GPUs in the Super Computer

The next generation of super computing has arrived. GPUs are becoming more widely available, and with the advent of new technology allowing them to process non-graphical information in parallel many scientists are beginning to harness their massive computing power. Per dollar GPUs can do several times the floating point work of CPUs, and are perfect for offloading instructions that can be done in parallel. CUDA allows programmers to harness this power in NVidia graphics cards, and with more GPU enabled nodes popping up in clusters around the country it has become a new programming challenge to effectively use multiple GPUs on multiple nodes in a cluster. Check out this paper to see their results!

What would a Quantum Computer do to the Internet?

While reading The Cuckoo’s Egg it occurred to me just how much the Internet has changed since the time frame in which this story occurred. We now access information from everywhere; it is used for everything. The air around us is filled with digital information at different frequencies carrying the requests and the answers to the requests of millions of users. That air contains everything from the voices of the prophets to social security, bank, and credit card numbers to porn and pirated music. People are using the Internet for everything both good and evil. And, everything that they use it for is stored in a digital format that is converted into waves at different frequencies that travel from place to place through a complex network of wires, cell towers, wireless routers, satilite links, and more.

The safty of this traveling information is of the utmost concern to many. Copyrighted or private data that can be used to identify individuals is sensitve and we don’t want just anybody having access to it. As a matter of fact we only want ourselves and those we specifically intent to inform to know what we are saying. So we encrypt things. And as computing power increases and people figure out how to break our encryptions, we encrypt things more securely. The funny thing is that most of this encryption relies on RSA. And what makes that funny, at least to me, is that RSA would be easily crackable if the Quantum Computer is ever invented.

This brings me to the topic that I would have actually writen about if I only had one paragraph: The Quantum Computer would be a nuclear bomb to the Internet. Privacy would vanish. Encryption as we know it today would be completely ineffective, and there would be no way of submitting information to only the intended recipient. Only by physically keeping others away from the information would keep things protected, and even that would be only a wire splice away from being looked at. With a Quantum Computer any good computer scientist could break the best “secure” system there is today. That is scary stuff. I wonder if it will ever happen. Maybe keeping private computer networks seperated entirely from the Internet for super classified information is really the best way to go.

The Unrecorded

I find it interesting that even as the church has grown larger, I still have yet to hear the church mention that in some cases it is impossible to do geneology. My dad and my mom’s dad (my grandpa) are from India. My dad’s family has some family history – going back a couple hundred years or so, but before the 1800’s there is absolutely nothing. My grandpa’s side is even worse, it is virtually unrecorded. My grandpa grew up in a 300 square foot house where 20 family members spanning multiple generations lived. Before that they lived in villages where absolutely no good record keeping was ever done. Nothing beyond what the oldest still remember can be gathered, and that isn’t very much. It is truly frustrating that there is nothing that future generations can do to make up for the lack of record keeping in the past.

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality, better known as AR in the tech/mobile phone industry, was a really cool idea that started gaining a lot of steam in 2009. The basic concept is to take GPS and Compass data from a phone, and give you information on nearby locations or objects. For instance AR could recommend a restaurant 20 yards away, or tell you that a park is around the corner. Today we can look at the progress various AR providers have made and see glaring flaws in their products. But, that doesn’t mean that the idea doesn’t have merit, or that AR will fail. I personally love big cities and think that AR may be one of the greatest technologies for a traveler, or someone looking to have a fun night out on the town. As phone GPS and image processing gets better, and with a lot of hard work and cooperation between AR providers, it could be a fun toy in the next few years. (link)

Whose getting all the degrees?

Why do we continually talk about equality between the sexes from the “females are treated unfairly” mentality? I’m continually confused as to why so many people devote so much time and energy trying to make it look like women have the odds stacked against them in educational and job opportunities. While it may be very unpopular to say this, the statistics show that for the last 15 years young men, yes men, not women, have been at a serious disadvantage in obtaining college educations. In the near future it will be obvious to everyone that while it was certainly once true, women are no longer the underrepresented and economically disadvantaged sex. Let the census data do the talking, view it here.

Tech Politics

The global power that tech giants wield is rather astounding.  When the iPhone became a status symbol, and “Google it” became a common phrase it was one thing, but today, when a single company challenges the largest country in the worlds’ internet censorship, and is taken seriously, that blows me away. It’s not that Google’s stance on internet censorship in China is really meant to be political, it is mostly driven by money (the more websites it can serve, the more ad revenue it can get), but it still has the effect of trying to force a government to allow more freedom of speech. And what if China refuses to allow Google to have its way? Google threatens to withdraw from the country. I can’t wait to see what happens next. (Link)

The Internet’s greatest gift

Among the billions of other people on the planet, it was once very difficult to share knowledge and ideas. The Internet connects minds from all over the world, shrinking the distance between people. As it has grown, the Internet has become the greatest teacher the world has ever seen. People of all ages and backgrounds are free to investigate whatever they are interested in, and are given access to a wealth of human knowledge that was unimaginable a single generation ago. Ihe Internet’s greatest gift to its users is the freedom to learn.