Quantum Computing Just Grew Way the Hell Up

“On Wednesday, researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland unveiled a first-of-its-kind fully programmable and reconfigurable quantum computer. The five-qubit machine, which is described in the journal Nature, represents a dramatic step toward general-purpose quantum computing—and, with it, an upending of what we can even consider to be computable.”

Source: Quantum Computing Just Grew Way the Hell Up

Do Neutrinos Explain Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry? | Quanta Magazine

The long-standing puzzle to be solved is why we and everything we see is matter-made. More to the point, why does anything — matter or antimatter — exist at all? The reigning laws of particle physics, known as the Standard Model, treat matter and antimatter nearly equivalently, respecting (with one known exception) so-called charge-parity, or “CP,” symmetry: For every particle decay that produces, say, a negatively charged electron, the mirror-image decay yielding a positively charged antielectron occurs at

Source: Do Neutrinos Explain Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry? | Quanta Magazine

White Dwarf Lashes Red Dwarf with Mystery Ray | ESO

In a unique twist, this binary star system is exhibiting some brutal behaviour. Highly magnetic and spinning rapidly, AR Sco’s white dwarf accelerates electrons up to almost the speed of light. As these high energy particles whip through space, they release radiation in a lighthouse-like beam which lashes across the face of the cool red dwarf star, causing the entire system to brighten and fade dramatically every 1.97 minutes. These powerful pulses include radiation at radio frequencies, which has never been detected before from a white dwarf system.

Source: White Dwarf Lashes Red Dwarf with Mystery Ray | ESO

Space Radiation Devastated the Lives of Apollo Astronauts | Observer

“During such interplanetary travel, astronauts will be exposed to multiple sources of ionizing radiation, including galactic cosmic rays, solar particle events, and trapped radiation in the Van Allen belts,” claims the paper. For this reason, humans are going to need serious protection to not only survive the long journey to Mars but to also become a fully space-faring civilization that continues to extend our reach into the solar system.

Source: Space Radiation Devastated the Lives of Apollo Astronauts | Observer

Fending Off The Tyranny of Tools – IEEE Spectrum

When used with awareness and attention, our tools foster embodied cognition—they become extensions of our bodies or our minds. But if we stop paying attention, those tools can come to dominate our lives and we become “functional cyborgs,” or fyborgs, to use Alexander Chislenko’s evocative blend. We necessarily extend ourselves technologically with eyeglasses or canes or hearing aids, but we frequently go far beyond that to use our latest tools—particularly smartphones and similar devices—to mediate all or most of our experiences.

Source: Fending Off The Tyranny of Tools – IEEE Spectrum

Be Prepared: We’re Entering A Post-Device Era

“[…] the future of computing seems to be about a set of platform and device-independent services. Specifically, voice-based interactions, driven by large installations of cloud-based servers running deep learning-based algorithms are what’s hot these days. This kind of computing model doesn’t necessarily need the kind of local horsepower that traditional computing devices have had. Indeed, these types of services can be accessed by the simplest of devices, with little more than an audio input, an audio output, and a wireless connection.”

Source: Be Prepared: We’re Entering A Post-Device Era

Power to the People: How One Unknown Group of Researchers Holds the Key to Using AI to Solve Real… — Medium

What’s needed for AI’s wide adoption is an understanding of how to build interfaces that put the power of these systems in the hands of their human users. What’s needed is a new hybrid design discipline, one whose practitioners understand AI systems well enough to know what affordances they offer for interaction and understand humans well enough to know how they might use, misuse, and abuse these affordances.

Source: Power to the People: How One Unknown Group of Researchers Holds the Key to Using AI to Solve Real… — Medium

The limited value of a computer science education – thoughts from the red planet – thoughts from the red planet

Overall I have mixed feelings about the value of a computer science education, mostly because of the personal benefit I have gotten from mine. For most cases though, I think it is severely overvalued. It’s very strange to observe an industry with major talent shortages, and then to know perfectly good self-taught programmers get prematurely rejected in interviews because they don’t have a computer science background. I hope to see the industry improve in this respect, but in the meantime I’m happy to exploit this imbalance as a competitive advantage.

Source: The limited value of a computer science education – thoughts from the red planet – thoughts from the red planet

The War on Stupid People

I just read this great article in the Atlantic.

80 MILLION Americans have an IQ of 90 or below. What is your first gut reaction about those people when you hear that?

Throughout human history, the most valuable substance on Earth has been… the human brain. Even the dimmest of humans can be taught to do tasks that we still have trouble getting machines to do.

But that is changing rapidly. And just like jobs that require “muscle” (agriculture, manufacturing) have mostly disappeared, jobs that require structured thought (finance, law) are starting to disappear as well.

So that piece of wetware in your skull is going to be scrutinized further and further, as its economic value plummets and your worth as a cog in the GDP falls with it.

Source: The War on Stupid People

What is a “particle”?

Excellent article on a question I’ve had for a long time.

“In the broadest sense, ‘particles’ are physical things that we can count,” says Greg Gbur, a science writer and physicist at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte. You can’t have half a quark or one-third of an electron. And all particles of a given type are precisely identical to each other: they don’t come in various colors or have little license plates that distinguish them. Any two electrons will produce the same result in a detector, and that’s what makes them fundamental: They don’t come in a variety pack.

Source: What is a “particle”?