⚛️ WHAT IS QUANTUM COMPUTING? ALSO, A COLLECTION OF FREE SERVICES FOR DEVELOPERS.
Heya,
A quick one for you today with three of the best examples of cognitive surplus I've seen in a while. Please check out the portfolio site; you will not see a better one for some time.
I took a deep-ish look into quantum computing which is the best way to privately humble yourself.
I also found some socially responsible applications of AI, a couple of cool tools, free stuff for developers, and two awesome, awesome web games.
Enjoy,
Chris.
📰 From the Newsroom
Google announces quantum supremacy. ⛰️
What is quantum supremacy?
A term popularized in the 80’s referring to devices which could solve problems that classical computers could not complete in a reasonable timeframe.
What happened lately?
Google claimed the mantle after their Sycamore quantum computer performed a computation 1.5 billion times faster than a contemporary computer could (200 seconds vs 10,000 years).
How does it work?
Existing computers use bits that are either a 1 or a 0. Quantum computers use ‘qubits’ which can be both 1 and 0 at the same time. Each qubit can take advantage of superposition and entanglement to give two values at the same time making them ridiculously efficient.
What kinds of things could it do?
Like, really, really hard math stuff. Modeling complicated chemical reactions, designing new molecules, geographic modeling, data mining,
Who are the big players?
The biggest countries and the largest companies. Both Google and IBM have made the biggest leaps but Microsoft also has their fingers in the pie. The number of startups looking for their slice grows every day with D-Wave one of the oldest and most innovative so far.
When will it happen?
It’s hard to say at this stage; it took around 20 years of research for Google to reach this point. On the other hand, IBM made its quantum computer, which boasts 53 qubits of processing power, available to researchers via the cloud. However, qubits are notoriously volatile, both temperature and vibration can break the system, so it will be sometime before the technology is packaged neatly onto your desk.
What to say?
Preventing the destabilization of the qubits is the next great challenge for quantum computing.
What not to say…
Qubit is the character from Wreck-It-Ralph and Pixels. I like movies.
nytimes.com
🕸️ The Cool Side of the Web
This portfolio site is amazing. 🚙 Drive a jeep around career highlights and barge through letters while you're at it.
bruno-simon.com
Some great GIF work here with classic Marvel comics given GIF-over. More personal favorite is Daredevil.
tumblr.com
More tarot with an entertaining IKEA themed tarot deck. 🇸🇪
etsy.com
🤖 Robots et. al.
I'd buy that for a dollar! “RoboTrump” AI mimics the President’s writing style.
futurism.com
This is how the AI lulls us into trust: How AI is being used to stop elephant poachers. 🐘
For your sober view of the day, here is an art project representing endangered animals. Each pixel represents on an animal, so the more pixelly the image the closer the animal is to extinction.
npr.org
⚒️ Tools and Resources
CoBeats is an organization tool for all of your web finds.
I like this one a lot for collecting a bunch of different media types from across the web. You create "clips" which can be links, files, or text notes. It even has a search feature that you can use to find new shows, movies, books, and songs.
cobeats.com
A royalty free collection of beats for your projects.
This is a good resource for quality beats which seems to have no limits on what you can do with them. If you know any beatmakers, then send them a link because Strikefree is on the hunt for session artists.
strikefreemusic.com
🕷️ Design & Development Arena
6 cheap VPS hosting providers worth using in 2020. 🔗
If you're lucky enough to need VPS hosting then this is a great guide to providers. In particular, there is a great breakdown of the services and the technologies they use.
codeinwp.com
Free for developers collects all the information on services with free tiers into one handy location.
free-for.dev
45 hilarious comments found in source code. They're in no particular order, but #7 is my favorite.
loudprogrammer.net
🎮 Fun & Games
Aim and Shoot is a game where you decide to end the rise of the machines. 🤖
You will face off against bots who are controlled by their own neural network. Each time you destroy them, they come back stronger. Can you win? More details here
github.io
I love this one: Use your mouse to try and draw a perfect circle. Seriously addictive. ⭕️💯
vole.wtf
Outro
As always, I would love to hear what you've been upto. You can reply to this email or fling links in my direction via Twitter.
If you know someone who likes creepy robots and fun web games, then feel free to forward them this email.
If you received this via a forward, then drop your email over here and get it every week.
Have a great one,
Chris
That Bruno Simon portfolio site is an absolute classic—driving that little Jeep around to knock over his resume blocks never gets old. Also, that "draw a perfect circle" game is a trap; you think you'll try it once and suddenly you've wasted 20 minutes chasing a 95% score. This https://videotoframes.com/ai-video-upscaler is a really nice thing.
Free-for.dev is going straight into my bookmarks, right next to this newsletter. Since you're clearly a collector of handy services: I've been using restockalerts.com, which emails you the moment Hermès bags come back in stock online — saved my anniversary gift hunt from the reseller markup. The quantum supremacy explainer was the clearest I've read anywhere, by the way.