Source: http://gizmodo.com/google-has-its-own-alternative-to-github-cloud-source-1713829382
If you work with code every day, you’re likely used to GitHub—a place to store code with all the revision history you ever need. Now, though, Google has its own take on the service, open as a beta release for you to use for free.
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/24/the-blade-is-a-3d-printed-supercar/
3D printing technology has already revolutionized the aeronautics industry. Manufacturers can create lighter, stronger components at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional production methods. Now a San Francisco-based startup called Divergent Microfactories is trying to do the same in the automotive industry. To that end, the company debuted a 3D printed supercar dubbed "Blade", reportedly the first such vehicle to ever be additively manufactured.
The Blade's chassis is quite unique. Instead of having to generate the entire thing as a single unit, Divergent developed an 3D printed aluminum "Node" joint. The printed carbon fiber tubes that make up the chassis plug into these nodes to form a strong and lightweight frame for the rest of the vehicle. Divergent claims that this method can reduce the weight of the chassis by as much as 90 percent compared to conventional cars though the fact that it's carbon fiber and not steel or aluminum probably has a lot to do with those weight savings. In all, the vehicle weighs just 1,400 pounds (just a touch more than the Caterham Seven 620 R) but features a 700HP engine capable of running on both CNG and gas.
The company plans to produce a limited number of these vehicles to start (surprised Jay Leno doesn't already own one) but hopes to franchise its technology and let smaller boutique manufacturers build their own cars. And seriously, if the Department of Energy can build its own e-Cobra, how tough could it really be?
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/23/lenovo-ideacentre-stick-300/
Who knew that stick computers were suddenly in vogue? In the wake of pocket-sized desktops from Intel, Dell and Google, Lenovo is joining the fray with the Ideacentre 300 Stick. The extra-tiny Windows PC is much like a sleeker, more polished version of Intel's Compute Stick. It shares the same 1.3GHz Atom chip, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of built-in storage as its counterpart, and you'll also have the familiar USB port and microSD card slot for those moments when wireless peripherals won't cut it. The system's biggest difference (and really, biggest draw) is its price. It'll cost $129 when it hits stores in July -- that's about $20 less than the Intel stick, and you're getting a full-fledged home computer versus a corporate "thin client" like Dell's similarly priced Wyse Cloud Connect.
Source: Lenovo
Intel quietly launched a free Android app over the weekend, that lets you use your phone as a keyboard and trackpad for your PC. Intel Remote Keyboard was designed for use with mini PCs that are about the size of a flash drive and don't ship with peripherals — but you can use it on any system run...
Sent via Flipboard, your personal magazine.
Get it for free to keep up with the news you care about.
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/20/facebook-and-google-ai-image-creation/
For Facebook and Google, it's not enough for computers to recognize images... they should create images, too. Both tech firms have just shown off neural networks that automatically generate pictures based on their understanding of what objects look like. Facebook's approach uses two of these networks to produce tiny thumbnail images. The technique is much like what you'd experience if you learned painting from a harsh (if not especially daring) critic. The first algorithm creates pictures based on a random vector, while the second checks them for realistic objects and rejects the fake-looking shots; over time, you're left with the most convincing results. The current output is good enough that 40 percent of pictures fooled human viewers, and there's a chance that they'll become more realistic with further refinements.
Google's take heads in the opposite direction. Instead of striving for realism, it's producing art by letting the neural network run wild and decide on the visual elements that it wants to emphasize. If you give the machine a photo of the sky and it thinks there are birds in the scene, it'll keep amplifying those avian traits until they're impossible to miss. The finished work is more than a little trippy, especially if you give it random noise as its source material -- as you can see above, the results give impressionist and surrealist painters a run for their money. You're not likely to see these Facebook and Google programs replacing human artists and photographers, but they're skilled enough to draw images you might enjoy.
Filed under: Science, Internet, Software, Google, Facebook
Via: The Next Web, Singularity Hub
Source: Facebook (ArXiv.org), Google Research Blog
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/21/light-based-battery/
Sure, you can make solar-powered devices that store their excess energy in a battery, but what about the battery itself? Unfortunately, it's still behind the times -- the lithium-ion cells you see today have to be connected to another device to charge, and they're occasionally very dangerous thanks to their chemical makeup. A team of Indian researchers may have just licked those problems, though. They've developed a battery whose titanium nitrate anode (where current flows into the device) is driven by light, both natural and artificial. In a well-lit area, a prototype can recharge itself without using either an external source or unstable chemicals.
The existing technology isn't ready for prime time yet. While it tops up in 30 seconds, it's barely powerful enough to run an LED light or a small fan, let alone your phone. If the technology improves, however, you could see more gadgets that not only don't have to be plugged in, but won't ignite if you drop them a certain way.
Filed under: Science
Source: ACS
Hunting for extremely dim galaxies is especially difficult with single-lens telescopes. That's because, no matter how technologically advanced, the device's design cannot fully eliminate detail-obscuring scattered light from the resulting images. The University of Toronto's Dragonfly Telephoto Array, however, deftly avoids that issue. This array -- one of the smallest multi-lens astronomy telescopes in use today -- is comprised of 10 Canon 400mm f/2.8 L IS II USM telephoto lenses, each costing $10,000. What's more, each lens is coated in a unique subwavelength nanomaterial that drastically reduces light reflection within the optic. And, like its insect inspiration, the Dragonfly's ten eyes can work in concert with one another to further reduce unwanted illumination in the resulting image, bringing out otherwise unseen detail in cosmic structures. According to the University of Toronto spokesman Roberto Abraham, this $100,000 system is ten times as accurate as its nearest rival.
[Image Credit: U of Toronto]
Source: http://gizmodo.com/i-can-barely-watch-this-video-of-the-worlds-longest-sky-1704539127
You’ll want to read the rest of this post with your eyes shut if you have even the remotest fear of heights: This is the world’s longest skywalk, which recently opened in China. The skywalk allows crazy people to walk 87 feet off a cliff for spectacular vomit-inducing views. Don’t worry, it’s only about a half-mile down to the valley floor.
Smartphones, smart TVs, smart refrigerators, smart washing machines. Samsung Electronics wants to put a chip in everything it makes—and in things made by other companies, too. The world's largest smartphone maker today debuted a new series of all-in-one chip modules, called Artik, that help devel...
Sent via Flipboard, your personal magazine.
Get it for free to keep up with the news you care about.
Welcome to the (almost) holodeck We've all seen basic 3D pictures before. There are those distorted picture-globes you can take with your phone, or Google's Street View photospheres. They're impressive in their own way, but they're just 2D images arranged in a slightly 3D-ish manner. Pretty, but ...
Sent via Flipboard, your personal magazine.
Get it for free to keep up with the news you care about.
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/29/windows-holographic-windows-10-apps-hololens/
When Microsoft debuted its Windows Holographic software and HoloLens headset a few months back, Windows 10 apps were mentioned as a possibility. Well, at Build 2015 today, the folks in Redmond offered a look at Windows 10 Universal apps in holographic action. During the onstage demo, apps could be placed on walls or set to float in space, and resized based on the user's needs -- something we'd only seen in videos up to this point. Of course, this means that users in different locations can collaborate on 3D models without having to be in the same room. Any Windows 10 app can be used as a hologram with the headset, so getting work done at a place other than your desk will soon be a possibility.
With those apps in play, you can overlay a hologram on top of a physical object and make tweaks without heading back to the keyboard. Just like the real and virtual robots we saw onstage, you wrangle simple changes, like the color of an LED, with gestures and the projected UI. Microsoft partnered with Case Western Reserve University to develop medical solutions for the platform, and those were shown off, too. Up-close examinations of the nervous and skeletal systems are now possible without the use of cadavers, and each of the body's systems can be displayed as a separate model in seconds. For architects, Windows Holographic brings the ability to walk through buildings without leaving the office, or through those projects that are still just blueprints. Of course, we'll have to wait and see what the final version looks like, but Microsoft's vision for how we'll work in the near-future is pretty enticing.
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/29/3-atom-thick-transistor-promises-ultra-thin-electronics/
Researchers from Cornell University announced a breakthrough in transistor technology in the latest issue of the journal, Nature. The team has reportedly developed a novel and highly efficient method of producing an experimental material known as transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD). TMD is an exceedingly thin (but highly conductive) film, which makes it useful in many high-tech applications -- everything from solar cells to flexible, wearable gadgets -- but also makes it a huge pain to produce in appreciable quantities. That is, until now.
"Our work pushes TMDs to the technologically relevant scale, showing the promise of making devices on that scale," Saien Xie, one of the paper's lead authors. TMD, like the similarly touted wonder-material graphene, could help extend Moore's Law by providing a stable and compact substrate onto which engineers can pack an ever-increasing number of circuits. However, since it's only three atoms thick, TMD production typically suffers from a high rate of breakage and failure. The new method from Cornell, which mixes diethylsulfide and a metal hexacarbonyl compound atop a silicon wafer and then bakes them for 26 hours in hydrogen gas, has proven far more successful.
Out of a batch of 200 such wafers created for the study, only two failed -- that's a 99 percent success rate. With these results in hand, the research team hopes to streamline the manufacturing process as well as improve the consistency of the resulting film. The technology is still at least a few years away from being commercially viable but when it is, we could see it usher in a new era of paper-thin, super-powerful electronics.
Filed under: Science
Via: The Verge
Source: Nature
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/30/windows-10-preview-raspberry-pi-2/
Day one of Microsoft's Build 2015 conference is in the books, but that doesn't mean the news has stopped. The Windows 10 IoT Core Insider developer preview (phew!) has launched for small devices including the Raspberry Pi 2. Redmond admits that it's still pretty rough around the edges, but it's hoping that the maker community can provide feedback for how the platform's turning out along the road to a full release. What's more, the software giant is partnering with Arduino for a series of "Arduino Certified" products to bring the ubiquitous DIY boards into the Windows family and take advantage of all that the software has to offer. For example, cloud computing, a familiar user interface, image processing and a ton more. It follows the theme of bringing everything under one roof that Nadella and Co. have been so vocal about lately, and should hopefully help tinkerers develop some pr! etty pow erful stuff in their garage.
The Windows IoT shell is a Universal app like any other on Win10. That's all your RPi will do :D pic.twitter.com/GwVkUxUCPA
- Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) April 30, 2015 This is what your Raspberry Pi 2 running Windows 10 will boot up to (you can run the x86 version on your desktop): pic.twitter.com/td1qonbdhX
- Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) April 30, 2015 Filed under: Desktops, Microsoft
Source: Windows Blog, Steve Troughton-Smith (Twitter) (1), (2)
Posts
