Skype’s real-time translator now understands French and German —along with the existing English, Italian, Mandarin and Spanish. Read more…
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Skype’s real-time translator now understands French and German—along with the existing English, Ital
Co-directors Andy and Lana Wachowski only had six minutes every day to shoot a single giant chase scene for their space opera Jupiter Ascending . Why could they only film the chase at one time of day? They explain in our exclusive interview. Plus they tell io9 why they’re so obsessed with telling stories about “The One.” Read more…
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How The Wachowskis Tried To Shoot "The Most Beautiful Chase Ever Filmed"
In 1890, a group of eight large New York City bakeries combined to form the New York Biscuit Company and built a giant six-story factory in West Chelsea. Eight years later, they merged with their competitor, Chicago’s American Biscuit and Manufacturing to form an even larger conglomerate – the National Biscuit Company, but the factory and headquarters remained in Chelsea. In 1901, the National Biscuit Company put their abbreviated company name on a box of wafers for the first time – Nabisco. Soon, Nabisco became the company’s official name. Read more…
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How the Oreo Was Invented
Advocatus Diaboli writes British spies have been granted the authority to secretly eavesdrop on legally privileged attorney-client communications, according to newly released documents. On Thursday, a series of previously classified policies confirmed for the first time that the U.K.’s top surveillance agency Government Communications Headquarters has advised its employees: “You may in principle target the communications of lawyers.” The country’s other major security and intelligence agencies—MI5 and MI6—have adopted similar policies, the documents show. The guidelines also appear to permit surveillance of journalists and others deemed to work in “sensitive professions.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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British Spies Are Free To Target Lawyers and Journalists
With another sweltering summer over you might have already forgotten the glory of your AC unit, the 100-year-old modern convenience which truly changed the way we live. But the U.S. might have felt the cool breeze of relief a half-century sooner, if an entire industry built on keeping things frozen hadn’t stopped the first air conditioner from being made. Read more…
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We could have had AC 50 years earlier but the ice lobby killed it
An anonymous reader writes The state-run OAO Rosneft has discovered a vast pool of crude in the Kara Sea region of the Arctic Ocean, arguably bigger than the Gulf of Mexico. From the article: “The discovery sharpens the dispute between Russia and the U.S. over President Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine. The well was drilled before the Oct. 10 deadline Exxon was granted by the U.S. government under sanctions barring American companies from working in Russia’s Arctic offshore. Rosneft and Exxon won’t be able to do more drilling, putting the exploration and development of the area on hold despite the find announced today.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Exxon and Russian Operation Discovers Oil Field Larger Than the Gulf of Mexico
Whether you’re traveling to Tanzania, Taiwan, or Tokyo, you’re likely going to run into situations where English is not the primary language. But rather than blow hundreds of dollars on Rosetta Stone or fumble through archaic paperback phrasebooks, drop one of these helpful real-time translation apps on your phone instead. Read more…
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How to Turn Your Mobile Device into a Universal Translator
A joint project involving NASA and MIT researchers had demonstrated technology that could supply a lunar colony with broadband via lasers (“faster Internet access than many U.S. homes get”) and has already demonstrated its worth in communications with spacecraft. From ComputerWorld’s article: “The Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) kicked off last September with the launch of NASA’s LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer), a research satellite now orbiting the moon. NASA built a laser communications module into LADEE for use in the high-speed wireless experiment. LLCD has already proved itself, transmitting data from LADEE to Earth at 622Mbps (bits per second) and in the other direction at 19.44Mbps, according to MIT. It beat the fastest-ever radio communication to the moon by a factor of 4, 800.” Communicating at such distances means overcoming various challenges; one of the biggest is the variability in Earth’s atmosphere. The LLCD doesn’t try to power through the atmosphere at only one spot, therefore, but uses four separate beams in the New Mexico desert, each aimed “through a different column of air, where the light-bending effects of the atmosphere are slightly different. That increases the chance that at least one of the beams will reach the receiver on the LADEE. Test results have been promising, according to MIT, with the 384, 633-kilometer optical link providing error-free performance in both darkness and bright sunlight, through partly transparent thin clouds, and through atmospheric turbulence that affected signal power.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Quad Lasers Deliver Fast, Earth-Based Internet To the Moon
What’s the language that the most Americans speak after English? As you’d probably guess, the second-most common language spoken in the U.S. is Spanish. But if you look at the most common languages after English and Spanish, the results get a little more surprising, especially when you parse them by state. Read more…
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The Most Common Languages Spoken in the U.S. After English and Spanish
necro81 writes: “The FDA today approved the Luke prosthetic arm for sale. The Luke Arm, created by Dean Kamen’s DEKA R&D Corp., was a project initiated by DARPA to develop a prosthetic arm for wounded warriors more advanced than those previously available. The Arm can be configured for below-the-elbow, above-the-elbow, and shoulder-level amputees. The full arm has 10 powered degrees of freedom and has the look and weight of the arm it replaces. Through trials by DEKA and the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, the Arm has been used by dozens of amputees for a total of many thousands of hours. Commercialization is still pending.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Luke Prosthetic Arm Approved By FDA