Saturday, November 25, 2017
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Star Trek
Around 1989 I was having lunch with coworkers when one person asked what seemed at the time to be a reasonable question, "How does the computer on Star Trek know everything?", like maybe that would be impossible.
Best wishes,
John Coffey
Saturday, November 4, 2017
How Bill Gate Made Microsoft
Not sure if you would like this or not. The documentary is about 18 years old. So it is a little out of date. Much of the information is available in other places. Nevertheless, I found it pretty interesting, but these kinds of things always interest me.
Friday, November 3, 2017
Yavin 4
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: utahtrout <utahtrout
Maybe what we thought was a sentry in star wars on Yavin 4 was just a cell tower repairman...
Globally, no country has yet to hit the important milestone of 50Mbps average speeds. Analysts have been predicting that a country (South Korea or Singapore) would hit the magic number this year, but both are still stuck at about 45Mbps.
Mind you, that number doesn't look so bad when you scroll all the way down to the United States, languishing at 14Mbps. The list of nations with faster mobile internet includes powerhouses like Lebanon (23Mbps), Romania (25Mbps) and Serbia (33Mbps).
There is one tiny beacon of hope: the US is doing well in terms of 4G availability, measured as the "proportion of time users have access to a particular network." The US is fifth of all countries, which is a huge achievement considering how widely spread parts of the US's population is.
http://bgr.com/2017/11/01/
Saturday, October 28, 2017
The Rise and Fall of Peter Molyneux
This 4 and 1/2 part video is over 3 hours long. Still, I found it very fascinating. I just kept watching one part after another.
It just shows how difficult the game business is.
I think that Peter Molyneux's problem is that he tried to design games while he wrote them. He seemed to start games without a clear idea where he was going.
Friday, October 20, 2017
Saturday, October 14, 2017
Friday, October 13, 2017
I was a big fan of the Atari ST and wrote a videogame for it.
In the mid1980's we saw a ton of small computer makers that would quickly fall by the wayside. Atari and Commodore were fairly large, but ultimately lost to more mainstream computers.
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Apple Special Event. September 12, 2017.
A couple of days ago, Apple introduced their products at the brand new Steve Jobs theater, at their new Apple Park campus. I thought that the first ten minutes of the video were pretty interesting, including at 4:24 a quote from Steve Jobs I hadn't heard before.
re: Big announcements from our September event.
iPhone 8 can be preordered in 2 days. iPhone X can be preordered on October 27th.
Since my iPhone 6+ works just fine and I am happy with it, I can't really justify spending hundreds of dollars on a new phone. I could be happy with either the iPhone 8 or the iPhone 10, but I would rather wait until something major goes wrong with my phone before I spend the big bucks.
When I was working, I used to get a new phone with a new contract every 2 years. The upfront cost was relatively low, usually either $200 or $300, because the carrier would subsidize the cost of the phone. Many carriers won't do this anymore,but some companies like Sprint might. But right now I am saving $30 per month on Total Wireless, so I would have to pay an extra $720 over two years to get a subsidized phone.
One reason I bought a new phone every two years is that there would be some major changes every two years. However, now the phones have gotten so good that the changes are more incremental. The new phones always have a faster processor and a better camera, but this is hardly a reason to abandon your old phone.
Apple's 6 core processor is kind of exciting. Two high power cores with 4 low power cores, and unlike the previous phone, it can use all the cores at the same time. This rivals some desktop computers in terms of power. (Some competing brands of phones will allow you to hook up a monitor, keyboard and mouse and use it like an internet based computer. Microsoft Windows Phone does this, and I think so does the Google phone.)
Since my iPhone 6+ works just fine and I am happy with it, I can't really justify spending hundreds of dollars on a new phone. I could be happy with either the iPhone 8 or the iPhone 10, but I would rather wait until something major goes wrong with my phone before I spend the big bucks.
When I was working, I used to get a new phone with a new contract every 2 years. The upfront cost was relatively low, usually either $200 or $300, because the carrier would subsidize the cost of the phone. Many carriers won't do this anymore,but some companies like Sprint might. But right now I am saving $30 per month on Total Wireless, so I would have to pay an extra $720 over two years to get a subsidized phone.
One reason I bought a new phone every two years is that there would be some major changes every two years. However, now the phones have gotten so good that the changes are more incremental. The new phones always have a faster processor and a better camera, but this is hardly a reason to abandon your old phone.
Apple's 6 core processor is kind of exciting. Two high power cores with 4 low power cores, and unlike the previous phone, it can use all the cores at the same time. This rivals some desktop computers in terms of power. (Some competing brands of phones will allow you to hook up a monitor, keyboard and mouse and use it like an internet based computer. Microsoft Windows Phone does this, and I think so does the Google phone.)
Wednesday, September 6, 2017
Thursday, June 8, 2017
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
We are entering a new era where a phone can be a real computer.
We are entering a new era where a phone can be a real computer.
I think that this was inevitable.
In this department, Apple has refused to merge their mobile and desktop operating systems, which Microsoft has done and Google has started to do. Apple would prefer that you spend big bucks to buy separate overpriced devices, but with newer phones becoming as powerful as some laptops, if not more powerful, why bother?
Best wishes,
John Coffey
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
Fwd: Unlock iPhone
'Tim Cook Opposes Court Order That Apple Must Help FBI Unlock iPhone'
https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/
Sunday, December 27, 2015
The late Steve Jobs introduces the first iPhone in 2007
I love watching this video.
This video serves as good instruction on how to use the iPhone.
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Fwd: Skylake
'first-ever Xeon processor family for laptops, the E3-1500M v5…
the mobile workstation market is one of the few areas where Windows PC sales are growing -- it only makes sense for Intel to court the increasing numbers of creatives and engineers that want to do their jobs away from the office.'
http://www.engadget.com/2015/08/08/intel-xeon-for-laptops/
Fwd: Skylake
I looked at just released 5th generation Broadwell chips, but in the next month or two we should have 6th generation skylake…
'Skylake ships with an integrated graphics core inside of it, which Intel had previously said would be optimized for low-power video decoding. What was surprising, however, was apparently how good it is – Skaugen showed off the chip decoding 15 4K videos using the chip's H.265 decoding engine, and compared it against to a machine with a pair of Nvidia Titan chips performing the same task. They struggled.'
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
AI
'The letter, presented at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was signed by Tesla's Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Google DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis and professor Stephen Hawking along with 1,000 AI and robotics researchers.
The letter states: "AI technology has reached a point where the deployment of [autonomous weapons] is – practically if not legally – feasible within years, not decades, and the stakes are high:'
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/27/musk-wozniak-hawking-ban-ai-autonomous-weapons
Musk and Hawking have warned that AI is "our biggest existential threat" and that the development of full AI could "spell the end of the human race". But others, including Wozniak have recently changed their minds on AI, with the Apple co-founder saying that robots would be good for humans, making them like the "family pet and taken care of all the time".
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Fwd: Smart Skin
'BAE Systems' U.K. division is developing the Smart Skin concept, which aims to give machines the ability to 'feel' the world around them, sense and process the data like an animal and relay the information to a "brain" within the machine.
In future combat, all machines could leverage this mega-smart skin, detecting heat, damage and stress. Combat aircraft, drones, tanks and other land vehicles, as well as naval vessels could covered with the smart skin. Drones operating in air, on land, at sea or underwater could also deploy the technology.
Using a skin loaded with a range of sensors, machines could "feel" and sense things like an animal does. The smart skin would cover a combat aircraft -- reading, recording and processing the machine's sensations.'
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2015/07/23/how-smart-skin-could-revolutionize-military-vehicles/
Friday, August 21, 2015
Fwd: low power
'By using absorption and reflection to indicate data states, NASA reckons it's created a Wi-Fi device for the wearable market that uses just 0.1 per cent of the power of ordinary transceivers.
Working with Frank Chang at Caltech UCLA, the JPL boffin Adrian Tang is keen on ways to let devices with relatively low communications needs do without recharging.
As NASA explains here, their idea is to let a chip either reflect a signal back to a base station or access point (representing a binary 1), or absorb it (representing a binary 0). That way, the Wi-Fi device (be it a smart-watch or a a bio-sensor, for example), only needs enough energy for its own operations, instead of having to carry power for a full transceiver.
Not only that, but the device is fast. The NASA release says that at a short 2.5 metre distance, it can communicate at up to 330 Mbps, "using about a thousand times less power than a regular Wi-Fi link".'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/28/back_at_you_wifi_reflector_cuts_power_demands_for_wearables/
Fwd: 3D Xpoint memory
'The companies say the forthcoming chips will be up to 1,000 times faster than the NAND flash memory chips now used in most mobile devices, while storing 10 times more data than dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chips that are another mainstay of electronics hardware.
Their technology—dubbed 3D Xpoint—doesn't quite match the speed of the chips known as DRAMs. But unlike those chips—and like NAND flash memory—the new chips will retain data even after they're powered off, the companies say.
"This is a whole new paradigm," said Mark Adams, Micron's president, predicting the technology will cause "a major disruption" in the $78.5 billion memory-chip market…
http://www.wsj.com/articles/intel-micron-claim-memory-chip-breakthrough-1438099234
compare to nram…
Fwd: Google translate
'Google Translate's real-time translation tool, first introduced in January, instantly transcribes a sign from a foreign language to your own when you point your phone camera at it—and now, the feature has expanded to cover 27 languages. Through the standalone Translate app, users can translate signs in tongues ranging from Catalan and Indonesian, to Slovak and Ukrainian.
The service previously offered translations between English and French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. The app works both ways: Non-English speakers can also translate English signs into their native languages. For Hindi and Thai translations, however, Google Translate can only convert English to the two languages—not the other way around—due to the complexity of their characters.
The app also works in the absence of a data connection for a phone, which makes it optimal for travelers.
The instant translation feature is largely derived from the Word Lens app, which Google acquired last year when it purchased the company behind it, Quest Visual.'
http://www.fastcompany.com/3049192/fast-feed/google-translate-can-now-decipher-signs-in-27-languages
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Fwd: android graphics api
'Mobile app developers looking for more direct graphics control will have it: Google on Monday announced Android support for Vulkan, a direct rendering 3D graphics API.
Vulkan actually comes by way of the Khronos Group, a non-profit consortium of companies creating open standard APIs for computer graphics rendering such as OpenGL and WebGL. Once Google integrates the new Vulkan APIs, developers can choose to use them or stick with the tried and true OpenGL ES.'
http://www.zdnet.com/article/android-to-get-a-graphics-boost-with-vulkan-a-low-overhead-rending-api/
Sunday, August 2, 2015
Re: HPC
A machine at China's National University of Defense Technology in Guangzhou, called Tianhe-2 (Milky Way-2) is thought to currently be the fastest supercomputer in existence — variously reported as doing either 34 or 55 petaflops (1 petaflop is equivalent to 1 quadrillion floating-point operations per second).
The executive order, issued by Obama on Wednesday, would set up a body known as the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI) to research and build what is hoped to become the first machine to hit 1 exaflop, equivalent to 1,000 petaflops…
But Industry Tap notes that such a machine would require 200 megawatts of power (compared with 3 megawatts for the current-generation machines). That means "a power plant would be required to run it."
<Insert joke about global warming here.>The president's executive order is just the latest salvo in something of an international supercomputer arms race that has broken out in recent years
...
The question on my mind is why do they need it? I wonder if the Chinese machine would be sentient with the right software running on it?
But can I play Candy Crush on it?
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Fwd: Xpoint
'Much of that possibility hinges on the actual performance of 3D XPoint. Intel and Micron didn't get into specifics beyond the "1,000X" faster switching speed, but they did say 3D XPoint would offer "10X" the performance of an NVMe PCIe device. You don't have to look far to find that NVMe PCIe device either: The only one I know of today is Intel's excellent 750 series SSD, which hits in excess of 2.5GB of read speed on some loads. If that is the drive both companies are using as a reference, it's pretty easy to see that they expect 3D XPoint drives/devices to reach beyond 20GBps of read and write speed.
For reference, a typical PC with a Haswell or Broadwell CPU and dual-channel DDR3 offers around 17GB+ of memory bandwidth, while lower-end machines survive on 9GBps or less. Higher-end systems reach into the 55GBps range, while graphics card memory far outstrips those.'
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2953816/storage/what-3d-xpoint-says-about-the-pc-of-the-future.html
Sunday, June 21, 2015
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