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AI Has Cracked a Key Mathematical Puzzle For Understanding Our World Published on October 30, 2020 at 10:56PM An anonymous reader shares a report: Unless you're a physicist or an engineer, there really isn't much reason for you to know about partial differential equations. I know. After years of poring over them in undergrad while studying mechanical engineering, I've never used them since in the real world. But partial differential equations, or PDEs, are also kind of magical. They're a category of math equations that are really good at describing change over space and time, and thus very handy for describing the physical phenomena in our universe. They can be used to model everything from planetary orbits to plate tectonics to the air turbulence that disturbs a flight, which in turn allows us to do practical things like predict seismic activity and design safe planes. The catch is PDEs are notoriously hard to solve. And here, the meaning of "solve" is perh...

Chinese Spacecraft Set for Mars Landing in May: State Media Published on October 30, 2020 at 10:17PM A Chinese spacecraft is expected to land on Mars in May, state-run media reported on Thursday, citing a space agency official. From a report: The spacecraft, which left Earth in July, is set to land in Utopia Planitia, a plain in the northern hemisphere of Mars, the China News Service reported, citing Liu Tongjie, spokesman for the Mars mission. Separate spacecraft launched by the United States and the United Arab Emirates this year are also en route to Mars, though only the U.S. one will attempt a landing. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Honeywell Announces its H1 Quantum Computer with 10 Qubits Published on October 30, 2020 at 09:39PM New submitter B1948J writes: It's interesting that Honeywell is once again emerging as a computing hardware vendor. Over 50 years ago, Honeywell established itself as one of the big 3 computer mainframe manufacturers (Honeywell, Burroughs and IBM). Some say the Honeywell-200 introduced "channel architecture" before IBM "announced" it for their 360 series computers. Now, Honeywell is announcing its H1 Quantum Computer capable of a Quantum Value of 128 through 10 fully connected qubits. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

WhatsApp is Now Delivering Roughly 100 Billion Messages a Day Published on October 30, 2020 at 09:10PM WhatsApp, the popular instant messaging app owned by Facebook, is now delivering roughly 100 billion messages a day, the company's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said at the quarterly earnings call Thursday. From a report: For some perspective, users exchanged 100 billion messages on WhatsApp last New Year's Eve. That is the day when WhatsApp tops its engagement figures, and as many of you may remember, also the time when the service customarily suffered glitches in the past years. (No outage on last New Year's Eve!) At this point, WhatsApp is just competing with itself. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp together were used to exchange 60 billion messages a day as of early 2016. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Big Tech Continues Its Surge Ahead of the Rest of the Economy Published on October 30, 2020 at 08:12PM While the rest of the U.S. economy languished earlier this year, the tech industry's biggest companies seemed immune to the downturn, surging as the country worked, learned and shopped from home. From a report: On Thursday, as the economy is showing signs of improvement, Amazon, Apple, Alphabet and Facebook reported profits that highlighted how a recovery may provide another catalyst to help them generate a level of wealth that hasn't been seen in a single industry in generations. With an entrenched audience of users and the financial resources to press their leads in areas like cloud computing, e-commerce and digital advertising, the companies demonstrated again that economic malaise, upstart competitors and feisty antitrust regulators have had little impact on their bottom line. Combined, the four companies reported a quarterly net profit of $38 billion. Amazon reported re...

Samsung Regains Top Smartphone Vendor Spot as Xiaomi Overtakes Apple Published on October 30, 2020 at 07:31PM Samsung is back on top as the world's biggest smartphone vendor one quarter after losing its spot to Huawei, according to reports from IDC, Counterpoint, and Canalys. The news comes just as Samsung posted its highest quarterly revenue figures ever, which the company said was helped by a boost in demand for smartphones. From a report: Huawei became the number one vendor for the first time three months ago, benefiting from strong sales in China while much of the rest of the world was operating under constrained retail conditions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But Huawei's shipments fell 7 percent quarter-on-quarter and 24 percent year-on-year, according to Counterpoint, while Samsung's shipments increased by 47 percent over the last quarter. Xiaomi was able to regain the number three spot for the first time in several years, overtaking Apple for the first time with y...

Night aboard the International Space Station can seemingly look like every spooky sci-fi movie you've ever seen. via NASA https://ift.tt/3jHCtkj