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Imagine a world where you could download every episode of Game of Thrones before you’d even lifted your finger off the ‘Buy’ button?

Well researchers at University College London have brought us one crucial step closer to this utopian world by creating a record-breaking data transfer speed of 1.125 terabits per second.

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ViaSat plans to launch three satellites to provide 1 terabit per second internet connections to remote areas, aircraft, and maritime vehicles.

ViaSat, a US-based satellite company, has teamed up with Boeing to build three new satellites that will provide high-speed Internet to remote areas around the world. This joint project was announced two days ago. ViaSat is scheduled to launch its satellite ViaSat2 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in just a few months.

These three new satellites, named ViaSat3, will be carrying a total network capacity of a whopping 1 Terabit per second, triple the capacity of ViaSat2. It will be able to deliver 100 Mbps service to remote residential areas in the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

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ARLINGTON: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing artificial intelligence that can help humans understand the floods of data they unleashed 50 years ago with the Internet and make better decisions, even in the heat of battle. Such “human-machine collaboration” — informally known as the centaur model — is the high-tech holy grail of the Defense Department’s plan to counter Russian and Chinese advances, known as the Third Offset Strategy.

“We’ve had some great conversations with the deputy,” said DARPA director Arati Prabhakar, referring to the chief architect of Offset, Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work. “In many of our programs you’ll see some of the technology components” of the strategy. But it’s more than specific technologies, however exotic: It’s about a new approach to technology.

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A team of researchers has achieved the fastest ever transmission rate for digital information between a single transmitter and receiver, sending data optically at a frankly ridiculous 1.125 terabits per second.

The result, achieved by scientists at University College London, uses a series of signal processing techniques to achieve the speed. But first, the lead researcher, Dr Robert Maher, puts the rate into context in a press release:

For comparison this is almost 50,000 times greater than the average speed of a UK broadband connection of 24 megabits per second… To give an example, the data rate we have achieved would allow the entire HD Game of Thrones series to be downloaded within one second.

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“Over the past year, Google engineers have experimented and developed a set of building blocks for the Internet of Things - an ecosystem of connected devices, services and “things” that promises direct and efficient support of one’s daily life. While there has been significant progress in this field, there remain significant challenges in terms of (1) interoperability and a standardized modular systems architecture, (2) privacy, security and user safety, as well as (3) how users interact with, manage and control an ensemble of devices in this connected environment.

It is in this context that we are happy to invite university researchers1 to participate in the Internet of Things (IoT) Technology Research Award Pilot.”

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Here is a concept to think about when we’re 20 or 30 years into the future — imagine a world where humans and all living things in it are truly Singular, and the new AI & Humanoid robots are alive and well. Will AI (including Robots) ever need therapy, will AI ever get stressed out or have panic attacks, will any humans know what AI is thinking once we give AI more independence?

I ask these questions because as we enhance and evolve AI to be like humans and interpret and process emotions, feelings, and interact like humans; will AI expeience fully the struggles of everyday life like some humans do? And, when needs counseling or therapy will they go to another AI or will they see a human therapist?

As we evolve AI; we must look at the full longer picture around AI including how human do we really wish to make AI.


Two actors pose for stock footage in that can be used in political ads. Karen O’Connell, left, & Leslie Luxemburg pretend to chat over coffee. In a political ad, this clip could be used to illustrate any number of topics. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

Two weeks ago, the Internet Archive started its new Political TV Ad Archive, which monitors television stations in 20 markets in eight U.S. states to compile a list of 2016 primary-election advertisements & uses audio fingerprinting algorithms to automatically flag each one airing of those spots.

[Who are all those smiling people in crusade advertisements?]

The project will create a public database of political television ads in the 2016 race, where they are running & who is paying for them. Since the end of Nov., the archive has identified 267 distinct ads that, if broadcast end to end, would total 196 minutes. They have aired a collective 72,807 times on the stations it’s monitoring.

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Glad that Stanford is working on their own version because the US Government has their own and it has been online in Los Alamos for a while now; have more than one version to learn from only enriches the final version.


Researchers are a step closer to building a quantum technology that could help improve internet security.

Researchers from Stanford University in U.S. have created a novel quantum light source to help improve internet security. In other words, the scientists have designed a technology that might someday serve as the basis for quantum communication.

The physics of quantum communication is definitely complex. Standard lasers are in reality not useful for secure communication in the physics of quantum communication, as they release what is called ‘classical’ light.

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