Literature buffs know it well: libraries are full of ancient knowledge passed down through the centuries. That’s why the American company GitHub has chosen to store a collection of computer code records in the libraries of Alexandria, Oxford and Stanford. An original initiative that allows to preserve a part of our digital heritage for future generations.

GitHub embarked since last summer on an ambitious archiving program so that future historians will have a better understanding of the broad spectrum of open source projects built by developers today. Thousands of lines of computer code have been stored on reels of piqlFilm, a 35mm photosensitive nanofilm that is particularly resistant to the wear and tear of time.

Three boxes entrusted to three prestigious libraries

These treasures of computer knowledge were stored in boxes designed by Alex Maki-Jokela, an artist and engineer whose work is based on 3D printing and art generated by artificial intelligence. “I wanted to create something that was aesthetically beautiful, and that paid homage to the spirit of open source software and the generations of scientists and engineers who designed it,” he explains in a statement.

Three of the boxes have been entrusted to the libraries of Alexandria in Egypt, Oxford in the United Kingdom, and Stanford in the United States, to ensure that the knowledge and information amassed by the world’s developers in recent years is not forgotten. “Preserving knowledge is critically important not only to us at the Bodley Library, but to society as a whole. In this digital age, we must constantly seek new ways to preserve critical information, such as code,” Richard Ovenden, who heads the British institution, said in a statement.

A “safe” designed to last a thousand years!

In addition to partnering with these three prestigious libraries to preserve the main works produced by the free software community, GitHub decided to keep 21 terabytes of computer data in a warehouse built in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, 100 meters deep under the Arctic ice. An atypical place designed to withstand all weather conditions and natural disasters for 1,000 years.

GitHub is not the only institution seeking to build a universal and perennial software archive. Inria joined forces with Unesco in 2016 to launch the Software Heritage project, which aims to collect, organize, preserve, and make accessible, to all, the source code of all existing software. A titanic undertaking that aims to lead to the creation of the “Alexandria Library” of software.

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If you take a look at ICOs that have been launched in the past two years, most of them are utilizing technology that’s already there and are just unworkable. This combined with the low success rate of startups in this day and age, most if not all of the new cryptocurrencies do not have a promising future.

However, before you start to panic, it’s imperative to keep in mind that some coins will thrive and survive. In this brief read, we have listed a few altcoins that seem to have the best chance of generating profit in 2019 and beyond.

Basic Attention Token (BAT)

This is a project that was founded by some of the most highly regarded individuals in the tech world. Simply put, the basic attention token is a unit of account between publishers, advertisers and users. It is synonymous with the Brave Browser, which repels malware and protects user privacy while browsing the web. According to the Basic Attention Token whitepaper, the browser blocks ads and trackers that are notorious for selling user information. Personal data privacy has become more of a concern in the past few months, and with such a solution, BAT is more likely to be a great long-term investment compared to other relatively new altcoins.

Binance Coin (BNB)

Binance quickly became the biggest crypto exchange in the market and for a good reason. It not only allows you to buy almost any coin, but it does so at a minimal fee compared to exchanges like Coinbase. The Binance user base is growing day by day, which means more people are purchasing cryptocurrencies, even though the market hasn’t had a dramatic change.

The binance exchange is so well-established and user-friendly that is has become the first port of call for new investors and newbies. Due to such reliance, the Binance or BNB token has become one of the most traded coins on the market, thus increasing its value, day after day.

BNB ideally has appealing affiliate programs which contribute highly to the companies growth. Moreover, the exchange does not have serious security issues, which has been an alarming aspect of numerous major cryptocurrency exchanges.

Stellar (XLM)

The goal of Stellar is to provide a fast, efficient as well as inexpensive service to people for cross-border payments. Unlike Ripple, XLM is geared to individuals and not big institutions. Companies such as Paypal dominate the online payment industry and charge about 4 to 5 percent per transaction, which can be hefty for large transactions. In contrast, XLM offers transaction speeds of 5 seconds and nominal fees. For example, Tempo remittances dApp operating on Stellar blockchain can be able to process over 600K transactions for a mere 0.01 USD. Also, XLM doesn’t utilize proof of work verification, meaning it does not have to deal with the energy consumption that’s currently hampering bitcoin. Lastly, Stellar has partnered with renowned companies like IBM, further showing that it is a substantial investment.

Tron (TRX)

This is undoubtedly a controversial pick, but TRON recently purchased BitTorrent. Such an acquisition will mean big things this year if the company can develop decentralized and more secure means of torrenting. Other points to consider is that TRX is among the few ERC20 tokens that are on the MainNet. For these reasons, Tron is indeed a cryptocurrency with a promising future.

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Flying taxi, four-legged car, roll-up TV, capsule beer machine… Did you think you saw everything from CES Las Vegas 2019? However, some manufacturers have even more unusual ideas. Where are they getting all this stuff?

The karaoke cup holder machine

It’s well known; you only sing well when you’re drunk. That must have been what Sony thought when it designed its GTK-PG10 loudspeaker to play music but also to hide some soundtracks to sing songs. When it’s your turn, you can put your beer mug in one of the folding shutters. Surprisingly, nobody mentioned that the speaker is waterproof, which means it is better not to be too drunk anyway.

The bra that measures your chest

Usually, to know your bra size, you rely on a tape measure and previous purchases. But this old method is too unreliable, according to the manufacturer Soma, who has developed a connected bra equipped with sensors that measure the bust of the woman wearing it. Somainnofit links to an application that offers a whole range of Soma clothing in the right size. A selling point more than a real garment.

Interactive toilets

You have to feel lonely to want to talk to your toilet bowl. However, Kohler thinks the opposite with its “immersive” Numi 2.0 toilets. Equipped with voice control via Alexa and speakers, they allow you to listen to music, adjust the color of the light or the temperature of the seat. This small distraction is still charged $7,000 or $9,000 for the black version.

The ring that transforms color into sound

Here is the xylophone 2.0: Specdrums is a small ring that records the color of an object when it is touched and translated into sound. By using several rings, you can have fun creating music by tweaking peaches and bananas or sorting your multicolored patterned T-shirts. Good luck playing Mozart with this technique, unless you have a full-color chart on hand. Count 60 euros per unit and 90 euros per pair.

The camera that makes your baby a spy

The emotion of a father playing with his child for the first time or the joy of a mother watching her first steps, all these moments, the French startup Babeyes allows you to record them by transforming your baby into a cameraman. Her teddy bear-shaped camera clips onto the baby’s pajamas and films everything in her field of action. As if the millions of photos posted on the social networks of the parents “baba” of their little ones were not enough.

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The small sector of the connected home is being shaken up by the arrival of these new types of devices, which are sometimes favoured by Google Assistant, sometimes by Alexa and sometimes by Siri or Microsoft. These assistants, we can also describe them as intelligent speakers boosted with artificial intelligence, intend to occupy a prominent place in homes.

Key points to consider

Manufacturing

Since smart speakers are intended to be permanently or almost permanently accessible, it should be possible to consider placing them in any room of the house (living room, kitchen, bathroom, etc.) and even why not outside, since some have batteries. Some attention will, therefore, be paid to the robustness of the product, in particular by monitoring any IP certification (water or dust resistance).

Ergonomics

If the speaker is designed for music listening, we of course subject it to the same versatility requirements as a “non-intelligent” speaker. It is, therefore, necessary to check whether it offers complete connectivity, as well as exhaustive and easy-to-use controls.

Sound quality

Like all loudspeakers, “intelligent” models have to offer quality sound reproduction. It is to ensure not only that they can provide a pleasant music listening experience, but also to reproduce the voice of the vocal assistant in a clear, natural and perfectly intelligible way.

Voice recognition

It is a good thing that the user can understand the assistant, but it is apparently no less important that the assistant can recognize the user! Not all intelligent speakers are equal in this respect, succeeding in picking up voice commands from a greater or lesser distance, being more or less sensitive to surrounding noise and benefiting from a more or less effective understanding algorithm.

Test procedures

We test audio performance in an utterly classic way: our acoustic measurements mainly include frequency response, harmonic distortion, power, impulse response, etc. Speech recognition quality is measured by sending several voice commands to the speaker at a calibrated sound level, pronounced by a sample of people with different voice timbres.

We then check how far the control is perceived, with what background noise level, etc. Outside the lab, all these products are tested in a “connected” environment to observe the possible interactions with the various equipment in the house.

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