Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: mobile phones – Page 197

In Brief

  • Canada is spending millions to ensure all citizens have access to home internet with download speeds of at least 50Mbps and upload speeds of 10Mbps in the next 10 to 15 years.
  • At a time when so many things we used to do in person or via a physical medium are done digitally, living without the internet inherently puts a person at a disadvantage.

Canada is making some major moves to ensure that every citizen in the country has access to fast broadband speeds. The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced this week that it was setting up a fund of $750 million available over the next five years to expand internet access.

The CRTC is implementing a standard of universal availability of home internet with download speeds of at least 50Mbps and upload speeds of 10Mbps with the option of unlimited data. In doing so, the Canadian government is declaring that broadband internet is a basic telecommunications service, akin to phone service.

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Never before have businesses been able to build billion-dollar valuations in so little time. Never before have incumbent enterprises been able to go out of business so quickly. Disruption is now commonplace, and augmented reality (AR) is emerging as yet another avenue to turn industries on their heads. But what direction will this new technology take?

AR overlays digital information on the physical world using a smartphone (think Pokémon Go) or a headset. In its simplest form, AR is simply a rectangular display floating in front of the eyes, à la Google Glass. More advanced forms will drop video game characters or useful information seamlessly onto physical objects, from homes to industrial warehouses.

While virtual reality is moving into a more commercial phase, AR is a little earlier in its development. But AR’s potential practical applications are significant. So, what’s in store for AR in the coming years?

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Smartphones are revolutionizing the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses, thanks to add-ons and apps that make their ubiquitous small screens into medical devices, researchers say.

“If you look at the camera, the flash, the microphone… they all are getting better and better,” said Shwetak Patel, engineering professor at the University of Washington.

“In fact the capabilities on those phones are as great as some of the specialized devices,” he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting this week.

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Personally; I see this not being needed in less than 10 years.

Automatic speech recognition is on the verge of becoming the chief way of interacting with primary computing devices. A decade ago, the concept of automatic speech recognition was laughed at.

Anticipating this rise in voice-controlled electronics, a team of researchers from MIT have developed a low-power chip designed for automatic speech recognition. A cell phone running speech-recognition software might need roughly 1 watt of power, but the new chip requires between 0.2 and 10 milliwatts only, based on the number of words it has to recognize.

In a real-world application, that potentially means a power savings of 90 to 99%, which could make voice control feasible for moderately simple electronic devices. That includes power-constrained gadgets that have to go months between battery charges or extract energy from their environments.

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A story and a question for Valentines — could you fall in love with a robot? Me? the answer is no as I get bored easily and like imagnative conversations; I would get bored after a while of a robot.

Many of us say we have relationships with our dogs, and some—still—with our childhood teddy-bear. Some might claim to have a relationship with their car. And others, although they might not admit it publicly, feel they have some sort of relationship with their sex-doll.

Are all these people deluded? Can we really have relationships with non-human beings?

If so, what about robots? Computerised chat-bots, such as the “personal assistants” Siri (from Apple’s iPhone) and Cortana (from Microsoft), already exist which can remember many of their owner’s likes and dislikes, and respond helpfully to their questions, recognising their individual voice and accent.

Continue reading “Could you fall in love with a robot?” | >

Quest to settle riddle over Einstein’s dark energy theory may soon be over

Saving energy is just as important as finding new and sustainable sources. By reducing the demand we reduce the energy and storage needed in the first place.

This is a first step in creating the tools needed to design and engineer low energy electronics. Cell Phones that last for weeks on a single charge and computers and servers using micro watts. However you will still need a lot of energy to drive screens and interface devices.

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