23892784
submission
Artem Tashkinov writes:
Ever since the invention of silicon transistor pundits have predicted that one day due to the laws of physics, companies which produce integrated circuits won't be able to shrink transistors, because at one point wires and gates become so small electrons will begin to stray freely and short circuit the chip. Intel has already plans for 11nm chips, but according to the current estimate the gate length of 5nm poses the ultimate limit of the silicon technology due to huge off-leakage current. So the question is, what happens next? Will the electronics industry and advancement in computing performance come to a screeching halt? Will we see the advent of photonic or quantum computers or something completely different? Or maybe computations will move to the cloud where CPUs will be plugged in on demand? Share your vision of the future.
18662460
submission
Artem Tashkinov writes:
Two Italians, Professor Sergio Focardi and Eng. Andrea A. Rossi, both of the University of Bologna, announced to the world that they have a cold fusion device capable of producing more than 10 kilowatts of heat power, while only consuming a fraction of that. This is the first public demonstration of a nickel-hydrogen fusion reactor capable of producing a few kilowatts of thermal energy. At its peak, it is capable of generating 15,000 watts with just 400 watts input required. Licensees are mentioned, with contracts in the USA and in Europe. Mass production should escalate in 2-3 years. Presently Rossi says they are manufacturing a 1 megawatt plant composed of 125 modules.
12522260
submission
Artem Tashkinov writes:
Electronic Frontier Foundation has published the white paper "How Unique is Your Browser" where they show that most Internet users are easily traceable and uniquely identifiable even with cookies support completely disabled. Also they released a web tool which shows your favourite web browser uniqueness, you can check it on you own by visiting this website. The only mitigating factor for this privacy vulnerability is disabling JavaScript and Flash plugin support for websites you don't trust (that can be accomplished by using NoScipt extension for Firefox web browser).
9752046
submission
Artem Tashkinov writes:
Recently scientists have reexamined a 100kg meteorite that hit Australia in 1969 and discovered that the rock which originated in the early days of the Solar System or even earlier contains a soup of highly complex organic chemistry. These findings further prove a theory of a primordial life possibly boosted by extra-terrestrial material. The researchers found 14,197 distinct elemental formulas. Taking into account the limitation of the instrument used, the researchers estimate that there may actually be more than 50,000.
735437
submission
Artem Tashkinov writes:
Maggie Jackson wrote a book in which she is proving that "compared to past generations, we are in fact less capable of quality analytical thinking, more ignorant about many issues, and more fragmented as a community." As a a result of infinite and distracting flow of information coming from the Internet, mail, TV and and medias "it becomes nearly impossible to utilize our capacity for sustained attention, and the implications are felt in business, the home, and society at large."
Jackson notes that the average worker switches tasks every three minutes and once interrupted takes nearly half an hour to go back to the original task. Families and friends find it increasingly difficult to meet face-to-face and even more difficult to do so without interruption or willful multitasking. News segments bombard us with superficially simple pieces of information. We have essentially been ushered into a world of constant distraction in which reflective thinking and undivided attention (single-tasking) has become exceedingly rare.
However she says that there is a remedy.
