DARPA enlists NVIDIA to build exascale supercomputer that's '1000x faster' than today's quickest

At this point, it's pretty obvious that GPUs will soon be playing a huge role in modern day supercomputers -- a role that may just rival that of the tried-and-true CPU. Virginia Tech is gleefully accepting $2 million in order to build a GPU and CPU-enabled HokieSpeed supercomputer, and today DARPA is handing out $25 million to NVIDIA in order to develop "high-performance GPU computing systems." Specifically the Defense Department's research and development arm is aiming to address a so-called "crisis in computing," and if all goes well, the four-year project will eventually yield a "new class of exascale supercomputers which will be 1,000-times more powerful than today's fastest supercomputers." That's a pretty lofty goal, but NVIDIA will be aided by Cray, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a half-dozen US universities along the way. And yeah, if ever anyone's ego was prepared to topple Moore's Law, it'd be this guy.

Japanese Scientists Invent 'Elastic Water'

This is "elastic water," a substance researchers have created in Japan that's 95% water yet retains a jelly-like texture that's perfect for sticking tissues together.

The stuff is made by adding two grams of clay and "a small quantity of some organic matter" to regular old water. And if they're able to figure out how to increase its density, it could produce eco-friendly plastic materials. Also, I bet it feels real weird when you squeeze it.

The future of US Army helicopters: Pilots Optional

Five years ago, the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter got a digital cockpit and fly-by-wire controls. Starting in 2011, the US Army would like it to perform missions without a pilot at the helm. In a 140-page "Unmanned Aircraft Systems Roadmap" released earlier this month, the Armed Forces reveal that the UH-60, AH-64, CH-47 and OH-58D whirlybirds will all be part of a new aircraft category called Optionally Piloted Vehicles (OPV) -- meaning in future, the flick of a switch will turn them into giant UAVs. If an unmanned Apache gunship makes your boots quake, you're not alone, but you won't truly have reason to fear until 2025. That's when the government estimates half of all Army aircraft will be OPV, and those bots will learn the more deadly behaviors, like swarming. Sikorsky says the unmanned UH-60M will fly later this year

Steve Job’s Commencement Address

This is one of my favorite speeches of all times and was given by Steve Jobs at Stanford’s 2005 graduation ceremony. I really admire his philosophy of life and the way he co-relates it in his business which truly makes him the rockstar that he is and one of the very few people I look up to. Enjoy Reading it !!!!!!!!!!

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Solar Path Recorded By Pinhole Camera Over Six Months

Between the months of June and December last year, "Mr. Mallon" was filming the sun's activities on a single film cell, which lay forgotten in his back garden. This is the beautiful result.

It's a pretty example of what you can do with pinhole photography, where you simply place a roll of film in a handmade camera (very easy to do, Mr. Mallon followed these instructions here), and leave it outside, ready to record the path of the sun in the sky.

The film was scanned, and then made negative to illustrate the solar path clearly.

BOB, America’s Biggest Sodium Sulfur Battery, Powers a Texas Town

They say everything’s bigger in Texas. Apparently that’s true for batteries, too. Presidio, Texas, recently built a giant sodium sulfur battery that’s powerful enough to provide energy for the entire town. Not only will the battery serve as a back-up source of power, other utilities can use similar batteries to store energy generated by renewables.


BOB, short for “Big-Old Battery,” began charging up this week. The giant sodium sulfur powerhouse, which is literally the size of a house, can store four megawatts of power for up to eight hours. Before BOB came online, a single, 60-year-old transmission line was the only thing connecting Presidio to the grid. The town frequently experienced power outages. BOB serves as a much-needed back-up plan, and it holds enough power to generate electricity for the whole town. BOB is the first sodium sulfur battery in Texas and the biggest one in existence in the US. Electric Transmission Texas ponied up $25 million to build the battery, and will add $60 million to build a second transmission line by 2012. Batteries like BOB are useful for towns like Presidio, but they can also be used by utilities themselves. In America’s archaic grid system, electricity generation and usage must occur simultaneously, a huge problem for renewables like wind and solar, which generate power sporadically. Bringing on giant batteries to store power can ensure more renewables are brought online before a smart grid can be put in place.

Northrop Grumman's X-47B is getting closer to flight. The 62.1-foot wingspan unmanned aerial vehicle may populate all US Navy's aircraft carriers by the end of the decade.

Conceptual football gets loaded with sensors, don't need no pump

We've heard of soccer balls that play a tune when kicked, sure, and we're pumped to see the world cup in 3D, but it's not often that someone comes up with a serious technological makeover for the sport that's nearly as old as life itself. CTRUS, however, is just that -- a theoretical revolution in soccer that begins with the all-important ball. To start with, a reinforced elastic structure means that CTRUS doesn't require any air. (So long, pump.) Next, GPS and RFID chips keep track of the ball's position at all times, and tell it to light up in different colors when it scores a goal or is accomplice to a nefarious violation. (Farewell, referee.) Last but not least, the sphere itself will report back with accelerometers that measure the ball's kick force and travel speed, and a camera that could (with magical software stabilization, of course) actually film action from the balls own POV. Sadly, the ball is just a concept, but since we're dreaming, we urge its creators to add a second camera. Just imagine just how immersive it would be to have your face booted in at 100kmph in glorious 3D.

HotWheels

US Army wants 2.3 gigapixel camera for aerial surveillance

DARPA may have already gone to the trouble of building a 1.8 gigapixel camera as part of its ARGUS-IS project (pictured above), but it looks like the US Army is setting its sights a little higher, and it's now soliciting proposals for a 2.3 gigapixel camera that would be used for some super-wide aerial surveillance. While obviously still quite a ways from becoming reality, the Army hopes the system will be both smaller and lighter than previous systems, work in the infrared range to boot, and capture images at a rate of two frames per second. The key bit, however, is of course that 2.3 gigapixel sensor, which should let the camera provide continuous coverage of a range of about sixty-two square miles at a resolution of 0.3 meters, or just enough to make out the outline of your tinfoil hat.

Tata Motors' Nano lights up the streets of Mumbai

Indeed, there is a time in every product's life-cycle when it has its birth announcement, when it steps out into the world for the first time, and when it bursts into flames -- and Tata's Nano is no exception. These days TATA motors has been particularly well known for its combustible nano's -- back in 2009, three Nanos caught fire, and now we have pictures of the latest to go into flames, courtesy of an insurance agent Satish Sawant. Apparently, the auto dealership was delivering the vehicle to its new owner when a motorcyclist overtook the driver to get his attention. Since the engine is behind the driver, he had no idea that it had caught fire at some point on his journey. Who would have thought that a hundred thousand rupee vehicle would be plagued with problems? Let's just hope they get 'em sorted before the Nano EV hits the streets.

A Nuclear Reactor for Home......

It would seem that Toshiba hasn't given up on its dream of producing a nuclear reactor for home, and its latest potential partner counts quite the big name among its backers. Run by a former Microsoft exec and partially funded by Bill Gates himself, TerraPower is said to have opened preliminary discussions with Toshiba regarding a possible joint venture between the two companies. The aim is, predictably, to make safer, smaller, more socially acceptable, and just plain better reactors. TerraPower boasts its tech can run without refueling for up to 60 years on depleted uranium and Bill Gates has gotten enthusiastic enough about the whole thing to give a 30-minute talk on the matter.

Will be uploading the link to the video shortly.