What a time to be alive. Not only are we living in the future, it seems we’re also travelling back in time. You know, like tachyons. Why all the Doc Brown talk? Well, Microsoft’s teasing a little something called Windows 1.0. It seems to be be an obvious reference to Windows 10, based on the retro blue logo for the operating system. Weird how we never noticed that before.
The Apollo computer was state-of-the-art in its time, but what would have been different if the moon landing had the state-of-the-art computers that are available today?
I suspect that the software development time would have been a lot faster, due to the software development tools that are available today. It would have been a lot quicker to write, debug and test the complex code required to deliver a man to the moon.
The first thing that Stoffel van Wyk appreciated about his new Dyson hairdryer is how quiet it is. These days,…
So what constitutes art?
I’ve been asked about this a lot in the last few months. I was asked to help curate a digital arts festival, called Creativate, which took place last year for the first time as part of the National Arts Festival in Makhanda.
Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency has taken a lot of criticism from Western government officials and media commentators – but it’s not meant for them. A major target market for the Libra is users in developing countries.
While photographic fakes have been around since the dawn of photography, the more recent use of deep learning artificial intelligence techniques (the “deep” in deepfakes) is leading to the creation of increasingly credible computer simulations.
Each mock-up presented a fake image accompanied by a short textual description about its content and a few contextual cues and features such as the particular place it purportedly appeared, information on what its source was and whether anyone had reshared it – as well as how many likes or other interactions had happened.
During the course of a day, robots might be expected to do everything from making a cup of tea to changing the bedding while holding a conversation. These are all challenging tasks that are more challenging when attempted together. No two homes will be the same, which will mean robots will have to learn fast and adapt to their environment. As anyone sharing a home will appreciate, the objects you need won’t always be found in the same place – robots will need to think on their feet to find them.
Facebook has unveiled libra, a cryptocurrency that will enable users to make international payments over Messenger and other group platforms like WhatsApp – perhaps from as soon as 2020.
We’ve been following along with Netflix’s Stranger Things since Season 3 was announced. While previous trailers have proved to be a little… meh, showing more drama and a not insubstantial amount of rampant consumerism (albeit a retro version of it), the newest — and final — Stranger Things Season 3 trailer brings the pain. And more than a little horror, to boot.