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Four Elements Added To Periodic Table

physburn writes: The Guardian reports that four new elements, with atomic numbers 113, 115, 117, and 118, have been formally added to the periodic table. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry has now initiated the process of formalizing names and symbols for these elements. “The RIKEN collaboration team in Japan have fulfilled the criteria for element Z=113 and will be invited to propose a permanent name and symbol.” 115 and 117, with the temporary names of ununpentium and ununseptium, will be named by researchers from Oak Ridge and Lawrence Livermore national labs in the U.S., as well as from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia. 118, known for now as ununoctium, will be named by the same group minus the Oak Ridge researchers. Professor Paul Karol said, “A particular difficulty in establishing these new elements is that they decay into hitherto unknown isotopes of slightly lighter elements that also need to be unequivocally identified, but in the future we hope to improve methods that can directly measure the atomic number, Z.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Four Elements Added To Periodic Table

AMD’s new graphics architecture is called Polaris

The rumours were true: AMD’s new graphics architecture is called Polaris (it previously went under the codename Arctic Islands), it’s based on a 14nm FinFET process, and it’ll ship in “mid-2016.” Given that AMD’s GPUs—and indeed Nvidia’s—have been stuck at the larger 28nm process node for several years, the move to 14nm should bring huge improvements in power consumption and performance per watt. Details are thin on the ground—AMD has promised to go into much greater detail at a later date—but for now the company has confirmed that Polaris is the fourth generation of its Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture. The current GCN architecture, GCN 1.2, is used by the likes of the Radeon R9 285 and R9 Fury. Improvements to the command processor, geometry processor, L2 cache, memory controller, multimedia cores, and display engine are promised in fourth-gen GCN, as well as to the all important compute units at the heart of the GPU. Polaris will support hardware 4K h.265 encoding and decoding at 60 FPS, DisplayPort 1.3, and, at long last, HDMI 2.0a. The latter was missing from AMD’s recent Fury and 300-series of GPUs, which instead featured HDMI 1.4a that limited 4K signals to 30 FPS at 60Hz, making them less than ideal for use in the living room with 4K TVs. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AMD’s new graphics architecture is called Polaris

Tool translates sentences into a picture

Add / Remove Artists and creatives have always been able to translate imaginative ideas into physical visuals using skills such as painting and sculpturing, but technology such as 3D printing has been democratizing some of the modes of creating. We have already seen ThinkerThing — a system that uses neurosensory tech to enable users to 3D print physical manifestations of their imagination. Now, WordsEye is an incredibly accessible online tool, which enables users to experiment with digital art by turning their words into surreal images. To begin, users register on the Beta version of the program. They can then create an image through language by inputting sentences that include nouns, adjectives and measurements. The program automatically recognizes the different elements of speech and translates the description into a visual. For example, if the user types ‘the small striped elephant is 3 feet in front of the red house,’ WordsEye uses speech tagging and analysis to produce that image, filling in any missing details itself. WordsEyes stores a vast database of language and its corresponding imagery and will eventually be built out with suggestions from users too. Initially conceived as a fun, creative tool for self expression, the program could also be used as an educational tool to assist with literacy, teaching new languages or to empower those with physical disabilities. WordsEye is expected launch as an app for iOS and Android in the near future. How else could the tool be used? Website: www.wordseye.com Contact: type-a-picture@wordseye.com The post Tool translates sentences into a picture appeared first on Springwise .

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Tool translates sentences into a picture

Breaking the DRM on the 1982 Apple ][+ port of Burger Time

4AM is a prolific computer historian whose practice involves cracking the copy protection on neglected Apple ][+ floppy disks, producing not just games, but voluminous logs that reveal the secret history of the cat-and-mouse between crackers and publishers. (more…)

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Breaking the DRM on the 1982 Apple ][+ port of Burger Time

‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ is an Ultra HD Blu-ray launch title

Ultra HD Blu-ray is finally coming in 2016, and while we’ll hear more about its 4K movies this week at CES, Warner Bros. is kicking things off by announcing some of the first movies on the way . Right out of the gate, it’s offering Mad Max: Fury Road , San Andreas, The Lego Movie and Pan . They’re promised for the “initial launch” early this year, although there’s no exact date mentioned. More movies will arrive later this year and Warner says it plans to release over 35 in 2016, although only Man of Steel and Pacific Rim have been named. Standard features are of course 4K resolution and HDR support for more colors and better contrast, while select titles will also feature “immersive audio” Dolby Atmos sound. If you’re skipping discs for streaming or downloading, Warner says it will expand the number of movies available that way as well. Fox announced its Ultra HD Blu-ray plans during IFA last year , stay tuned this week for more news on what 4K content is coming to match all the new TVs. [Image credit: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy] Source: Warner Bros. (PRNewswire)

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‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ is an Ultra HD Blu-ray launch title

Arrested Nigerian Email Scammer Facing Up To 30 Years In Prison

McGruber writes: Amechi Colvis Amuegbunam, 28, a Nigerian man living in the U.S. on a student visa, faces federal wire fraud charges in connection with a sophisticated email phishing scam targeting businesses. He was arrested in Baltimore and charged with scamming 17 North Texas companies out of more than $600, 000 using the technique. If convicted, Amuegbunam faces up to 30 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Arrested Nigerian Email Scammer Facing Up To 30 Years In Prison

Samsung’s ‘Rink’ Motion Controllers For Gear VR Look Pretty Great

 A few days ago, Samsung shared a few items that they’d be showing on the floor at CES in Las Vegas. One of them, which barely caused a blip on the radar was the “rink.” It’s Samsung’s motion controllers for the Gear VR, something that is sorely needed for their mobile virtual reality experience. If you remember, Oculus just shared that their own motion… Read More

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Samsung’s ‘Rink’ Motion Controllers For Gear VR Look Pretty Great

Windows 95 on a Nintendo 3DS is as strange as you’d think

The trend of putting PC software on wholly impractical devices isn’t stopping with the new year, folks. GBATemp fan Shutterbug2000 has managed to get Windows 95 running on a New Nintendo 3DS XL thanks to both DOSbox emulation and some ingenuity. You won’t be doing a whole lot with this right now — Microsoft wasn’t designing for touchscreens and analog sticks two decades ago — but it really does work on a basic level. It looks more than a little odd, too, between the tiny desktop and the emulator status on the second screen. The real challenge may be to run any meaningful software beyond the operating system. As great as it would be to run classic Windows games on a modern handheld, it could be a long, long while before you’re doing much more than staring at the home screen. Even so, this because-I-can feat is pretty impressive… and it’s probably the closest you’ll ever get to a portable Microsoft gaming system . Via: NeoGAF , Kotaku Source: GBATemp.net

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Windows 95 on a Nintendo 3DS is as strange as you’d think

LG’s 2016 TVs include its first production 8K set

Forget all the hype about 4K at CES last year — this year’s trend is 8K . LG has revealed some of the first details about its 2016 TV lineup, and the highlight is its first production-grade 8K model, the UH9800. The Korean tech giant isn’t saying much about what this 98-inch monster will offer or when it ships, but it’s safe to say that this won’t be an impulse purchase when Sharp’s 8K screen costs about $130, 000. Don’t worry if you’re unwilling to take out a mortgage just to upgrade, as there are plenty of upgraded 4K TVs in the mix. The UH8500 (55 to 75 inches) and UH9500 (55 to 86 inches) series both tout Color Prime Plus, which mixes both filters and LCD phosphors to reach about 90 percent of the Digital Cinema Initiative’s expanded color range. Both these and the lower-end UH7700 (49 to 65 inches) also tout a “True Black” panel that cuts glare and improves contrast, along with a Contrast Maximizer option that… well, does what it says. The UH9500 is your pick if you’re design-conscious, since it has an extremely slim (0.22-inch) body that manages to cram in a relatively powerful Harman/Kardon audio system. All of LG’s newer sets should pack the easier-to-use webOS 3.0 for their interface. It’s not yet known how much you’ll pay for the 4K models, but it won’t be surprising if there’s at least one within your budget given rapidly falling prices. The real question is what Samsung, Sony and others have to offer. LG gets points for announcing early, but you may well see strong alternatives (even among 8K sets) before long. Source: LG Newsroom

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LG’s 2016 TVs include its first production 8K set

The Three Possible Classes of Interstellar Travel

An anonymous reader writes: The stars call to us through the ages, with each and every one holding the promise of a future for humanity beyond Earth. For generations, this was a mere dream, as our technology allowed us to neither know what worlds might lie beyond our own Solar System or to reach beyond our planet. But time and development has changed both of those things significantly. Now, when we look to the stars, we know that potentially habitable worlds lurk throughout our galaxy, and our spaceflight capabilities can bring us there. But so far, it would only be a very long, lonely, one-way trip. This isn’t necessarily going to be the case forever, though, as physically feasible technology could get humans to another star within a single lifetime, and potentially groundbreaking technology might make the journey almost instantaneous. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The Three Possible Classes of Interstellar Travel