computing

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

TECHNOLOGY

Does Computing Technology Oppress Or Liberate Black Americans

In 2015, two colleagues—Deen Freelon and Meredith Clark—and I set out to better understand how Black Lives Matter emerged. Our report, Beyond the Hashtags, the Online Struggle for Offline Justice, crystalized then-NAACP president Cornell Brooks’ sentiment: “This isn’t your grandparents’ civil rights movement.” Our study showed us that Ferguson, Missouri birthed Black Lives Matter. It told us that Twitter named Michael Brown for the world. Traditional news media outlets were a day late, and when they did arrive, Twitter was their primary source for information. It afforded a 24-hour glimpse into a radical new way of making news, of telling stories—giving unfiltered voice to those whose voices are traditionally unheard, ignored, or silenced. Digital media—social networking platforms, b...

Women equal men in computing skill, but are less confident

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS

Women equal men in computing skill, but are less confident

In the workplace, women are now as good as men when it comes to computing performance, but there is still a gender gap when it comes to confidence, according to our new research. As professors of business, we studied how well men and women in midlevel business jobs performed on computing tasks. We also asked them to rate how they thought they did. Study participants were randomly assigned basic, intermediate or advanced problems on laptops, tablets or mobile devices, while seated, standing or walking slowly. We found no difference in the performance between men and women in the total number of questions answered correctly or the time taken to answer the questions. In only one scenario did men perform slightly better – while completing a basic task, on a tablet, while seated (76.3% corre...

A quantum computing future is unlikely, due to random hardware errors

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

TECHNOLOGY

A quantum computing future is unlikely, due to random hardware errors

Google announced this fall to much fanfare that it had demonstrated “quantum supremacy” – that is, it performed a specific quantum computation far faster than the best classical computers could achieve. IBM promptly critiqued the claim, saying that its own classical supercomputer could perform the computation at nearly the same speed with far greater fidelity and, therefore, the Google announcement should be taken “with a large dose of skepticism.” Artist’s rendition of the Google processor. Forest Stearns, Google AI Quantum Artist in Residence, CC BY-ND This wasn’t the first time someone cast doubt on quantu...

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

TECHNOLOGY

Google touts quantum computing milestone

Quantum processor completes task in minutes that would take traditional supercomputer thousands of years, Google says. Google has said it has achieved a breakthrough in quantum computing research, saying an experimental quantum processor has completed a calculation in just a few minutes that would take a traditional supercomputer thousands of years. The findings, published on Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature, show that "quantum speedup is achievable in a real-world system and is not precluded by any hidden physical laws," the researchers wrote. Quantum computing is a nascent and somewhat bewildering technology for vastly sped-up information processing. Quantum computers might one day revolutionise tasks that would take existing computers years, includin...