Lifeboat Foundation

Work on an “Internet of brains” takes another step.

Using a supercomputing system, MIT researchers have developed a model that captures what web traffic looks like around the world on a given day, which can be used as a measurement tool for internet research and many other applications.

Understanding web traffic patterns at such a large scale, the researchers say, is useful for informing internet policy, identifying and preventing outages, defending against cyberattacks, and designing more efficient computing infrastructure. A paper describing the approach was presented at the recent IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Conference.

For their work, the researchers gathered the largest publicly available internet traffic dataset, comprising 50 billion data packets exchanged in different locations across the globe over a period of several years.

Hundreds of millions of people in India depend on farming for their livelihoods, but many of them struggle with losing crops to disease, getting them to market or achieving the right price when they do. Several startups are trying to change that.

Piggybacking on India’s mobile boom, these companies are using smartphones and the internet to help farmers grow, harvest and sell their crops more efficiently. India is self-sufficient in food staples, but faces a constant challenge to feed its population of 1.3 billion and rising. The country accounts for a quarter of the world’s hungry people and is home to over 190 million undernourished people, according to the latest estimates by the United Nations.

“There is a lot of financing and talent which is coming in this space,” says Rikin Gandhi, co-founder and executive director of Digital Green, a social enterprise that began as a research project backed by Microsoft ( MSFT ).

(CNN) — SpaceX is on a mission to beam cheap, high-speed internet to consumers all over the globe. And this week the company revealed a few earthly locations that are already linked to the network, including CEO Elon Musk’s house and the cockpits of a few Air Force jets.

It’s part of early testing for the 60 broadband-beaming satellites and two demo devices that SpaceX has already launched into orbit.

Eventually, the company wants to operate thousands of satellites that will circle the planet at about 300 to 700 miles overhead. The project is called Starlink, and if it’s successful it could forever alter the landscape of the telecom industry.

While lawmakers and regulators look to combat monopolies by online giants, some innovators are developing internet platforms to prevent monopolies from forming in the future.

X, the private spaceflight company known for reusable rockets and a giant, shiny Starship, will begin offering its own satellite internet service in 2020, according to SpaceNews. In fact, the U.S. Air Force is already testing it in planes.

To build the service, SpaceX will have to launch up to eight Falcon 9 rockets filled with the company’s Starlink satellites, SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell told SpaceNews and other reporters this week at the 70th International Astronautical Congress in Washington.

“We’ll continue to upgrade the network until mid to late next year,” SpaceNews’ Jeff Foust quoted Shotwell as saying during a media roundtable on Tuesday (Oct. 22). “We’re hoping for 24 launches by the end of the year.”

Reader, Tamia Boyden asks this question:

In the 90s, how could we access the internet without WiFi?

This post began as an answer to that question at Quora. In the process of answering, I compiled this history of public, residential Internet access. Whether you lived through this fascinating social and technical upheaval or simply want to explore the roots of a booming social phenomenon, I hope you will find the timeline and evolution as interesting as I do.

I have included my answer to Tamia’s question, below. But first, let’s get a quick snapshot of the highlights. This short bullet-list focuses on technical milestones, but the history below, explains the context, social phenomenon and implications.

Continue reading “Public Internet Access: Brief history” »

Art by AI update: not GAN but CAN (Creative Adversarial Networks)

Scientist Ahmed Elgammal went from doing artificial intelligence research to attending his first art exhibit in Chelsea. How? With the help of his creative partner AICAN, an nearly autonomous AI artist. Together they made stunning art that is molding the field of AI art and the art scene in general. We stopped by the Chelsea gallery to talk to Elgammal about how AICAN works, and of course, see the art.

Continue reading “We Attended an AI’s First Art Exhibit in NYC — Future Blink” »

The research scientists’ warnings come amid rising concern about the power of the big tech companies. Most of the focus has been on the current generation of technology — search, online advertising, social media and e-commerce. But the scientists are worried about a barrier to exploring the technological future, when that requires staggering amounts of computing.

Each big step of progress in computing — from mainframe to personal computer to internet to smartphone — has opened opportunities for more people to invent on the digital frontier.

But there is growing concern that trend is being reversed at tech’s new leading edge, artificial intelligence.

Continue reading “At Tech’s Leading Edge, Worry About a Concentration of Power” »