in a pattern devised by their computer. The different heights change the phase of the light bouncing off different parts of the cloak to mimic the phase it would have
says Boubacar Kante, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UCSD, who led the work, which appears in the latest issue of Progress in Electromagnetics Research.
This particular cloak exists only in computer simulation, though the team is working on building a physical version,
a dimension easily achievable by the photolithography processes used for making computer chips. But Kante points out that microwave cloaks could be useful for the military,
#Why Aren't Supercomputers Getting Faster Like They Used To? Currently, the world most powerful supercomputers can ramp up to more than a thousand trillion operations per second,
or a petaflop. But computing power is not growing as fast as it has in the past.
On Monday, the June 2015 listing of the Top 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world revealed the beginnings of a plateau in performance growth.
There are a number of technical aspects and economic factors that interfere with supercomputing improvements. Experts disagree on the cause,
but the result could be a slowing of the pace of improvement in some scientific fields.
Computing hardware development projections are based on Moore Law which predicts that the number of transistors on integrated circuits will double about every two years, causing an exponential growth in performance.
Supercomputer power is expected, for the most part to follow the same curve. In the past, that was exactly the case.
The rate of performance developmenthe change in aggregate number of petaflops between Top500 listsad doubled each year.
One reason, says IBM senior manager of Data Centric Systems, John Gunnels, is that the pace of Moore Law has slowed. f you can shrink these chips at the rate you were shrinking them before,
IBM researchers are trying to prop up Moore law using silicon-germanium transistor channels in effort to create a 7-nanometer chip within the next four years.
The cost of the electricity to power these behemoths has played also a role in slowing the speed of supercomputer development. an somebody make a computer that has higher performance?
Other laboratories could reach the performance of the number one supercomputer, Tianhe-2 if they want to pay US $390 million for the same technology,
Dongarra predicts that the China Tianhe-2 will remain at the top of the supercomputer pyramid for at least two more lists because of the lack of funding for new systems.
Though computer scientists in the United states say 2023 is a more feasible timeline to construct an exascale supercomputer
(and the U s. government is planning out an exascale supercomputer that would cost $200 million),
such as weather projection. he National Weather Service uses supercomputers to run physical models to predict what will happen in three to five days,
and faster computers will make those predictions better. r
#Diesel-Powered Fuel cell Produces Clean electricity Although several options to store hydrogen as a fuel for cars have been investigated,
asteroid mining firm Planetary Resources, aims to test critical electronic systems and software during its 90-day mission.
Prominent billionaire backers include Hollywood director James cameron and Google executives Larry page and Eric Schmidt. But the exact mineral wealth of the asteroids most easily accessible from Earth remains unknown.
and the others that we manufacture using 3-D printers. t
#Nanowires Boost Hydrogen Production from Sunlight Tenfold Using the energy of the sun to split water into hydrogen
#System Does occupied Wi-fi in TV Channels Internet providers have been hoping to get their hands on precious low frequency UHF channels unused by broadcast TV.
created the first device that allows Wireless internet in a UHF channel that is already occupied by a TV broadcast. nstead of all television or all wireless connection,
Such superpowers could allow Internet coverage in secluded areas that traditional terrestrial broadband cannot economically reach.
However, unused UHF channels, commonly referred to as TV white-spaces, are scarce. In big cities such as Houston, where the study was conducted,
In New york and Los angeles there are none. nstead of all television or all wireless connection how can we do both?
the professor of electrical and computer engineering who led the research. The Rice university engineers called their answer i-Fi in Active TV Channels or WATCH.
They had to gain approval from the U s. Federal Communications Commission to test it. The WATCH spectrum sharing system works on a feedback loop.
whenever a viewer is not watching a TV channel. The system consists of a special Wi-fi transmitter
and a receiver in a person home and requires a smart TV. The system could deliver 6 times as much data as white space schemes in use today Currently
TV towers occupy a whole channel no matter how many viewers are watching at a given time,
says one of the study researchers, Xu Zhang. ven though these channels are being occupied by TV broadcasters most people use cable, satellite,
or Internet to watch television, he says. hat means these TV broadcasters are wasting spectrum.
But under the WATCH system, a user TV viewing information is sent to a spectrum database by smartphone remote control and smart TV.
This database updates the WATCH receiver telling it that it can cancel out the TV broadcast
and use the channel to send data via the WATCH transmitter. If the viewer flips back to that channel
The system then would move its data stream to a different channel to keep from interfering with the user TV viewing experience.
so Wi-fi streaming doesn interfere with their TV signal, says Zhang. If a next door neighbor wants to watch the channel WATCH is using to stream Wi-fi,
then the system will locate and use channel that has no nearby viewers. The engineers found that their system could provide six times as much wireless data4 megabits per seconds TV white-space systems in use today
which only utilize unoccupied UHF channels. he system provides a step towards improved utilization of UHF frequency bands,
says Knightly. here are implications that this could allow Wireless internet access in difficult to reach places and underserved areas.
There is a much larger need for Internet connectivity than television in developing countries, says James Carlson,
founder and CEO of Carlson Wireless Technologies. eople would rather leapfrog technology that will soon be obsolete.
Carlson Wireless plans to deploy 3-G wireless service over TV white-space in Africa and parts of South and Southeast asia later this year
The device inventors suggest the laser could find use in video displays, solid-state lighting, and a laser-based version of Wi-fi. Although previous research has created red, blue, green and other lasers,
each of these lasers usually only emitted one color of light. Creating a monolithic structure capable of emitting red, green,
In addition, he says that white lasers could also lead to video displays with more vivid colors and higher contrast than conventional displays.
Li-Fi ould be 10 times faster than today Wi-fi, but"the Li-Fi currently under development is based on LEDS,"
may have just been given a boost that moves it from mere promise to likely future backbone of computing.
and make possible the continued trend towards ever more powerful computing. his is a discovery in the true sense,
#Google s Unified Privacy Policy Draws Threat Of $15m Fine In The netherlands The national data protection authority in The netherlands has warned Google that it could be fined up to $15 million
to comply with Dutch data protection law. Google January 2012 decision to combine the privacy policies of some 60 different products in order for it to be able to gather more intel on webs users for targeting ads quickly triggered a data protection review in October 2012
led The french data protection watchdog. That action was followed by individual investigations by multiple data protection watchdogs in Europe with six member states,
including The netherlands, launching probes into Google handling of personal data in April last year. The Dutch data protection authority, the CBP, has evidently run out of patience with Google.
In a statement earlier this week, the CBP said it requires Google to gain unambiguous consent from users to combine multiple privacy policies across its products specifying that this consent cannot be gained by a general agreement to a privacy policy
but must be done ia a clear permission screen Google must also clearly explain what personal data is being obtained by which of its services and for what purpose,
and this information must be clearly and consistently conveyed in its privacy policy, it said.
The CBP is concerned also that Youbube be labeled clearly as a Google service albeit the Dutch DPA notes that Google seems to have taken already action on this point.
Commenting in a statement, CBP president Jacob Kohnstamm said: oogle captures us in an invisible web of our personal information without telling us that
and without asking our permission. This has been running since 2012 and we hope that our patience will no longer be put to the test.
The CBP does add that Google has sent a letter to the six data protection authorities which launched reviews namely France, Germany, Italy, Spain,
The netherlands and the U k. noting that the letters include details of a arge number of measuresaimed at addressing European privacy legislation compliance.
However the CBP said it has determined not yet whether Google proposed measures would resolve its privacy violations.
Responding to the Dutch threat of a fine a Google spokesperson told Techcrunch via email:
ee disappointed with the Dutch data protection authority order, especially as we have made already a number of changes to our privacy policy in response to their concerns.
However, wee recently shared some proposals for further changes with the European privacy regulators group,
#Baidu Maker Of China s Largest Search engine Confirms Its Strategic Investment In Uber It s official:
Chinese Internet giant Baidu has confirmed that it is Uber s latest investor as Techcrunch reported last week.
Bloomberg previously reported that Baidu had taken the entire $600 million surplus that Uber built into its most recent funding round
however a source at Baidu told Techcrunch that this is untrue. If there is further capacity in the round
and Baidu is more significant than the investment because Baidu Maps will be able to integrate Uber This is similar to Google maps Uber integration after Google Ventures invested in the car-calling app.
Furthermore Baidu s mobile search app will be configured so that Uber is displayed prominently when users make travel-or venue-related queries.
This is a major boon for Uber because Baidu operates China s largest search engine and will help it compete against its rivals##Didi Dache and rival##Kuaidi Dache
which are backed by Baidu-competitors Tencent and Alibaba respectively. The Baidu investment comes just a few weeks after Uber announced that it had raised $1. 2 billion in funding at a $40 billion valuation with##a portion of the capital earmarked for expansion in the Asia-Pacific region.
The deal was struck at a#signing ceremony#at Baidu HQ in Beijing which Baidu chairman and CEO Robin Li and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick both attended.
The deal will also allow Uber to take advantage of Baidu s app distribution channels which include 91 Wireless
which it purchased for $1. 9 billion last year. This is important because Google Play isn t available in China
and 91 Wireless runs some of the largest alternative app stores in the country. Baidu claims it is currently China s largest mobile app distribution platform
and distributed an average of 160 million apps per day. The company s mobile search products currently have over 500 million monthly active users
while Baidu Map has over 240 million monthly active users which has allowed it to create heat maps of travel patterns by users similar to Uber s God View.
Baidu is also currently tackling an expansion into Latin america via Brazil which overlaps with Uber s global aspirations.
In a prepared statement Kalanick said#This collaboration marks a milestone for Uber. We re currently in 250 cities around the world and the Asia-Pacific region has been a key area of growth for us.
Our partnership with Baidu#a premier global brand#reflects our commitment to the region and the growing community of Uber riders and driver-partners here.#
#Uber is currently available in nine Chinese cities including Beijing Shanghai Tianjin Chongqing Shenzhen Guangzhou Wuhan Chengdu and Hangzhou.
For more information about how Baidu and Uber can work##together see our previous article t
#A Wave Crests: Silicon valley Postsecondary education And A Half-Trillion Dollars It easy to forget that these are early days for the Internet.
We still have different ideas on what it is or how it should work. The web is governed by an iterative improvement process that moves faster than any other invention in human history.
Ed tech is no exception. I like to direct your attention to an interesting phenomenon: since 2012, most ed-tech companies have rewritten quietly their product promise from unbridled learning for learning sake to a path to a job
or career goal website copy now essentially says obs, jobs, careers, jobs. That transition may be related to another 2012 development:
the rise of accelerated learning programs (ALPS), including General assembly and Dev Bootcamp. ALPS explicitly measure student employment outcomes,
including placement rate and average salary, and they work. The ALP phenomenon has helped influence this product pivot in the ed-tech sector.
When one of my students gets a job, I get a giant bear hug and the credit for getting them there,
MOOCS literally offered college classes on the internet. This seemed promising, and The New york times declared 2012 he year of the MOOC.
but how would they make money from the millions of users that they taught? Pushed by the same forces as the rest of us,
tart programming now, get hired in months alongside ALPS and other career education programs. Trend:
Hybrid Online/Offline Institutions Codecademy and Coursera are based two web ed-tech entrants that have created subsequently physical learning environments.
Earlier this year, Hack Reactor launched the online version of its immersive curriculum, Remote Beta, a web-based ALP.
and mix online and offline approaches. If you thought it was dramatic when taxis became tech companies,
As mobile devices become magic wands for marketplaces, matching supply and demand and making goods and services more accessible than ever before,
which allows the end user to quickly find somebody to ship their package anywhere in the world.
Shopify and ebay can use space to both warehouse their goods and then deliver them in urban areas.
most of which have been designed to help users create budgets, better understand their finances, and make positive decisions with their money.
Those apps were great for the small percentage of users who were interested already ultra in examining the minutiae of where their money was goingbut for those of us who don want to deal with the cognitive overhead
See, Digit wants to change the way users think about saving cash, by helping them to put money away without having to think about it at all.
Instead, Digit relies on an algorithm that determines how much it should move from one account to another,
Then, among other things, it takes into account a user regular salary or payment schedule
in that it doesn overburden the user with too much information or rely on them to change their behavior to benefit their financial interests.
In fact, its website is pretty bare bones, only showing a few details about a user Digit account:
How much money is currently in the account, how much has been saved over time, what the average transfer amount is,
the site also has a detailed list of each transfer over time that you can scroll through.
Rather than overwhelm users with information on the website, Digit primary mode of communication with users is via SMS. It sends users daily updates via text with different pieces of information each day.
Most days it provides users with the balance of their checking account, but occasionally also updates them on how much theye saved with Digit over the course of a week or a month.
Users can then request more information using a series of simple SMS commands. For example, type ecentand Digit will text back the last three transactions to be recorded by your checking account.
Type ithdrawand you can move money back from your Digit account to checking at any time.
And Now For The Haters There are a few caveats to the Digit service that potential users should know about.
Most importantly, users should know that the money that is transferred into your Digit avings accountisn really bearing any interest,
That will no doubt cause some skeptics to complain that any Digit user would be better off just putting aside the money themselves into their own savings account.
those users should be putting their money into stocks or bonds or basically anything with a better financial return than a sub-1%APY savings account.
000 for the users who have signed up, according to CEO Ethan Bloch. That comes out to about 5. 5 percent of usersmonthly income on average,
Also participating in the round are Freestyle Capital, Upside Partnership, Google Ventures, Operative Capital, Garry Tan, Alexis Ohanian, Aaron Harris, Rick Berry, Nate Bosshard, Eric
With their help, Digit hopes to make savings more seamless for a whole bunch of users a
Rather than relying on a combination of different banks and other payments processors for individual markets,
as well as local payment processors around the world. Its platform works in nearly 200 countries, allowing partners to get paid in virtually any currency and through a wide variety of payment methods.
through its platform payments can be accepted either online, via mobile devices, or even in store for businesses that have operations in multiple countries.
500 different merchants for its platform, including well-known tech companies like Facebook, Airbnb, Spotify, Evernote, and Groupon.
In addition to its payment network, Adyen has also been investing in offering a mobile point-of-sales system called Shuttle.
including those of e-commerce site Coupang; Yello Mobile; 4: 33 Creative Lab Game Studio; and food delivery app Baedal Minjok.
Now the city government hopes to get more people interested in its startup industry by sponsoring Global Hackathon Seoul,
and large corporations. eoul already has an incredible infrastructure (fastest Internet/mobile speed), highest smartphone penetration,
and you can even run the sound through an ios device to use software filters and effects.
or insider-y emails about films. That those things were stolen, however? Yes. Especially since former employees weren even being made aware of the situation.
and beef up its own servers and security infrastructure. Sony Tries Silencing Reporters Sony hack was made worse by its poor security infrastructure,
Theye pulled nude photos off celebrity phones and from rivatemessaging app Snapchat. Large companies like Adobe and ebay have seen emails and other personal account information stolen.
And whistleblowers like Snowden have revealed the most private and devastating aspects of government spying agendas.
its employees (and their families) in unencrypted Excel and Word files and carelessly shared emails.
News media has reported on a number of these leaked emails, which have included private jabs, jokes and commentary, including a director referring to Hollywood star Angelina jolie as a poiled brat,
Beyond providing fodder for gossip blogs, the Sony hack has revealed also serious information that arguably more serving of the ublic interest.
Like just how casual internal company HR employees treat email communication, for example. Email is not private;
as a former IT worker, I could have accessed any inbox on my domain (and often did,
though not for reading emails, but for legitimate reasons like backup, archiving, or transfer to a new hire).
But more importantly, employees dealing with sensitive information seem not to understand that email is not a place where an HR employee needs to be detailing a child medical treatment,
if youe choosing to record Social security numbers, birth dates and salaries in Excel spreadsheets, you should protect them with at least a minimum amount of security,
Another key item that was revealed by journalists reporting on the Sony leak was that of Hollywood war against Google,
which was code-named roject Goliathin email threads. As detailed by The Verge lawyers from the MPAA and half a dozen major studios refer to oliathas their biggest enemy in their battle with online piracy,
and the Sony emails discuss a variety of tactics to fight oliath, including site blocking,
legal action involving state attorneys general, political lobbying, and more. Things like this (below), make the issue surrounding the ethics of reporting on the hacked content more complicated.
, and Disney joined together to begin a new campaign against piracy on the web. A January 25th email lays out a series of legally
and technically ambitious new tools, including new measures that would block infringing sites from reaching customers of many major ISPS Documents reviewed by The Verge detail the beginning of a new plan to attack piracy after the federal
SOPA efforts failed by working with state attorneys general and major ISPS like Comcast to expand court power over the way data is served.
the result would fundamentally alter the open nature of the internet. Sony Emails Could Be Your Emails Sorkin
(and Sony) are fine to criticize reporterseditorial choices. But Sorkin, in a nutshell, is wrong to say that reporting on the leaks is pectacularly dishonorableas a whole.
hosting them on their own sites, copy and pasting emails in full, or revealing specific personal details like which employees had high medical bills,
or which child medical claims were being denied. The media has reported, however, that is the kind of information these documents contain.
Sony emails could be your emails. They could be your company emails. Those could be your kids.
If an organization of Sony size is susceptible to hacking, anyone is. In the aftermath, Sony has hired now Fireeye Inc. Mandiant forensics unit to clean up this massive cyber attack,
#Skype Translator Preview Going Live Today Skype has been talking about and demoing its new real-time translation software for Skype for a while now
but users will begin getting firsthand experience with the tool as of today. The Skype Translator preview program begins welcoming its first participants into the fold based on sign ups to the Translator preview page we told you about in early November.
The Skype Translator project offers on the fly-fly translation of both spoken and written languages for participants in Skype conversations making it possible for two people who speak completely different languages to communicate with virtually no barriers to understanding.
The preview program starts with support for English and Spanish spoken translation as well as over 40 languages for real-time text chat.
At launch tis also limited to users of Windows 8. 1 software (either desktop or mobile) so Microsoft is playing platform favorites with this early beta program.
They ve also already been testing it out with schools in the U s . and Mexico as you can see in the video above.
The tech behind the translation involves advanced machine learning which also means that it ll get smarter with time
and increased use; the more time it hears a word in conversation the better it ll become at translating it accurately.
The early tests look promising but everything we ve seen so far has been from Skype direct
and likely involved a lot of control. The classroom tests in the video above also involve mostly fairly rudimentary translation
301m Smartphones Sold In Q3 As Xiaomi Muscles Into The Top 5 At Samsung s Expense Smartphones now account for 66%of all mobile phones worldwide
But while Android appears to have onthe so-called platform war, the two-horse race between the leading smartphone vendors Samsung and Apple looks like it may finally be breaking up a bit,
powered by sales of handsets in emerging markets. Gartner today published its Q3 numbers for how mobile phones fared globally.
A total of 301 million smartphones sold up 20%on a year ago. Within that, Apple and Samsung combined smartphone share totalled 37%,down 7 percentage points from the same period a year ago.
Mobile phone sales overall were 456 million completely flat on Q3 2013. Within the smartphone space, China Xiaomi made its way into the top five for the first time with a sharp rise over a year ago,
while the world biggest OEM, Samsung, declined. Apple saw its share increase up to 38 million,
or 12.7%of the market on strong iphone 6 sales, a trend other analysts have been tracking as well,
while Huawei also saw a small gain to move up to the number-three spot (16 million devices,
5. 3%).That not to say that Samsung is not in the lead: it is, by some margin.
The Korean handset giant sold 73 million smartphones in Q3, giving it a 24.4%share of the market,
although that down by almost eight percentage points (and 7 million devices sold) on a year ago.
Overall, the company sold 94 million handsets (smart and low-end phones combined) for a 20%share of the market (down five percentage points on a year ago.
Xiaomi sales of 16 million smartphones for a 5. 2%share of the market is up nearly four percentage points over a year ago (it only sold 3. 6 million units in Q3 2013.
In short, it because sales in mature markets (where Samsung traditionally has been strong) are saturated now with smartphones,
Emerging markets, on the other hand, are seeing very sharp sales rises some of the highest ever in smartphone history
with sales of smartphones growing almost 50%year-over-year, the analysts write. This is also another reason why Chinese vendors,
who started selling low-cost Android-based handsets to these markets early, are doing so well.
In China, one of the most important markets for Samsung, its smartphone sales declined 28.6%.
and offer top specs Chinese brands are positioned well to expand in the premium phone market too
and address the needs of upgrade users that aspire to premium phones, but cannot afford Apple or Samsung high-end products,
Gartner director Roberta Cozza notes. he smartphone market is more than ever in flux as more players step up their game in this space.
As a point of contrast, Western European smartphone sales declined 5. 2%the third consecutive decline this year.
Among mature markets, the U s. saw the highest growth, seeing an 18.9%increase ostered by the launch of the iphones 6 and 6 Plus.
But put another way, neither of these two, big mature markets are keeping up with overall sales growth of smartphones
Gartner predicts that Apple momentum will continue unabated with its iggest ever fourth-quarter salesof both models of large-screen phones,
although there will be other key moves coming from Chinese handset makers. ver the holidays we expect record sales of the iphone 6 and iphone 6 Plus,
In Europe prepaid country markets and attractive lost-cost LTE phones will also offer key opportunities for these brands.
has essentially now been won by Android. Its share is now at 83.1%on sales of 250 million units.
while Windows, Blackberry and ther OS? s all continue their declines. In real terms, Windows sales were nearly flat over a year ago on 9 million units.
It very hard to think of how Microsoft will manage to turn this around, and you do have to wonder
when Windows phone-based devices grew quarter-on-quarter thanks to the introduction of more mid-range devices,
The big picture for feature phones is not unlike that of Microsoft legacy smartphone maker Blackberry:
Interestingly, Gartner doesn peg this drop to the ineluctable charm of smartphones, but rather says it because of the narrowing price difference between them and basic devices.
Smartphones are already 66%of the world total mobile market and by 2018 Gartner predicts that proportion will be 90
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