A handheld game system designer recently celebrated the first units shipping by posting a text file on Gopher. If you’re old enough to understand that sentence, I hope your knees and back are doing OK. The Playdate console fits in a palm and has a small monochrome screen and retro-style arrow and A/B keys. It’s […]
Here’s an edit of an old computer tutorial video featuring a woman that just can’t stop saying ‘floppy diskette’ over and over again, along with a few variations such as ‘disk drive,’ ‘system disk,’ and ‘bootup disk.’ Boring video? Not really. It’s actually more entertaining than it sounds. [Milton Croissant]
A Google researcher says artificial general intelligence is inevitable and it’s now just a matter of scale. As often with the topic, it seems to come down to definitions. To put things simply, we already have plenty of examples of limited artificial intelligence with a computer or system performing a specific task (such as flying […]
From Fredrik Gran: The ‘robot cellist’, a non-human entity at the intersection of performer and instrument, consists of two industrial robotic arms playing a cello. …The robot cellist has developed individual playing style and techniques along with a reflexive compositional perspective. [Fredrik Gran]
A microprocessor powered by algae has now been running continuously for a year. Researchers at the University of Cambridge say the approach could help power Internet of Things devices. The system uses Synechocystis, a common blue-green algae, in a device around the size of a AA battery. It harvests solar energy through photosynthesis, creating an […]
Researchers say they have proof-of-concept of an approach that could dramatically speed up computer processing. As seems to be the case with 90 percent of technological advances these days, it involves graphene. The University of Rochester researchers were trying to find a faster way to use logic gates, the physical component in a processor that […]
Apple, Google and Microsoft have agreed a joint program to boost passwordless sign-ins. They’ll give greater support to the FIDO Alliance standard. The idea is to almost completely remove the need to use any passwords, sidestepping the trade-off between security and convenience. At the moment FIDO often requires users to type in a password the […]
Researchers at Cambridge University say the broadband bandwidth of copper phone lines could be significantly higher than is currently achieved. It could be a workaround for one of the big challenges in expanding high-speed internet provision. Ergin Dinc’s team were looking for solutions to the “last-mile problem” under which it’s financially efficient to build fiber […]
Fitbit devices will soon be able to tell users if they have an irregular heart rhythm. It’s designed more as an early warning than an emergency alert. The feature will initially only be available in the United States, where it has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Unlike previous attempts that relied on […]
Today marks the 40th anniversary of a truly important date in computing history: the release of the ZX Spectrum. The Spectrum was by no means the first home computer. It wasn’t the first home computer that came pre-assembled in an affordable package. It wasn’t the first home computer that allowed children to develop programming skills. […]