Researchers Discover Huge Freshwater Reserves Under Ocean Floors

As earth’s population surges, mankind faces an increasingly limited supply of fresh water. Thankfully, Australian scientists report this week that they’ve found vast new fresh water supplies. Unfortunately, it’s in one of earth’s least accessible places: under the ocean floor . Read more…        

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Researchers Discover Huge Freshwater Reserves Under Ocean Floors

YuFu Is A Range Of Bluetooth 4.0 Styli For Pro Digital Artists & Amateur Scribblers

Hex3 , the company behind a successfully Kickstarted pressure-sensitive stylus called  JaJa , and a follow-up stylus for tablets, called  Nota , which had a (relatively) fine 3.7mm tip to make scribbling on a slate more precise, is expanding its line-up with three new stylus products – under a new brand name, YuFu. Once again, the startup has taken to Kickstarter to get the required minimum orders to fire up production of the YuFu, YuFu Pro and YuFu Focus. It’s seeking to raise $25,000, and is more than half way there with 30 days left on its campaign. If successful it’s aiming to ship to backers next April. It’s a couple of years since pressure sensitive styluses arrived so the YuFu is definitely facing more competition than Hex3′s earlier  JaJa . Which presumably is why it’s spreading its bets with multiple models, as well as focusing on a premium, hardwearing build, with the YuFu rocking a slim, metal-case design that resembles a mechanical pencil. The YuFu Pro – aimed at “serious artists” – has 4,048 levels of pressure sensitivity, with the function built into the pen, rather than the tip so you vary how much you squeeze it, rather than how hard you press it against the glass (to limit fatigue). It also has tilt sensors for shading and calligraphy, optional gestures such as tap and shake to erase, plus an ultrafine tip (1.9mm). This model is $65 for Kickstarter backers, but will retail for $99 in future. The mid-range YuFu Focus has 64 levels of pressure sensitivity and the same ultrafine 1.9mm tip. Hex3 says this model is for “creative business and art school use”. It’s $49 for Kickstarter early birds, rising to $79  retail post-Kickstarter. While the basic YuFu – aimed at “anyone who uses a tablet for notes or drawing” but doesn’t need pressure sensitivity to vary the flow of digital ink or an ultrafine tip – offers the same hardwearing metal construction and interchangeable tips (with brush, teflon or rubber tips) that all the models have but is designed for less precise scribbling. This model is up for grabs at an early bird Kickstarter price of $25, rising to $39 retail post-Kickstarter. The YuFu styli are powered by 1x AAAA battery apiece. They use Bluetooth Low Energy to connect to the tablet, so are compatible with the iPad 3 and above, and the iPad mini. They will also work with other tablets that have support for BLE, according to Hex3 – so some Android tabs might also work. What apps can you use YuFu with? Hex3 hasn’t listed compatible apps by name, rather it says it will support “all of the Apps you could need”. And includes the below graphic depicting currently supported apps. It’s worth noting that functions such as the YuFu Pro’s Gyro sensor (to support shading) will only work with “integrated apps”. So if your art app of choice doesn’t appear below you may want to ask if they’re planning to support it before pledging any cash.

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YuFu Is A Range Of Bluetooth 4.0 Styli For Pro Digital Artists & Amateur Scribblers

Newly captured photo shows Russia’s new badass shark stealth fighter

A new photo captured by Artyom Anikeev shows Russia’s new Sukhoi T-50 stealth fighter—America’s F-22 Raptor’s nemesis. According to The Aviationist, its new camouflage—inspired by a typical white tip Red Sea’s shark—will make it look “as a rhomboidal shaped aircraft, smaller than the actual airplane” from a distance. Read more…        

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Newly captured photo shows Russia’s new badass shark stealth fighter

270 Million Android Users In China

An anonymous reader writes “Until now, it was particularly difficult to obtain reliable figures on the results of the Android operating system in China. Indeed, there is no ‘centralized app store’ and most smartphones sold in the country do not use Google services, including activation. In fact, it is very difficult to know the actual results. The search engine Baidu has corrected this by publishing a report on trends in the mobile internet for the 3rd quarter 2013. It appears that there would be now 270 million active users of the Google platform in the country (more than 20% of the total population). Growth would, however, decrease with a small 13% against 55% for the same period last year but up 10% compared to Q2 2013.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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270 Million Android Users In China

This is a space shockwave traveling 1000 times faster than sound

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reports on the discovery of a “reverse shock wave racing inward at Mach 1000” in the Tycho’s supernova remnant, making its particles glow as you can see in the photograph above. If you think the idea of a shockwave traveling inward is counterintuitive, you aren’t alone. This is what’s happening: Read more…        

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This is a space shockwave traveling 1000 times faster than sound

Hydrobee Lets You Charge A Battery From A Fast-Flowing River To Juice Up USB Devices Off-Grid

We’ve seen fire harnessed to power a phone charger for the great outdoors, with the nifty  FlameStower , now meet Hydrobee: another Kickstarter project aiming to provide an off-grid alternative for charging a battery you can then use to juice your phone. But, as its name suggests, Hydrobee is all about water. There’s two parts to Hydrobee. When wearing its ‘Stream Body’, the gizmo can be placed in a river or dragged behind a boat – so long as the water is flowing faster than 1.8m/s (or 4mph+) – and two to four hours later its battery will be fully charged. A smaller inner unit can also be attached directly to a flowing faucet to charge – so could be used as a back-up power generator for your phone during a power outage (so long as your taps don’t require electricity to pump the water to them). Once Hydrobee’s battery is juiced, you can then plug in a USB device to charge it – a secondary charging process that presumably takes several more hours. Hydrobee reminds me of a CDT project I worked on in school, where we stuck a dynamo on a paddle wheel-bearing rig designed to float in a river and stuck a micro bulb on top that we hoped would be powered by it… Long story short it didn’t work on demo day, but that’s technology demos for you. Hydrobee has clearly perfected the hydroelectric tech better than a bunch of schoolkids managed to. The prototype consists of a tiny hydropowered turbine sited in a can with rechargeable batteries and waterproofed electronics, and a USB 2.0 port – so you can juice up your phone or other USB-powered device. The internal batteries are 6 x 1.2V AA NiMH rechargeable cells of 2,500 mAh capacity, yielding a total of 15,000 mAh. It is still a prototype for now. And Hydrobee’s U.S.-based creator has put a call out for Kickstarter users to give him feedback on the sorts of things they’d like to be able to use the device for to help shape the final product. The campaign is looking to raise $48,000 in crowdfunding, with 17 days left to run. If it hits its funding target, Hydrobees will be shipped to backers next March. The Hydrobee turbine generator, which can be used to generate a charge from water from a running faucet or hose, is being offered to early Kickstarter backers for $24. Or it’s $78 for all the kit, including the floating Stream Body.

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Hydrobee Lets You Charge A Battery From A Fast-Flowing River To Juice Up USB Devices Off-Grid

All the new exo-planets discovered by Kepler in one single image

This image has all the new worlds discovered by Kepler. The total is now 3, 538. The big balls are actually stars. The planets are the tiny black dots in front of them, shown to scale. It’s ridiculous. Read more…        

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All the new exo-planets discovered by Kepler in one single image

This morphing table can create a virtual version of you in realtime

Keiichi Matsuda is excited about this invention and I can’t blame him: A solid table that reproduces a virtual version of anything that you put under its sensors—in realtime. You can see how it reproduces the hands moving in the clip above, but there’s more: Read more…        

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This morphing table can create a virtual version of you in realtime

Taiwan Protests Apple Maps That Show Island As Province of China

itwbennett writes “Taiwan is demanding Apple revise its mapping software and remove a label that describes the island as a province of China, rather than as a sovereign state. The complaint was lodged after local media reports said that users on the island had noticed the change in Apple’s latest iOS and Mac OS versions. ‘The maps don’t acknowledge Taiwan as its own nation. We voiced our disapproval, and hope Apple will make the change, ‘ an official with Taiwan’s foreign ministry said Wednesday. This isn’t the first time such a mistake was made. Google also labeled Taiwan as a Chinese province in 2005.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Taiwan Protests Apple Maps That Show Island As Province of China

Russian Authorities Seize Goods from China Implanted with "Spy" Chips

A weird thing happened in St. Petersburg last week. The Russian press reports that local officials intercepted a shipment from China that contained home appliances with “spy” microchips capable of spreading malware to wi-fi enabled devices within 200 meters. Tea kettles were apparently the chief culprit. Read more…        

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Russian Authorities Seize Goods from China Implanted with "Spy" Chips