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24th
July 2015
What the Heck?? – Editors Comment. ’ve just seen the announcement for the new Samsung Galaxy A8 mobile... and it’s being billed as
the slimmest smartphone ever, at only 5.9mm. Well, I’m beginning to have a bit of a finger
problem with thin mobiles. My current S6 looks pretty anorexic viewed side on, so I’m wondering
how they’re going to shave its size down even more? Cell phones these days just keep getting
thinner and smarter - people, however, seem to be just the opposite. On that topic, our Apps section
this week has got some amazing new health Apps – so if you’ve ever wanted rippling abs, tight buns and
a slim waist, just check out the Apps section... more info there.
I am finding these health apps really useful, because, like most HISPIANS, my job entails me spending a
lot of time sitting down in front of a computer with very little chance to exercise, and this was starting to
get me down. I was becoming like an iPhone – I just lost energy without doing anything. So one day I
mentioned to my Doctor friend that I was getting a bit more “gravity challenged” to which he suggested I
try jogging. He said it would add years to my life. And he was right! After jogging for 2 weeks, I already
felt 10 years older. Needless to say, my jogging days are over, but now, after a bit of downloading, I’m
already 2Kg down, sleeping better and have much more energy – I love apps !
Whether you call them cellphones, mobile phones or smartphones, our
modern pocket-sized communication devices are taking over our lives
one phone call at a time. As the capabilities of our mobile devices have
increased, so has the discussion on what effect smartphones will have on
our daily lives. Like I heard this week that a new study from
Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in the USA set
out to explore whether an individual’s smartphone habits could be used
to predict whether or not they were depressed. The results, published in
the Journal of Medical Research on Wednesday, were staggering.
Measuring behavioural markers for depression through GPS and usage
sensors, researchers were able to predict with 86 percent accuracy
whether or not the individual was depressed. Led by Dr. David C. Mohr, Director of Northwestern’s
Centre for Behavioural Intervention Technologies, the study tracked behaviours that previous studies
have linked with depression, including hours spent in certain locations (e.g. work and home) and time
spent interacting with the phone. The World Health Organization estimates that 350 million people
worldwide suffer from depression. Despite these numbers, less than half receive treatment, often
because they aren’t aware that they have the condition, but the results of the study could hold a key to
both diagnosing and treating clinical depression. Phones, according to Mohr, fit into the “fabric of
people’s lives,” they could make for a simpler way to measure mental health, without the need for special
devices or superfluous paperwork. “We now have an objective measure of behaviour related to
depression. And we’re detecting it passively. Phones can provide data unobtrusively and with no effort on
the part of the user.” I’m depressed and only my phone knows it.
In closing, here’s my health tip of the week - Never under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a
laxative on the same night - Have a great week team. See you again soon.
I
24th
July 2015
History Repeats Itself!
he dewy chill over Leicester, England, in
March 1885 did not deter thousands of
protesters from gathering outside nearby
York Castle to protest the imprisonment of seven
activists. Organizers claimed as many as 100,000
people attended. The cause they rallied against?
Vaccination.
This movement has faded from popular memory,
obscured by the controversy of more recent anti-
vaccination efforts, which gained momentum in
the 1990s. However, the effects of the Victorian
anti-vaccination movement still echo in the
debate over the personal belief exemption, which
was banned in California only last month.
On the day the Leicester protesters gathered,
vaccination was mandatory in England. Nearly a
century before, Edward Jenner, a Scottish
physician, had invented a method of protecting
people against the raging threat of smallpox. The
treatment was called variolation, and it involved
voluntary infection with a similar disease.
Patients were given cowpox to protect them
against the much deadlier smallpox, much the
way parents long exposed their children to
chicken pox to protect them from getting sicker
from the illness later in life.
After germ theory was expanded upon and
researchers developed vaccines, the British
government, in 1840, outlawed variolation,
which still carried some risk of killing the person
it was meant to protect Safer vaccines, which
contain a weakened form of a particular disease,
replaced variolation. To encourage widespread
vaccination, the law made it compulsory for
infants during their first three months of life and
then extended the age to children up to 14 years
old in 1867, imposing fines on those who did not
comply.
Modern vaccination activists come from a
different world than those in the 19th century.
While anti-vaxers today are largely upper middle
class, the crowd opposing vaccination in the 19th
century was largely composed of lower- and
working-class British citizens, who felt that they
were the particular targets, as a class group, for
vaccination and for prosecution under the
compulsory laws.
Can you get credit? new app has been developed to help
people access their credit profiles on
their Android smartphones. In a
statement by Akani
Solutions, who developed
the Akani Mobile Credit
Report app, former credit
ombudsman Mannie van
Schalk said the app was
an effective negotiation
tool for getting better
interest rates when
applying for credit.
“Knowledge is power… knowing your status
meant that you can take control of your financial
health and start making more conscious
decisions with your money”.
Akani CEO said users would know immediately
when an account is opened in their name or
when a credit provider says you have missed
payments”. So it’s a good security tool as well.
T
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24th
July 2015
Paperless school rejuvenated.
f you didn’t see the pun in that headline,
then I need less coffee as I write. I saw
recently that the e-Learning project, which
was stopped because of tablet theft, has
been rebooted now that security measures have
been beefed up.
A number of thefts left the smart schools
paperless education project in tatters, with tablets
and laptops having to be recalled from township
schools in Gauteng. Having launched in January,
the project was halted in May following a
number of thefts and school robberies, which
saw more than 3,000 tablets stolen out of 88,000
distributed.
“This prompted the MEC to temporarily retrieve
them for the installation of additional security
features,” the department said.
The first recipients of the new tablets and laptops
were seven schools in Tembisa, East of
Johannesburg. Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza
Lesufi said that all matric classrooms will get
interactive blackboards, while each matric
learner in a no-fee-paying township school will
receive a tablet.
Teachers and each subject adviser, meanwhile,
would receive a laptop by July 21, following the
new security measures put in place.
“Security is being beefed up in the schools, and
prior to issuing the tablets for circulation,
installation of tracking devices in all the tablets,
is currently underway,” the MEC said.
Lesufi aims to have all high schools in the
province paperless by 2019.
Smart Management.
hen hiring, promoting, even just
putting together your team, you
should look for the most intelligent
people in the room, right? .. Well, not so fast.
Intelligence is one of those characteristics where
there is a minimum level needed to be in the
game. Once past that, too much intelligence can
be a drawback or worse. Intelligence is like
underwear - It is important that you have it, but
not necessary that you show it off.
The Enron management team, for example, were
known as “the smartest guys in the room.”
Consider how well that turned out. The former
US energy trading company tapped its top talent
to run some of its most-profitable divisions,
almost without supervision. The managers,
despite their intelligence, were an arrogant,
insecure bunch who took wild chances and lost
billions of dollars. The company was dissolved
in 2001.
Certainly, the job for which you’re hiring makes
a difference. You do want big-time intelligence
for researchers, analysts, and coders, but you can
lock those
folks in a
room and let
them do their
thing because
they work on
their own. But
do you really
need to find the smartest managers? The problem
with really intelligent people is that they often
think they know more than everyone else. Maybe
they do. But that doesn’t help them when they’re
trying to get others to buy into whatever they’re
I W
24th
July 2015
selling When you know the right answer, you
often can’t believe that everyone else doesn’t
just see the same thing, and fall into line.
Unfortunately, organisations don’t work that
way. Especially when working with peers when
you don’t have direct authority over them, the
only way to get momentum toward your
preferred outcome is to sell them on the idea.
Imposing your “superior” solution just doesn’t
work.
The irony is that
sometimes the most
talented person can
make for one of the
most ineffective
managers. You can
see this in sports,
for example, where retired superstars often find
it difficult to coach or manage successfully
because they are now supervising lesser mortals
that weren’t blessed with the same degree of
innate talent.
I remember talking to managers from Singapore-
based Creative Technology, Inc after the iPod
had just been introduced by Apple. Creative had
a technologically superior MP3 player, but
customers preferred the iPod, to the utter dismay
of the Creative managers. They just couldn’t
understand how customers were so irrational!
But it turns out that the best technology doesn’t
always win, just like the smartest people don’t
always succeed.
The most important thing in life is not to know
everything, it is to have Google Search on your
smartphone.
Apps you simply must have. on't have an hour for a daily workout?
You might not need it, just try the 7
minute quick fit workout, it even has a
Video Tutorial to help you do it right!
This App features the most appropriate exercises
for normal people just like you and me, best of
all, you can do it
anytime anywhere, it
only takes 7 minutes.
This workout
application is based
on HICT (high
intensity circuit
training). You don't
need go to the gym,
simply try the 7 minute quick fit workout and
abs workout, and make yourself healthier.
The 7 minute workout consists of 12 exercises to
be done for 30 seconds, with 10 seconds break
between each exercise. All you need just a chair
and a wall.
ant the ultimate workout that you can
do at home or when it suits you?
Then try the 30 Day Fitness
Challenge. This App features a collection of
simple 30 day exercise challenges, where you do
a set number of exercises each day with rest days
thrown in!
The workouts
increase in intensity
slowly and day 30
will test anyone. The
app is suitable for
both men and
women of any age
and any fitness level.
Start off at the beginner level and work your way
slowly up to advanced!
D
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24th
July 2015
Online “Doctors” Are Often Wrong (Phew).e’re in an era where it’s no longer reasonable to pretend that patients aren’t Googling their
symptoms. So, assuming patients are going to Google, and that the Internet is a vast sea
containing both accurate and wildly unhelpful health information, the question is how to steer
people toward the former and away from the latter. As a slightly more official alternative to going to
Yahoo! Answers, typing in “What is this rash?” and waiting for the geniuses on those forums to dispense
their wisdom, many organizations have developed “symptom checkers.” You plug in your symptoms,
and an algorithm spits back possible diagnoses, and/or whether you should seek treatment or deal with the
issue yourself. But Annie sent me an interesting link which says that, according to a new study, these
symptom checkers vary widely in accuracy. Researchers from Harvard Medical School and Boston’s
Children’s Hospital inputted 45 “patient vignettes” into 23 different symptom checkers.
On average, they included the correct diagnosis in the first three results 51 percent of the time, and
included it in the first 20 results 58 percent of the time. Understandably, the sites did better at identifying
common conditions than uncommon ones.
Of the symptom checkers that gave triage advice they did so “appropriately,” 57 percent of the time.
Triage advice was more likely to be correct for more urgent conditions or uncommon conditions.
“Although there was a range of
performance across symptom checkers,
overall they had deficits in both diagnosis
and triage accuracy,” the study reads. It’s
also possible that the study over-estimated
how accurate these sites are, because the
patient vignettes it used included clinical
terms that a layperson might not necessarily
know or recognize his symptoms as.
One of the other issues the researchers saw
was that the sites weren’t very good, on the
whole, at recommending self-care when it
was appropriate, which could lead to people
going to the ER or doctor’s office for something that would go away on its own, or that could be treated
over the counter.
“If symptom checkers are seen as a replacement for seeing a physician, they are likely an inferior
alternative,” the study reads. “It is believed that physicians have a diagnostic accuracy rate of 85 [to] 90
percent.
Most people are hopefully savvy enough not to take a WebMD result as a diagnosis. They’re probably
just trying to figure out how seriously to take their condition. In that case, it might be less important that
symptom checkers spit out the right diagnosis, and more important that they tell the searcher whether the
symptoms may warrant a trip to the hospital or doctor or whether they can be self treated..
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24th
July 2015
The “All-Network” SIM
pple and Samsung are working with
mobile network operators to develop an
embedded SIM system which will allow
you to change mobile providers without buying a
new SIM card.
According to The Verge, the “e-SIM” will
remain inside the phone and allow users to
switch between mobile operators – not lock them
to a single carrier as the current SIM card system
does.
The report states that the new standard is
expected to be ready in 2016, and follows
Apple’s launch of the Apple SIM which comes
with its LTE iPads.
The removal of the SIM card and SIM card tray
from phones may also allows Samsung and
Apple to make their smartphones thinner. WTH?
The Financial Times reported that the “majority
of operators” are in favour of the e-SIM,
including AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone,
Telefonica, and Orange. Watch this space, this is
going to lead to some very interesting ads!!
For more speed, move house. okla’s Net Index website shows that
Midrand, Bryanston, and Ferndale
have the highest average mobile
broadband speeds.
The Net Index website uses data from millions of
recent test results from Speedtest.net to calculate
the average broadband speeds.
According to the website, South Africa has an
average mobile download speed of 10.7Mbps,
and an average mobile upload speed of 3.6Mbps.
These speeds are in line with global standards,
where the
average mobile
download speed
is 12.3Mbps
and the average
upload speed is
4.9Mbps.
The top mobile
suburb in SA is
Midrand, with
an average download speed of 20.78Mbps,
followed by Bryanston with 15.32Mbps and
Ferndale with 14.25Mbps.
Vodacom had the highest average download
speed at 13.91Mbps, followed by Telkom with
9.48Mbps, MTN with 8.78Mbps, and Cell C
with 4.71Mbps.
Kill the Flash!!
t is a while since I last mentioned Adobe
Flash and why everyone must stop using it.
Since then, the leaks from the hackers of the
mass surveillance company HackingTeam have
revealed three very serious bugs (called zero-day
bugs) in Flash that they were exploiting to take
over victims’ machines.
It is likely that more Flash vulnerabilities will be
revealed as security researcher’s work through
the documents the hackers removed from the
HackingTeam.
The leaked exploits have already appeared in
hacking toolkits and are presumably already
being used on the general public.
A
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24th
July 2015
Since these bugs have come to light, both
Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome
have blocked various versions of Flash from
running on their browsers. Other companies are
removing Flash from installs on new computers.
The reality is,
there really is no
reason for Flash to
still exist or be
supported by
modern browsers.
Steve
Jobs made this
point in 2010.
Another factor is
that Flash use is tightly coupled with how
annoying and intrusive ads are displayed on
websites.
Removing Flash may be an inconvenience for
accessing a small amount of functionality, but
users actively removing and blocking ads has
become much more common. If you do want to
remove Flash, and as a security measure, it is
really advisable to at least limit its use, there are
a number of different ways to disable it
temporarily or permanently. An added benefit of
removing Flash is that you won’t have constant
messages asking to update it as daily security
flaws are discovered and fixed by Adobe.
New Low Cost Smartphone.
innacle Africa has launched its Proline
XM-502 dual-SIM LTE smartphone in
South Africa for the retail price of
R1,699.
The phone will go on sale from 7 August, and
offers “new levels of performance at an
affordable price”.
“We partnered with MediaTek to launch the first
commercially available smartphone based on
their new 64-bit LTE platform, delivering
performance that has never been seen before in a
sub R 2,000 smartphone,” said the company.
The phones features a 5-inch QHD (960 x 540)
display, 1GHz 64-bit quad-core Cortex-A53
processor, and 2,000mAh battery.
The HISPIAN had a quick look at a pre-launch
example and we absolutely loved the 13Mp rear
camera, the LTE network speeds and the 32GB
SD card slot. The phone comes with Android
Lollipop right out of the box as well. This phone
is well worth a second look if you are in the
market for a smartphone on a limited budget.
Editor’s LOL of the Week.
f you did get it, then, like me, you probably
had a good LOL. If you didn’t get it, then
Google “Paintings by van Gogh” for your
LOL.
P
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24th
July 2015
A cure for Alzheimer’s?
orldwide, nearly 44 million people have Alzheimer’s or a related dementia and only 1-in-4
people with Alzheimer’s disease have been diagnosed. The WHO estimates the global cost of
Alzheimer’s and dementia to be $605 billion, which is equivalent to 1% of the entire world’s
gross domestic product.
Now, the first drug that can halt the progression of Alzheimer’s disease if caught early is expected to be
unveiled this week. Trials have been ongoing into a new treatment called Solanezumab which appears to
stop the degenerative disease in its tracks.
The results were announced by drugs company Eli Lilly at the Alzheimer’s Association International
Conference on Wednesday morning and are positive enough to make it the first drug proven to be
effective for treating dementia.
Solanezumab is an antibody which works by binding to the amyloid plaques which cause Alzheimer’s
disease and clearing them from the brain.
Initial trials failed to show any benefit, but
when researchers went back over the
data they found that it seemed to work in
people with mild symptoms and
launched a new study.
Eric Karran, director of research
at Alzheimer's Research UK, said it
would be interesting to find out if the
treatment worked in the long term.
"Current treatments only help with
symptoms. They enable nerve cells to
communicate with each other more
effectively, but don't stop the underlying
disease from getting worse," he said.
"Eventually the effect of these treatments wears off as the damage to the brain overwhelms the modest
benefit afforded by the drugs."
Eli Lilly researchers presented results at a recent conference where they said: "Results from 28 weeks'
treatment suggest patients who received Solanezumab had a cognitive benefit not recovered by patients
who began Solanezumab later." In a final sentence, they added: "This is thought consistent with a
treatment effect that changes the underlying pathology of Alzheimer's disease."
Imperial College has discovered how to turn off an enzyme which is driving many incurable diseases
including Alzheimer’s and cancer. Scientists at Ulster and Lancaster Universities found that diabetes
drugs Liraglutide and Lixisenatide prevent amyloid plaques forming in mice. And a number of
organisations now claim to have developed tests which can pick up the earliest signs of dementia 10 years
before the first symptoms appear.
But Eli Lilly reports the first phase three trial in patients to show beneficial results and this marks a
breakthrough in the treatment of Alzheimer's.
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24th
July 2015
Slap it on this Summer. ummer is nearly here and we will all be
hitting the poolside or the beach working
on our tans. We all know too much time
in the sun can cause skin cancer, but do you
know what's actually causing your sunburn?
The radiation in sunlight's ultraviolet spectrum
can cause damage to the DNA in your skin cells,
This UV radiation is divided into three different
types:
UVA has less energy and is usually the UV
radiation type responsible for tans.
UVB is in the middle, and can cause enough
damage to lead to sunburn.
UVC has a shorter wavelength but this one
doesn't have much of an impact on the skin -- it's
absorbed by the atmosphere.
When the skin starts detecting UVA radiation,
receptors produce special skin cells called
melanocytes which produce extra melanin and
darken skin colour. UVB radiation, on the other
hand, damages a cell's DNA
While this information may have you rethinking
your beach plans, sunburns are preventable if
proper precautions are taken. The Skin Cancer
Foundation recommends applying sunscreen
with SPF of 15 or higher, staying in shade as
often as possible and covering up with sunscreen
and hats to prevent skin cancer These tips
certainly apply to sunburns as well.
Pay as you go? Here’s the best
new analysis from Tarifica has found
that Telkom offers more high-value
prepaid cellular plans for consumers
than other operators in SA.
Like its contract package analysis, the prepaid
index uses the Tarifica Score: an algorithm that
weighs different features of a mobile plan.
These are weighed against the total cost of a plan
to determine its consumer value relative to other
offers in a country Tarifica provided the
following summary of operator performance:
Cell C’s plans performed well in the light user
profile, based on having the cheapest per-minute
calling rate in South Africa and effective
bundling.
MTN performed best in the moderate and heavy
user profiles capturing four Top Value Plans, has
a relatively competitive per-minute calling rate,
and generous data promotion.
Telkom captured three Top Value Plan positions
in the light user profile, seven in the moderate
user profile, and five in the heavy user profile.
Its success was based on having the second-
cheapest per-minute calling rate and
aggressively-priced SMS and data bundles.
Vodacom did not have any Top Value Plans due
to its relatively high per-minute and per-SMS
rates, although it did score significantly better in
the moderate and heavy user profiles than in the
light user profile.
S A
24th
July 2015
Top 5 reasons to be a
proud South African
espite recent reports of a spike in South
Africans applying to emigrate, recent
research points to a country with proud
citizens planning to stay put.
Research compiled by AC Nielsen for Brand
South Africa entitled: A Brand Of Optimism,
reveals that only 1% of 2,524 respondents
indicated that they are planning to leave the
country with no intention of returning.
“Only 74% of respondents indicate that they will
‘continue to live & work in SA regardless
of social, economic and political situations,” the
report said.
Six in 10 (61%) respondents ‘are extremely
proud to be South African’, with 35% being
somewhat proud, according to the report’s
author, Dr. Petrus de Kock.
The top 5 drivers for pride in the country
include:
1. The beautiful landscape (56%)
2. The cultural diversity (49%)
3. The people in general (49%)
4. Achievements of our democracy (41%)
5. Our national sports teams (48%)
“It is also
interesting to
note that 56%
of respondents
to the survey
indicate that
citizens should focus on solutions, rather
than only the problems confronting the
country,” de Kock said.
Three quarters (76%) of respondents believe that
this is a country where it is possible for your
dreams to come true.
The RoboDoc will see you now
reg recently sent me a very interesting
piece of reading about the first robot
that’s being tried in court for killing a
human being. Well this set me off to do some
research on robots and obviously, some
fascinating stuff came to light. It led to Robots
vs. Humans, how human are robots and even to
the content that’s in today’s Editor’s feature
article about making computers human.
But one of the very interesting things that I
uncovered was that the area where Robots are
making the most impact is, in fact, Healthcare.
Robots aren't new to healthcare. Remember the
da Vinci Surgical System, the surgical assistant
the FDA approved back in 2000? Since then, the
system has conducted more than 20,000
surgeries and has paved the way for robotic
advancements in healthcare. In fact, vendors
have introduced a number of new robots to better
provide care to remote patients, help with
various physical therapies and similar to the da
Vinci system -- help perform surgery. For
example, Magnetic Microbots are a group of tiny
robots used in various operations, such as
removing plaque from a patient's arteries or
helping with ocular conditions and disease
screenings.
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24th
July 2015
Other robotic advancements are used to better
the day-to-day lives of patients, helping them
eat, or helping a patient regain the ability to
walk. "In the next few years, thousands of
'service robots' are expected to enter the
healthcare sector picture R2-D2 from Star
Wars carrying a tray of medications or a load of
laundry down hospital corridors," according to a
recent article from The Wall Street Journal.
"Fewer than 1,000 of these blue-collar robots
currently roam about hospitals, but those
numbers are expected to grow quickly."
And that's no surprise considering the mounting
financial difficulties the healthcare industry
faces. Robots like the Aethon TUG can complete
the work of three full-time employees, yet it
"costs less than one full-time employee,"
according to the company. The TUG acts as a
distribution system to move through hospital
corridors, elevators and departments to make
either scheduled or on-demand deliveries.
Swisslog's RoboCourier, a similar delivery
system, helps eliminate human work and
completes tasks with the push of a button.
"This new robotic breed is boasting features
increasingly found in smartphones,
gaming.consoles and other consumer
electronics, from advanced sensors and motion
detectors to powerful microprocessors and voice
activation. The service robots are self-aware,
intelligent and able to navigate changing
environments, even chaotic hospital settings,"
according to the WSJ.
Outside the hospital setting, caregivers use
robots to enhance telemedicine and care for
those restricted to their homes. The Vasteras
Giraff, for instance, is a two-way call system
similar to Skype and is used by doctors to
communicate with the elderly. A PC, camera and
monitor control the robot.
Robots even are already performing well in
surgery ... until Eskom does its load shedding
thing..Then it's just a coat rack leaning over you
as you bleed to death. I can just imagine a robot
doctor saying to a robot nurse “Are those real or
have you been upgraded in Silicon Valley?”
LOL-Magic Mushrooms.
ptly nicknamed “eternal light,” the
fungus, called
Mycena
luxaeterna was found
in the dark depths of
Brazilian rain forests
and is just one species
among dozens of other
radiant glowing fungi
detailed in a
2014 Mycologia study.
“The ground was so
brightly illuminated, that looking down was like
looking at the sky”, lead study author Dennis
Desjardin told National Geographic. Desjardin
said he suspects the glow attracts nocturnal
creatures, which then help disperse the
mushroom’s spores so that they can propagate.
He must be a fun guy.
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24th
July 2015
Editors Feature -What Is a “Computer” Anymore?
eople used to be computers. That is, for hundreds of years, computing was the work of humans,
and very often women. Then, in the mid-20th century, machines began to take on the bulk of
computing work, and the definition of “computer” changed.
A computer was no longer just a human reckoner. Just the way a calculator was no longer a person who,
as Webster’s 1828 dictionary had defined it, “estimates or considers the force and effect of causes, with a
view to form a correct estimate of the effects.” In the past 70 or so years, a computer went from being a
room-sized monstrosity that ran on pulleys and bulbs to a four-ounce touchscreen that’s as ordinary as it
is miraculous.
Now, leading computer scientists
and technologists say the definition
of “computer” is again changing.
The topic came up repeatedly at a
brain-inspired computing panel
held at the U.S. Capitol last week.
The panellists—neuroscientists,
computer scientists, engineers, and
academics—agreed: We have
reached a profound moment of
convergence and acceleration in
computing technology, one that will reverberate in the way we talk about computers, and specifically with
regard to the word “computer,” from now on.
“It’s like the move from simple adding machines to automated computing,” said James Brase, the deputy
associate director for data science at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “Because we’re making
an architectural change, not just a technology change. The new kinds of capabilities it won’t be a linear
scale, this will be a major leap.”
The architectural change he’s talking about has to do with efforts
to build a computer that can act and, crucially, learn, the way a
human brain does. Which means focusing on capabilities like
pattern recognition and juiced-up processing power and building
machines that can perceive their surroundings by using sensors, as
well as distil meaning from deep oceans of data. “We are at a time
where what a computer means will be redefined. These words
change. A ‘computer,’ to my grandchildren, will be definitely
different,
“There’s a way in which the whole process of science and technology will change,” said Peter
Littlewood, the director of Argonne National Laboratory. “There is not going to be a single model for
computing. We’ve had the linear, the serial one. Now we’re developing the neuromorphic methods that
are designed around pattern recognition ... There will be a change, not just architecturally, but also in the
way we integrate data that we are not doing now."
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24th
July 2015
The dramatic change in computing that Littlewood describes has to do with modelling next-generation
machines on the networked mechanisms of the human brain, an approach that, as the M.I.T. neuroscience
professor James DiCarlo cautioned, has some major limitations. The first of which is that we don’t
actually know, in anywhere near a complete sense, how the brain works. This means that we can’t yet
build a machine model of the human brain. “The brain is a computer, an information processing device
that we don’t yet know how to build,” DiCarlo said. What type of device is it? That is the question. We’re
not ready to build machines that can perfectly emulate the brain because we don’t know how it works.”
And yet scientists know enough about the brain, that it relies
on a tangle of billions of interconnected neurons, that it is
energy efficient, that its data-processing sophistication is in
many ways unmatched by technology, to know that talking
about the brain as a computer is more than just a useful
metaphor. The fields of neuroscience and computer science
are already feeding off of one another.
“The challenges of mapping the brain are comparable to the
challenges of mapping the universe,” Littlewood said.
“We’re now on the verge of being able to map the brain at a scale where you can see a synapse. And if
you map the brain down to the scale of synapse and you take all of that data, that’s about a zettabyte of
data. A zettabyte is about the annual information traffic over the worldwide Internet. It is a very big
number. It is not an astronomical number, but it
is a number that in the next decade, we will
need to be able to deal with."
As the computers of the near future help
humans adapt to larger piles of data, they’ll also
learn by observing human behaviour. “So far,
we have learned to adapt to computers,” said
Dharmendra Modha, the founder of IBM's
Cognitive Computing group. “We use
keyboards. We use our thumb to type into the
smartphone. But given the advent of the brain-
inspired computing and how it’s going to
integrate into modern computing infrastructure, computers will begin to adapt more and more to human
beings.”
That’s a key point and one that contains a pleasant irony: As the definition of “computer” changes, it may
soon evoke the older, more human definition of computing. Because while the computers of the future
will still be machines, they’ll be more human-like than ever before.
“That’s our goal: To make a computer much more like a human being, in the sense that it integrates data
and can make decisions,” Littlewood said “So the future definition of computer may be like the original.
It may be like a person after all.”
24th
July 2015
Data Crunching.
More and More of our data is hosted in “the
cloud” – This actually means that its sitting on a
hard drive in a server somewhere “out there”.
But what happens to these hard drives when they
become redundant or crash?
Before:
Some of the world’s most sensitive
information is stored in data centres. This data
includes banking information, credit card details,
passwords, and medical records. This
information is stored on server hard drives,
which in time will become redundant and be
replaced. This raises the question: What happens
to these hosting server hard drives after the
servers are thrown out?
Good news is that South Africa’s hosting
providers are all following strict processes to
ensure that the hard drives are destroyed.
Hetzner said the process of disposing of
redundant hard drives is important due to data
security and environmental concerns.
Once a hard drive has been identified for
disposal by Hetzner, the following happens:
1. Assuming the hard drive is still functioning,
it is electronically wiped clean at Hetzner’s
premises.
2. They are collected by an ISO-accredited e-
waste removal service.
3. They are physically destroyed to ensure that
any failure in the electronic wiping process
does not result in compromised customer
data.
4. The component materials are then either
recycled or disposed of in an
environmentally-conscious manner.
5. A report of disposed hard drives, identified
by serial numbers, is returned to Hetzner.
“Over the last couple of years we have recycled
approximately 4 tons of obsolete hardware,” said
Athena Turner, marketing and communications
manager at Hetzner.
After:
So your data is safe, and you can use the cloud
with complete security, knowing that our server
supplier Hetzner is taking care of you.
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