Kozminski Techblog

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Due to increased popularity of cryptocurrencies there has been a huge demand for graphics cards. The new generation of NVIDIA cards seems to be the favourites of the crypto community, especially the RTX 3060.

For NVIDIA the increased popularity of their product is a problem because it causes a shortage, because of that they are not able to get to their primary clients, the gaming community. The limited availability also drives the price of the card to ridiculously high amounts.

By limiting the mining performance by almost 50% they hope to discourage cryptominers from buying the RTX 3060. That would mean the company would finally be able to fulfil the demand among the gaming community. The reduced performance will only be applied to new cards.

It’s not the first time NVIDIA tried to apply such a limit but previous solutions were not stable enough due to bugs.

The company is not neglecting the cryptocurrency market, they plan to release a dedicated cards designed only for mining. Their goal is to keep every customer happy and deliver the best product for the purpose.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/29/22409838/nvidia-rtx-3060-etherium-cryptocurrency-mining-limit-back-driver-update

NVIDIA reintroduces GeForce RTX 3060 cryptomining hash limiter

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Recent news from Facebook spilled some information about the social media giant plan to improve their news feed and give users more relevant, more engaging and overall more personalised content.

During upcoming months, users will be asked to fill surveys about content. This data will be used by Facebook to later introduce new changes to the platform.

The end result will be based on four different signals driven by user feedback.

Those four signals are:

1. Is this post inspirational?

The feeling of inspiration is heavily positive, uplifting and motivating. This high dose of positivity is like digital vitamin D for us, makes our mood much better. Especially now, during pandemic, it’s a high priority to give users inspiration.

One part of the feedback survey will ask people if they found posts inspirational. Based on that feedback, Facebook will recognize posts as inspirational, and that signal will be incorporated and considered for future news feed rankings. 

2. Is this post interesting?

The second signal was defined in order to make sure that content shown by facebook reaches the right audience. After all, people engage with content that they are genuinely interested in.

Facebook is going to ask people if they are interested in certain topics and if they want to find more media on their feed about those topics.

Based on that information, content will be to ranked and prioritised in users’ news feeds.

Most interesting posts will be shown closer to the top of news feed, and the ones with less interest-rate, will be moved down. What’s more, Facebook will organically promote posts in topics that users find interesting.

3. Do you want to see less of these posts?

Facebook plan doesn’t consist of only bringing up the most interesting topics, but also lowering those less interesting.

If people will signal that certain topic isn’t interesting for them, similar posts won’t be shown to them.

4. Do you want to hide this post?

Finally, if someone is not only, not interested in certain topic, but doesn’t want to see it at all, Facebook is making it even easier for them. This was, the social media giant will make our social media feed even more personal.

This will also serve as a ranking signal to improve the news feed experience.

Here is what Facebook said about this feedback process:

“While a post’s engagement — or how often people like it, comment on it, or share it — can be a helpful indicator that it’s interesting to people, this survey-driven approach, which largely occurs outside the immediate reaction to a post, gives a more complete picture of the types of posts people find most valuable and what kind of content detracts from their News Feed experience.”

This news feed rankings will be adjusted over the next few months, based on the feedback Facebook receives from users.

source: https://interreviewed.com/how-facebook-is-improving-its-news-feed-ranking/

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A thermoelectric generator (TEG) embedded in a wearable wristband can transform body heat into enough electricity to power an LED. Since it can power smartwatches and other wearables, this technology may theoretically eliminate the need for conventional charging devices.

Qian Zhang from the Harbin Institute of Technology in China who has been studying this technology for over 15 years says that “Energy supply is always a big issue, and this could help alleviate the energy crisis.”

TEGs are used in a wide range of applications, however their energy output is normally quite low. This is a major issue that Zhang and his colleagues are attempting to overcome. They layered a magnesium and bismuth material – the TEG materials – between polyurethane and a flexible electrode to create a wristband that could wrap around a human arm.

As a result, the wristband measures 115mm long and is just under 30mm thick. It generates power thanks to the difference between the temperature of human skin and the temperature of the surrounding environment. The unit can produce 20.6 microwatts per square centimetre at its peak, which is more than enough to light an LED attached to the wristband.

If the technology becomes more relevant it may become a stepping stone for the future generations of wearables. As a result, we may experience a future, where all of out gadgetes will be completly wireless and without the need for any charging.

Sources:

https://interreviewed.com/wristband-that-turns-body-heat-into-electricity-can-power-an-led/

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Last year NYPD acquired Spot, the robot dog from Boston Dynamics. The machine was nicknamed the Digidog and its main purpose was to protect citizens, police officers and save lives according to the NYPD. Unfortunately after major backlash from the community the robot is going back to its manufacturer.

According to city officials and citizens Digidog was sending a wrong message to the community and is a sign of a dystopian technology that has no place in New York yet. The general public in convinced that the robot is an example of excessive police militarisation and is used wrongly to intervene in poor communities where the NYPD is scared to send its officers. Said militarisation is impossible in this case. Fitting any weapons to the robot is agains Boston Dynamics terms of service and the lease would end immediately .

The two sides seem to have a different perception of how the robot will affect the communities. On one hand the police has made questionable decisions to send the Digidog to a home invasion in Bronx and to a pubic housing building, which according to critics shows how aggressively the police treats poor communities. On the other hand the robot has a potential to fit in places when no human can go or to show a non-biased recording of a dangerous situation.

The NYPD spokesperson highlighted that we might see other robots joining the police force but in a smarter and more effective way.

Sources:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/29/22409559/nypd-robot-dog-digidog-boston-dynamics-contract-terminated

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/nyregion/nypd-robot-dog-backlash.html

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Image credit: https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/28/lobus-raises-6-million-for-an-art-management-platform-on-the-blockchain/

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, have exploded in popularity this year, coinciding with the increase in the value of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. According to Nonfungible.com, the overall volume of NFT transactions quadrupled to $250 million last year. They’re a form of digital asset that uses blockchain technology to monitor ownership of a specific virtual object, such as a piece of art or sports trading cards.

One of the blockchain’s most obvious real-world use cases has been reshaping ownership proofs in the fine art markets. However, as top auction houses have welcomed NFTs and well-known artists have experimented with the crypto medium in recent months, the future has appeared more real than ever.

Lobus is hoping to commoditize blockchain technology with an asset management platform that they hope will bring creator-friendly mechanisms from NFT marketplaces like SuperRare to the physical art world as well, enabling art owners to retain partial ownership of the works they sell so that they can profit from secondary transactions down the road.

While physical art sellers have been accustomed to selling 100% of their work while seeing that value grow over time, Lobus’s goal is for artist’s to maintain fractional ownership throughout those sales, ensuring that they earn a commission on sales down the road.

Lobus co-CEO, Sarah Wendell Sherril in an interview with TechCrunch said: “We’re really on a mission of making artists into owners. We are really leveraging the best of what NFTs are putting out there about ownership and asking the questions of how to help create different ownership structures and interrupt this asset class.”

A major priority for the team has been to concentrate on what their technology will bring to their network of art owners rather than the nuances of knowing what blockchain actually is.

Lobus currently has about 45,000 art objects in its database, with a total asset valuation of $5.4 billion across physical and digital objects.

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The Department of Transport has announced that automated lane-keeping systems (ALKS) are to be legalized on the British motorways by the end of this year. There are still however some specific circumstances under which a driver can switch to the autopilot mode.

In fact, a driver can unwind, read a newspaper, watch a movie and is not obliged to control the vehicle during the ride, but only within the speed of maximum 37 mph (60 km/h). A system keeps the car in a single lane, controls its position and ensures a safe distance from other objects, however when the speed exceeds 37 mph, or when the traffic increases, it automatically demands a human to take over. In such situation, a driver has 10 seconds to react and take the wheel and in case it won’t happen, the vehicle will turn on its hazard lights to warn drivers on the road, reduce the speed and eventually stop the car. Additionally, using ALKS will be only allowed on motorways which is due to the safety precautions (lack of pedestrians and cars moving in the same direction).

Such system is being put under a lot of questions whether ALKS should be actually called as ‘self-driving’. Insurers are of the opinion that government’s definition of ALKS as automated, introduces misleading perception and puts an incorrect picture onto the matter. As the system still requires a driver to take over and be on the alert, their concern is that such naming will cause a lot of misuses of the technology and lead to many accidents which have already occurred in the past. In 2018 there was a fatal car crash where a driver was playing a video game on the passenger’s seat while switching his car on the autopilot. The same year another man was imposed a ban on driving due to Tesla driving him on the passenger’s seat. During his trial he said that “he was unlucky one who got caught”.

Although there is a lot of risks associated with the technology, ALKS are at the same time likely to increase the safety on the road:

“Automated driving systems could prevent 47,000 serious accidents and save 3,900 lives over the next decade through their ability to reduce the single largest cause of road accidents – human error.”

Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders

The UK is striving to take the lead in the autonomous car industry and has anticipated the legalization of automated lane-keeping systems by the end of this year. Will the predictors come true? In 2017 promises to introduce self-steering vehicles by 2021 were also made, which ultimately did not happen. The government however is strongly focused on pioneering autonomous cars in the country and estimates the industry to reach £42bn and hire another 38,000 people by 2035.

Sources:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56906145

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/28/self-driving-cars-could-get-green-light-for-use-on-uk-motorways-this-year

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April 2021 India is under huge new wave of novel corona virus. The hospitals are lacking in equipment and staff. Around social media people are tracking down oxygen, drugs and lacking medical equipment. Government is almost helpless with occurring situation.
Sohini Chattopadhyay 30, with a group of her friends were struggling to finds donors of plasma on all sort of social medias with no results.
Chattopadhyay finally decided to use tinder to find the donors of the blood.

She and another friend of hers created profiles each on the dating service and were swiping right of anyone who looked healthy and was close to their age. they managed to find the donor with the right blood type who was willing to donate the plasma.

“I was pretty touched,” says Chattopadhyay. “What started as a desperate joke turned out to actually give us some leads, and in this case also found someone willing to donate.” 

Although a Tinder match for convalescent plasma may be a one-off success story, it represents the myriad ways India’s residents are going online to help their loved ones as the country faces around 350 000 new covid cases a day, a dramatic spike that began in early April. And without enough government action or information, ordinary citizens are turning to social media to crowdsource everything from financial help to medical equipment. They’re inundating Twitter and Instagram with requests for hospital beds, oxygen supplies, antiviral drugs, and convalescent plasma donors; they’re creating Google docs, websites, and web apps to aggregate what’s being shared and to play matchmaker between buyers and sellers. 



Reference:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/04/28/1023983/india-covid-crowdsourcing/