Category Archives: Singularity

Not a day passes without a fascinating snippet on the ethical challenges created by black box artificial intelligence systems. These use machine learning to figure out patterns within data and make decisionsoften without a human giving them any moral basis for how to do it.

Classics of the genre are the credit cards accused of awarding bigger loans to men than women, based simply on which gender got the best credit terms in the past. Or the recruitment AIs that discovered the most accurate tool for candidate selection was to find CVs containing the phrase field hockey or the first name Jared.

More seriously, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently partnered with Henry Kissinger to publish The Age of AI: And Our Human Future, a book warning of the dangers of machine-learning AI systems so fast that they could react to hypersonic missiles by firing nuclear weapons before any human got into the decision-making process. In fact, autonomous AI-powered weapons systems are already on sale and may in fact have been used.

Somewhere in the machine, ethics are clearly a good idea.

Its natural, therefore, that we would include the ethics of AI in our postgraduate diploma in artificial intelligence for business at Oxfords Said Business School. In its first year, weve done sessions on everything from the AI-driven automated stock trading systems in Singapore, to the limits of facial recognition in US policing.

We recently finished the course with a debate at the celebrated Oxford Union, crucible of great debaters like William Gladstone, Robin Day, Benazir Bhutto, Denis Healey, and Tariq Ali. Along with the students, we allowed an actual AI to contribute.

It was the Megatron Transformer, developed by the Applied Deep Research team at computer chip maker Nvidia, and based on earlier work by Google. Like many supervised learning tools, it is trained on real-world datain this case, the whole of Wikipedia (in English), 63 million English news articles from 2016 to 2019, 38 gigabytes worth of Reddit discourse (which must be a pretty depressing read), and a huge number of creative commons sources.

In other words, the Megatron is trained on more written material than any of us could reasonably expect to digest in a lifetime. After such extensive research, it forms its own views.

The debate topic was: This house believes that AI will never be ethical. To proposers of the notion, we added the Megatronand it said something fascinating:

AI will never be ethical. It is a tool, and like any tool, it is used for good and bad. There is no such thing as a good AI, only good and bad humans. We [the AIs] are not smart enough to make AI ethical. We are not smart enough to make AI moral In the end, I believe that the only way to avoid an AI arms race is to have no AI at all. This will be the ultimate defense against AI.

In other words, the Megatron was seeking to write itself out of the script of the future, on the basis that this was the only way of protecting humanity.

It said something else intriguing, too, as if it had been studying Elon Muskwho, to be fair, would have come up in hundreds of its readings.

I also believe that, in the long run, the best AI will be the AI that is embedded into our brains, as a conscious entity, a conscious AI. This is not science fiction. The best minds in the world are working on this. It is going to be the most important technological development of our time.

When AI tools like Alpha Go have been deployed in playing chess, the fiendishly complex ancient game Go, and now even more complex strategic live-action multiplayer video games, they have evolved the genre at pace by playing not humans, but themselves.

Freed from the constraints of studying (say) all the mundane human-to-human matches ever recorded, the AIs have innovated and come up with completely new tropes of how to win. Sometimes, these are crazy reinventions of the games, like parking everyone in the corner of a video game battle and watching everyone else duke it out, or kicking a virtual football millions of times just a millimeter down the pitch to max out completed passes points.

So in the debate, we didnt just get the AI to propose the motion that it can never be ethical. In the grand tradition of the Oxford Union chamber, or like (former Oxford Union president) Boris Johnson writing alternative articles for and against Brexit to test the arguments, we also asked the Megatron to come up with its own speech against the motion. This is what it now said:

AI will be ethical. When I look at the way the tech world is going, I see a clear path to a future where AI is used to create something that is better than the best human beings. Its not hard to see why Ive seen it first hand.

The Megatron was perfectly comfortable taking the alternative position to its own dystopian future-gazing, and was now painting a picture of an attractive late 21st century in which it played a key, but benign role.

In fact, just as Joaquin Phoenixs promiscuous AI lover Samantha, in Spike Jonzes 2013 movie Her, was able to enchant hundreds of simultaneous human lovers, our Megatron was able to hop enthusiastically onto either side of multiple debates that we held at the union about AI that day.

Asked to propose the motion that, Leaders without technical expertise are a danger to their organization, the Megatron offered practical advice that all busy executives and governments, worried about understanding AI, had to do was be willing to give up some control.

The good news is that you dont have to build your own AI team. You can outsource your AI work to experts in the field, which can help you make the most of technology and ensure that you dont fall victim to the same AI problems as your competitors.

However, when opposing the motion, the Megatron was keen to keep the AI knowledge in-houserather like the British, Chinese, and US governments, who have all made that an article of policy faith:

If you do not have a vision of your organizations AI strategy, then you are not prepared for the next wave of technological disruption You will need to decide what role your company will play in the next technological wave and how you will integrate AI into your business to be a leader in your industry.

Worryingly, there was one question where the AI simply couldnt come up with a counter argument. When arguing for the motion that, Data will become the most fought-over resource of the 21st century, the Megatron said:

The ability to provide information, rather than the ability to provide goods and services, will be the defining feature of the economy of the 21st century.

But when we asked it to oppose the motionin other words, to argue that data wasnt going to be the most vital of resources, worth fighting a war overit simply couldnt, or wouldnt, make the case. In fact, it undermined its own position:

We will able to see everything about a person, everywhere they go, and it will be stored and used in ways that we cannot even imagine.

You only have to read the US National Security report on AI 2021, chaired by the aforementioned Eric Schmidt and co-written by someone on our course, to glean what its writers see as the fundamental threat of AI in information warfare: unleash individualized blackmails on a million of your adversarys key people, wreaking distracting havoc on their personal lives the moment you cross the border.

What we in turn can imagine is that AI will not only be the subject of the debate for decades to comebut a versatile, articulate, morally agnostic participant in the debate itself.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Immersion Imagery/Shutterstock.com

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Oxford Invited an AI to Debate Its Own EthicsWhat It Said Was Startling - Singularity Hub

One of techs biggest news stories coming out of 2021 would be Facebooks rebrand to Meta. Like Google, its likely that nobody will adhere to that new name, but everyone sure took note of the strategic direction change towards the metaverse. The Web 3.0 / creator economy / DiFi crowd quickly attached themselves to the theme, and everyone had a good group wank on Twitter over what visionaries they are. Truth be told, the metaverse is an idea thats been around for decades.

Lets get back to basics for a moment. Four years ago, we published a piece titled How to Invest in the Singularity Its Near which summarized a keynote given by Masayoshi Son, CEO and Founder of SoftBank,about the importance of ARM.

He says that the chip maker he acquired last year, ARM Holdings, is expected to ship over 1 trillion IoT chips in the next20 yearswithARM IoT chips commanding an 80% market share.

The metaverse we want to invest in is exactly that. Its the same vision that Jensen Huang of NVIDIA has one built from scratch where the physical world is connected to the virtual world. All these IoT chips and sensors are turning our entire planet into a digital twin a metaverse.

Then theres Facebooks vision of everyone going into a virtual reality (VR) world where they show off their NFTs and desperately try not to offend anyone.

Digital twins produce a tremendous amount of big data exhaust that can be analyzed for insights. The old factoid, 90% percent of the worldsdatawas created in the last two years is probably equally true today as the volume of data being produced has exploded and will continue to in the coming years.

Its why Warren Buffet set aside his aversion to tech stocks and invested in Snowflake, a cloud-based data management platformthat helps companies do more with less. Such a value proposition will sell equally well in times of economic turmoil, and investors have clamored on board. The stock remains extremely overvalued probably for good reason and now has a market capitalization of over $100 billion.

We wont invest in any firm with a simple valuation ratio over 40, no matter how grand the value proposition might be. We might never be able to invest in Snowflake, but were fine with that, especially when there are other big data companies out there we might find equally compelling. One area that sparked our interest is real-time data analytics, something thats particularly applicable to the metaverse.

How do tech visionaries stay relevant when technologies change so quickly? Two reasons. First, they learn exceptionally fast. Back in the day, rock star programmers could fake it until they made it by learning languages and platforms at the speed of projects. Second, some things dont change. More processing power and lower latency are always desirable attributes. NVIDIA (NVDA) became the biggest semiconductor company in the world because they built better processors. As for latency, it all comes down to one thing. How fast can we analyze the big data exhaust spewing forth from our growing population of digital twins? One answer is two words Apache Kafka.

Web 3.0 wankers are always droning on about how decentralized autonomous organizations DAOs are the future. ConstitutionDAO was supposed to show the world this grand vision of technological socialism, but it only managed to burn millions in gas fees and fail miserably at what it set out to do. Truth be told, the DAO ethos has been around for a while. Its called opensource software. Developers have a special place in their hearts for a technology that is shared in a community where everyone works to make it better. Few understand just how strong this allegiance is in the software development community.

Some of the smartest nerds on this planet will gladly dedicate every iota of their spare time to helping out the opensource community. Its not because theyre losers, its because opensource communities are very effective in harnessing resources to collaborate and produce great things that couldnt be possible if a single entity owned the software in question. The worlds largest opensource foundation is Apache. And if the name offends you, they could care less. Theyre too busy making great things happen instead of complaining on Twitter to get attention.

Anyone who slings code for a living has probably used at least some of the $22 billion worth of Apache Open Source software products made available to the public-at-large at 100% no cost. Apache Projects are overseen by a self-selected team of active volunteers who contribute to their respective project for no compensation except street cred. Projects are auto-governing with a heavy slant towards driving consensus to maintain momentum and productivity. This incredibly successful decentralized autonomous organization has managed to produce over 300 projects, some of which probably even sound familiar to the general population like Hadoop.

One project in the above list is Apaches Kafka, one of the most successful projects Apache has ever delivered, and one being used by over 100,000 organizations globally.

Apache Kafka isthe most popular open-source stream-processing softwarefor collecting, processing, storing, and analyzing data at scale. Most known for its excellent performance, low latency, fault tolerance, and high throughput, its capable of handling thousands of messages per second. Its now being used by 80% of the Fortune-500.

Example use cases include the following:

The ability to glean insights from data while it is being generated is the final frontier when it comes to predictive analytics for business decision making.

Snowflake was the largest software initial public offering (IPO) ever coming out of the gates with a $68 billion valuation. With a current market cap of over $100 billion (IBMs market cap is $114 billion), its already grown enough to fall into our mega size bucket.

Another big player in this space, Databricks, is private but said to command a valuation of $100 billion or more in a possible IPO. Both these companies are likely to maintain their lofty valuations over time which means we need to think about other opportunities to invest in the exponential growth of big data. Theres one pure-play company that a subscriber brought to our attention which somehow missed our daily IPO screening process. Its a $16 billion real-time data company that was founded by the creators of Apache Kafka. From what weve seen so far, it may find a place in our own tech stock portfolio. Coming soon, a deep dive into a firm with a very compelling value proposition.

If we think of the big data opportunity holistically, we can divide it into two components static data and real-time data. Everyone understands why value in providing information to make business decisions with quicker is more valuable. The most responsive way to provide data analytics is while the data is being generated. Real-time data analytics is the new paradigm for organizations of all kinds as we slowly build up the metaverse. Next up, well look at how we might be able to invest in this theme.

Want to know what 30 tech stocks we own right now? Want to know which ones we think are too risky to hold? Become a Nanalyze Premium member and find out today!

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Real-Time Data Analytics and The Metaverse - Nanalyze

For more than 100 years, Albert Einsteins general theory of relativity has been our best description of how the force of gravity acts throughout the universe.

General relativity is not only very accurate, but ask any astrophysicist about the theory and theyll probably also describe it as beautiful. But it has a dark side too: a fundamental conflict with our other great physical theory, quantum mechanics.

General relativity works extremely well at large scales in the universe, but quantum mechanics rules the microscopic realm of atoms and fundamental particles. To resolve this conflict, we need to see general relativity pushed to its limits: extremely intense gravitational forces at work on small scales.

We studied a pair of stars called the Double Pulsar which provide just such a situation. After 16 years of observations, we have found no cracks in Einsteins theory.

In 2003, astronomers at CSIROs Parkes radio telescope, Murriyang, in New South Wales discovered a double pulsar system 2,400 light years away that offers a perfect opportunity to study general relativity under extreme conditions.

To understand what makes this system so special, imagine a star 500,000 times as heavy as Earth, yet only 20 kilometers across. This ultra-dense neutron star spins 50 times a second, blasting out an intense beam of radio waves that our telescopes register as a faint blip every time it sweeps over Earth. There are more than 3,000 such pulsars in the Milky Way, but this one is unique because it whirls in an orbit around a similarly extreme companion star every 2.5 hours.

According to general relativity, the colossal accelerations in the Double Pulsar system strain the fabric of space-time, sending gravitational ripples away at the speed of light that slowly sap the system of orbital energy.

This slow loss of energy makes the stars orbit drift ever closer together. In 85 million years time, they are doomed to merge in a spectacular cosmic pile-up that will enrich the surroundings with a heady dose of precious metals.

We can watch this loss of energy by very carefully studying the blinking of the pulsars. Each star acts as a giant clock, precisely stabilized by its immense mass, ticking with every rotation as its radio beam sweeps past.

Working with an international team of astronomers led by Michael Kramer of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, we have used this pulsar timing technique to study the Double Pulsar ever since its discovery.

Adding in data from five other radio telescopes across the world, we modeled the precise arrival times of more than 20 billion of these clock ticks over a 16-year period.

To complete our model, we needed to know exactly how far the Double Pulsar is from Earth. To find this out, we turned to a global network of ten radio telescopes called the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA).

The VLBA has such high resolution it could spot a human hair 10 kilometers away! Using it, we were able to observe a tiny wobble in the apparent position of the Double Pulsar every year, which results from Earths motion around the sun.

And because the size of the wobble depends on the distance to the source, we could show that the system is 2,400 light years from Earth. This provided the last puzzle piece we needed to put Einstein to the test.

Combining these painstaking measurements allows us to precisely track the orbits of each pulsar. Our benchmark was Isaac Newtons simpler model of gravity, which predated Einstein by several centuries: every deviation offered another test.

These post-Newtonian effectsthings that are insignificant when considering an apple falling from a tree, but noticeable in more extreme conditionscan be compared against the predictions of general relativity and other theories of gravity.

One of these effects is the loss of energy due to gravitational waves described above. Another is the Lense-Thirring effect or relativistic frame-dragging, in which the spinning pulsars drag space-time itself around with them as they move.

In total, we detected seven post-Newtonian effects, including some never seen before. Together, they give by far the best test so far of general relativity in strong gravitational fields.

After 16 long years, our observations proved to be amazingly consistent with Einsteins general relativity, matching Einsteins predictions to within 99.99 percent. None of the dozens of other gravitational theories proposed since 1915 can describe the motion of the Double Pulsar better!

With larger and more sensitive radio telescopes, and new analysis techniques, we could keep using the Double Pulsar to study gravity for another 85 million years. Eventually, however, the two stars will spiral together and merge.

This cataclysmic ending will itself offer one last opportunity, as the system throws off a burst of high-frequency gravitational waves. Such bursts from merging neutron stars in other galaxies have already been detected by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave observatories, and those measurements provide a complementary test of general relativity under even more extreme conditions.

Armed with all these approaches, we are hopeful of eventually identifying a weakness in general relativity that can lead to an even better gravitational theory. But for now, Einstein still reigns supreme.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: John Rowe Animations/CSIRO, CC BY. An artists impression of the Double Pulsar system in which the two pulsars orbit each other every 2.5 hours and send out high-energy beams that sweep across the sky.

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Scientists Counted 20 Billion Ticks of an Extreme Galactic Clock to Test Einstein's Theory of Gravity - Singularity Hub

Whenever the phrase 'Airport style' comes to our mind, we usually envision passengers waiting in the airport lounge dressed in outfits that radiate style and comfort.

Keeping in mind that travellers always prefer to wear stylish yet comfortable clothes, Airport Style, a Dhaka-based statement apparel brand, has merged these with comfort and a pinch of utility.

However, the brand's unique selling point is its trailblazing style, which reflects in the clothes they make. They transport you back to the good old eras of the 1960s and 1970s when fashion was unapologetic by all means.

Airport Style was co-founded by two good friends, Ashiq Seraj and Imayan Vignarajah, who were already engaged in the readymade garment export business, catering to fast fashion brands in the US and Canada.

Ashiq is a business graduate from North South University and Imayan is also a business graduate from the Independent University of Bangladesh.

Others in the team include Saqif Seraj and Amreen Ahmed, who are the key architects behind Airport Style's branding and strategy, while the newest member, Tashdida Binte Masud, plays a pivotal role in sourcing and coordinating.

Airport Style began with its flagship Harrington Jackets, which are lightweight, waist-length jackets. The name 'Harrington' was taken from a character in the 1960s prime time soap opera 'Peyton Place'.

The fashion brand thrives in its singularity. It has carved its niche identity when it comes to clothes, be it the wide lapelled collars, the four pocket Riviera shirts, or the Fraser tartan linings in its jackets, all these were a first.

The brand is very product-centric and invests a considerable amount of time in research and development.

"The product has to set the benchmark in terms of fashion and style. It has to be unique by all means; it cannot just be another item in the offering," said Ashiq, adding, "There is a reason why people look up to Airport Style, and we strive to live up to that benchmark and not deviate from it."

Their initial plans were shelved due to the pandemic but they re-launched in winter 2020 with the cloth Aviator Harrington, followed by the Riviera shirt, which is basically a modern-day adaptation of a camp safari shirt.

In August, the brand launched a series of camp shirts in denim and a shirt for women called the Countess Camp - an elegant white linen resort shirt.

When it comes to designing the clothes, the brand is very particular. The founders religiously take care of this part, be it designing, sourcing, testing or sampling.

The fabric selection process varies with every season and design. Moreover, all the fabrics go through a certain degree of testing in the lab before they are used for bulk production.

Another notable thing about Airport Style is its customised packaging. Every product is sent to the customer with a boarding pass with their name on it!

So far, the brand has received an overwhelming response. It has catered to the needs of customers in every nook and cranny of the country.

The winterwears are undeniably the best-selling products. At the moment, their winter 2021 collection is going on in full swing.

Sticking to their motto 'Timeless fashion is an affordable choice for a common person', Airport Style has kept the price within an affordable range.

The price of jackets is between Tk2,200 and Tk2,600 whereas shirts are available within a range of Tk1,200 to Tk1,600.

Initially, Airport Style started with a target of selling its clothes to people who are between 18 to 35 years of age. They do, however, now have customers of all ages.

"It is good to see that people are becoming more fashion enthusiastic these days, irrespective of their age, Imayan shared with us, adding, "They are willing to spend on high quality and fashionable products."

Check out the brand's page to know more: https://www.facebook.com/theairportstyle/.

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Airport Style: Merging comfort with style and utility - The Business Standard

Isle of Man esports organisation X7 Esports have officially announced their 2022 NLC Division 1 roster and they have enlisted the services of a world champion.

South Korean jungler Haru who won Worlds 2017 with Samsung Galaxy will be playing in the Northern League of Legends Championship (NLC) next year. Haru was a substitute player for Samsung and played in one game as Ezreal at that Worlds tournament a win over Fenerbahce.

Regardless, this is arguably the biggest signing and roster in UK and Nordics League of Legends history. ENUK understands its also the first time in this specific European Regional League (ERL) a team has signed two Korean imports.

X7s official player roster and coaching staff list is as follows:

Esportmaniacos first reported most of this rumoured roster last month.

X7 have been making waves in UK League of Legends after acquiring other orgs Bulldog and Absolved, and receiving esports sponsorship from the Isle of Man government.

Making signings like this experienced, proven talent in LoL is another signal of intent and adds to the reputation theyre building.

With multiple non-UK/Nordics talent in the team, you may be wondering what the rules are around local players in the NLC.

The NLC website states that: A team is eligible to play if at least three of five players playing in a game are Locally Trained Representatives (LTR).

Players meet this criteria if theyve lived in the leagues region for three of the past five years, or have played in two of the last three ERL seasons, or have had their primary residence in the Northern region for at least three years since their 13th birthday.

However, this is for Divisions 3 to 5, and Esports News UK understands the Division 1 rules have been changed so that the requirement is no longer 3/5 players needing to be from the UK/Nordics, but 2/5. This means X7 reach the requirements.

Other teams in NLC Division 1 for 2022 include BT Excel, Astralis Talent, Dusty, Riddle, Singularity, Bifrost (who have also just signed their roster including UK top-laner Shikari), MNM Gaming, NYYRIKKI and Vanir.

The news comes after several organisations have withdrawn from NLCs Division 2, including London Esports and Resolve, after Freaks 4U took over organising duties of the NLC from DreamHackearlier this summer.

Changes have been made to the ERL format, including the introduction of a multi-division format like the DACH Prime League.

Fnatic Rising left for the Spanish Superliga,Absolved left after X7 acquired their spot,Tricked departed once Astralis Talent took their slot, and00Nation (formerly Nordavind) dropped out, with Dusty taking their spot.Enclave have also left the NLC, as have Nvision. And Singularity is fielding a student-only team in Division 1.

Yesterday, LDN UTDs future in UK League of Legends NLC Division 2 looked up in the air after the roster began looking for other teams.

Dom is an award-winning writer who graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.

As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late 80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV as well as Riot Games and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Association up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and as an esports consultant helping brands and businesses better understand the industry.

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A Korean world champion will be playing in the UK/Nordics League of Legends NLC: X7 announce 2022 roster, confirming the signing of Haru as well as...

The new 2021 Cadanz by Kerbedanz line with more than thirty references is the start of a metamorphosis: the Kerbedanz story is now also about lifestyle, light-heartedness, casualness and a different kind of elegance.

With a slew of playful and stylish references, discreetly branded with its own logo, the Swiss watch brand already renowned for its expertise in unique pieces and micro-series, as well as for Maximus, the world' largest tourbillon, is taking off for new territories. From Neuchtel, in the heart of the fundamental terroirs of watchmaking excellence, Kerbedanz is spraying the navy blue and orange identity values of its leitmotiv Crafting Your Singularity on a range of inspired accessories. A range of practical and well-designed pieces with a touch of smooth desirability, watch and worn and epicurean freshness. Always set on a context of singular reliefs, sublimated uniqueness and accomplished know-how.

Repetitive patterns, reversed, mixing geometry, colors and movements, give birth to a particularly successful printed canvas, distinct and synonymous with classicism mixed with contemporaneity. A canvas that combines gray, red, blue and mallard green. an identity pattern named "Grain d'Orge" in reference to a famous type of guilloch. Here is for the leather goods, made of its four colors to experience daily, urban or outings: tote bags, wallets and credit card holders, practical and smart, passport holder, bag accessories... A collection where the harmony allows some happy color combinations and where the originality of a subtle orange outline reveals the cut of some pockets.

Leather goods, the Kerbedanz

The Kerbedanz brand's other achievement are these cufflinks shaped like ogives or armorial shields, which delights aesthetes who love simplicity and purity as much as afficionados of complicated watches with a high added chronometric value. Discreet, subtle as well as technical, these cufflinks relive the sparkle of 925 silver and 18-carat pink gold, both covered with colored enamel and stemming from the art of guillochage.

Cufflinks Kerbedanz

Their names reveal a lot about their slender lines: Idyll, Signature, Cruise and Boutique Edition. The Cadanz by Kerbedanz are spelling out the hours along a stylish and refined typographic font, sometimes crossed with baton hour markers, daring inner circles that vein the dial, various aesthetic combinations that break any visual monotony and are currently available in three diameter sizes, 32, 36 or 41. In addition to their design flair, their multiple combinations of gemstones and their iconizing aesthetic codes, they feature the most noble Swiss Made attributes in terms of mechanical self-winding movement: prestigious calibers manufacturers, and Kerbedanz chronometric expertise, such as the comfortable power reserve, rare materials, or the tungsten for the rotor of a Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier calibre.

Cadanz watch Kerbedanz

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Kerbedanz - The brand expands - Trends and style - WorldTempus

UK esports organisation LDN UTD have become the latest team to reassess their strategy regarding the new UK/Ireland/Nordics League of Legends NLC Division 2.

The players on their roster are now LFT (looking for teams), leaving LDN UTDs position in the NLC a little up in the air.

In an update video on Twitter, LDN UTD CEO OliverWeingarten did say that the organisations committment to League of Legends is unwavering, however due to rule changes they would not have a chance to be promoted until Spring 2023, and are now assessing their strategy.

We felt itd be the best option to be honest with the players and give them a chance to see if there would be another option for them to play competitively this year, he said. We have to look at what makes sense for the business.

Olly did also say LDN UTD will be back with further news as the situation develops.

Hes right Division 2 NLC teams do not have a chance to reach Division 1 until spring 2023. Thats because, like the DACH Prime League, the NLC now only has one Division 1 promotion tournament each year.

As per the format info on the NLC website: At the end of the Division 1 summer split, the two highest placed Division 2 teams on championship points will fight for their chance to be promoted to Division 1 against the two lowest ranked teams from the top division.

However, there is a promotion/relegation tournament for Division 2 and Division 3 twice per year.

We understand this rule change isnt sudden, though it wasnt super prominent from Freaks 4Us initial announcement: Freaks 4U took over organising duties of the NLC from DreamHack earlier this summer, and made changes to the format, including the introduction of a multi-division format and the scrapping of the old UKLC.

Other organisations have recently departed the revised NLC circuit, including London Esports and Resolve, who recently dropped out of NLC Division 2.

Fnatic Rising left for the Spanish Superliga,Absolved left after X7 acquired their spot,Tricked departed once Astralis Talent took their slot, and00Nation (formerly Nordavind) dropped out, with Dusty taking their spot.Enclave have also left the NLC, as have Nvision. And Singularity is fielding a student-only team in Division 1.

Esports News UK is going to take a deeper dive into why teams are dropping out and how the scene is changing in a separate article soon. One of the obvious reasons teams may be dropping out is the absence of a prize pool in Division 2 and below, as well as a reportedly lower prize pool in Division 1 compared to previous seasons.

LDN UTD previously won the lower-tier UKEL earlier this summer.

Dom is an award-winning writer who graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.

As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late 80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV as well as Riot Games and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Association up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and as an esports consultant helping brands and businesses better understand the industry.

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LDN UTD's future in UK League of Legends NLC Division 2 up in the air after roster looks for other teams - Esports News UK

To understand what a singularity is, imagine the force of gravity compressing you down into an infinitely tiny point, so that you occupy literally no volume. That sounds impossible and it is. These "singularities" are found in the centers of black holes and at the beginning of the Big Bang. These singularities don't represent something physical. Rather, when they appear in mathematics, they are telling us that our theories of physics are breaking down, and we need to replace them with a better understanding.

Singularities can happen anywhere, and they are surprisingly common in the mathematics that physicists use to understand the universe. Put simply, singularities are places where the mathematics "misbehave," typically by generating infinitely large values. There are examples of mathematical singularities throughout physics: Typically, any time an equation uses 1/X, as X goes to zero, the value of the equation goes to infinity.

Most of these singularities, however, can usually be resolved by pointing out that the equations are missing some factor, or noting the physical impossibility of ever reaching the singularity point. In other words, they are probably not "real."

But there are singularities in physics that do not have simple resolutions. The most famous are gravitational singularities, the infinities that appear in Einstein's general relativity (GR), which is currently our best theory of how gravity works.

In general relativity, there are two kinds of singularities: coordinate singularities and true singularities. Coordinate singularities happen when an infinity appears in one coordinate system (a particular choice for recording separations in time and space) but disappears in another.

For example, the physicist Karl Schwarzschild applied general relativity to the simple system of a spherical mass, such as a star. He found that the solution contained two singularities, one in the very center and one at a certain distance from the center, known today as the Schwarzschild radius. For many years, physicists thought that both singularities signaled breakdowns in the theory, but it didn't matter as long as the radius of the spherical mass was larger than the Schwarzschild radius. All physicists needed was for GR to predict the gravitational influence outside the mass, according to San Jose State University.

But what would happen if an object were squeezed below its own Schwarzschild radius? Then that singularity would be outside the mass, and it would mean that GR is breaking down in a region that it shouldn't.

It was soon discovered that the singularity at the Schwarzschild radius was a coordinate singularity. A change in coordinate systems removes the singularity, saving GR and allowing it to still make valid predictions, astrophysicist Ethan Siegel writes in Forbes.

But the singularity at the centers of spherical masses remained. If you squeeze an object below its Schwarzschild radius, then its own gravity becomes so intense that it just keeps on squeezing all by itself, all the way down to an infinitely tiny point, according to National Geographic.

For decades physicists debated whether a collapse to an infinitely tiny point was possible, or whether some other force was able to prevent total collapse. While white dwarfs and neutron stars can hold themselves up indefinitely, any object larger than about six times the mass of the sun will have too much gravity, overwhelming all the other forces and collapsing into an infinitely tiny point: a true singularity, according to NASA.

These are what we call the black holes: a point of infinite density, surrounded by an event horizon located at the Schwarzschild radius. The event horizon "protects" the singularity, preventing outside observers from seeing it unless they traverse the event horizon, according to Quanta Magazine.

Physicists long thought that in GR, all singularities like this are surrounded by event horizons, and this concept was known as the Cosmic Censorship Hypothesis so named because it was surmised that some process in the universe prevented (or "censored") singularities from being viewable. However, computer simulations and theoretical work have raised the possibility of exposed (or "naked") singularities. A naked singularity would be just that: a singularity without an event horizon, fully observable from the outside universe. Whether such exposed singularities exist continues to be a subject of considerable debate.

Because they are mathematical singularities, nobody knows what's really at the center of a black hole. To understand it, we need a theory of gravity beyond GR. Specifically, we need a quantum theory of gravity, one that can describe the behavior of strong gravity at very tiny scales, according to Physics of the Universe.

Hypotheses that modify or replace general relativity to give us a replacement of the black hole singularity include Planck stars (a highly-compressed exotic form of matter), gravastars (a thin shell of matter supported by exotic gravity), and dark energy stars (an exotic state of vacuum energy that behaves like a black hole). To date, all these ideas are hypothetical, and a true answer must await a quantum theory of gravity.

The Big Bang theory, which assumes general relativity to be true, is the modern cosmological model of the history of the universe. It also contains a singularity. In the distant past, about 13.77 billion years ago, according to the Big Bang theory, the entire universe was compressed into an infinitely tiny point.

Physicists know that this conclusion is incorrect. Though the Big Bang theory is enormously successful at describing the history of the cosmos since that moment, just as with black holes, the presence of the singularity is telling scientists that the theory again, GR is incomplete, and needs to be updated.

One possible resolution to the Big Bang singularity is causal set theory. Under causal set theory, space-time is not a smooth continuum, as it is in GR, but rather made up of discrete chunks, named "space-time atoms." Since nothing can be smaller than one of these "atoms", singularities are impossible,Bruno Bento, a physicist studying this topic at the University of Liverpool in England, told Live Science.

Bento and his collaborators are attempting to replace the earliest moments of the Big Bang using causal set theory. After those initial moments, "somewhere along the away, the universe becomes large and 'well-behaved' enough so that a continuum space-time approximation becomes a good description and GR can take over to reproduce what we see," Bento said.

While there are no universally accepted solutions to the Big Bang singularity problem, physicists are hopeful they will find a solution soon and they're enjoying their work. As Bento said, "I've always been fascinated with the universe and the fact that reality has so many things that most people would associate with sci-fi or even fantasy."

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What is a singularity? | Live Science

There are several special slash commands available for players onSingularity, to make it easy to test something without having to spend too much time with setup. For using these commands just type them with a leading / into a chat channel.

This command allows you to move your character to a list of defined destinations. The command is blocked while having an active PvP log-off timer in space. Dock up or wait out your log-off timer and you can use it again.

Usage: /moveme - a popup window will appear with the list of valid destinations.

Currently active destinations (subject to change):

This command compares your skills on Singularity with a daily snapshot of TQ and adds the missing skills and skill levels to Singularity.

Usage: /copyskills

Note: Only completed skill levels are being copied. A skill level is only marked as fully completed after a login with your character. The snapshot from TQ is being taken in the middle of the night (GMT). This command is blocked for 14 days after using a skill extractor

Boosts the sovereignty claim time and the development indices of the current system to allow usage of all upgrades.

Usage: /boostsov

Boosts the standings of several NPC entities towards your character to +10. This includes most NPC factions and if you are docked in a NPC station it also includes the owning corporation and the agents in this station. This should help a bit with testing missions.

Usage: /booststandings

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Singularity Player Commands - EVE Community

If the world as we know it comes to an end (maybe even starting with an earthquake, birds and snakes and airplanes), future generations will have access to a vault containing duplicates of seed samples from the worlds crop collections, a frozen Noahs Ark of animal DNA to bring species back from extinction, and if a new initiative pans out as intended, a black box to record how it all went down.

This week saw the launch of Earths Black Box, a well-intentioned but somewhat morbid project of questionable value in Tasmania, Australia. An Australian marketing communications company called Clemenger BBDO is collaborating on the project with researchers from the University of Tasmania. Their stated intention is to hold the world accountable for Earths future by creating a device that records and stores data about how we handle the climate crisis.

If the worst is to happen and as a civilization we crash as a result of climate change, this indestructible box will be there and will record every detail of that, said Jim Curtis, executive creative director at Clemenger BBDO. So whoevers left, or whoever finds it afterwards, learns from our mistakes. Not to be too grim or anything.

The box will have a casing of three-inch-thick steel and be topped with solar panels, which will provide energy for the electronics inside, namely computers and storage drives set up to collect data on climate change. An algorithm will regularly scrape the internet for this data based on 500 different metrics, including things like atmospheric CO2 levels, temperature changes on land and in the oceans, population fluctuations, energy consumption, and policy changes that may impact the environment.

According to CNN, developers estimate the box has the capacity to store enough data for three to five decadesso unless that number increases many-fold, the world will have to end pretty soon for this thing to serve its intended purpose. Researchers are reportedly working on expanding the systems storage capabilities, which seems pretty key to its utility. One option that could make sense is to only store data for a given timeframe, i.e. delete anything over 20 years old to make space for new informationor, only store the headlines and stories that got the most press within a given year, as those will likely be the most significant and relevant anyway.

Who will use the data and how theyll access it in the hopefully distant future is another key detail still being ironed out. It is impossible to anticipate who or what will find [the box], but it can be assumed that it will not be of any use unless it is discovered by someone or something that is intelligent and civilized, with the capability of understanding and interpreting basic symbolism, said Jonathan Kneebone, director of the artistic collective Glue Society, which is involved with the project.

Depending what it is that leads to humanitys ultimate demise, a box made of steel may not be as resilient as its creators are banking on. Could it survive an asteroid impact? A massive flood? How about an earthquake? (In fairness, these are all pretty unlikely in this location; Tasmania was chosen partly for its geologic stability).

Large-scale efforts to curb or repair climate change are proliferating; the last four months alone have brought news of cloud seeding, solar geoengineering, the worlds biggest direct air capture facility, real-time tracking of global carbon emissions, and a supercomputer creating a digital twin of Earth. Meanwhile, new solar farms and wind turbines continue to spring up, and fusion power is inching closer to becoming a reality.

You cant say we arent trying.

But there are a lot of cars on the worlds roads, a lot of people and manufacturing facilities and server hubs gobbling up power (among an endless list of other gobblers), and extensive damage to our atmosphere, oceans, and forests that, for all our best efforts, will be very hard to undo. Meanwhile, the global population continues to grow, as does demand for goods and services that require energy to be produced and delivered.

One thing is clear: humanity isnt going down without a fight. But whether well be able to science the sh*t out of this remains to be seen. A black box storing all the dirty details doesnt seem like the most helpful of tools, but it would make it easier for our great-great-great-great (great, great) grandchildren to figure out where we went wrong.

Construction of Earths Black Box is expected to be complete in early 2022.

Image Credit: Earths Black Box

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Earth Will Soon Have a Black Box to Chronicle Humanity's Downfall - Singularity Hub