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Unfolded: #8

March 19, 2021 / robin-grainger

MIT Technology Review’s picked 10 breakthrough technologies for 2021
Blood oxygen meters (aka pulse oxymeters) don’t work that well if you’re black. It’s not a new problem
Scientists have recreated quantum entanglement in the lab. Unbreakable quantum encryption comes a step closer
Want to keep journalism alive? Don’t legislate, buy a newspaper
Microsoft wants to bring AR to Teams. God help us
Joe Biden wants a (micro)Chips Race with China. Reminiscent of the 1960’s Space Race against the USSR?

March 3, 2021 / robin-grainger

The world’s biggest surveillance cam maker had code on Github for recognising ethnicity. Its kit (and code) is available everywhere
Making a vaccine is hard. This piece explains how RNA ones like Moderna’s and Pfizer’s are made
Quantum Fluctuations is an artwork created from particle collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (best viewed in 4K)
The world’s first AI robot artist turns its (her?) hand to self portraiture
Roll over Minecraft. Most pre/teens spent lockdown in Roblox. Brands are now piling in to its “metaverse” and a $30b IPO looms

February 11, 2021 / robin-grainger

CV Dazzle is a makeup technique for foiling facial recognition cameras – see below (June ’20 article but v good)
Handy set of e-commerce stats from across the EU: usage, spending all up, but digital divides emerging
Cardboard’s turned into “beige gold” thanks to the glut in lockdown home deliveries and resulting demand for packaging. Gamestop, schmamestop
Google’s developed a “private” alternative to cookies. Which is proprietary to Google, natch
First and Last of Men is a mesmerising, haunting message from two billion years into our future. Tilda Swinton narrates

February 3, 2021 / robin-grainger

Meet Dall-e, the OpenAI app that turns words into pictures (try it for yourself)
Unicorn hunt: worthwhile list of 50 high-potential startups for 2021 compiled by CB Insights
Car production is grinding to a halt globally – for lack of microchips (rather than, say, nuts or tyres)
An app for managing early-stage cancer from Leeds University could mean fewer trips to hospital
Lignosat is a satellite made of wood – it combusts completely in the atmosphere, meaning less debris and pollution

January 15, 2021 / robin-grainger

Graphika has mapped the social conversation about Covid vaccines. It shows right-wing outlets are most susceptible to anti-vax misinformation
Been up to no good? Your car could dob you in
Some of us marked the passing of Flash (the plugin which made the early 2000s web fun, not the scourge of Ming the Merciless)
Citroen’s Tesla-a-like from 1979 is a thing to behold
Teddy Ruxpin, meet Alexa. Frankenstein’s monster for the 2020’s? (I remember Ruxpin freaking me out when I first saw one in about 1985)

January 3, 2021 / robin-grainger

Listening to music during surgery means patients recover faster and need fewer pain meds. The soundtrack to this experiment? The temptingly entitled Trancemusik
What comes after smartphones? Worthwhile musings on the future of consumer tech
There’s more snogging in unequal societies. Stonker from 2020’s (virtual) Ig Nobel Awards
VR game Cyberpunk 2077 is barely a week old but already has an intimidating troll army
And finally: the biggest lie of the year (2020) is announced

December 11, 2020 / robin-grainger

Protein structures – Unfolded! Google AI subsidiary DeepMind has cracked the problem of predicting protein structures – a major breakthrough with implications everywhere from medicine to recycling. It won hands-down at this year’s ‘Protein Olympics‘, held every 2 years since 1994.
Spray-on robots: researchers in Hong Kong have invented a harmless spray that turns inanimate objects into magnetically-controlled robots – precision medicine delivery is a potentially key application. The video’s awesome.
Ain’t no power: Protestors against police brutality in Nigeria are using bitcoin to channel funds to community organisers, sidestepping the local banking system which has locked them out.
Oxygen on Mars? The Mars Perseverance rover, launched in July, includes an experiment to extract oxygen from the Martian atmosphere. Terraformers stay cool – its aim is to test the viability of making rocket fuel on the red planet.
Unfolded before. Is IBM Watson an AI or a mechanical Turk? IBM hailed it as a silver bullet for cancer treatment; the reality was very different. Terrific long read from 2017 on the hype vs reality of AI when lives are involved.