Author: kenmay

Microsoft’s Project Scorpio Will Pack Internal PSU, 4K Game DVR Capture

According to an exclusive report from Windows Central, Microsoft’s upcoming “Project Scorpio” gaming console will feature an internal power supply unit (PSU), similar to the Xbox One S, and 4K game DVR and streaming at 60 frames-per-second (FPS). From the report: In Microsoft’s efforts to make Project Scorpio a true 4K system, it will also feature HEVC and VP9 codecs for decoding 4K streams for things such Netflix, just like the Xbox One S. It will also leverage HEVC for encoding 2160p, 60 frame-per-second (FPS) video for Game DVR and streaming. Microsoft’s Beam streaming service has been running public 4K stream tests for some time, and it’s now fair to assume it will not only be PC streamers who will benefit. Project Scorpio’s Game DVR will allow you to stream and record clips in 4K resolution with 60FPS, according to our sources, which is a massive, massive step up from the 720p, 30FPS you get on the current Xbox One. With every bit of information we receive about Project Scorpio, the theme of native 4K keeps appearing — not only for games, but also console features. We now believe Scorpio will sport 4K Game DVR, 4K Blu-ray playback, and 4K streaming apps, but the real showstopper will be the 4K games Microsoft will likely flaunt at E3 2017. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft’s Project Scorpio Will Pack Internal PSU, 4K Game DVR Capture

Laser pulse study could lead to ultrafast computers

Computers that run 100, 000 times faster than current ones can change life as we know it. They could help discover distant planets more quickly or diagnose illnesses much, much earlier than usual, among other things. A team of researchers, including engineers from the University of Michigan, believe they’ve found a way to achieve that goal using extremely short laser pulses. The researchers have demoed a method to control “femtosecond” (one quadrillionth of a second) pulses of light that can move electrons quickly and efficiently. U of Michigan says it’s a step toward “lightwave electronics, ” and eventually, quantum computing . In current computers, some of the electrons moving through semiconductors bump into each other and release energy in the form of heat. That’s not very efficient computing. The researchers used crystals called gallium selenide as semiconductors and shone short laser pulses into them. These pulses move electrons into one higher energy level to the next. When the electrons move back from the higher energy levels, they emit even shorter pulses. These extremely short pulses can be used to quickly read and write information to electrons, but to be able to do that, you need to be able to control the pulses. The team found that changing the orientation of the crystals allowed them to control where the electrons go and how they move. U of Michigan explained that “because femtosecond pulses are fast enough to intercept an electron between being put into an excited state and coming down from that state, they can potentially be used for quantum computations using electrons in excited states as qubits.” While a lot of work needs to be done before we see the method used in actual working lightwave or quantum computers, this is a big step towards that goal. As Rupert Huber, lead researchers and physics professor at the University of Regensburg, said: “In the past few years, we and other groups have found that the oscillating electric field of ultrashort laser pulses can actually move electrons back and forth in solids. Everybody was immediately excited because one may be able to exploit this principle to build future computers that work at unprecedented clock rates — 10 to a hundred thousand times faster than state-of-the-art electronics.” Source: Nature Photonics , University of Michigan

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Laser pulse study could lead to ultrafast computers

Drop your Ford off for service 24/7 using these automated kiosks

The march toward “automated everything” continues apace. Wendy’s is putting thousands of self-ordering machines in its restaurants, and now Ford is trying out a similar strategy, but, you know, for cars. The company announced it has partnered with Panasonic and GoMoto , which specializes in car dealership technologies, to create so-called Smart Service Kiosks. First, customers enter their contact information into the outdoor kiosk by using the touchscreen and scanning their driver’s license. Then they input certain key vehicle information and create a security PIN for key pick-up. Next, they can request basic maintenance tasks like alignment, oil changes and inspections, among other things. Users also have the option to enter more details about their service needs so technicians aren’t left guessing what they’re looking for. When that’s done, users drop off their keys and pick up keys for a loaner car. Once the dealership is finished with the vehicle, users will get an email alert. That email contains a QR code customers will need to scan at the kiosk in order to pick up their keys. After also entering the PIN they created earlier, car owners can pay for the service and pick up their keys any time of day. The service is beginning a 90-day trial at a dealership in Birch Run, Michigan. Tom Hodges, Dealer Connectivity Manager at Ford, says the kiosks could potentially “do for dealership service what ATMs did for the banking industry.” Indeed, that sounds like an apt comparison. The kiosks seem capable of handling basic needs, but ultimately, car owners will still need to talk to a real person for bigger or more complicated problems. Source: Ford

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Drop your Ford off for service 24/7 using these automated kiosks

Scientists Made the Perfect Underwater Glue By Stealing an Idea From Shellfish

Even the strongest artificial glues are completely useless when you try to apply them underwater, but somehow shellfish are able to hold fast to rocks to deter predators from trying to carry them away. Clearly,   nature has already figured out how to make glues that work underwater , and now researchers may have… Read more…

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Scientists Made the Perfect Underwater Glue By Stealing an Idea From Shellfish

Microsoft’s Teams is almost an excellent Slack-killer, and it’s now live for O365

Enlarge / Teams looks good, but is unfortunately its chat is quite bulky in a vertical direction. (credit: Microsoft) After being in beta since November , Microsoft Teams is now available to anyone with a suitable Office 365 subscription. Teams is a group messaging application organized around chatrooms. Slack has become the darling of media and software development types, with its modern, Web-based take on what is actually an old-fashioned mode of computerized communication. Slack is text-heavy and line-oriented, much like the IRC that it mimics. Slack arguably brought IRC into the 21st century and added such niceties as persistent message storage so that you can see what happened before you even joined a particular channel. Slack also includes inline images and emoji. If instant messaging apps like Skype are an alternative to the telephone, Slack represents an alternative to standing around the office watercooler or hanging out in the break room. Teams builds on this same heritage, but it adds a Microsoft twist: Rather than being a standalone service, as Slack is, Teams is an integrated part of Office 365. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft’s Teams is almost an excellent Slack-killer, and it’s now live for O365

‘We Didn’t Lose Control Of Our Personal Data — It Was Stolen From Us By People Farmers’

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the worldwide web, wrote an open-letter over the weekend to mark the 28th anniversary of his invention. In his letter, he shared three worrisome things that happened over the last twelve months. In his letter, Berners-Lee pointed out three things that occurred over the past 12 months that has him worried: we do not assume control of our personal data anymore; how easy it is for misinformation to spread on the web; and lack of transparency on political advertising on the web. Cyborg rights activist Aral Balkan wrote a piece yesterday arguing that perhaps Berners-Lee is being modest about the things that concern him. From the article: It’s important to note that these (those three worrisome things) are not trends and that they’ve been in the making for far longer than twelve months. They are symptoms that are inextricably linked to the core nature of the Web as it exists within the greater socio-technological system we live under today that we call Surveillance Capitalism. Tim says we’ve “lost control of our personal data.” This is not entirely accurate. We didn’t lose control; it was stolen from us by Silicon Valley. It is stolen from you every day by people farmers; the Googles and the Facebooks of the world. It is stolen from you by an industry of data brokers, the publishing behavioural advertising industry (“adtech”), and a long tail of Silicon Valley startups hungry for an exit to one of the more established players or looking to compete with them to own a share of you. The elephants in the room — Google and Facebook — stand silently in the wings, unmentioned except as allies later on in the letter where they’re portrayed trying to “combat the problem” of misinformation. Is it perhaps foolish to expect anything more when Google is one of the biggest contributors to recent web standards at the W3C and when Google and Facebook both help fund the Web Foundation? Let me state it plainly: Google and Facebook are not allies in our fight for an equitable future — they are the enemy. These platform monopolies are factory farms for human beings; farming us for every gram of insight they can extract. If, as Tim states, the core challenge for the Web today is combating people farming, and if we know who the people farmers are, shouldn’t we be strongly regulating them to curb their abuses? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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‘We Didn’t Lose Control Of Our Personal Data — It Was Stolen From Us By People Farmers’

Shellfish-inspired glue stays sticky underwater

Even the strongest human-made glue tends to fail when you dunk it underwater. Purdue researchers, however, think they have a simple solution to this: imitate nature. They’ve developed a polymer adhesive that’s based on the proteins mussels use to cling to rocks. The team’s synthetic creation takes advantage of compounds inside the proteins’ amino acids to bind directly to an intended surface, rather than interacting with water on the surface. The result is a material that not only outperforms the glue you see in the hardware store, but is 17 times stronger than the shellfish’s own adhesive — and that has scientists scratching their heads. Purdue speculates that mussels may only produce adhesives that are just strong enough to keep their bodies attached. A too-strong substance could actually backfire by making it difficult for a mussel to escape predators without hurting itself. The artificial version, meanwhile, is as powerful as humans want it to be. There’s still a long way to go before this glue is ready for real-world use. However, there’s a good chance that could happen. The US military’s Office of Naval Research funded the project, and it clearly has a vested interest in making sure that its constructions survive water. This doesn’t mean that you’ll see warships held together by glue instead of rivets, but the concept isn’t completely far-fetched. Source: Purdue University , ACS

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Shellfish-inspired glue stays sticky underwater

How to Run Windows on an iPhone, No Jailbreak Required

Are you tired of using your iPhone to do all kinds of iPhone stuff? Then check out this boredom cure that lets you install and run Windows XP on an iPhone 7 without jailbreaking the device. It’s just silly fun! Read more…

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How to Run Windows on an iPhone, No Jailbreak Required

Volvo’s first EV will cost less than $40,000

When Volvo revealed its intentions to make its first all-electric car , it raised at least a few questions: would the EV carry a premium over Volvo’s already pricier-than-usual lineup? And would it have enough range to be more than an urban commuter car? Apparently, the answer to both is “yes.” The company’s US chief Lex Kerssemakers told the press that the 2019-era vehicle should carry a price between $35, 000 and $40, 000, and should have at least a 250-mile range. That would put it at the lower end of Volvo’s price spectrum, and pit it directly against the wave of new mainstream EVs like the Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model 3 . The company isn’t ready to talk about the finer details of the machine. However, the price and range suggest that this is most likely to be a sedan than either an SUV or a compact car like the old C30 Electric concept. And Kerssemakers stresses that range is important — he says that people won’t buy an EV unless it has “sufficient” range, even if it’s overkill for the daily commute. Volvo’s approach should be important for EVs as a whole by not only making them more accessible, but introducing them to a familiar brand associated with upscale cars. It may also be crucial to the company’s success in its home country. Tesla sales are exploding in Sweden, and it would be more than a little embarrassing if Volvo let a foreign rival go unchallenged for more than a few years. Via: Business Insider Source: Automotive News

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Volvo’s first EV will cost less than $40,000