All posts tagged: Leap

The Great Leap Backward | Irina Dumitrescu

The Great Leap Backward | Irina Dumitrescu

Published by skeptic

One late August day in 1985, Lea Ypi climbed a tree in search of peace. Her parents, branded as “intellectuals” in Communist Albania thanks to their bourgeois family histories, were feuding with their closest friends. The object of their contention—like the golden apple that caused the Trojan War—was an empty Coca-Cola can. Ypi’s mother had brought the can home and placed it on an embroidered cloth to brighten their apartment. This was a treatment that most Albanians reserved for photographs of Enver Hoxha, the brutal dictator who ruled the country for over forty years. Despite little Lea’s enthusiasm for “Uncle Enver,” her parents did not subscribe to Hoxha’s personality cult. No photo, just the Coke can. Until it disappeared. The Ypis suspected their closest friends, the Papases, of stealing the can. An older couple with much better credentials—the wife, Donika, steamed letters open at the post office, and her husband, Mihal, was a Party member with a collection of war medals for killing Nazi soldiers—the Papases had taken a liking to the Ypis despite their …

Why timekeeping is now on the verge of a giant leap forward in accuracy

Why timekeeping is now on the verge of a giant leap forward in accuracy

Published by skeptic

Time is vital to the functioning of our everyday lives: from the watches on our wrists to the GPS systems in our phones. Communication systems, power grids, and financial transactions all rely on precision timing. Seconds are the vital units of measurement in timekeeping. Surprisingly, there is still debate over the definition of the second. But recent advances in the world’s most accurate forms of timekeeping may have just changed the game. Accurate timekeeping has always been part of humankind’s social evolution. At the Neolithic monument of Newgrange in Ireland, a special opening above an entrance allows sunlight to illuminate the passage and chamber on the shortest days of the year, around December 21st, the winter solstice. Some 2,300 years ago, Aristotle said that “the revolution of the outermost sphere of the heavens” should be the reference for measuring time. The Greek philosopher believed the cosmos was arranged into concentric spheres, with Earth at the centre. Water clocks, which appeared around 2,000BC, are among the oldest instruments for measuring time. They do this by regulating …

Silicon Valley’s Trillion-Dollar Leap of Faith

Silicon Valley’s Trillion-Dollar Leap of Faith

Published by skeptic

Tech companies like to make two grand pronouncements about the future of artificial intelligence. First, the technology is going to usher in a revolution akin to the advent of fire, nuclear weapons, and the internet. And second, it is going to cost almost unfathomable sums of money. Silicon Valley has already triggered tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars of spending on AI, and companies only want to spend more. Their reasoning is straightforward: These companies have decided that the best way to make generative AI better is to build bigger AI models. And that is really, really expensive, requiring resources on the scale of moon missions and the interstate-highway system to fund the data centers and related infrastructure that generative AI depends on. For a product as important as fire, they say, any spending is worth it. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has described his firm as “the most capital-intensive startup in Silicon Valley history.” Dario Amodei, the CEO of the rival start-up Anthropic, has predicted that a single AI model (such …

Olympics Photo of the Day: A Leap Through the Antlers

Olympics Photo of the Day: A Leap Through the Antlers

Published by skeptic

A unique view of a whimsical obstacle for riders in Versailles July 28, 2024, 2:21 PM ET Buda Mendes / Getty One of the best parts about the Olympics can be the creativity and variety found in the arenas and courses. For the 2024 equestrian cross-country course, designer Pierre Le Goupil took inspiration from the features and grounds of the Palace of Versailles, creating 28 decorative obstacles—including this fence shaped like a stag’s head, with antlers reaching up more than 23 feet (7 meters) on either side. Here, Team Australia’s Kevin McNab, riding the horse Don Quidam, clears the hurdle during the equestrian cross-country leg on day two of the 2024 Olympic Games at Chateau de Versailles in Versailles, France. Source link

Republicans leap on Hunter Biden trial after week of revealing testimony | Hunter Biden

Republicans leap on Hunter Biden trial after week of revealing testimony | Hunter Biden

Published by skeptic

The picture of criminal behavior and a dissolute lifestyle was painted in sometimes painfully frank testimony in a Delaware court room last week and would have been difficult to hear for the family of any defendant. But Hunter Biden, the man in the dock in Wilmington, is no ordinary plaintiff; he is the son of the president of the United States. Biden Jr, 54, went on trial last Monday facing three federal charges relating to the illegal purchase and ownership of a gun while in the grip of longstanding drug addiction. All week long, the proceedings put the personal conduct of the eldest surviving presidential scion under a microscope. A jury in his home town heard details of his previous addiction to crack cocaine and how, in 2018 – with his father preparing for a run for the presidency – he bought a handgun by allegedly lying to a registered firearms dealer about his drug use. He then desperately tried to retrieve it from a garbage bin where his then lover, the widow of Joe …

Exclusive-Google, augmented reality startup Magic Leap strike partnership deal

Exclusive-Google, augmented reality startup Magic Leap strike partnership deal

Published by Sam

NEW YORK : Alphabet’s Google and augmented reality startup Magic Leap are forming a strategic technology partnership and working on building immersive experiences that blend the physical and digital worlds. Magic Leap said in a blog post on Thursday that the two companies have agreed to a partnership. A Google spokesperson confirmed the agreement. While short on details, the announcement adds to signals that Google may be plotting a return to the market for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) technologies that it so far has largely yielded to rivals Meta and Apple. The partnership would combine Florida-based Magic Leap’s expertise in optics and device manufacturing with Google’s technology platforms, Magic Leap said. “We’ve shipped a couple of different versions of augmented reality devices so far, so we’re out there delivering things, and Google has a long history of platforms thinking,” Magic Leap’s Chief Technology Officer Julie Larson-Green told Reuters in an interview ahead of the announcement. “So we’re thinking, putting our expertise and their expertise together, there’s lots of things we could end up doing,” …

Erling Haaland’s freakish scoring spree summed up by otherworldly leap for second goal

Erling Haaland’s freakish scoring spree summed up by otherworldly leap for second goal

Published by skeptic

<![CDATA[ The first thought was how he has jumped that high from practically a standing start but then Erling Haaland is not like the rest of us mere mortals. He has his own video game character now but there was always something otherworldly about him. And as he rose above poor Nelson Semedo as if being hoisted from the ground by some sort of invisible force, you just had to admire the sheer athleticism of the whole operation. ]]> Source link

Can Zendaya make the leap from tween idol to Hollywood heavyweight? | Zendaya

Can Zendaya make the leap from tween idol to Hollywood heavyweight? | Zendaya

Published by skeptic

Actor-model-producer Zendaya Coleman – universally known mononymously, without her last name – has never been short of attention, but it feels as if the 27-year-old has arrived at a breakthrough moment. With the tennis romance Challengers arriving in cinemas, in which she is the central focus, the sci-fi blockbuster Dune: Part Two still reeling in audiences, and acting as the simultaneous cover star of two separate editions of Vogue magazine – the British and the American – Zendaya appears to have achieved a new level. Her career has so far specialised in an impressively high number of attention-grabbing moments, including appearing in a spectacularly bizarre metallic silver “robot suit” at the premiere of Dune: Part Two earlier this year, and the Challengers trailer release in June 2023, with its sexually suggestive premise of a threeway love affair. Challengers, however, represents something of a high-stakes career re-calibration; co-starring Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist and directed by Italian auteur Luca Guadagnino, Zendaya is using it to transition into mature, dramatic roles while not abandoning the teen and …