Across technology. Учебное пособие-1

it's emitted into space. Since sound moves slower through the block than it does through air or water, by carefully printing the top of the block in a very specific pattern to vary its thickness, you get the same effect as using a transducer array made up of individual transducers that are each as small as the resolution of your 3D printer. This allows the creation of acoustic holograms that are about 100 times as detailed as anyone has been able to make before.

Images: Kai MeldeThe acoustic hologram at the upper right is able to generate the image of a bird.

In common use, the word “hologram” refers to a structured field of light or sound, but it can also refer to the spatial storage of a wave front in a way that allows the characteristics of that wave front to be reconstructed when you pump some energy back through the storage medium. In this particular case, the “hologram” is the plastic block, which converts a sound wave from a single transducer into a complex sound field.

The obvious downside with this technique is that you can't dynamically change the acoustic field, since it's fixed by the 3D-printed plastic plate. You can set up acoustic fields that move objects, but they'll move along a fixed path. One potential workaround is 3D printing a single hologram that encodes multiple sound fields at different frequencies. That would allow you to dynamically select the hologram by twiddling the transducer.

In terms of practical applications, the researchers mention super-resolution imaging, selective heating, and personalized medicine. But what's most relevant here is the fact that it's now very quick, easy, and cheap to create ultrahigh resolution acoustic hologram-based tractor beams for that spaceship that I'm totally not secretly building in my garage.

Статья 8

The Little Hack That Could: The Story of Spotify’s “Discover Weekly”

Recommendation Engine

By Tekla S. Perry

“Empower bottom-up innovation and amazing things will happen.” That’s what Spotify software engineer Edward Newett says. He was responsible for one of those amazing things: a way to help Spotify users discover new music called Discover Weekly. This tool launched about a year ago; it now has 40 million users and is helping to build the careers of new artists.

Spotify software engineer Edward Newett started building the Discover Weekly recommender system as a side project.

Newett joined Spotify in 2013, initially working on a team developing a web page with personalized information, news about artists, album releases, and local concerts, along with a recommender system that offered suggestions of albums a user might find appealing. The recommendation feature, Newett recalled, seemed like a good idea, but wasn’t heavily used. “My hunch was that navigating to this page and looking at albums was too much work,” he said, speaking at the third annual @Scale conference held in San Jose last week. @Scale brings together engineers who build or maintain systems designed for vast numbers of users,

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including engineers from companies like Google, Airbnb, Dropbox, Netflix, and others.

Newett thought he could come up with a better way, and in 2014 convinced a colleague to help him hack together a prototype of a tool they called Discover Weekly. Discover Weekly would give users a personalized playlist of music they’d never listened to, designed to fit their musical tastes.

The Discover Weekly engineers didn’t want to commit a lot of time to the project until they were convinced it was worth doing. So they changed Spotify’s traditional engineering approach to include more frequent user tests.

To come up with the individualized lists, the two scrounged together a variety of machine learning tools used in other parts of the Spotify system. Their system looks at what the user is already listening to, and then find connections between those songs and artists and other songs and artists, crawling through user activity logs, playlists of other users, general news from around the web, and spectragrams of audio. It then filters the recommendations to eliminate music the user has already heard, and sends the individualized playlist to the user. To make it clear that this playlist was personalized, they decided to illustrate each with an image of the user, pulled from Facebook. And they determined that they would refresh the lists weekly, on Monday mornings.

To test Discover Weekly in early 2015, the two engineers quietly pushed their new tool out to the Spotify accounts of all company employees. “Everyone freaked out in a good way,” Newett said, saying things like “‘It’s as if my secret music twin put it together.’”

“We were feeling good, but we hadn’t tested it on [typical] users, so we then rolled it out to one percent of the user base,” he recalls, and again, he recalls, the reaction was awesome.

Then came the mid-2015 rollout to the the rest of Spotify’s customers, some 100 million active users around the world. “We had to refresh 100 million playlists every Sunday night, with about a terabyte of new data.”

Discover Weekly quickly became a habit for people, Newett reports, giving them something to look forward to on Monday mornings. Then, a few months after the mid-2015 launch, he says, the team had its “first production incident–it didn’t update.” Some users “went into blind rage or existential crisis.”

For Newett, that reaction validated the tool’s popularity.

Since then, the team moved the system from its own servers to Google’s Cloud Bigtable, and now runs its recommendation algorithms several days ahead of time, rather than trying to crunch through recommendations for its entire user base on Sunday for Monday release.

“This wasn’t a big company initiative,” Newett says, “just a team of passionate engineers who went about solving a problem we saw with the technology we had.”

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Games

Game 1 - Computer acronyms

What do the following acronyms stand for? See if you can find any words you don’t know at the bottom.

ADSL

Alt (key) AI AT&T ATM BASIC CD ROM CPU GPS HTML ISP LAN www

All-purpose Alternative American Area

Artificial Asymmetric Automatic Beginner’s Central Code Compact Digital Disk

Global Hypertext Instruction

Intelligence Internet Language Local

Line Machine Mark-up Memory Network Only Positioning

Processing Provider Read

Service Subscriber Symbolic

System Telegraph Telephone Teller Unit Web

Wide World

Game 2 - Roleplays on the topic of inventions

Do a selection of the roleplays below, each time pretending that you are at a time when the thing that you are talking about has recently been invented or could soon be.

1.You think that you can invent one of the things on the list but the head of the funding committee (your partner) thinks it isn’t likely that your research will be successful. Try to persuade them to give you as much money as you can get.

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2.You are both futurologists. One of you thinks that one of the things on the list will be invented (fairly) soon and the other thinks it will be invented far into the future if ever. Discuss until one of your run out of arguments or you reach a compromise position.

3.Imagine you have invented one of the things in the list but your boss won’t accept that that is a good idea. Roleplay trying to persuade him or her that it will be popular and profitable, and try to get as many people as you can on your team to develop it.

4.You are the government committee which must decide on the restrictions of use on one of the inventions. Decide what the restrictions should be, one of you arguing that there should be tighter restrictions and the other that there should be fewer or no restrictions.

5.You are the committee to award the Nobel Prize for Engineering and three of the things in the list are on the shortlist. Decide together which invention should be given the prize.

6.Pretend one of you is an inventor who has just retired and the other is an interviewer from a newspaper or engineering magazine. Roleplay an interview about the history of your invention.

7.Roleplay trying to sell one of the things on the list to someone who has never heard of it (because it is a new invention at the time you are speaking). Try to persuade them that it is worth trying.

8.Roleplay a phone conversation from someone who bought one of the products for the first time at your suggestion but isn’t happy with their purchase. Try to persuade them to keep using it.

9.You both claim to have invented one of the things in the list. Argue about how you developed what you did before your partner and so you should be credited with the invention.

10.It is twenty years after the invention of one of the things on the list. Argue about whether it was overall a good thing that it was invented or not, using your imagination about what the consequences were. You think it was a good idea and your partner disagrees.

11.One of you thinks that an invention above will have a huge impact, whereas the other thinks normal life won’t change much. Argue until you come to a compromise or one of you gives up.

Do the same roleplays, but pretending you are in or just before the time of one of the past and/ or future inventions below.

Inventions used now

3D movies Anti-virus software Ball bearing

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Bar code Email GPS

Industrial robot Instant messaging Internet

Laptop (computer) Mouse

MP3 player

Past inventions

Clockwork toys Dot matrix printer Floppy disk Laser disk Minidisc

Overhead projector (= OHP) PDA

Possible future technologies

Androids/ Robots which are indistinguishable from people Chips in our brains

Choosing your dreams from a menu

Limitless cheap electrical energy, e.g. from fusion reactors Virtual reality that is indistinguishable from real life Replicators (= Machines that can scan and copy anything) Reprogramming people’s minds

Uploading our minds (personalities, memories, etc) into supercomputers.

Game 3 - Networking Game

This is a game where students can practice their small talk skills, and see how networking works in real life.

Explain to the students that they are at a party, and each one will get a certain character they have to play. Then explain what networking is and how it is a great source of making acquaintances, getting information, and even getting jobs. It is a very common practice in the US.

Cut strips such as each strip has one character on it and distribute them to the students. If one student does not have a match, the teacher can take on one of the roles.

Tell the students they are going to a party and they do not know anyone. The goal is to talk to as many people as possible, until they find the person who has the same interests/ jobs as their own, and who can help them.

Tell the students to start with some small talk, and gradually move into talks about their jobs. As the party progresses, some students can direct the others to talk to the person with the same interest. The teacher should mingle as well and listen in to conversations, and encourage students to mingle and not to stay by themselves.

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Students will see how small talk, being friendly, and talking to as many people as possible can lead to getting the information they need for their jobs.

What is Networking?

network n. & v. a group of people who exchange information, contacts, and experience for professional or social purposes. (The Oxford Dictionary), To interact or engage in informal communication with others for mutual assistance or support.

It is a known fact that some of the best jobs aren't listed anywhere except in the mental catalogues of CEOs and managers.

So how do you apply for jobs that aren't advertised anywhere, which exist only in the seemingly inaccessible minds of working America's movers and shakers? You meet people who might have insight into your job search. You talk to people who know people who could help you out. You chat it up with strangers at parties. You cold-call people you've read about in the newspaper. You write cordial letters to prominent community leaders. You cultivate an arsenal of contacts. In short, you network.

1.You are the CEO of a startup company in New York. Your company is going really well, and you are looking to hire. You are interested in smart computer programmers.

2.You are a student at CUNY. You study Computer Programming, and love it. You have some experience from internships, but you need more. You really hope to get a job after you graduate in June. You are the first in your class, and will graduate with honors. You want to work for a small company, not a big one!

3.You are a Math teacher, who recently moved to New York. You are looking for a job in a small private school or tutoring school. You are very talented, and got great references.

4.You were offered a job at Microsoft a few years ago, but you did not take it because of family reasons. Now you regret your decision. You cannot get in touch with your recruiter at Microsoft, and do not know anyone who works there. You would like to meet someone who works at Microsoft, and maybe send them your resume.

5.You are a software engineer (computer programmer) at Microsoft. Microsoft hires a lot of people through internal referrals, so you do not mind when people give you their resumes. Actually Microsoft will pay you a fee if they hire that person, so it is in your best interest to refer people.

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Таблица неправильных английских глаголов

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58

59

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