Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Thursday, August 07, 2014

IBM's new supercomputing chip mimics the human brain with very little power

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/07/ibm-synapse-supercomputing-chip-mimics-human-brain/

A lot has changed in the three years since IBM first unveiled a prototype of its human brain-inspired SyNAPSE (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics) chip. That single-core prototype has now been significantly scaled up, leading to a new, production-ready SyNAPSE chip that blows past its predecessor with 1 million neurons, 256 million synapses and 4,096 neurosynaptic cores, all the while only requiring 70mW of power. Though the numbers are impressive, it's what they translate to that holds even greater prominence: the ability for devices to process various sensory data in parallel just like the human brain, by merging memory and computing.

Traditionally, faster processing has always meant greater power consumption, but IBM's new SyNAPSE chip flips that paradigm on its head. To give you some perspective of just how low-powered this supercomputing chip is, IBM's Chief Scientist Dr. Dharmendra S. Modha says it requires power equivalent to that of a battery from a hearing aid. It's an achievement that's merited IBM the cover of the journal Science; it also has the potential to drastically alter conventional approaches to computing. In fact, the new SyNAPSE chip is so disruptive to the current computing landscape that IBM's created a new programming language to go along with it and an educational outreach program called SyNAPSE University. It's no wonder why the project received $53 million in funding from DARPA.

IBM's Chief Scientist Dr. Dharmendra S. Modha says [the new SyNAPSE chip] requires power equivalent to that of a battery from a hearing aid.

IBM hasn't publicly announced any partnerships to leverage its new SyNAPSE chip yet, though discussions are surely taking place. Currently, the company's been able to build a programmable, working board with 16 of these chips working in concert -- that represents 16 million neurons capable of processing instructions that, Modha says, would traditionally be carried out by "racks and racks of conventional computers." Again, this is all done at an extremely low-powered state, which means the chips produce way less heat. It's not hard to imagine some of the immediate benefits this could bring to consumers: for instance, laptops that don't burn your lap; or even mobile phones that run for days and can process extreme amounts of environmental data.

But Modha sums up the magnitude of IBM's new SyNAPSE chip best with this simple analogy: "You can carry our board in your backpack. You can't carry four racks of conventional computers in your backpack."

[Image credit: IBM]

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Tour college campuses from the couch with Google Maps Street View

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/07/street-view-campus-tours/

The time for choosing a college to attend this fall may have long passed, but you can get a jump start on next year with Google Maps. Street View added 36 more campus tours in the US and Canada, including a look at Georgetown University's Healy Lawn that's pictured above. University of Miami and University of Regina are also included in the tally, allowing you to familiarize yourself with prospective surroundings ahead of that formal campus visit. Or if you just really fancy an academic summer vacation.

Filed under: Internet, Software, Google

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Source: Google Maps

CHART OF THE DAY: Netflix Is Finally Becoming HBO, Like It Said It Would (NFLX)

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-netflix-is-finally-becoming-hbo-like-it-said-it-would-2014-8

Last January, Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos said the company’s “goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.” Well, mission accomplished. According to the latest data provided by the company, which was charted for us by Statista, Netflix has finally passed HBO in subscriber revenue ($1.146 billion vs. $1.141 billion).

Netflix says it has 48 million total paid subscribers, with the vast majority of those customers — 35.1 million, to be exact — in the U.S. HBO actually has more paid subscribers than Netflix with 127 million worldwide, but that figure also includes various channels owned by the company, including HBO 2, HBO Family, and Cinemax.

20140807 BI_HBO_Netflix

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Tuesday, August 05, 2014

The FBI uses malware to combat online anonymity

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/05/the-fbi-uses-malware-to-combat-online-anonymity/

CE53N2 Hacker using laptop. Lots of digits on the computer screen. Stealing; Thief; Identity; Laptop; Hacker; Computer; Securit

Online anonymity is a beautiful, terrible thing, so naturally governments and law enforcement types are eager to see what happens behind the web's closed doors. Naturally, that includes the folks at the FBI: According to Wired, the FBI has been using "network investigative techniques" -- like highly specific, purpose-built malware -- to help peel back popular anonymizing service Tor's layers of obscurity to catch criminals.

The bureau's efforts began in earnest with an involved child pornography investigation dubbed Operation Torpedo back in 2012. They eventually lucked out by gaining access to a CP site called Pedoboard, arresting the operator, taking over the servers, and delivering malware to visitors who thought they were protected by Tor.

There's no denying that some good has come from the bureau's use of malware, as Wired's Kevin Poulsen points out that more than 12 child porn aficionados are headed to trial as a result. The flip side of that coin is that the FBI's success with Operation Torpedo led to another effort to bypass the anonymity that Tor provides... and possibly exposed some innocent people's information to the FBI's eager eyes. With a little Javascript, understanding of Firefox and Tor security issues and a "tiny" Windows program, users of some Tor-hidden services like Tormail (hosted by an outfit called Freedom Hosting, which itself was being investigated for "tolerating" child porn) essentially had their IP addresses unmasked.

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Source: Wired