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Apple preps next Mac chips with aim to outclass highest-end PCs (nationthailand.com)

Apple preps next Mac chips with aim to outclass highest-end PCs

Dec 07. 2020

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Mark Gurman, Ian King · BUSINESS 

Apple Inc. is planning a series of new Mac processors for introduction as early as 2021 that are aimed at outperforming Intel Corp.’s fastest.

Chip engineers at the Cupertino, California-based technology giant are working on several successors to the M1 custom chip, Apple’s first Mac main processor that debuted in November. If they live up to expectations, they will significantly outpace the performance of the latest machines running Intel chips, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the plans aren’t yet public.

Apple’s M1 chip was unveiled in a new entry-level MacBook Pro laptop, a refreshed Mac mini desktop and across the MacBook Air range. The company’s next series of chips, planned for release as early as the spring and later in the fall, are destined to be placed across upgraded versions of the MacBook Pro, both entry-level and high-end iMac desktops, and later a new Mac Pro workstation, the people said.

The road map indicates Apple’s confidence that it can differentiate its products on the strength of its own engineering and is taking decisive steps to design Intel components out of its devices. The next two lines of Apple chips are also planned to be more ambitious than some industry watchers expected for next year. The company said it expects to finish the transition away from Intel and to its own silicon in 2022.

While Intel gets less than 10% of its revenue from furnishing Apple with Mac chips, the rest of its PC business is liable to face turbulence if the iPhone maker is able to deliver demonstrably better-performing computers. It could accelerate a shake-up in an industry that has long been dependent on Intel’s pace of innovation. For Apple, the move sheds that dependency, deepens its distinction from the rest of the PC market and gives it a chance to add to its small, but growing share in PCs.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment. Chip development and production is complex with changes being common throughout the development process. Apple could still choose to hold back these chips in favor of lesser versions for next year’s Macs, the people said, but the plans nonetheless indicate Apple’s vast ambitions.

Apple’s Mac chips, like those in its iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, use technology licensed from Arm Ltd., the chip design firm whose blueprints underpin much of the mobile industry and which Nvidia Corp. is in the process of acquiring. Apple designs the chips and outsources their production to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which has taken the lead from Intel in chip manufacturing.

The current M1 chip inherits a mobile-centric design built around four high-performance processing cores to accelerate tasks like video editing and four power-saving cores that can handle less intensive jobs like web browsing. For its next generation chip targeting MacBook Pro and iMac models, Apple is working on designs with as many as 16 power cores and four efficiency cores, the people said.

While that component is in development, Apple could choose to first release variations with only eight or 12 of the high-performance cores enabled depending on production, they said. Chipmakers are often forced to offer some models with lower specifications than they originally intended because of problems that emerge during fabrication.

For higher-end desktop computers, planned for later in 2021 and a new half-sized Mac Pro planned to launch by 2022, Apple is testing a chip design with as many as 32 high-performance cores.

With today’s Intel systems, Apple’s highest-end laptops offer a maximum of eight cores, a high-end iMac Pro is available with as many as 18 and the priciest Mac Pro desktop features as much as a 28-core system. Though architecturally different, Apple and Intel’s chips rely on the segmentation of workloads into smaller, serialized tasks that several processing cores can work on at once.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which has been gaining market share at Intel’s expense, offers standard desktop parts with as many as 16 cores, with some of its high-end chips for gaming PCs going as high as 64 cores.

While the M1 silicon has been well received, the Macs using it are Apple’s lower-end systems with less memory and fewer ports. The company still sells higher-end, Intel-based versions of some of the lines that received M1 updates. The M1 chip is a variation of a new iPad processor destined to be included in a new iPad Pro arriving next year.

Apple engineers are also developing more ambitious graphics processors. Today’s M1 processors are offered with a custom Apple graphics engine that comes in either 7- or 8-core variations. For its future high-end laptops and midrange desktops, Apple is testing 16-core and 32-core graphics parts.

For later in 2021 or potentially 2022, Apple is working on pricier graphics upgrades with 64 and 128 dedicated cores aimed at its highest-end machines, the people said. Those graphics chips would be several times faster than the current graphics modules Apple uses from Nvidia and AMD in its Intel-powered hardware.

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U.S., states poised to sue Facebook for monopoly abuse (nationthailand.com)

U.S., states poised to sue Facebook for monopoly abuse

Dec 07. 2020

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · David McLaughlin, Ben Brody · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, COURTSLAW 

Facebook Inc. soon will be hit by federal and state antitrust lawsuits accusing the social media giant of abusing its dominance and thwarting competition, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Lawsuits are expected as soon as this week from the Republican-led Federal Trade Commission and a group of state attorneys general led by New York’s Letitia James, a Democrat, according to the people, who described the plans under condition of anonymity.

The complaints will mark the second time in less than two months that the U.S. and state officials have leveled monopoly charges against a U.S. technology giant. Combined with the Justice Department’s October complaint against Alphabet Inc.’s Google, the lawsuits mark the most significant monopoly cases filed in the U.S. in 20 years.

For Facebook, the lawsuits will represent the biggest regulatory attack in the company’s history, potentially imperiling its ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp. The cases culminate investigations into Facebook that began last year, part of a wave of antitrust scrutiny directed at U.S. tech firms that promises to carry over into the Biden administration.

Facebook became a prime target for President Donald Trump in the last two months of his administration. Last week, he threatened to veto the annual U.S. defense authorization bill unless Congress adds a rider to abolish the law that protects technology companies, including Facebook, from liability over most content posted by users. The demand followed months of attacks by Trump and other Republicans, who claim the technology platforms suppress conservative views.

In addition to the Facebook case, states are planning new lawsuits against Google in the coming weeks, according to two people familiar with the matter. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is targeting Google’s advertising business, while another group that includes Colorado, Iowa and New York has been investigating the company’s search monopoly, the subject of the Justice Department’s complaint.

It will be up to Biden’s Justice Department to carry the Google case forward, while the Facebook case will fall to whomever Biden picks as FTC chairman if Joe Simons, who was appointed by Trump, leaves the agency.

The cases reflect how public sentiment has turned on companies that have gone from scrappy start-ups to digital behemoths, said Rebecca Haw Allensworth, who teaches antitrust law at Vanderbilt University.

“We like the underdogs and the upstarts and competition, and when those companies were the underdogs and shaking things up they were a lot more popular,” she said. “Now they look like the big barons of industry that created the political will that led to the first antitrust laws.”

New York’s James said in an interview on Bloomberg TV Thursday that the states could combine their case with the FTC’s. The states’ investigation of Google, which initially included nearly every state, eventually fractured along partisan lines.

“I am confident that it will be a bipartisan matter as we move forward,” she said in response to a question about the states’ Facebook inquiry. “And in the event that we do file, we look forward to the possibility of consolidating with the FTC.”

No final decisions have been made and the filings could be delayed. The FTC declined to comment. James declined to discuss further details of the states’ Facebook probe.

The FTC case has focused in part on the company’s 2012 acquisition of Instagram and its 2014 purchase of WhatsApp — and whether they were intended to choke off competition.

That was among the findings of a 16-month House investigation of Facebook and other tech giants. The House report, released in October, accused Facebook of buying smaller companies that it viewed as competitive threats to protect and expand its dominant market position. Since its founding in 2004, Facebook has acquired at least 63 companies, according to the report.

The report cited internal documents showing that once Facebook identified competitive threats, “it attempted to buy or crush them by cloning their product features” or blocking them from connecting to the company’s platform.

“Facebook took these steps to harm competitors and insulate Facebook from competition, not just to grow or offer better products and services,” it said.

According to the report, Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in a message to a colleague that “Instagram can hurt us meaningfully without becoming a huge business.” When Facebook’s chief financial officer asked if the goal of buying Instagram was to “neutralize a potential competitor,” Zuckerberg responded that that was a motivation for the deal.

Facebook has long denied it’s a threat to competition. Zuckerberg told Congress in July that the company faces intense competition around the world and is constantly innovating to develop products users will like and to avoid falling behind.

Instagram’s success was far from guaranteed, he told lawmakers. It was Facebook’s investments in the company that made it successful.

“With hindsight it probably looks like obvious that Instagram would have reached the scale that it has today, but at the time it was far from obvious,” he told Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which oversaw the panel’s antitrust report. “This has been an American success story.”

The Facebook complaint is the most significant antitrust action under the FTC’s Simons, who has led the agency since 2018. Last year, Simons reached a $5 billion settlement against Facebook for privacy infractions, an agreement that was widely criticized by privacy advocates, Democratic lawmakers and the agency’s two Democratic commissioners for not requiring changes in the way Facebook operates.

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Cisco agrees to buy British cloud company for $721 million (nationthailand.com)

Cisco agrees to buy British cloud company for $721 million

Dec 07. 2020

By Syndication The Washington Post, Bloomberg · Linus Chua

Cisco Systems agreed to buy British customer service software maker IMImobile Plc in a deal valued at about 543 million pounds ($721 million) as part of a plan to enhance tools to help companies keep track of and interacting with users. IMImobile shares rose the most on record.

The deal, Cisco’s largest British acquisition in about three years, offers IMImobile investors 595 pence per share in cash, the company said in a statement on Monday. That’s a 48% premium to the company’s Friday closing price of 402.50 pence.

Cisco is seeking to push further into automation to improve the way its customers reach out to their end-users, enabling them to make their pitches and services more effective. And it wants to add those capabilities to its existing customer-relationship management offerings.

IMImobile shares jumped 47% to 593 pence in early London trading on Monday, their biggest ever gain, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. San Jose, California-based Cisco, down 7.5% this year, rose 27 cents to $44.38 in New York on Friday.

Cisco’s Chief Executive Officer Chuck Robbins is seeking to recast the company — whose hardware is the backbone of the internet — as a networking software and services provider. He’s responding to an industrywide shift that has seen more of the functions traditionally provided by in-house hardware migrate to outsourcing offered by remote data centers.

With IMImobile, it sees an opportunity to use artificial intelligence software to automate the outreach process more effectively than is currently possible. For example, it will help customers channel their offerings into the approach that they prefer, such as through text messages, social media or a voice call. Another instance is to provide a company representative with more contextual information about the customer they’re dealing with to make sure that they tailor that interaction in a way that the customer wants.

“A great customer relationship is built on consistently enjoyable interactions where every touchpoint on every channel is an opportunity for businesses to deliver rich, engaging and intuitive experiences,” Cisco Senior Vice President Jeetu Patel said in the release.

The acquisition adds to a growing list of deals as technology companies seek to strengthen their AI capabilities. A week ago, ServiceNow Inc. said will buy Canadian startup Element AI Inc., marking the software maker’s fourth AI-related acquisition this year.

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More students than ever got F’s in first term of 2020-21 school year – but are A-F grades fair in a pandemic? (nationthailand.com)

More students than ever got F’s in first term of 2020-21 school year – but are A-F grades fair in a pandemic?

Dec 06. 2020

By The Washington Post · Valerie Strauss · NATIONAL, EDUCATION 

Students’ grades for the first period of the 2020-21 academic year are now being recorded and we are seeing stories from around the country about an unprecedented rise in F’s.

Is anybody surprised?

Millions of kids are living through the most disruptive school year of their lives because of the coronavirus pandemic. They are forced to learn at home online or wear masks in classrooms without the benefit of their usual social, sports and artistic outlets. Anxiety among students is exploding, as is depression and loneliness and trauma, according to health officials and students themselves.

To be sure, many adults are having a hard time staying focused on their work amid the health and political chaos of 2020, so why would anybody expect young people to be any better?

And is it fair to give kids regular A-F grades when nothing has been regular about the way they are living and learning since last March, and won’t be for some time?

Last spring, when the coronavirus pandemic began and schools across the United States closed and reverted to remote learning – literally overnight – many districts decided to halt giving A-F grades and institute some form of pass-fail system.

School and district officials said then that giving A-F grades wouldn’t be fair because of the inadequacy of remote learning at the time and because many students did not have sufficient technology and/or Internet access, and/or a quiet, safe place to learn at home, and/or no resources to help with their school work. Before the pandemic, millions of children attended poorly funded schools and lived in poverty, but the pandemic exacerbated the inequities.

When the 2020-21 academic year began this fall, A-F grading systems returned even though many students were still learning from home. Now there are news stories from across the country about a tsunami of F’s:

In Maryland: Failure rates in math and English jumped as much as sixfold for some of the most vulnerable students in Montgomery County, the largest system in the state. – The Washington Post

In Texas: Students across the greater Houston metropolitan area got F’s at unprecedented rates, with some districts reporting nearly half of middle and high school students failing in at least one class. – The Houston Chronicle

In North Carolina: Forty-six percent of students in grades 3-12 in Wilson County Schools failed at least one class – more than double the rate from the same period in fall 2019. – Associated Press

In Virginia: Fairfax County Public Schools, the largest district in the state, reported that the percentage of middle school and high school students who earned F’s in at least two classes jumped from 6 percent to 11 percent. – The Washington Post 

In California: Districts around the San Francisco Bay area reported spikes in failing grades. The Sequoia Union High School District in Redwood City said the percentage of students with more than one failing grade jumped from 19.7 percent last year at the same time to 29 percent. F’s in Mt. Diablo Unified School District in Contra Costa County jumped from 19 percent over the previous two fall terms to 30.7 percent. – The Mercury News

When the 2020-21 school year started, fears that millions of students were falling badly behind in their school work had escalated, and administrators and teachers believed that students would try harder if they had to achieve a specific grade rather than just pass a class. They also said that remote learning had improved a lot from the spring and the academic programming was more substantial. And they said there is no systemic substitute right now for the traditional grading system.

In addition, high school students worried about how colleges and universities would view an entire academic year of pass-fail grades. Institutions of higher education had told students not to worry about their grades last spring but that changed in the fall. The University of California and California State University systems said, for example, that they would not accept pass/fail or similar marks for 2020-21 on applicants’ transcripts next year.

So A-F grades reappeared, but in a nod to the unique pandemic circumstances and continued inequities that make it harder for some students to work from home, many districts and schools have given some flexibility to students.

For example, in Newman, Calif., the school board of the Newman-Crows Landing Unified School District voted last month to temporarily ease the grading policy. Teachers can’t give a zero to students who don’t turn in assignments; now the lowest score on all assignments is 50 points on a scale of 100 – and the policy is retroactive to the start of the 2020-21 school year.

Some teachers spoke against the policy, citing an argument made by educators around the country: Pass/fail systems are a disincentive for students to try hard for a good grade and they work against those students who work their hardest.

WestSideConnect.com reported that Scott Felber, a teacher at Orestimba High School in Newman-Crows Landing, wrote a letter to the board saying: “What will happen to a student who gives everything they have to squeak by with a passing grade when they watch their friends do minimal work and get the same grade?”

Nearly 20 Yolo Middle School teachers said in a letter that giving students half-credit for incomplete assignments “is not preparing them for life,” WestSideConnect.com reported.

Other teachers said, however, that they had already been giving 50 points for uncompleted assignments and that it had not affected the motivation of students to work hard.

Lily Villa is a 16-year-old junior who attends Mabton Junior High School in Washington state. She said that she was worried last spring that her school had turned to a pass-fail system grading system. “When we are thinking about higher education,” she said, “we are thinking about credentials, and when you have pass and fail grades, that affects your GPA and that can hurt you.”

Now, she said, she has changed her mind.

“School districts currently believe the online system is good enough to have a full letter grade format, but it’s not,” she said. “Students are worried about their mental health, their grades, their communication with teachers, being able to have Internet access, being able to have modern technology at home. And that type of letter-grade system just makes things worse, and brings students more to worry about.”

The effect of pass-fail systems on GPAs was a concern in Massachusetts, where a joint committee on grades for Newton South High School and Newton North High School agreed over the summer that teachers would give A-F grades this year but that the results would not factor into a cumulative GPA.

Pedro Noguera, dean of the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education, said the issue is complicated.

“Ideally, teachers should provide feedback in narrative form so that students receive detailed comments on how they have done and where improvement may be needed,” he said. “This is a lot of work for teachers so it may not be possible in many cases. For students who are motivated by grades, a letter grade may be helpful for encouragement. For students who are struggling, letter grades are unlikely to do much to motivate them to apply themselves.”

Justin Parmenter, a seventh-grade English Language Arts teacher in Charlotte, N.C., said he opposes the use of A-F grades right now.

“I think A-F grades are questionable even during non-pandemic times but absolutely pointless right now,” he said. “When a student’s ability to access instruction depends on what kind of internet signal they have, it’s a huge equity issue. Add to that the fact that these conditions make it very difficult for us to provide the kind of individualized instruction that our students need (and in some cases, legally require) and so many other reasons. This is just not the time for it.”

Jessyca Matthews, a high school English teacher in Flint, Mich., said: “If I had a choice, this year would have been a growth year. No grades, but a focus on mental health, cultivation of new interest in education, and thinking of ways to reach out and uplift kids. If that could have happened, maybe even for the first semester, that would have been wonderful.

“But, even with knowing there needs to be major shifts in education, we continue to do the same oppressive behaviors, just in a virtual space,” she said.

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Chinese team unveils exceedingly fast quantum computer (nationthailand.com)

Chinese team unveils exceedingly fast quantum computer

Dec 06. 2020An experimental device used for Jiuzhang, a prototype quantum computer, is unveiled by Chinese scientists on Dec 4, 2020. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] 

By China Daily

A new approach to computing by a group of Chinese scientists raises the possibility that today’s supercomputers may not be so super for long.

The scientists revealed a prototype quantum computer that can calculate 100,000 billion times faster than today’s best supercomputers.

The group, led by professors Pan Jianwei and Lu Chaoyang of the University of Science and Technology of China, unveiled their prototype on the website of the journal Science on Friday.

The computer, which they named Jiuzhang, after the ancient Chinese mathematics text, was able to manipulate 76 quantum bits, or qubits, for calculations.

Quantum mechanics is defined as the body of scientific laws regarding nature at the smallest scale — the energy levels of atoms and subatomic particles.

Unlike classical computers, which handle data in binary bits, quantum computers process data using qubits, which can be identified as 0, 1or both. As a result, the computing power of quantum computers can increase exponentially as the number of qubits increases.

The computing speed of a quantum computer could appear overwhelming — so much that no classical computer could perform the same task in a reasonable amount of time.

The advantage enjoyed by quantum computers is unlikely to be overturned by classical computers’ algorithms or hardware improvements, even though the two types of computers are still in competition, Pan said.

His team prefers to call it the quantum computational advantage, though it is more widely known as quantum supremacy.

“The achievement of the quantum computational advantage is the first milestone for quantum computing research, and our latest breakthrough has brought China to that point,” Pan said.

Pan is also an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and vice-president of the University of Science and Technology of China, based in Hefei, Anhui province.

Last year, Google claimed it had reached this milestone by using a 53-qubit processor named Sycamore to solve an arbitrary mathematical computation in 200 seconds. The same task would take what was then the world’s most powerful supercomputer, the Summit, more than 10,000 years to complete, according to a study published in the journal Nature.

However, IBM, the creator of Summit, later challenged Google’s findings by adjusting the way its supercomputer approached the task and said it could come up with a solution in 2.5 days, a reasonable amount of time.

Pan said his team could have achieved the breakthrough a little earlier if it didn’t have to deal with restrictions placed on international scientific collaboration by the United States government.

“Scientific research requires international collaboration, and it will benefit all of humankind,” Pan said, adding that future universal fault-tolerant quantum computers will enjoy wide application in areas including weather forecasting and medicine design.

“The restrictions will turn out to be useless because we will ultimately overcome all the obstacles by ourselves,” he said.

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A fight for forest equity takes on new urgency amid pandemic (nationthailand.com)

A fight for forest equity takes on new urgency amid pandemic

Dec 06. 2020Nathan Harrington, executive director of Ward 8 Woods Conservancy, picks up trash at Oxon Run Park in Southeast Washington on Oct. 28. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post phtoo by Matt McClain. 

By Special To The Washington Post · Gabriel Popkin · NATIONAL, SCIENCE-ENVIRONMENT 

WASHINGTON – On an overcast but mild morning in late October, Nathan Harrington pulled up at a dead end in the southern reaches of Washington D.C. His gray pickup truck carried a magnet with the name of the Ward 8 Woods Conservancy – the organization Harrington founded and directs – and a collage of left-wing and environmental bumper stickers.

His work crew of three men – Shaw Turner, Davon Abney, and Henderson Blount – were already assembled. Soon they donned bright yellow vests and plunged into the woods. Above them towered magnificent sycamores, tulip trees and even a rare swamp white oak. Oxon Run, one of Washington’s largest free-flowing streams east of the river, beckoned with wide sandbars and bluffs that evoke a far wilder place than the heart of a major city. 

But on the ground, the illusion of remoteness vanished. Hundreds of empty bottles and food wrappers, many probably washed in by recent rains, were strewn about. Aggressive vines choked out much of the other vegetation.

Over the next 31/2 hours, the crew – joined by James Penn, who was trying out for a job – piled Harrington’s truck high with dirty mattresses, rusted bike wheels, moldy drywall, window frames, something that looked like part of an engine, the end of a toilet plunger and dozens of bags full of bottles, chip wrappers and other detritus. They hauled out four shopping carts and left them on the side of the road for the local Giant to pick up.

Those aren’t the strangest finds the team has had in their two years cleaning up Ward 8’s forested parks. “You’d be surprised how many bowling balls there are,” Harrington said. This year, the team has collected more than 100,000 pounds of trash – about the weight of a tank. 

“Pretty much, if you can think of it, we’ve found it in the woods,” Harrington said.

Blount, who had started the job just several weeks earlier, said he values keeping the woods clean. But he’s never actually spent time in them, or known anyone who has. 

The group spending their Wednesday morning in the park hopes to change that. While low-income neighborhoods in many cities have fewer trees, the reality in Washington is more complicated. Ward 8, the city’s poorest, has over 500 acres of forest; its total tree cover tops that of four wealthier wards. But Ward 8’s forests are littered, overrun by invasive species and all but closed to people, with virtually no signage and fewer than 1.5 miles of official hiking trails. By comparison, 1,754-acre Rock Creek Park has more than 36 miles of hiking trails.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, which has taken more lives in the majority-Black Ward 8 than anywhere else in Washington, the inaccessibility of the ward’s forests has gone from an environmental injustice to a full-blown public health threat, Harrington and other advocates say. Opening them up, however, will require overcoming decades of neglect and underfunding. 

“We’re the only environmental organization based in Ward 8, focused on Ward 8,” Harrington said. “Nobody else is paying attention to these woods.”

This summer, however, the National Park Service released an ambitious plan to transform one of the green spaces where the conservancy has been working. 

Although he had weighed in on the plan at several public meetings, Harrington said he and his team were unaware of its release until informed by a reporter.

A former teacher and tour guide, Harrington got his start as a woods advocate in 2011 with the Committee to Restore Shepherd Parkway. The group formed to clean up and activate a nearly 200-acre swath of federally owned woods that run much of the length of the ward, including near the Congress Heights house where Harrington has lived since 2009. 

Harrington hoped he might convince the National Park Service to blaze hiking trails through one of the largest pieces of contiguous woodland in Washington. But he said his entreaties received discouraging responses: The service lacked funds; the environment was too sensitive; and – most galling, he says – he was told local residents didn’t value or respect their parks.

“There’s all this resistance to changing the status quo,” Harrington said. “It’s what I can only call racism or racial bias.”

With backing from the Anacostia Coordinating Council, Harrington converted the committee to the Ward 8 Woods Conservancy in the summer of 2018 to fight what he had come to view as not just neglect, but injustice. “He started with absolutely no resources other than his two hands and his burning commitment to make things better,” said longtime Ward 8 activist Philip Pannell, who has supported and mentored Harrington and also serves as executive director of the council.

Harrington has since raised enough money from government grants and private foundations and donors – his budget for 2020 was $110,000 – to pay himself and his team of park stewards, usually around four strong. In January, Ward 8 Woods became an independent 501(c)(3).

Wages begin at $16 an hour for up to 20 hours a week. Harrington has prioritized hiring from the ward and giving a chance to people whose employment or, sometimes, criminal records might give other employers pause. He hopes his stewards can use the positions as steppingstones toward full-time green jobs – a vision he said will be advanced by a new partnership with the D.C.-based nonprofit Casey Trees.

Turner discovered the organization in August via Facebook. He previously worked in fast food, but he appreciates working outdoors.

“This is something new to me,” he said. “I would say it’s a blessing. It’s peaceful.” 

But he said the five-man crew struggles to keep up with the volume of trash and invasive plants they confront. “We need more help.”

The coronavirus pandemic has increased the urgency Harrington said he feels to make the forest accessible. Trees provide cooling shade during Washington’s hot summers and can ameliorate poor air quality, which has proved to be a risk factor for the virus. And with many social and physical outlets off limits, including many of the city’s indoor recreation facilities, time outdoors has become critical to millions of peoples’ physical and mental health regimens. 

“I think the trees are like free medicine,” said Brenda Richardson, an environmental advocate and member of Friends of Oxon Run, a D.C.-owned park located in Ward 8.

When the woods are inaccessible, however, people are pushed indoors toward sedentary lifestyles, Richardson said. Harrington hopes his group’s cleanups can lay the groundwork for new trails and an environmental education program that will help residents learn about and be comfortable in their forests. 

Not everyone shares a desire for more heavily used parks. Kemi Morten, director of the Ward 8-based nonprofit Unfoldment and a Ward 8 Woods board member, fears that hikers could disturb the wildlife that inhabits Shepherd Parkway. She also worries about safety. 

One thing everyone can agree on: Ward 8’s parks are underfunded.

National Capital Parks-East, which oversees federal parkland in the ward, manages more than 8,000 acres spread over 13 sites in Maryland and eastern D.C. – including Shepherd Parkway, Oxon Run Parkway and Fort Stanton – with a budget of less than $17 million and around 140 full-time employees. The Mall and Memorial Parks’ budget is more than double that. Rock Creek Park gets more than $9 million for less than a quarter of the acreage and is aided by at least two long-established nonprofits: Rock Creek Conservancy, with a nearly $1 million budget of its own, and the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club.

Harrington thought local leaders might be more amenable to his vision of investing in Ward 8’s forests. But in late summer, he said he received an email from a staff member at D.C.’s Urban Forestry Division strongly objecting to the idea of a hiking trail along Suitland Parkway, a large forested tract managed by the District. The residents had shown disrespect for the land, the official wrote, according to Harrington. 

Harrington was frustrated. “That’s because there’s nothing worth respecting right now,” he said. “That sort of thinking is a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Earl Eutsler, head of D.C.’s Urban Forestry Division, emphatically disputed that Ward 8 has been neglected. He pointed out a publicly accessible fruit tree orchard the division has planted along Suitland Parkway, and a grant from the city’s Department of Transportation, which oversees Urban Forestry, that funded Ward 8 Woods to clean up the Suitland Parkway bicycle trail. His team has increased street trees in the ward by a greater proportion than in any other ward, Eutsler added. 

Duff McCully, a supervisory forester with the city who wrote the email that discouraged Harrington, praised Ward 8 Woods’ work and said the email expressed an opinion, not that of the Urban Forestry Division. He added that his views on a trail’s appropriateness are immaterial because a separate DDOT unit manages new trail construction on city land. Harrington is now preparing an application to that program.

Both Eutsler and McCully also noted with exasperation the large volumes of trash that routinely accumulate in the Suitland Parkway woods, including appliances and construction debris. Harrington has handed out literature encouraging park neighbors to avoid littering and report dumpers and has urged Washington’s environmental crimes unit to step up enforcement.

Others agree that Ward 8’s forests are under-resourced but blame the neglect on agencies preferentially responding to more vocal constituencies in wealthier areas.

“It’s just a fact that the environment is not the top priority of political and civic leaders in this ward,” Pannell said. “Nathan hasn’t gotten the type of support I think he deserves.”

Ward 8 Woods has received awards from the D.C. Federation of Civic Associations and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, but Pannell pointed out that neither came with funds to help Harrington grow his operation.

In July, the Park Service released a multimillion-dollar plan for Shepherd Parkway that includes both construction of new trails and restoration of existing trails, as well as overlooks, signage and better interpretation of the park’s Civil War-era forts. Park Service spokesman Sean McGinty credited Ward 8 Woods with caring and advocating for the park.

Harrington, when made aware of the plan, lamented a lack of clarity on whether unpaved hiking trails will actually be blazed in the wooded section of the park, providing the access he’s long pushed for. The Park Service hopes to begin developing the popular northern section of the park, known as Parklands, in 2021, but funding for some aspects of the plan still needs to be secured, McGinty said. 

The Great American Outdoors Act, signed into law this summer, may provide new funding, Harrington hopes. But he’s not holding his breath. For now, he plans to continue his cleanups and laying the groundwork for closer connections between people and nature. 

“Sometimes I look at Nathan, and say he’s got the patience of Job in the Bible,” Richardson said. “He’s very patient and methodical in his approach to fulfilling his vision.”

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Facebook accused of squeezing rival startups in virtual reality (nationthailand.com)

Facebook accused of squeezing rival startups in virtual reality

Dec 04. 2020Attendees use Oculus VR Inc. headsets during the F8 Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif., on April 30, 2019. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by David Paul Morris. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · David McLaughlin

Virtual-reality startups are accusing Facebook of using a familiar playbook to muscle out rivals in what could be the digital platform of the future — prompting a new line of scrutiny from U.S. competition enforcers.

Facebook is the world’s biggest virtual-reality hardware maker thanks to its 2014 acquisition of Oculus for $2 billion. Its practices are now drawing the attention of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, which is talking to developers about their interactions with the company, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The scrutiny over Facebook’s virtual-reality business reflects broader concerns that the social-media pioneer has grown too powerful. One U.S. lawmaker, during a hearing with Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, attributed the company’s dominance to a simple strategy: Copy, acquire and kill any company that’s a competitive threat.

Software developers and startup founders say the world’s biggest social media company is now using that same playbook to undermine competition in the virtual-reality market.

Facebook’s Oculus acquisition was a bet by Zuckerberg that virtual reality would go beyond gaming to encompass a broad array of experiences and eventually change the way people work and communicate, experts say.

Facebook is pushing hard to establish its presence in virtual reality because it represents a unique opportunity for the social media player to establish itself as the leader in the next state-of-the-art platform to deliver products and services to its users without relying on Google or Apple.

The Federal Trade Commission is preparing to bring an antitrust case against Facebook as soon as next week. But that investigation has been focused mostly on whether the company’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp harmed competition, Bloomberg has reported.

The social media giant last year disclosed an investigation by the Justice Department, but neither the company nor the department has provided details or explained how the inquiry is different from the FTC probe. The FTC declined to comment. The Justice Department didn’t respond to a request seeking comment.

Developers say Facebook is using its market power to thwart companies that offer competing games and services. It’s copying the most promising ideas, using below-cost pricing for its devices and making it harder for some apps to work properly on the platform, according to developers and a hardware maker.

Faceboook declined to comment about the complaints.

Facebook has a 39% share of the virtual-reality hardware market, making it the industry’s largest player, according to data from market intelligence firm International Data Corporation. Smaller players include Lenovo Group, Sony and HTC, while Apple is developing its own mixed virtual and augmented reality headset for launch as early as 2022, Bloomberg has reported. Facebook launched its latest headset, the Quest 2, in October, cutting the price to $299 from $399.

At the core of the complaints is the way Facebook runs the platform and competes against software developers who build apps and depend on the platform for their business.

“Our industry is getting eaten alive by Facebook,” said Cix Liv, who co-founded startup Yur Inc., which makes technology that can be integrated into Oculus games to track fitness metrics. “Any application that has a chance of being mildly competitive with them, they have to kill it somehow.”

Yur released its fitness tracking app for Oculus in September 2019 and spent months working to satisfy Facebook’s security, privacy and performance benchmarks to get the app into the Oculus app store. While the app was available to users on another marketplace, Liv said, Yur couldn’t get it into the Oculus store even though he said the startup met Facebook’s requirements.

Facebook in the spring released a software update for Oculus that prevented Yur’s technology from working within games, according to Liv. Liv said Yur was the only company that experienced such an issue. Subsequent updates required users to delete the Yur app in order to get the Oculus headset working again.

Then in September, Facebook released its own fitness tracker called Oculus Move that Liv said has the same functionality and look as Yur’s product. He accuses Facebook of effectively killing his product by keeping it out of the store and breaking its functionality, all while working to copy his technology.

The reason is simple, Liv says: Facebook wants to favor its own products on the platform so it can collect as much data about users as possible in order to “control the future of ads by knowing more about you than any company in history.”

Virtual-reality consultant Nima Zeighami said Facebook “locked down the ecosystem so much that if someone makes an app that competes with them too much, they can just blacklist them.”

Liv said he was forced out of his company after speaking out against Facebook on Twitter about a month ago. He said the venture capital fund backing his startup, Venture Reality Fund, told him that he would have to leave the company if he continued criticizing Facebook. Liv said he believed the fund sought to pacify Facebook because of its potential to acquire the fitness app and other startups the fund is backing.

One of the fund’s partners, Tipatat Chennavasin, denied telling Liv that he had to leave the company if he kept criticizing Facebook.

The criticisms against Facebook echo those leveled against other tech giants, such as Amazon.com, which sells its own branded products in competition with third-party sellers on its marketplace. Apple also owns the App Store, where its products compete against those of developers who depend on the store to sell their apps.

In October, Democrats on the House antitrust panel recommended that Congress prohibit a dominant platform from competing against companies that operate on the platform — in essence, to break them up.

Other app developers have similar stories of copied products and functionality issues regarding Facebook. One is Guy Godin, a developer who created Virtual Desktop Inc., which allows users to replicate their computer desktops on the Oculus headset. It was released on Oculus in 2016 and has become a top seller on the platform, he said.

In June 2019, Godin introduced a version that could stream games and other content to the Oculus headset, a feature that was popular with gamers because they weren’t tethered to their computers with a cable, Godin said.

A few weeks later, Facebook told him to remove the feature or else his app would be pulled from the Oculus store. Facebook explained it was due to poor user experience and health and safety issues. Godin called those claims “totally bogus” but said he had no choice but to comply because he depends on Oculus for 90% of his revenue.

In September that year, Facebook announced it was releasing a competing product called Oculus Link, which allowed users to stream content but required a cabled connection to the user’s computer.

Godin said he’s happy to compete against Facebook’s product but that it isn’t a level playing field because the company controls what features he can offer.

“They just want to own it all,” he said. “If there’s only one company, it’s going to be very hard to survive as a developer.”

The complaints mirror allegations about Facebook raised in the findings of the House investigation of tech platforms.

“Facebook is a case study, in my opinion, in monopoly power because your company harvests and monetizes our data, and then your company uses that data to spy on competitors and to copy, acquire and kill rivals,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., told Zuckerberg when he testified in July.

A group of more than 40 developers organized in September and considered writing an open letter to Facebook calling for more transparency to its Oculus store policies and other changes to benefit developers, according to Liv. He said they’re now looking to team up with an established organization that can represent their views similar to the way Apple’s App Store developers created the Coalition for App Fairness.

To help secure its position in the market, Facebook is selling the Oculus headset at a loss, according to Stan Larroque, the founder and CEO of Lynx, a Paris startup that promotes its virtual-reality headset to businesses. Engineers at Lynx, whose headset uses many of the same components as Oculus’s Quest headset, estimate that Facebook sells the latest version of the headset, the Quest 2, at a $50 loss per device, said Larroque. That makes it impossible for smaller device makers to compete, he said.

“The message is we’re Facebook and we don’t care if we make money or not, but we’ll flood the market and virtual reality will be Facebook Reality pretty soon,” Larroque said.

The House report warned that below-cost pricing, also known as predatory pricing, is a risk in digital markets because they tend to be characterized by a winner-take-all dynamic, where one or two companies end up dominating. As a result, there’s an incentive to pursue growth over profit by engaging in predatory pricing for some period to force out competitors.

Developers also complain that Facebook squeezes them by forcing them to pay a commission on sales, a complaint also leveled at Apple. One of them is Darshan Shankar, the founder and CEO of Bigscreen Inc., which lets users stream movies on the Oculus headset and interact virtually with friends as they watch together.

When a user rents a movie on Bigscreen, they have to use the Oculus in-app purchase system, which collects 30% of the rental fee. That ultimately makes the economics of the business unworkable for the start-up, he said. Shankar said Facebook refuses to negotiate on the 30% commission that Bigscreen has to pay.

“It’s literally impossible for anyone to start an e-commerce or media business in VR because these walled gardens are gatekeepers,” he said. “Entire industries are impossible because of them.”

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It’s OK if you weren’t paying attention to gadgets in 2020. Here are the best ones you missed. (nationthailand.com)

It’s OK if you weren’t paying attention to gadgets in 2020. Here are the best ones you missed.

Dec 01. 2020These googly eyes we put on the newest smart speakers of 2020 are a friendly reminder that they’re both music players and surveillance devices. Shown here clockwise from the upper left are the Google Nest Audio, Amazon Echo 4, Apple HomePod mini and Amazon Echo Dot 4.. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Geoffrey Fowler 

By The Washington Post · Geoffrey A. Fowler

Alexa got plump. The HomePod sprouted babies. Electric bikes are suddenly sexy.

While 2020 kept you busy fighting a pandemic or fretting about the election, gadgets have had a life of their own.

Consider this a cheat sheet to this season’s buzziest and best new electronics. I’ve been testing a dozen smart speakers, nine smartphones, four TV dongles and three e-bikes in my Washington Post gadget lab – now also known as my living room. I blew a fuse only once.

2020 has had enough bad news, so this list covers only gadgets that impressed. It’s not necessarily the stuff you see most advertised – like the fib about faster 5G phones – that made the best impression.

All of the major smart speakers got an audible upgrade this year, with one exception. There’s once again a new iPhone sized to slip into skinny jeans. And I’ve actually gotten catcalls zipping around (stop laughing) on my pandemic commuting solution, the sleek VanMoof S3 e-bike.

A word of warning about one notable release I didn’t get a chance to test: Apple’s new MacBook Air. It uses a new kind of chip that promises better battery life but requires a rewrite or translation software for older apps.

Now bring on my gadgets.

– – –

Serious sound

Smart speakers that talk just turned 5, and you can actually hear them maturing. This year, all three of the biggest brands finally offer room-filling sound for just $100.

Of course, picking a smart speaker is about more than just sound. You’re also investing in an artificial intelligence tribe, of sorts – a voice operating system to fetch answers, operate your home and potentially violate your privacy. This year, Amazon, Google and Apple have gotten a bit better as home assistants, too.

Amazon Echo 4 and Echo Dot 4

If I had $100 to spend on a speaker, it would go to the new Echo 4. Amazon replaced its old tube-shaped Echos with a plump orb the size of a cantaloupe. Pop music sounds more muscular – and on instrumental songs, the dynamic range is wide enough that you can pick out the different instruments.

(Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, but I review all tech with the same critical eye. Or, in this case, without even looking: I tested sound quality with a blindfold.)

I promised to focus on the positive, but I’d be derelict if I didn’t mention one stinker: Amazon’s smaller orb speaker, the new $50 Echo Dot 4. About the size of an apple, its sound took two steps back from the Echo Dot 3. The good news is you can get the last generation on sale for as little as $19.

Just remember: Echos are also invasive data collection devices. After haranguing by privacy advocates like me, Amazon just added an option – if you know to go turn it on – to not store recordings of you.

Google Nest Audio

Google’s $100 Nest Audio speaker sounds almost as good as the Echo 4, just missing a bit of the bass. But it’s leagues less muddy than the original air-freshener-shaped Google Home speaker it replaces. With a rounded, vertical shape it looks stylish, though I find its lack of physical buttons for volume and play/pause frustrating – they’re hidden underneath its cloth exterior.

Google’s talking Assistant still feels the most capable. It even lets you choose different default voices, and the robot version of comedian Issa Rae makes me smile every time. I also like that Google’s default privacy setting is to not keep recordings from your home.

Apple HomePod mini

The original HomePod was a rare miss by Apple: overpriced at $350 and not the brightest student in the smart speaker class. But there’s a whole lot Apple got right in this new $100 baby-sized pod. While it just looks like a fancy fruit in a foam wrapper, it packs remarkable sound – nearly as good as speakers twice its size. If anything, it might have just a bit too much bass.

The mini is also smarter than the original HomePod. If you’re listening to a song on your headphones, just tap your iPhone on the HomePod and the music will move to there. Apple is more paranoid about privacy than Amazon or Google, though that means the HomePod mini isn’t as widely capable in the smart home – it still can’t operate things like the most popular doorbells and thermostats. And alas, you can voice control music from Apple Music and select other partners, but still not Spotify.

In this night mode photo, the iPhone 12 Pro Max’s larger sensor was able to grab the shot more quickly, resulting in a slightly sharper image. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Geoffrey Fowler

iPhones are no longer one size fits all

Forget 5G. But as I wrote in my iPhone 12 review, there are other reasons to like this year’s crop of phones from Apple. One is that there are more varieties than ever, including one actually designed for the ergonomics of the human hand – and another targeting photographers.

iPhone 12 mini

Don’t let the cute name throw you. This $700 (and up) iPhone does almost everything the latest iPhone 12 can but squeezes it into a package that’s a hair shorter than an old iPhone 6, 7 or 8. And unlike those older models, you get a much more usable phone, because Apple nipped and tucked the unused areas on the front to fit in 5.4 inches of screen (measured on the diagonal). Even people who don’t think of themselves as having small hands will appreciate how easy this phone is to stuff into a pocket.

Just one warning: The smaller size also means less space for battery. Apple claims the 12 mini can last for 10 hours of streamed video, one hour less than the regular 12. However, a product teardown by iFixit found the mini’s battery measures just 8.57 Wh – 20 percent less than in the regular 12. I’ve seen it eat through half of its battery in hours of occasional filming and sharing video.

iPhone 12 Pro Max

Apple’s supersized iPhone Pro Max, already larger than a “king” sized chocolate bar, got even taller this year. If no amount of iPhone is too much, then you’ll love the $1,100 (and up) 12 Pro Max’s now 6.7-inch screen, measured on the diagonal.

But for many, the Max in this phone’s name actually refers to its camera. Unlike the rest of the 12 and 12 Pro line, this model features a larger sensor to gather more light in dark situations. And its optical zoom that can go a wee bit further to bring your scene closer. I tested the 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max side by side in difficult lowlight scenes and could feel how the Max captured the same shot in less exposure time, reducing the chance of blur. And you can spot differences in the final photos – if you look under a microscope. Only picky photographers will care.

The budget-friendly Roku Streambar comes with both a soundbar to improve your TVs audio and a 4K streaming media player. MUST CREDIT: Roku handout

Fixing TV

Pandemic times have left us with a lot more time to watch TV. The technology in big screens hit a plateau with 4K ultra-HD resolution and HDR (short for high-dynamic range tones). But there are still some good new ideas to improve the overall experience.

Roku Streambar

Roku’s $130 Streambar is a two-in-one upgrade. First, it fixes the most common problem with most TVs: terrible sound. Today’s flat-screen TVs don’t have space for decent speakers. The Streambar is a compact sound bar, which combines four speakers into one strip to give you a room-filling sound. It can also boost the clarity of speech and level out crazy-loud commercials.

Second, the Streambar also plugs into your TV’s HDMI to turn it into a Roku streaming device, letting you access streaming services and search for movies and shows with your voice. While Roku’s interface, built around apps you install, is more dated than its competitors, it’s simple and just works. The price is right; I just wish Roku wasn’t in the business of tracking what we watch to target ads.

Chromecast with Google TV

With the new $50 Chromecast, Google has taken a fresh stab at organizing the hot mess of watching TV. With streaming apps multiplying like bunnies, how does anyone keep track of which show is where?

The Chromecast with Google TV updates Google’s beloved original streaming device, which you controlled with a phone, by adding a remote control and a whole new interface built around Google’s smarts. To get the most out of this experience, you need to go all in on streaming, including switching from cable to Google’s $65 per month YouTube TV (used by about 3 million people for live channels and DVR in the cloud). After you log in to all your services, you can search for whatever you want to watch – either from live TV or on-demand apps – by using your voice. Google also keeps track of what you watch and makes recommendations right up front, regardless of which service it comes from.

Google hasn’t totally cracked it: The new Chromecast’s search and recommendations aren’t equally smart about all app sources – it too often directed me to YouTube for clips instead of the apps where I had paid for access for shows. It’s also missing streaming services including Apple TV Plus.

– – –

See and be seen

VanMoof S3 and X3 e-bikes

I don’t own any Lycra pants. That’s my way of saying I’m not a bike guy. But the pandemic made me rethink getting around town. The $2,000 VanMoof S3 (and the smaller X3) looks like an ordinary bicycle, but is supercharged in and out. A motor kicks in when you pedal to help you get where you need to go – giving you just enough exercise to not have to break a sweat. My favorite part is a button on the handlebar you can press for an extra boost. When you get home, plug it in for a range of 37 to 93 miles (depending on hills).

Strangers stop and comment on its slick looking design, whereas many other e-bikes in this price range give off a dork vibe. It connects to a phone app that you can use to lock and unlock it, log your rides or even track down a stolen bike with its built-in GPS.

GoPro Hero9 Black

The original tiny action camera got some key upgrades in the $400 Hero9 that will appeal for vacation-video heroes and social media stars alike. First, the video quality is stellar: It now has a 23.6 megapixel sensor (about twice any recent iPhone). And while you’re on the move, the Hero9 uses a new kind of software smoothing to make your shots look like you were using a Hollywood Steadicam.

My favorite part: GoPro added a screen to the front of the camera (in addition to the one on the back) to help you frame your selfies. Now you can be both behind the camera and in front of it at the same time. It’s a huge help in framing your TikTok shots. Learning to dance is still on you, though.

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

World’s fastest supercomputer delivers immediate results (nationthailand.com)

World’s fastest supercomputer delivers immediate results

Nov 29. 2020

By Syndication Washington Post, The Japan News-Yomiuri · Hiroshige Yazawa, Rena Azuma · WORLD, ASIA-PACIFIC 
It was announced on Nov. 17 that the supercomputer Fugaku, developed jointly by Riken and Fujitsu Ltd., had been ranked No. 1 in the world in four major categories, including computing speed, for the second consecutive time. It first topped those categories in June.

Although Fugaku is scheduled to be fully operational in fiscal 2021, it has already yielded tangible results in such research as predicting how microscopic droplets containing the novel coronavirus spread as a result of coughs.

With about 90% of its computational resources in operation, Fugaku became the world’s fastest supercomputer in June, becoming the first Japanese supercomputer to take that spot in 8½ years.

The previous Japanese supercomputer to be ranked No. 1 globally was its predecessor, the K supercomputer.

In the latest rankings, Fugaku dominated four categories for the second consecutive time, using all its about 160,000 central processing units installed in a total of 432 racks.

Fugaku performed 442 quadrillion computations per second, up from 415 quadrillion in June. This far surpassed other supercomputers, including the one ranked No. 2.

Satoshi Matsuoka, director of the Riken Center for Computational Science, who was in charge of Fugaku’s development, said, “By balancing ease of use and high performance, it has achieved a level no other supercomputer can realize.”

Although Fugaku is still making adjustments for full implementation, it has been gradually used since April.

It has drawn the most attention for its prediction of how microscopic droplets containing the novel coronavirus spread in such familiar settings as offices, restaurants and classrooms.

How droplets containing the virus spread from a cough or during conversation in various scenarios can be computed by changing the positioning of the people and their environment. The effectiveness of wearing masks, face shields and the like will also be examined. Although such tasks require the processing of a huge amount of data, Fugaku can handle it with no difficulty.

This research has been conducted since May by Makoto Tsubokura, a professor at Kobe University who also serves as a leader of a Riken team. The team had initially planned to precisely reproduce how gasoline would be sprayed inside the pistons of an automobile engine.

At one time, a team member who was standing by at home due to the spread of the coronavirus suggested that the mechanism of the gasoline spraying and that of droplets spreading would likely be the same. This led to joint research involving experts in other fields with whom the team had never interacted before, such as researchers in infectious disease and technicians from a construction company and a manufacturer of air-conditioning equipment.

When researching a new subject, it usually takes a long time for a program to be devised and a supercomputer put into operation. However, Fugaku is designed so that PC software or smartphone apps that people are familiar with can be used as they are. As a result, the team said it was able to start the relevant computations quickly.

Tsubokura said: “With the K computer, it would have taken at least a year, including preparations. The ease of use and high performance of Fugaku resulted in prompt action.”

A team of researchers led by Satoru Miyano, director of M&D Data Science Center of Tokyo Medical and Dental University, has begun using Fugaku to analyze the functions of genes in a cancer cell. Cancer worsens as genes mutate repeatedly and in a complex matter. A vast amount of data must be input for computation.

Miyano said, “Ten years ago, it took at least three months to analyze the relevant data even when using the supercomputer at the University of Tokyo at full capacity. With Fugaku, it’s done within a few hours, and using only part of its computing capability. If this level of computation can be done ordinarily, ideas will surely be generated that could not have been conceived of before.” 

Miyano will also start research using Fugaku on whether there is any genetic factor behind the development of serious cases of covid-19, the infectious disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Fugaku can be operated via remote control, so it can be used from anywhere. With high-speed internet connections used for academic purposes, for instance, Fugaku can be operated even from someone’s home.

A team led by Yasushi Okuno, a professor at Kyoto University, has successfully identified candidate drugs for treating covid-19, out of more than 2,000 existing drugs. Okuno has obtained the results almost completely via remote control from his home. 

“Amid the spread of infections, the computations were done without my having to go to the university. Its operation via remote control is not that difficult. It’s actually rather easy.”

The TOP500 project, which ranks the performance of supercomputers developed by countries around the world, started in 1993. The rankings are announced twice a year. 

The countries that developed the world’s top five supercomputers in terms of computing speed in the latest rankings were developed by Japan, the United States (with three) and China.

There was a period when the computer systems developed by Japan and by the United States competed for the top spot, but those developed by China have gradually advanced to occupy a superior position. Since June 2010, computer systems developed by China have been atop the list 11 times, those developed by the United States 7 times and Japanese systems four times (twice by the K and twice by Fugaku.)

The pace of their progress can be seen when looking at progress in the computing speed of these top-ranking supercomputers. Japan’s Earth Simulator supercomputer system, which was named the world’s fastest computer five times in a row from 2002 to 2004, performed about 35 trillion computations per second. That was amazingly fast back then, but the 440 quadrillion computations per second performed by Fugaku this time is about 10,000 times faster.

The difference can be likened to a turtle that moves 50 meters in an hour and a linear motor car that travels 500 kph.

The number of Fugaku CPUs that can be used, and for how long, is still limited. But it has already been used in over 100 cases of research. In addition to its use in medical fields, such as research on the novel coronavirus and cancer, it is also being utilized in weather forecasting and engineering.

Once Fugaku is put into full operation in fiscal 2021, it is expected to be made available around-the-clock throughout the year, except during maintenance checks. K was made available mostly free of charge, as long as it was to be used for research purposes. 

Although fees for using Fugaku have yet to be decided, it is expected to be handled in a similar way. The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry and other entities will invite research proposals involving Fugaku and select users.

As next-generation computers that could be far faster than supercomputers, quantum computers are considered promising. Supercomputer systems are also indispensable for developing next-generation computers.

Once a quantum computer is realized, there is a possibility that even such complex cryptograms as crypto assets, which are deemed impossible to be deciphered by present technologies, could be decoded instantly.

Yoshitoshi Kunieda, a professor at Ritsumeikan University and scholar of information engineering, said: “The exchange and handling of information, including that related to crypto assets, will be directly linked to global strategies. In this sense, the development of supercomputer systems has become ever more crucial.”

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King’s School brings top UK academic standards to Bangkok (nationthailand.com)

King’s School brings top UK academic standards to Bangkok

Nov 28. 2020Professor Sakorn Suksriwong 

By The Nation

King’s College International School Bangkok is now welcoming applications from students for pre-nursery to Year 10 in the academic year 2021. It will open Year 11-13 in subsequent academic years. The school opened its doors to students in August 2020 with a student-centred and value-led curriculum for both boys and girls.

“King’s Bangkok is the third school in the world and the first in Southeast Asia to be established in collaboration with King’s Wimbledon, one of the most academically successful schools in the world,” said Professor Sakorn Suksriwong, chairman of King’s executive committee.

Around 25 per cent of King’s Wimbledon students are accepted to Oxford or Cambridge each year, he added.

King’s Bangkok said it has adopted the same standards and spirit as the parent school, which is regarded as one of the best in the UK.

“In this opening year more than 300 students, selected according to a rigorous admissions process, started their learning journey to become well-rounded and happy adults,” Sakorn said.

Headmaster Thomas Banyard highlighted the quality of teaching at King’s Bangkok.

“[W]e have the same teacher selection standards as our UK parent school. In addition, the highest quality teachers from King’s Wimbledon are sent to join forces with the teaching staff in Bangkok,” said Banyard, who was previously assistant head at King’s Wimbledon and has a first class physics degree from the University of Oxford.

For more information or to submit an application, visit www.kingsbangkok.ac.th or call (02) 481 9955.