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Posts Tagged “
Stanford
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earthquakes
Laptop Accelerometers Used to Study Earthquakes, Desk "Bumping"
Seismologists at Stanford are learning from their roommates over in the biology department and rigging up a distributed computing system to gather quake data from laptops with accelerometers. It's used to save resources for scientists by using assets (your laptops) that are already deployed in a widespread area. They're rolling this out primarily in quake-heavy areas like SF and LA, but should be spreading to other zones later. More »
fcc hearings
FCC Holding Comcast Do-Over Hearings at Stanford on April 17
The FCC has confirmed that they're going to hold a second hearing about Comcast's BitTorrent throttling/blocking at Stanford, seeing as the first hearing was filled with Comcast's paid audience members. The hearing is going to be on April 17, but does Comcast actually care. Apparently not, because the man who spoke on behalf of Comcast at the Harvard hearing last month says the FCC doesn't have any legal power to do anything about the ISP anyway, even if they decide that their BitTorrent blocking is a no no. Check Ars for more on this. (On a related note, my Comcast cable internet is down right now and I'm writing this on EVDO.) [ZDNet]
announcements
Folding@home Recognized By Guinness World Records
Guinness World Records has acknowledged Folding@home as the world's most powerful distributed computing project. On September 16, 2007, months after the program was first distributed to PS3s, Folding@home hit 1 petaflop—setting the record. But just a week later (September 23), PS3 users alone reached the petraflop mark. While Kaz Hirai revealed some of these numbers at his Tokyo Game Show keynote last month, it's good to see gamers who are fueling Folding@home immortalized in the same context as marathon teeter-totterers and that guy who ate an airplane. Because they deserve it. [image]
home entertainment
PS3 Folding@Home Gets Update 1.2
The latest update for Sony and Stanford's Folding@Home PS3 project has a couple of new interesting features that fans will enjoy using. There's PSP Remote Play to control and view folding information on the go, a screensaver mode, protein visualization enhancements, and an "Advanced Mode" that's only available to people who run Folding@home for more than eight hours a day. We applaud the effort and hope that along with curing diseases, Folding finds a cure for the douchebaggery that all of Stanford seems to be infected with. Go Bears. [assbags.edu]
mommy
Computer Learns Baby Talk, Pacifies Programmers
Stanford researchers have developed a program that can, at a most basic level, learn language. In studying whether the brain is hard-wired with preset sounds or if it acquires the basics of speech dynamically, a computer program was designed to learn speech. After listening to hours of Japanese and English mother-to-baby talk, the computer was able to learn the basic vowel sounds just as a baby. The computer performed so well that its accuracy was measured between 80-90%, depending on the software architecture (and whether it was "nappie time"). More »
home entertainment
PS3 Folding Update Coming Mañana, Adds More Speed
Just a quick note about the PlayStation 3 Folding @ Home app that's been all the rage lately—you know, because there aren't very many actual games to play on the system. Tomorrow Sony's releasing an update that both increases folding performance (nice) and improves the user location display map so you can see where you and others are doing their folding. More »
gadgets
The Man Wants Your PS3
We all know that you can get a nice warm fuzzy feeling inside by contributing your PS3's idle time to processing sh'loads of Alzheimer's research data. Apparently, Stanford's Folding@home is generating so many teraflops of good buzz, Big Corporate wants in. Masa Chatani, chief technology officer at Sony Computer Entertainment, told the Financial Times yesterday that the company was "in discussions" with firms who want the distributed processing power for less altruistic aims. More »
home entertainment
Just Friday we were gushing that the Folding@Home project, with the help of a few Spartanesque PS3s, had topped 500 teraflops. Apparently, that was too good to be true. Just now, as approximately 30k PS3s were about to push Folding over a PFLOP (1000 TFLOPS), Folding staff at Stanford seem to have reestimated the PS3's power of calculation to be about 50% less than previously thought. No matter. We're not that far off from PFLOPing, according to the FAQ, if you all get off your asses and buy PS3s for Folding. More »
Breaking: PS3 Folding@Home TFLOP Rating Demoted by 50%, PFLOPS Still Possible
Just Friday we were gushing that the Folding@Home project, with the help of a few Spartanesque PS3s, had topped 500 teraflops. Apparently, that was too good to be true. Just now, as approximately 30k PS3s were about to push Folding over a PFLOP (1000 TFLOPS), Folding staff at Stanford seem to have reestimated the PS3's power of calculation to be about 50% less than previously thought. No matter. We're not that far off from PFLOPing, according to the FAQ, if you all get off your asses and buy PS3s for Folding. More »
robots
Neuroscientist Aims to Implant Electrode in Own Brain
A Stanford neuroscientist wants to understand the relationship between the human brain and consciousness, and to do this he's asking for regulatory approval to implant an electrode into his own brain. Said Stanford's Bill Newsome:I don't know how to figure it out, but it seems to me that stimulating a human brain such as my own would be a good place to start.Don't try this at home. Newsome admits it will be difficult to get regulatory approval for an project such as this, because of liability issues and the scientific community s reluctance to experiment on humans. More »
robots
Next Robot Car Stunt: SF to LA
Those robot-car DARPA Grand Challenge desert race winners from Stanford University are at it again. This time instead of sending their VW Touareg to pick its way through the desert, a robotically-controlled car will attempt to find its way from San Francisco City Hall to downtown Los Angeles at highway speeds in October, 2007. The team is considering a VW Passat wagon for this version 2.0, and the vehicle will have a human in the car as a copilot, ready to take over if the automaton somehow loses its way. No word as to whether this stunt will take place during rush hour. The optimistic Stanford researchers say robotic cars may drive us to work in five to ten years. First things first, Professor. More »
digital cameras
