Li-Fi instead of Wi-Fi and a big step towards quantum computing

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Data transfer at the speed of light? It won’t be quite like that with the new Light-Fidelity technology, or Li-Fi for short. But the new method of data transmission should be significantly faster than WLAN or Wi-Fi – and according to its inventor, it should soon be ready for the market.

Harald Haas, who first came up with the idea of ​​data transmission with light – more precisely with visible light communication – 20 years ago, told the Tagesschau that “in two to three years the first Li-Fi-capable smartphones will come onto the market”. could. This means good news for internet customers: Li-Fi should achieve a transmission rate of 224 gigabits per second. For comparison: Even with the new WLAN standard Wi-Fi 7, only 46 gigabits per second are expected. So only the speed of light is nicer!

Admittedly, it’s not such a small step – Microsoft even describes it as a milestone in the development of a quantum supercomputer. The company now wants to build it within the next ten years.

The hurdle that Microsoft has cleared for this is the development of a highly stable qubit. According to the company, it has developed a device that can induce a topological phase of matter in a controlled environment, creating qubits that are not easily disturbed. In addition, Microsoft can apparently keep possible disruptive elements to a minimum. If that’s true, Microsoft could possibly keep its ten-year promise. Stable qubits, as the central information unit, form the basic requirement for quantum computing.

The land of poets and thinkers – or rather that of computers? In order not to lag behind in terms of digitization, computer science is to become a compulsory subject in a first federal state: Lower Saxony will start after the coming summer holidays – but who should teach it?

There is still a little problem with this question, because there is still a lack of specialist teachers, as the Ministry of Education has confirmed to the German Press Agency. Although Lower Saxony has been offering a further training course since 2019, only 150 teachers have completed it, which is not enough to cover the needs of almost 1,000 schools. If in the coming school year all years from the tenth grade onwards have computer science lessons, these will have to be given by non-specialist teachers in some cases.

Most people probably know what Alexa – the cloud-based language assistant from Amazon with the soft, female voice – sounds like. But what could she look like? This question drove hobbyist Thomas Burns and his team, who then decided to build Alexa’s face to fulfill her dream of a talking robot.

True to the motto of his YouTube channel Workshop Nation, vintage electronics were used. So Alexa’s mouth is made out of an old tube TV, on which her voice is displayed in waveform. Big, moving, deep blue bug eyes came out of the 3D printer, and in the background circuits and tangled wires stand almost like hair. Burns calls the result “a little flawed,” but “cool.”

In the YouTube comments, however, several users also call the “Alexatron” “creepy”. It is possible that Amazon will continue to leave its Alexa with the voice.

The game “Skyrim” is a godsend for modding fans. Players love changing the appearance of characters or adding entirely new ones. But thanks to AI, the modding community around “Skyrim” has a new problem to deal with.

While it’s not uncommon for characters to be portrayed in scantily clad, artificial intelligence offers completely new possibilities to transform the otherwise chaste role-playing game into deepfake porn. For example, mods use voice cloning technology to mimic the voices of in-game characters in pornographic content. However, the characters are voiced by real people – and they didn’t give their approval, as some of them noted on Twitter. They see the game manufacturer Bethesda as responsible and have also contacted “Skyrim” mods, which were able to delete some content. However, there is disagreement in the modding community on the subject – and so the deepfake porn issue could grow into a bigger problem.

That’s it for today’s t3n daily. You can find much more about all aspects of digital life, working life and the future around the clock at t3n.de.