Tag: science

Samsung Releases First 2TB Consumer SSD For Laptops

Lucas123 writes: Samsung has released what it is calling the world’s first 2.5-in consumer-grade, multi-terabyte SSD, and it’s issuing the new drive a 10-year warranty. With up to 2TB of capacity, the new 850 Pro and 850 EVO SSDs double the maximum capacity of their predecessors. As with the previous 840 Pro and EVO models, Samsung used its 3D V-NAND technology, which stacks 32 layers of NAND atop one another in a microscopic skyscraper. Additionally, the drives take advantage of multi-level cell (MLC) and triple-level cell (TLC) (2- and 3-bit per cell) technology for even greater density. The 850 Pro, Samsung said, can manage up to 550MBps sequential read and 520MBps sequential write rates and up to 100, 000 random I/Os per second (IOPS). The 850 EVO SSD has slightly lower performance with 540MBps and 520MBps sequential read/write rates and up to 90, 000 random IOPS. The SSDs will range in capacity from 120GB to 2TB and in price from $99 to $999. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read More:
Samsung Releases First 2TB Consumer SSD For Laptops

iPhone 6S New Feature: Force Touch

New submitter WarJolt writes: Apple is adding Force Touch to their iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus. I’m not sure if Force Touch enough to convince an Android user like myself to switch, but there are definitely some interesting possibilities for app developers. A challenge for App developers will be to make apps compatible with both Force Touch iPhones and non-force touch iPhones. (Here’s the Bloomberg report Forbes draws from.) Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continued here:
iPhone 6S New Feature: Force Touch

Engineers Just Broke the Capacity Limit For Fiber Optic Transmission

So, that Internet apocalypse that’s going to befall us when the our fiber optic cables max out? Maybe not so much. On Thursday, engineers reported in Science that they’d broken the “capacity limit” for fiber optic transmission, opening the door to future networks that carry more data further at lower costs. Read more…

More:
Engineers Just Broke the Capacity Limit For Fiber Optic Transmission

How Etak Built a Car Navigation System In 1985

harrymcc writes: Thirty years ago, a startup called Etak released the Navigator, an in-car navigation system. It provided turn-by-turn driving directions despite the fact that GPS did not exist, and stored its maps–which Etak had to create itself–on cassette tapes. And some of its data and technologies are still in use in today’s navigation apps. Over at Fast Company, Benj Edwards tells this amazing story. I remember reading about (and lusting over) this system back then, in the much-missed DAK catalog. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Taken from:
How Etak Built a Car Navigation System In 1985

This  Full-Color Display is Just Microns Thick and Flexible Like Skin

The prospect of a material that can change color yet is still flexible enough to wear as clothing is a perennial sci-fi dream—and now amazingly close to reality. This new electronic skin is just a few microns thick and yet manages to change color, acting as a credible digital display. Read more…

Excerpt from:
This  Full-Color Display is Just Microns Thick and Flexible Like Skin

NIST Workshop Explores Automated Tattoo Identification

chicksdaddy writes: Security Ledger reports on a recent NIST workshop dedicated to improving the art of automated tattoo identification. It used to be that the only place you’d commonly see tattoos was at your local VA hospital. No more. In the last 30 years, body art has gone mainstream. One in five adults in the U.S. has one. For law enforcement and forensics experts, this is a good thing; tattoos are a great way to identify both perpetrators and their victims. Given the number and variety of tattoos, though, how to describe and catalog them? Clearly this is an area where technology can help, but it’s also one of those “fuzzy” problems that challenges the limits of artificial intelligence. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Tattoo Recognition Technology Challenge Workshop challenged industry and academia to work towards developing an automated image-based tattoo matching technology. Participating organizations in the challenge used a FBI -supplied dataset of thousands of images of tattoos from government databases. They were challenged to develop methods for identifying a tattoo in an image, identifying visually similar or related tattoos from different subjects; identifying the same tattoo image from the same subject over time; identifying a small region of interest that is contained in a larger image; and identifying a tattoo from a visually similar image like a sketch or scanned print. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More:
NIST Workshop Explores Automated Tattoo Identification

Amazon Is Only Going To Pay Authors When Each Page Is Read

An anonymous reader writes: Amazon has a new plan to keep self-published authors honest: they’re only going to pay them when someone actually reads a page. Peter Wayner at the Atlantic explores how this is going to change the lives of the authors — and the readers. Fat, impressive coffee table books are out if no one reads them. Thin, concise authors will be bereft. Page turners are in. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Link:
Amazon Is Only Going To Pay Authors When Each Page Is Read

Unicode Consortium Releases Unicode 8.0.0

An anonymous reader writes: The newest version of the Unicode standard adds 7, 716 new characters to the existing 21, 499 – that’s more than 35% growth! Most of them are Chinese, Japan and Korean ideographs, but among those changes Unicode adds support for new languages like Ik, used in Uganda. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Follow this link:
Unicode Consortium Releases Unicode 8.0.0

5G Network Speed Defined As 20 Gbps By the International Telecommunication Union

An anonymous reader writes with a report at Mobipicker (linking to a Korea Times story) that a 12-member committee from the International Telecommunication Union has hashed out a formal definition of the speed requirements for 5G mobile networking; the result has been designated IMT-2020, and it specifies that 5G networks should provide data speeds of up to 20Gbps — 20 times faster than 4G. From the Korea Times story: The 5G network will also have a capacity to provide more than 100 megabits-per-second average data transmission to over one million Internet of Things devices within 1 square kilometer. Video content services, including ones that use holography technology, will also be available thanks to the expanded data transmit capacity, the ministry said. … The union also decided to target commercializing the 5G network worldwide by 2020. To do so, it will start receiving applications for technology which can be candidates to become the standard for the new network. Consequently, the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games will be the world’s first international event to showcase and demonstrate 5G technology. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

View the original here:
5G Network Speed Defined As 20 Gbps By the International Telecommunication Union

How Facebook Is Censoring Content in the United States

Facebook vows to be transparent, and yet the Electronic Frontier Foundation discovered that the company is hiding all the ways that it blocks access in the United States, on behalf of law enforcement. Read more…

Excerpt from:
How Facebook Is Censoring Content in the United States