Tag: video

Watch The Olympics Opening Ceremony Drone Video Before It Gets Taken Down (Again)

On Saturday I was lucky enough to watch footage of the amazing drone display aired during the Olympics opening ceremony. Coordinated by Intel, 1, 218 drones performed a lightshow–pre-recorded rather than conducted live, due to logistical issues–and it was posted to Vimeo for those who missed the live broadcast. Sadly, the International Olympics Committee ordered the video removed due to copyright infringement. Fair enough–but then why not post the video themselves, so those who missed it could enjoy it? Neither they nor NBC has made the video available. So I poked around and found a pirated copy on YouTube. It’s a truncated version somewhat spoiled by commentary provided by Korean news broadcasters, but at least gives you a taste. Watch it here (it’s unembeddable) before the IOC orders it removed. It really is a shame they pulled the video, because the team behind it busted their asses to pull this off. You can see some snippets of the footage in the behind-the-scenes video below: I’m hoping the IOC comes to their senses and re-posts the full version. If they do I’ll come back to this post and insert it.

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Watch The Olympics Opening Ceremony Drone Video Before It Gets Taken Down (Again)

NASA is putting hundreds of historical videos on YouTube

As part of its mission to make its research easier to access, NASA is uploading decades’ worth of archived footage to YouTube. So far around 300 videos have been uploaded, with a further 200 on the way. Each clip documents an important part of NASA’s history, including Space Shuttle landing research, X1 and X43A trial flights and the testing of the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle. SpaceX chief Elon Musk has previously commented on how difficult it was to find historical footage on NASA’s website. Before the uploading project, curious flight-fans would have to laboriously search through the Dryden Aircraft Movie Collection via the Dryden Flight Research Center website. Standard search queries in Google would reveal nothing. Now, with the video library prominently on the (renamed) Armstrong Flight Research Center’s website and YouTube channel , everyone has easy access to these fascinating historical highlights. Via: Motherboard Source: Armstrong Video Gallery

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NASA is putting hundreds of historical videos on YouTube

Researchers encode a movie onto living bacteria

Forget USB drives and the cloud — what if you could carry every bit of data you’ve ever used on your skin? That’s the long-term goal of researchers at Harvard Medical School, who have stored a video in the DNA of bacteria. It’s the first time a video has been recorded into living cells, as opposed to synthetic material. The team inserted a short animated image of ‘The Horse in Motion’ (one of the earliest moving images ever created) into E. coli, using gene-editing system CRISPR. The movie was split into five frames, and each frame chopped into single-colored pixels. They then created DNA codes corresponding to each color and strung them together. Each bacterium carried snippets of the video stored in their DNA, and when taken together, the scientists were able to retrieve and reconstruct the pieces to play the video. It’s not the first time we’ve seen data stored in this fashion. Back in 2003 a small message was encoded into DNA, and more recently we’ve seen a full operating system written into DNA strands. One team is even trying to store poetry in DNA. But this is the first time it’s been attempted with living bacteria, rather than synthetic material, which presents a unique set of challenges. Live cells are constantly moving and changing, and are liable to interpret the addition of data to their DNA as an invading virus, and subsequently destroy it. That’s why, shaky and blurred as it is, this movie breaks new ground. The world is generating huge amounts of digital data, and scientists see DNA as an effective way of not only dealing with the volumes produced, but as a secure method of preservation. In the face of nuclear explosions, radiation exposure or extreme temperature fluctuation some bacteria can continue to exist — data centers will not. It’ll be some time before you can use this technology to upload data into your body, but in the meantime it has valuable research applications. The scientists behind the study hope the breakthrough will eventually lead to the creation of “living sensors” that can record what is happening inside a cell or in its environment. Via: Stat News Source: Nature (PDF)

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Researchers encode a movie onto living bacteria

Run Android on an iPhone – with some heavy engineering and caveats

Familiar with cramming one operating system into somewhere it doesn’t belong , developers at Tendigi have just created a homemade iPhone case that lets you run Android on your iOS smartphone. (Well, kind of). Fortunately, because of the Android Open Source Project , it gave Nick Lee the freedom to clone the mobile OS and build his own local hardware. Before he went that far, Lee decided to test the concept — streaming Android across to an iPhone through a cable — with a Nexus 5. He needed tools that could communicate with iOS, as well as services that let USB cables play nice with an iPhone. Lee also crafted software that transmitted what was happening on the Android devices’ screen to the iPhone, while also send touch-input back. The next challenge: cramming it all into an iPhone “case”. See it working after the break. He then made his own tiny Android development board (all the technical specifics are here ), linking it to the soon-to-be franken-iPhone and its own power supply, prototyping and 3D-printing an enclosure to house it all and attach to the iPhone. It’s not the prettiest case, and really you’re ‘streaming’ Android to your iPhone screen, but it’s the man-hours thought that counts, right? Source: Tendigi

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Run Android on an iPhone – with some heavy engineering and caveats

The ‘Game of Thrones’ credits are more fun in 360-degrees

There are still ten days to go until Game of Thrones season six debuts, but HBO is doing its best to keep fans’ appetites for new footage satiated until then. After dropping a dingy new trailer on Monday, and some behind-the-scenes footage yesterday, it’s now released a 360-degree video of the show’s opening credits on Facebook. The extended sequence lets you explore the famous clockwork map of Westeros and Essos. The map is arranged inside a sphere, which means looking in the right direction will give you a little peek across the water at Sothoryos and the Basilisk Isles. Many of the show’s iconic locations are there, from King’s Landing and Winterfell to Dorne. There are more than a few easter eggs to discover just by looking around as well, including a glimpse of an unnamed direwolf by the wall — make of that what you will — and a PG-13 view of the Titan of Braavos. Via: Deadline Source: Game of Thrones (Facebook)

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The ‘Game of Thrones’ credits are more fun in 360-degrees

Hitachi’s answer to Pepper the robot is swifter and sturdier

Look out, Pepper : you have some fresh competition. Hitachi has unveiled EMIEW3, its first humanoid assistant robot built for full-fledged commercial service. Like its SoftBank-made counterpart, it’s designed to help you find your way around stores and public facilities. It’s particularly focused on tourists, as it can switch languages on the fly. However, its edge may simply be its ability to cope with real-world situations. It’s much faster than Pepper (3.7MPH versus 1.2MPH), so it’s more likely to keep up with humans; it can also get back up if it falls down, and listen to you in noisy street environments. The machine also reflects a lot of lessons learned from its predecessor and beyond. For instance, it knows to slow down near corners so that it won’t smack into someone. It identifies people asking for help, too, and will approach on its own. Its biggest drawback is simply that it’s not as personable as Pepper (you’re just looking at a pair of expressionless eyes), and doesn’t have a built-in display to show information. It’s going to be a while before you see EMIEW3 in service, as Hitachi doesn’t expect it to be ready until 2018. However, Hitachi has grand ambitions for its third-generation hardware. It’s hoping to offer the new robot beyond Japan, so you might just witness this little helper guiding you through offices and stores in your corner of the world. Via: Nikkei , I4U Source: Hitachi

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Hitachi’s answer to Pepper the robot is swifter and sturdier

A ‘Star Wars’ VR experiment is coming soon to HTC Vive

Last year Industrial Light & Magic teased an HTC Vive VR tie-in experience (the old teaser clip is embedded after the break) to go along with The Force Awakens and to celebrate the launch of its ILM Experience Lab . It appears its release was delayed along with the headset, but now that it’s rolling out, we should see it soon. Earlier this evening a short YouTube teaser for Star Wars: Trials on Tattooine appeared on the ILMVisualFX YouTube channel before going private, and it showed something that appeared to go beyond the Jakku Spy experience that appeared last year for Google Cardboard. It flashed a glimpse at the Vive headset, along with a VR trip in the Star Wars universe featuring everything from R2-D2 to player-controlled lightsaber battles. These screenshots should give you an idea of what this Cinematic Virtual Reality Experiment will be like, now we’re just waiting to hear when it will be available. [Thanks, Anonymous!] Source: ILMVisualFX (YouTube)

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A ‘Star Wars’ VR experiment is coming soon to HTC Vive

Twisty fusion reactor goes online after 19 years of work

Germany just took fusion power one big, important step forward. The country’s Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics has just switched on Wendelstein 7-X , the first large fusion reactor based on a twisty stellarator design. It’s only producing hydrogen plasma at the moment and won’t actually generate energy, but power isn’t really the point. Instead, it’ll serve as proof that stellarators could provide energy while operating continuously, unlike current (tokamak-based) fusion reactors that operate in short pulses. They should be safer, too. The inaugural test phase will run through mid-March, after which point it’ll get an upgrade to let it run hotter and longer. Eventually, it should discharge for up to 30 minutes at a time, and muster a heating power of 20 megawatts. The machine comes at a high price in more ways than one. It took roughly 19 years to design and build Wendelstein 7-X at a staggering cost of €1.2 billion, or about $1.3 billion. That’s a lot of effort for a testbed device. However, it could pay off if it leads to a much more powerful (not to mention less dangerous ) alternative to nuclear fission energy. Via: Motherboard Source: Max Planck Institute

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Twisty fusion reactor goes online after 19 years of work

YouTube Said To Be Working to Stream Live 360 Video

There’s no denying that 360 video is wonderful, immersive and, in some cases, almost exhilarating . But YouTube isn’t content: Apparently it’s building capabilities that will allow it to stream 360-degree video live. Read more…

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YouTube Said To Be Working to Stream Live 360 Video

N64’s ‘GoldenEye 007’ goes modern with Unreal Engine 4

Ah, yes. GoldenEye 007 . One of the classic Nintendo 64 titles and a memorable first-person shooter is certainly a game that I spent a lot of time with. Now we have a glimpse of what the game could look like if it was made with the tools available to developers today. YouTube user Jude Wilson recreated a portion of the Facility Map using Unreal Engine 4 , offering a bit of nostalgia for those of us who are familiar with the title. Wilson isn’t the first to do this, as Mario and Sonic have already been given the UE4 treatment. It’s an interesting take, but don’t take our word for it, go through the level yourself via the video down below. Via: Cinema Blend Source: Jude Wilson (YouTube)

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N64’s ‘GoldenEye 007’ goes modern with Unreal Engine 4