What if UNO were rebooted? JelloApocalypse’s If UNO Was An Anime gives the mundane classic all the hackneyed tropes and stock characters of card game tie-in toons.
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UNO, anime edition
What if UNO were rebooted? JelloApocalypse’s If UNO Was An Anime gives the mundane classic all the hackneyed tropes and stock characters of card game tie-in toons.
More here:
UNO, anime edition
Spotify has been keen on adding new discovery features to its service for a while now . Today, the streaming option announced yet another tool that keeps your playlists fresh. The new feature is called Daily Mixes and it compiles six different playlists that are constantly updated based on your listening habits. Each mix contains over a dozen songs and more tracks load as you listen so you don’t have to worry about running out of material. Sitting atop the “Your Library” section of the Spotify app, Daily Mixes are a combination of tunes by the artists you listen to on the regular and other material you might not be as familiar with. As you might expect, there’s the option to “heart” a song to add it to your collection or “ban” a track to keep it from popping up in future playlists. Unlike the name suggests, the Mixes aren’t updated daily per se. Spotify says the name implies that you can enjoy them daily and while the track order may shuffle every day, the data that selects the songs will be updated on a weekly basis. Daily Mixes are divided by genre. For example, I have playlists for hardcore, hip hop, indie rock, electronic, metal and hard rock. Most of those are an equal mix of artists that I listen to often (or at least from time to time) and new songs that I hadn’t heard of yet. Not all the songs are new releases, so there’s a blend of old and new in each list as well. These new playlists work a lot like Pandora stations or Spotify’s own radio feature, only now the queue is automatically compiled for you and you can start wherever you want. You don’t even have to pick an a specific artist to get started. Spotify says the new playlists will be “consistently refreshed” and feature “near endless playback” to make listening to music on a daily basis a bit easier. Just like those aforementioned stations, Daily Mixes are based entirely on what you’re listening to and get better the more music you play. After a few days with Daily Mixes, the playlists seem useful at times when I have trouble deciding exactly what to play. I’m a big fan of both Discover Weekly and Release Radar for learning about new artists and keeping up new material from all of the acts I listen to often, but I don’t think I’ll use Daily Mixes quite as often. It’s still early though, so that may change. Spotify’s focus on discovery continues to provide its users with ways to keep their listening habit fresh. Multiple options mean you can find the one that you like best. If you want to give the new feature a shot, it’s available now on Spotify’s Android and iOS apps for both paid and free users. New to Spotify? You’ll need to use the service for about two weeks before Daily Mixes will show up for you. For faithful desktop users, the tool will be rolling out to other platforms “soon, ” so hopefully you won’t have to wait too long to employ the new goods there.
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Spotify’s Daily Mixes use your listening habits to make playlists
Researchers working in Africa have uncovered 3.8 million-year-old protein fragments encased in an ostrich eggshell. These biological building blocks are millions of years older than the oldest DNA ever found, highlighting the possibility of recovering ancient proteins from extinct animals—and even the remains of early humans. Read more…
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Oldest Proteins Ever Recovered Found in 3.8 Million-Year-Old Eggshell
Autonomous vehicle technology is still in its infancy, which means that most self-driving vehicles still have a way for humans to take over when needed. But as Komatsu demonstrates with a design for a new autonomous dump truck, in some cases there are real advantages to eliminating humans altogether. Read more…
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This Giant Autonomous Dump Truck Doesn’t Have a Front or Back
We’re finally going to hear Elon Musk’s plans for a mission to Mars. You can watch along to find out what it is at 2:30pm EDT. In the meantime, here’s some of what we expect to hear—and what it means to the plan to finally put a person on Mars. Read more…
Our solar system is rife with geologic activity, from eruptive ice moons to mountainous dwarf planets . Still, Earth always held a special place in the hall of geologic fame. It was the only bonafide planet to exhibit tectonic and seismic activity—until now. Read more…
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We Just Found Out That Mercury Is Geologically Active
There is no doubt that Ralph McQuarrie’s sublime art was fundamental in shaping the success of Star Wars , and enriching the galaxy far, far away. For years his work has been archived and championed, but a new book is collecting some of his best (and some of his rarest) Star Wars art in a lavish volume, and we’ve got an exclusive look inside. Read more…
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Inside a Treasure Trove of Rare Ralph McQuarrie Star Wars Art
Mandarin Chinese is a notoriously difficult language to translate to English, and for those who rely on Google Translate to decipher important information, machine-based tools simply aren’t good enough. All that is about to change, as Google today announced it has implemented a new learning system in its web and mobile translation apps that will bring significantly better results. As a native speaker (and reader and writer) of both Mandarin Chinese (both complex and traditional alphabets) and English, I’ve often cringed at Google Translate’s output. But looking at the examples provided by Google on its blog post , I am impressed. The new system uses what the company calls Google Neural Machine Translation (GNMT), which looks at entire sentences as it decodes instead of breaking them up into words and phrases to be considered independently. The latter method often resulted in disjointed results that sometimes didn’t make sense. According to the company, this new technique is better, because “it requires fewer engineering design choices than previous Phrase-Based translation systems.” It still breaks up sentences into individual characters, but now considers each one in relation to those before and after it. This is especially important in a language such as Mandarin, wherein words can mean different things based on the characters they are paired with. Chinese to English is just one of 10, 000 language pairs that Google Translate supports, and the company says it will be working to roll out GNMT to more translations “over the coming months.” Of course, machine translation still isn’t perfect — there are plenty of nuances that algorithms simply can’t pick up on, regardless of how well neural-based artificial intelligence is doing . But at least now, with the new system, the meaning will hopefully be lost in translation, not lost in Translate. Source: Google
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Google’s Chinese-to-English translations might now suck less
Tonight, presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will meet for their first debate. Here’s how to tune in for free online, even if you don’t have cable. Read more…
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How to Stream Tonight’s First Presidential Debate Online, No Cable Required
We used to think of Pluto a remote frigid rock, but since the New Horizons visit, it’s vying for the title of the solar system’s most interesting (ex-) planet. An earlier study showed that its core is warm enough to support a liquid water ocean, and now we’ve learned that it might be huge — at least 100 km (62 miles) deep. The evidence, according to the team from Brown University, comes from a likely impact with massive asteroid. Pluto’s most significant feature is the Sputnik Planam , a heart-shaped crater formed by an impact with an object up to 200 km (125 miles) across. Normally, such a crater would create a “negative mass anomaly, ” or a gouged-out hole with less heft than the terrain around it. However, “that’s not what we see with Sputnik Planum, ” says Brown University geologist Brandon Johnson. Instead, the region unexpectedly has more weight than scientists expect. They know that because of Charon, Pluto’s moon. Like ours, it’s tidally locked with Pluto and always shows the same face to the planet. Interestingly, the Sputnik Planum sits right on the tidal axis, suggesting that there’s more mass in that area. “As Charon’s gravity pulls on Pluto, it would pull proportionally more on areas of higher mass, which would tilt the planet until Sputnik Planum became aligned with the tidal axis, ” the paper states. A closeup of the Sputnik Planum impact crater So why would a crater area be so heavy? The researchers theorize that when a large body impacted Pluto, it created a trampoline effect, drawing material near the core toward the surface. If that material was liquid water, “it may have welled up following the Sputnik Planum impact, evening out the crater’s mass, ” the paper says. Nitrogen ice later filled in the crater to give it extra weight, resulting in a positive mass anomaly. For the simulation to be accurate, the liquid water below the surface must be at least 100km thick with 30 percent salinity. That might seem impossible on a planet with a surface temperature of 44K (-380 F). However, scientists think that radiation heating at the core of the planet and the 300km (200 mile) thick insulating ice shell makes liquid water feasible, in theory. “It’s pretty amazing to me that you have this body so far out in the solar system that still may have liquid water, ” says Johnson. Via: Phys Org Source: Brown University