Circa 2018
19-year-old Erik Finman, a self-made Bitcoin millionaire, took some free time to make a functional Dr. Octopus suit. Besides looking so cool, it also works as a prosthetic prototype.
Continue reading “Teenage Millionaire Built a Real-Life Dr. Octopus Suit” »
Billionaire Elon Musk is facing criticism in China after the country recently complained that its budding space station, which is still in construction, had two “close encounters” with satellites launched by SpaceX’s Starlink program earlier this year. The Chinese space station was twice forced to take evasive action in order to avoid collision with satellites launched by Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, according to a document submitted by China to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs earlier this month.
Though the claims have not been independently verified and SpaceX is yet to respond, China alleges that its space station had to implement “preventive collision avoidance control” both on July 1 and October 21 when faced with oncoming Starlink satellites.
According to the document, China informed the U.N. Secretary-General that the close encounters with Starlink satellites “constituted dangers to the life or health of astronauts aboard the China Space Station.”
Emerging technologies including AI, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), 5G, and blockchain (and related digital currencies) have all progressed on their own merits and timeline. Each has found a degree of application, though clearly AI has progressed the furthest. Each technology is maturing while overcoming challenges ranging from blockchain’s energy consumption to VR’s propensity for inducing nausea. They will likely converge in readiness over the next several years, underpinned by the now ubiquitous cloud computing for elasticity and scale. And in that convergence, the sum will be far greater than the parts. The catalyst for this convergence will be the metaverse — a connected network of always-on 3D virtual worlds.
The metaverse concept has wide-sweeping potential. On one level, it could be a 3D social media channel with messaging targeted perfectly to every user by AI. That’s the Meta (previously Facebook) vision. It also has the potential to be an all-encompassing platform for information, entertainment, and work.
Continue reading “How AI, VR, AR, 5G, and blockchain may converge to power the metaverse” »
A research team, led by Assistant Professor Desmond Loke from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), has developed a new type of artificial synapse based on two-dimensional (2D) materials for highly scalable brain-inspired computing.
Brain-inspired computing, which mimics how the human brain functions, has drawn significant scientific attention because of its uses in artificial intelligence functions and low energy consumption. For brain-inspired computing to work, synapses remembering the connections between two neurons are necessary, like human brains.
In developing brains, synapses can be grouped into functional synapses and silent synapses. For functional synapses, the synapses are active, while for silent synapses, the synapses are inactive under normal conditions. And, when silent synapses are activated, they can help to optimize the connections between neurons. However, as artificial synapses built on digital circuits typically occupy large spaces, there are usually limitations in terms of hardware efficiency and costs. As the human brain contains about a hundred trillion synapses, it is necessary to improve the hardware cost in order to apply it to smart portable devices and internet-of things (IoTs).
Researchers at an Abu Dhabi university revealed details about a set of vulnerabilities in the information transfer mechanism that underlies modern telephone networks. According to the report, threat actors can exploit these flaws to deploy denial of service (DoS) and Man-in-The-Middle (MiTM) attacks using a few pieces of hardware.
Experts Evangelos Bitsikas and Christina Pöpper mention that these failures can occur in all kinds of scenarios as long as some general conditions are met. In addition, the problems lie in all generations of network infrastructure, from 2G to 5G.
Continue reading “New critical vulnerabilities discovered in 2G, 3G, 4G, LTE & 5G networks” »
Go beyond the hype.
Dubbed as the internet of tomorrow, Web 3.0 seems to be the next big thing that’s going to change our lives by fundamentally reshaping the internet.
Continue reading “Web 3.0 Is Coming, But Not Everyone Will Love It” »
He has done his math. The questions seem to be: How to put together viable payloads to make use of Stsrship launches? How to build new markets in space?
This again?! Game Over? Busted? We’re doing Starship again so soon because I’m an unoriginal hack. There’s also been new developments in Starship and I think it’s a perfect time to revisit the launch system. Get as mad as you wish.
The world’s two biggest plane makers say the technology could have a negative impact on the aviation industry.
Aging is a highly complex process with thousands of genes influencing our health, which poses a challenge for researchers looking to explain and target the underlying processes that lead to declining health. Researchers from the Babraham Institute’s Epigenetics research program have published a map of genetic interactions in C. elegans in iScience which can be used to identify new genes that influence lifespan and that have equivalent genes in humans.
Researchers use simple model organisms like the nematode worm C. elegans to gather information that can inform studies on human aging because many genes are shared or have counterparts in other species. However, there are some conceptual and technical challenges that apply to the study of aging in model organisms. Dr. Casanueva, Group leader in the Epigenetics research program explains: “The way researchers usually study gene function is by disrupting its function and observing what happens. The disruption of some genes causes worms to live a very long-life. In this way, researchers have found the so-called ‘longevity-pathways.” However, the complexity underlying aging means that it is not enough to focus on individual genes. We need to study the overall organization of longevity by generating a systems-wide view.”
In collaboration with the physicist Marta Sales Pardo at University of Rovira i Virgili, Dr. Casanueva and her lab set out to cast a wider net when it comes to studying longevity genes. Together they created the largest network of gene regulatory interactions that are found in a long-lived type of C. elegans. In this network, the relationships between genes are represented by lines, and represented in different layers based on the flow of information between genes. The middle of the web represents the genes with the most influence, in this case, they receive complex input signals and de-code them, and connect to an output layer of genes. The researchers found that most key genes for longevity belong to transcription factors and metabolic genes.
Focus on strategic sectors like lithium and 5G puts U.S. and Europe on defensive.
HONG KONG — In late 2003, when much of the world was getting connected to Wi-Fi, China decided to do it differently.
