Yesterday, Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright announced that he was the elusive creator of Bitcoin. His proclamation was immediately met with an avalanche of suspicion , with one prominent cryptography expert describing it as “flimflam and hokum.” Now, through a spokesman, Wright has promised that further proof for his claims is coming. Read more…
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Craig Wright Claims He Will Move Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin ‘In the Coming Days’
Windows/Mac/Linux: The Nintendo 3DS is a great little system , but with a maximum resolution of 400 x 240, it’s not exactly a looker. Citra is an emulator that’s still very early in development, but features a way to upscale 3DS games to 1600 x 960. Read more…
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Citra Emulates 3DS Games In Higher Definition
Moog’s first iPad app, called the Animoog, did an incredible job smashing together iPad tech and old analog instruments , back when tablets were very much a new thing . It’s nearly five years later, and Moog has launched an all-new app, digitally memorializing its classic $10, 000 Moog Model 15 Synthesizer . Luckily, the app comes at a 99.7 percent discount. Read more…
Crowdfunded filmmakers will be able to shoot on film for a lot less money thanks to a partnership between Kodak and Kickstarter. Kodak says it will provide free 35mm or Super 16mm film stock for select projects, up to a total of around $20, 000 for 35mm film, depending on the total budget. Beyond that, the company will provide discounted film and mentoring for packaging, financing and sales strategies. The choice of filmmakers appears to be at Kodak’s discretion, but so far the company has picked several Kickstarter productions that will launch this spring. Kickstarter has successfully funded 20, 000 productions totalling $330 million so far, though it didn’t say which were shot on film. The platform has garnered a lot of bad publicity in the past by funding large projects like Veronica Mars and Zach Braff’s Wish I Was Here , since the well-known producers probably could have raised the cash elsewhere. On the other hand, it’s an excellent platform for up-and-coming filmmakers, and has helped get Oscar-nominated projects with very small budgets off the ground. Kodak VP Anne Hubbell says that “Kodak understands that artists working at all budget levels strive to tell their stories with the unique quality and emotion that film provides.” The company points out that footage can be purchased by Kickstarter producers in eighteen countries, including the US, UK, France and Canada. Kodak’s situation is a lot more secure in the film industry since it struck a deal with Hollywood to supply film for the foreseeable future. DarkFall, a Kickstarter film backed by Kodak However, it’s equally likely that many young, inexperienced directors would rather shoot digital, given advantages like speed and the ability to easily review takes. As we have pointed out , the costs of shooting on film go way beyond the stock itself. Filmmakers also need to consider processing and transferring footage to a format that can be edited, color corrected and converted to a final screening format. That, combined with the lower sensitivity of film compared to digital cameras (which necessitates more complex lighting) means that the total budget will likely still be higher, even with the film thrown in. That said, it’s always good to have choices, so if it’s an aesthetic that a director absolutely can’t live without, good old celluloid is now a much more feasible option. Source: Kodak
Who said that e-paper was old stuff ? Certainly not China — the country’s Guangzhou OED Technologies has created what it says is the world’s first graphene -based e-paper. The extremely strong yet light material promises very thin screens that are both brighter and more flexible. You could get e-readers that are easier to read on a sunny day, for instance, or activity trackers that can put up with more abuse. It should even be less expensive, as graphene’s carbon is much easier to find than the exotic indium metal you see in conventional e-paper. The main question is simply availability. The company expects to start production of graphene e-paper in a year, and it’s not clear just who’s lined up. You shouldn’t count on Amazon making a graphene Kindle, unfortunately. If the technology takes off, though, it could give e-paper some relevance in an era when it’s being crowded out by LCD- and OLED-based devices. Via: DNA India Source: Xinhua
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Graphene e-paper is brighter and bendier
One of the really nice things about the newest builds of Raspbian is that it comes with just about all the software you need to get running. The downside of that is that all that software takes up a ton of space. RasPi.tv points out you can quickly snag about a 1GB back by deleting two apps: LibreOffice and Wolfram. Read more…
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Instantly Free Up Almost 1GB on Your Raspberry Pi By Ditching LibreOffice and Wolfram
Microsoft is about to release its take on the automation service IFTTT called Flow, according to a blog post published and removed by the company. Update : the service is now live ! Flow connects to over 35 services, with more integrations planned. These include Microsoft products like Office 365 and OneDrive; third-party platforms such as Twitter, Dropbox, MailChimp, Google Drive, Slack and Trello; and developer-focused options like Github and SQL. Just like IFTTT, you’ll be able to create workflows across multiple services. Examples include adding a card in Trello if your boss emails you with “to do” in the subject line, sending a text alert if a Dropbox file is modified, or saving all of a user’s tweets to OneDrive. Some of this functionality has been available as part of a private preview for Microsoft’s Azure business customers, but Flow appears to be a more user-friendly take on the concept. It’s aimed squarely at businesses, schools and other large institutions, but there’s no reason that it couldn’t be useful to individuals, especially if you’re the sort of person that organizes your life through Trello. It’s not clear exactly when Flow will be ready. Twitter user @h0x0d first discovered the service (as spotted by The Verge ) along with the blog post, but it was swiftly removed. The article itself had a typo and didn’t appear finished, so it seems that it was posted before it was ready. Ironically, one of the workflows mentioned in the post intended to ensure “that all of the posts [about Flow] were reviewed and approved.” It appears that particular Flow failed. We’ve reached out to Microsoft for more information on Flow, and will update you once we have more details. Update : As noted above, Microsoft’s Flow service went live on Friday morning. Via: The Verge Source: Microsoft Flow (Google cache)
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Flow is Microsoft’s take on IFTTT automation (Updated)
Elon Musk has been fighting to be treated with the same level of respect as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and it looks like his persistence has paid off. Reuters is reporting that the US Air Force has handed SpaceX a contract worth $83 million to launch the next GPS satellite into orbit. It’s a big deal, because until now, only Lockheed and Boeing (through the United Launch Alliance ) have been permitted to fling objects into the heavens on the Air Force’s behalf. The launch will take place in May 2018 from Florida atop a Falcon 9 rocket, although while Musk has won the battle, he might also be well on the way to winning the war. Back in 2014, the US Air Force awarded a contract for 26 rocket launches to ULA, the space joint venture from Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Musk believed that SpaceX was able to offer a better deal, and was peeved he wasn’t even allowed the chance to bid for the business. Shortly afterward, Musk launched a lawsuit to try and block the contract, alleging that there was something fishy about the contract process. Namely that one of the officials in charge of awarding the deal was subsequently handed a cushy job at the ULA . It didn’t take long for red-faced bodies at the Pentagon to agree that it needed to improve “the competitive landscape” for “national security space launches.” Reuters is also suggesting that the ULA might not be able to compete with SpaceX and its ability to make space launches progressively cheaper. That’s not much of a surprise, since the company has struggled in recent years to deal with its upstart rival. Part of this is down to the fact that its Atlas V rockets use Russian-made rocket engines, which are cheap and reliable but politically inconvenient. In the wake of the occupation of Crimea, the US imposed trade sanctions on Russia that preclude ULA from sourcing its engines. Last week the Motley Fool published a report that said that something might be rotten in the state of the ULA more generally. Former executive Brett Tobey apparently told students at the University of Colorado that it simply couldn’t compete with SpaceX. He reportedly said that it was because of the way his former company’s pricing structure was laid out, representatives were prohibited from quoting under $125 million. Even worse is that when the subsidiary costs are also included in the calculation, the price of a ULA launch is closer to $200 million. In addition, the firm has announced that it’ll cut jobs, and could let anywhere between 375 and 500 employees go between now and 2017. By comparison, SpaceX is riding high after showing that its Falcon 9 rocket can land on a platform after being shot into space . Reusable rockets is going to massively reduce the cost for each launch, and should help make journeys into the heavens that much cheaper. In addition, Musk is pledging to get the first SpaceX capsules to land on Mars by 2018 , an ambitious goal, but one that he’s uniquely equipped to see to reality.
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SpaceX wins its first military launch contract
It’s been two weeks since Disney’s Jungle Book was released—and we still can’t quite believe the whole thing was filmed in a downtown L.A. warehouse . Now Disney is peeling back the curtain and showing us just how this incredible spectacle was created. Read more…
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Astonishing Behind-the-Scenes Video Shows How The Jungle Book Was Filmed in Downtown LA
The very name of the T6 ion thruster sounds like something from sci-fi. But it’s very real, and this little engine will be one of four that take the European Space Agency’s BepiColombo spacecraft to Mercury. Read more…
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This Futuristic Ion Thruster Will Take a Mission to Mercury