual reality blurs the line in ‘Creative Control’

Posted by in categories: augmented reality, entertainment, virtual reality

There are some kernels of brilliance scattered amid the dead spaces of “Creative Control,” a microbudgeted techno-drama.

In a near-future Brooklyn, marketing consultant David (played by Benjamin Dickinson, the film’s director and co-writer) is assigned to create an ad campaign for Augmenta, a new form of augmented-reality glasses that will add a high-tech layer to the viewer’s reality. After deciding to give a pair to a hip artist — in this case, the musician/comedian Reggie Watts, here wittily sending up his own image — David starts noodling with a pair himself.

While he ignores his flighty yoga-instructor girlfriend, Juliette (Nora Zehetner), David starts to create a sexy avatar based on Sophie (Alexia Rasmussen), the fashion-designer girlfriend of his best friend, Wim (Dan Gill), a philandering photographer. David and Sophie start crushing on each other, but it’s nothing to the sparks David feels with her simulated version.

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