AI

The World's Fastest Supercomputer Breaks an AI Record (wired.com) 66

Posted by msmash from the pushing-the-limits dept.
Along America's west coast, the world's most valuable companies are racing to make artificial intelligence smarter. Google and Facebook have boasted of experiments using billions of photos and thousands of high-powered processors. But late last year, a project in eastern Tennessee quietly exceeded the scale of any corporate AI lab. It was run by the US government. From a report: The record-setting project involved the world's most powerful supercomputer, Summit, at Oak Ridge National Lab. The machine captured that crown in June last year, reclaiming the title for the US after five years of China topping the list. As part of a climate research project, the giant computer booted up a machine-learning experiment that ran faster than any before. Summit, which occupies an area equivalent to two tennis courts, used more than 27,000 powerful graphics processors in the project. It tapped their power to train deep-learning algorithms, the technology driving AI's frontier, chewing through the exercise at a rate of a billion billion operations per second, a pace known in supercomputing circles as an exaflop.

"Deep learning has never been scaled to such levels of performance before," says Prabhat, who leads a research group at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. His group collaborated with researchers at Summit's home base, Oak Ridge National Lab. Fittingly, the world's most powerful computer's AI workout was focused on one of the world's largest problems: climate change. Tech companies train algorithms to recognize faces or road signs; the government scientists trained theirs to detect weather patterns like cyclones in the copious output from climate simulations that spool out a century's worth of three-hour forecasts for Earth's atmosphere.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Hey, is that a new galaxy? - Cosmos (cosmosmagazine.com)

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  1. Hey, is that a new galaxy?Cosmos
  2. Astronomers make an accidental discovery: The tiny dwarf galaxy Bedin 1Digital Trends
  3. See the Whirlpool Galaxy Through the Eyes of the NASA's 'Great Observatories'Space.com
  4. NASA's Hubble Telescope stumbles upon a dwarf galaxy 30 million light years awayFirstpost
  5. NASA's Hubble finds a dwarf galaxy in our cosmic neighborhoodTimes Now
  6. View full coverage on Google News

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Rover Curiosity finds Mars rocks more porous than thought - THE WEEK (theweek.in)

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  1. Rover Curiosity finds Mars rocks more porous than thoughtTHE WEEK
  2. Space Photos of the Week: Look, Ma, No Selfie Stick!WIRED
  3. Check Out The Curiosity Rover’s Brand New Selfie - From MarsGentside UK
  4. Curiosity makes unexpected discovery on Mars, NASA says planet is 'uncanny valley of Earth'India Today
  5. How Nasa's Curiosity rover weighed a mountain on MarsTODAYonline
  6. View full coverage on Google News

Comment Re:It is time to by pass the ISP's (Score 2) 203

by dryeo (#58064724) Attached to: FCC Struggles To Convince Judge That Broadband Isn't 'Telecommunications'

I'm on a LTE connection, a type of wireless. I get about 75 ms to a location 50 miles away. It's hard to imagine how it'll do a third of that when traveling hundreds of miles and still having to convert the signal at the endpoints.
>speedtest-cli
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Telus Communications (209.52.xxx.xxx)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Tech Futures Interactive Inc. (Burnaby, BC) [20.74 km]: 77.833 ms
Education

Rich Kids Are Cheating in School With Apple Watches (theoutline.com) 252

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: There is, however, one demographic that has embraced the Apple Watch with open arms: tech-savvy, upper middle-class teens and tweens. The watch is a convenient workaround for classroom cell-phone bans; it can be used for everything from texting to cheating on tests. [...] Julia Rubin, a former middle-school teacher at a private school in New York City, said that when the Apple Watch first came out in 2014, a handful of students got them as presents for the holidays.

When Rubin asked her school's principal to ban the watches the same way the school banned cell phones, she refused. In addition to kids texting during class, there is growing concern that smart watches could be used to help kids cheat during exams. In fact, there is a wealth of YouTube videos showing teens how to do precisely that, usually with the disclaimer that they are only sharing this information "for entertainment purposes."

[...] Nikias Molina, 20, is a Spanish vlogger who runs the YouTube channel Apple World. A slender, dark-haired kid with braces and a slight European accent, Molina posted a 2018 video showing subscribers how to use various apps on the Apple Watch to cheat on exams. As he demonstrates in the video and explained to me, there are apps you can download onto the Apple Watch to save PDFs, but the most common method is to take a photo of a cheat sheet and pull it up on the Apple Watch, which doesn't require internet accessibility. The response to the video was mixed -- "students were thanking me [in the comments], and teachers were hating on me" -- but the video racked up more than 115,000 views.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Oh dear! Amazon's facial recognition is racist and sexist – and there's a JLaw deep fake that will make you want to tear out your eyes - The Register (theregister.co.uk)

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  1. Oh dear! Amazon's facial recognition is racist and sexist – and there's a JLaw deep fake that will make you want to tear out your eyesThe Register
  2. Microsoft: Cruel to stop government using facial recognitionBusiness Insider
  3. Google Says It Wants Rules for the Use of AI–Kinda, SortaWIRED
  4. Denying govt agencies facial recognition tech would be ‘cruel’, claims Microsoft presidentRT
  5. Amazon face match mishmash | The MercuryIOL
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Feed Google News Sci Tech: Microsoft: Cruel to stop government using facial recognition - Business Insider (businessinsider.com)

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  1. Microsoft: Cruel to stop government using facial recognitionBusiness Insider
  2. Google Says It Wants Rules for the Use of AI–Kinda, SortaWIRED
  3. Denying govt agencies facial recognition tech would be ‘cruel’, claims Microsoft presidentRT
  4. Amazon face match mishmash | The MercuryIOL
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Communications

FCC Struggles To Convince Judge That Broadband Isn't 'Telecommunications' (arstechnica.com) 203

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
A Federal Communications Commission lawyer faced a skeptical panel of judges on Friday as the FCC defended its repeal of net neutrality rules and deregulation of the broadband industry. From a report: FCC General Counsel Thomas Johnson struggled to explain why broadband shouldn't be considered a telecommunications service, and struggled to explain the FCC's failure to protect public safety agencies from Internet providers blocking or slowing down content. Oral arguments were held on Friday in the case, which is being decided by a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Throttling of firefighters' data plans played a major role in today's oral arguments.

Of the three judges, Circuit Judge Patricia Millett expressed the most skepticism of Johnson's arguments, repeatedly challenging the FCC's definition of broadband and its disregard for arguments made by public safety agencies. She also questioned the FCC's claim that the net neutrality rules harmed broadband investment. Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins also expressed some skepticism of FCC arguments, while Senior Circuit Judge Stephen Williams seemed more amenable to FCC arguments.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Virginia Tech holds N.C. State to 24 points - Roanoke Times (roanoke.com)

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  1. Virginia Tech holds N.C. State to 24 pointsRoanoke Times
  2. No. 23 NC State Wolfpack scores just 24 points in loss to No. 12 Virginia Tech HokiesESPN
  3. NC State's 24-Point Performance Against Virginia Tech Made Me Want To VomitDeadspin
  4. 'It still doesn't seem real': No. 12 Hokies turn in historic defensive performance in win over No. 23 WolfpackRichmond.com
  5. NC State’s 24-point performance made all sorts of hilarious historySB Nation
  6. View full coverage on Google News

Comment Re: C# Killed Java (Score 1) 519

by Z00L00K (#58062964) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How Dead Is Java?

Just be aware that embarcadero is more or less just a holding company for old tech like Delphi, a lot of the competence has left the building so some bugs that exists aren't going to be fixed.

My source can't unfortunately be revealed, but I wouldn't be surprised if their products dies in a few years.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Apple apologizes for privacy-invading FaceTime bug, promises delayed software update - BetaNews (betanews.com)

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  1. Apple apologizes for privacy-invading FaceTime bug, promises delayed software updateBetaNews
  2. Apple Delays FaceTime Update After Eavesdropping Bug FiascoHuffPost
  3. Apple Loop: The End of Apple, Massive iOS Security Problems, Stunning AirPods 2 RevealedForbes
  4. Apple says a fix for the Group FaceTime bug will be rolled out next weekTechRadar
  5. 14-year-old's FaceTime bug discovery could rattle AppleYahoo! Finance News
  6. View full coverage on Google News

Comment Re: What? (Score 2) 519

by magzteel (#58062760) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How Dead Is Java?

Python isn't dead, but it was gravely wounded by the Python 2/3 debacle. (Python 3 is backward incompatible with Python 2, without actually fixing any of the big problems with Python 2.).

A lot of people still use Python because of the huge library ecosystem. However not many new projects are being started in Python today. The quality of the community has also dropped precipitously as good developers jumped ship and the code monkeys piled in.

Golang, otoh, is alive and doing very well. Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Etcd, and Prometheus are a few of the high profile FOSS projects written in Go. Many talented folks who jumped ship from Python are now Gophers.

Open source and enterprise aren't the same thing. An open source project can choose to use whatever flavor of the month they like. An enterprise will have a strong bias towards using tech they have established depth in. Adopting a new language becomes a long term support commitment that has to make business sense.

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