Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 7,267

The School of Computer Science and Statistics in Dublin, Ireland, has begun investigating how much user data iOS and Android send to Apple and Google, respectively. Overall, they discovered that, even when the devices are idle or minimally configured, each tends to share an average of 4.5 minutes’ worth of data every day.

For instance, Apple and Google both receive the devices’ IMEI, hardware serial number, SIM and IMSI, handset phone number and other items. Moreover, Android and iOS continue to transmit telemetry to their , even if the user specifically opts not to share this data. In fact, as soon as the user inserts a SIM card into either , corresponding user data beacons out to the parent companies of each.

Meanwhile, users have no way to avoid iOS devices sharing with Apple the MAC addresses of nearby devices—such as other handsets or home gateway—as well as GPS location. Indeed, these users do not even have to log in for the device to share their data. On the other hand, Google collects a much larger amount of data from nearby devices than Apple. As a comparison, Google receives about 1MB of data versus 42KB for Apple. While idle, the Android Pixel sends around 1MB every 12 hours, while iOS shares 52KB of data. Furthermore, Google even collects about 20 times more handset data than Apple, and the majority of users in the US have Android devices.

Read more | >

The qubit is the building block of quantum computing, analogous to the bit in classical computers. To perform error-free calculations, quantum computers of the future are likely to need at least millions of qubits. The latest study, published in the journal PRX Quantum, suggests that these computers could be made with industrial-grade silicon chips using existing manufacturing processes, instead of adopting new manufacturing processes or even newly discovered particles.

For the study, researchers were able to isolate and measure the quantum state of a single electron (the ) in a silicon transistor manufactured using a ‘CMOS’ technology similar to that used to make chips in processors.

Furthermore, the spin of the electron was found to remain stable for a period of up to nine seconds. The next step is to use a similar manufacturing technology to show how an array of qubits can interact to perform quantum logic operations.

Read more | >

Shooting beams of ions at proton clouds, like throwing nuclear darts at the speed of light, can provide a clearer view of nuclear structure. Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT

Shooting beams of ions at proton clouds may help researchers map the inner workings of neutron stars.

Physicists at MIT and elsewhere are blasting beams of ions at clouds of protons —like throwing nuclear darts at the speed of light — to map the structure of an atom ’s nucleus.

Read more | >

Many of us have been wracking our brains why Nvidia would spend a fortune – a whopping $40 billion – to acquire Arm Holdings, a chip architecture licensing company that generates on the order of $2 billion in sales – since the deal was rumored back in July 2020. As we sat and listened to the Arm Vision Day rollout of the Arm V9 architecture, which will define processors ranging from tiny embedded controllers in IoT device all the way up to massive CPUs in the datacenter, we may have figured it out.

There are all kinds of positives, as we pointed out in our original analysis ahead of the deal, in our analysis the day the deal was announced in September 2020, and in a one-on-one conversation with Nvidia co-founder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang in October 2020.

We have said for a long time that we believe that Nvidia needs to control its own CPU future, and even joked with Huang that it didn’t need to have to buy all of Arm Holdings to make the best Arm server CPU, to which he responded that this was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create value and push all of Nvidia’s technologies – its own GPUs for compute and graphics and Mellanox network interface chips, DPU processors, and switch ASICs – through an Arm licensing channel to make them all as malleable and yet standardized as the Arm licensing model not only allows, but encourages.

Read more | >

SYNTHETIC cells made by combining components of Mycoplasma bacteria with a chemically synthesised genome can grow and divide into cells of uniform shape and size, just like most natural bacterial cells.

In 2016, researchers led by Craig Venter at the J. Craig Venter Institute in San Diego, California, announced that they had created synthetic “minimal” cells. The genome in each cell contained just 473 key genes thought to be essential for life.

Read more | >

Los Angeles to Tokyo in 2.5 HOURS: Supersonic jet firm unveils plane that can transport 50 people at over 3000mph…

However, by the end of the decade, that time could be reduced to just two and a half hours if the vision of Florida-based supersonic jet firm Aerion comes to fruition.

This week it unveiled a ‘first glimpse’ of its AS3TM airliner, designed to transport up to 50 passengers at up to ‘Mach 4+’ — or at least 3000mph.

Read more | >

:oooooooo.

Researchers with the CERN-based ALPHA collaboration have announced the world’s first laser-based manipulation of antimatter, leveraging a made-in-Canada laser system to cool a sample of antimatter down to near absolute zero. The achievement, detailed in an article published today and featured on the cover of the journal Nature, will significantly alter the landscape of antimatter research and advance the next generation of experiments.

Antimatter is the otherworldly counterpart to matter; it exhibits near-identical characteristics and behaviors but has opposite charge. Because they annihilate upon contact with matter, are exceptionally difficult to create and control in our world and had never before been manipulated with a laser.

“Today’s results are the culmination of a years-long program of research and engineering, conducted at UBC but supported by partners from across the country,” said Takamasa Momose, the University of British Columbia (UBC) researcher with ALPHA’s Canadian team (ALPHA-Canada) who led the development of the laser. “With this technique, we can address long-standing mysteries like: ‘How does antimatter respond to gravity? Can antimatter help us understand symmetries in physics?’. These answers may fundamentally alter our understanding of our Universe.”

Read more | >

The eruption of Iceland’s Fagradalsfjall volcano is so vibrant it can be seen from space, and satellites orbiting hundreds of miles above the ground have captured images of the eruption from orbit.

Using data from the Operational Land Imager on NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey’s Landsat 8 satellite, NASA data visualizer Joshua Stevens pieced together a false-color image of the eruption. The image shows the eruption at 10:25 p.m. local time (2225 GMT) on March 22, three days after it started on March 19.

Read more | >