googletechtalks
Think faster focus better and remember moreRewiring our brain to stay younger...
Google Tech Talks June 16, 2008 ABSTRACT Explore the brain's amazing ability to change throughout a person's life. This phenomenon—called neuroplasticty—is the science behind brain fitness, and it has been called one of the most extraordinary scientific discoveries of the 20th century. PBS had recently aired this special, The Brain Fitness Program, which explains the brain's complexities in a way that both scientists and people with no scientific background can appreciate. This is opportunity to learn more about how our minds work—and to find out more about the latest in cutting-edge brain research, from the founder of Posit Science and creator of the Brain Fitness Program software, Dr. Michael Merzenich. Speaker: Dr. Michael Merzenich, Ph.D. Michael M. Merzenich, PhD: Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Merzenich leads the company's scientific team. For more than three decades, Dr. Merzenich has been a leading pioneer in brain plasticity research. He is the Francis A. Sooy Professor at the Keck Center for Integrative Neurosciences at UCSF. Dr. Merzenich is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including the Ipsen Prize, Zulch Prize of the Max Planck Institute, Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award and Purkinje Medal. Dr. Merzenich has published more than 200 articles, including many in leading peer-reviewed journals, such as Science and Nature. His work is also often covered in the popular press, including the New York Times ...
GTAC 2011: Keynote - How Hackers See Bugs
6th Annual Google Test Automation Conference 2011 (GTAC 2011) "Cloudy With A Chance Of Tests" Computer History Museum Mountain View, CA USA October 26-27, 2011 Presented by Hugh Thompson, People Security.
Whole Brain Emulation: The Logical Endpoint of Neuroinformatics?
Google Tech Talk May 27, 2010 ABSTRACT Presented by Anders Sandberg. The idea of creating a faithful, one-to-one computer copy of a human brain has been a popular philosophical thought experiment and science fiction plot for decades. While computational neuroscience and systems biology are currently very far away from this goal, the trends towards large-scale simulation, industrialized neuroinformatics, new forms of microscopy and powerful computing clusters point in this direction and are enabling new forms of simulations of unprecendented scope. In this talk I will discuss current estimates of how close we are to achieving emulated brains, technological requirements, research challenges and some of the possible consequences.
Netmap: A Novel Framework for High Speed Packet I/O
Google Tech Talk (more info below) August 8, 2011 Presented by Luigi Rizzo, Universita` di Pisa ABSTRACT Software packet processing at line rate is problematic both in userspace and within the kernel, due to the cost of managing in-kernel metadata, and system calls/and data copy overhead. We present a novel framework, called netmap, that solves these challenges by integrating and extending good ideas from existing proposals. With netmap, it takes as little as 70 clock cycles to move one packet between the wire and userspace processes -- more than 10 times faster than existing APIs. As an example, a single core running at 900MHz can generate the 14.8Mpps that saturate a 10GigE interface. This efficiency is an enabling factor for doing high speed packet processing within the safe and feature-rich user space environment provided by modern operating systems. In the talk we will present netmap and its internals, explain why it is efficient yet safe and easy to use, and report our experience in developing and porting applications to the new API -- a task made easy by the existence of a pcap compatibility library. netmap is available on FreeBSD -- work supported by EU FP7 Project "CHANGE" URL info.iet.unipi.it
No Time to Think
Google Tech Talks March, 5 2008 ABSTRACT Vannevar Bush's 1945 article, "As We May Think," has been much celebrated as a central inspiration for the development of hypertext and the World Wide Web. Less attention, however, has been paid to Bush's motivation for imagining a new generation of information technologies; it was his hope that more powerful tools, by automating the routine aspects of information processing, would leave researchers and other professionals more time for creative thought. But now, more than sixty years later, it seems clear that the opposite has happened, that the use of the new technologies has contributed to an accelerated mode of working and living that leaves us less to think, not more. In this talk I will explore how this state of affairs has come about and what we can do about it. Speaker: David M. Levy David Levy earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford University in 1979 and a Diploma in Calligraphy and Bookbinding from the Roehampton Institute (London) in 1983. For more than fifteen years he was a researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where his work, described in "Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age" (Arcade, 2001), centered on exploring the transition from paper and print to digital. During the year 2005-2006, he was the holder of the Papamarkou Chair in Education and Technology at the Library of Congress. A professor at the UW Information School since 2000-2001, he has been ...
Node.js: JavaScript on the Server
Google Tech Talk July 28, 2010 ABSTRACT Presented by Ryan Dahl, the creator of the node.JS open source project. It is well known that event loops rather than threads are required for high-performance servers. Javascript is a language unencumbered of threads and designed specifically to be used with synchronous evented I/O, making it an attractive means of programming server software. Node.js ties together the V8 Javascript compiler with an event loop, a thread pool for making blocking system calls, and a carefully designed HTTP parser to provide a browser-like interface to creating fast server-side software. This talk will explain Node's design and how to get started with it.
Nutrients for Better Mental Performance
Google Tech Talk December 2, 2009 ABSTRACT Presented by Steven Wm. Fowkes. The talk will answer questions like: 1. Which nutrients promote optimal brain function? 2. What nutrients are commonly deficient enough to impair mental performance? 3. How can you get a better nights sleep without Ambien? 4. What nutrients counteract aspects of aging? 5. Is there an alternative to serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SRI) antidepressants? 6. What modern nutrition myths lead us to consume products that sabotage healthy brain function? 7. What tests can you get from your doctor? 8. What nutrients affect appetite, alertness, and tension? 9. What nutrient combo will prevent hangovers 90% of the time? About Steven Wm. Fowkes Steven Wm. Fowkes is the Director of the Cognitive Enhancement Research Institute and a co-author of the book Smart Drugs II. He has appeared on Larry King Live and in two anti-aging documentaries. Steve will explain how different nutritions can help people of all ages treat various physical and mental conditions, spanning from genetic disorders such as Down syndrome, to adolescent behavior problems and on to senility and Alzheimer's disease in the elderly. He will also speak about using nutrients to address memory problems as well as verbal and multi-tasking challenges that the testosterone-poised homo sapiens (ie, men) are commonly known for. In the Q&A feel free to ask him how to use nutrients to improve ones sense of humor.
Coaching Series: Accomplishing More By Doing Less
Google Tech Talks January, 31 2008 ABSTRACT Being creative and successful in business and your personal lives requires that you be responsive and flexible as you move beyond your comfort zones. Though it may seem paradoxical, all real change and creativity begins by facing and understanding the reality of your current situation. Learning to see and respond with greater clarity is where the path toward change and growth begins. What is that you are really doing? What are you doing that is extraneous? How can you bring more ease to and at the same time enliven your work and personal activities? Learn how slowing down and looking deeply can lead to greater business success and personal satisfaction. Learn key practices that can help you: Be flexible and responsive in the midst of change Act with calm in the midst of intense activity Relax in the midst of exertion Gain clarity and insight in the midst of difficulty and competing demands Increase creativity and problem-solving skills Improve listening and communication skills Improve focus and concentration Increase work satisfaction Lead and build teams Speaker: Marc Lesser I integrate best practices from business strategy and leadership development with mindfulness practices to help individuals and teams develop greater flexibility and responsiveness in their work and lives, leading to more creativity, productivity, and financial security. My focus is on deep and lasting authenticity and leadership. I am the founder and ...
GET LAMP: The Text Adventure Documentary
Google Tech Talk (more below) March 7, 2011 Presented by Jason Scott. ABSTRACT Jason Scott will talk about making the documentary and we'll be screening some portion of the film. www.getlamp.com In the early years of the microcomputer, a special kind of game was being played. With limited sound, simple graphics, and tiny amounts of computing power, the first games on home computers would hardly raise an eyebrow in the modern era of photorealism and surround sound. In a world of Quake, Half-Life and Halo, it is expected that a successful game must be loud, fast, and full of blazing life-like action. But in the early 1980s, an entire industry rose over the telling of tales, the solving of intricate puzzles and the art of writing. Like living books, these games described fantastic worlds to their readers, and then invited them to live within them. They were called "computer adventure games", and they used the most powerful graphics processor in the world: the human mind. Rising from side projects at universities and engineering companies, adventure games would describe a place, and then ask what to do next. They presented puzzles, tricks and traps to be overcome. They were filled with suspense, humor and sadness. And they offered a unique type of joy as players discovered how to negotiate the obstacles and think their way to victory. These players have carried their memories of these text adventures to the modern day, and a whole new generation of authors have taken up the ...
Engineering Data Analysis (with R and ggplot2)
Google Tech Talk (more info below) June 6, 2011 Presented by Hadley Wickham, Assistant Professor, Dobelman Family Junior Chair, Department of Statistics, Rice University. ABSTRACT Data analysis, the process of converting data into knowledge, insight and understanding, is a critical part of statistics, but there's surprisingly little research on it. In this talk I'll introduce some of my recent work, including a model of data analysis. I'm a passionate advocate of programming that data analysis should be carried out using a programming language, and I'll justify this by discussing some of the requirement of good data analysis (reproducibility, automation and communication). With these in mind, I'll introduce you to a powerful set of tools for better understanding data: the statistical programming language R, and the ggplot2 domain specific language (DSL) for visualisation.
Building a JavaScript-Based Game Engine for the Web
Google Tech Talk June 11, 2010 ABSTRACT Presented by Paul Bakaus. There are many professional game engines out there for consoles, PCs, and mobile handhelds. However, there is one big empty gap, even in 2010: Not a single game engine targets desktop and mobile browsers natively without the use of plugins. In this session, Paul will talk about the challenges of building a pure browser-based gaming engine, how web programming concepts like event-driven architecture need to be considered, and what it means to fully utilize the open web stack—HTML5, client- and server-side JavaScript, external Stylesheets, server-side JavaScript and, of course, Canvas—to squeeze every millisecond of rendering time. We will go into the details of our own upcoming Aves Engine for isometric real-time games and will give you a very solid idea of what needs to be done to build graphically rich, real-time, full featured games for the web. Paul Bakaus is the CTO of the Germany-based startup Dextrose AG, and his corporate work mostly focuses on UX, UI and tricky JavaScript challenges. He is best known for creating jQuery UI, the popular official UI framework for jQuery, where he was the driving force behind many of its plugins.
The Remote Agent Experiment: Debugging Code from 60 Million Miles Away
Google Tech Talk February 14, 2012 Presented by Ron Garret. ABSTRACT The Remote Agent Experiment: Debugging Code from 60 Million Miles Away The Remote Agent Experiment (RAX) was an autonomous control system for an unmanned interplanetary spacecraft called New Millennium Deep Space 1 (DS1). In May, 1999, control of the DS1 spacecraft, a $150-million asset, was handed over to the Remote Agent software for three days. It was the first -- and, to date, the last -- time that an interplanetary spacecraft has been under fully autonomous control. RAX was a resounding technological success, but a political disaster. Instead of paving the way for future autonomous missions, RAX is the reason that NASA has not flown an autonomous mission since. This talk is about the lessons learned from an ambitious but ultimately failed attempt to introduce technological change into a large, bureaucratic organization, the limitations of static code analysis, and the unique challenges of debugging code when the round-trip ping time is 45 minutes. Slides available at www.flownet.com Dr. Ron Garret is a software engineer turned entrepreneur and angel investor. He has co-founded three startups and invested in a dozen others. In a previous life he was an AI and robotics researcher at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab where he led the development of one of the four major components of the Remote Agent. In 2000 he went to work for what was at the time an obscure little Silicon Valley startup called Google ...
Putting the Fun in Functional: Applying Game Mechanics to Functional Software
Google Tech Talks January 29, 2009 ABSTRACT In this session, we'll review the psychology and system thinking behind game design, and learn how to use game mechanics to create an experience that's fun, compelling, and addictive on the Web and mobile. We'll conclude by showcasing some cutting-edge services that incorporate these ideas and show us what future of social and applications will look like. "It's one of my absolute favorite discussions on user engagement & how to think about app / web design & user engagement by using strategy from game mechanics." - Dave McClure (500hats.typepad.com A lot of our services here at Google can benefit from simple ways to make them more engaging by applying lessons from game mechanics. Amy Jo Kim's company Shufflebrain builds smart games for social networks, starting with Facebook. (For an example of how Facebook is using Game design to drive user engagement, see: www.insidefacebook.com Speaker: Amy Jo Kim Amy Jo Kim, CEO of Shufflebrain, is an internationally known expert in online community architecture. She has helped design social games and social architecture for such companies as Electronic Arts, Digital Chocolate, Viacom, eBay and Yahoo! Her book Community Building on the Web was published in 2000, and has been translated into 6 languages.
Color, Music, and Emotion
Google Tech Talk (more info below) June 30, 2011 Presented by Stephen E. Palmer Professor of the Graduate School Psychology & Cognitive Science University of California, Berkeley ABSTRACT Arnheim (1986) once speculated that different aesthetic domains (eg, color and music) might be related to each other through common emotional associations. We investigated this hypothesis by having participants pick from among an array of 37 colors the five colors that went best (and later the five that went worst) with each of a set of 18 brief samples of classical orchestral music that varied in composer (Bach/Mozart/Brahms), tempo (slow/medium/fast), and mode (major/minor). They also rated each musical selection and each color for its emotional associations (happy-sad, lively-dreary, strong-weak, angry-calm). Systematic mappings were found between the dimensions of color and music: faster music and major mode were associated with lighter, more saturated, yellower colors, whereas slower music and minor mode were associated with darker, desaturated, bluer colors. More precisely controlled musical stimuli (single-line melodies by Mozart on a synthesized piano) produced more refined relations between the music and the colors chosen to go with them. These color-music mappings are mediated by common emotional associations, because the correlation between emotional ratings of the musical selections and emotional ratings of the colors chosen to go with them were extremely high (.90 to .98 ...
jQuery
Google Tech Talks April, 3 2008 ABSTRACT jQuery is a JavaScript library that stands out among its competitors because it is faster, focuses on writing less code, and is very extensible. In this talk, I will explore jQuery and how to use it. I will start off talking about the basics of using jQuery. Then, I will talk about building plugins. Finally, time permitting, I will take apart some plugins and talk about how they work, and I will show the nitty gritty details of the library. Speaker: Dmitri Gaskin Dmitri Gaskin drinks code with his cereal for breakfast every morning. He's a jQuery whiz and a Drupal know-it-all. He contributes patches for both Open Source projects. In the Drupal world, he maintains many modules, is on the security team, and is involved in the upcoming Summer of Code as a mentor and administrator. Dmitri has given many talks on Drupal and jQuery, in such places as Logitech, Drupalcon and live on a radio show out of LA When Dmitri isn't coding, a very rare occurrence, he is playing and composing contemporary music. And attending classes in the 6th grade. (He's only 12.)
What I Saw in North Korea and Why it Matters
Google Tech Talk (more info below) March 28, 2011 Presented by Siegfried S. Hecker, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University ABSTRACT North Korea Nuclear Proliferation, Negotiation and the human aspects of an estranged country. My seventh trip to North Korea in seven years produced another surprise -- North Korea decided to build its own light-water reactor and uranium enrichment facility. During my first visit I was shown plutonium produced in its Yongbyon nuclear complex to convince me they have the bomb. For more than 30 years, Pyongyang has moved along parallel paths of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, opting to chose bombs over electricity. I will discuss how North Korea got the bomb, why it got it, and the prospects of whether or not it will give up the bomb. Finally, I will try to show with photos and stories of how North Korea is not such a hermit kingdom after all. Siegfried S. Hecker is co-director of the Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation, Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Professor (Research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering. He is also director emeritus at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he served as director from 1986-1997 and senior fellow until July 2005. He received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in metallurgy from Case Western Reserve University. His current professional interests include plutonium research ...
Google Personal Growth Series: Mindsight: The New Science of
Google Tech Talks April 22, 2009 ABSTRACT This interactive talk will examine two major questions: What is the mind? and How can we create a healthy mind? We'll examine the interactions among the mind, the brain, and human relationships and explore ways to create a healthy mind, an integrated brain, and mindful, empathic relationships. Here is one surprising finding: the vast majority (about 95%) of mental health practitioners around the globe, and even many scientists and philosophers focusing on the mind, do not have a definition of what the mind is! In this talk, well offer a working definition of the mind and practical implications for how to perceive and strengthen the mind itself—a learnable skill called mindsight. Then well build on this perspective to explore ways that the mind, the brain, and our relationships are influenced by digital information flow and also how they can be moved toward healthy functioning. Presented by Daniel J. Siegel, MD
HTML5 Storage: Application Cache
Google Tech Talk January 5, 2011 Presented by Nikolas Coukouma. ABSTRACT HTML5 includes a specification for application caches. This unique feature allows a page to store needed static resources and start even when offline. This talk will cover both the basics and some more advanced uses. Hopefully it will answer most of your questions about what's possible and provide some hints about how to do it.
Bufferbloat: Dark Buffers in the Internet
Google Tech Talk (more info below) April 26, 3011 Presented by Jim Gettys. ABSTRACT VOIP and teleconferencing often perform much more poorly on today's Internet than the Internet of a decade ago, despite great gains in bandwidth. Lots of fiber, cheap memory, smart hardware, variability of wireless thoughput, changes in web browser behaviour, changes in TCP implementations, and a focus on benchmarking Internet performance solely by bandwidth, and engineer's natural reluctance to drop packets have conspired to encourage papering over problems by adding buffers; each of which may introduce latency when filled. Buffering mistakes have been made in all technologies: operating systems, home routers both wired and wireless, broadband equipment, corporate networks, 3G networks and parts of the core Internet itself. The mistaken quest to never drop packets has destroyed interactivity under load, and often results in actual higher packet loss, as TCP's congestion avoidance algorithms have been defeated by these buffers. The lessons of the "RED manifesto" of 1997 have been forgotten or never learned by a new generation of engineers. Full solutions require careful queue management, and that management should be everywhere; we no longer have the luxury to think that this is a problem solely of Internet routers. I will describe some of the mitigations and solutions to this problem, and how you can at least make your home network and systems behave the way they should. More info at www ...
A Chinese Typewriter in Silicon Valley
Google Tech Talk December 5, 2011 A Chinese Typewriter in Silicon Valley: What 150 Years of Chinese Information Technology can Teach the Alphabetic World Presented by Thomas S. Mullaney. ABSTRACT In 1862, an eccentric Frenchman published two essays about telegraphy: the first, a proposal for a Chinese telegraph code, and the second, a critique of Morse Code. Inspired by his study of Chinese, he argued that symbolic languages like Morse and other telegraph codes failed to measure up to the brilliance and power of the physical technology of the telegraph. Whereas the telegraph-as-machine was an immense achievement that granted humans a power bordering on the god-like, the semiotic architecture of telegraph codes remained crude and bounded to the languages out of which they were developed (namely English -- but also alphabetic languages more broadly). What was needed, he argued, was a symbolic interface that transcended existing human language, a human-machine interface that would unlock rather than inhibit the awesome potential of new communication technologies. I will show, this Frenchman's call to action was picked up and examined to a far greater extent than in any other part of the world. As compared to the Euro-American world of information technology, wherein ever-more sophisticated apparatuses of information technology were developed, Chinese experimentation centered on questions of semiotic interface, user-machine interaction, and mediation for some 150 years. This ...
The Evolution of End User Programming
Google Tech Talk February 1, 2010 ABSTRACT Presented by Allen Cypher, IBM Research Almaden. The popularity of the Web has changed the world of End User Programming. Our research systems can now be built in a web browser that people use in their daily life, semantic information is broadly available, and our users are more experienced and they share their work with others. After twenty-five years of trying to infer the user's intent, Allen will compare early and contemporary end user programming systems to see what progress we have made, and what opportunities we now have for widespread success. Allen Cypher began building systems to automate repetitive activities in 1984. His Eager system was one of the first intelligent agents. In 1993, he edited "Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration", which collected the work of earlier pioneers and of the active researchers at the time. In the 90's, he co-developed a visual language called Stagecast Creator that enabled children to create their own games and simulations and publish them on the Web. His current work with CoScripter is aimed at bringing end user programming to the Web.
Let's Go Further: Build Concurrent Software using the Go Programming Language
Google Tech Talk April 25, 2012 Presented by Sameer Ajmani ABSTRACT Go is an open source programming environment that makes it easy to build simple, reliable, and efficient software. One of Go's key design goals is code adaptability; that it should be easy to take a simple design and build upon it in a clean and natural way. Go Version 1 (or Go 1 for short), which defines a language and a set of core libraries to provide a stable foundation for creating reliable products, projects, and publications, was recently released and available for use. Go was born out of frustration with existing languages and environments for systems programming. Programming had become too difficult and the choice of languages was partly to blame. One had to choose either efficient compilation, efficient execution, or ease of programming; all three were not available in the same mainstream language. Programmers who could were choosing ease over safety and efficiency by moving to dynamically typed languages such as Python and JavaScript rather than C++ or, to a lesser extent, Java. Go is an attempt to combine the ease of programming of an interpreted, dynamically typed language with the efficiency and safety of a statically typed, compiled language. It also aims to be modern, with support for networked and multicore computing. Finally, it is intended to be fast: it should take at most a few seconds to build a large executable on a single computer. To meet these goals required addressing a number ...
Changes to JavaScript, Part 1: EcmaScript 5
Google Tech Talk May 18, 2009 ABSTRACT Presented by Mark Miller, Waldemar Horwat, and Mike Samuel. Slides for this talk are available from google-caja.googlecode.com Today's JavaScript is a decent language for writing small scale scripts. But even for beginners, it has too many minefields between what beginners learn and what they need to know. And JavaScript is now increasingly used for serious software engineering projects -- straining to carry a load it was not designed for. After 10 years, the world of JavaScript standards is moving again. The next version, EcmaScript 5, is in "final draft standard" status with implementations about to appear. The "Harmony" agreement sets the direction for future versions beyond EcmaScript 5. The "Secure EcmaScript" working group is working towards an EcmaScript 5 subset suitable for the security needs of inline gadgets, mashups, and more. In this first talk, we'll explain changes in EcmaScript 5, the problems they're meant to address, the de-facto standards they codify, and how these changes are likely to affect web applications. Waldemar Horwat has been involved with JavaScript standardization and implementation since the 1990's when he was working on Netscape's implementation. He is a former editor of the standard and wrote parts of the existing ECMAScript Edition 3 standard. He participates in the ECMA TC39 committee and is the Google representative at the ECMA General Assembly. Mark S. Miller is a research scientist at Google ...
Cognitive Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation
Google Tech Talks February, 28 2008 ABSTRACT Mindfulness meditation, one type of meditation technique, has been shown to enhance emotional awareness and psychological flexibility as well as induce well-being and emotional balance. Scientists have also begun to examine how meditation may influence brain functions. This talk will examine the effect of mindfulness meditation practice on the brain systems in which psychological functions such as attention, emotional reactivity, emotion regulation, and self-view are instantiated. We will also discuss how different forms of meditation practices are being studied using neuroscientific technologies and are being integrated into clinical practice to address symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress. Speaker: Philippe Goldin Philippe is a research scientist and heads the Clinically Applied Affective Neuroscience group in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. He spent 6 years in India and Nepal studying various languages, Buddhist philosophy and debate at Namgyal Monastery and the Dialectic Monastic Institute, and serving as an interpreter for various Tibetan Buddhist lamas. He then returned to the US to complete a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University. His NIH-funded clinical research focuses on (a) functional neuroimaging investigations of cognitive-affective mechanisms in adults with anxiety disorders, (b) comparing the effects of mindfulness meditation and cognitive-behavioral therapy on brain ...
When Will We Discover the Extraterrestrials?
Google TechTalk April 24, 2007 Speaker: Dr. Seth Shostak The scientific hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence is now into its fifth decade, and we still haven't uncovered a confirmed peep from any cosmic company. Could this mean that finding aliens, even if they exist, is a project for the ages -- one that might take centuries or longer? New technologies for use in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) suggest that, despite the continued dearth of signals from other societies, there is good reason to expect that success might not be far off -- that we might find evidence of sophisticated civilizations within a few decades. Why this is so, what contact would tell us, and what such a discovery would mean, are the subject of this talk on the continuing efforts to establish our place in the universe of thinking beings. This Space Exploration series talk was hosted by Boris Debic.
Dtrace Review
Google Tech Talks August 15, 2007 ABSTRACT Bryan Cantrill will discuss the Dtrace and how it can be used to significantly improve debugging both for development and live systems. Credits: Speaker:Bryan Cantrill
A JVM Does That?
Google Tech Talk (more info below) March 29, 2011 Presented by Cliff Click, Azul Systems. ABSTRACT Just what the heck is a JVM *supposed* to do? JVMs already provide a host of services. The 'J' part definitely slants the service selection and the 'V' part means that underneath the illusion there's a lot of really cruddy stuff. The success of these illusions has led to the real popularity of JVMs. In particular, JVMs are probably the most popular way to distribute ready-to-use GC technology to the masses, and the 2nd most popular way to distribute ready-to-use compilation technology (just behind "gcc" I'm guessing). Just what are these illusions? The illusion that bytecodes are fast and have a reasonable cost model : (machine code generation, profiling, JIT'ing). The illusion that you can quickly change the program at any time (dynamic class loading, deoptimization, re-JIT'ing). The illusion of infinite memory (Garbage Collection). The illusion of a consistent threading and memory model (the JMM, volatiles, locks). The illusion of quick time access (ie Intel's "rdtsc" is mostly useless for time). The illusion that these other illusions all work on all sorts of machines from cell phones to 1000-cpu mainframes (it's kinda sorta mostly true). But these are not enough! The People cry out for more illusions! The illusion of an Infinite Stack (tail recursion), the illusion that running-code-is-data (closures), the illusion that Integers are as cheap as 'ints' (autoboxing ...
Teaching Kids To Code
Google Tech Talks March, 7 2008 ABSTRACT Learning to code has become both more important and more complicated in the last decade. We need to make it attractive and easy again. Most western countries currently experience a shortage of skilled computing professionals in the employment market. We have seen a similar problem in the 1990s, but this time the situation is different: While the problem in the 90s was university capacity (we just couldn't educate enough people quickly enough), this time around it is enrolment: Universities have the capacity, but not enough students sign up to study technical, computing related subjects, such as computer science or software engineering. The real problem lies before university: at school age, students decide against computing as a subject, because it is perceived as geeky, tedious, intellectually not challenging, and most of all boring. At the same time, programming in schools is on a sharp decline. We need to counter this trend by bringing programming back into schools, and make it an engaging, challenging, relevant and enjoyable activity. To be successful, the public sector, academia and business should work together to make this happen. At the University of Kent, we have developed two successful development environments, named BlueJ and Greenfoot, and educational material to address these challenges. In this presentation, we will discuss both, with the main focus on Greenfoot, a system for beginners to learn Java programming ...
The Quantum Conspiracy: What Popularizers of QM Don't Want You to Know
Google Tech Talk January 6, 2011 Presented by Ron Garret. ABSTRACT Richard Feynman once famously quipped that no one understands quantum mechanics, and popular accounts continue to promulgate the view that QM is an intractable mystery (probably because that helps to sell books). QM is certainly unintuitive, but the idea that no one understands it is far from the truth. In fact, QM is no more difficult to understand than relativity. The problem is that the vast majority of popular accounts of QM are simply flat-out wrong. They are based on the so-called Copenhagen interpretation of QM, which has been thoroughly discredited for decades. It turns out that if Copenhagen were true then it would be possible to communicate faster than light, and hence send signals backwards in time. This talk describes an alternative interpretation based on quantum information theory (QIT) which is consistent with current scientific knowledge. It turns out that there is a simple intuition that makes almost all quantum mysteries simply evaporate, and replaces them with an easily understood (albeit strange) insight: measurement and entanglement are the same physical phenomenon, and you don't really exist. Slides are available here: docs.google.com Link to the paper: www.flownet.com About the speaker: Dr. Ron Garret was an AI and robotics researcher at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab for fifteen years before taking a year off to work at Google in June of 2000. He was the lead engineer on the first ...
Supersymmetry, Extra Dimensions and the Origin of Mass
Google Tech Talks June 18, 2007 ABSTRACT "Supersymmetry, Extra Dimensions and the Origin of Mass: Exploring the Nature of the Universe Using PetaScale Data Analysis" The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), scheduled to begin operation in Summer 2008, will collide protons at energies not accessible since the time of the early Universe. The study of the reactions produced at the LHC has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the most fundamental forces in nature. The ATLAS experiment, currently being installed at the LHC, is designed to detect collisions at the LHC, to collect the relevant data and to provide a unified framework for the reconstruction and analysis of these data. This talk...
Strategies in the Search for ET
Google Tech Talk June 11, 2009 ABSTRACT Presented by Seth Shostak, SETI Institute. The scientific hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence is now into its fifth decade, and we still haven't uncovered a confirmed peep from the cosmos. For that matter, we still dont know if life at any level of intelligence exists beyond Earth. Could this mean that finding aliens, even if theyre out there, is a project for the ages one that might take centuries or longer? The preferred technique used to hunt down cosmic company is to look for persistent radio signals or laser flashes from nearby star systems. But could this be a flawed strategy? In this presentation, well consider some strategies that new SETI experiments might consider, as well as discuss why its possible that we might find evidence of sophisticated intelligence within only a few decades. Seth is the Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, California. He has an undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University, and a doctorate in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology. For much of his career, Seth conducted radio astronomy research on galaxies, and has published approximately sixty papers in professional journals. He has written several hundred popular magazine and Web articles on various topics in astronomy, technology, film and television. He lectures on astronomy and other subjects at Stanford and other venues in the Bay Area, and for the last six years, has been a Distinquished ...
Emotion and Motion: Using Movement Design to Shape User Experience (Katherine Isbister)
Google Tech Talk (more below) March 4, 2011 Presented by Katherine Isbister. ABSTRACT With the rise of movement-based input--multitouch, stereo camera systems like the Kinect, accelerometer and gyroscope-enabled mobile and game controls--there's a much broader palette of choices for how people interact with information and interfaces. In this talk, I'll present research about how movement impacts our emotions and our connection to others, and implications for how we think about designing interaction with our systems. Movement-based input introduces exciting opportunities for increasing engagement, reducing anxiety, and building social connection, and now is the time to establish new input conventions that will shape how we all use technology in the years to come. Speaker Info: Katherine Isbister is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Digital Media at NYU's Polytechnic Institute, where she is the Director of the Game Innovation Lab. Her research focus is social and emotional aspects of Human Computer Interaction (seewww.socialgamelab.bxmc.poly.edu), including the design of movement-based interaction. Her work in this area has received coverage through Scientific American, Wired, and NPR.
The Implications of OpenID
Google Tech Talks June 25, 2007 ABSTRACT Simon Willison OpenID is an emerging standard that provides simple, decentralised authentication for the Web. OpenID follows the Unix philosophy, solving one small problem rather than attempting to tackle the many larger challenges posed by online identity. This talk will explore the implications of OpenID, and explore the best practices required to take advantage of this new technology while avoiding the potential pitfalls. Speaker: Simon Willison Simon Willison is a consultant on OpenID and client- and server-side Web development, and a co-creator of the Django Web framework. Before going frelance Simon worked on Yahoo!'s Technology Development...
Ocean Wave Energy
Google Tech Talks November 8, 2006 ABSTRACT The World Energy Council has estimated the 'useful' global ocean wave energy resource as 2TW (17500TWh/year). From this it has been estimated (Thorpe 1999) that the practical economic contribution from wave energy converters could be 2000TWh/year (similar to current installed nuclear or hydroelectric generation capacity). Such generating capacity could result in up to 2 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions being displaced from fossil fuel generation per year - similar to current emissions from electricity generation in the US. Formed in 1998, based in Edinburgh, Scotland, Ocean Power Delivery Ltd has developed the 'Pelamis' wave energy converter...
Coaching Series: Impactful Communication
Google Tech Talks January, 30 2008 ABSTRACT Greg Gillis and Lesly Higgins, experienced corporate coaches, will discuss and demonstrate various methods to effectively communicate; whether it is delivering a yearly review to a fellow Googler, developing your group's strategic vision, or influencing others towards an idea. By learning about Advocacy and Inquiry, Appreciate Inquiry, and Effective Feedback/Feedforward, you will come away from this workshop with concrete examples and experiences to help you get your message across with impact. Speaker: Lesly Higgins I've been coaching since 1999. After my first career in software development, with roles that included VP Software Engineering at Commerce One and VP Information Technology at Charles Schwab, I returned to school to complete an MS in Organizational Behavior and Development and also a comprehensive coaching program. I've coached at all levels in organizations, most functions, and with both early stage and Fortune 500 companies. Most of my clients are in the tech space, and they include: Agile Software, America Online, Apple Computer, Autodesk, Charles Schwab, Coremetrics, CNET, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Peoplesoft, Pixar, SAP, Shutterfly, Taleo, TiVo, and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. I believe everyone wants to be more effective and more fulfilled in life. Usually we don't know HOW to achieve that. And often we don't know what skills are important to develop to increase our overall effectiveness and satisfaction ...
Meaningful Innovation: Whether to Design or Evolve?
Google Tech Talk September 29, 2010 Presented by Steve Jurvetson. ABSTRACT Many of the interesting challenges in computer science, nanotechnology, and synthetic biology entail the construction of complex systems. As these systems transcend human comprehension, will we continue to design them or will we increasingly evolve them? As we design for evolvability, the locus of learning shifts from the artifacts themselves to the process that created them. There is no mathematical shortcut for the decomposition of a neural network or genetic program, no way to "reverse evolve" with the ease that we can reverse engineer the artifacts of purposeful design. The beauty of compounding iterative algorithms (evolution, fractals, organic growth, art) derives from their irreducibility. Google itself is a complex system that seeks to perpetually innovate. Leadership in complex organizations shifts from direction setting to a wisdom of crowds. The role of upper management is to tune the parameters of communication. Leaders can embrace a process that promotes innovation with emergent predictability more than they can hope to dictate the product of innovation itself. Innovation is critical to economic growth, progress, and the fate of the planet, yet it seems so random. While innovation may appear inscrutable at the atomic level, patterns emerge in the aggregate nonetheless. A critical pattern, spanning centuries, is that the pace of innovation is perpetually accelerating, and it is ...
BGP at 18: Lessons In Protocol Design
Google Tech Talks April 17, 2007 ABSTRACT 18th anniversary of BGP. In this talk we examine the evolution of BGP over these 18 years, and look at the lessons we could learn from this. Dr. Yakov Rekhter joined Juniper Networks in Dec 2000, where he is a Distinguished Engineer. Prior to joining Juniper, Yakov worked at Cisco Systems, where he was a Cisco Fellow. Prior to joining Cisco in 1995, he worked at IBM TJ Watson Research Center. Yakov Rekhter was one of the leading architects and a major software developer of the NSFNET Backbone Phase II. He co-designed the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). He was also one of the lead designers of Tag Switching, BGP/MPLS based VPNs, and MPLS Traffic...
Starcraft 2: For the Swarm
Google Tech Talk September 10, 2010 ABSTRACT Presented by Alex Do and Taylor Parsons. Hear HDStarcraft (one of the top Starcraft commentators) and Painuser (a top-level Terran player) speak on the development of e-sports with the coming of Starcraft 2, Starcraft 2 strategy, high-level play and commentary, and... well... more Starcraft 2. In addition discussing Starcraft and e-sports, they will providing live commentary on the finals match of the Google Starcraft 2 tournament. Come and see what all the fuss is about, and witness the battle prowess of your fellow Googlers! SPEAKER INFO: Alex "HDStarcraft" Do is one of the foremost Starcraft 2 commentators, amassing over 57 million views on his YouTube channel (www.youtube.com as well as hosting the highly featured HDH Invitational tournament during the beta. Taylor "Painuser" Parsons is a Diamond-level Terran player (us.battle.net currently one of the top Terran players in North America, with a 70% win ratio. He has also been featured in PC Gamer, as well as several high-profile tournaments, including the HDH Invitational.
Mindfulness Stress Reduction And Healing
Google Tech Talks March 8, 2007 ABSTRACT Presenter: Jon Kabat-Zinn Jon Kabat-Zinn will describe the revolution in medicine that has occurred over the past 30 years that has integrated the mind back into the body and developed a remarkable range of practices for integrating one's experience, reducing stress, healing the body, coping more effectively with emotions such as anxiety, anger, and depression, and cultivating greater well-being and happiness. His work has been instrumental in bringing Buddhist meditative practices, as he likes to say, "without the Buddhism" to full acceptance within the mainstream of medicine, psychology, and health care, and has shown them to be effective in people suffering from a wide range of medical...
Clarifying the Tubulin bit/qubit - Defending the Penrose-Hameroff Orch OR Model (Quantum Biology)
Google Workshop on Quantum Biology Clarifying the tubulin bit/qubit - Defending the Penrose-Hameroff Orch OR Model of Quantum Computation in Microtubules Presented by Stuart Hameroff October 22, 2010 ABSTRACT The Penrose-Hameroff theory of orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR) postulates quantum computation in microtubules inside brain neurons underlying consciousness. Specifically, Orch OR proposes that tubulin proteins comprising microtubule cylindrical lattices function as 'bits' -- switching between alternative states (eg of 1 or 0), as well as quantum bits or 'qubits' (existing transiently as quantum superposition of both 1 AND 0). Despite increasing evidence for functional quantum effects in warm biological systems, Orch OR has been recently criticized, eg in Phys Rev E by McKemmish et al (2009), who claim the nature and energetic requirements for switching of tubulin bits and qubits in microtubules make Orch OR biologically unfeasible and unsalvageable irrespective of any conceivable modification. Here we show that McKemmish et al misrepresent tubulin bit switching as proposed in Orch OR, and merely disprove their own misrepresentation. Specifically we address their allegations regarding regulation of tubulin switching by 1) van der Waals London forces, 2) GTP hydrolysis and 3) Fröhlich coherence, and show how they are wrong on all counts. We clarify certain aspects of tubulin with regard to potential bit/qubit function, and describe topological tubulin qubits ...
How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters
Google Tech Talks January 24, 2007 ABSTRACT Every day around the world, software developers spend much of their time working with a variety of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Some are integral to the core platform, some provide access to widely distributed frameworks, and some are written in-house for use by a few developers. Nearly all programmers occasionally function as API designers, whether they know it or not. A well-designed API can be a great asset to the organization that wrote it and to all who use it. Good APIs increase the pleasure and productivity of the developers who use them, the quality of the software they produce, and ultimately, the corporate bottom line....
Cannons to the Planets
Google Tech Talk December 15, 2009 ABSTRACT Presented by Dr. John Hunter, President of Quicklaunch, Inc. Quicklaunch is dedicated to launching rocket propellant and other consumables into orbit using a hydrogen gas gun. Quicklaunchers are related to the SHARP launcher, originally at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. More than 90% of the mass required for manned Mars and Lunar exploration is propellant. The Quicklaunch breakthrough will result in costs less than $250/lb to propellant depots in Low Earth Orbit. These low costs will enable manned space exploration of the solar system in our lifetime. Johns talk will include the history of gun launch to space, from the popularizers to the practitioners. A brief physics overview will be given on hydrogen gas guns as well as electric guns. An animation will portray a Quicklauncher delivering propellant to a depot in Low Earth Orbit. There will be plenty of time for questions and answers.
Heavy Ion Fusion
Google Tech Talk November 11th, 2010 Presented by Dr. Charles Helsley. Abstract: The limited supply and worldwide environmental effects of carbon-based fuels demand that a different source of energy be identified and tapped. This analysis applies to synthetic bio fuels as well as fossil fuels. The obvious candidates to supplant carbon-based fuels are solar conversion, wind generation, hydraulic generation, geothermal extraction, fission, and fusion. When scaled to the size necessary to satisfy the energy demands of the world, all except fusion have severe unmitigated environmental impacts, induce geopolitical instability, or exhibit very limited availability, reliability, and sustainability. Most technologies suffer from more than one of these drawbacks. The fusion of Deuterium and Tritium ("DT") to form Helium and a neutron is a well-known reaction that yields prodigious amounts of energy. Though sufficient fuel is available in seawater to sustain the global energy demand for millennia, we still need an engine capable of running the reaction. As of 2009, the search for such an engine has been going on for 6 decades and common wisdom says it is still 5 decades away. The problem is that the search has been concentrated on the 1 GW regime (the size of a normal large power plant). HIF is that engine now. What is not generally known is that a safe practical way to harness the isotope's of Hydrogen reaction was developed in the 1970's but abandoned because it was only ...
The Ansel Adams Zone System: HDR Capture and Range Compression by Chemical Processing
Google Tech Talk January 21, 2010 ABSTRACT Presented by John McCann. We tend to think of digital imaging and the tools of Photoshop(TM) as a new phenomenon in imaging. We are also familiar with multiple-exposure HDR techniques intended to capture a wider range of scene information, than conventional film photography. We know about tone-scale adjustments to make better pictures. We tend to think of everyday, consumer, silver-halide photography as a fixed window of scene capture with a limited, standard range of response. This description of photography is certainly true, between 1950 and 2000, for instant films and negatives processed at the drugstore. These systems had fixed dynamic range and fixed tone-scale response to light. All pixels in the film have the same response to light, so the same light exposure from different pixels was rendered as the same film density. Ansel Adams, along with Fred Archer, formulated the Zone System, starting in 1940. It was earlier than the trillions of consumer photos in the second half of the 20th century, yet it was much more sophisticated than today's digital techniques. This talk will describe the chemical mechanisms of the zone system in the parlance of digital image processing. It will describe the Zone System's chemical techniques for image synthesis. It also discusses dodging and burning techniques to fit the HDR scene into the LDR print. These techniques introduced spatial changes in the print causing dynamic range compression ...
Becoming a Software Testing Expert
Google TechTalks June 13, 2006 James Bach I work with project teams and individual engineers to help them plan SQA, change control, and testing processes that allow them to understand and control the risks of product failure. Most of my experience is with market-driven Silicon Valley software companies like Apple Computer and Borland, so the techniques I've gathered and developed are designed for use under conditions of compressed schedules, high rates of change, component-based technology, and poor specification. ABSTRACT You're already an experienced tester. You know how to design tests and report bugs. Now what? Do you feel like an expert? Unfortunately, if you want to become very good at...
Literate functional testing
Google London Test Automation Conference (LTAC) Google Tech Talks September 7th, 2006 Presenters: Robert Chatley and Tom White Credits: Presenter:Robert Chatley, Presenter:Tom White
Semantic Web
Google Tech Talks May 25, 2007 ABSTRACT The Semantic Web is a field aiming a the creation, deployment, and interoperation of machine readable data on the Internet. In the talk we present some projects in DERI on Semantic Web technologies - notably Semantic Interlinking of Online Community sites, Social Semantic Collaborative Filtering, and ActiveRDF, a library for Browsing, programming and navigating Semantic Web data. The SIOC (Semantic Interlinking of Online Communities) project [1] is an effort aiming at establishing and deploying a metadata vocabulary for interlinking and connecting distributed conversation on blogs, bulletin boards, and mailing lists. The vocabulary has been implemented...
Your Brain at Work
Google Tech Talk November 12, 2009 ABSTRACT Presented by David Rock. In his new book "Your Brain at Work," coach David Rock depicts the story of two people over one day at the office, and what's happening in their brains that makes it so hard to focus and be productive. Not only does he explain why things go wrong, but how you can train your brain to improve thinking and performance at work. Based on interviews with 30 neuroscientists, he's developed strategies to help you work smart all day. Learn how to: · Maximize your mental energy by understanding your brain's limits · Overcome distractions · Improve your focus through understanding the nature of attention · Reduce stress levels with brain-based techniques · Improve how you collaborate by understanding the social needs of the brain You can learn to be more productive, less stressed and stay sane by understanding your brain. David Rock is a thought leader for the brain-based approach to coaching. David coined the term 'NeuroLeadership' and co-founded the NeuroLeadership Institute, Journal and Summit. He is also the founder and CEO of Results Coaching Systems, which helps Fortune 500 clients worldwide improve thinking and performance. He has authored four books, most recently 'Your Brain at Work'. He is on the advisory board and faculty of international business school CIMBA, and a guest lecturer at Oxford University. He consults organizations including Ericsson, Publicis, NASA, Accenture, EDS and the US Federal ...
Genetics and Intelligence
Google Tech Talk (more info below) August 18, 2011 Presented by Steve Hsu. How do genes affect cognitive ability? I begin with a brief review of psychometric measurements of intelligence, introducing the idea of a "general factor" or IQ score. The main results concern the stability, validity (predictive power), and heritability of adult IQ. Next, I discuss ongoing Genome Wide Association Studies which investigate the genetic basis of intelligence. Due mainly to the rapidly decreasing cost of sequencing, it is likely that within the next 5-10 years we will identify genes which account for a significant fraction of total IQ variation. We are currently seeking volunteers for a study of high cognitive ability. Participants will receive free genotyping. Speaker Info: Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Oregon and Director of its Institute of Theoretical Science. Educated at Caltech and Berkeley, he was a Harvard Junior Fellow and Assistant Professor at Yale before moving to Oregon in 1998. He is also the founder of two Silicon Valley software startups in the area of information security. He serves as Scientific Advisor to the Cognitive Genomics Lab of BGI (formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute), one of the leading genomics research centers in the world.
Simple interactive 3D modeling for all
Google Tech Talks April, 15 2008 ABSTRACT The recent increase in demand for 3D content, for a wide variety of purposes, has led to a corresponding increase in the number and diversity of people using 3D modeling software. It has also amplified the pressure to deliver 3D models on tight budgets, and at pace. These combined pressures have driven an increase in the sophistication of 3D modelling software, but also a new focus on its usability. VideoTrace represents a significant change in the way 3D models are made, and exemplifies a new kind of interface design. The VideoTrace user sketches the shape they require over a frame of a video sequence, and automated image analysis techniques generate the model. The interface is thus intuitive, and easy to use, but supported by strong mathematical analysis. It allows unskilled users to achieve models that would be impossible using more conventional modelling software, and skilled users to dramatically improve their accuracy and productivity. Speaker: Anton van den Hengel Anton van den Hengel is the Director of the Australian Centre for Visual Technologies, a Director of PunchCard Visual Technologies Pty Ltd, and an Associate Professor in Computer Vision at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. Dr van den Hengel's primary research interests are in interactive 3D modeling from image sets and large-scale video surveillance.
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