MIT News reports researchers have figured out how to 3D print "semiconductor-free logic gates" that can be assembled into something that could do computations - work they began in the pandemic days, when semiconductors suddenly became scarce. Current polymer-based 3D printers will never be able to reproduce state-of-the-art chips (with circuits close enough to spark concern about quantum effects), but then, not everything needs that kind of CPU, they say.
A South Boston man was arrested this week on a federal wire-fraud conspiracy charge for his alleged role in a scam ring that took a 75-year-old North Adams man for $420,000 after he responded to a popup message that his computer was frozen. Read more.
Police in Needham are trying to sooth the nerves of residents getting e-mail from somebody who claims to have installed spyware on their phones or computers with which to track their activity on porn sites and who says they will release the information to family and friends unless the residents pay $2,000 in Bitcoin immediately. Read more.
The Zoning Board of Appeal today approved plans to convert a long unoccupied Victorian and its carriage house at 43 Hutchings St. in Roxbury into a residential Web-programming school for 14 young women - over the objections of neighbors, who say they want to keep their street a place of single-family homes rather than a place where do-gooders can dump yet more transitional housing. Read more.
Update, 2:25 p.m.: RMV says its officers are open for appointments again but that the statewide vehicle inspection system remains offline.
The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles reports it's been hit by the same Windows security-software screwup as Mass General Brigham, which means it's had to cancel all customer-service-center appointments before noon "as many workstations at centers are not operational." Read more.
An attempt by a computer-security firm called CrowdStrike to send out an update for its Windows security software has taken down computers and mobile devices around the world, including at Mass General Brigham, which sent out an urgent message to staff this morning: Read more.
A mighty little light particle has jogged (read: teleported?) its first quantum marathon around the universal hub in a groundbreaking new scientific study. Harvard phsyicists used existing Boston-area telecommunication fiber networks to send the particle over a roughly 22-mile loop through Cambridge, Somerville, Watertown, and Boston between two quantum computers located a floor apart in Harvard labs.
Think of it as a simple, closed internet between point A and B, carrying a signal encoded not by classical bits like the existing internet, but by perfectly secure, individual particles of light.
A mighty little light particle has jogged (read: teleported?) its first quantum marathon around the universal hub in a groundbreaking new scientific study. Harvard phsyicists used existing Boston-area telecommunication fiber networks to send the particle over a roughly 22-mile loop through Cambridge, Somerville, Watertown, and Boston between two quantum computers located a floor apart in Harvard labs.
Think of it as a simple, closed internet between point A and B, carrying a signal encoded not by classical bits like the existing internet, but by perfectly secure, individual particles of light.
Let's start with the telephone museum Verizon has, here in the town where the telephone was first used, but almost never lets anybody in to see. Read more.
A spinout from Harvard's Wyss Institute announced today it's now licensing its microbe-based system to turn carbon dioxide into a component of a variety of foods and other substances, including chocolate. Read more.
MIT News reports on a five-year deal between the MIT Electron-conductive Cement-based Materials Hub and the Aizawa Concrete Corp. to research ways to use concrete in ways you really wouldn't think it could be: To replace lithium batteries to store energy created by wind and solar power and to create systems that could de-ice frozen roads and sidewalks. Read more.
The Boston City Council this week formally accepted a $500,000 grant from the state Department of Education to develop a lesson plan for teaching students how to use open data sources - with a focus on the city's own Analyze Boston collection of public data sets on everything from crime reports and restaurant inspections to listings of city streetlights and data on where people are using parking meters. Read more.
Robert Ambrogi gets the scoop that the judge in a Norfolk County lawsuit has sanctioned a lawyer because at least four briefs his office submitted in one particular case were based in part on citations made up by an AI program about cases that never actually happened. Read more.
Artair Geal discovered these 1980s ads for Prime Computer, which turned the old Carling Brewery on the shores of Lake Cochituate into a minicomputer powerhouse, and which apparently dabbled in romance advice on the side: Read more.
And wouldn't that be something? LSD-ladled robo-taxis suddenly careening all over Storrow Drive at rush hour. Read more.
The Globe yesterday ran this headline: Self-driving cars are booming in San Francisco. Is it really a loss for Boston?
Betteridge's Law holds: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word No." Read more.
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