The Add Oil project lets anyone in the world write a message of support to Hong Kong’s protesters, which is then beamed in 16′ tall letters on the sides of buildings near the protests. Read the rest
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Umbrella Revolution’s projector guerrillas splash huge messages on public buildings
If you send your holiday photos to Google’s Autoawesome processor, it will snip out the best smiles and poses and combine them to make pictures of scenes that never actually happened. Read the rest
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How AIs are rewriting photographic history
A single week of Soylent contains seven meal pouches and seven oil containers. Total weight is just about 10 lbs (4.5 kg). Lee Hutchinson Soylent, the slushy slightly sweet meal supplement/replacement from California engineer Rob Rhinehart and his company Rosa Labs, has by most accounts been a smashing success story. We tried it and liked it a year ago. While we wrote more about why folks might (or might not) want to drink it once it hit its official release , the Rosa Labs development team has continued work even as shipments of the powder leave the factory by the truckload. In an update e-mail yesterday morning, Rosa Labs announced two major milestones: first, that shipments have (finally) been completed to everyone who backed the Soylent crowdfunding project prior to its closure, and secondly, that Soylent is getting its first major update to version 1.1. It seems a little weird that food (or “food”) has a version number, but Rhinehart always intended Soylent to be a product that changed over time based on feedback and market forces. In a quick post on the official Soylent blog, Rhinehart explains that the bump to 1.1 brings with it a decrease in the product’s sucralose level, dialing down the release version’s vague sweetness to a more truly neutral taste. The logic here, explains the post, is that it’s easier to add sweetness than to take it away, and many Soylent 1.0 users have expressed a desire to flavor the product with add-ons (peanut butter is a popular one, as is blended fruit). The second change deals with my biggest issue with Soylent—what can be politely termed as “a bit of gas.” Regular Soylent use eliminates the gas, but using Soylent as an occasional substitute for a missed meal—which is my preferred usage of the stuff—can introduce some thunderous gut activity (which I referred to in my original Soylent review as ” horse-killing farts “). Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Soylent gets a version bump to 1.1—new flavor, new gut flora help
Nobel Prize Committee Each year, roughly a quarter of the electricity we generate goes to lighting. For decades, that lighting came in the form of an incandescent light bulb, which produced 16 lumens for every Watt it was fed. Fluorescent bulbs are roughly five times as efficient, but recent LEDs do nearly 19 times better than incandescents, producing 300 lumens for each Watt. The first LEDs date back to 1907, but it’s only recently that their incredible efficiency has been brought to bear on the lighting market. One of the key holdups was our inability to generate a broad spectrum of colors. Specifically, we couldn’t make white light because we lacked the ability to produce blue LEDs. Now, the Nobel Prize in Physics is being given to three materials scientists who overcame this roadblock. The people receiving the honor are Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano, both faculty at Nagoya University in Japan, and Shuji Nakamura, now of UC Santa Barbara, who did much of his key work while at Nichia Chemicals, a small company in Japan. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Blue LEDs given Nobel Prize in physics
If you enjoy the creative part of building games but not so much the coding, Microsoft’s Project Spark is now available for Xbox One and PC (Windows 8.1 only). That marks the end of a six month beta period that saw over a million testers create 70, 000 game levels, according to Microsoft. As a reminder, Spark lets you build games with relative ease by using onscreen tools to add monsters, geography, game dynamics and logic. You can also use a Kinect HD on either platform to capture your own movements and facial expressions for game characters. Download it now for Windows 8.1 and Xbox One for free, or as Microsoft helpfully suggested, buy a starter disk with content for $39.99. Otherwise, fresh content has to be earned during gameplay or by purchasing tokens. Filed under: Gaming , Microsoft Comments Source: Xbox
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Microsoft’s Project Spark game creator comes to Xbox One and PC
HP’s home-focused and business divisions have frequently seemed at odds with each other, and apparently the company agrees. The Wall Street Journal claims that the tech giant is about to split into two companies, one focused on PCs and the other dedicated solely to corporate hardware and services. If the report is accurate, the separation could be announced as early as Monday. The exact reasoning behind the move hasn’t been mentioned, but the PC-centric group would be headed by one of its existing executives, Dion Weisler; current CEO Meg Whitman would run the business group and keep an eye on the other company by serving as its chairman of the board. However true the rumor may be, such a move wouldn’t be all that surprising — much of the computing industry has been restructuring and rescaling to cope with a world where the PC’s role is rapidly evolving. Update: Recode also says it’s aware of the split, and has an explanation for it. Supposedly, HP had no luck in early talks to sell its PC division to Dell or Lenovo. It had similar problems offloading server and services groups, and a merger with the data storage gurus at EMC also wasn’t meant to be. The breakup would effectively revive plans shelved when CEO Leo Apotheker got the boot in 2011; getting rid of less successful products (in this case, PCs) would improve the chances of an EMC merger or similar deals. Update 2: HP has now confirmed the news. In a filing with the SEC , the company states that it plans to split into two publicly traded companies. Its consumer-focused PC, tablet, and printing efforts will continue on under the HP banner, while a new company named Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will focus on “enterprise technology infrastructure” and “software and services businesses.” Filed under: Desktops , Laptops , HP Comments Source: Wall Street Journal , HP (SEC filing)
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HP officially splitting into two companies (update)
Cyrus Farivar This week, I downloaded a new iPhone app, Path Talk , and I texted actual questions to local businesses near where I live in Oakland, California. In some cases I got answers back within minutes, but most took longer, even over an hour. Nevertheless, it was almost like magic. Without interrupting my work day, I learned some crucial information about my favorite East Oakland taco truck ( Tacos Sinaloa ): “Can I place an order by phone?” “Hi! Unfortunately, you would have to come to our restaurant in person since we do not take orders over the phone. Sorry about that. Have a nice day!” Read 25 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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How to win friends, influence people, and have businesses magically text you
An anonymous reader writes The Linux 3.17 kernel was officially released today. Linux 3.17 presents a number of new features that include working open-source AMD Hawaii GPU support, an Xbox One controller driver, free-fall support for Toshiba laptops, numerous ARM updates, and other changes. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Linux 3.17 Kernel Released With Xbox One Controller Support
Remember IllumiRoom ? It’s the Microsoft Research project that pairs an Xbox Kinect with a projector to extend your TV onto a wall, with immersive (and hallucinogenic) effects. Redmond has just revealed that IllumiRoom 2.0 is now called RoomAlive and is a huge leap over what it was last year . The new system projects content throughout your entire room that you can interact with (or shoot), as shown in the insane video below. Instead of a single Kinect and projector, it uses multiple “procams” consisting of off-the-shelf projectors, Kinects and a smaller computer to control them. Microsoft claims that it’s completely auto-calibrating and self-locating, enabling it to calculate the entire 3D geometry of your room in minutes. Once installed, RoomAlive can track multiple players and weapons, letting them hit or blow up creatures, whack-a-mole style. It can also project textures and cyber-critters onto your walls and furniture, transforming your den into a holodeck or a factory, for example. Another demo brought to mind the 3D game in the movie Her , with the players controlling a character that tries to avoid being killed by “robots” emerging from your walls and floor. Finally, there’s a game that requires you to physically dodge booby traps, with any failure resulting in a bloody wound projected virtually onto your body. It looks amazing, but we were also excited by Illumiroom’s potential, and it’s still far from becoming an actual product you can buy. In any case, not too many folks could afford to rig up a room with multiple projectors and Kinects the way Microsoft did. Still, like Oculus , it’s not hard to see huge potential in the research. And unlike the Rift, it could one day transform games into something that actually gets you off the couch. [Image credits: Microsoft Research] Filed under: Gaming , Microsoft Comments Source: Microsoft
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Microsoft’s RoomAlive turns your den into a video game level
It hasn’t been hard to produce realistic-looking skin in computer-generated movies, but it’s much harder to do that in the context of a game running live on your console or PC. That trip to the uncanny valley is going to be much easier in the near future, though, thanks to the impending arrival of Unreal Engine 4.5 . The gaming framework adds subsurface light scattering effects that give digital skin a more natural look. Instead of the harsh visuals you normally get (see the pale, excessively-shadowed face at left), you’ll see softer, decidedly fleshier surfaces (middle and right). The scattering should also help out with leaves, candle wax and other materials that are rarely drawn well in your favorite action games. That’s not the only party trick. A new raytracing technique should produce soft, reasonably authentic long shadows in sunsets. Mobile games can finally handle dynamic shadows, too, so a character carrying a lantern may look that much more ominous. Developers will have to implement the new Unreal Engine in their projects before you can see the upgrades first-hand, but it shouldn’t be too long before you’re playing shooters and other titles that feel much more true to life. Filed under: Gaming , Software Comments Source: Unreal Engine
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The new Unreal Engine will bring eerily realistic skin to your games