tagged w/ Processing
-
![IBM’s Processors Will Think Like Brains. [Death by AI is getting even closer now!]](http://i2.crtcdn1.net/images/spacer.gif)
It's been just over 30 years since IBM released its first PC and shook the whole world up. Hoping to do some more world-shaking, they've built two chips that function more similarly to our brains than normal chips do.
Yes people, this could be the day we all look back upon with sheer horror, as The Robots chase us from our houses and onto the streets.
Funded in part by DARPA, which contributed $41 million to the "cognitive computing" project, the prototype chips use parallel processing to multi-task, but more importantly adapt to new information even if they're not expecting it. The projector leader at IBM Research, Dharmendra Modha, claims that "you have to throw out virtually everything we know about how these chips are designed," elaborating that "the key, key, key difference really is the memory and the processor are very closely brought together. There's a massive, massive amount of parallelism."
They also have sensors for identifying changes in the real world, such as temperature rises, audio and motion movements, which could make them well-suited to outdoors use, in cars, traffic lights or planes for example.
While it's likely we won't see these two prototype chips put into practise for another 10 years, IBM is confident it's the future for their business. Both chips have 256 neurons, with one of them containing 262,144 "programmable synapses," and the other 65,536 "learning synapses," which will be built upon and hopefully get to the point where it's possible to have a chip with 10 billion neurons, and 100 trillion synapses.
It's likely those numbers sound impossibly large to you—personally, I can't even fathom the size and power. But IBM's Modha doesn't give any reason for us to be scared, telling the NY Times that they're "not trying to build a brain," that they're just "trying [to] draw inspiration from the brain."
http://gizmodo.com/5832122/ibms-processors-will-think-like-brainsIt's been just over 30 years since IBM released its first PC and shook the whole... more
-
-
Sweden's approval of thrombin - a new so-called meat glue, has drawn criticism from consumer groups and politicians alike who fear that consumers stand to be misled.
"We do not want this at all - it is meat make-up," said Jan Bertoft at the Swedish Consumer's Association (Sveriges Konsumenter).
Thrombin is a coagulation protein which together with the fibrous protein fibrin can be used to develop a "meat glue" enzyme that can be used for sticking together different pieces of meat.
EU countries voted to approve the use of the enzyme on Monday.
Despite clear labelling of meat products, there remains a concern that consumers will be fooled as it is not clear from the appearance of the product whether it is constructed from different pieces of meat or not.
The additive can for example be used to put together small parts of pork tenderloin to make the product look like a whole fillet.
"The problem is that it looks like real meat. It is the dishonesty in it that makes us think that it is not okay," Bertoft said.
The approval of thrombin has also come in for criticism from some Swedish politicians.
"To use Thrombin in meat is a way of misleading consumers, to present something as better than it actually is," said Åsa Westlund, a Social Democrat MEP.
Westlund has been involved in the process to develop new EU legislation covering food additives which will come into force in the beginning of next year.
"If it had been in force today, then this would not have been allowed. That is my view," she said.
But Gunilla Henrysdotter at the Swedish National Food Administration (Livsmedelsverket) argues that it is not for certain that the new legislation would have rendered thrombin illegal.
"It would be approved in the future as well," she said.
The decision to approve thrombin was taken by a Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health (SCFCAH) on Monday. One country voted against and one abstained. All the other countries, including Sweden, voted in favour.
The most important issue raised by Sweden was the proper labelling of products containing thrombin, according to Evelyn Jansson-Elfberg at the Food Administration.
"There is no danger in eating it, but the risk is that the customer will pay an excessively high price. It is the misleading aspect of it all that we have reacted against," she said.
Sweden, and several other countries, have thus argued that thrombin should be classed as a food additive instead of a processing aid.
This line of reasoning was accepted and means that thrombin will only be able to be used in products in which its content its clearly declared.
The products will read "composite meat product."
Thrombin can be made from blood taken from either cows or pigs, and this information must also be clearly shown.
Products containing thrombin will not however be approved for use in commercial kitchens.
http://www.thelocal.se/24900/20100210/Sweden's approval of thrombin - a new so-called meat glue, has drawn criticism... more
-
-
Anything highly processed or that has a lot of ingredients — which generally indicates it’s highly processed — for each ingredient there is an environmental impact, plus energy and water to get to the finished product. Scratch cooking avoids that, and the packaging waste.Anything highly processed or that has a lot of ingredients — which generally... more
-
-
The N900 is Nokia’s first Maemo device. With software originally built for PC and a powerful “engine room” it offers its users the first fully functional mix of smartphone and pocket laptop. Available for pre-order now at www.shop.nokia.com/n900The N900 is Nokia’s first Maemo device. With software originally built for PC... more
-
-
"I get the ideas for my experiments from nature, long standing principles of computer science, and texts on various subjects. "= jared tarbell"I get the ideas for my experiments from nature, long standing principles of... more
-
-
Personal blog/portfolio site for processing powerhouse Robert Hodgins. Stunning work, really.Personal blog/portfolio site for processing powerhouse Robert Hodgins. Stunning work,... more
-
-
mhahn
-
added this
-
2 years ago
- |
-
At first, "Metamorphosis" seems like a beautiful, polished short-animation about little butterflies. However, before long the film's “stylish graphic design” facade falls away, revealing the acclaimed producer's own underlying imaginary, bizarre world of “life unto victimized death.”
This detailed article includes a number of very intriguing, surreal photographs and the very weird, must-see short animation film, "Metamorphosis."At first, "Metamorphosis" seems like a beautiful, polished short-animation... more
-
-
A short documentary about a cider legend named Roger Wilkins. Roger lives in Mudgely, a small village in the heart of Somerset, from his farm he creates the finest farm house cider in the world!A short documentary about a cider legend named Roger Wilkins. Roger lives in Mudgely,... more
-
-
Not only is this visualization way more beautiful than the 80s looking fractals (though they will always be close to my heart) and technologically impressive, it's also really cool to see art being incorporated into commerce in a way that feels respectful and mutually beneficial. The visualizer had been originally posted online as "Magnetosphere" and Apple purchased it.
( http://allanwhite.net/index.php/blog/comments/itunes_8_rumors/ )
Here I gave the new iTunes a whirl with the song "Cotton Candy" by Depth Affect.
For those less familiar with Robert Hodgin's work, it's worth pointing out that the video you see here is generated by code in response to the musical input.
check out more Flight404 here:
http://www.vimeo.com/flight404/videos/all/sort:newest
Not only is this visualization way more beautiful than the 80s looking fractals... more
-
-
regina
-
added this
-
3 years ago
- |
-
Ah, this is nice: a collection of many videos all taken from exactly the same angle -- anchored to the handlebars of a bike -- collapsed and blended into one.
Spooky to watch. It sorta feels like he's riding through time itself.Ah, this is nice: a collection of many videos all taken from exactly the same angle --... more
-
-
sloan
-
added this
-
3 years ago
- |
-
Field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology continues to gain momentum, and the worldwide FPGA market is expected to grow from $1.9 billion in 2005 to $2.75 billion by 2010. Since its invention by Xilinx in 1984, FPGAs have gone from being simple glue logic chips to actually replacing custom application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and processors for signal processing and control applications. Why has this technology been so successful? This article provides an introduction to FPGAs and highlights some of the benefits that make FPGAs unique.
Top Five Benefits:
1. Performance
2. Time to Market
3. Cost
4. Reliability
5. Long-Term Maintenance
At the highest level, FPGAs are reprogrammable silicon chips. Using prebuilt logic blocks and programmable routing resources, you can configure these chips to implement custom hardware functionality without ever having to pick up a breadboard or soldering iron. You develop digital computing tasks in software and compile them down to a configuration file or bitstream that contains information on how the components should be wired together. In addition, FPGAs are completely reconfigurable and instantly take on a brand new “personality” when you recompile a different configuration of circuitry. In the past, FPGA technology was only available to engineers with a deep understanding of digital hardware design. The rise of high-level design tools, however, is changing the rules of FPGA programming, with new technologies that convert graphical block diagrams or even C code into digital hardware circuitry.
FPGA chip adoption across all industries is driven by the fact that FPGAs combine the best parts of ASICs and processor-based systems. FPGAs provide hardware-timed speed and reliability, but they do not require high volumes to justify the large upfront expense of custom ASIC design. Reprogrammable silicon also has the same flexibility of software running on a processor-based system, but it is not limited by the number of processing cores available. Unlike processors, FPGAs are truly parallel in nature so different processing operations do not have to compete for the same resources. Each independent processing task is assigned to a dedicated section of the chip, and can function autonomously without any influence from other logic blocks. As a result, the performance of one part of the application is not affected when additional processing is added.
The adoption of FPGA technology continues to increase as higher-level tools evolve to deliver the benefits of reprogrammable silicon to engineers and scientists of all expertise.Field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology continues to gain momentum, and the... more
-
-
On May 4th, 2007, we asked internet users to help isolate Michael Jackson's white glove in all 10,060 frames of his nationally televised landmark performance of Billy Jean. 72 hours later 125,000 gloves had been located. wgt_data_v1.txt (listed below) is the culmination of data collected. It is released here for all to download and use as an input into any digital system. Just as the data was gathered collectively it is our hope that it will be visualized collectively. Please email links to your apps, video, source code, and/or screen shots to evan[at]eyebeam[dot]org. Work will be exhibited in an online gallery and depending on popularity and interest potentially in a forthcoming physical gallery exhibition as well. Huge thanks to everyone that contributed to the data collection.
For more information please check out the top data contributers, the about page, and the original data entry applet (no longer in use). To view visualizations of this data check out the gallery. Example source code for getting started can be downloaded below (available as Processing and Open Frameworks projects).On May 4th, 2007, we asked internet users to help isolate Michael Jackson's white... more
-
-
"TheSheepMarket.com is a collection of the first 10,000 sheep made by workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Workers were paid 0.02 ($USD) to "draw a sheep facing to the left." Animations of each sheep's creation may be viewed at TheSheepMarket.com."
And if browsing through 10,000 hastily drawn sheep isn't enough for you, you can download Aaron Koblin's 42-page thesis on the project to have him "explore the discourse surrounding commoditization of human labor, the connotations of sheep, and the techniques of visualizing governance within the realm of media art." Go on!
"TheSheepMarket.com is a collection of the first 10,000 sheep made by workers on... more
-
-
"analog" mashup
-
-
regina
-
added this
-
4 years ago
- |
-
Interactive installation "I,ball" by Marcus Graf. Exposed @ VillaNuts in Den Haag, Netherlands in September/October 2007.
For more work, see http://www.florito.net
A webcam connected to a computer detects objects moving outside the gallery. They eyes projected on small semi-transparent foil squares then follow the audience passing by the gallery window.Interactive installation "I,ball" by Marcus Graf. Exposed @ VillaNuts in Den... more
-
