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A sada možete da pratite svoj puls preko vaše vebkamere

via boingboing

Festo - BionicOpter

iliti

BionicOpter

via Singularity Hub

Korak bliže kvantnom internetu

via Phys dot Org

A eto nama i letećih robota veličine insekta - RoboBee

via io9

Government Lab Admits to Using Quantum Internet for Two Years

Quote
This might be the biggest tech humblebrag ever. A team of scientists at Los Alamos National Labs has quietly shrugged its shoulders and admitted to the fact that, yeah, it's been using quantum internet for, like, the last two years. Whatever.

Ovogodišnji Sajam tehnike i tehničkih dostignuća održaće se pod motom "Korak u budućnost" od 13. do 17. maja na Beogradskom sajmu, u halama 1, 1a, 2, 3, 3a i 4.

Najstarija velika priredba Beogradskog sajma, organizovana još 1937. godine, koja je dve decenije kasnije postala član Međunarodne unije sajmova UFI, Sajam tehnike je, promovišući nove tehnologije, bila i ostala do danas najprestižnija manifestacija regiona i pokretač industrijskog razvoja zemlje.

Za industrijski napredak svake zemlje važni su savremeni tehnički i tehnološki proizvodi. Stoga Sajam tehnike ove godine poseban akcenat u izlagačkoj koncepciji usmerava ka domaćim izlagačima koji nude inovacije, inovativne proizvode i inovativne projekte.

Savremene tehnologije iz oblasti automatizacije, roboti, bežične komunikacije, elektroenergetika, elektronika, rasveta, procesna tehnika, logistika, materijali, kao i oblasti: reindustrijalizacija, energetska efikasnost, alternativni i obnovljivi izvori enerije, primena IT u industriji obeležiće ovogodišnji 57. Međunarodni sajam tehnike i tehničkih dostignuća.

Integra, kompjuterski integrisana fabrika 21. veka, koja objedinjuje kompjutersku integraciju i automatizaciju svih procesa, predstavlja se i ove godine u hali 1 Beogradskog sajma. Komponente i moduli za fleksibilnu automatizaciju, elektronski merni instrumenti i uređaji, uređaji i softver za razvoj i testiranje programa, upravljanje i nadzor, numerički upravljane mašine i alatke, obradni i merni centri, industrijski roboti, alati i sistemi alata, oprema i softver za projektovanje primenom računara – CAD/CAM, (računarski podržano projektovanje i računarski podržana proizvodnja) su među najznačajnijim oblastima izlagačkog koncepta ove grupe.

Elektroenergetika, energetska, industrijska elektronika, instalacije i rasveta za industriju, poslovne prostore i kuće predstavljaju veoma značajnu izlagačku oblast ove manifestacije. Zbog sve većeg značaja korišćenja obnovljivih izvora energije i unapređenja energetske efikasnosti, na Sajmu tehnike biće organizovan forum sa temom: "Obnovljivi izvori i efikasno korišćenje energije".

Procesna tehnika, logistika i transport, zavarivanje, materijali, oprema za profesionalne i naučne svrhe takođe su deo bogatog izlagačkog sadržaja Sajma tehnike.

Preko 600 izlagača iz 22 zemlje sveta predstavlja se na ovogodišnjem Sajmu tehnike. Ove godine predstaviće se i izlagači iz Belgije, BIH, Bugarske, Italije, Koreje, Mađarske, Makedonije, Poljske, Rusije, SAD, Slovačke Republike, Švajcarske, Švedske, Tajvana (NR Kina), Turske, Velike Britanije i Srbije.

Na ovogodišnjem Sajmu tehnike biće bredstavljeno preko 200 noviteta.

Radno vreme Sajma tehnike je od 10 do 18 sati. Zadnjeg dana trajanja Sajma, u petak, 17. maja, radno vreme je do 17 sati. Cena pojedinačne ulaznice je 400 dinara, za grupne posete 250, dok je za grupne posete učenika stručnih škola i studente ulaz besplatan. Cena parkinga je 100 dinara na sat.

Vidimo se na Sajmu tehnike i tehničkih dostugnuća!

(MONDO)

Quote from: дејан on 07-05-2013, 14:54:41
Government Lab Admits to Using Quantum Internet for Two Years

Quote
This might be the biggest tech humblebrag ever. A team of scientists at Los Alamos National Labs has quietly shrugged its shoulders and admitted to the fact that, yeah, it's been using quantum internet for, like, the last two years. Whatever.

Evo malo jasnije šta se tu zapravo dešava.

via io9

Robo-Gavran

via Singularity Hub

Evo zašto nam trebaju 3D štampači:


http://io9.com/how-a-3d-printer-saved-this-babys-life-509522983


http://boingboing.net/2013/05/23/3d-printed-bio-absorbable-spli.html

Cement pretvoren u električni provodnik

via ExtremeTech

via Argonne National Laboratory

Algoritam koji pomaže robotu da predvidi ljudsko ponašanje

via Wired

***30-story building built in 15 days*** Construction time lapse *View Fullscreen*

A uskoro i nova zgrada.

via Treehugger

via Singularity Hub

Aliluja

BBC 3D programming 'on hold' indefinitely

Quote
The BBC is to suspend 3D programming for an indefinite period due to a "lack of public appetite" for the technology.
Kim Shillinglaw, the BBC's head of 3D, said it has "not taken off" with audiences who find it "quite hassly".
The BBC began a two-year 3D trial in 2011, broadcasting several shows and events in 3D, including the Olympic Games and Strictly Come Dancing.
A Doctor Who anniversary special in November will be among the final shows televised in 3D as part of the trial.
Half of the estimated 1.5 million households in the UK with a 3D-enabled television watched last summer's Olympics opening ceremony in 3D.
The BBC said 3D viewing figures for the Queen's Christmas Message and the children's drama Mr Stink were "even more disappointing", with just 5% of potential viewers tuning in over the Christmas period.
'Wait-and-see'
In an interview with the Radio Times, Shillinglaw said: "I have never seen a very big appetite for 3D television in the UK.
"I think when people watch TV they concentrate in a different way. When people go to the cinema they go and are used to doing one thing - I think that's one of the reasons that take up of 3D TV has been disappointing."
Shillinglaw will return to her main job at the BBC, as head of science and natural history, when the project ends at the close of the year.
"After that we will see what happens when the recession ends and there may be more take up of sets, but I think the BBC will be having a wait-and-see. It's the right time for a good old pause," she said.
"I am not sure our job is to call the whole 3D race," she said.
Last year's Wimbledon finals were the first programmes to be shown in 3D by the BBC. This year, the broadcaster will show both the men's and ladies Wimbledon semi-finals and finals in 3D.
The free-to-air 3D Wimbledon coverage is only available to viewers with access to a 3D TV set and to the BBC's HD Red Button channel on certain platforms, but not Sky.
Last month, US sports network ESPN announced it was to close its 3D channel in the US due to a lack of uptake.
Recent figures from the US suggest no more than 120,000 people are watching 3D channels at any one time.

Je l' ovo bilo:

Grasshopper 325m Test | Single Camera (Hexacopter)

Dakle, kako pružiti taktilni fidbek osobi koja koristi motion controlled tehnologiju poput Kinecta? Dizni ima odgovor:

AIREAL: Interactive Tactile Experiences in Free Air

Počelo je!!!

Direct Brain-to-Brain Communication in Humans: A Pilot Study

Samsung je uspeo da u trci da se izbaci prvi smartwatch na tržište pobedi. Ali, sudeći po urnebesnoj recenziji na Arstehnici, pirova je to pobeda:

Death by incompatibility: A Samsung Galaxy Gear review

Quote
Samsung built a smartwatch but forgot to make it do stuff.

When a new article is posted on the Internet, the first addition to the comments section is often an inconsequential, one-word statement: "First!"
The frequent "First!" cry of the Internet troll declares some strange pride in being the first to comment on an article. The commenter put little to no effort into the post; it added nothing to the conversation, and it was completely devoid of substance. The troll did secure the spot at the top of the thread, though, and every additional commenter will be forced to scroll past the pointless contribution.
The Samsung Galaxy Gear says "First!" in hardware form. Samsung has beaten Google and Apple as the first major manufacturer to market, but much like the Internet commenter, it has sacrificed substance for the sake of timing. The Galaxy Gear is a product (with some impressive internals, no less) that has such limited use and such crippling compatibility requirements that it is currently the equivalent of hardware spam. While the Gear won't even come close to serving the needs of the vast majority of people, we're going to be talking about smartwatches a lot in the coming months, so if nothing else, the Gear provides a great starting point.

za nastavak kliknite gore na link...

30 Things You No Longer Need Because of Smartphones

Ja sam prilično ozloglašen po svojoj negativnoj predrasudi prema gesturalnim interfejsima i trodimenzionalnim displejima, ali od ovoga se čak i meni malo diže:

In thin air: Could touch display projected on mist replace physical screens?

Quote(CNN) -- If buttons are a thing of the past and touch screens are the present, what are the screens of the future?
It's not a riddle, but it is a trick question: if the projections of companies like Displair are true then the screens of the future won't be screens at all but interactive images floating in mid-air.
According to Russian designer Max Kamanin, creator of Displair, high-tech displays made from mist and air are "the next step in visual technology".
Tired with "electronic junk" such as TV sets and monitors, Kamanin wanted to invent something that would allow people to display and interact with information without cluttering the physical environment.


His solution? Projecting 3D images onto sheets of mist, giving the illusion of a hologram: "An airstream is created from tiny water drops, similar to the ones in the clouds. The water drops are so tiny they don't have any moisture in them; you can test it on paper or your glasses -- your piece of paper will remain dry and your glasses won't steam up. We can then see images that are projected onto these tiny water drops," he explains.
With the technology consisting of air, water and light Displair is one of the simpler concepts in the burgeoning holographic and 3D projection industry.
"I realised that everything already exists in nature and everything that people create comes from nature: we just need to watch it carefully and you will soon get your answers."
With Displair, users need not wear special glasses as with many other new screen systems because the image is being displayed onto an invisible screen; and that screen responds "intuitively" to hand movements -- 1500 of them -- many of which are similar to those used on our mobile devices, such as pinch-and-zoom.
Today the technology is being used in advertising by big companies such as Google, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, but Kamanin can see practical applications elsewhere, such as in medicine.
"A heart surgeon could see in the air a patient's heart and could blow it up and search for information immediately without having to wash his hands."
The screen-free display comes at a time when concerns are emerging over the hygiene of digital multi-touch displays: "By creating Displair we have developed a product which can be used as a public terminal for extracting necessary information such as timetables and restaurant menus," says Kamanin. "It means that in the future when bigger displays are created numerous people can use Displair at the same time, play games and search for information."
Projecting forward, Kamanin says that in the future he and his team hope to explore scent, to offer users a multi-sensory experience. For now though, he says the basic technology needs further refinement to improve the picture quality and interaction speed.

I sad ćemo, ko onaj ludi čamuga što je mahao na Mandelinoj sahrani, da idemo i mlataramo rukama i nogama i klimamo glavom i pri tom se još pravimo in i pametni 

Pa, to već radimo, sigurno si video kinect interfejse itd. Ali ovaj sa 3D projekcijom na oblaku sitnih kapljica nekako deluje baš dekadentno 

Ma ovo će da se proda na prvi udar, ali će, kao i sve igračke, da završi na tavanu.
Ljudi imaju tela koja isto to rade

A ona olovka što piše po vazduhu - ima da zagadi vazduh, neće moći da se diše od toga. Kladim se da će biti zabranjeno za upotrebu na javnim mestima.

Ma, da, već sam i ja gore izneo svoj načelni skepticizam spram ovakve tehnologije. Ali ovo čak i meni kao skeptiku deluje dovoljno startrekovski nrdi da me malo uzbudi.

Daklem, ja bih volo jedan startrekijski trajkoder za rođendan!
Ali, ovde se zaobilazi suština i prodaje se efekat umesto šta taj uređaj stvarno radi. Kad su nove tehnologije u pitanju, uvek se provo proda ono najnevažnije, time se otplaćuje skupa predproizvodnja. Treba sačekati dok cene padnu i videti da li to zaista treba.

Mislim da je osnovni problem, kod džepne kompjuterske produkcije, tastatura na kojoj može normalno da se radi, da se rasklopi i sklopi na džepnu veličinu, jer tač skrinovi jednostavno nisu dobri za tipkanje. Mi se oslanjamo na čulo dodira u mnogo čemu i ne može to da se zameni vizuelnim efektima.

Takođe, mislim da nije dobro rešenje da se mozak opterećuje dodatnim funkcijama kontrole raznolikih gedžeta bajpasovanjem telesnih (mišićnih i skeletnih) organa. Taj san o bestelesnom, misaonom kontrolisanju sveta je ipak samo san koji propagira bolesnu metamorfozu i degeneraciju.

Praktično sve što si napisao ja mogu da potpišem. Već sam na više meta na ovom forumu lamentirao nad novim interfejsima koji su inspirisani star trekom i majnoriti riportom i koji prodaju maglu umesto nečeg korisnog.

Ali ovo mi je za trenutak rastopilo ledeno srce jer je interesantan/ jeftin način za projekciju trodimenzionalne slike u prostor ispred korisnika a priče o haptičkom fidbeku deluju kao magija 

Mislim da je sa postojećim smartfonovima već sada moguće završiti neki rudimentarni lekarski pregled (rad srca, smetnje u disanju) ali nedostaje softver koji bi to omogućio. Uz malo hardverskog majstorisanja mogao bi se napraviti prilično dobar asistent za lekarske preglede. Već sada bi mogao da se napravi nekakav softver koji bi pratio promene na koži, i upozoravao na moguće karcinome kože. Sve što pacijent treba da uradi je da se jednom u pola godine uslika kamerom od glave do pete.

Evo zanimljivog teksta

http://business.time.com/2013/12/27/why-3d-printing-is-turning-out-to-be-risky/

Quote from: mac on 27-12-2013, 17:09:08
Mislim da je sa postojećim smartfonovima već sada moguće završiti neki rudimentarni lekarski pregled (rad srca, smetnje u disanju) ali nedostaje softver koji bi to omogućio. Uz malo hardverskog majstorisanja mogao bi se napraviti prilično dobar asistent za lekarske preglede. Već sada bi mogao da se napravi nekakav softver koji bi pratio promene na koži, i upozoravao na moguće karcinome kože. Sve što pacijent treba da uradi je da se jednom u pola godine uslika kamerom od glave do pete.

Meni se čini da smo već pričali o tome ovde, a ako nismo, evo jednog člankaiz LA Timesa koji govori o tome da kako je u Africi problem dostupnosti primarne zdravstvene zaštite prilično ozbiljan, apovi za spartfounove koji odrađuju neku laku dijagnostiku mogu da doprinesu boljoj zaštiti zdravlja:

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/06/health/la-he-health-apps-20121006


Naravno, kao čovek uzgajan na marksističkim vrednostima, ja sam užasnut idejom da se smatra prihvatljivim kako se posao koji treba da obavlja država jer ima obavezu prema svojim građanima, odrađuje nekako izokola kroz korporacije. No, opet, ja sam star čovek, nesklon promenama paradigme...

Quote from: Lord Kufer on 27-12-2013, 17:12:17
Evo zanimljivog teksta

http://business.time.com/2013/12/27/why-3d-printing-is-turning-out-to-be-risky/

Hm, koliko vidim, ovaj tekst govori pre svega o rizicima na strani investitora, odnosno da je rizik u tome da se uleti sa parama prerano (tj. da se upadne u babl i izgubi investicija) ili prekasno, kad su već dobre deonice otišle za razuman novac.

Ono što je jedna od premisa teksta - da je 3D printanje privlačno jer dramatično smanjuje cenu proizvodnje - je svakako filozofija čitave te industrije u ovom trenutku, ali za sada je to samo teza koja skoro ni u jednom slučaju nije realizovana. Kraće rečeno, za sada su skoro svi 3D-printed objekti skupljiji od industrijski proizvedenih ili u apsolutnom smislu ili u skrivenim troškovima. Dakle, definitivno još nismo stigli na vrh talasa.

3D printeri u suštini idu k realizaciji ideje replikatora. Tehnologija ide u tom pravcu bez sumnje, a politika će, opet bez sumnje, ići na to da monopolizuje. Tu su glavni rizici po mom skromnom mišljenju 

Pa, bez sumnje. Već vidimo debatu koja se tiče 3D printanja oružja...

Biće zabranjeno unošenje u avijone i bijoskope, crkve i molove, škole i metro 

Pa, mislim da je već zabranjeno unošenje na sva mesta gde su zabranjena i industrijski pravljena oružja. Debata je više na temu da li printanje pištolja kod kuće predstavlja ne samo opasnost po javni red i mir nego i po ljude koji printaju...

A u 2014. godini se očekuje da vidimo prvu 3D printanu jetru!!111!!! Ne za ugradnju u loveka, to ne bi moglo da dobije dozvolu, ali za testiranje u farmaceutskim testovima, recimo:
The first 3D printed organ -- a liver -- is expected in 2014

Uskoro, uskoro, svaki će moći da ima svoju Leeloo

Hi, hi, koja prevara! Naseli skoro svi srpski mediji a raskrinkana sa običnom gugl pretragom ...

http://blog.b92.net/text/23572/Milos-Stankovic-IZUMITELJ/

Autor bloga je naseo ali su onda komentatori objasnili stvar.

A šta bi sa OVIM likom?

http://sioux-law.20m.com/cgi-bin/i/images/svedok2.jpg

Evo malo promišljanja neoludizma od strane učenih ljudi:


If I Had a Hammer

Quote
MY favorite story in Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee's fascinating new book, "The Second Machine Age," is when the Dutch chess grandmaster Jan Hein Donner was asked how he'd prepare for a chess match against a computer, like I.B.M.'s Deep Blue. Donner replied: "I would bring a hammer."
Donner isn't alone in fantasizing that he'd like to smash some recent advances in software and automation — think self-driving cars, robotic factories and artificially intelligent reservationists — which are not only replacing blue-collar jobs at a faster rate, but now also white-collar skills, even grandmasters!
Something very, very big happened over the last decade. It is being felt in every job, factory and school. My own shorthand is that the world went from "connected to hyperconnected" and, as a result, average is over, because employers now have so much easier, cheaper access to above-average software, automation and cheap genius from abroad. Brynjolfsson and McAfee, both at M.I.T., offer a more detailed explanation: We are at the start of  the Second Machine Age.
The First Machine Age, they argue, was the Industrial Revolution that was born along with the steam engine in the late 1700s. This period was "all about power systems to augment human muscle," explained McAfee in an interview, "and each successive invention in that age delivered more and more power. But they all required humans to make decisions about them." Therefore, the inventions of this era actually made human control and labor "more valuable and important." Labor and machines were complementary.
In the Second Machine Age, though, argues Brynjolfsson, "we are beginning to automate a lot more cognitive tasks, a lot more of the control systems that determine what to use that power for. In many cases today artificially intelligent machines can make better decisions than humans." So humans and software-driven machines may increasingly be substitutes, not complements. What's making this possible, the authors argue, are three huge technological advances that just reached their tipping points, advances they describe as "exponential, digital and combinatorial."
To illustrate "exponential" they retell the story of the king who was so impressed with the man who invented chess that he offered him any reward. The inventor suggested rice to feed his family. He asked the king to simply place a grain of rice on the first square of a chessboard and then have each subsequent square receive twice as many grains as the previous. The emperor agreed until he realized that 63 instances of doubling yields a fantastically big number, even starting with one grain — like 18 quintillion grains of rice, once you finish the second half of the chess board.  Recent Comments     Anonymous 3 days ago  The combination of extended advances in technology and globalization have resulted in a tremendous shift of wealth and power from labor (i.e...
    robert forte 3 days ago  In the article you mention new technologies' ability to be very constructive or very destructive.   You give them equal billing.  That's a...
    Tammy 3 days ago  I think what's challenging in today's culture are the abstract ethics that were universal objective moral norms in social conduct.  If I...
   

   
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The authors compare this second half of the chessboard to Moore's Law about the relentless doubling of digital computing power about every two years. Unlike the steam engine, which was physical and doubled in performance every 70 years, computers "get better, faster than anything else, ever," says Brynjolfsson. Now that we're in the second half of the digital chessboard, you see cars that drive themselves in traffic, Jeopardy-champion supercomputers, flexible factory robots and pocket smartphones that are the equivalent of a supercomputer of just a generation ago.Now add the spread of the Internet to both people and things — soon everyone on the planet will have a smartphone, and every cash register, airplane engine, student iPad and thermostat will be broadcasting digital data via the Internet. All this data means we can instantly discover and analyze patterns, instantly replicate what is working on a global scale and instantly improve what isn't working — whether it is eye surgery techniques, teaching fractions or how best to operate a G.E. engine at 30,000 feet. Suddenly, the speed and slope of improvement, they argue, gets very fast and steep.
Combinatorial advances mean you can take Google Maps and combine them with a smartphone app like Waze, through which drivers automatically transmit traffic conditions on their routes by just carrying their phone in their car, and meld both into a GPS system that not only tells you what the best route is to your destination but what the best route now is because it also sees all the traffic everywhere. Instantly, you're the smartest driver in town.
Put all these advances together, say the authors, and you can see that our generation will have more power to improve (or destroy) the world than any before, relying on fewer people and more technology. But it also means that we need to rethink deeply our social contracts, because labor is so important to a person's identity and dignity and to societal stability. They suggest that we consider lowering taxes on human labor to make it cheaper relative to digital labor, that we reinvent education so more people can "race with machines" not against them, that we do much more to foster the entrepreneurship that invents new industries and jobs, and even consider guaranteeing every American a basic income. We've got a lot of rethinking to do, they argue, because we're not only in a recession-induced employment slump. We're in a technological hurricane reshaping the workplace — and it just keeps doubling.

Charting technology's new directions: A conversation with MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson

Quote
A leading expert explores the new relationship between man and machine and the challenges that emerge when innovation is decoupled from growth in jobs and incomes.





"We're finally getting at that seminal moment in human history when we can talk to our machines and our machines will understand us in regular, natural language," says Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Erik Brynjolfsson. In this video, he explores the role of big data in business performance, the rise of robotics, and the decoupling of the historical relationship between gains in productivity, incomes, and jobs. He is the coauthor, with MIT research scientist Andrew McAfee, of Race Against the Machine (Digital Frontier Press, October 2011). This interview was conducted by McKinsey Publishing's Rik Kirkland. What follows is an edited transcript of Brynjolfsson's remarks. 
  Interview transcript Technologies to watch  We see a slew of amazing innovations already in the pipeline. We've had a chance to look at some of them. A few of them are beginning to have significant effects now, and I think more of them will have even bigger effects in the next five or ten years. Obviously, big data has got to be at or near the top of that list.
Andy [Andrew McAfee] and I have done a lot of work on looking at how big data is changing companies. It's very striking to us how the companies that are measuring their operations more carefully, taking these very large volumes of data and creating more analytical types of management practices, are dramatically outperforming their competitors.
We've spent some time looking at different kinds of robotics. For instance, our friend Rodney Brooks has a company called Rethink Robotics. We play with a robot called Baxter, and it works for less than $4 an hour, and can do a lot of basic, routine manual tasks. And the big advances there were improvements in vision; sensory systems, more generally; touch; relatively fine motor control; and it can work more autonomously than other robots.
Another very striking example is the Google self-driving car. I had a thrilling experience riding down Route 101, and at first, it was kind of scary because you're just sitting there and there's no driver. But then, after a while, you kind of feel like, "Hey, this is kind of cool." And by the end of the ride, I think I was almost bored. It was like, "Hey, this is driving so smoothly and confidently, I almost feel more secure in this car." In fact, I did feel more secure in that car than I did riding with a typical Boston taxi driver.
Another big category is in using different kinds of artificial intelligence to answer questions. We had IBM's Watson supercomputer come and play our team of MIT students, and Watson completely kicked their butt playing Jeopardy! But, of course, they didn't build it just to win $75,000 at Jeopardy! They have it answering questions at call centers—a whole variety of unexpected questions. They have it doing medical diagnoses, legal recommendations, and financial- services recommendations.
And I can just see a plethora of opportunities there to answer all sorts of unstructured queries from very large data sets in a way that not just matches but exceeds human capabilities. And there are a lot of jobs that are going to be affected by that, and a lot of wealth that can be potentially created from that.
Man and machine  I think we're finally getting at that seminal moment in human history when we can talk to our machines and our machines will understand us in regular, natural language. It's a little clunky if you use Siri or some of the automated voice-response systems. At first, you're kind of amazed by a few things you can do, but you quickly run into the boundaries and it can be a little frustrating. But it's advancing very, very rapidly.
And to tie it back to one of the technologies I mentioned earlier, the big breakthrough has been linking it to big data. You now have hundreds of millions of people using that, talking to it and correcting it. It creates a closed-loop learning system where these voice systems (not just Siri but Google and the others) are learning much more rapidly than they could in the past. And just by crunching large amounts of data, they're able to improve language understanding in a way that we couldn't when we were sort of trying to hand code the semantics and syntax of language in the first era of language recognition.
So I could go on, but those alone would be enough to revolutionize my life, and I think everyone's life. But in terms of economic impact, some of the biggest impacts will be getting machines to do things that humans can't do, or that are very different. The old saw is that we didn't make machines fly by flapping their wings, and cars don't walk on their wheels. They use very different methods, and, as a result, can exceed our capabilities in dramatic ways. And then, of course, they're weaker in other ways.
That does leave these sort of interesting weak spots that they have, and the nice thing is that it means humans and machines are complementary. Machines aren't perfect or even very good substitutes for humans in some areas. But by working together, by racing with machines, we can do more than the machines by themselves or humans by themselves could do.
If you just look at simple games like chess, everyone knows now that the best chess player in the world is not a human. But what they may not know is that it's not a computer either. It's actually a team of humans and computers playing together that can beat the best computer playing chess or the best human playing chess.
And that's a good kind of microcosm of this idea of racing with machines. There are a number of companies trying to create new business models where they use technology to bring people together and solve problems that couldn't previously be solved.
Productivity paradox  Innovation has never been faster. And in fact, if you look at the underlying statistics, productivity growth is doing pretty well. Productivity levels are at an all-time high, and in the 2000s, productivity growth was faster than it was in the 1990s, which was a great decade.
On the other hand, you have the median worker doing worse. And the median household and the median worker in the United States have lower incomes today than in 1997. What's more, the employment-to-population ratio has fallen; it's almost like falling off a cliff. And similar things are visible in the OECD¹  statistics for nations around the world. And that is exactly the great paradox of our era.²
Now, the way that we came about to resolve that was to make a key observation, and that is that there is no economic law that says that technological progress needs to benefit everybody, or even that it needs to benefit a majority of people. It's entirely possible for technology to advance, to make the pie bigger, and yet for some people to get a smaller share of that pie.
And in essence, that's what's been happening, especially over the past 10 or 15 years. Historically, productivity and employment and median income have all grown together. And I recently wrote an article called "The Great Decoupling"³ where you see how these trends map each other all through the 20th century, and then they start separating in the late 1990s, in particular. So from that data, it does appear that we're in a new era, in the sense that these technologies are behaving differently.
In fairness, technology has always been creating jobs, and it has always been destroying jobs. Go back to 1800 when on the order of 90 percent of Americans worked on farms. Now it's less than 2 percent. Of course, all those people didn't just become unemployed. As technology automated threshing, those jobs were replaced by new jobs. Henry Ford helped create the auto industry. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and many others helped create the computer industry, and numerous other occupations rose up that we never could have thought of before. And so people moved from one area to another.
You'd like to see that happening again now. But the data show that it just isn't happening as fast. We're having the automation and the job destruction; we're not having the creation at the same pace. There's no guarantee that we'll be able to find these new jobs. It may be that machines are better than that.
That said, I'm not sure that's a bad thing, because ultimately the purpose of economic progress and technological progress is to be able to create more wealth with less work. I mean, isn't that what we want? More wealth with less work? So, if we are in a Star-Trek economy, where replicators create all the essentials that we need, that doesn't have to be a bad thing if we can have an economic system that matches to it and find a way that people can share in that benefit. And people can still continue to find meaning and value in life.
And we may, in the coming decades, be confronted with that question of how we create an economic system that adapts and changes as rapidly as our technological system has changed.
  About the authors  Erik Brynjolfsson is the Schussel Family Professor of Management at MIT's Sloan School of Management. This interview was conducted by McKinsey Publishing's Rik Kirkland.

Povezivanje svega živog na internet (i srazmerno malo pažnje posvećene bezbednosti) rezultira i time da danas spem može da vam stigne i - od frižidera:


Fridge sends spam emails as attack hits smart gadgets

Quote

A fridge has been discovered sending out spam after a web attack managed to compromise smart gadgets.
The fridge was one of more than 100,000 devices used to take part in the spam campaign.
Uncovered by security firm Proofpoint the attack compromised computers, home routers, media PCs and smart TV sets.
The attack is believed to be one of the first to exploit the lax security on devices that are part of the "internet of things".
Poor protection The spam attack took place between 23 December 2013 and 6 January this year, said Proofpoint in a statement. In total, it said, about 750,000 messages were sent as part of the junk mail campaign. The emails were routed through the compromised gadgets.
About 25% of the messages seen by Proofpoint researchers did not pass through laptops, desktops or smartphones, it said.
Instead, the malware managed to get itself installed on other smart devices such as kitchen appliances, the home media systems on which people store copied DVDs and web-connected televisions.
Many of these gadgets have computer processors onboard and act as a self-contained web server to handle communication and other sophisticated functions.
Investigation by Proofpoint into the internet addresses involved in the attack revealed the presence of the smart gadgets, said David Knight, general manager of Proofpoint's information security division.
"The results spoke for themselves when the addresses responded with explicit identification, including well-known, often graphically branded interfaces, file structures, and content," he told the BBC.
Mr Knight speculated that the malware that allowed spam to be sent from these devices was able to install itself because many of the gadgets were poorly configured or used default passwords that left them exposed.
He said attacks such as this would become much more routine as homes and furnishings got smarter and were put online.
"Many of these devices are poorly protected at best and consumers have virtually no way to detect or fix infections when they do occur," he added.

Giant leap for nuclear fusion as scientists get more energy out than fuel put in

QuoteResearchers in the US have overcome a key barrier to making nuclear fusion reactors a reality. In results published in Nature, scientists have shown that they can now produce more energy than the fuel put into an experiment. The use of fusion as a source of energy remains a long way off, but the latest development is an important step toward that goal.

Jedna trećina vlasnika nosivih kompjuterizovanih sprava ih napušta posle šest meseci. Ko se iznenadio?


Wearables: one-third of consumers abandoning devices

Quote
Hundreds of Galaxy Gear smartwatches are listed on eBay barely six months after launch. Why isn't the wearable tech market taking off?


The advert was blunt: a second-hand Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch for sale, priced at "£100 ONO". For a device which cost £299 in September, surely that's a bargain?
Yet after a week advertised on the intranet of an non-technical organisation with more than 10,000 staff, it was still unsold. "Nothing hangs around our noticeboard that long," one who saw the ad told me.

Separately, the same organisation had another Galaxy Gear for sale - priced at "any offer". That did sell (how can you argue with "any price"?) but together the adverts for a device that was barely six months old point to a problem some people are beginning to suspect about "wearables" - that if you don't get it just right, they're done.
That observation is strengthened by research from Endeavour Partners in the US, which found that one-third of American consumers who have owned a wearable product stopped using it within six months. What's more, while one in 10 American adults own some form of activity tracker, half of them no longer use it.
So what's the problem with smartwatches and fitness trackers? Are they just too early? Or is it something more fundamental?
The tale of the smartwatches is mixed. One was acquired when the owner bought a Galaxy Note 3 smartphones; the mobile network offered the Gear as a cheap add-on. But the buyer, having got it, decided it was ugly and sought to get rid of it.
The other came from someone who definitely wanted it, and used it - but was disappointed when it was superseded within months by the newer version, released by Samsung at Mobile World Congress. "Is that the old one?" the owner was asked by informed friends.
It's against stories like that that one must weigh figures like Samsung's claims of sales for the Galaxy Gear, and the figures from Kantar ComTech, which suggest that there are 426,000 smartwatches owned in Britain, of which 136,000 are Galaxy Gears. (I own and use a Pebble bought through its Kickstarter page; I've mostly been very pleased with it, with one exception.)
But some of those smartwatches, as the above examples suggest, probably aren't being used. A quick search on eBay for "Galaxy Gear" (excluding the words "protector" and "seal" which are used to sell add-ons) turns up nearly 900 results, of which this one, chosen at random, is typical: "I got it free with my Galaxy Note 3 and do not want this."
The story is the same as that found by CCS Insight, which last autumn found in a survey of more than 1,500 smartphone owners in the US and UK that 65% had heard of smartwatches, and more than 50% knew about fitness trackers; but of those who owned either, 40% had stopped using them because they got bored with the idea, or simply forgot to put it on.
Taken on their own, none of those is conclusive, or even concerning evidence for wearables boosters – except for the last one. But that is the one that really does hold the seeds of a very worrying trend for wearables companies, because the people who have bought fitness trackers and abandoned them should, in theory, be the most eager early adopters.Early abandonmentFor comparison, you wouldn't find people from the early days of the smartphone saying that they'd abandoned their BlackBerry, Treo or Windows Mobile or Symbian phone. They were the early adopters, and they found utility in having email and (sometimes) web pages on the move. The idea of giving them up just wouldn't occur to them.
But fitness trackers, which were meant to spearhead wearables use – because they provided something people would want. The "total addressable market" of gym users in the UK, for example, is substantial: 4.5 million adults have memberships, according to data from TGI; in the US, the figure is about 10 times higher. Those are substantial markets.
Yet the data from Endeavour Partners indicates that fitness trackers are no more sticky than new year's resolutions.
What does that presage for wearables? It may be that they are presently so primitive that it's no surprise that people give them up: they're too big, haven't discovered the killer app that we want out of them, and have battery life that is too limited.
In the early days of MP3 players such as the Diamond Rio, you could tell that they were transformative because the ones using solid-state storage weren't prone to skipping, unlike the CD Walkmans they were trying to disrupt. The trouble was that getting music on to those early players was a pain – you had very limited storage, and comparatively slow connections (USB 1.1, at 12 megabits per second; USB 2 didn't come into widespread use until about 2003).
So lots of those early MP3 players eventually ended up in drawers; but that didn't stop the sector becoming huge. We went from having to carry around CDs and a CD player (or a MiniDisc and player, or cassettes and player) to having the music integrated into the player. And then the player became integrated into other objects, such as our phones. Integrated lifeBut it was that integration - the way that the music became part of the music player, rather than being separate (and bulky) - which really showed off the promise of the early devices.
So far, there aren't clear signs of quite what it is that smartwatches and fitness trackers are replacing, in the way that those music players did. Useful new technology has to replace or simplify some function, ideally; otherwise it has the challenge of persuading us that we need this entirely new thing. Smartphones are simpler ways to collect your email – and also make phone calls and surf the web (and so on).
Fitness trackers... let you track your fitness. But given that 41% of people run with their smartphones, you might get by with a movement tracking app instead. The trouble with devices that claim to track your steps is they're so easily hoaxed by waving your arms around.
The Endeavour Partners study, and those for-sale adverts (both physical and on eBay) point to something still unsolved by this first tranche of wearable devices. They're just not that good at exciting us. The problems to be solved - usefulness, battery life, appearance - clearly haven't been. Nor has the real killer app appeared (although there seems to be increasing evidence that people find the notifications on smartwatches useful).
Perhaps the arrival of Android Wear will make a difference - and that the incorporation of Google Now, voice search, and the "cards" system that seems to be part of Android Wear will all add up to an experience that delights the second-generation wearables buyers. It remains to be seen, though. There's a gap between the obvious extra utility that digital music players - or early smartphones - offered, and the very thin reasoning being used to justify a computer on your wrist or waist.
Overall, something seems to be missing from the usefulness that we'd expected to feel. (And I say that as the owner of a smartwatch; I like the way that the Pebble lets me know when someone's calling even if I'm away from my phone and, until the software update, also showed me texts - but only texts, not emails or tweets or Facebook updates; my choice now is to have all or nothing of those, so I choose the latter).
It could be that wearables are poised for a tsunami of success. But those sales notices on the intranet, and those eBay listings, give reason to pause.

Nanodot-based smartphone battery that recharges in 30 seconds

QuoteToday at Microsoft's Think Next symposium in Tel Aviv, Israeli startup StoreDot has demonstrated the prototype of a nanodot-based smartphone battery it claims can fully charge in just under 30 seconds. With the company having plans for mass production, this technology could change the way we interact with portable electronics, and perhaps even help realize the dream of a fast-charging electric car.


As we all know only too well, recharging our portable electronics can take a painfully long time. This is because reversing the chemical reactions that caused the battery to deplete is a process that can hardly be rushed, for considerations of both safety and energy efficiency.
But now, a radically new battery design advanced by StoreDot could bring charge times down to the order of a few seconds. The company produces so-called nanodots, chemically synthesized bio-organic peptide molecules that, thanks to their small size, improve electrode capacitance and electrolyte performance. The end result is batteries that can be fully charged in seconds rather than hours.
'In essence, we have developed a new generation of electrodes with new materials – we call it MFE – Multi Function Electrode," StoreDot CEO Doron Myersdorf told Gizmag. "On one side it acts like a supercapacitor (with very fast charging), and on the other is like a lithium electrode (with slow discharge). The electrolyte is modified with our nanodots in order to make the multifunction electrode more effective."
The company says that unlike other nanodot and quantum-dot technologies that are heavy metal based, making them toxic, its nanodots are made from a vast range of bio-organic raw materials that are environmentally-friendly. These materials are also naturally abundant, and the nanodots employ a basic biological mechanism of self-assembly, making them cheap to manufacture.
Self-discharge characteristics are similar to those of lithium-ion cells and, for its first prototype, the company targeted the approximate capacity of a smartphone battery (around 2,000 mAh).
But Myersdorf told us that the technology could also be adapted to electric cars, by modifying the electrode so it could sustain higher currents (and, of course, configuring a large number of cells in parallel).
StoreDot is in the process of submitting patents for the technology, and mass production of the smartphone batteries is planned for late 2016.
The video below illustrates just how quickly the battery can be recharged.

StoreDot Flash-Battery Demo

Da li bi neko tehnički potkovaniji od mene mogao da mi objasni zašto vidimo ovo što vidimo? Naime ovo je video na kome američka ratna mornarica pokazuje prototip novog railguna, dakle "topa" koji ispaljuje balistički projektil brzinom od sedam Maha koristeći elektromagnetno polje za davanje ubrzanja tanetu. As in: nema hemijske propulzije. Zašto onda vidimo vatru i dim? Većina komentatora na JuTjubu i Slešdotu koji ovo objašnjavaju vele da se od toplote i pritiska koje generiše kretanje mase ovolikom brzinom u malom prostoru "zapali kiseonik", što baš ništa ne znači, a neki kažu da se to zapale sitni komadi metala koji se oslobađaju od trenja... Meni to nekako... ne deluje tako???


http://youtu.be/qJQfAcBs5vQ

Ali američka ratna mornarica radi i korisnije stvari, na primer ova demonstracija dobijanja goriva iz... morske vode? 

Scale Model WWII Craft Takes Flight With Fuel From the Sea Concept

QuoteNavy researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Materials Science and Technology Division, demonstrate proof-of-concept of novel NRL technologies developed for the recovery of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and hydrogen (H₂) from seawater and conversion to a liquid hydrocarbon fuel.

Fueled by a liquid hydrocarbon—a component of NRL's novel gas-to-liquid (GTL) process that uses CO₂ and H₂ as feedstock—the research team demonstrated sustained flight of a radio-controlled (RC) P-51 replica of the legendary Red Tail Squadron, powered by an off-the-shelf (OTS) and unmodified two-stroke internal combustion engine.
Using an innovative and proprietary NRL electrolytic cation exchange module (E-CEM), both dissolved and bound CO₂ are removed from seawater at 92 percent efficiency by re-equilibrating carbonate and bicarbonate to CO₂ and simultaneously producing H₂. The gases are then converted to liquid hydrocarbons by a metal catalyst in a reactor system.
"In close collaboration with the Office of Naval Research P38 Naval Reserve program, NRL has developed a game changing technology for extracting, simultaneously, CO₂ and H₂ from seawater," said Dr. Heather Willauer, NRL research chemist. "This is the first time technology of this nature has been demonstrated with the potential for transition, from the laboratory, to full-scale commercial implementation."
CO₂ in the air and in seawater is an abundant carbon resource, but the concentration in the ocean (100 milligrams per liter [mg/L]) is about 140 times greater than that in air, and 1/3 the concentration of CO₂ from a stack gas (296 mg/L). Two to three percent of the CO₂ in seawater is dissolved CO₂ gas in the form of carbonic acid, one percent is carbonate, and the remaining 96 to 97 percent is bound in bicarbonate.
NRL has made significant advances in the development of a gas-to-liquids (GTL) synthesis process to convert CO₂ and H₂ from seawater to a fuel-like fraction of C₉-C₁₆ molecules. In the first patented step, an iron-based catalyst has been developed that can achieve CO₂ conversion levels up to 60 percent and decrease unwanted methane production in favor of longer-chain unsaturated hydrocarbons (olefins). These value-added hydrocarbons from this process serve as building blocks for the production of industrial chemicals and designer fuels.


In the second step these olefins can be converted to compounds of a higher molecular using controlled polymerization. The resulting liquid contains hydrocarbon molecules in the carbon range, C₉-C₁₆, suitable for use a possible renewable replacement for petroleum based jet fuel.
The predicted cost of jet fuel using these technologies is in the range of $3-$6 per gallon, and with sufficient funding and partnerships, this approach could be commercially viable within the next seven to ten years. Pursuing remote land-based options would be the first step towards a future sea-based solution.
The minimum modular carbon capture and fuel synthesis unit is envisioned to be scaled-up by the addition individual E-CEM modules and reactor tubes to meet fuel demands.
NRL operates a lab-scale fixed-bed catalytic reactor system and the outputs of this prototype unit have confirmed the presence of the required C₉-C₁₆ molecules in the liquid. This lab-scale system is the first step towards transitioning the NRL technology into commercial modular reactor units that may be scaled-up by increasing the length and number of reactors.
The process efficiencies and the capability to simultaneously produce large quantities of H₂, and process the seawater without the need for additional chemicals or pollutants, has made these technologies far superior to previously developed and tested membrane and ion exchange technologies for recovery of CO₂ from seawater or air.

Creating Fuel from Seawater

How To Build A Smartphone Microscope Stand for $10

Obtaining a high quality microscope for your home or a classroom doesn't require a massive investment. For only $10, basic supplies from a hardware store can be turned into microscope stand for a smart phone capable of reaching up to 175x magnification. All that is required for this setup is a piece of plywood, some Plexiglass, the lens from a laser pointer, small LED light, and some nuts and bolts to hold it together.

By using a smartphone with the microscope, images and videos of the specimens can be taken easily. This is a great tool for getting up close and personal with everyday small objects like salt and pepper, but it can also be used to see plant cells easily.

http://www.iflscience.com/technology/how-build-smartphone-microscope-stand-10

Turn Your Smartphone Into a Digital Microscope!

Svi smo znali da je CD tehnologija kurac, a stiže i istorijska potvrda da je njihova degradacija realnost a ne urbani mit:


http://beta.slashdot.org/story/202019

Quote"Adrienne LaFrance reports at the Atlantic that if you've tried listening to any of the old CDs lately from your carefully assembled collection from the 1980's or 1990's you may have noticed that many of them won't play. 'While most of the studio-manufactured albums I bought still play, there's really no telling how much longer they will. My once-treasured CD collection — so carefully assembled over the course of about a decade beginning in 1994 — isn't just aging; it's dying. And so is yours.'

Fenella France, chief of preservation research and testing at the Library of Congress is trying to figure out how CDs age so that we can better understand how to save them. But it's a tricky business, in large part because manufacturers have changed their processes over the years and even CDs made by the same company in the same year and wrapped in identical packaging might have totally different lifespans. 'We're trying to predict, in terms of collections, which of the types of CDs are the discs most at risk,' says France. 'The problem is, different manufacturers have different formulations so it's quite complex in trying to figure out what exactly is happening because they've changed the formulation along the way and it's proprietary information.' There are all kinds of forces that accelerate CD aging in real time. Eventually, many discs show signs of edge rot, which happens as oxygen seeps through a disc's layers. Some CDs begin a deterioration process called bronzing, which is corrosion that worsens with exposure to various pollutants. The lasers in devices used to burn or even play a CD can also affect its longevity. 'The ubiquity of a once dominant media is again receding. Like most of the technology we leave behind, CDs are are being forgotten slowly,' concludes LaFrance. 'We stop using old formats little by little. They stop working. We stop replacing them. And, before long, they're gone.'" You can donate CDs to be tested for aging characteristics by emailing the Center for the Library's Analytical Science Samples. I haven't had much trouble ripping discs that were pressed in the 80s (and acquired from used CD stores with who knows how many previous owners), but I'm starting to get nervous about not having flac rips of most of my discs.

http://singularityhub.com/2014/05/16/neurogrid-a-circuit-board-modeled-on-the-human-brain/

QuoteNeuroGrid — A Circuit Board Modeled after the Human Brain Although the basic computer architecture we rely on was designed to handle math and logic problems, it's done a bang-up job of tackling everything from word processing and socializing to controlling the movements of artificial limbs. But as we demand increasingly human-like work from machines, pressure is mounting to rejigger and expand their basic architecture to better jibe with the brain's way of doing things.
If we ever want to be able to run a computer that simulates the hundred billion neurons at work in a human brain, though, each of its silicon chips will have to sip, not gulp, energy. And while computers will have to process information through pathways more organic and complex than the classic von Neumann architecture, they will have to keep up a demanding pace.
Eying those problems on the horizon, a team of Stanford University engineers led by Kwabena Boahen has developed a circuit board, and its underlying chips, that simulates the activity of a million neurons 9,000 times faster than a personal computer could and is 100,000 times more energy efficient. They reported the findings in a recent issue of IEEE.
The circuit board, called Neurogrid, consists of 16 custom-designed Neurocore chips. Each chip simulates 65,536 neurons. All told, the board can simulate 1 million neurons and billions of synaptic connections.
By way of comparison, the neural chips IBM uses consist of 256 digital neurons and a couple hundred thousand synaptic connections. Qualcomm has announced, but not yet launched, a neuromorphic chip.
"From a pure energy perspective, the brain is hard to match," Boahen said in a news release. With 80,000 times more neurons than Neurogrid, the brain uses just three times the power, according to the article.
"The computer can compensate for its lack of parallelism by executing instructions blazingly fast, but it pays a steep cost in energy and time to shuttle far-flung data through its central processing unit," Boahen and colleagues explain on the Neurogrid project website.
Here's how the system works, briefly: The neuromorphic chip is analog to capture the variety of ionic signals the neurons filter in the brain. It includes shared electronic circuits to maximize "synaptic" connections, which are represented by way of pairing a particular ersatz-neuron's address on the chip to a particular spot in the RAM. To maximize speed, the circuit board retains a tree rather than a mesh network.
While the chip would save money in energy use, it's not cheap. The prototype cost $40,000 to make. But Boahen said that adopting modern industrial manufacturing processes and producing in bulk would bring the price down to $400.
Neurocore isn't made for the garage user, anyway. Like most neural chips and networks, it's designed to model brain activity for researchers. To accommodate different research objectives, it can be programmed to act like different cortical layers.
But lower power usage isn't just a cost issue. It would free future human-acting robots from cumbersome power supplies and could eventually make it safe to implant computers in human patients.
Boahen plans to test the human-like capabilities of the chip by using it to power robotic limbs.
"It is important for us to show that the components of our system replicate their biological analogs. Otherwise, we will have a difficult time convincing others that our artificial brain is working like the human brain," the Neurogrid website concludes.

Izvori su užasni (Indipendent i Dejli Mejl), ali evo, naučnici napravili materijal koji je toliko taman da se skoro uopšte ne vidi - samo 0,035 posto vidljivog spektra se reflektuje sa njega. Plus provodi toplotu sedam i po puta brže nego bakar a jači je deset puta od čelika. Baciti pogled:



Blackest is the new black: Scientists develop a material so dark that you can't see it...

Scientists discover the new black: British researchers devise material so dark it looks like a black hole

A sad znamo šta da Skalopu kupimo za sledeći rođendan! Britanski naučnik koji se bavi, koliko shvatam, raketama, je svoje znanje iskoristio da dizajnira šerpu koja kuva hranu 40% brže nego druge, zahvaljujući poboljšanom transferu toplote:

                                                                        British rocket scientist says he's designed a better saucepan



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