Over the past two months, GM has entered into a $500 million alliance with ride-sharing company Lyft; formed Maven — its personal mobility brand for car-sharing fleets in many U.S. cities — and established a separate unit for autonomous vehicle development.

“This acquisition announcement clearly shows that GM is serious about developing the technology and controlling its own path to self-driving and driverless vehicles,” said Egil Juliussen, research director for IHS Automotive.

While GM did not disclose the financial details of the Cruise acquisition, reports estimated the purchase to be in the $1 billion range.

Founded in 2013, Cruise sells an aftermarket product that is positioned as a highway autopilot, according to IHS Automotive.

Vehicles using Cruise’s software cannot automatically changes lanes, but the technology does work at low speed and highway speed, meaning it’s classified between Level 2 and Level 3 in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s levels of autonomous driving.

The NHTSA’s Level 3 includes limited self-driving automation and allows a driver to cede full control of all safety-critical functions under certain traffic or environmental conditions; Level 4 indicates a fully autonomous vehicle.

Cruise’s software was initially offered by Audi in its A4 and S4 vehicles as a $10,000 option that required installation work by Cruise. The product consisted of a sensor unit on top of the car and a computer in the trunk.

GM’s purchase of Cruise is likely to spur other carmakers “to react and determine what their strategy should be,” Juliussen said.

Other carmakers are likely to seek to become partners with Google and license Google’s self-driving and driverless software technology. Multiple manufacturers are likely to opt for a Google partnership, IHS said.

Source- http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/gm-announces-acquisition-of-cruise-automation.html

The architecture they have devised ought to be relatively easy to scale, and could therefore form the basis of workable quantum computers in the future – with a bit of “engineering effort” and “an enormous amount of money”, according to Isaac Chuang, professor of physics, electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.

Chuang’s team has put together a prototype comprising the first five quantum bits (or qubits) of a quantum computer. This is being tested on mathematical factoring problems, which could have implications for applications that use factoring as the basis for encryption to keep information, including credit card details, secure.

The proof-of-concept has been applied only to the number 15, but the researchers claim that this is the “first scalable implementation” of quantum computing to solve Shor’s algorithm, a quantum algorithm that can quickly calculate the prime factors of large numbers.

“The team was able to keep the quantum system stable by holding the atoms in an ion trap, where they removed an electron from each atom, thereby charging it. They then held each atom in place with an electric field,” explained MIT.

Chuang added: “That way, we know exactly where that atom is in space. Then we do that with another atom, a few microns away – [a distance] about 100th the width of a human hair.

“By having a number of these atoms together, they can still interact with each other because they’re charged. That interaction lets us perform logic gates, which allow us to realise the primitives of the Shor factoring algorithm. The gates we perform can work on any of these kinds of atoms, no matter how large we make the system.”

Chuang is a pioneer in the field of quantum computing. He designed a quantum computer in 2001 based on one molecule that could be held in ‘superposition’ and manipulated with nuclear magnetic resonance to factor the number 15.

The results represented the first experimental realisation of Shor’s algorithm. But the system wasn’t scalable as it became more difficult to control as more atoms were added.

However, the architecture that Chuang and his team have put together is, he believes, highly scalable and will enable the team to build quantum computing devices capable of solving much bigger mathematical factors.

“It might still cost an enormous amount of money to build, [and] you won’t be building a quantum computer and putting it on your desktop anytime soon, but now it’s much more an engineering effort and not a basic physics question,” said Chuang.

In other quantum computing news this week, the UK government has promised £200m to support engineering and physical sciences PhD students and fuel UK research into quantum technologies, although most of the cash will be spent on Doctoral Training Partnerships rather than trying to build workable quantum computing prototypes.

Courtesy-TheInq

That’s according to U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) officials, who run the national labs. A new program aims to connect manufacturers with supercomputers and the expertise to use them.

This program provides $3 million, initially, for 10 industry projects, the DOE has announced. Whether the program extends into future fiscal years may well depend on Congress.

The projects are all designed to improve efficiency, product development and energy use.

For instance, Procter & Gamble will get help to reduce the paper pulp in products by 20%, “which could result in significant cost and energy savings” in this energy- intensive industry, according to the project description.

Another firm, ZoomEssence, which produces “powder ingredients that capture all the key sensory components of a liquid,” will work to optimize the design of a new drying method using HPC simulations, according to the award description.

Some other projects in the initial implementation of what is being called HPC4Mfg (HPC for Manufacturing) includes an effort to help Global Foundriesoptimize transistor design.

In another, the Ohio Supercomputer Center and the Edison Welding Institute will develop a welding simulation tool.

The national labs not only have the hardware; “more importantly the labs have deep expertise in using HPC to help solve complex problems,” said Donna Crawford, the associate director of computation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in a conference call. They have the applications as well, she said.

HPC can be used to design and prototype products virtually that otherwise might require physical prototypes. These systems can run simulations and visualizations to discover, for instance, new energy-efficient manufacturing methods.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/u-s-wants-to-help-supercomputer-makers.html

Facebook, for example, built a data center in Lulea in Sweden because the icy cold temperatures there would help cut the energy required for cooling. A proposed Facebook data center in Clonee, Ireland, will rely heavily on locally available wind energy. Google’s data center in Hamina in Finland uses sea water from the Bay of Finland for cooling.

Now, Microsoft is looking at locating data centers under the sea.

The company is testing underwater data centers with an eye to reducing data latency for the many users who live close to the sea and also to enable rapid deployment of a data center.

Microsoft, which has designed, built, and deployed its own subsea data center in the ocean, in the period of about a year, started working on the project in late 2014, a year after Microsoft employee, Sean James, who served on a U.S. Navy submarine, submitted a paper on the concept.

A prototype vessel, named the Leona Philpot after an Xbox game character, operated on the seafloor about 1 kilometer from the Pacific coast of the U.S. from August to November 2015, according to a Microsoft page on the project.

The subsea data center experiment, called Project Natick after a town in Massachusetts, is in the research stage and Microsoft warns it is “still early days” to evaluate whether the concept could be adopted by the company and other cloud service providers.

“Project Natick reflects Microsoft’s ongoing quest for cloud datacenter solutions that offer rapid provisioning, lower costs, high responsiveness, and are more environmentally sustainable,” the company said.

Using undersea data centers helps because they can serve the 50 percent of people who live within 200 kilometers from the ocean. Microsoft said in an FAQ that deployment in deepwater offers “ready access to cooling, renewable power sources, and a controlled environment.” Moreover, a data center can be deployed from start to finish in 90 days.

Courtesy- http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/microsoft-goes-deep-with-underwater-data-center.html

The social network continues to see surging interest in video. During one day last quarter, its users watched a combined 100 million hours of video. Roughly 500 million users watch at least some video each day.

That’s a lot of video and a lot of viewers, and Facebook wants to capitalize on it.

“We are exploring a dedicated place on Facebook for when they just want to watch videos,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday during a conference call to discuss Facebook’s quarterly financial results.

But he was tight-lipped on how the video might actually be presented.

Asked if a stand-alone video app is in the cards, he mentioned the success of Messenger and a Facebook app for managing Pages. “I do think there are additional opportunities for this and we’ll continue looking at them,” he said.

Facebook wants to encourage more video viewing because it keeps users on the site longer, helping it to sell more ads.

“Marketers also really love video and it’s a compelling way to reach consumers,” COO Sheryl Sandberg said during the call.

Zuckerberg has been watching the growth of video for osme time. At a town hall meeting in November 2014, he predicted, ”In five years, most of [Facebook] will be video.”

And it’s likely that most of that video will be consumed over mobile networks.

Among Facebook’s heaviest users — the billion people who access it on a daily basis — 90 percent use a mobile device, either solely or in addition to their PC.

It’s financial results for the fourth quarter were strong. Revenue was $5.8 billion, up 52 percent from the same period in 2014, while net profit more than doubled to $1.6 billion.

http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/facebook-exploring-a-dedicated-video-service.html

In a move which is a side step from its normal expansion into its own brand of groceries and clothing, Amazon is flogging its own chips which are being made by Annapurna Labs.

Annapurna is an Israeli subsidiary that Amazon acquired a year ago and the chips are called Alpine. They are ARM-based processors are designed to drive home gateways, Wi-Fi routers, and Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices.

They’re meant for things like data centers and cheap smart home devices rather than smartphones and tablet which makes the concept of Amazon selling them seem rather odd. After all if you are a datacenter you usually go to a supplier and buy shedloads of expensive gear.  You don’t normally pop into Amazon and do a quick search, even if you are a Prime Member.

Intel currently has the data center sewn  up and ARM chip use is still thin on the ground however Amazon has done well in the cloud so peddling chips as part of a product package makes a bit of sense.

It won’t initially be targeting the kind of high-end servers which are powering the Internet of Stuff which is supposed to be the next big thing.  Asus, Netgear, and Synology are already producing devices that use Amazon’s Alpine .

Courtesy-Fud

Politwoops had been a popular social media destination for political junkies and others looking to unearth social media gaffes by politicians.

But in a move widely lambasted by open-government advocates, Twitter effectively shuttered Politwoops last summer when it revoked access to its interface by the government accountability watchdog, the Sunlight Foundation, that had developed the tool and had been publishing the tweets.

On Thursday, Twitter said it had reached a deal with Sunlight and another organization, the Open State Foundation, to restore the tool.

“Politwoops is an important tool for holding our public officials, including candidates and elected or appointed public officials, accountable for the statements they make, and we’re glad that we’ve been able to reach an agreement with Twitter to bring it back online both in the U.S. and internationally,” said Jenn Topper, communications director for The Sunlight Foundation.

While the announcement was a victory for government-transparency advocates, it could prove to be a setback for politicians hoping to avoid the social media rumpus that can accompany an ill-timed tweet or misconstrued online musing.

The deal comes as the clock ticks closer to the first vote casting in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. The Iowa caucuses will take place on Feb. 1, followed by the first primary in New Hampshire on Feb. 9.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/twitter-to-revived-archived-deleted-tweets-of-politicians.html

The lab was used by Qualcomm to develop Interferometric Modulator Display and Apple Insider claims it is now being used to develop thinner, lighter, brighter and more energy-efficient screens.

The lab employs at least 50 engineers and has recruited talent from display maker AU Optronics and Qualcomm. Outside the lab there is no signage or much to indicate that the Fruity Cargo Cult has assumed control.

Government records show that the building is registered to Apple Taiwan, and a staff in the building were observed wearing Apple ID badges.

Bloomberg thinks Apple wants to “reduce reliance on the technology developed by suppliers such as Samsung, LG, Sharp and Japan and instead “develop the production processes in-house and outsource to smaller manufacturers such as Taiwan’s AU Optronics or Innolux.

Apple currently uses LCD screens in its Macs and iOS devices and an OLED display for Apple Watch and the new lab was where Qualcomm tried to develop to develop its own Mirasol displays.

Mirasol use a different technology to backlit LCDs or OLED. It uses an array of microscopic mirror-like elements that can reflect light of a specific colour. It does not need a backlight and only uses energy when being switched on or off, like E-Ink.

The downside to IMOD has historically been that it reproduces flat, unsaturated colours, a problem that may be possible to fix. Qualcomm introduced a Toq smartwatch with an IMOD screen, but the device flopped.

Qualcomm took a $142 million charge on its Mirasol display business and a year ago there were rumours Qualcomm was selling off its Longtan Mirasol panel plant to TSMC.

What appears to have happened is that Jobs Mob might have bought more than just the facility, and instead has some interest in using Mirasol IMOD technology which could offer an advanced technological breakthrough in enabling a new class of low-power displays for use in phones, tablets or wearables.

Courtesy-Fud