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Microsoft today announced that it acquired Lumenisity, a U.K.-based startup developing “hollow core fiber (HCF)” technologies primarily for data centers and ISPs. Microsoft says that the purchase, the terms of which weren’t disclosed, will “expand [its] ability to further optimize its global cloud infrastructure” and “serve Microsoft’s cloud platform and services customers with strict latency and security requirements.”

HCF cables fundamentally combine optical fiber and coaxial cable. They’ve been around since the ’90s, but what Lumenisity brings to the table is a proprietary design with an air-filled center channel surrounded by a ring of glass tubes. The idea is that light can travel faster through air than glass; in a trial with Comcast in April, a single strand of Lumenisity HCF was reportedly able to deliver traffic rates ranging from 10 Gbps to 400 Gbps.

“HCF can provide benefits across a broad range of industries including healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, retail and government,” Girish Bablani, CVP of Microsoft’s Azure Core business, wrote in a blog post. “For the public sector, HCF could provide enhanced security and intrusion detection for federal and local governments across the globe. In healthcare, because HCF can accommodate the size and volume of large data sets, it could help accelerate medical image retrieval, facilitating providers’ ability to ingest, persist and share medical imaging data in the cloud. And with the rise of the digital economy, HCF could help international financial institutions seeking fast, secure transactions across a broad geographic region.”

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It’s proving tough to reign in systems like ChatGPT

Did a human.

Did a human write that, or ChatGPT? It can be hard to tell — perhaps too hard, its creator OpenAI thinks, which is why it is working on a way to “watermark” AI-generated content.

In a lecture at the University of Austin, computer science professor Scott Aaronson, currently a guest researcher at OpenAI, revealed that OpenAI is developing a tool for “statistically watermarking the outputs of a text [AI system].” Whenever a system — say, ChatGPT — generates text, the tool would embed an “unnoticeable secret signal” indicating where the text came from.

Continue reading “OpenAI’s attempts to watermark AI text hit limits” | >

Brodmann17, an Israeli computer vision technology startup that developed a novel approach to take on a marketplace dominated by Mobileye, shut down this week. Brodmann17’s co-founder and CEO Adi Pinhas posted a message on LinkedIn announcing the move, stating that while the company would not be able to bring its products to the mass market as hoped, “we do get comfort that our innovation will hopefully influence the market thinking and others will proceed in the mission of creating safer mobility to everyone.”

In a subsequent interview, Pinhas told TechCrunch that “there is a strong feeling of sorrow as we proved the technology, there is outstanding demand and we have customers in production.

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Pelorus, a provider of experiential travel and yachting, has partnered with Swedish aviation company OceanSky Cruises, the “airline of airships,” to promote the advancement of ultra-sustainable airship travel.

Pelorus will provide thorough research, planning, and logistics as OceanSky’s “expedition partner” to create individualized private experiences before, after, and onboard OceanSky Cruises’ fleet of premier “lighter than air” airships, according to a press release by the company last week.

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Keith Downing is a professor of Computer Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life. He has a particular interest in evolutionary algorithms, which have applications ranging from the development of the Mars Rover antenna, patented circuits, early driverless cars, to even art. For computer scientists to learn from nature, he believes there needs to be a shift in our traditional ways thinking.

About TEDx, x = independently organized event.
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations).

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Tournament selection, roulette selection, mutation, crossover — all processes used in genetic algorithms. Dr Alex Turner explains using the Knapsack Problem.

https://www.facebook.com/computerphile.
https://twitter.com/computer_phile.

This video was filmed and edited by Sean Riley.

Computer Science at the University of Nottingham: https://bit.ly/nottscomputer.

Continue reading “The Knapsack Problem & Genetic Algorithms — Computerphile” | >

Papilio antimachusPhoto by Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez (Lmbuga Commons)(Lmbuga Galipedia); CC-BY-SA-3.0 The Giant African Swallowtail (Papilio antimachus) is a species of giant butterfly in the family of swallowtail butterflies. As a giant butterfly, Papilio antimachus belongs to the family Papilionidae and has a wingspan of between 7.1 and 9.1 inches. It is not unusual to see wings that can measure 10 inches or more from tip to tip.

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Robert McNair Price (born 7 July 1954) is an American New Testament scholar who argues against the existence of a historical Jesus (the Christ myth theory). He taught theology and religious studies at the Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary. Price is a professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute, and the author of a number of books on biblical studies and the historicity of Jesus.

A former Baptist minister, Price was the editor of the Journal of Higher Criticism from 1994 until it ceased publication in 2003. He has also written extensively about the Cthulhu Mythos, a “shared universe” created by the writer H. P. Lovecraft. He also co-wrote a book with his wife, Carol Selby Price, Mystic Rhythms: The Philosophical Vision of Rush (1999), on the rock band Rush.

Price is a fellow of the suspended Jesus Project, a group of 150 individuals who study the historicity of Jesus and the Gospels, the organizer of a Web community for those interested in the history of Christianity, and sits on the advisory board of the Secular Student Alliance. He is a religious skeptic, especially of orthodox Christian beliefs, occasionally describing himself as a Christian atheist. Among other things, Price does not accept the historicity of Jesus and does not believe that Nazareth existed in the time of Jesus.

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Continue reading “Patriarch names were Deities? How did we get from Polytheism to Monotheism? Dr. Robert M. Price” | >

A team of researchers in China have developed a high-conductivity material that could greatly reduce contact resistance and Schottky barrier height within critical parts of electronic and optoelectronic microchips, paving the way for computer and digital imaging components that consume less power relative to their performance than existing chipsets.

The material, (MoS2) is so thin that it falls into a classification of two-dimensional. That is, it is grown in sheets extending in two directions, X and Y, but virtually immeasurable on a Z axis because the material is often only a single molecule or atom in height.

The team, led by Professor Dong Li and Professor Anlian Pan, College of Materials Science and Engineering at Hunan University, published their findings in Nano Research.

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A research team from Skoltech, Aalto University, and Kurnakov Institute has recently developed a new, versatile and simple approach to using carbon nanotubes for manufacturing carbon nanotube-polymer nanocomposites. The method is reported in Carbon and involves making briquettes—dense packages of carbon nanotube powders. Nanocomposites made with briquettes perform equally well as those made from the more expensive masterbatches, which are also polymer-specific—that is, less versatile.

“We believe the use of dense briquettes of carbon nanotubes can significantly facilitate the development of the composite industry. This technique is cheap and applicable to a broad variety of polymer matrices, without sacrificing any of the electrical and thermal properties of the final material,” the lead author of the study, Skoltech Ph.D. student Hassaan Butt, stated.

Carbon nanotubes have been intensively investigated for decades by researchers from academia and industry because of their unique combination of electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties. Meanwhile, polymer-based nanocomposites have come to be the largest carbon nanotube application and the one closest to widespread integration into everyday life. It is easy to understand why: The smallest amounts of nanotubes added to a polymer endow the material with fundamentally new properties, such as and piezoresistivity, as well as crucially enhancing its thermal and .

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