Lifeboat Foundation

After the introduction of the fifth-generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks (5G), engineers worldwide are now working on systems that could further speed up communications. The next-generation wireless communication networks, from 6G onward, will require technologies that enable communications at sub-terahertz and terahertz frequency bands (i.e., from 100GHz to 10THz).

While several systems have been proposed for enabling communication at these frequency bands specifically for personal use and local area networks, some applications would benefit from longer communication distances. So far, generating high-power ultrabroadband signals that contain information and can travel long distances has been challenging.

Researchers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Northeastern University and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) have recently developed a system that could enable multi-gigabit-per-second (Gbps) communications in the sub-terahertz frequency band over several kilometers. This system, presented in a paper in Nature Electronics, utilizes on-chip power-combining frequency multiplier designs based on Schottky diodes, semiconducting diodes formed by the junction of a semiconductor and a metal, developed at NASA JPL.

Search is possibly one of the main technological advances of the Internet era that did not change much over the past 20 years. Now, we are in for another disruption. The real battle for dominance in AI is on. Can Google maintain its monopoly?

The success that ChatGPT has had, at least in generating public interest, has had the inevitable consequence of prompting some writers to question its credentials and generally pour tepid if not actually cold water over what it can do. The latest of these is Will Knight writing in the January 13, 2023 edition of Wired. “ChatGPT Has Investors Drooling – but Can It Bring Home the Bacon?”.

In that article he makes two observations that merit closer attention, one of which I think has merit and the other of which I think harks back to a Dreyfus-like What Computers Still Can’t Do mentality. And both can be seen as examples of Schadenfreude.

Right at the end of the article Wright makes a legitimate point that he has gleaned from Phil Libin who was the CEO of the note-taking app Evernote from 2007–2015. Wright, summarising some of the downsides Libin anticipates, says One is that ChatGPT and other generative AI models are currently created by scraping content made by humans from the web, but are increasingly contributing to the text and images found online. All of these models are about to shit all over their own training data, he [Libin] says. ‘We’re about to be flooded with a tsunami of bullshit.’

The team recreated a turbulent magnetic reconnection, suggested to be a trigger of solar flares.

On January 10, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded a massive X-class solar flare. The blast hurled debris into space, and radiation from the flare triggered radio blackouts across the South Pacific. The solar outburst was the third X-class — the most powerful — flare in less than a week.

These intense bursts of radiation from the release of magnetic energy associated with sunspots can be dangerous — in February 2022, SpaceX lost 40 of its newly launched Starlink communications satellites due to a geomagnetic storm triggered by a solar flare.

SpaceX signed a new agreement with the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to prevent Starlink satellites from interfering with astronomy.

SpaceX has long been criticized by astronomers for the brightness of its Starlink satellites. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, said in 2019 that SpaceX would ensure that Starlink has no material effect on discoveries in astronomy. “We care a great deal about science,” he said in a tweet.

Exactly, potentially helping billions of economically disadvantaged people is the greater good. That said, we’ll make sure Starlink has no material effect on discoveries in astronomy. We care a great deal about science.

Natbot is a Python program that enables GPT-3 to browse the web to perform a specified objective. It works by supplying GPT-3 descriptions of what is shown on the page, such as links and buttons, and then telling GPT-3 to perform an…

The suit claims generative AI art tools violate copyright law by scraping artists’ work from the web without their consent.

A trio of artists have launched a lawsuit against Stability AI and Midjourney, creators of AI art generators Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, and artist portfolio platform DeviantArt, which recently created its own AI art generator, DreamUp.

The artists — Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz — allege that these organizations have infringed the rights of “millions of artists” by training their AI tools on five billion images scraped from the web “with­out the con­sent of the orig­i­nal artists.”

Continue reading “AI art tools Stable Diffusion and Midjourney targeted with copyright lawsuit” »

Geert Lovink is a Dutch media theorist, internet critic, and author of Dark Fiber (2002), My First Recession (2003), Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012), Social Media Abyss (2016), Sad by Design (2019), Stuck on the Platform (2022) and Extinction Internet (2022). In 2004 he founded the Institute of Network Cultures at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. From 2004–2012 he was associate professor in the new media program of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. In 2005–2006 he was a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin. From 2007–2017 he was Professor of Media Theory at the European Graduate School. In December 2021 Geert Lovink was appointed Professor of Art and Network Cultures at the Art History Department, Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam.

In this interview, we talked with Geert Lovink about his latest essay Extinction Internet, Mark Fisher’s hauntology, the memory of Bernard Stiegler, the XR movement, and the phantoms of accelerationism.

Alessandro Sbordoni: Today, platform realism makes us feel like another internet is no longer possible. In your essay, Extinction Internet, you argue that the internet is ending and that it is time for theorists, artists, activists, designers, and developers to imagine what is after the end of the internet as we know it. What can we do as internet users?

A “Nightly News” segment from 1993 captures the early stages of how people were using the Internet.
» Subscribe to NBC News: http://nbcnews.to/SubscribeToNBC
» Watch more NBC video: http://bit.ly/MoreNBCNews.

NBC News is a leading source of global news and information. Here you will find clips from NBC Nightly News, Meet The Press, and our original series Debunker, Flashback, Nerdwatch, and Show Me. Subscribe to our channel for news stories, technology, politics, health, entertainment, science, business, and exclusive NBC investigations.

Continue reading “What The Internet Looked Like In The 1990s | Flashback | NBC News” »