proposals – Tech Today w/ Ken May

It’s only been a month since the Unicode Emoji Consortium released version 10 of the colorful little communication icons, including more diverse images along with zombies, a T-rex and (yes) a sandwich icon. Now, though, the group has yet another set of proposed emojis for next year. Along with more math and science items and a silly drunk face emoji, the new group of 67 tiny pictures includes, wait for it, a new sad poo emoji. The top two requested emoji in this list are “face with smiling eyes and party horn and party hat, ” which I guess is sort of a “let’s party” emoji, along with “frowning face with question marks as eyes, ” which is totally going to be my go-to “WTF” emoji when it shows up on my iPhone. The other proposed images range from a self-explanatory “smiling face with smiling eyes and three hearts” to a more complex image like “blue face with clenched teeth and icicles.” There are body parts, like the tops of various heads (including a bald one), items of clothing like a hiking boot and lab coat, new animals like a llama and hippopotamus, more foods like a “moon cake” and mango and various activity emojis like “flying disc” and firecracker. Other proposals include cool science objects, like a test tube and DNA double helix, as well as stuff like a roll of toilet paper (handy when stuck in the bathroom with only your phone and one of the two poop emojis) and a ball of yarn. These are all just draft emojis, of course. The final encoding in Unicode 11.0 isn’t set to release until June of 2018. The final candidates will be decide in the fourth quarter of this year, and decided in the first quarter of 2018. The Emoji subcommittee says that it received many proposals for new emoji that weren’t “well-formed.” The authors have been informed of the need to re-submit, so the list can change at any time. Via: The Verge Source: Unicode

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Proposed emojis include the drunk face and sad poo we’ve all been missing

One area limiting speed in personal computing speed is memory — specifically, how quickly individual memory cells can be switched, which is currently done using an external magnetic field. European and Russian scientists have proposed a new method using much more rapid terahertz radiation, aka “T-rays, ” the same things used in airport body scanners. According to their research, published in the journal Nature , swapping out magnetic fields for T-rays could crank up the rate of the cell-resetting process by a factor of 1000, which could be used to create ultrafast memory. The radiation is actually a series of short electromagnetic pulses pinging the cells at terahertz frequencies (which have wavelengths of about 0.1 millimeter, lying between microwaves and infrared light, according to the scientists’ press release). Most of the recent T-ray experiments have dealt with quick, precise inspections of organic and mechanical material. Aside from quickly scanning you for contraband and awkward bulges at airports, other proposals have involved using terahertz radiation to look into broken microchip innards , peer into fragile texts and even comb airport luggage for bombs . But similar to those hypothetical applications, you won’t see T-rays in your PCs any time soon. The scientists have successfully demonstrated the concept on a weak ferromagnet, thulium orthoferrite (TmFeO₃), and even found that the terahertz radiation’s effect was ten times greater than a traditional external magnetic field, meaning the new method is both far faster and more efficient. But the scientists have yet to publish tests on actual computer memory cells, so it’s unknown when, or if, T-rays will buzz around inside your machine. Source: Nature

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Terahertz radiation could speed up computer memory by 1000 times