Information

A new study from Caltech calculates that our brains process information at the extremely slow speed of just 10 bits per second. This leisurely pace may have long evolutionary roots, despite our sensory systems gathering data 100 million times faster.

A full DNA computer is a step closer, thanks to a new technology that could store petabytes of data in DNA for thousands or even millions of years. The system can also process data, as demonstrated by solving sudoku puzzles.

A study has predicted that AI activity by ‘bad actors’ determined to cause online harm through the spread of disinformation will be a daily occurrence by the middle of 2024, around the time of many national elections, including in the US.

Smartphones versus personal computers. One tends to be used more for ‘play,’ while the other is favored for work. A new study has found that the way we process deceptive online information very much depends on the device we’re using to view it.

10,000 years in the future, explorers could end up getting rickrolled, thanks to a Global Music Vault due to be built in Norway. It features Microsoft’s Project Silica, a tough new data storage medium that’s never gonna give you up.

DNA is a promising data storage medium, but it’s difficult to retrieve and manipulate data written to it. Now a team has developed “chemical neurons” that can conduct calculations on data stored in DNA and read back the answers easily.

Back in 2020, Delta Air Lines previewed a passenger information system where a number of travelers looking at the same screen would each be served up different views. Now that Parallel Reality technology is flying into Detroit later this month.

As with most things, nature’s data storage system, DNA, far surpasses anything we’ve created. Now, researchers have doubled its already incredible storage capacity by adding extra letters to its “alphabet,” and developed a new way to read it back.

A new KFF survey has found 78 percent of Americans believe, or are uncertain about, at least one piece of COVID-19 misinformation. The survey also found more than one third of those polled believe the government is exaggerating the number of COVID-19 deaths.

Storing the world’s knowledge digitally online makes it vulnerable to being lost in a disaster. As a backup, GitHub has now archived 21 TB of public open source data and buried it in a vault in the Arctic in an effort to preserve it for 1,000 years.

Microsoft and Warner Bros. have crammed the 1978 movie Superman onto a silica glass slide the size of a drink coaster. This tough new medium is designed to last centuries, surviving punishment that would ruin film or magnetic drives.

​An intriguing new study suggests that the recent acceleration in fringe extremism and misinformation is due to the mass proliferation of information we all have at our fingertips playing up on our limits for effectively processing information.​