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• снижены цены на инстансы на 10%;
• поддержка 16-ядерных инстансов (до 104 ГБ RAM) для высокопроизводительных вычислений и баз NoSQL;
• кроме Debian и CentOS с ядром от Google, теперь в виртуальных машинах можно запускать FreeBSD и любые дистрибутивы Linux с любыми ядрами и программным обеспечением, включая Docker, FOG, xfs и aufs.

Elon Musk's Space company SpaceX mad a big step forward yesterday with the launch of its first commercial satellite.

Here's a gorgeous timelapse photo showing the streak of the rocket.

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What if you could reach into your computer screen, pull something out of it, and manipulate it with your hands?

New technology that allows us to do just that is a step away from revolutionizing the way we interact with the digital world. Technology will soon make it possible for us to reach out and touch digital information, making interaction and collaboration between people thousands of miles apart much easier.

The Tangible Media Group at MIT is developing tons of these game-changing technologies. One new device called inFORM allows the user to move objects around without having to actually physically be there to touch them. inFORM creators Daniel Leithinger, Sean Follmer, and Hiroshi Ishii, describe inFORM as a Dynamic Shape Display "that can render 3-D content physically, so users can interact with digital information in a tangible way."

In this demonstration it appears as if they've made a pegboard to interpret screen data so it looks like this guy is rolling the ball around...

... But behind the scenes you can see the user is creating the physical representation of himself by moving his actual hands to interact with the ball in the digital representation:

Follmer said this kind of shape display and digital interaction technology has existed for a while, but inFORM is different because it focuses on interaction between the user and objects, and provides a way for people far away to collaborate and work together.

For example the scientists behind inFORM say on the Tangible Media Group website that "remote participants in a video conference can be displayed physically, allowing for a strong sense of presence and the ability to interact physically at a distance."

Follmer said inFORM could likely be used for maps and terrain models, and to make prototypes of architecture designs.

For example, if landscapers were planning the construction of an outdoor courtyard, one could reach out and move the physical objects around from thousands of miles away.

They even think doctors will be able to use inFORM to enhance the diagnosis and treatment of patients.

"Finally, cross sections through volumetric data such as medical imaging CT scans can be viewed in 3-D physically and interacted with," the Tangible Media Group website says. "We would like to explore medical or surgical simulations."

Right now inFORM is only set up based on a local network, but Follmer said there is nothing preventing it from working from farther distances. He said its just a matter of more research and testing.

Other next-generation screens

There are many other pieces of technology that are making digital information touchable. Most of this technology relies on haptic feedback. Haptic feedback is the reason touchscreens work. Your touch sends a vibration or current between your finger and the screen.

But a company called Bristol Interactions and Graphics has developed a technology called UltraHaptics that eliminates the need to touch a screen altogether. It uses ultrasound waves that concentrate around the user's hand. The concentration creates pressure mid-air that feels and act like invisible buttons.

Second Surface, also developed by MIT's Tangible Media Group, lets you draw things in a spatial grid anywhere. You can even see what other users are drawing and contribute your own digital information.

T(ether), another Tangible Media Group project, allows users to actually reach into the virtual world and manipulate digital information.

Scientists at Disney Research have even figured out a way for us to sense 3-D texture on a touchscreen. We can run our hands across a screen and can feel different textures like wood or metal. These screens manipulate the haptic feedback current produced by our touch. Manipulating the currents makes it possible to simulate different textures.

HP is working on a way to view objects in 3-D from mobile devices and essentially create a portable hologram similar to the Princess Leia hologram in "Star Wars."

Museums like the Smithsonian are even taking advantage of this kind of interactive technology by creating digital models of their exhibits that anyone in the world can access. You can visit the museum even if you're thousands of miles away. You can view each artifact from every angle, zoom in and out, and you can even print out your own model of the artifact with a 3-D printer. The process to create one of these interactive models takes a long time. Each artifact has to be scanned from dozens of angles to make it possible.

These technologies might not make it into your hand the way they are right now, but it's likely that in the future they will be wrapped into the tech that we use today, Follmer said.

The Tangible Media Group sees inFORM as a step toward the idea of "radical atoms" — materials that are more fluid than rigid, so instead of a phone that's just a rectangle, your device can change shape at will.

Right now with a smartphone you can make calls, play games, browse the Internet, send texts, and use maps. But the phone presents all that information the exact same way. It may be possible to create a smartphone that you can display different kinds of information in different ways that are the more user-friendly, Follmer said.

For example, you phone could take one shape so that you can hold it to your ear when you get a call, but take a different shape — maybe more dome-like — that's more useful when you are getting directions.

All this technology is transforming our relationship with digital information from a passive one, in which we stare at the information on a screen, into an active one, in which we can physically interact with and manipulate the information.

SEE ALSO: Researchers Have Discovered A Way For Us To Feel An Object's Texture Through A Screen

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2013 was a wild year for weather and other natural phenomena.

Wildfires and tornadoes wreaked havoc across the United States, while erupting volcanoes and floods destroyed other parts of the world.

Here we commemorate the power of mother nature through memorable and devastating images of our environment taken this year.

Trucks are encased in ice after a warehouse fire in Chicago on Jan. 23, 2013. The large fire occurred as an Arctic blast gripped the U.S. Midwest and Northeast. At least three deaths were linked to the frigid weather, and fierce winds made some locations feel as cold as 50 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

Read more: Firefighters Leave Chicago Warehouse Covered In Ice »

A huge winter blizzard, called "Nemo" by the media, pummeled the northeastern United States in February. A foot of snow blanketed New York City and 36 inches covered Boston. The storm also left hundreds of thousands of people across the east coast without power and led to the death of at least four people.

Read more: Manhattan Is Covered In Nearly A Foot Of Snow »

China's smog problem gained international media attention when in January air pollution in Beijing and much of northern China soared past healthy levels, reaching up to 40 times higher than the standard set by the World Health Organization.

Read more: China's Smog Problem Is Completely Out Of Control »

Straight from camp "what could go wrong" scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication have developed a proof-of-concept malware that can communicate with other machines nearby, using just standard laptop speakers and microphones. Most importantly, the computers don't need to be on the same -- or technically any -- network, they just need to be within 65 feet of each other. Even more sinister, is the fact that the researchers who developed the method claim they can form audio "mesh" networks to extend this reach much farther. The idea isn't a new one, and in fact, the technique that proved most reliable is based on an older method, developed to help computers communicate under water (not malware). One "positive" is that currently data speeds are slow. Very slow. An excruciating 20 bits per second. So, your petabytes of personal data might not be radioed back to crime HQ any time soon, but tests have already successfully shared passwords over the "air gap." If there's ever an excuse to get that radio in the office, this is probably it (though it'll need really good top-end).

Filed under: Laptops, Networking

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Via: Arstechnica

Source: Journal of Communications

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On Friday, a rare weather phenomenon created an incredible sight at the Grand Canyon.

The canyon was filled with fog due to something known as "temperature inversion," according to the Grand Canyon National Park Facebook page, which posted photos to its website. 

"We are currently experiencing an after Thanksgiving treat," a photo caption read. "No, it's not more pumpkin pie. It's a once in a lifetime, outstanding, crazy, amazing, mind blowing inversion. Enjoy."

Typically, the temperature of the air decreases with height. When the temperature of the atmosphere is "inverted," warm air sits on top of cooler air.

"The warm air above cooler air acts like a lid, suppressing vertical mixing and trapping the cooler air at the surface," explains the National Weather Service.

Temperature inversions  happen once or twice a year, typically in the winter months. However, ranger Erin Whittaker told MailOnline that the most recent inversion only happens once every 10 years — it's special because the fog filled up the entire canyon (not just parts) and it happened on a cloudless day. As a result, the view was particularly beautiful. 

"Here's what Mather Point looked like this morning with the rare inversion," the National Park Service said on the Grand Canyon Facebook page. "Word spread like wildfire and most ran to the rim to photograph it. What a fantastic treat for all!"

SEE ALSO: The Most Irreplaceable Sites On Earth

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Welcome to Time Machines, where we offer up a selection of mechanical oddities, milestone gadgets and unique inventions to test out your tech-history skills.

This invention brought streaming music to New York City's early adopters around the turn of the 20th century. Mark Twain, who was among the first to have a personal telephone line installed, was an avid supporter of the service, which provided the crystalline clarity of electrically generated music delivered into his own home on the telephone wire. Head on past the break to find out the full story.

The keyboard at Telharmonic Hall, New York City - circa 1907.

Thaddeus Cahill's Telharmonium

The Telharmonium arrived nearly a century before services like Pandora and SiriusXM began streaming music to homes and devices and almost a decade before radio hit the airwaves all around the world. In March of 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was granted his first telephone patent and in the decades that followed, a web of phone lines spread exponentially across the globe, reaching both businesses and households. Thaddeus Cahill saw opportunity in those wires that went beyond just conversation. It was his grand vision to create the perfect instrument, driven by electricity and capable of delivering music from a "central station" to a multitude of destinations along the growing network of telephone lines.

The Iowa-born inventor showed a spark of brilliance early on, excelling at his lessons and tinkering with various devices in his early teens. In 1891, at the age of 24, he headed to Washington, D.C., to work at his brother's lab and over the next few years, music was on his mind. He conceived of an electrical device that could mimic the tones of various instruments and saw telephone receivers as a gateway to providing his new form of music to anyone with a connection.

In 1897, Cahill received a patent for his "Art of and Apparatus for Generating and Distributing Music Electrically," and soon found investors for his "Telharmonium" project. With funding in hand and a deal with a factory in the industrial city of Holyoke, Mass., Cahill began construction of his dream. The Telharmonium's control center was an unusually complex keyboard, enlisting at least 48 keys per octave, which would trigger sounds devised to mimic the flute, clarinet, oboe and, most elusively, the violin. Powering these electric tones were massive electrical generators; all told, the weight of the machine was around 200 tons. In 1902, the machine would test the abilities of the railway system as Cahill shipped the entire device to its new home in New York City.

A section of the switchboard and tone mixers in the basement of Telharmonic Hall, circa 1907.

The new location was called Telharmonic Hall and would offer live performances of the instrument, which could be enjoyed in person and by subscription at any of the various restaurants and hotels that had been swayed by this unique device. The heart of the machine was located downstairs, with rooms jam packed with alternators, tone mixers and switching systems. The tones it generated were advertised as "The music of A.D. 2000," with a technological purity and infinite timbres. Some reports were quite critical, saying that staccatos sounded brittle and sharp, like a tiny steel hammer; lows lacked fullness and the pitch tended to drift. Naysaying critics aside, the Telharmonium's futuristic sound was a hit when it opened to the public in January of 1907.

It seems the signals he was sending out on the phone lines tended to bleed into phone conversations throughout the area...

The backbone of Cahill's plan, however, was fulfilling subscriptions and delivering his Telharmonic music to the masses, which proved more difficult than he thought. Wiring subscribers was slowgoing and dealing with the phone companies was a logistical, political and financial battle. It seems the signals he was sending out on the phone lines tended to bleed into phone conversations throughout the area, drawing frequent complaints. On top of that, profit projections for the service, which hadn't been perfected, were overestimated and failed to cover expenses.

Later, a short-lived financial crisis called the "Panic of 1907," along with Nikola Tesla's announcements about the future of radio and wireless, lead to the end of Telharmonic Hall and it was shipped back to the factory in Holyoke. Undeterred, Cahill continued to develop his device. He simplified the circuitry, scaled back the keyboard to a standard 12 keys per octave (by utilizing multiple key banks), designed improved telephonic receivers and increased the efficiency of his alternators so they could run at higher speeds, producing up to 1.57 megawatts in output.

Cahill set up shop again in New York in 1911, but his second attempt fared no better than the first. Wireless telegraphy stations had begun to flourish. Radio had arrived, helped along by Lee de Forest's audion, a vacuum tube that could vastly amplify signals and provide warm, pleasing tones. It also marked a massive reduction in size for audio devices compared to the Telharmonium. It seems Cahill's innovation arrived a few years too soon to take advantage of the vacuum tube's cost- and space-saving technology, but also too late to enjoy a prolonged success before radio's ubiquity.

[Image credits: New York Electric Music Co., Telharmonic Hall Program]

Filed under: Science, Alt

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• сначала VPN, потом Tor;
• сначала Tor, а потом VPN.