No braille? No problem! This FingerReader by the Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab is a high-tech way to help visually impaired people read; it actually scans printed text and narrates it aloud. Read more…
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This Ring Scans Text And Reads It Aloud For Visually Impaired People
That’s right, a thousand dollars is just the starting price for the new Titan Black, which surpasses and replaces the original $999 GTX Titan that came out last year. Thanks to a more overclock-friendly version of NVIDIA’s “Big Kepler” silicon, card vendors are offering custom-cooled versions of the Titan Black that go way beyond the 889MHz reference design, with monetary premiums to match. EVGA looks to be bringing out a 1GHz “HydroCopper” variant, for example, which will likely fetch in the region of $1, 100 — just reasonable enough, in a twisted sort of way, to make you question whether buying a base card might be selling yourself short. But the Titan Black is about more than just clock speeds. It adopts the gaming-focused features of the $699 GTX 780 Ti, including a full quota of 2, 880 stream processors and 240 texture units, and it combines them with the 6GB of GDDR5 and double precision floating point performance that made the first Titan so good at semi-professional GPU compute tasks (just below the level of a Tesla ). We haven’t seen many reviews yet, aside from one saucy piece of literature that looked at four Titan Blacks side-by-side in SLI mode, but it looks like NVIDA might have finally hit on a solid product for those of us who want to mix business with pleasure . Filed under: Desktops , Gaming , NVIDIA Comments Source: Hardware.info , AnandTech , TechPowerUp
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NVIDIA Titan Black cards bring much improved specs, even crazier prices
NASA’s Saturn V remains the only launch vehicle in history to catapult humans beyond low-Earth orbit. In this beautiful cutaway – what appears to be an original diagram from Boeing’s Space Division – the legendary rocket’s internal workings are laid bare in captivating detail. Read more…
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The Most Detailed Saturn V Cutaway We’ve Ever Seen
cold fjord sends news that Iran’s breach of a computer network belonging to the U.S. Navy was more serious than originally thought. According to a Wall Street Journal report (paywalled, but summarized at The Verge), it took the Navy four months to secure its network after the breach, and the repair cost was approximately $10 million. From the article: “The hackers targeted the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, the unclassified network used by the Department of the Navy to host websites, store nonsensitive information and handle voice, video and data communications. The network has 800, 000 users at 2, 500 locations, according to the Navy. … The intrusion into the Navy’s system was the most recent in a series of Iranian cyberoffensives that have taken U.S. military and intelligence officials by surprise. In early 2012, top intelligence officials held the view that Iran wanted to execute a cyberattack but had little capability. Not long after, Iranian hackers began a series of major “denial-of-service” attacks on a growing number of U.S. bank websites, and they launched a virus on a Saudi oil company that immobilized 30, 000 computers. … Defense officials were surprised at the skills of the Iranian hackers. Previously, their tactics had been far cruder, usually involving so-called denial of service attacks that disrupt network operations but usually don’t involve a penetration of network security.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Iran’s Hacking of US Navy ‘Extensive,’ Repairs Took $10M and 4 Months
In the 1980s Irina Margareta Nistor worked as a translator of TV programs in Romania under the Communist regime. But in her spare time she secretly dubbed over 3, 000 banned movie titles, all VHS tapes smuggled in from the West. These tapes quickly spread throughout Romania. Nobody knew Nistor’s name. But everybody knew her voice. Read more…
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This Woman Secretly Dubbed American Movies During the Cold War
Some things are better left untouched. Really3D, the hilarious YouTube channel that animates classics into ridiculous 3D renders , proves that with a gagful 3D animation of the 1928 classic Steamboat Willie. You know, the short film that first introduced the world to Mickey Mouse. The 3D version of the classic is so bad and terrifying it’s amazing. Read more…
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Seeing the original 1928 Mickey Mouse animated in 3D is terrifying
Ever since Microsoft bought Skype in 2011, one of the biggest questions has been how the company would integrate the voice and video messaging service with its other voice and video messaging software: Lync. Last year, the company integrated the two systems for voice calling, allowing Lync users to talk to, and see the online status of, Skype users. This year, the company will take another big step toward bringing the systems together, with cross-network video calling. The company demonstrated Lync-to-Skype video calling at its Lync Conference today. The feature will go into a limited beta in summer or fall. In addition to improved interoperability with Skype, the company is also adding native interoperability with Cisco/Tandberg video conferencing systems. Joining its existing Lync clients for Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad, and Android phones, Microsoft says that it will have a Lync client for Android tablets available in the Google Play store by the end of June. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Lync-Skype video chat shown for the first time, coming later this year
Nvidia’s Tegra K1 is damned pretty for mobile tech, but the desktop team hasn’t just been sitting around waiting for Tegra to catch up. Say hello to Maxwell—the new architecture on the desktop side—and the GTX 750Ti. It’s a tiny little sucker that’s worth its weight in watts. Read more…
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Nvidia’s First Maxwell Card Is a Power-Sipping Screamer
Solana is currently the largest parabolic trough plant in the world, covering more than 1,900 acres in southern Arizona. 4 more images in gallery GILA BEND, ARIZONA—Every afternoon during the summer, millions of people across the American Southwest come home from work and switch on their air conditioners, straining the power grid in states like Arizona. Traditional solar power—although perfectly suited to the sunny climes of this region—can’t meet this demand since the surge in use peaks just as the day’s sun is disappearing. That’s why most power suppliers diversify, using electricity from different sources to meet local needs. Solar power is abundant in the middle of sunny, clear days, but energy from other sources—coal, nuclear, or hydroelectric power for example—is necessary at night or when the weather is bad. But increasingly efficient technology is allowing solar plants to contribute for a longer period of time each day and produce energy even in cloudy conditions. The key is a design that allows them to store the sun’s energy to be used later. And new facilities, such as the Solana power plant that recently came online in Gila Bend, Arizona, are increasing solar energy’s niche by producing electricity several hours after the sun sets. Read 35 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Who needs sunlight? In Arizona, solar power never sleeps
MediaPortal 1.7.0 Pre Release We are very happy to present you the Pre Release version of MediaPortal 1.7.0 today. This release includes a number of new features and bug fixes. These new features need a lot of testing to make sure everything works fine. Please report any problems in the bug reporting sections of the forum. Oh, and enjoy it! We are calling this a pre release, but it is very stable. Highlights of this release Many of the changes in this release are things that you might not notice at first, but they are designed to improve the stability of MediaPortal moving forwards for the next few releases. Using SkinSettings/Expressions Skin Settings and Expressions are really powerful. Skin designers are going to be doing some amazing things with them in the near future. We have already been testing a home screen editor entirely within the MediaPortal GUI. Look for this in Area 51 very soon. Separate the WindowsPlugins to individual files This is one for the developers. Since MediaPortal started, the core plugins (My Videos, My Music, My Pictures, etc.) have been stored in a single file called WindowsPlugins.dll. This means that a lot of code has been loaded that isn’t always needed. Also, making a change to one plugin often resulted in another plugin developing a new bug. We can’t carry on like that, so the plugins are now in their own self-contained files. This will make things more stable and easier to fix/improve in future. Enhancements to the TV and Video OSDs TV recording thumbs and comskip markers were not properly shown in the TV and Video OSDs. This is fixed. Improvements to the Installer You probably have the LAV Filters package installed to get the best quality playback of most video files, and TitanExtended installed to provide skin files for your plugins. The installer correctly detects the installed version, and only offers to install these if a newer version is available. Wake On LAN MediaPortal can now wake your server if it is in sleep mode and you want to access your files. Add MediaInfo For Files in the Background We use a code library called MediaInfo to obtain certain information about video files when you play them. This information can be displayed by MediaPortal. Up to now, it has only been possible to obtain this information when you actually play a file. With this release, we have added a setting to allow all files to be scanned in the background. This is turned off by default, so check out the documentation for changes to see where this setting is and how to enable it. Full list of changes You can review the complete change log for 1.7.0 Pre Release by using the link below: Changelog: MediaPortal 1.7.0 Pre Release Documentation of new features can be found at the following link: What’s new for MediaPortal 1.7.0 Pre Release Compiled Plugin related changes Community Plugin Developers should have a look at the following page to find out about the changes which will effect their extensions. Some of these changes are mandatory to become 1.7.0 compatible: changes which affect plugins Additional Information: TVE3 Code freeze At the moment we are working hard on releasing a new version of our TVEngine – which is called TVE3.5. Development is still in early stage and some features are missing. To make a release of this happen in the future we have to put our current TVEngine (TVE3) on code freeze. This means only critical issues will get fixed. Everything else will have to wait for a TVE3.5 release. When we think it is ready for public testing you will find a testbuild in our Area51 forum part. Since we have limited resources we are not able to give you a specific release date. It is ready when it is ready! We’ll hope you understand that. Thanks! Installation, Upgrade, Download and Feedback Installation With MediaPortal 1.6.0 we switched to .NET4 so you need to make sure you have .NET4 installed on your computer (not needed if you are on Windows 8 because it comes with .NET4, but you NEED the .NET 3.5 features enabled!). Otherwise you are not able to install MediaPortal and the installer just quits. Download-Link: Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Standalone Installer) Aside from that when doing a clean installation of 1.6.0 there is nothing else special to worry about. Upgrade Upgrading from 1.2.x, 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final, 1.4.0, 1.5.0 or 1.6.0 MP 1.7.0 Pre Release All MediaPortal 1.2.x, 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final, 1.4.0, 1.5.0 and 1.6.0 installations can be upgraded to 1.7.0 Pre Release without losing your settings. Plugins: If you are running MediaPortal 1.6.0 or earlier, many of your previously installed plugins will be shown as incompatible after the upgrade to 1.7.0 Pre Release! We have been working hard with the plugin developer community to ensure that updated versions of plugins are available as soon as possible. Run the ‘MediaPortal Extension Installer’ and select ‘Update All Installed’ from the file menu to update in one click. Skins: Warning! Due to the new features and changes introduced in 1.4.0, none of the 1.3.x skins are compatible with 1.7.0 Pre Release! Please contact the author of the skin you use for further information and updates. Upgrading Extensions: The easiest way to upgrade your extensions is by launching the MediaPortal Extension Installer , and let it check for updated versions. However this only works for extensions that use our MPEI system. If the author of the extension releases it as a stand alone installer, you must contact them for an updated version. Upgrading from 1.2.0 Alpha or earlier to 1.7.0 Pre Release All MediaPortal installations starting with 1.1.0 RC1 can be upgraded to 1.7.0 Pre Release, without losing your settings. If you are running MediaPortal 1.2.0 Alpha or earlier, then none of your extensions (plugins and skins) will work after the upgrade to 1.7.0 Pre Release! You must update your extensions after the upgrade! So, please make sure that 1.7.0 compatible versions of your extensions are available before you start the upgrade! General note about Upgrades Manually stop TV-Service! On some systems our installer is not able to update the TV-Server installation because its files are locked or the service can not be stopped. For upgrades to 1.7.0 Pre Release we recommend that you manually stop the TV-Service and make sure, via Windows Task Manager (enable the “all users” option), that the TvService.exe process is really gone before starting to upgrade. Custom TV-Service properties If you manually changed the properties of the TV-Service (like restart on error options) , then you must redo these changes after the upgrade. The installer is not able to save and restore your custom service properties when it installs the new version of the TV-Service. Feedback Bugs If you think you found a bug then please post a detailed report in our Bug Reports Forum . Make sure your report includes all the required information . Incomplete reports will be removed to keep the forum clean. Download Finally – the download. We hope that you took the time to read this release news entirely because it includes vital information about the major changes. If you would like to support MediaPortal, we would be happy to receive a small donation ! The Team wishes you a lot of fun with this new release! .::. Download – MediaPortal 1.7.0 Pre Release .::. :: Post a Comment ::
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MediaPortal 1.7.0 Pre Release released