Impact Lab – Page 468 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

Coding, new technology, quantum computing, Science & Technology News

Meet Silq: The first intuitive programming language for quantum computers

July 1, 2020

The creation of the C programming language was a massive milestone for classical computing. Developed by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson at AT&T Bell Laboratories in the early 1970s, C was an easy programming language for would-be computer coders to learn. At the time, most computer programs were written in what is called assembly language, which communicates directly with the computer’s hardware. But while assembly programs gave users unparalleled control over their machines, they were long, complex, and difficult to debug. C was different. It was easy, intuitive, and helped open up computer programming to an entirely new audience. It was nothing short of a revolution in computing.

Now, nearly 50 years after C was created, computer scientists have reached a similar milestone: A new programming language that brings the same level of coding simplicity to quantum computing.

Drawing parallels between the development of classical computers and the state of quantum computing today is difficult. Quantum computers, for those unfamiliar with them, represent the future of computing as we know it. Unlike a classical computer, which encodes information as a series of ones and zeroes, the “qubits” in a quantum computer can be either a one, a zero, or both at the same time. Quantum computers operate under different, quantum rules to classical computers — and promise to eventually be almost unimaginably fast when it comes to crunching data and carrying out calculations.

Continue reading… “Meet Silq: The first intuitive programming language for quantum computers”

Breakthrough Thinking, Health & Fitness, Human Behavior, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

How to build a ‘rest ethic’ that is as strong as your work one

June 30, 2020

The authors of a new book offer creative and thoughful ways to maximize your time off that will gift you with inspiration, ideas, and recovery.

Take in a deep breath and hold it. Keep holding. How long can you hold your inhale until it gets uncomfortable? Thirty seconds? A few minutes? It doesn’t take long until we all, eventually, need to exhale.

Think of your work ethic as the inhale (it is, in a way, as essential to your career as air is to your body). With a good work ethic, we make, execute, coordinate, manage, fulfill, and get things done. Task list—inhale. Project execution—inhale. Making our ideas come to life—inhale. But we can’t keep inhaling forever. Eventually we have to exhale. This exhale is your rest ethic, and it is just as essential.

A solid rest ethic gifts us inspiration, ideas, and recovery. It allows us to build up our enthusiasm and sustain our passion. Gaining a fresh perspective—exhale. Project ideation and “aha” moments—exhale. Letting big ideas incubate in your mind—exhale. And just as a deep exhale prepares you for a better inhale, your rest ethic enables you to have a better work ethic.

Continue reading… “How to build a ‘rest ethic’ that is as strong as your work one”

Artificial Intelligence, Children, Education, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott believes artificial intelligence will help reprogram the American dream

June 30, 2020

Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott rise to his current post is about as unlikely as you will find. He grew up in Gladys, Virginia, a town of a few hundred people. He loved his family and his hometown to such an extent that he did not aspire to leave. He caught the technology bug in the 1970s by chance, and that passion would provide a ticket to bigger places that he did not initially seek.

The issue was one of opportunity. In his formative years, jobs were decreasing in places like Gladys just as they were increasing dramatically in tech hubs like Silicon Valley. After pursuing a PhD in computer science at the University of Virginia, he left in 2003 prior to completing his dissertation to join Google. He would rise to become a Senior Engineering Director there. He left Google for LinkedIn in 2011. He would eventually rise to become the Senior Vice President of Engineering & Operations at LinkedIn. From LinkedIn he joined Microsoft three and a half years ago as CTO. He is deeply satisfied with the course of his career and its trajectory, but part of him laments that it took him so far from his roots and the hometown that he loves.

As he reflected further on this conundrum, he put his thoughts to paper and published the book, Reprogramming the American Dream in April, co-authored by Greg Shaw. As he noted in a conversation I recently had with him, “Silicon Valley is a perfectly wonderful place, but we should be able to create opportunity and prosperity everywhere, not just in these coastal urban innovation centers.”

Scott believes that machine learning and artificial intelligence will be key ingredients to aiding an entrepreneurial rise in smaller towns across the United States. These advances will place less of a burden on companies to hire employees in the small towns, as some technical development will be conducted by the bots. He also hopes that as some of these businesses blossom, more kids will be inspired to start their own businesses powered by technology, creating a virtuous cycle of sorts.

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Biotech, Engineering, Famous Inventor, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

The Segway’s inventor has a new project : Manufacturing human organs

June 30, 2020

Dean Kamen, who invented the Segway almost 20 years ago, is still busy inventing. Now, at the age of 69, he is working on the most ambitious project of his career: manufacturing organs

When the FDA approves lab-grown human organs for patients, Dean Kamen wants to be ready to mass-produce them

This past January, the umpteenth version of the Segway Personal Transporter whisked attendees around in its white, egg-shaped seat at CES, the huge annual consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. Called the Segway S-Pod, it drew comparisons to the hover-chairs in Wall-E that shuttled around people so out of shape and blob-like, they’d forgotten how to stand.

This is not how Dean Kamen, who invented the Segway almost 20 years ago, imagined his legacy.

Kamen was inspired to create a device like the Segway in the early ’90s, when he noticed a young man who’d lost his legs in a wheelchair at the mall. It seemed like everywhere Kamen went that night, he bumped into the guy, seeing him unable to get over a curb or reach a high shelf at Radio Shack, too low to be noticed in line at the ice cream counter. Kamen had already been thinking about how to help the disabled. “And I just decided, you know what?” he says. “I’m going to solve that problem.”

Continue reading… “The Segway’s inventor has a new project : Manufacturing human organs”

communication, Entertainment, Legal Issues, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

Spotify lands exclusive rights to new Kim Kardashian West podcast

June 30, 2020

Spotify has inked an exclusive deal to distribute Kim Kardashian West’s new podcast, a spokesperson confirmed to Axios.

Why it matters: The deal, unlike Spotify’s purchase of “The Ringer” in February and its exclusive arrangement to distribute “The Joe Rogan Experience” beginning this fall, includes female producers and hosts, which could lure a more diverse, female-centric audience to the platform.

Details: The podcast will be co-produced and co-hosted by West and television producer Lori Rothschild Ansaldi, according to the Wall Street Journal, which was first to break the news.

A Spotify spokesperson confirmed details of the Journal’s report, which notes that the podcast will be adjacent to West’s work with the Innocence Project, a nonprofit that focuses on exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals and criminal justice reform.

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Automation, new technology, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Dog-like robots now on sale for $75,000, with conditions

June 29, 2020

FILE – In this May 24, 2018, file photo, a Boston Dynamics SpotMini robot walks through a conference room during a robotics summit in Boston. Boston Dynamics on Tuesday, June 16, 2020 started selling its four-legged Spot robots online for just under $75,000 each. The agile robots can walk, climb stairs and open doors. But people who buy them online must agree not to arm them or intentionally use them as weapons, among other conditions.

You can now buy one of those unnerving animal-like robots you might have seen on YouTube — so long as you don’t plan to use it to harm or intimidate anyone.

Boston Dynamics on Tuesday started selling its four-legged Spot robots online for just under $75,000 each.

The agile robots can walk, climb stairs and observe their surroundings with cameras and other sensors. But people who buy them online must agree not to arm them or intentionally use them as weapons, among other conditions.

“The key goal for us is to make sure people trust robots,” Michael Perry, the company’s vice president for business development, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Somebody wanted to use Spot for a haunted house and we said no to that. It frames the robot in a negative context.”

The terms and conditions state that “Spot is an amazing robot, but is not certified safe for in-home use or intended for use near children or others who may not appreciate the hazards associated with its operation.”

Continue reading… “Dog-like robots now on sale for $75,000, with conditions”

Automation, Employment, Food, Robots, Science & Technology News

The robots continue to invade the fast food sphere

June 29, 2020

A KFC in Moscow sends chicken along a conveyor belt to be delivered by a robotic arm.

The last dispatch from The Takeout’s robot beat was May 5. That’s six whole weeks during which the robots, unbothered by our human troubles, continued making advancements in their quest to replace the human race. As is so often the case, they have set their sights on a new way to optimize fast food, perhaps understanding that this is where they can exert the most influence over us.

Humans have generally understood for decades that the robots have been coming for our jobs, with a capacity for automation that renders many human workers obsolete—in theory, anyway. Recent estimates show that by 2030, a whopping 38% of American jobs will be eliminated in favor of automation. Now, with the entire world in the clutches of a pandemic, it’s possible that humans have begun to warm to the robots, which are not perceived to be as germ-covered as humans and can better facilitate social distancing measures (plus, you know, companies don’t have to pay them a living wage). With that in mind, KFC is currently testing “fast food of the future” in Moscow. Take a look:

Continue reading… “The robots continue to invade the fast food sphere”

2020 Predictions, Big Problems, Business, Coronavirus, Science & Technology News

Which jobs are coming back first? Which may never return?

June 29, 2020

Job postings in the beauty and wellness category rebounded at the job-listing behemoth Indeed.

A snapshot of who’s hiring now, plus a warning about employment predictions in an unknown COVID-19 recovery.

America’s job market added 2.5 million new jobs in May, as the economy began to wake up from what one economist called a “medically induced coma.” The new jobs are clustered in people-facing companies that have started to hire back workers they’d furloughed, so in reality many aren’t so new. We’re talking about places like bars and restaurants, hair salons, medical offices and car dealerships.

Spot a trend? Yep, it’s the service sector, the heart of the modern American economy and the epicenter of the recent jobs earthquake. A record 20.5 million jobs evaporated in April, some losses coming in surprising areas like nursing. We’re in a unique recession, prompted not by a housing bust or a market crash, but a virus with an unpredictable course. Sure, we have data from the 1918 flu pandemic, but it’s of limited utility for projecting jobs in e-sports or Starbucks. To be sure, jobs are growing right now in key spots we highlight below, but beware of forecasting too far out. As one economic expert warns us, don’t rely on economic experts. “The leading economic indicator is the virus,” energy scholar Sarah Ladislaw told us weeks ago.

Continue reading… “Which jobs are coming back first? Which may never return?”

Automation, Employment, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Robots will take 50 million jobs in the next decade. These are the skills you’ll need to stay employed

June 29, 2020

A new report finds that automation will take over a significant part of work activities in Europe by 2030.

In the next 10 years, robots will take over 50 million jobs.

More than 90 million workers across Europe (about 40% of the total workforce) will have to develop significant new skills within their current roles in the next ten years, as automation puts 51 million jobs at risk, warns a new report from analyst firm McKinsey.

And almost all of today’s European workers will face some degree of change as their jobs evolve because of technology. But although the statistics seemingly feed into a common fear of robots taking over our jobs, quick conclusions needn’t be drawn: the research also shows that employment growth in other sectors will largely compensate for overall job loss.

So much, in fact, that Europe might find itself short of up to six million workers by 2030. As new opportunities emerge in fields like technology, for example, McKinsey anticipates that finding sufficient workers with the required skills to fill the jobs that are being created on the continent will be challenging.

Continue reading… “Robots will take 50 million jobs in the next decade. These are the skills you’ll need to stay employed”

government, Latest News, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

Now you can become an EU e-resident for Rs8,620

June 28, 2020

But don’t pack your bags just yet

You can now become an e-resident of Estonia.

You can now work remotely from the Baltic European Union country of Estonia. It just became the first country to offer e-residency to digital nomads, irrespective of where they may be physically based.

As the majority of us suddenly learn that we did not in fact need to waste our lives commuting to get to a common office location to work effectively with colleagues and be productive, gainfully-employed members of society, working remotely might actually be a trend that will stick around, hopefully longer than the virus does. And now for those who operate their own businesses that don’t require physical infrastructure, Estonia is offering an e-residency that allows you to set up operations in the EU country.

Located in northern Europe, with Finland to the north and Latvia to the south, Russia to the east and Sweden to the west, Estonia is opening itself up to people who would like to incorporate and grow their business in the EU. The residency is aimed at those who work online and may not be based in any one country or location for an extended period of time; freelancers; startups looking to set up operations in the EU; and other digital entrepreneurs working in finance, tech and marketing who would like a European presence. The country is expected to issue 1,800 e-residency permits every year.

Continue reading… “Now you can become an EU e-resident for Rs8,620”

new technology, quantum computing, Science & Technology News, security

The best applications for Quantum Computing

June 28, 2020

One of the areas that I have been researching is what applications can best make use of the power of quantum computing. Although this is a work in progress, I am providing a preliminary assessment for my readers based upon discussions with various experts and other research I have done so far. The list below is shown in a priority order based upon the combination of three factors that I have reviewed: Progress-to-Date, Difficulty, and Payoff. One thing to note is that the successful implementations for most, if not all, of these application areas will probably be based upon a hybrid platform that combines classical and quantum computing in a cloud environment to achieve the best of both worlds. So here’s the list.

Continue reading… “The best applications for Quantum Computing”

Business, Coronavirus, Employment, Science & Technology News

The work-from-anywhere era changes everything about compensation

June 28, 2020

The work-from-anywhere era changes everything about compensation

Companies that say they’ll let people work where they want have yet to figure out what that means for pay. Here are the questions that need answering.

Some of the tech industry’s giants have been dealt a giant blow by the COVID-19 crisis, laying off thousands of employees in San Francisco in recent weeks. These companies—and many others—are now looking at a future that includes moving entirely remote, or shifting to a hybrid policy in which employees are in the office only on certain days.

Employee compensation is a company’s largest operational expense. Yet those announcing new remote work policies have yet to reconcile how the new rules impact compensation in the long term. Though some companies, such as Facebook, have already announced their intention to pay different rates for employees working outside an office, most have been holding back on making that decision. But once the dust settles and many or most employees have moved off-site, employers will be looking at shifting pay policies while employees reconcile how this affects their paychecks and plans.

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