Category: IT

Facebook is set to take its worldwide internet project to new heights, all the way to geostationary orbit, to be specific. The social media giant has announced a new partnership with French firm Eutelsat, with plans to launch a satellite into space next year in hope of bringing millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa online. The satellite is already under construction. Being built by Israeli firm Spacecom, the AMOS-6 satellite is designed to address the gaps in internet access throughout West, East and Southern Africa that cannot be filled by…

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When I was in middle school, I read a popular book about programming in BASIC (which was the most popular programming language for beginners at that time). But it was 1986, and we did not have computers at home or school yet. So, I could only write computer programs on paper, without being able to try them on an actual computer. Surprisingly, I am now doing something similar—I am studying how to solve problems on a quantum computer. We do not yet have a fully functional quantum computer. But I am…

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A new “atomic memory” device that encodes data atom by atom can store hundreds of times more data than current hard disks can, a new study finds. “You would need just the area of a postage stamp to write out all books ever written,” said study senior author Sander Otte, a physicist at the Delft University of Technology’s Kavli Institute of Nanoscience in the Netherlands. In fact, the researchers estimated that if they created a cube 100 microns wide — about the same diameter as the average human hair —…

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Though virtual reality has existed in some form since the 1960s, and in the realm of science fiction for much longer, 2016 promises to be a breakthrough year for the technology, with high-profile product launches and major releases in games and film. With that in mind we are thrilled to announce our new conference Versions, organized in partnership with NEW INC, the incubator program at The New Museum.Versions aims to shift the conversation around VR from one focused on tools and gadgets to a dynamic interdisciplinary discussion that will examine…

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