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.
Read more
The robot takeover is inevitable
Posted in robotics/AI
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.”
Read more
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.
Read more
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.
Read more