John

Watch this new European rocket lift off … then crash

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An effort by Isar Aerospace to become the first European commercial space company to launch an orbital rocket from continental Europe failed in spectacular fashion when the vehicle lost control and exploded soon after liftoff on Sunday. The inaugural launch of the two-stage Spectrum rocket took place at the Andøya Spaceport in Norway at 12:30 … Read more

Researchers develop 90-nanometer LEDs for future ultra high-resolution displays

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Forward-looking: Downscaling has long been the driving force in technological progress – from boosting computing power through smaller transistors to advancing display technology with micro-LEDs. Now, researchers from Zhejiang University and the University of Cambridge are pushing the boundaries of LED innovation even further, unveiling the world’s smallest LEDs: nano-PeLEDs, based on perovskite semiconductors. These … Read more

Oops: Google says it might have deleted your Maps Timeline data

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The Google Maps Timeline has long been a useful though slightly uncomfortable feature that maintains a complete record of everywhere your phone goes (and probably you with it). Google recently changed the way it stored timeline data to improve privacy, but the company now confirms that a “technical issue” resulted in many users losing their … Read more

We are finally beginning to understand how LLMs work: No, they don’t simply predict word after word

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In context: The constant improvements AI companies have been making to their models might lead you to think we’ve finally figured out how large language models (LLMs) work. But nope – LLMs continue to be one of the least understood mass-market technologies ever. But Anthropic is attempting to change that with a new technique called … Read more

The amateur photographers fixing Wikipedia’s ‘terrible’ pictures

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Graham Fraser Technology Reporter Wikipedia/Georges Biard/Frank Sun The actress Laetitia Dosch is one of those to benefit from an improved picture. Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world but, by the admission of some of its own volunteer editors, it suffers from a persistent problem – terrible pictures, particularly of celebrities. … Read more

Research team demonstrates certified quantum randomness

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A team of researchers have published a paper in which they show that a quantum computer can produce certified randomness, which has numerous application areas such as in cryptography. According to the paper, published in Nature, random-number generation is a natural task to demonstrate quantum computing’s supremacy over traditional, classical computing, as randomness is … Read more