Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for November 12, 2019

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Authored by @remlaps

IDEX claims infinite scalability for Ethereum (by moving calculations somewhere else); An AI tool that generates fashion insights by studying flickr and instagram; Microsoft Edge coming to linux; Creation of a new, unsinkable metal; and a Steem essay arguing that the breakthrough of the decade will be the unification of quantum physics and general relativity

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  1. IDEX Claims Creation of 'Infinite Scaling Solution for Ethereum' - According to the article, IDEX is responsible for 40% of all DEX transactions. The firm claims in an e-mail to have a scaling solution, named Optimized Optimistic Rollups (O2Rs), that will achieve block finality on the ethereum blockchain in a matter of 10 minutes. In comparison, the Optimistic Rollups (ORs) protocol that was developed by the Plasma Group takes about 2 weeks to achieve block finality. The Plasma Group is an Ethereum scalability development team. The article claims that O2Rs has limitless scalability potential, and that it scales by moving computation off-chain, while publishing results and verifications on-chain. The recent congestion of the EOS network demonstrates why scalability continues to be an important issue for blockchain.

  2. AI tool detects global fashion trends - Cornell's GeoStyle AI tool scans the millions of publicly available images that people are frequently uploading of themselves in order to identify fashion trends. Some examples of trends that it found include yellow shirts with the word, "DAD", on the king's birthday in Thailand; sleeveless shirts for Seattle's FreakNight; and the yellow shirts with blue scarves that people wore in Catalan in 2013 to support "Catalan independence from Spain." The team also created a data visualizer, enabling a user to identify short term, long term, and seasonal trends. Click through and check out the visualizer. It's easy and intuitive. The data for the analysis comes from instagram and flickr. The project was completed by co-authors, Bharath Hariharan and Noah Snavely, and it builds on the 2017 StreetStyle project. Snavely was also involved in the creation of StreetStyle. h/t Communications of the ACM

  3. Microsoft Edge is officially coming to Linux soon - During a presentation to Orlando, USA, Microsoft confirmed that having already been migrated to a Chromium engine and made available for Macs, Edge will also be released for Linux next year. The announcement was light on specifics, and it's not clear if things like tabs, bookmarks, and other settings will be synchronized across operating systems. It's also not clear how tightly the browser will be integrated with windows systems like KDE or Gnome. It's a positive step, but wake me up when Edge has a cryptocurrency wallet and pays me to watch ads. ; -) h/t OSnews

  4. That’s unsinkable behaviour - By studying fire ants and diving bell spiders, scientists were able to create designs that would trap enough air in a metal component to keep it floating above water, then using ultra-short laser bursts, they were able to realize it's production. The resultant materials are able to float, even after being forcibly submerged for periods up to two months. Because the air is stored in a compartmentalized way, the materials also continue to float after multiple punctures. Potential uses for the material range "from floating devices and electronic equipment protection, to highly floatable ships and vessels." Unless I missed something, the article doesn't say anything about potential costs or when the technique might be ready for mass production. h/t RealClear Science

  5. STEEM STEM Breakthrough Contest: Reconciling Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity - Today's post is another entry in the STEM Breakthrough Contest. In this post, @bengy's topic is "Reconciling Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity". The post begins with a survey of historical physics of theories, starting with Newtonian physics, developed by Isaac Newton, which accurately described most phenomena at human-observable scales. In the 20th century, the essay notes that observations at larger and smaller scales showed that Newtonian physics was a decent approximation, but not a complete theory. Twentieth century physicists introduced General Relativity to explain observations at large scales, and Quantum Mechanics to explain observations at tiny scales. However, the essay also notes that when these latter two theories overlap, there are significant areas of disagreement between the two. In order to advance scientific knowledge to the next level, @bengy anticipates a breakthrough in the form of a unifying theory that explains observations at the large scale and small scale, and without ambiguity in areas where today's theories overlap. @bengy argues that this will be important for the intrinsic gain in knowledge that it brings, and also because this deeper level of knowledge will lead to marketable developments that would, otherwise, be unlikely. (A 10% beneficiary has been assigned to this post for @bengy.)

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