Tag: science

MGM and Universal commit to Dolby’s HDR imaging tech

Over the past year, Dolby’s worked hard to convince many of the major movie studios and streaming services that its HDR imaging technology is the one worth backing. Netflix, Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures are already on board, but today they’ve been joined by MGM Studios and Universal Pictures, after the studios confirmed they’ll deliver “new release and catalog titles” that have been mastered in Dolby Vision. High dynamic range (HDR), if you’re not already aware, transforms the way you see HD and 4K media. The technology doesn’t change the number of pixels your TV works with, it just makes them do more. Dolby Vision, for example, delivers increased brightness, better light-to-dark contrast and colors that the company says have been seen before on a TV. As with many new digital technologies, the uptake of HDR could be impacted by a battle over competing standards. The UHD Alliance is tackling the issue, though, and has issued specifications for what it considers to be a ‘premium’ 4K TV . Any set that meets the required resolution, color depth and brightness and black levels will be issued with a sticker that proves it can deliver the best possible experience from your Ultra HD Blu-rays or 4K streams from Netflix and Amazon. Dolby is also working to get TV makers on board, recently announcing that it will feature on Vizio’s latest range of 4K TVs. The company is also working with Roku to incorporate the technology into future 4K Roku TVs, regardless of who they’re made by. Source: Dolby

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MGM and Universal commit to Dolby’s HDR imaging tech

See how much fat you’re burning just by breathing out

Using a weighing scale to keep track of your weight is tricky. Your body can lose water, muscle or fat but the scale simply picks up your overall weight. It doesn’t reflect your gym obsession or fat loss with any accuracy. LEVL is a new portable device that analyses your breath to tell you if your body is in fat-burning mode. A white box holds a proprietary nano sensor that checks your breath for the level of acetone, a molecule that your body releases when it goes into fat burning mode or ketosis. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen tech like this: in 2013, NTT DoCoMo demonstrated something remarkably similar. The process is simple: breathe in, breathe out into the inhaler and place it in a white device for an instant reading of the acetone concentration. There is an accompanying app that tracks your analysis to help you maintain a record of your readings over time. The app provides analysis of the amount of calories (and, by extension, pounds) burned off during the day. In many ways, the only thing that LEVL provides is a vague indication that your weight-loss regime is working, or not. But is that really something you would, or need to monitor to such an obsessive level? We’re not entirely sure. Daniel Cooper contributed to this report.

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See how much fat you’re burning just by breathing out

PlayStation Now just got 40-plus new PS3 games

Sony announced the addition of more than 40 PS3 games to its Now service, bringing the total number of available PS3 games to 300, 100 of which are PS3 exclusives . Additionally, Sony’s offering a pretty steep discount on the Now service itself for the holidays — $100 for a full year’s subscription . That’s more than half off what they normally charge. The discount offer runs through Monday, January 11th. [Image Credit: Getty]

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PlayStation Now just got 40-plus new PS3 games

How an IRS Agent Stole $1M From Taxpayers

Trailrunner7 writes: Few, if any, companies or government agencies store more sensitive personal information than the IRS, and consumers have virtually no insight into how that data is used and secured. But, as the results of a recent Justice Department investigation show, when you start poking around in those dark corners, you sometimes find very ugly things. Beginning in 2008, a small group of people–including an IRS employee who worked in the Taxpayer Advocate Service section–worked a simple and effective scam that involved fake tax returns, phony refunds, dozens of pre-loaded debit cards, and a web of lies. The scheme relied upon one key ingredient for its success: access to taxpayers’ personal information. And it brought the alleged perpetrators more than $1 million. What sets this case apart is that the accused IRS employee, Nakeisha Hall, was tasked specifically with helping people who had been affected by some kind of tax-related identity theft or fraud. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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How an IRS Agent Stole $1M From Taxpayers

Intel, Warner sue over device that strips 4K copy protection

The media industry was more than a little alarmed when 4K bootlegs of Amazon and Netflix streams showed up this November. Weren’t these feeds supposed to be relatively safe from pirates? It’s no surprise, then, that they’re doing something about it. Intel (through its Digital Content Protection brand) and Warner Bros. are suing LegendSky for offering HDFury, a series of devices designed to strip HDCP copy protection from many sources, including streams. The two plaintiffs claim that HDFury violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention measures, making it all too easy to rip and share 4K video. They also allege that LegendSky is dishonest when it says it meets HDCP’s licensing requirements. LegendSky hasn’t said how it’s handling the lawsuit, although it may not have much success fighting back. As TorrentFreak notes, 4K stream rips started surfacing mere days after the first HDFury boxes started shipping. Even if Intel and Warner can’t draw a direct link between the two events, the timing certainly looks suspicious. And while HDCP is notorious for being a nuisance to legitimate viewers, it’s not very likely that people are buying HDFury solely to reclaim some convenience. As it stands, it wasn’t too hard to see this coming. With 4K Blu-ray movies on the way, Warner and other studios are no doubt eager to minimize the related piracy before it really takes off — streaming was just the tip of the iceberg. Source: TorrentFreak

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Intel, Warner sue over device that strips 4K copy protection

Netgear transforms your power plug into a fast WiFi hotspot

2016 is here, and the flying cars and hoverboards are disappointing , to say the least. Worse yet, we still can’t get a decent internet connection in our man cave, but Netgear is at least trying to solve that problem with a string of new devices for CES 2016. The most interesting is the PowerLine WiFi 1000 , a product the company claims is the first to marry gigabit powerline (aka HomePlug ) with 802.11ac WiFi. (The Devolo DLAN 1200+ also does the trick, but it’s only available in Europe.) The idea is to plug the base unit into an electrical plug and hook it up to your router, then plug the WiFi extender into another socket. You can then connect via 802.11ac WiFi in a remote room to your device of choice. That should help you avoid connection woes in remote sections of your house or behind walls. However, powerline connections often fail to work well in houses with “noisy” electrical setups and speeds are always much lower than the maximum specified. Nevertheless, it could may solve a problem dead spot in places where you can’t run an ethernet cable and WiFi extenders won’t do the trick. The Powerline WiFi 1000 Kit is now available in the US for $119.99. Speaking of WiFi range extenders, Netgear also launched the Nighthawk X4 AC2200 (2.2Gbps) and AC1900 (1.9Gbps), the first such devices to feature Multi-User MIMO tech. What that jargon means is that the extenders multitask by sending separate WiFi streams to each user so that everyone gets faster speeds with less waiting. Both devices have 802.11ac WiFi, Beamforming+ and four internal antennae that cover up to 10, 000 square feet. The units are now available in the US for $169.99 for the X4 AC2200 and $139.99 for the slightly slower AC1900. Netgear also unveiled the Nighthawk X4S AC2600 router , a mid-priced model aimed at the gaming and streaming set. The company said it built on its popular Nighthawk X4 AC2350 router by adding a bunch of new features like quad-stream architecture on both 2.4 and 5GHz bands, Multi-User MIMO and 160MHz bandwidth. The company claims that the latter feature will provide better support for upcoming smartphone tech. The other features, meanwhile, will let you connect more devices and stream faster with lower latency and higher bandwidth. Other features include a pair of USB 3.0 ports and an eSATA port to easily add storage to the device, which also functions as a smart hub. It’s also got VPN support for secure remote access and the MyMedia app for DLNA connectivity. The Nighthawk X4 AC2350 is now available at a suggested price of $269.99 in the US.

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Netgear transforms your power plug into a fast WiFi hotspot

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

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