Computers & the Internet News and Discussions

[weatheriscool]

A wi-fi sensing system that creates 3D human meshes
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-02-wi- ... eshes.html
by Ingrid Fadelli , Tech Xplore

A 3D mesh is a three-dimensional object representation made of different vertices and polygons. These representations can be very useful for numerous technological applications, including computer vision, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) systems.

Researchers at Florida State University and Rutgers University have recently developed Wi-Mesh, a system that can create reliable 3D human meshes, representations of humans that can then be used by different computational models and applications. Their system was presented at the Twentieth ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (ACM SenSys '22), a conference focusing on computer science research.

"Our research group specializes in cutting-edge wi-fi sensing research," Professor Jie Yang at Florida State University, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Tech Xplore. "In previous work, we have developed systems that use wi-fi devices to sense a range of human activities and objects, including large-scale human body movements, small-scale finger movements, sleep monitoring, and daily objects. Our E-eyes and WiFinger systems were among the first to use wi-fi sensing to classify various types of daily activities and finger gestures, with a focus on predefined activities using a trained model."

The key objective of the recent work by Professor Yang and his colleagues was to assess whether wi-fi devices that are commonly used for communications could also help to construct 3D human meshes. A 3D human mesh represents the surface of a human body in three-dimensions, capturing different people's heights, weights, somatotypes, body proportions and articulation-induced body deformations.

"3D human meshes have numerous applications, including VR/AR content creation, virtual try-on, and exercise monitoring, and are a fundamental building block for various downstream tasks, such as animation, clothed human reconstruction, and rendering," Professor Yang explained.

[weatheriscool]

A faster, more accurate 3D modeling tool recreates a landscape's digital twin down to the pixel level
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-02-fas ... eates.html
by Patrick Lejtenyi, Concordia University

Concordia researchers have developed a new technique that can help create high-quality, accurate 3D models of large-scale landscapes—essentially, digital replicas of the real world.

While more work is required before the researchers achieve their goal, they recently outlined their new automated method in the journal Scientific Reports. The framework reconstructs the geometry, structure and appearance of an area using highly detailed images taken by aircraft typically flying higher than 30,000 feet.

These large-scale aerial images—usually more than 200 megapixels each—are then processed to produce precise 3D models of cityscapes, landscapes or mixed areas. They can model their appearance right down to the structures' colors.

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

OneWeb launch completes space internet project

7 hours ago

London-based company OneWeb has launched the final set of satellites it needs to deliver a broadband internet connection anywhere on Earth.

The 36 spacecraft went up on an Indian LVM3 rocket from the Sriharikota spaceport in Andhra Pradesh.

Their deployment 450km above the planet takes OneWeb's total in-orbit constellation to 618.

It's less than three years ago that the UK government took the decision to buy OneWeb out of bankruptcy.

At the time, it was seen as controversial; arguments raged about whether it was a sound use of taxpayer money.

But since the purchase, OneWeb has managed to attract significant additional investment, and is even now planning a next generation of satellites.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65066669

[weatheriscool]

DRAM Prices Fell 20% in Q1 and Are Expected to Drop Even Further
If you've been considering an upgrade, now (or very soon) would be the time to finally do it.
By Josh Norem March 30, 2023
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/d ... en-further

One semi-surprising benefit of the global downturn in the PC market is it's making DRAM much more affordable. A new report states that companies that purchase memory from manufacturers such as Micron and SK Hynix have reduced their orders, lowering demand. That caused the average selling price of DRAM to fall by 20% in Q1 of 2023 due to excess inventory. Prices are also expected to fall another 10 to 15% in the next quarter. So, you know what to do: Put a note in your calendar now that reads "upgrade RAM," with the date of June 30.

News about the DRAM industry's woes is detailed in a new report from industry analyst Trendforce, which monitors the PC industry for -- what else? -- trends. Its latest dispatch says that Micron and SK Hynix have begun to reduce DRAM production in the face of withering demand. Memory buyers such as system integrators have been reducing orders for the last three quarters, so it's time for a response. Since demand is low, the only way to get prices back up is to reduce supply, according to the report. However, these things take a while to trickle through the global supply chain, so it's unclear when the impact of these actions will be realized at retail. Therefore, it's unclear if prices will continue to fall into Q3.

[caltrek]

Italy Has Just Banned ChatGPT
by Tom Hale
March 31, 2023

Introduction:

(IFL Science) Italy has taken action to ban ChatGPT over alleged privacy violations. On March 31, the Italian Data Protection Authority said the AI chatbot would be temporarily blocked in the country "with immediate effect" and they will be investigating the company behind the technology, OpenAI.

In a press release, the agency alleges that OpenAI is violating the European Union’s privacy law, known as GDPR, as it has no legal basis to justify the “massive collection” of personal data that's used to train the AI.

They also argue that OpenAI doesn’t provide enough information about how much data it collects. Furthermore, they cite concerns that ChatGPT doesn't have any age verification so children risk being exposed to content that is “absolutely inappropriate to their age and awareness.”

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that’s been designed to respond to text in a conversational way. The technology is based on a large language model, a deep learning algorithm that can understand, process, predict, and generate text based on knowledge gained from massive datasets.

Through its deep understanding of language patterns, it’s able to pull off some incredible feats of apparent intelligence. People have already been using the tool to write computer code and some media outlets even use it to write their news articles (with mixed results). It’s so smart it was even capable of passing a US medical licensing exam.

Read more here: https://www.iflscience.com/italy-has-j ... gpt-68270

[lechwall]

Italy Has Just Banned ChatGPT
by Tom Hale
March 31, 2023

Introduction:

(IFL Science) Italy has taken action to ban ChatGPT over alleged privacy violations. On March 31, the Italian Data Protection Authority said the AI chatbot would be temporarily blocked in the country "with immediate effect" and they will be investigating the company behind the technology, OpenAI.

In a press release, the agency alleges that OpenAI is violating the European Union’s privacy law, known as GDPR, as it has no legal basis to justify the “massive collection” of personal data that's used to train the AI.

They also argue that OpenAI doesn’t provide enough information about how much data it collects. Furthermore, they cite concerns that ChatGPT doesn't have any age verification so children risk being exposed to content that is “absolutely inappropriate to their age and awareness.”

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that’s been designed to respond to text in a conversational way. The technology is based on a large language model, a deep learning algorithm that can understand, process, predict, and generate text based on knowledge gained from massive datasets.

Through its deep understanding of language patterns, it’s able to pull off some incredible feats of apparent intelligence. People have already been using the tool to write computer code and some media outlets even use it to write their news articles (with mixed results). It’s so smart it was even capable of passing a US medical licensing exam.

Read more here: https://www.iflscience.com/italy-has-j ... gpt-68270

And this is why AGI will not be developed in Europe.

[weatheriscool]

G.Skill Announces 24GB, 48GB Memory Kits With Speeds up to DDR5-8200
Not all motherboards cannot run these super-fast sticks, though.
By Josh Norem April 3, 2023
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/g ... -ddr5-8200

Now that both Intel and AMD support DDR5 memory on their latest platforms, it's entering a renaissance period. Like DDR4 before it, initial offerings were low-speed and expensive. As the technology matures, we're starting to see higher-speed kits and prices that are beginning to become rational. Another new phenomenon in the memory world is non-binary kits with capacities of 24GB and 48GB. G.Skill is capitalizing on both trends with its latest overclocked Trident Z5 DDR5 memory kits, capable of speeds up to DDR5-8200. That makes them some of the fastest memory available right now, but these capacities and speeds are not supported by all motherboards.

[weatheriscool]

Seagate's First 22TB Hard Drive Launches With Impressive Discount
For just $18 per terabyte, you can get your hands on the latest Seagate IronWolf 22TB hard drive.
By Ryan Whitwam April 14, 2023
https://www.extremetech.com/electronics ... e-discount

There was a time not terribly long ago when having even a terabyte of data in a single hard drive was unthinkable. Then, it happened, and data density has continued rocketing upward to this very day when Seagate released its first 22TB 3.5-inch hard drive. The new Seagate IronWolf Pro 22TB is available for purchase, and it's not as spendy as you'd expect. The drive has been heavily discounted from the $599 MSRP to a mere $399.

Even a cheap solid-state drive (SSD) would be much faster than this spinning hard drive, but you can't beat that capacity or the cost, which works out to about $18 per terabyte. The IronWolf Pro 22TB (model ST22000NT001) is filled with helium, which helps to protect the 10 platters and 20 read-write heads. It uses conventional magnetic recording (CMR) for improved reliability versus shingled magnetic recording (SMR). You might recall Western Digital got in hot water a few years ago for quietly swapping to SMR in its NAS hard drives.

At 7200 RPM with 512MB of cache, the new IronWolf has a maximum sustained transfer rate of 285 MB/s. The latest SSDs, on the other hand, can read data at more than 7,000 MB/s. Still, the IronWolf Pro 22TB is a little faster (7.5%) than Western Digital's 22TB drive, launched late last year.

Seagate equipped the new 22TB drive with rotational vibration sensors to reduce noise. It idles at 20 dBA and jumps to 26 dBA during active seeking. That's just a hair quieter than Western Digitial's drive, which hits 32 dBA for active seek. The Seagate drive can get louder during heavy workloads, reaching as high as 34 dBA.

[weatheriscool]

Alphabet shares fall on report Samsung may dump Google Search for Bing
Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/technology/alph ... 023-04-17/

April 17 (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) shares fell as much as 4% on Monday following a report South Korea's Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) was considering replacing Google with Microsoft-owned (MSFT.O) Bing as the default search engine on its devices.

The report, published by the New York Times over the weekend, underscores the growing challenges Google's $162-billion-a-year search engine business face from Bing - a minor player that has risen in prominence recently after the integration of the artificial intelligence tech behind ChatGPT.

Google's reaction to the threat was "panic" as the company earns an estimated $3 billion in annual revenue from the Samsung contract, the report said, citing internal messages.

[Tadasuke]

Seagate Delivers First Samples of 30 TB+ HAMR HDDs To Data Center Clients

Cloud data center clients of Seagate have started to receive the first 30 TB+ HAMR-based hard disk drives (HDDs). HAMR stands for "heat-assisted magnetic recording," which is to make HDDs much more efficient for data storage. Now that the company's clients have received drives, it is time for Seagate to research the sales revenue over the following weeks to find how well the industry will adopt the new capacity HAMR drives.

article: https://wccftech.com/seagate-delivers-f ... er-clients

[Tadasuke]

The fact that my dad had a 66 MHz CPU in 1994, 4 MB RAM, 540 MB HDD and 1 MB on the video card, while in 2004 he had a 3 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, 300 GB HDD and 128 MB on the video card, seemed only normal and logical to me back in the day. Kids these days don't experience such a change unfortunately. More recently, I went from 8 threads 4.7 GHz to 16 threads 4.7 GHz, 8 GB to 32 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD to 1 TB SSD and 1 to 12 GB on the video card in about 10 years. Much smaller change, but I still remember those larger changes, that kids these days don't remember. There is a nostalgia in it and about it for me. I wonder if it is over forever or whether it will come back one day...

[Powers]

The fact that my dad had a 66 MHz CPU in 1994, 4 MB RAM, 540 MB HDD and 1 MB on the video card, while in 2004 he had a 3 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, 300 GB HDD and 128 MB on the video card, seemed only normal and logical to me back in the day. Kids these days don't experience such a change unfortunately. More recently, I went from 8 threads 4.7 GHz to 16 threads 4.7 GHz, 8 GB to 32 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD to 1 TB SSD and 1 to 12 GB on the video card in about 10 years. Much smaller change, but I still remember those larger changes, that kids these days don't remember. There is a nostalgia in it and about it for me. I wonder if it is over forever or whether it will come back one day...

SOVL

[weatheriscool]

Google rolls out passkey as password alternative
Amritpal Kaur Sandhu-Longoria
USA TODAY

Passwords can be hard to remember, so Google has rolled out a simpler and safer solution for its users – passkeys.

Google account holders will now be able to login to apps the same way they login to their devices by using a fingerprint, face scan or a screen lock PIN, which the company touts is more secure, and resistant to online attacks like phishing and one-time SMS codes.

The company's product managers wrote in a Google blog that while passwords are not totally going away yet, they are frustrating to remember, and can put people at risk should their password end up in the wrong hands.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/20 ... 181487007/

[weatheriscool]

Google to Revamp Search With AI Chatbot, Videos
The changes are part of a larger effort to adapt to younger users’ expectations.
By Adrianna Nine May 8, 2023
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/g ... bot-videos

The Google search experience has remained roughly the same for years. Not only has the engine’s list of blue links joined the multicolored Google logo in becoming a brand mainstay, but they’ve guided the development of other search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo. But those blue links might not be the star of the show for much longer: According to company documents, Google is planning to revamp the presentation of its search results by adding an AI chatbot, integrated videos, and more.

The changes are part of a larger effort to adapt to younger users’ expectations. The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that internal documents and other sources indicate a major shift away from what’s unofficially called “the 10 blue links.” While those links will still be there, results will focus on a conversational AI tool codenamed “Magi,” as well as interactive video content.

[weatheriscool]

Developer Creates Compact Windows 11 That Runs in GPU VRAM
The Tiny11 utility can make Windows 11 lightweight enough to run inside an RTX 3050.
By Ryan Whitwam May 9, 2023
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/d ... n-gpu-vram

Microsoft's decision to institute strict system requirements for Windows 11 was met with frustration, but PC enthusiasts don't tend to let a little thing like that stop them. It's possible to install stripped-down versions of Windows 11, and now we know just how flexible it can be. The developer of the Tiny11 Windows modifier has created a build of Windows 11 that takes up so little space it can run entirely inside a GPU's VRAM.

Yes, GPU Ram Drives are still a thing, but there's not much reason to use them anymore. In the days before ultra-fast solid-state storage was commonplace, some people living on the bleeding edge would sometimes convert GPU memory into virtual storage. This provided access to speedy storage for applications that needed extremely fast reads and writes without requiring new hardware.

Today, RAM Drives can't compete with high-speed SSDs, and GPU RAM Drives specifically come with some inefficiencies that make them slower even with high-throughput VRAM chips. Still, the open source GPU RAM Drive utility lets you create virtual storage on your card. That's what NTDev, the person behind Tiny11, used in this experiment.

[weatheriscool]

DNA data storage system uses microcapsules to cut errors and losses
By Michael Irving
May 08, 2023
https://newatlas.com/science/dna-microc ... rs-losses/

Future data centers might do away with banks of hard drives and switch to a storage medium that nature has been using for billions of years – DNA. In a major step towards making that a reality, scientists have created a new system of reading and organizing files using microcapsules.

Like many things humans have built, nature beat us to data storage with a system vastly superior to anything we could come up with. DNA packs information in incredibly densely – a single gram of the stuff can hold up to 215 petabytes, or 215 million GB of data, meaning the entire contents of the internet could be kept in a shoebox full of DNA. Recent work has even found ways to double that data density by adding new letters to the alphabet soup.

Plus, DNA can be extremely long-lasting. Our current hardware tends to degrade within decades, but under the right conditions DNA could potentially be preserved for millions of years. And finally, it requires far less energy to maintain, cutting the power bills that massive data centers are running up.

[weatheriscool]

[wjfox]

Researchers at the University of Maryland have developed a computer vision technology that can reconstruct a 3D image of a scene displayed in a reflection on a person’s eyeball.