Lifeboat Foundation

Despite its recent blowback, Web 3.0 offers a more interconnected and productive society.

The next significant development for the internet and all it governs is Web 3.0. To improve user experience, it will make use of artificial intelligence. In addition, blockchain technology will enable the service to be backed by decentralized networks since Web 3.0 is the fundamental framework for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. This will be a revolutionary move that might significantly influence businesses and how they function, as well as individual users. For instance, site owners won’t have to rely on larger businesses like Amazon (AWS) and Google to buy server space.

Web 2.0 – the current version of the internet – has grown overly centralized, with a small number of large technology businesses and government organizations controlling the industry. Web 3.0, which promises a decentralized online ecosystem built on the still-emerging blockchain, will be the third iteration of the internet. Web 3.0 was first coined in 2014 by a computer scientist named Gavin Wood also helped create Ethereum, the decentralized blockchain system that powers the ether coin.

Continue reading “Explained: Will Web 3.0 live up to its hype?” »

Synced has previously covered additional research on the use of WiFi signals for human pose and action recognition through walls and the associated risks of such technologies.

Please note that the DensePose-COCO and DensePose-PoseTrack datasets are distributed under NonCommercial Creative Commons license.

Continue reading “DensePose: DensePose was introduced in 2018 and aims to map human pixels in an RGB image to the 3D surface of the human body” »

Scientists have developed a way to detect 3D shapes and the movements of human bodies in a room using a Wi-Fi router.

The researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. hope that the technology may eventually replace normal cameras.

According to a recent paper published on arXiv, the team of scientists managed to make out images of people in a room through the Wi-Fi signals emitted from a normal router.

Continue reading “Wi-Fi Can Now ‘See’ People, Tech Could One Day Replace Cameras” »

After the introduction of the fifth-generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks (5G), engineers worldwide are now working on systems that could further speed up communications. The next-generation wireless communication networks, from 6G onward, will require technologies that enable communications at sub-terahertz and terahertz frequency bands (i.e., from 100GHz to 10THz).

While several systems have been proposed for enabling communication at these frequency bands specifically for personal use and local area networks, some applications would benefit from longer communication distances. So far, generating high-power ultrabroadband signals that contain information and can travel long distances has been challenging.

Researchers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Northeastern University and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) have recently developed a system that could enable multi-gigabit-per-second (Gbps) communications in the sub-terahertz frequency band over several kilometers. This system, presented in a paper in Nature Electronics, utilizes on-chip power-combining frequency multiplier designs based on Schottky diodes, semiconducting diodes formed by the junction of a semiconductor and a metal, developed at NASA JPL.

Continue reading “A system to enable multi-kilometer and sub-terahertz communications at extremely high frequency bands” »

Search is possibly one of the main technological advances of the Internet era that did not change much over the past 20 years. Now, we are in for another disruption. The real battle for dominance in AI is on. Can Google maintain its monopoly?

The success that ChatGPT has had, at least in generating public interest, has had the inevitable consequence of prompting some writers to question its credentials and generally pour tepid if not actually cold water over what it can do. The latest of these is Will Knight writing in the January 13, 2023 edition of Wired. “ChatGPT Has Investors Drooling – but Can It Bring Home the Bacon?”.

In that article he makes two observations that merit closer attention, one of which I think has merit and the other of which I think harks back to a Dreyfus-like What Computers Still Can’t Do mentality. And both can be seen as examples of Schadenfreude.

Right at the end of the article Wright makes a legitimate point that he has gleaned from Phil Libin who was the CEO of the note-taking app Evernote from 2007–2015. Wright, summarising some of the downsides Libin anticipates, says One is that ChatGPT and other generative AI models are currently created by scraping content made by humans from the web, but are increasingly contributing to the text and images found online. All of these models are about to shit all over their own training data, he [Libin] says. ‘We’re about to be flooded with a tsunami of bullshit.’

The team recreated a turbulent magnetic reconnection, suggested to be a trigger of solar flares.

On January 10, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded a massive X-class solar flare. The blast hurled debris into space, and radiation from the flare triggered radio blackouts across the South Pacific. The solar outburst was the third X-class — the most powerful — flare in less than a week.

These intense bursts of radiation from the release of magnetic energy associated with sunspots can be dangerous — in February 2022, SpaceX lost 40 of its newly launched Starlink communications satellites due to a geomagnetic storm triggered by a solar flare.

SpaceX signed a new agreement with the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to prevent Starlink satellites from interfering with astronomy.

SpaceX has long been criticized by astronomers for the brightness of its Starlink satellites. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, said in 2019 that SpaceX would ensure that Starlink has no material effect on discoveries in astronomy. “We care a great deal about science,” he said in a tweet.

Exactly, potentially helping billions of economically disadvantaged people is the greater good. That said, we’ll make sure Starlink has no material effect on discoveries in astronomy. We care a great deal about science.

Continue reading “SpaceX signs agreement with US National Science Foundation to prevent Starlink’s interference with astronomy” »