Private Islands Online Australia

Posted on by

Private Islands, Richard Vanhoff, has had diverse business background with his early career starting in the media working with one of Australias leading TV stations and then eventually moving to radio. Through these two major media agencies, Richard met the crme of international artists and personalities.

This provided access to the rich and famous, which brought with it a plethora of contacts that inspired the development of his real estate career with his wife Narelle.

Richard and Narelle lived on one ofAustralias best-known resorts, Hamilton Island, for over 17 years with the Beatles George Harrison as one of their neighbours on Hamilton Island. Richard again was introduced to some of the worlds best musicians and international celebrities. This furthered his and Narelles passion for sales and in particular islands and island resorts, using these well-established contacts over the last 20 years as a foundation of their client network.

Richard and Narelle have received many international and Australian awards for achieving the highest gross commission sales, which included the sale of Great Keppel Island, Pumpkin Island, Long Island & Bamborough Island just to name a few. As a single real estate agent, Richard can comfortably state that he has sold and negotiated the sale of some of themost exotic island properties in the Pacific.

Continued here:

Private Islands Online Australia

Tor Browser 11.5.8 Download | TechSpot

Posted on by

Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. It also enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features.

The Tor Browser uses the Tor network, which consists of more than six thousand relays located worldwide, to hide the users' location and online traffic. This ensures anonymity and avoids your activities from being seen by others.

The Tor Browser is the flagship product from the Tor Project. The web browser is based on a modified version of Mozilla Firefox ESR that includes extras like the Tor proxy, TorButton, TorLauncher, NoScript, and HTTPS Everywhere extensions.

With Tor Browser having made Tor more accessible to everyday internet users and activists, Tor was an instrumental tool during the Arab Spring beginning in late 2010. It not only protected people's identity online but also allowed them to access critical resources, social media, and websites which were blocked.

Individuals use Tor to keep websites from tracking them and their family members, or to connect to news sites, instant messaging services, or the like when these are blocked by their local Internet providers. Tor's hidden services let users publish web sites and other services without needing to reveal the location of the site. Individuals also use Tor for socially sensitive communication: chat rooms and web forums for rape and abuse survivors, or people with illnesses.

Journalists use Tor to communicate more safely with whistleblowers and dissidents. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) use Tor to allow their workers to connect to their home website while they're in a foreign country, without notifying everybody nearby that they're working with that organization.

Groups such as Indymedia recommend Tor for safeguarding their members' online privacy and security. Activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recommend Tor as a mechanism for maintaining civil liberties online. Corporations use Tor as a safe way to conduct competitive analysis, and to protect sensitive procurement patterns from eavesdroppers. They also use it to replace traditional VPNs, which reveal the exact amount and timing of communication. Which locations have employees working late? Which locations have employees consulting job-hunting websites? Which research divisions are communicating with the company's patent lawyers?

A branch of the U.S. Navy uses Tor for open source intelligence gathering, and one of its teams used Tor while deployed in the Middle East recently. Law enforcement uses Tor for visiting or surveilling web sites without leaving government IP addresses in their web logs, and for security during sting operations.

Tor is not a VPN. Tor is a free browser similar to Chrome or Firefox, but it includes features that encrypt your IP address, making your browsing sessions private. A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is software that can change your IP address when you use any browser installed on your PC. To learn more about VPNs, you can read this article.

Tor Browser 11.5.8 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and also from our distribution directory. This release will not be published on Google Play due to their target API level requirements. Assuming we do not run into any major problems, Tor Browser 11.5.9 will be an Android-only release that fixes this issue.

Tor Browser 11.5.8 backports the following security updates from Firefox ESR 102.5 to to Firefox ESR 91.13 on Windows, macOS and Linux:

Tor Browser 11.5.8 updates GeckoView on Android to Firefox ESR 102.5 and includes important security updates. Tor Browser 11.5.8 backports the following security updates from Firefox 107 to Firefox ESR 102.5 on Android:

The full changelog since Tor Browser 11.5.7 is:

All Platforms

Windows + macOS + Linux

Android

Build All Platforms

Read the original:

Tor Browser 11.5.8 Download | TechSpot

Rationalism vs. Empiricism: Similarities & Differences

Posted on by

What is Rationalism?

Rationalism functions on three key principles that work to find the truth:

Empiricism, on the other hand, works with key principles to use skepticism in its school of thought that rejects the principles of rationalism.

Induction is a significant difference between rationalism and empiricism. Induction promotes the belief that the only thing we can be sure of is the experiences that we have. This is called solipsism. Everything that we experience is a projection of the mind, meaning that we can only truly know that we exist and everything else is just the projection of the mind. Interestingly, a rationalist belief that is similar to solipsism is Rene Descartes' statement 'I think; therefore, I am.'

Keep in mind, where rationalism holds that experience isn't necessary to acquire truth - that it can be discovered through reason - empiricists believe that the nature of reality, or truth, can only become knowledge if it is experienced. This knowledge is attained through the primary or secondary qualities of an object.

Primary Qualities - these are qualities that belong to an object and refer to its physical properties, such as shape or size or color. A banana has a curved shape specific to a banana and is yellow.

Secondary Qualities - these qualities refer to the degree that is perceived by the individual, such as its taste or degree of color. The secondary qualities of a banana are defined by the individual, such as its taste. Some people don't think that bananas are delicious. The degree of yellow for the banana can be perceived on different levels as well, depending on the individual.

Rationalism and empiricism share some similarities, specifically the use of skepticism, which is a doubt that the other ideas are true, to invoke a pattern of thought that will lead to knowledge or the truth of the nature of reality. This skepticism, however, is what makes rationalism and empiricism fundamentally opposite.

Rationalism has three key principles: Deduction , which is the application of concrete principles to draw a conclusion; innate ideas , which is the concept that we're born with fundamental truths or experiences left over from another life that we're born with; and reason, which uses logic to determine a conclusion.

Empiricism has its own principles, which include a rejection of innate ideas, the use of sense experience, which involves ideas that are either simple or complex and make use of the five senses, and induction, which is the belief that very little can be proven conclusively, especially without experience. From this, empiricists promote the notion of solipsism, which is the belief that everything we experience is a projection of the mind and can only be true to the individual. In other words, only the self can be known to be real. Remember Descartes' quote about this?

Empiricists believe that experience and thus knowledge can only be obtained through absorbing an object's primary qualities, which are qualities that belong to an object and refer to its physical properties, and secondary qualities, which involve the degree that is perceived by the individual, such as its taste or degree of color.

Read more here:

Rationalism vs. Empiricism: Similarities & Differences

Advantages & Disadvantages of Rationalism & Empiricism

Posted on by

Rationalism and empiricism are two distinct philosophical approaches to understanding the world around us. They are often contrasted with each other, as their approach to knowledge is completely different. Empiricists believe that we learn about our world through our previous experience, while for rationalists, reason is the basis of understanding anything. Both views can help someone attain knowledge, but they have certain disadvantages.

1 Empiricism Advantages

An empiricist would say that the laws of electrical conductivity are dependent on human observation. It's because we've seen electricity going through a piece of metal and not wood thousands of times that we consolidated the fact that metal is a conductor and wood is not. Our senses don't lie -- under normal circumstances -- and experience can show whether a phenomenon repeats itself and therefore it abides by certain laws or it happened randomly. Scientists for example use experiments to test through observation whether an assumption is true or not.

2 Empiricism Disadvantages

Perception is not universal: What a person perceives as true can be false for another person. For example, a book can be red for one man, but for a color-blind person it may be green. Does this mean that because one or many color-blinds perceive the book as such it is indeed green? Furthermore, perception is also affected by external factors: the same experiment under different conditions (temperature for example) can give different results, unbeknownst to the careless researcher.

3 Rationalism Advantages

Rationalists believe that there is a reason each object or phenomenon exists. An object comes back to the ground when thrown upwards not because a million people have observed so but because there is a reason for it to happen: the law of gravity. In addition, metal is a conductor because it facilitates movable electric charges, unlike wood. Rationalism tries to find the already existing general principles (man didn't create them) behind each phenomenon, which are independent of each individual's perception of knowledge. The result is undisputed theories explaining the laws of the world surrounding us.

4 Rationalism Disadvantages

Rationalism suggests that people are born with innate ideas, truths in a particular subject area (such as math concepts) that are part of out rational nature and we only have to bring them to the surface. However, as philosopher John Locke suggests, there are "idiots" who are not aware of -- and cannot understand -- simple notions, contradicting the universality of innate ideas. Furthermore, laws or logic describing the world are not infallible, as they may be based on human misconceptions, otherwise scientists would not conduct experiments and just rely on logical arguments.

Read the original here:

Advantages & Disadvantages of Rationalism & Empiricism

Rationalism (architecture) – Wikipedia

Posted on by

20th-century Italian architectural style

In architecture, Rationalism is an architectural current which mostly developed from Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. Vitruvius had claimed in his work De architectura that architecture is a science that can be comprehended rationally. The formulation was taken up and further developed in the architectural treatises of the Renaissance. Eighteenth-century progressive art theory opposed the Baroque use of illusionism with the classic beauty of truth and reason.

Twentieth-century Rationalism derived less from a special, unified theoretical work than from a common belief that the most varied problems posed by the real world could be resolved by reason. In that respect, it represented a reaction to Historicism and a contrast to Art Nouveau and Expressionism.

The term Rationalism is commonly used to refer to the wider International Style.[1][2][3][4]

The name Rationalism is retroactively applied to a movement in architecture that came about during the Age of Enlightenment (more specifically, Neoclassicism), arguing that architecture's intellectual base is primarily in science as opposed to reverence for and emulation of archaic traditions and beliefs. Rationalist architects, following the philosophy of Ren Descartes emphasized geometric forms and ideal proportions.[5]:8184

The French Louis XVI style emerged in the mid-18th century with its roots in the waning interest of the Baroque period. The architectural notions of the time gravitated more and more to the belief that reason and natural forms are tied closely together, and that the rationality of science should serve as the basis for where structural members should be placed. Towards the end of the 18th century, Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, a teacher at the influential cole Polytechnique in Paris at the time, argued that architecture in its entirety was based in science.

Other architectural theorists of the period who advanced rationalist ideas include Abb Jean-Louis de Cordemoy (16311713),[6]:559[7]:265 the Venetian Carlo Lodoli (16901761),[6]:560 Abb Marc-Antoine Laugier (17131769) and Quatremre de Quincy (17551849).[5]:8792

The architecture of Claude Nicholas Ledoux (17361806) and tienne-Louis Boulle (17281799) typify Enlightenment rationalism, with their use of pure geometric forms, including spheres, squares, and cylinders.[5]:9296

The term structural rationalism most often refers to a 19th-century French movement, usually associated with the theorists Eugne Viollet-le-Duc and Auguste Choisy. Viollet-le-Duc rejected the concept of an ideal architecture and instead saw architecture as a rational construction approach defined by the materials and purpose of the structure.

The architect Eugne Train was one of the most important practitioners of this school, particularly with his educational buildings such as the Collge Chaptal and Lyce Voltaire.[8]

Architects such as Henri Labrouste and Auguste Perret incorporated the virtues of structural rationalism throughout the 19th century in their buildings. By the early 20th century, architects such as Hendrik Petrus Berlage were exploring the idea that structure itself could create space without the need for decoration. This gave rise to modernism, which further explored this concept. More specifically, the Soviet Modernist group ASNOVA were known as 'the Rationalists'.

Rational Architecture (Italian: Architettura razionale) thrived in Italy from the 1920s to the 1940s, under the support and patronage of Mussolinis Fascist regime. In 1926, a group of young architects Sebastiano Larco, Guido Frette, Carlo Enrico Rava, Adalberto Libera, Luigi Figini, Gino Pollini, and Giuseppe Terragni (190443) founded the so-called Gruppo 7, publishing their manifesto in the magazine Rassegna Italiana. Their declared intent was to strike a middle ground between the classicism of the Novecento Italiano movement and the industrially inspired architecture of Futurism.[9]:203 Their "note" declared:

The hallmark of the earlier avant garde was a contrived impetus and a vain, destructive fury, mingling good and bad elements: the hallmark of today's youth is a desire for lucidity and wisdom...This must be clear...we do not intend to break with tradition...The new architecture, the true architecture, should be the result of a close association between logic and rationality.[9]:203

One of the first rationalist buildings was the Palazzo Gualino in Turin, built for the financier Riccardo Gualino by the architects Gino Levi-Montalcini and Giuseppe Pagano.[10]Gruppo 7 mounted three exhibitions between 1926 and 1931, and the movement constituted itself as an official body, the Movimento Italiano per l'Architettura Razionale (MIAR), in 1930. Exemplary works include Giuseppe Terragni's Casa del Fascio in Como (193236), The Medaglia d'Oro room at the Italian Aeronautical Show in Milan (1934) by Pagano and Marcello Nizzoli, and the Fascist Trades Union Building in Como (193843), designed by Cesare Cattaneo, Pietro Lingeri, Augusto Magnani, L. Origoni, and Mario Terragni.[9]:2059

Pagano became editor of Casabella in 1933 together with Edoardo Persico. Pagano and Persico featured the work of the rationalists in the magazine, and its editorials urged the Italian state to adopt rationalism as its official style. The Rationalists enjoyed some official commissions from the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini, but the state tended to favor the more classically inspired work of the National Union of Architects. Architects associated with the movement collaborated on large official projects of the Mussolini regime, including the University of Rome (begun in 1932) and the Esposizione Universale Roma (EUR) in the southern part of Rome (begun in 1936). The EUR features monumental buildings, many of which evocative of ancient Roman architecture, but absent ornament, revealing strong geometric forms.[9]:2047

In the late 1960s, a new rationalist movement emerged in architecture, claiming inspiration from both the Enlightenment and early-20th-century rationalists. Like the earlier rationalists, the movement, known as the Tendenza, was centered in Italy. Practitioners include Carlo Aymonino (19262010), Aldo Rossi (193197), and Giorgio Grassi. The Italian design magazine Casabella featured the work of these architects and theorists. The work of architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri influenced the movement, and the University Iuav of Venice emerged as a center of the Tendenza after Tafuri became chair of Architecture History in 1968.[5]:157 et seq. A Tendenza exhibition was organized for the 1973 Milan Triennale.[5]:178183

Rossi's book L'architettura della citt, published in 1966, and translated into English as The Architecture of the City in 1982, explored several of the ideas that inform Neo-rationalism. In seeking to develop an understanding of the city beyond simple functionalism, Rossi revives the idea of typology, following from Quatremre de Quincy, as a method for understanding buildings, as well as the larger city. He also writes of the importance of monuments as expressions of the collective memory of the city, and the idea of place as an expression of both physical reality and history.[5]:16672[11]:17880

Architects such as Leon Krier, Maurice Culot, and Demetri Porphyrios took Rossi's ideas to their logical conclusion with a revival of Classical Architecture and Traditional Urbanism. Krier's witty critique of Modernism, often in the form of cartoons, and Porphyrios's well crafted philosophical arguments, such as "Classicism is not a Style", won over a small but talented group of architects to the classical point of view. Organizations such as the Traditional Architecture Group at the RIBA, and the Institute of Classical Architecture attest to their growing number, but mask the Rationalist origins.

In Germany, Oswald Mathias Ungers became the leading practitioner of German rationalism from the mid-1960s.[11]:17880 Ungers influenced a younger generation of German architects, including Hans Kollhoff, Max Dudler, and Christoph Mckler.[12]

Go here to see the original:

Rationalism (architecture) - Wikipedia

Rationalism vs. Empiricism | Concepts, Differences & Examples – Video …

Posted on by

The difference between rationalism and empiricism can be understood primarily in terms of three claims on which the positions disagree. The first claim is the intuition/deduction thesis. This is the idea that people can gain knowledge just by using intuition, and by building off their intuition with deductive reasoning. Empiricists generally only agree with this thesis in the case of knowledge that concerns ideas, and not knowledge concerning the external world. Rationalists, on the other hand, often claim that people can gain meaningful knowledge about the external world through intuition and deduction.

The second claim is the innate knowledge thesis. Similar to innate concepts, innate knowledge is the idea that it is simply part of human nature to know certain facts about the world, without having to learn them. The difference between a fact known through intuition and one known innately is that intuitively known facts are felt or sensed to be true when someone thinks about them, whereas innate knowledge is simply known to be true. Rationalists often identify particular claims that they believe are examples of innate knowledge. Empiricists generally hold that innate knowledge does not exist, as such a claim would go against the concept of the blank slate. Empiricists may hold that people have certain innate capacities that allow them to learn, but the knowledge itself must be the product of experience.

The third claim is the innate concept thesis. Like innate knowledge, an innate concept is one that exists within the human mind without a person having learned it. Innate concepts are different from innate knowledge because having a concept in one's mind just means understanding the meaning of some idea; it does not involve knowing a fact or statement. Rationalists often claim that people understand certain ideas innately, such as the idea of free will, or of mind and body. However, as in the case of innate knowledge, empiricists generally hold that innate concepts do not exist, because people are born as blank slates.

Although rationalism and empiricism generally advocate different views about the source of knowledge, it is not accurate to think of them as opposite positions or to view them as two binary options. Many philosophers who have been considered rationalists or empiricists actually have more complexity in their positions, and a given philosopher might follow rationalist principles in one field but empiricist principles in another.

Furthermore, rationalism and empiricism do not necessarily lead to opposing conclusions or viewpoints. For example, both rationalism and empiricism employ skepticism in their arguments. Descartes, who is generally viewed as a rationalist philosopher, argued for the importance of doubting apparent sources of knowledge and examining whether it is possible to have certainty about anything. This skeptical method was shared by empiricist philosophers such as David Hume, who examined whether the information people gain from experience is actually enough to justify knowledge about the world.

Another related shared idea is the emphasis on one's own individual perspective as the source of knowledge. According to Descartes's skeptical method, knowledge can only be gained by beginning with certainty about the existence of one's own mind. This is the source of his famous argument that ''I think, therefore I am,'' often called the cogito. The cogito claims that a person can be certain that they exist because they are thinking. This idea is linked to solipsism, the claim that other people do not truly exist or do not have minds. Descartes argues that external experience should be doubted, but ultimately claims that it is possible to gain knowledge of the outside world. Locke, who is generally viewed as an empiricist, takes up a similar idea and questions whether it is possible to know that other people think and feel. His conclusion is that there is no way to directly know that other people have minds, but that it is a reasonable inference based on observations of the world.

Rationalism and empiricism are terms used to describe different views about where people acquire knowledge. They are part of the field of epistemology, which examines the meaning, origin, and scope of knowledge. Rationalism views reason and intuition, or people's ability to sense the truth of statements, to be key ways of gaining knowledge. Rationalism focuses on deduction, or using the laws of logic to make arguments featuring conclusions that must be true. It also advocates the existence of innate ideas that people inherently possess in their minds. Empiricism, by contrast, holds that ideas and knowledge are the result of sense experience, or people's sensory interactions with the world. According to empiricism, the mind at birth is a tabula rasa or blank slate, without any knowledge or ideas. Knowledge is gained through induction, where people use experiences to make plausible inferences about the world.

Rationalism and empiricism can be distinguished based on three central claims. First is the intuition/deduction thesis: Rationalists generally consider intuition and deduction to be legitimate avenues to meaningful knowledge concerning the external world, whereas empiricists think intuition is only reliable when it comes to claims about ideas and their meaning. Next is the innate knowledge thesis: Rationalists often claim people have innate knowledge residing in their minds, whereas empiricists generally claim experience is where people get knowledge. Third is the innate concept thesis: Rationalists generally think people innately understand certain concepts, whereas empiricists disagree. Despite these disagreements, rationalism and empiricism are not truly opposing views. Many philosophers have views that incorporate both positions. There are also some issues where rationalists and empiricists take a similar approach. For instance, both rationalist and empiricist philosophers have advocated skepticism or doubt about apparent knowledge, and both have considered the issue of solipsism, or whether people can determine from their own experiences that other people exist and have minds of their own.

Originally posted here:

Rationalism vs. Empiricism | Concepts, Differences & Examples - Video ...

Difference Between Rationalism and Empiricism | Definition and …

Posted on by

Main Difference Rationalism vs Empiricism

Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that deals with the theory of knowledge. It studies the nature of knowledge, the rationality of belief, and justification. Rationalism and empiricism are two schools of thought in epistemology. Both these schools of thought are concerned with the source of knowledge and justification. The main difference between rationalism and empiricism is that rationalism considers reason as the source of knowledge whereas empiricism considers experience as the source of knowledge.

This article covers,

1. What is Rationalism? Definition and Characteristics

2. What is Empiricism? Definition and Characteristics

3. Difference Between Rationalism and Empiricism

Empiricism is a theory that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience. This theory emphasizes the role of the five senses in obtaining knowledge. Empiricism rejects innate concepts or inborn knowledge. John Locke, one of the most famous empiricist stated that mind is a blank slate (tabula rasa) when we enter the world. According to this theory, it is only later, through the acquisition of experience that we gain knowledge and information.

However, if knowledge comes only through experience, it is impossible for us to talk about something that we have not experienced. This claim questions the validity of religious and ethical concepts; since these concepts cannot be observed or experienced, they were considered to be meaningless. Nevertheless, moderate empiricists accept that there are some phenomenon that cannot be explained through senses.

John Lock was an eminent empiricist.

Rationalism is a theory that states knowledge comes through reason, i.e., reason is the source of knowledge and justification. There are three basic claims in rationalism and rationalists must adopt at least one of these three claims. These claims are known as the intuition/deduction thesis, the innate knowledge thesis, or the innate concept thesis.

Innate knowledge Rationalists argue that we are not born with minds like blind slates, but we have some innate knowledge. That is, even before we experience the world we know some things.

Intuition/deduction Rationalists can also argue that there are some truths that can be worked out independent of experience of the world, though not known innately. Examples of such truths include logic, mathematics, or ethical truths.

Innate concept Some philosophers argue that innate knowledge and innate concept are the same whereas some other philosophers are of the view that they are different. Innate concept these people claim as that some concepts are a part of our rational nature and are not based on our experience. The way two children view the same object as ugly and beautiful can be an example of innate concepts.

Although these two theories, rationalism and empiricism, are often contrasted with each other, both reason and experience can be sources of knowledge. Language acquisition can be taken as an example of this. Although experience is needed to perfect a language, a certain amount of, intuition, deduction, and innate knowledge are also required to acquire a language.

Immanuel Kant was a noted rationalist.

Rationalism: Rationalism is a theory based on the claim that reason is the source of knowledge.

Empiricism: Empiricism is a theory based on the claim that experience is the source of knowledge.

Rationalism: Rationalists believe in intuition.

Empiricism: Empiricists do not believe in intuition.

Rationalism: Rationalists believe that individuals have innate knowledge or concepts.

Empiricism: Empiricists believe that individuals have no innate knowledge.

Rationalism: Immanuel Kant, Plato, Rene Descartes, and Aristotle are some examples of prominent rationalists.

Empiricism: John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and George Berkeley are some examples of prominent empiricists.

Image Courtesy:

Immanuel Kant (painted portrait)By Anonymous (Public Domain) via Commons Wikimedia

JohnLockBy Sir Godfrey Kneller State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.( Public Domain) via Commons Wikimedia

View post:

Difference Between Rationalism and Empiricism | Definition and ...

Seychelles Population 2022 (Live) – worldpopulationreview.com

Posted on by

Like many island nations, Seychelles is densely populated with 186 people per square kilometers (483/sq mi), which ranks 60th in the world. The capital and largest city, Victoria, has a population of 25,000, or more than 25% of the country's population.

During the British control of Seychelles, French upper class were allowed to retain their land, and both French and British settlers used African slaves and later indentured Indian servants, despite the British prohibition on slavery in 1835. This led to a small minority population of Indians on the island, as well as Chinese, and the Gran'bla ("big whites") of French origin controlling politics and the economy.

Today, there are descendants of the Indian, Chinese and Gran'bla making up ethnic communities in Seychelles, although most people are of black African origin, often with mixed European or Asian heritage. Seychelles has no indigenous population, and the current population is composed of immigrants and their descendants.

The ethnic breakdown is 93% Seychellois Creole, 3% British, 1.8% French, 0.5% Chinese, 0.3% Indian and 1.2% other.

Most Seychelles are Christians, with 82% of the population adhering to Roman Catholicism. 2% of the population practices Hinduism while 1% practices Islam.

Original post:

Seychelles Population 2022 (Live) - worldpopulationreview.com

Learn quantum computing: a field guide – IBM Quantum

Posted on by

Quantum theory is a revolutionary advancement in physics and chemistrythat emerged in the early twentieth century. It is an elegantmathematical theory able to explain the counterintuitive behavior ofsubatomic particles, most notably the phenomenon of entanglement. Inthe late twentieth century it was discovered that quantum theory appliesnot only to atoms and molecules, but to bits and logic operations in acomputer. This realization has brought about a revolution in thescience and technology of information processing, making possible kindsof computing and communication hitherto unknown in the Information Age.

Our everyday computers perform calculations and process information using thestandard (or classical) model ofcomputation, which dates back toTuring and vonNeumann. In thismodel, all information is reducible to bits, which can take the valuesof either 0 or 1. Additionally, all processing can be performed via simple logicgates (AND, OR, NOT, XOR, XNOR)acting on one or two bits at a time, or be entirely described by NAND (or NOR).At any point in its computation, aclassical computers state is entirely determined by the states of allits bits, so that a computer with n bits can exist in one of2^n possible states, ranging from 00...0 to11...1 .

The power of the quantum computer, meanwhile, lies in its much richerrepertoire of states. A quantum computer also has bits but instead of0 and 1, its quantum bits, or qubits, can represent a 0, 1, or linearcombination of both, which is a property known as superposition.This on its own is no special thing, since a computer whose bits can beintermediate between 0 and 1 is just an analog computer, scarcely morepowerful than an ordinary digital computer. However, a quantum computertakes advantage of a special kind of superposition that allows forexponentially many logical states at once, all the states from|00...0rangle to |11...1rangle . This is a powerfulfeat, and no classical computer can achieve it.

The vast majority of quantum superpositions, and the ones most useful for quantumcomputation, are entangled. Entangled states are states of the whole computerthat do not correspond to any assignment of digital or analog states ofthe individual qubits. A quantum computer is therefore significantly more powerfulthan any one classical computer whether it be deterministic,probabilistic, or analog.

While todays quantum processors are modest in size, their complexity growscontinuously. We believe this is the right time to build and engage a communityof new quantum learners, spark further interest in those who are curious,and foster a quantum intuition in the greater community.By making quantum concepts more widely understood even on a generallevel we can more deeply explore all the possibilities quantumcomputing offers, and more rapidly bring its exciting power to a worldwhose perspective is limited by classical physics.

With this in mind, we created the IBM Quantum Composer to provide the hands-onopportunity to experiment with operations on a real quantum computingprocessor. This field guide contains a series of topicsto accompany your journey as you create your own experiments, run them insimulation, and execute them on real quantum processorsavailable via IBM Cloud.

If quantum physics sounds challenging to you, you are not alone. But ifyou think the difficulty lies in hard math, think again. Quantum conceptscan, for the most part, be described by undergraduate-level linear algebra,so if you have ever taken a linear algebra course, the math will seem familiar.

The true challenge of quantum physics is internalizing ideas that arecounterintuitive to our day-to-day experiences in the physical world,which of course are constrained by classical physics. To comprehendthe quantum world, you must build a new intuition for a set of simple butvery different (and often surprising) laws.

The counterintuitive principles of quantum physics are:

1.A physical system in a definite state can still behaverandomly.

2.Two systems that are too far apart to influence each other cannevertheless behave in ways that, though individually random,are somehow strongly correlated.

Unfortunately, there is no single simple physicalprinciple from which these conclusions follow and we must guard againstattempting to describe quantum concepts in classical terms!The best we can do is to distill quantum mechanics down to a fewabstract-sounding mathematical laws, from which all the observed behaviorof quantum particles (and qubits in a quantum computer) can be deduced andpredicted.

Keep those two counterintuitive ideas in the back of your mind, let goof your beliefs about how the physical world works, and begin exploringthe quantum world!

Continue reading here:

Learn quantum computing: a field guide - IBM Quantum

Quantum Computing | Computer Science – Yale University

Posted on by

Quantum computing is entering an exciting new era. Small to medium-scale quantum computers are being built and tested; fast quantum algorithms are being discovered for problems that are previously unsolvable on conventional computers. Yale has been at the forefront of that progress, recognized for its leadership in Quantum Science. Through interdisciplinary research and pioneering innovations, our Yale CS faculty advances the state-of-the-art in quantum computing and quantum information science, building upon insights and lessons from classical computer science.

Yongshan Dings Lab Todays quantum computers are still moderate in size and prone to making errors, while most existing quantum applications require a large number of qubits and a high level of accuracy in operations. To bridge this gap, Dings Lab creates innovative techniques to improve the efficiency of algorithms and software, by adapting to hardware architectures. Working closely with experimentalists, their current efforts include constructing novel error-correcting protocols to guarantee robust computation and designing new algorithms that are less resource-intensive and more error-resilient.

Nisheeth Vishnois group is interested, on the one hand, in the design of quantum algorithms that can go beyond classical algorithms for optimization and sampling problems and, on the other hand, in the design of algorithms for computational problems arising in quantum mechanics.

Lin Zhongs Lab Quantum Computers rely on classical hardware for control (using microwave signals) and error correction (using FPGAs), which bears strong similarity to wireless communication systems: just imagine your smartphone is a qubit under the control of a base station. Toward fault-tolerant quantum computing, hundreds or even thousands of qubits must be controlled in tight synchrony and with errors corrected. Leveraging their experience in building scalable, massive MIMO communication systems, Lin Zhongs Lab design and experiment with scalable control systems for fully error-corrected, fault-tolerant quantum computers, in collaboration with quantum scientists.

At Yale, experts across areas including computer science, applied physics, electrical engineering, chemistry, physics, statistics & data science, and mathematics work together to advance the frontier of quantum computing and information processing. Quantum at Yale is a showcase of the vibrant research activities here at Yale.

Originally posted here:

Quantum Computing | Computer Science - Yale University

Introduction to quantum computing – GeeksforGeeks

Posted on by

Improve Article

Save Article

Like Article

Improve Article

Save Article

Computers are getting smaller and faster day by day because electronic components are getting smaller and smaller. But this process is about to meet its physical limit.

Electricity is the flow of electrons. Since the size of transistors is shrinking to the size of a few atoms, transistors cannot be used as switches because electrons may transfer themselves to the other side of blocked passage by the process called quantum tunneling.

Quantum mechanics is a branch of physics that explores the physical world at a most fundamental level. At this level, particles behave differently from the classical world taking more than one state at the same time and interacting with other particles that are very far away. Phenomena like superposition and entanglement take place.

In classical computing for example there are 4 bits. The combination of 4 bits can represent 2^4=16 values in total and one value a given instant. But in a combination of 4 qubits, all 16 combinations are possible at once.

What can quantum computers do?

Continue reading here:

Introduction to quantum computing - GeeksforGeeks

The country that became a ‘micronation capital’ – BBC Future

Posted on by

Cruickshank describes Atlantium as a "sustained performance art project".

"Im smart enough to know that Im not an actual monarch with real power," he says. "But the more people that accept something as a fact, the more real it becomes. People treat me with deference at official events and I get letters addressing me as 'Your Imperial Majesty'. I can't be flippant in response."

There is also the potential for tragic misunderstandings, says Hobbs.

"There have been cases where people who are escaping desperate situations pay a fee to become a citizen, and then the micronation has to tell them it isnt a real country. And the person says, 'What kind of a joke is this?' This is where it cuts into real life."

'The original nation'

Australia has been dubbed "the micronation capital of the world" because it has more than a dozen micronations. Some are playful, like Atlantium, while others were formed with a specific goal in mind. The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands was formed in 2004 in response to the Australian governments refusal to recognise same-sex marriages. It gained significant media attention and was dissolved in 2017 when Australians voted in support of legalising gay marriage.

Hobbs regards the micronationalism as consistent with Australian culture, which "celebrates mocking authority".

"Australia's pretty secure in its sovereignty. It's a continent with a sparse population. The government sort of says, 'We don't really care, so long as you keep paying taxes and follow the road rules. '"

The Yidindji Tribal Nation is seeking a treaty with Australia's government and to rectify Australia's constitution making no mention of indigenous people. It has 200 citizens, over half of whom are indigenous. The land claimed lies in the state of Queensland and stretches 80 km (50 miles) out to sea.

"The aim of the treaty is to settle the past," says Murrumu Walubara Yidindji, who was speaking in his capacity as minister for foreign affairs and trade. "We're saying, 'Look, you don't have to steal our stuff anymore. We'll settle the past and secure the future. '"

In 2014, the former press gallery journalist changed his name, surrendered his Australian passport and tore up his bank accounts, superannuation and healthcare documents. Members of the Yidinjyi government hand-delivered their treaty to the Australian government in 2017 however Walubara is still awaiting a reply.

"The Australian government is very slow," he says. "While they catch up with us, we will continue to develop ourselves as a nation. We own the place, and we're not insecure about it."

Read this article:

The country that became a 'micronation capital' - BBC Future

List of micronations – Wikipedia

Posted on by

FlagDateNameLocationDescription2008presentGrand Duchy of FlandrensisAn Antarctic micronation that seeks to draw attention to environmental concerns,[2] founded by Niels Vermeersch.[3]2001presentGrand Duchy of Westarctica

Antarctica

None

Australia

Australia

Australia

None

Australia

Australia

None

Canada

None

Canada

Chile

Denmark

France

France

France

Italy

None

Sweden

Sweden

United Kingdom

None

United Kingdom

United Kingdom

United Kingdom

United Kingdom

United States

None

United States

United States

United States

None

United States

United States

United States

United States

It is one of the first micronations in history and the oldest still functioning.

None

None

Global

Global

None

None

None

The rest is here:

List of micronations - Wikipedia

Talossa – Wikipedia

Posted on by

Micronation in Milwaukee, USA

Kingdom of Talossa

Regipts Talossan

A man's room is his kingdom

Declared

Total

Estimate

Total

Talossa, also known as the Kingdom of Talossa (Talossan: Regipts Talossan [redipts tsan]), is one of the earliest micronationsfounded in 1979 by then-14-year-old Robert Ben Madison of Milwaukee and at first confined to his bedroom; he adopted the name after discovering that the word means "inside the house" in Finnish. Among the first such projects still maintained, it has kept up a web presence since 1995.[1][2] Its internet and media exposure since the late 1990s contributed to the appearance of other subsequent internet micronations.

Talossa claims several places on Earth as its territory, especially a portion of Milwaukee, calling it the "Greater Talossan Area"; no such claim, however, is recognized by the United Nations or by any other nation. As of June 23, 2016, the number of active citizens is said to be 213.[3] Including those who are no longer citizens for various reasons, those who are under the age of 14 and so are not yet citizens, and those from the ESB Affair[4] there are 493 total registered individuals.The current King of Talossa is John Wooley (Ian Lupul). The successors to the throne are the children of the Present King (Prince Patrick, Prince Peter, Princess Daniele).[5] Kings of Talossa: Robert I (19791987), Robert II (1987), Florence I (19871988), Robert I (19882005), Louis (Regent, 20052006), John I (2006-)

Talossan culture has been developed over the years by Robert Madison and other fans. The Talossan language, also created by Madison in 1980,[6] claims a vocabulary of 35,000 root words and 121,000 derived words[7] including fieschada, meaning "love at first sight".[8][9]

Talossa was founded as a kingdom on December 26, 1979,[10] by Madison, shortly after the death of his mother. Madison maintained Talossa throughout his adolescence, publishing a handwritten newspaper and designing a flag and emblem. During this time its only other members were about a dozen relatives and acquaintances. This changed in the mid-1990s, when a series of stories in the New York Times[11][12] and Wired,[9] subsequently republished elsewhere, drew his website to popular attention. Several new "citizens" joined Talossa as a result, and Madison began to claim that he was the inventor of the term "micronation".

Madison disestablished the "kingdom" in late 2005, but Talossa is still active today despite the lack of involvement of the original founder.[13]

Madison registered "Talossa"[14] as a service mark in 2005 and created Talossa, Inc., a Wisconsin not-for-profit corporation. By 2013 the service mark had been cancelled and the corporation had been administratively dissolved.[15]

Madison invented Talossan ([tsan] or el glhe Talossan [ e tsan]) as a constructed language for his micronation. With its relatively large vocabulary, which is mostly French-based, it is said to be one of the most detailed fictional languages ever invented.[9] The former Association of Talossan Language Organisations (ATLO) maintained a website describing the language for new learners, providing language information, research and online translation to and from English.[16] The ISO 639 designation is "tzl".[17] That website is now deprecated, and new resources will[when?] be created with the formation of la Societ per l'Ilesnaziun del Glhe Naziunal (Society for the Facilitation of the National Language, SIGN).

The language is overseen by the Comit per l'tzil del Glhe ("Committee for the Use of the Language," CG), a group formed by Madison which periodically issued both Arestadas (decrees) to describe and document changes in language usage of the language and Pienamaintschen (supplements), to update the vocabulary list. The CG maintained a multi-lingual website providing access to the recent recommendations of the Committee.[18]

More recently, la SIGN is currently being created with the goal of assuming the CG's responsibilities.

Talossan uses the Latin alphabet. The letters of modern Talossan are:

a, , b, c, , d, , e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, , p, q, r, s, , t, u, , v, w, x, z,

Read more:

Talossa - Wikipedia

Why the iManage Acquisition Of AI Company RAVN Is Something To Crow About – Above the Law

Posted on by

Lets face it: document management systems are not very smart. Sure, DMS systems have made major strides in recent years in search, sharing, and ease of use. But when it comes right down to it, a DMS system is primarily a static repository where law firms store their documents and emails.

But what if you could sprinkle some intelligence into your DMS system? What if it could understand your documents and more intuitively organize them? What if it could extract and analyze key portions of documents and relate them to particular practice groups or use cases?

When I first learned that DMS company iManage had acquired U.K.-based artificial intelligence company RAVN Systems, it was for me an Aha! moment. How perfect, I thought. The marriage of document management and artificial intelligence could well change how we think about both technologies, turning DMS systems from static repositories to active law-practice tools and driving mainstream acceptance and appreciation of AI in legal.

Last week, I had the opportunity to discuss the acquisition with Sandeep Joshi, iManages vice president, business and corporate development. I asked him what he thinks the integration of AI technology will mean for document management.

There is the ability now to move this technology from the back room to the front and center of what lawyers do on a day-to-day basis, Joshi said. The leap in productivity well see because of this will look like a hockey stick curve.

I also asked Joshi if he thought the integration of RAVNs technology into a mainstream application such as iManage which counts 2,200 law firms and corporate legal departments as customers would drive broader adoption of AI in the legal industry.

It will, he said, but only if the technology is used to address real business problems the legal industry is facing, such as the pressure on both legal departments and their clients to reduce costs. We have to talk in terms of actual business problems and use cases that this technology can solve.

By way of example, Joshi cites the case earlier this year in which a team of seven investigators in the U.K. governments Serious Fraud Office, using RAVNs technology, was able to sift through 30 million documents at a rate of 60,000 a day to uncover large-scale bribery and corruption involving Rolls-Royce.

iManage has identified four capabilities RAVNs integration will provide for its customers:

What AI brings to the table is the ability to light up all this content, to make our customers more content-aware, Joshi said.

Surprisingly, the timetable for implementing this integration is short, and the first stages will be completed and announced within a matter of weeks. This is because iManage and RAVN had already been working together and some integration had already been implemented.

Coincidentally, the two companies share a common past. Before founding RAVN in 2010, its top executives all worked at the former Autonomy, which at the time also owned iManage. In 2011, HP acquired Autonomy and, with it, iManage. But after the Autonomy acquisition turned into a fiasco for HP, iManages leadership was able to buy out the business in 2015 and restore its original cofounders to the helm.

When iManage separated from HP, it had 155 employees. Through growth and the acquisition of RAVNs 50 employees, iManage is now at 375 people.

We view this as the start of an incredible journey, Joshi said. In the coming months and years, we have the ability to really move the pace of productivity gains.

Seems that every conversation about AI in law moves invariably to the question of robots replacing lawyers. Joshi said lawyers should view AI not as a competitor, but as a competitive advantage.

The interesting thing here is the ability to automate the boring stuff, he said. Lawyers go to law school to help their clients by providing legal advice. What this tech does is automate the routine, boring stuff. This will actually speed up the work of lawyers. Many of our large law firm customers view this as a competitive advantage.

This is one of those stories that has implications beyond these two companies and their customers. Document management is a technology that many lawyers know and understand. AI is still technology that many lawyers fear and dont understand. By merging the two technologies, lawyers will see the power of AI to as Joshi said light up all that content. That will be a major step forward in making artificial intelligence a no-brainer.

Robert Ambrogiis aMassachusetts lawyerand journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blogLawSites.com. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of theCollege of Law Practice Managementand an inauguralFastcase 50honoree. He can be reached by email atambrogi@gmail.com, and you can follow him onTwitter(@BobAmbrogi).

Follow this link:

Why the iManage Acquisition Of AI Company RAVN Is Something To Crow About - Above the Law

Five Industries That Will Eliminate Legacy Issues Using AI – Forbes

Posted on by
Five Industries That Will Eliminate Legacy Issues Using AI
Forbes
AI just recently began making its way into the public consciousness, but over the next several years it will step in to transform entire industries. Key to this transformation is AI's unlimited capacity to process and analyze mass amounts of data, and ...

More:

Five Industries That Will Eliminate Legacy Issues Using AI - Forbes

Banks bet on AI for a ‘self-driving’ banking experience – CNBC

Posted on by

Major banks are betting on artificial intelligence (AI) to act like a digital personal assistant to customers, helping to automate money-making decisions, top CEOs in the sector told CNBC, amid the continued threat from new, more nimble entrants into the market.

"Really people don't like banking , it's boring, it takes time, causes them stress, and people have bad financial habits," Carlos Torres Vila, CEO of Spain's BBVA, told CNBC in an interview at the Money 20/20 conference in Copenhagen earlier this week.

"What we can do is leverage data and AI to provide people with peace of mind, really having an almost magical experience that things in their financial life turn out the way they want it. It's almost like a self-driving bank experience."

BBVA is one of the big banks investing heavily in moves to digitize its operations, as customers come to expect more from mobile apps and the way they interact with lenders.

More here:

Banks bet on AI for a 'self-driving' banking experience - CNBC

AI to help worlds first removal of space debris – The Next Web

Posted on by

Space is a messy place. Anestimated 34,000 pieces of junk over 10 cm in diameter are currently orbiting Earth at around10 times the speed of a bullet. If one of them hits a spacecraft, the damage could be disastrous.

In September, the International Space Station had to dodge an unknown piece of debris. With the volume of space trash rapidly growing, the chances of acollision are increasing.

TheEuropean Space Agency(ESA) wants to clean up some of the mess with the help of AI. In 2025, it plans to launch the worlds first debris-removing space mission:ClearSpace-1.

The technology is being developed by Swiss startup ClearSpace, a spin-off from the Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne (EPFL). Their removal target isthe now-obsolete Vespa Upper Part, a 100 kg payload adaptor orbiting 660 km above the Earth.

[Read:4 ridiculously easy ways you can be more eco-friendly]

ClearSpace-1 will use an AI-powered camera to find the debris. Its robotic arms will then grab the object and drag it back to the atmosphere before burning it up.

A central focus is to develop deep learning algorithms to reliably estimate the 6D pose (three rotations and three translations) of the target from video-sequences even though images taken in space are difficult, said Mathieu Salzmann, an EPFLscientist spearheading the project. They can be over- or under-exposed with many mirror-like surfaces.

Vespa hasnt been seen for seven years, so EPFL will use a database of synthetic images to simulate its current appearance as training material for the algorithms.

Once the mission begins, theresearchers will capture real-life pictures from beyond the Earths atmosphere to finetune the AI system. The algorithms also need tobe transferred to a dedicated hardware platform onboard the capture satellite.

Since motion in space is well behaved, the pose estimation algorithms can fill the gaps between recognitions spaced one second apart, alleviating the computational pressure, saidProfessor David Atienza, head of ESL.

However, to ensure that they can autonomously cope with all the uncertainties in the mission, the algorithms are so complex that their implementation requires squeezing out all the performance from the platform resources.

If the capture is successful, it could pave the way for further debris-removal missions that can make space a safer place.

Published October 30, 2020 17:27 UTC

Follow this link:

AI to help worlds first removal of space debris - The Next Web