In Washington today, District Judge James E. Boarsberge said he will not issue a decision on a legal challenge by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Dakota Access, LLC, the private firm behind a nearly $4 billion oil project Native people say will destroy their land and cause unprecedented damage to human, plant, and animal life in the region.
The latest addition to a growing menagerie of octopus-robots has a lot going for it: It’s small, completely squishy, it doesn’t need a battery — and it farts.
The adorable palm-sized robot is the work of a team of engineers from Harvard University. They created our flatulent friend by pouring liquid silicone into an octopus-shaped mold and 3D printing legs. A soft, central controller in the bot’s body shunts hydrogen peroxide fuel through reaction chambers that convert the liquid to oxygen gas and water vapor. The gas inflates the legs through tiny channels running from the body and makes them wiggle — in a minimally alarming way, which is a first for the field of octobots. But that gas has to go somewhere when it’s done making the...
It's release week in Android land. It's kinda like Christmas… if the presents took months to reach some of the good little geeks and nerds.
If you're rocking Nougat right now, I'm happy for you. This is the benefit of buying a Nexus. For the rest of us, we'll be waiting a little while for Samsung, HTC, Motorola, and the rest to get updates to our phones. Okay, some of us will be waiting a lotta while, but in the meantime, we've got a little piece of Nougat you can taste on your own device: a rocking new wallpaper, pulled from the Google Now Launcher that pushed with Nougat on the Nexus 6P and 5X.
It's pink. It's glorious. It's dusky. And even though it's not the most exciting wallpaper, it's a wallpaper with a subtle grace and simplicity to add some class to your home screen.
I'm not entirely sure if this is sand or a coarse rock wall, but the lights and shadows at work here are breathtaking. I'd use two icon packs with this wall, one with the shadows and one with that beautiful golden rock.
This thin strip of sand along the deep, dark blue of the ocean is mesmerizing. It reminds me of trying to walk a delicate knife edge... Whether keeping balance or just remembering how thin the target you're reaching for is, this wallpaper has you covered.
As we navigate our lives, and the Android world, there's always rocks we have to steer away from, and while lighthouses sometimes help, we all must be vigilant as we try to traverse our own oceans.
Waves are enigmatic things. Taming them is impossible. Riding them takes the experience and the faith to let it carry you away. Wave represent tension, conflict, and yet they are quite peaceful to watch, and especially to hear.
If customized keyboards for mobile devices are to be the next-gen interface for accessing the wider web – including information you’d normally turn to a search engine to find – then Microsoft today has stepped up its fight with Google with the rollout of a new version of its predictive keyboard app Word Flow. While the app previously offered intelligent word suggestions… Read More
For the first time, astronomers have discovered a planet orbiting our sun’s nearest neighbor. The newly identified exoplanet (a planet outside our solar system) is officially the closest known exoplanet to Earth, located at a distance of 4.25 light-years away.
They’re calling it Proxima b, and it orbits around our nearest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri, every… Read More
Starting in the coming weeks, Google is adding a new data-saving perk for owners of its Nexus smartphones. Called Wi-Fi Assistant, the feature lets your device automatically connect to millions of open and free Wi-Fi hotspots in an effort to cut down on data use and optimize mobile data speeds. Prior to today, the feature was exclusive to Google’s Project Fi cell service. It will now be broadly available to any Nexus phone owner in the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, and Nordic countries, Google says.
To find Wi-Fi Assistant, head over to the Android Settings app, tap Google, tap Networking, and from there you can then toggle the feature on and off. If your phone is connected via Wi-Fi Assistant, you’ll see a small key in the upper corner...
Most states have no maximum temperature standards for their prisons: combine that with a succession of hottest-months-on-record and a prison system that provides less water than is medically recommended even when it's not hotter than blazes, and you've got a carceral state that is roasting prisoners alive. (more…)
Josh P. Davis, a psychology professor at the University of Greenwich estimates the 1% of the population are "super-recognizers" of faces.
From Science Alert:
In 2009, a team of neuroscientists from Harvard did one of the first studies of super-recognisers. In it, they looked at just four people who claimed to have an unusually good ability to recognise faces.
All four subjects told the researchers about instances when they'd recognised practical strangers: family members they hadn't seen for decades or actors they'd glimpsed once in an ad and then seen again in a movie. They felt like there was something wrong with them.
One of the people in the study told the researchers that she tried to hide her ability and "pretend that I don't remember [people] ... because it seems like I stalk them, or that they mean more to me than they d.".
I've always felt that I'm sometimes a super-recognizer and sometimes nearly face blind. I just took the five-minute online test. I scored 11 out of 14. My results said, "If you scored above 10 you may be a super recogniser, but you would need to do more tests to find this out."
Angela Corey is state attorney for Florida's 4th Circuit, where she's put children as young as 12 on trial as adults, facing life in prison -- in solitary, because children can't be mixed with adult populations -- without counseling, education, or any access to family. (more…)
I took Ghent University's vocabulary test, and according to the results, I know 83% of the English words.
The Minnesotan took the test and got a 94%. He said:
The test does not require you to define or spell words. Instead you are asked to determine whether an entry ("glyph," "moktam," "macrophage," "wookel" etc) is or is not a word in the English language.
There seemed to be about a hundred words in the test, which you can proceed through at your own pace, and you can retake it if you wish (with a different group of words on the retest). At the end you can review your errors and see the definitions of the words you missed.
The head of the pharmaceutical company that makes EpiPens raised the price of the life-saving device by over 400%. She was rewarded with a 671% raise. (more…)
VR makes the most sense when you don’t have to learn the controls and stuff just works.
Today, Leap Motion dropped an early access beta version of their Interaction Engine which makes it easier for developers to build VR environments can adroitly manipulate with their hands. In a blog post, the company calls the engine “a layer that exists between the Unity game engine and… Read More
Today, Beijing-based PowerVision made its ovoid camera drone, the PowerEgg, available to international customers via pre-order on the company’s website for $1,288.
Customers who pre-order a PowerEgg will also get a backpack designed to fit the drone, its charging station, decorative stand and remote controls along with their orders. The company says the backpack is valued at… Read More
Public servants in Singapore will be barred from using the internet at work, under a new policy aimed at protecting the city-state from cyber attacks and espionage. As Reuters reports, computers in some Singaporean ministries are already disconnected, or "air-gapped," from the web, but security experts doubt that expanding the policy will do much to enhance cybersecurity.
David Koh, head of Singapore's Cyber Security Agency, tells Reuters that officials decided to air gap government computers after realizing that the threat of a cyber attack "is too real." Research has shown that countries in Southeast Asia face a higher risk of cyberattack, particularly those implicated in ongoing disputes over the South China Sea.
Epic fail.
What is described as “America’s largest domino tower” collapses on camera, after 7 straight hours of building. (more…)
The Petcube Play and Bites are Wi-Fi cameras that work together or separately and allow you to interact with your pets when you’re not home using a phone, tablet, or computer
Connecting pets and their parents
Like many proud pet parents, there is a little pang of guilt when you leave your furry friend home alone during the workday or leave on an extended vacation. Petcube helps you keep in touch with your animals no matter where you are!
Petcube has created two devices that work together or independently for tech-savvy pet parents. Petcube Bites is a successfully funded Kickstarter project that allows you to dispense treats or watch a live stream from the device's camera so you can see or talk to your cat, dog, or iguana. Petcube Bite is the company's latest Kickstarter project that does something unique in the world of remote pet-care; it allows you to play with your pet!
$119.00+
The Petcube Play and Bites are Wi-Fi cameras that work together or separately and allow you to interact with your pets when you're not home using a phone, tablet, or computer.
Dynamic Test Center, a provider of engineering and safety tests of all kinds, rolled a shopping cart into a wall at 75 miles per hour. Apparently that's a new world record. That clip is preceded by a shopping cart smashing into a car at 11 mph. It's oddly even more satisfying to watch, particularly because it isn't my car.
At TriNoma Mall in Quezon City, a metaphor for modern life was born when a rat raced in from the street and tried to ascend the down escalator. Luckily, Kru Bryan was on hand to film the tragicomic analogy. (more…)
These 1850s photos of Japan were taken with a stereoscopic camera like the one shown here. The photos were hand-tinted and meant to be viewed with a stereoscope. (A View Master is a stereoscope.) The images here are animated GIFs that blink back and forth between the two photos, giving you the 3D effect without having to use a stereopscope.
[via]
Social Security wouldn't pay what was owed to 80-year-old Wanda Witter, and she ended up living on the streets of Washington DC for 16 years. She carried three suitcases of paperwork documenting her claim that the government owed her more than $100,000. Many people thought she was mentally ill and was making it up. But she was right all along, and Social Security wrote her a check for $99,999. They will probably give her more. From Washington Post:
Witter wandered the streets of Washington for about 16 years, calling the Social Security’s 800-number, sending them letters and trying to get someone to listen to her predicament.
It started after she lost her job as a machinist at Ingersoll-Rand plant in Corning, N.Y., where she made turbine and engine parts.
So Witter moved in with one of her four daughters who lived in Fort Carson, Colo., and started taking classes at Pikes Peak Community College. She graduated in three years and then went to paralegal school, where she earned her certificate.
She thought she could find work in the nation’s capital so she moved to D.C. around 1999.
“Washington was where all the lawyers were supposed to be,” she said.
But finding work wasn’t easy. Who wanted an unsmiling woman on her way to 70 who still carried herself like a machinist in their office? No one, it turned out. She got odd jobs stuffing envelopes or working in offices and ran out of money.
PlaySation Now, the all-you-can game subscription service that provides access to classic PlayStation titles on-demand, is making its way to Windows PCs, starting now in Europe and rolling out soon in North America. Sony’s also making it easier to game on your PC, with a DualShock 4 USB wireless controller adapter, letting you use your PlayStation 4 gamepads on both Mac and Windows… Read More
One of the few new top-level domains that actually makes sense, .blog, is starting the process of registration. Automattic, which runs WordPress and a number of other useful web apps, owns .blog and is handling applications at get.blog. Read More
From new multitasking and notification features to battery and data-saving modes.
Android 7.0 Nougat is finally upon us, bringing a wealth of new features and some pretty significant changes to the way Android looks and behaves. We've already give you a comprehensive guide to everything new in Nougat, but the broad strokes are equally important — from new multi-tasking features on phones and tablets to smarter notifications.
Check out the top five new features in Android 7.0 Nougat in our video roundup above!
Google is set to launch Daydream VR sometime “in the coming weeks,” according to Bloomberg, after laying the groundwork for its launch with the official debut of Android 7.0 this week. The new report says Google is investing big in original content to accompany the launch of its VR platform, which will be built-in to upcoming Android smartphone handsets that meet the recommended… Read More
Google today announced two major changes related to its mobile search results. The one you’ll probably notice first is that Google is removing the “mobile-friendly” label that highlighted pages that were easy to read on mobile from its mobile search results pages. In the long run, though, the second change may be more wide-reaching: starting on January 10, 2017, the company… Read More
Instapaper, a pioneering app for saving articles to read later, has been acquired — again. The app, which was created by developer Marco Arment and sold to Betaworks in 2013, has found a new home at Pinterest. The goal is "to accelerate discovering and saving articles on Pinterest," the company said in a statement. It will continue to operate as a standalone app, and the Instapaper team will work on both that app and on Pinterest generally. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Facebook is testing a change to its main mobile apps that would have videos automatically start with the sound turned on, according to Mashable. The test, which appears to be active in Australia and may be ongoing in other countries, has Facebook video playing with sound so long as users have the volume on their smartphone turned on. In a similar test, some users are able to activate and deactivate the sound by tapping a small button in the corner of the video, similar to Twitter and Vine’s handling of videos with sound.
As it stands today, Facebook videos will autoplay in the News Feed, but require users to tap once into the video and toggle the sound on and off. "We're running a small test in News Feed where people can choose whether...
