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18 Apr 20:08

Le One Mix 2S Yoga passe au processeur Core i7-8500Y

by Pierre Lecourt

One Netbook annonce la sortie du nouveau One Mix 2S Yoga Platinum Edition, un engin qui affiche en FullHD via un écran IPS tactile de 7 pouces par dessus un véritable clavier complet – en Qwerty uniquement – autour d’une charnière qui se déploie à 360°. L’engin peut ainsi se convertir en tablette, profiter d’un affichage tente ou présentation. Un super produit pour les plus baroudeurs d’autant qu’il est compatible avec un stylet actif pour la prise de notes.

2019-04-17 12_30_30-minimachines.net

Deux modèles étaient jusqu’à aujourd’hui disponibles, l’entrée de gamme était équipé d’un très bon processeur Intel Core M3-7Y30 de génération Kaby Lake : Un double coeur et quadruple threads cadencé de 1 à 2.6 GHz avec 4 Mo de mémoire cache et un TDP de 4.5 Watts.

Une version plus haut de gamme embarque une puce Amber Lake en Core M3-8100Y. une évolution toujours en 2C/4T avec des fréquences allant de 1.1 GHz à 3.4 GHz, toujours 4 Mo de cache et un TDP un poil plus haut avec 5 Watts annoncés.  Des puces qui allient un excellent rendement par watt.

2019-04-17 12_31_49-minimachines.net

La marque annonce désormais une troisième version baptisé One Mix 2S Yoga Platinum Edition qui embarque un processeur Intel Core i7-8500Y toujours dans la huitième génération d’Intel. Un Amber Lake toujours sur deux coeurs et 4 Threads mais cette fois-ci cadencé de 1.5 à 4.20 GHz avec 4 Mo de cache et un TDP de 5 watts. Son circuit graphique est un UHD 615 cadencé de 300 MHz à 1.05 GHz. Cette version haut de gamme propose un stockage SSD de 512 Go contre 256 Go maximum pour les modèles en Core M. La mémoire vive reste sur 8 Go sur les 16 Go que cette puce sait pourtant gérer.

2019-04-17 12_30_39-minimachines.net

Super ? Oui, sur le papier la solution est très excitante malgré son clavier QWERTY. Le problème est le tarif demandé ! Geekbuying l’annonce à 1199€ avec cette configuration ce qui est plus de deux fois le prix du modèle M3-8100Y avec 8 Go de mémoire et 256 Go de SSD proposé à 593.75€. La version Core M3-8100Y n’est pas disponible pour le moment mais restait dans la même gamme de tarif juste au dessus des 600€.

2019-04-17 12_31_38-minimachines.net

Du Benchmark de qualité….

Je suppose que l’effet nouveauté joue ici à plein et que les premières pièces vont être écoulées au prix le plus haut avant que les prix redescendent. D’autant que si le passage de 256 Go à 512 Go est quantifiable facilement, le gain de performances entre les Core M3 et cette version Amber Lake du Core i7 n’est pas si énorme. Les possibilités offertes par les M3-8100Y, par exemple, ne sont pas spécialement éloignées du Core i7-8500Y. Ce que pourra faire un One Mix 2S Yoga de base ne sera pas tellement différent de ce que proposera cette Platinum Edition. Les usages les plus lourds seront peut être accélérés de quelques instants mais dans l’absolu le changement de puce ne lui ouvre pas de portes logicielles supplémentaires.

Le One Mix 2S Yoga passe au processeur Core i7-8500Y © MiniMachines.net. 2019

16 Apr 22:08

Voice-Controlled Drink Dispenser Built with LEGO and a Raspberry Pi

by Cameron Coward

LEGO was the start of many people’s maker hobbies, because the simple building blocks appeal to everyone’s innate sense of creativity. LEGO bricks have been in production for 70 years now, which means several generations of children have grown up with them. There doesn’t seem to be any sign of that stopping anytime soon, and kids today still enjoy LEGO just like you did. Grant Gibson decided to take advantage of that and build a drink dispenser with his son out of LEGO and a Raspberry Pi.

You may remember Gibson from his Sjoelen game that he built with the help of a Raspberry Pi. Over the past couple of weeks, Gibson’s son has been home from school for the spring holidays. That means that Gibson had to find a way to keep his son entertained, and ideally in a way that is also healthy, educational, and productive. The project he decided to get his son working on was an automatic Alexa-controlled drinks dispenser, and LEGO bricks were the perfect material for constructing the frame of the machine.

https://medium.com/media/e60ba5c830fc620dd753d82d4bb55f11/href

The project started with Gibson’s son building the frame from standard LEGO bricks. That houses the bottle that contains the drink to be dispensed, the Raspberry Pi, a small water pump, a relay board to turn it on, and place for the cup to go. The water pump is powered directly from the Raspberry Pi’s 5V line, which isn’t normally a good idea because the impedance can cause damage. But Gibson reports that it has worked fine so far. They then used the Flask-Ask Alexa Skills Kit for Python to control the relay through the GPIO pins with voice commands. It’s a simple project, but a fun one for Gibson’s son.


Voice-Controlled Drink Dispenser Built with LEGO and a Raspberry Pi was originally published in Hackster Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

16 Apr 19:45

Google Home Hub smart display will reportedly be renamed the Google Nest Hub

by Bruce Brown

Insiders reportedly familiar with Google's plans confirmed the Google Home Hub will be rebranded Google Nest Hub. Citing accidental leaks in the Google Store about the Nest Home Max, informed sources suggest a May 7 launch date.

The post Google Home Hub smart display will reportedly be renamed the Google Nest Hub appeared first on Digital Trends.

16 Apr 06:10

Get destroyed by OpenAI’s masterful Dota 2 bots this weekend

by Nick Statt

OpenAI achieved a historic milestone in the world of artificial intelligence this weekend when its Dota 2 system, called OpenAI Five, handily bested the strategy game’s world champion e-sports team, OG, in a best-of-three contest. Now, the AI research organization wants to let the public get a taste of what it’s like to play against a program that’s virtually trained for the equivalent of 45,000 years to play the game at the highest possible level.

The company is calling the platform Arena, and it will be live for just three days starting Thursday, April 18th at 9PM ET. You can sign up here to get access, as OpenAI says it needs to allocate the proper amount of compute to handle the simultaneous play sessions for its cloud-based AI...

Continue reading…

14 Apr 07:49

Dasung is About to Launch a New E-ink Monitor With Touchscreen and a Frontlight

by Nate Hoffelder

The Chinese e-ink monitor maker Dasung is getting ready to launch its latest Paperlike model. This time they will be going all out and will be putting both a frontlight and a touchscreen on their monitor.

You can sign up to be notified of the launch on Indiegogo.

Dasung is About to Launch a New E-ink Monitor With Touchscreen and a Frontlight e-Reading Hardware

Dasung launched its first E-ink monitor in 2015. Over the past 4 years they've released a new model an average of once a year, improving performance every time.

The new model will have a 13.3" Carta E-ink screen (2200*1650 resolution) and connect to your computer, tablet, or phone over HDMI.

The new model will have a 13.3" Carta E-ink screen (2200*1650 resolution) and connect to your computer, tablet, or phone over HDMI. This is honestly one of those products that leaves you wondering why almost no one has heard of it. Yes, it's expensive, but it works so well and helps so much.

You just finished reading Dasung is About to Launch a New E-ink Monitor With Touchscreen and a Frontlight which was published on The Digital Reader.

09 Apr 19:52

3-in-5 Consumers Want the Same Voice Assistant in the Car as in the Home – New Amazon and JD Power Study

by Bret Kinsella
  • 59% of U.S. consumers said they were more likely to purchase a new car from a brand that supports their favored smart speaker voice assistant according to a survey of 5,000 smart speaker owners by J.D. Power
  • 76% of U.S. consumers said they are interested in seeing their smart speaker voice assistant accessible from inside their next car
  • Smart speaker based voice assistants have higher customer satisfaction than in-vehicle systems, but the difference is relatively small

J.D. Power collaborated with Amazon’s Alexa Auto in a recent survey that found 59% of consumers are more likely to purchase a car from auto brands that support their preferred voice assistant used in the home. Arianne Walker, chief evangelist for Alexa automotive commented in the finding:

“It didn’t surprise me that customers wanted to access to the voice services they use every day in the home while in their car. I was surprised that in the early days of voice adoption such a large percentage said not only would voice availability impact what vehicle they purchase, but they would consider a car company based on the availability of a preferred voice assistant. We’ve reached that tipping point in voice.”

We’ve reached a tipping point in voice.

The survey was conducted online in July 2018 in the U.S. and over 5,000 individual responses were gathered. Survey participants were required to own at least one vehicle from the 2014-2018 model years and own a smart speaker. The smart speaker ownership was not limited to Amazon Echo products, but also included Google Home and Apple HomePod device owners. You can download the full report here.

A Voicebot survey of over 1,000 U.S. adults revealed similar findings. The question was asked differently and responses were not limited to smart speaker device owners, but about 60% of consumers said the voice assistant choice does influence their purchase decision and about 19% said it was a significant factor or a requirement.

Consumers Want Their Smart Speaker Voice Assistants Available in the Car

The J.D. Power survey also asked whether consumers would like to have the voice assistant they use on their smart speakers also available in the car. Not surprisingly, many consumers see value in having consistent access to their voice assistant outside the home. With that said, this does not say that consumers exclusively want the home-based voice assistant while in the car.

Smart Speaker Based Voice Assistants Show Most Highest Satisfaction

Another key finding of the study is that smart speaker or in-home voice assistants show higher satisfaction among consumers. Smart speaker-based voice assistants ranked 7.81 compared to smartphones at 7.37 and in-vehicle voice solutions at 7.15.

You can see that voice assistant satisfaction across these three surfaces is fairly consistent. Smart speakers led the other two surfaces, but not by much. It is also notable that the 1-10 scale is also used for net promoter scores. A score of 9 or 10 is used to identify strong promoters of a technology, 7-8 is favorable but basically neutral, and 6 or below leads to users that are best thought of as detractors. What this data should indicate for voice assistant providers is that there is more work to do before voice assistant users as a whole become consistent and enthusiastic promoters of the technology.

Interview with Arianne Walker of Alexa Auto

Voicebot also had the opportunity to catch up with Amazon’s Ms. Walker to learn more about how the company interpreted the results and how it fits in with the Alexa Auto strategy.

How do the report findings impact Amazon’s voice strategy with automakers?

Adrianne Walker – Alexa Auto

Arianne Walker: It’s a great salient point to help the automakers understand the power of voice and how people really want to use it. What we hope from this is automakers embrace and help us with that vision in being able to provide choice for the customer in their vehicles. We have seen a lot of automakers embrace Alexa and voice services and bring Alexa into the car.

Do you think of the car as equivalent to a smart speaker with wheels?

Walker: A car is a very complicated device. When we think about car control we started thinking about controlling features of the car while outside of the car. Being able to utilize Alexa to get the cabin temperature to a nice 70 degrees and defrost the windows is a nice feature of voice control. The next step is to do many of those things while you are in the vehicle using voice. Being able to use your voice to activate certain controls so you can keep your hands on the wheel eyes on the road is a great safety feature for drivers.

You mention in-car controls. What is the status of Alexa offline mode for use while driving where cellular coverage is unreliable?

Walker: We are working on that through our Alexa Auto SDK. We have rolled out the first of those features like being able to handle turning on the air-conditioning and turning the fan up and down because we know it’s important for consumers to be able to have this control when they are not connected. We are working with automakers and suppliers and the SDK has deep hooks that go into the head unit [to enable these features].

There are many ways to bring Alexa into the car. How does Amazon think about the infotainment system, other embedded systems, or third-party devices such as Roav Viva or Alexa Auto?

Walker: Our north star is embedded voice assistant in the head unit of cars. It’s easy for consumers. You don’t need to bring your phone with you. However, there are long production lead times.BMW and Audi have that embedded experience in vehicles today. We’ve worked with automakers for a quicker integration using projection technology like Ford, Toyota, and Lexus which gets this to consumers faster. We also recognize there are many older automobiles on the road that don’t have the same capabilities and don’t necessarily have all of the more advanced hardware and software capabilities to allow for that embedded experience e. The aftermarket device and options are a great way to get Alex into all of those cars on the road today. We see it as giving customers choice and other options.

One other thing. We’ve worked with both automakers and integrators and suppliers to make it as easy as possible for automakers to get voice into the car. We want choice not just for our customers but also to our partners.

We are now seeing multiple voice assistants in the car. Often there is one from the automaker and another from a third party such as Alexa. How do you view that user experience where there are multiple assistants to choose from?

Walker: It’s really consistent with things we’ve done outside of the vehicle. The work that we have done with [Microsoft] Cortana and [Facebook] Portal is the assistants can hand off to each other and make sure customers have a good experience. We want to make sure it is easy for customers. Several automakers have gone all in on Alexa as the voice service on its own and we are also supporting automakers that want to have their own voice assistant as well.

Follow @bretkinsella Follow @voicebotai

Twice the Number of U.S. Adults Have Tried In-Car Voice Assistants as Smart Speakers

Alexa Automotive News Round Up – CES 2019

Amazon Releases Alexa Auto SDK

The post 3-in-5 Consumers Want the Same Voice Assistant in the Car as in the Home – New Amazon and JD Power Study appeared first on Voicebot.

09 Apr 19:33

Walmart to expand in-store tech, including Pickup Towers for online orders and robots

by Sarah Perez

Walmart is doubling down on its technology innovations in its brick-and-mortar stores in an effort to better compete with Amazon. The retailer today announced the expanded rollout of several technologies — ranging from in-store Pickup Towers to help customers quickly grab their online orders to floor-scrubbing robots. These jobs were, in many cases, previously handled by people instead of machines.

The retailer says it will add to its U.S. stores 1,500 new autonomous floor cleaners, 300 more shelf scanners, 1,200 more FAST Unloaders and 900 new Pickup Towers.

The “Auto-C” floor cleaner is programmed to clean and polish the store’s floor after the area is first prepped by associates. Publicly introduced last fall, the floor cleaner uses assisted autonomy technology to clean the floors instead of having an associate ride a scrubbing machine — a process that today eats up two hours of an employee’s time per day.

Built in partnership with Brain Corp., Walmart said in December it planned to deploy 360 floor-cleaning robots by the end of January 2019. It’s now bumping that rollout to include 1,500 more this year, bringing the total deployment to 1,860.

The Auto-S shelf scanners, meanwhile, have been in testing since 2017, when Walmart rolled out 50 robots to U.S. stores. It’s now adding 300 more to production to reach a total of 350.

These robots are produced by California-based Bossa Nova Robotics, and roll around aisles to scan prices and check inventory. The robots sit in a charging station until given a task by an employee — like checking inventory levels to see what needs restocking, identifying and finding misplaced items or locating incorrect prices or labeling.

In the backroom, Walmart has been testing FAST Unloaders that are capable of unloading a truck of merchandise along a conveyor belt in a fraction of the time it could be done by hand. The machines automatically scan and sort the items based on priority and department to speed up the process and direct items appropriately.

Unloading, the company noted earlier in testing, was also a heavily disliked job — and one it had trouble keeping staffed. Last summer, Walmart said it had 30 unloaders rolled out in the U.S. and was on pace to add 10 more a week.

Now, 1,200 more are being added to stores, bringing the total to 1,700.

The Pickup Towers have also been around since 2017, when they arrived in 200 stores. A sort of vending machine for online orders, the idea is that customers could save on orders by skipping last-mile deliveries, as shipping to a store costs Walmart less. Customers then benefit by getting a better price by not paying for shipping, and could get their items faster.

In April 2018, Walmart rolled out 500 more towers to U.S. stores. It’s now adding 900 more, which will see 1,700 total towers in use across its stores.

The company claims all this tech will free up its employees’ time from focusing on the “more mundane and repetitive tasks” so they can instead serve customers face-to-face.

Of course, that’s what they all say when turning over people’s jobs to robots and automation — whether that’s fancy coffee-making robotic kiosks, burger-flipping robots or restaurants staffed by a concierge but no kitchen help besides machines.

Walmart, however, claims to still have plenty of work for its staff — like picking groceries for its booming online grocery business, for example. Grocery shopping, generally, accounts for more than half its annual sales, and more of that business is shifting online.

The company also said that many of the jobs it automated were those it struggled to find, hire and retain associates to do, and by taking out the routine work, retention has improved.

“What we’re seeing so far suggests investments in store technology are shaping how we think about turnover and hours. The technology is automating pieces of work or tasks, rather than entire jobs,” a Walmart spokesperson said. “As that’s happening, we have been able to use many of the hours being saved in other areas of the store — focused more on service and selling for customers,” they continued.

“We have now added over 40,000 jobs for the online grocery picking role in stores over the last year and a half. These jobs didn’t exist a short time ago. The result so far: we’ve seen our U.S. store associate turnover reduced year-over-year,” the spokesperson added.

The tech announced today will roll out to U.S. stores “soon,” Walmart says, but didn’t provide exact dates.

05 Apr 14:22

A Japanese spacecraft just blasted a new crater into an asteroid

by Loren Grush
The asteroid Ryugu

A Japanese spacecraft about 186 million miles from Earth dropped a can of explosives on an asteroid last night, excavating a crater on the rough surface. Eventually, the spacecraft will inspect the new crater, and it may even grab a sample from it, helping scientists learn more about the asteroid’s interior.

The prospecting vehicle is Hayabusa2, a spacecraft operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Launched in 2014, Hayabusa2 traveled to a near-Earth asteroid named Ryugu, and it has been hanging out around the object since last year. The spacecraft’s mission is straightforward: grab samples of material from Ryugu, and bring them back to Earth for further study. But the spacecraft is using a few unique methods to reach its...

Continue reading…

04 Apr 06:08

Brain Corp. debuts an autonomous delivery robot for factories and retail

by Brian Heater

Admittedly, Brain Corp. sounds a bit like an evil corporation in some superhero comic, but the San Diego-based startup has generated some serious funding in recent years, including a $114 million Series C, led by SoftBank back in 2017.

The company’s been putting that money to work, announcing today the launch of an in-store autonomous delivery robot. AutoDelivery, which is currently still “proof of concept,” is built on the startup’s own BrainOS navigation platform, which is currently powering products from a number of companies, including Tennant, Minuteman, ICE, Nilfisk and SoftBank Robotics.

Brain Corp.’s system is an interesting one designed to fulfill a fairly wide range of case uses, from stores to factories to warehouses. That could mean everything from inventory stocking to delivery fulfillment. It’s a massive business and one positioned to get even larger in coming years, with products from Amazon Robotics and Fetch to Playground Ventures-supported Canvas, which offers up a similarly autonomous robot for factory settings.

Heck, even Boston Dynamics is getting in on the space these days, with its recent acquisition of Kinema Systems.

The Brain Corp. system appears to have some of the competition beat with its ability to tow carts, which could make it useful in a retail setting like the one in the above video. It also sports a touchscreen, so employees can input directions directly, forming a different relationship with human employees than products like Bossa Nova’s inventory-checking robot.

The robot is still in its early stages, making its debut at next week’s ProMat show in Chicago. The company expects a commercial launch early next year.

03 Apr 20:29

Burger King commence à vendre un Whopper sans boeuf

by Morgan Fromentin
Burger King commence à vendre un Whopper sans boeuf
Le Whopper est très certainement le sandwich le plus connu de Burger King. Aujourd'hui, la chaîne de fast-food commence à vendre une version sans bœuf, un Impossible Whopper.
28 Mar 21:11

Microsoft bascule ses 180 000 employés sur Teams

by James Henderson, ARNnet (adapté par Bastien Lion)
Microsoft vient d’achever la transition interne de Skype Entreprise vers Teams, à l’issue d'un processus de quatre mois couvrant plus (...)
24 Mar 13:33

Finley AI, l'assistant financier vocal

by Patrice BERNARD
Finley AI
Parce que beaucoup d'outils d'accompagnement des consommateurs dans la gestion de leur argent sont uniquement conçus pour répondre à leurs besoins à court terme (épargne de précaution, réduction de l'endettement…) et parce que leur éducation financière est souvent déficiente, Finley AI a conçu un assistant pédagogique interactif.

De fait, on assiste actuellement à une multiplication, y compris dans les banques traditionnelles, des services destinés à faciliter et stimuler la constitution d'une épargne, que ce soit pour faire face à des dépenses imprévues ou pour réaliser un projet (achat, voyage, cadeau…). À l'inverse, les solutions qui visent des échéances plus lointaines, telles que les robo-advisors, tendent à négliger le besoin de former leurs clients à leurs produits et d'offrir un conseil éclairé sur les options qu'ils mettent à leur disposition.

Malheureusement, une immense majorité de personnes – 90% au Royaume-Uni, selon l'article de FinTech Future… et probablement encore plus en France – n'ont jamais bénéficié du moindre accompagnement financier dans leur vie. En conséquence, beaucoup ignorent tout des opportunités qui leur tendent les bras ou bien choisissent des approches qui ne sont pas nécessairement adaptées à leurs besoins et leur situation mais leur sont poussées par un vendeur principalement intéressé par ses commissions.

Afin de remédier à une telle dérive, Finley AI propose donc une plate-forme conviviale et simple d'accès, intégrée à l'écosystème de l'assistant vocal Google (donc disponible via mobile, web, enceinte connectée…), qui se charge de répondre à toutes les questions qu'une personne avisée poserait normalement à son conseiller attitré, si elle pouvait en consulter un : comment fonctionnent les pensions, comment planifier son avenir, quelle est la meilleure manière de préparer sa retraite, par qui se faire aider… ?

Finley AI en action

Naturellement, l'impact de Finley AI sur la relation des individus à l'argent et aux produits financiers risque d'être réduit. En effet, sa logique fondée exclusivement sur la diffusion de connaissances et de recommandations génériques, sans prendre en compte le contexte spécifique de chaque utilisateur et sans chercher à rendre les conseils prodigués directement « actionnables » (à l'exception de la recherche d'un professionnel, qui est aussi sa seule perspective de modèle économique), limite son potentiel d'efficacité.

Quoi qu'il en soit, l'initiative de Finley AI a l'immense mérite de mettre le doigt sur le problème critique de la qualité de l'accompagnement des consommateurs dans leur vie financière : quand les fournisseurs – acteurs historiques ou startups – se focalisent sur leurs offres, au détriment de l'exploration des besoins précis de leurs clients et de la démonstration transparente de la valeur qui leur est apportée en alignement avec ceux-ci, la méfiance l'emporte, pour le plus grand malheur de toutes les parties prenantes.
14 Mar 07:32

“Patients casse-couilles” : le livre qui rassemble les perles entendues aux urgences

by Victor M.

Si on associe généralement les urgences d’un hôpital à un lieu effrayant et anxiogène, vous allez voir aujourd’hui qu’elles peuvent aussi être la source de bonnes doses de fous rires. Sonia Camay, médecin urgentiste depuis maintenant 12 ans, a vu défiler un nombre incalculable de patients. Et si le rôle du médecin urgentiste est de prendre en charge le patient pour préserver sa santé, il doit aussi savoir l’écouter et discuter avec lui… Ce qui donne parfois lieu à des discussions plutôt insolites.

Sonia Camay a donc eu l’idée d’écrire un livre référençant ses meilleures anecdotes hilarantes et les fameuses perles qu’elle a pu entendre de la bouche des patients qui ont croisé son chemin. Baptisé “Patients casse-couilles”, ce recueil de phrases et d’anecdotes insolites entendues dans les couloirs de l’hôpital nous montre une facette totalement différente des urgences.

Crédits : Sonia Camay / Les Éditions de l’Opportun

Entre les patients qui se trompent de mots, ceux qui visiblement ne connaissent pas très bien leurs corps, les enfants tyranniques ou encore les parents un peu trop portés sur la chose, les différents thèmes abordés avec beaucoup de légèreté montrent que le quotidien de médecin urgentiste peut parfois donner lieu à des situations absolument improbables. On imagine déjà la réaction de Sonia Camay et de ses collègues qui ont dû répondre, avec sérieux et professionnalisme, à ces perles de patients à mourir de rire.

Commander le livre

L’équipe de Creapills a sélectionné pour vous 15 perles insolites de patients, présentes dans le livre. Le recueil “Patients casse-couilles” sera disponible à partir du 21 mars prochain pour 9,90€, mais vous pouvez déjà le pré-commander ici. Une bonne idée qui aborde le sujet anxiogène des urgences en dédramatisant la situation à travers ces expériences vécues par une médecin urgentiste dont les journées ne sont visiblement pas de tout repos !

Crédits : Patients casse-couilles

Crédits : Patients casse-couilles

Crédits : Patients casse-couilles

Crédits : Patients casse-couilles

Crédits : Patients casse-couilles

Crédits : Patients casse-couilles

Crédits : Patients casse-couilles

Crédits : Patients casse-couilles

Crédits : Patients casse-couilles

Crédits : Patients casse-couilles

Crédits : Patients casse-couilles

Crédits : Patients casse-couilles

Crédits : Patients casse-couilles

Crédits : Patients casse-couilles

Crédits : Patients casse-couilles

Imaginé par : Sonia Camay pour Les Éditions de l’Opportun
Source : franceinter.fr

L’article “Patients casse-couilles” : le livre qui rassemble les perles entendues aux urgences est apparu en premier sur Creapills.

14 Mar 07:28

Comme le bon vin

by CommitStrip

14 Mar 07:23

Industrial E-Stop Button Becomes Novel Computer Interface

by Jeremy S. Cook

When typing away at your computer, there are likely times where a few keystrokes just don’t cut it, and a big red emergency button would be more appropriate. This, you might assume, is the type of thing that only appears in a cartoon, perhaps featuring an elaborate trap to catch a very fast bird.

This assumption, however, would now be wrong as Glen Atkins has integrated an HID-capable PIC16F1459 chip inside of an industrial mushroom push button switch. Instead of stopping a heavy assembly cell until reset, his board/software now either inserts a poop emoji into a Microsoft document, or executes a sequence that locks his Linux box at work. Both make sense in their own context, either when firing off an angry email, or clocking out for the day with a final button press.

Electronics-wise, the device is nearly identical to his Single ESC Key USB Keyboard from May 2018, but this build takes things to a whole new level. Rather than merely wire an input from the button’s internals and leave things loose — or glued — inside, he designed a 3D-printed holder based on the manufacturer’s 3D model to nicely mount his custom circuit board. This produced a secure assembly that looks internally almost like it was meant to be there. Notably, per its new USB connection, the unit is no longer appropriate for actual safety-critical applications.


Industrial E-Stop Button Becomes Novel Computer Interface was originally published in Hackster Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

06 Mar 07:04

How Augmented Reality Soothes Kids Scrapes and Cuts

by Derek E. Baird

Japanese toymaker Bandai has developed a digital spin on mom or dad kissing your boo-boo to make it all better: augmented reality band-aids.

Targeted at kids aged 3–6, these digital band-aids are designed to soothe a child with some consoling words from their favorite animated characters.

Right now, this augmented reality technology is limited to the Japanese kids’ market and characters, but if it catches on, don’t be surprised if American characters like Mickey Mouse, Sponge Bob or My Pretty Pony don’t end up on your kid's knee telling them that everything is going to be okay.

Still, it’s interesting to see the many ways that smartphones and AR technologies are beginning to integrate themselves into our daily, and most basic, tasks.

And while it would be pretty cool to see Luke Skywalker pop up on your hand, nothing is as satisfying to a child as a kiss on the forehead and squeeze from their parent.

Related


How Augmented Reality Soothes Kids Scrapes and Cuts was originally published in Virtual Reality Pop on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

05 Mar 21:59

En Chine, Starbucks a lancé une tasse à café insolite en forme de patte de chat

by Claire L.

Mais jusqu’où ira la folie et la passion pour les chats ? Les chats sont extrêmement populaires, notamment sur le web, et ça, les marques l’ont bien compris. Elles sont nombreuses à jouer sur cet attrait des chats pour proposer à leurs clients des produits insolites qui sauront satisfaire leur passion pour ces adorables boules de poils.

La dernière marque à avoir joué sur la corde sensible est le géant du café Starbucks qui propose à ses clients en Chine une tasse qui prend la forme d’une patte de chat. Dans le cadre de sa collection “Printemps 2019” sur le thème des fleurs de cerisier, la marque a a proposé à ses clients cette fameuse tasse “Cat Paw” qui prend la forme d’une tasse classique dans laquelle une patte en verre a été sculptée.

Lorsque vous versez votre boisson dans la tasse, ce n’est pas l’intégralité du récipient qui se remplit mais la fameuse patte qui est du coup mise en évidence. Mais ce que Starbucks n’avait visiblement pas prévu, c’est l’attrait du public chinois pour sa nouvelle tasse “patte de chat”

Dans une vidéo partagée sur YouTube par la CGTN (à visionner ci-dessus), on peut voir des clients se bousculer et littéralement se battre pour se procurer l’une de ces tasses en édition limitée. 😓

Initialement commercialisée 199 yuans (environ 26 euros), cette tasse est aujourd’hui proposée sur des sites tiers pour une valeur pouvant atteindre 10 fois ce montant. Si l’initiative était amusante et originale pour la marque, les conséquences et les bagarres engendrées par le côté “exclusif” du produit ont hélas tendance à ternir son image…

Crédits : Starbucks

Crédits : Starbucks

Crédits : __happy_day__

Crédits : __happy_day__

Crédits : __happy_day__

Crédits : koaphan

Imaginé par : Starbucks China
Source : designtaxi.com

L?article En Chine, Starbucks a lancé une tasse à café insolite en forme de patte de chat est apparu en premier sur Creapills.

27 Feb 20:51

How Amazon took 50% of the e-commerce market and what it means for the rest of us

by Jonathan Shieber
Jun-Sheng Li Contributor
Jun-Sheng (Jun) Li is an Executive in Residence at Canvas Ventures and was the former senior vice president of Walmart's global e-commerce supply chain.

As SVP of Walmart’s global ecommerce supply chain for five years until 2018, I had a front row seat to how brick-and-mortar retailers were responding to Amazon’s dominance in e-commerce. Most of us were alarmed. And who could blame us? Today, Amazon has nearly50% of all e-commerce trade.

The way I see it, if you are a brick-and-mortar retailer, you either embrace a digital strategy to become omnichannel or do nothing and become irrelevant.  To fully appreciate the gravity of the situation, let’s step back to understand how we got here. And importantly, start with what I believe is the single, biggest challenge for retailers today.

Holy Grail: Become Truly Omnichannel

Omnichannel retailing has become the goal that every retailer is aiming for — but few know how to achieve. In a nutshell, omnichannel simply means providing customers a seamless, continuous experience wherever customers would like to shop – across any device or store location – with a unified brand experience.

For example, I can buy a pair of shoes from Nordstrom using my smartphone and choose to pick up my purchase at a store or have it delivered to my home. If I want to return the shoes for any reason, I can do so by mail or return them at a store. My interaction with Nordstrom consistently flows from one channel to another.

But from a brick-and-mortar retailer’s perspective, that’s easier said than done.

A Lot More Moving Parts

They say the “devil’s in the details” and I would add the “details are in the supply chain.” And today’s supply chain is more complex than ever – especially if you’re a traditional, brick-and-mortar retailer striving to transform into an omnichannel. To start, you have to get your head around doing things very differently. You will be:

  • Distributing products to millions of homes instead of hundreds of stores
  • Managing millions of SKUs (stock keeping units) instead of thousands
  • Shipping to homes in parcels (including last-mile delivery) instead of truckloads to stores
  • Running fulfillment centers (FCs) in addition to distribution centers (DCs). FCs ship goods directly to customers. DCs ship goods to stores.

Want to Be an Omnichannel?

Be Ready to Add “Fulfillment Centers” to Your Existing Mix of “Distribution Centers”. The level of complexity will increase by orders of magnitude.

Three Key Challenges to Omnichannel Excellence

These are the top-three most intransigent challenges you will face in your omnichannel quest:

  • Organizational and Management Constraints
  • People can be resistant to change. Many find it hard to think in new paradigms.
  • Different business units have different processes, KPIs (key performance indicators) and incentives.

Sharing of assets across all channels can be difficult. For example, how should you allocate warehouse space and balance the availability of products (i.e. inventory) between online and in-store sales?

Process and Systems Challenges

  • First you need to plan: you must aggregate demand forecasting and planning for both physical and online sales by channel.
  • Then figure out what you have: Determine product assortment across all channels: DCs, FCs, your own stores and even third-party locations like a marketplace vendor.
  • Lastly, you need to know where to ship your products from. You must instantaneously track what was sold against a global inventory spread across a myriad of locations.

Continuous Innovation

A brick-and-mortar retailer will need to continually learn new processes and technologies that impact your supply chain. For example:

  • Learn new processes when integrating FCs into your supply chain network. This includes new ways to receive, sort, store, pick, pack, ship, house products in lockers or stores for drive-through and pick-ups. These processes are completely different from what is used at traditional DCs or stores.
  • Keep abreast of packaging technology, both the method of packing (optimizing how much you can fit into a package) and the materials (consider what’s best for long distance, the environment, costs, and the protection of the product, especially if it involves home delivery of groceries with thermal foam or totes.)
  • Meet the demands of home grocery shopping and “last mile” deliveries. In addition to delivering goods in full truckloads from DCs to stores, you must learn how to operate so-called “milk runs” from stores to customer homes. When delivering groceries to a home, you must adhere to certain time slots and sometimes make “live deliveries” to ensure perishable goods are received promptly and safely. This entails a constantly refreshed and technologically modern TMS (Transportation Management System).

 Amazon Had a Wide, Open Field

Going back to the headline of this article, how did Amazon become the e-commerce behemoth that it is today with seemingly little resistance from traditional retailers? Was the brick-and-mortar executives asleep at the wheel? To answer that question, some historical framing could help: 

The Four Waves of Ecommerce

So What’s a Retailer to Do?

I think we’re at the point of no return. The omnichannel train has left the station.  What would I do if I ran a retail business today? First, I would accept the fact that customers now love to shop both online and offline, and they expect 2-day shipping for certain products and near flawless execution. The bar has been set high by Amazon. Then I would create a game plan that leverages my existing physical assets like warehouses, distribution centers, and stores to offer new services like ship-from-store or pickup-at-store. I would also build new fulfillment centers specifically to fulfill online orders and ship to customers’ homes.

Although Amazon dominates e-commerce, there are multitudes of department stores and retail brands with successful digital platforms. I was on the Walmart team from 2013 to 2018 when Walmart invested heavily in their omnichannel strategy.

On February 19, 2019, Walmart announced their FY 2019 Q4 results which showed the company grew e-commerce sales by 43 percent year-over-year in its last quarter, blowing past estimates for the holiday season.

Of course, many factors go into an effective omnichannel strategy. The biggest factor, in my mind, is simply to gather the corporate will and get started.

26 Feb 07:05

HoloLens 2’s Field of View Revealed

by David Heaney
microsoft hololens 2

At MWC yesterday Microsoft announced the $3500 HoloLens 2 augmented reality headset. On stage the company boasted the headset’s “more than 2x” field of view compared to the original. However, no specific values were given.

Today on Twitter Microsoft’s Alex Kipman clarified the details. The headset provides 52 degrees of augmented viewing when measured diagonally, according to Kipman. Given that the Microsoft website states the headset’s aspect ratio is 3:2, this would give a horizontal FoV of 43° and a vertical of 29° using the basic Pythagorean theorem.

That 43°×29° is an impressive increase over the 30°×17.5° of the original. It’s now roughly equal to the 40°×30° of the $2295 Magic Leap One.

But how is this “more than 2x” the field of view of the original, you might ask? Well it seems Microsoft was referring to the total FoV area — not the per-axis measurements. A 43°×29° FoV is actually around 2.4x the area of 30°×17.5°.

This is an impressive leap forward and will make holographic objects feel much more immersive than before. But in perspective, it is still significantly narrower than even a typical VR headset. There is also a ways to go before either AR or VR headsets are capable of filling the entirety of human vision.

HoloLens 2 is the state of the art in augmented reality — using a custom designed laser MEMS display system. However AR technology still has a long way to go before becoming consumer friendly. Just like VR 10 years ago, AR will need several breakthroughs before it is truly ready for consumers. But based on what Microsoft showed us at MWC, we’ve never been more excited for AR’s future.

Tagged with: augmented reality, HoloLens 2, microsoft, microsoft hololens

The post HoloLens 2’s Field of View Revealed appeared first on UploadVR.

20 Feb 23:14

A DIY E-Ink Calendar Powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero W

by Cameron Coward

E-ink displays are fantastic to look at, but come with two serious caveats. Most of them are monochrome, and they’re very slow to refresh. Multicolor e-ink displays are available, but they refresh even slower. That means they’re only suited to a handful of specific applications, like in e-readers. Another device that they’re perfect for is a digital calendar, and Redditor Heyninclicks built their own using a Raspberry Pi.

In addition to the calendar functionality, this build also incorporates a weather display. Both are a great use for an e-ink display, since they don’t need to refresh very often and don’t need to refresh quickly when they do. In this case, that e-ink display is a 7.5" monochrome model made by Waveshare. It’s housed within a simple, but elegant, black picture frame.

A Raspberry Pi Zero W was used to update the display, and Heynineclicks created the graphics themselves. The weather data comes from Darksky, and the software to update the display was programmed specifically for this project. The final product looks great, and is a really practical way to always have a calendar and the weather on hand.


A DIY E-Ink Calendar Powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero W was originally published in Hackster Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

14 Feb 07:10

Vocalize.ai Acquired by Sensory

by Bret Kinsella

Vocalize.ai, a speech recognition benchmarking company, announced today it has been acquired by Sensory, a company known for on-device speech recognition, biometric security, and natural language understanding technology. Joe Murphy, the founder and CEO of Vocalize.ai, formerly worked at UL and saw an opportunity in the summer of 2017 to launch an independent testing and benchmarking company focused on the performance of voice assistants. Sensory was a customer of Vocalize.ai before the acquisition and the companies had discussed building out and sharing a testing studio. That consideration along with other synergies led to the acquisition discussions. Todd Mozer, CEO of Sensory Inc., commented:

“Sensory has always done in-house technology testing through simulations. However, we saw a growing need for an independent testing source that wasn’t influenced by our data or testing methods, that could also provide more real world, black-box testing. Vocalize.ai offers exactly what we needed and was in fact tremendously helpful in shaping our new TrulyHandsfree 6.0 release.”

Creating Common Evaluation Criteria for Voice Technologies

Since its founding, Vocalize.ai has conducted private studies for hardware and software makers as well as issued public reports on voice assistant performance. The company reported in September 2018 that Google Assistant was outpacing its peers in understanding accented speech and in June 2018 that SonosOne and the Amazon Echo Dot exhibited performance that audiologists would characterize as hearing loss. More recently, Vocalize.ai has focused on privately commissioned benchmarks but did collaborate with Voicebot.ai in the fall of 2018 on a study related to wake word “false positives” where voice assistants wake-up and start listening by accident.

The Vocalize.ai announcement says it will remain an independent company serving clients beyond Sensory. Deal terms were not disclosed and there is no record of previous investors. The company’s core asset is a testing software suite that automates numerous test protocols, most of them based on standards developed by audiologists. However, Mr. Murphy is also conducting tests beyond speech recognition performance that assess other capabilities of leading voice assistants.

Follow @bretkinsellaFollow @voicebotai

Sensory is Enabling Offline Smart Speakers with No Cloud Connectivity to Maximize Security

Google Assistant Takes Lead in Understanding Speakers with Accents

Sonos One, Eufy Genie and Amazon Echo Dot Exhibit Characteristics of Hearing Loss in New Study

The post Vocalize.ai Acquired by Sensory appeared first on Voicebot.

12 Feb 08:46

Baidu made a smart cat shelter that uses AI to tell cats and dogs apart

by Shannon Liao
The cat says: “Coming!” The camera says: “You’ve arrived, brother!”

China’s top search engine company Baidu made a smart cat shelter in Beijing that uses AI to verify when a cat is approaching and open its door. The cat shelter is heated and also offers cats food and water.

Besides running China’s main search engine, Baidu also works on AI tools in general and owns iQiyi, a Netflix-like rival that uses algorithms to determine what viewers may be interested in watching next. While cat shelters ordinarily seem out of the scope of what Baidu does, the company says that the idea first came to one employee, Wan Xi, who uncovered a small cat hiding in his car last winter and began to sympathize with the plight of other stray cats. Wan then apparently shut himself at home to develop software and work on a...

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11 Feb 17:18

Google Docs gets an API for task automation

by Frederic Lardinois

Google today announced the general availability of a new API for Google Docs that will allow developers to automate many of the tasks that users typically do manually in the company’s online office suite. The API has been in developer preview since last April’s Google Cloud Next 2018 and is now available to all developers.

As Google notes, the REST API was designed to help developers build workflow automation services for their users, build content management services and create documents in bulk. Using the API, developers can also set up processes that manipulate documents after the fact to update them, and the API also features the ability to insert, delete, move, merge and format text, insert inline images and work with lists, among other things.

The canonical use case here is invoicing, where you need to regularly create similar documents with ever-changing order numbers and line items based on information from third-party systems (or maybe even just a Google Sheet). Google also notes that the API’s import/export abilities allow you to use Docs for internal content management systems.

Some of the companies that built solutions based on the new API during the preview period include Zapier, Netflix, Mailchimp and Final Draft. Zapier integrated the Docs API into its own workflow automation tool to help its users create offer letters based on a template, for example, while Netflix used it to build an internal tool that helps its engineers gather data and automate its documentation workflow.

 

 

30 Jan 21:39

Waterproof Chemical Sensor Collects Biometric Data During Water Sports

by Cabe Atwell

Researchers from Northwestern University’s Rogers Research Group have developed a wearable biometric sensor that collects and analyzes athlete’s sweat, even while they are swimming underwater for prolonged periods. Our sweat carries a host of chemical information about our bodies, such as salt, sugar, hormones, drug, alcohol, and electrolyte levels, which are indicative of our overall health. Just like other demanding physical activities, swimming makes us sweat even while underwater, but there hasn’t been an effective way to collect and analyze it while under water.

The waterproof skin patch allows for monitoring biometrics during water sports. (📷: Rogers Research Group)

The researchers’ sweat sensor features a waterproof elastomeric moldable polymer circular patch that’s deformable and adheres to skin no matter the conditions. The underside of the patch has a tiny hole that allows sweat to enter; while a myriad of separate microfluidic channels push the sweat to an internal sensor where it is analyzed. An embedded NFC chip can then transmit the data to a mobile device that medical professionals can use to view the results.

The Rogers Research Group’s chemical sensor features an elastic patch with a tiny hole underneath that allows sweat to enter. The collected fluid travels through small channels to the sensor, where it is analyzed and stored. (📷: Rogers Research Group)

Each microfluidic channel serves as different miniature test lab — with one for fluid levels, another for chloride concentration, another for sweat loss, and so forth. The sweat is mixed with different chemicals within the micro-channels, causing it to change different colors, each representing that specific test, allowing athletes to see body chemistry changes in real-time.

Besides sending the collected data wirelessly to a mobile device for further analysis, the wearer could also take a pic of the patch, and an app could tell them if they need to drink more water or risk dehydration, something that can happen even while swimming.

The elastic polymer patch allows the sensor to deform to the skin creating a seal that prevents water from entering. (📷: Rogers Research Group)

The wearable sweat sensors are already in clinical use at the Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, where they are used to screen newborns for cystic fibrosis through measuring chloride levels in their sweat. They will also be fielded to athletes to put them through ‘extreme test-cases’ before they become available to the market.


Waterproof Chemical Sensor Collects Biometric Data During Water Sports was originally published in Hackster Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

29 Jan 22:59

The Pentagon compiled research into invisibility cloaking, wormholes, and warp drive

by Makena Kelly

A document released this month revealed a secretive multimillion-dollar Department of Defense program from the late 2000s compiled research into invisibility cloaks, warp drive, and many other areas of fringe space science as part of a now-defunct program aimed at detecting and potentially explaining strange sightings in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The five-page document includes a list of papers written for the program, originally sent to two members of Congress last year. The pages were released on January 16th as a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Federation of American Scientists.

Between 2007 and 2012, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) spent $22 million on this UFO program, which was formally known...

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28 Jan 22:17

MIT Creates Antennas for Wearables That Harvest Energy From Wi-Fi Signals

by Cameron Coward

Once of the biggest challenges in developing wearable devices is energy storage. Wearables, like any other mobile device, need to be as small and light as possible. That means that bulky, heavy batteries are a major constraint in their design. This new antenna design created by researchers at MIT, as well as many other institutions, solves that problem by harvesting the energy from the radio waves all around us.

Researchers have designed a flexible, battery-free “rectenna” — a device that converts energy from Wi-Fi signals into electricity. (📷: Christine Daniloff / MIT News)

That, by itself, isn’t a new concept; energy-collecting antennas, called rectennas, have been around for a long time. But, traditional rectenna designs have a lot of drawbacks: they’re relatively expensive by area, they’re rigid, and they can only harvest energy from a limited portion of the radio wave spectrum. This new design utilizes an inexpensive material called molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) that results in thin, flexible rectennas that can collect energy from a wide range of radio waves.

With the MoS2 material, they are able to build the rectifier portion of the antenna at just three atoms thick. That means these antennas can be incorporated into thin, lightweight, and even flexible wearable devices. Such an antenna can harvest electricity with up to 40% efficiency from wireless signals up to 10 gigahertz, which includes Wi-Fi and cellular signals that are always around us — but which usually just go to waste.

Because they’re inexpensive to construct, these new rectennas have potential in a wide range of industries. They could be used to power implantable medical devices where the safety of batteries is a concern. Thinking on a much larger scale, the researchers believe these could also be used to power entire smart roads, bridges, and other civil engineering structures.


MIT Creates Antennas for Wearables That Harvest Energy From Wi-Fi Signals was originally published in Hackster Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

05 Jan 13:03

Google’s Project Soli radar is sensitive enough to count sheets of paper and read Lego bricks

by James Vincent
Project Soli uses miniature radar to detect gestures.

What does the computer interface of the future look like? One bet from Google is that it will involve invisible interfaces you can tweak and twiddle in mid-air. This is what the company is exploring via Project Soli, an experimental hardware program which uses miniature radar to detect movement, and which recently won approval from the FCC for further study.

Imagining exactly how this tech will be put to use is tricky, but a group of researchers from the University of St Andrews in Scotland are exploring its limitations. In a paper published last month, they show how Project Soli hardware can be used for a range of precise sensing tasks. These including counting the number of playing cards in a deck, measuring compass orientation, and...

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02 Jan 08:48

This awesome homemade jukebox is controlled by swipeable song cards

by Jacob Kastrenakes

In an era where everything is controlled by touchscreens and oblique voice commands, there’s something incredibly satisfying about a gadget with simple, tactile controls. That’s probably why designer Chris Patty’s homemade jukebox looks so charming: it’s controlled by physical cards, each printed with an artist and album art on the front, that you swipe to play a song.

Patty created the jukebox as a Christmas gift for his father, after his family decided to only swap handmade presents this year. He later posted a short video of the creation to Twitter, where he’s received enough positive responses that he’s working on an open source version of the software and instructions so that fans can make their own.

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19 Dec 22:37

Steppingstone VR Uses Multi-Platform Electromagnetic Propulsion To Fight Sim Sickness

by Jamie Feltham
Steppingstone VR Uses Multi-Platform Electromagnetic Propulsion To Fight Sim Sickness

Steppingstone VR thinks its new approach to VR locomotion might be the one to solve simulation sickness.

The company is working on a motion platform that uses electromagnetic propulsion to physically move players around as they stand/sit on a platform. You can see it in the early prototype video below; the platform gets its power supply from a specialized floor, a little like bumper cars, allowing it to quickly adapt and move in response to the player’s input in VR. The sensations of physically moving that the player feels should help to combat sickness in games with smooth locomotion such as Skyrim VR.

But this is just the first step (sorry) for Steppingstone VR. Over emails, CEO Samy Bensmida tells me that the consumer version of its product aims to include multiple moving platforms that users will be able to step onto. Tiles will move backward as you step onto them, in theory allowing you to physically walk around a massive game world without ever leaving the center of a space. You can see a similar concept in the video below, though Bensmida explains that this system uses wheels, whereas Steppingstone’s electromagnetic propulsion will allow it a greater deal of autonomy.

“You will walk all day long in Skyrim with your legs, no harness, and get all the congruent inertial cues,” Bensmida said.

And, yes, as expensive as it looks, Bensmida says the product is “100% consumer” with the aim of streamlining it to be viable for homes. Based on the prototype, there’s a lot of work to be done to get Steppingstone towards anywhere near something we’d consider making space for it and we’d still be concerned about the safety of navigating multiple moving platforms when essentially blindfolded in VR.

Still, Bensmida seems confident the team will pull it off, and is preparing a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign to help it get there. It’s currently estimated to utilize a “consumer safe” 12V voltage and the campaign will likely run for around $150,000.

Would you put down electromagnetic flooring in your house if it meant complete and utter VR immersion?

Tagged with: Steppingstone VR

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19 Dec 07:29

Samsung’s stylish The Frame and Serif 4K TVs will soon come in more sizes with better picture quality

by Chris Welch

Ahead of CES, Samsung is announcing upcoming refreshes of its two most stylish 4K TVs, The Frame and Serif. These are lifestyle pieces that aim to make people rethink what a TV can and should look like. They don’t offer Samsung’s best picture performance — that’s still reserved for the proper QLED lineup — but they’re definitely good for attracting conversation in the home.

The Frame is being upgraded with an improved picture over its previous two iterations. The 2019 model will feature Samsung’s quantum dot display technology for a wider HDR color palette. Aside from offering a better picture, The Frame will also now come in a new 49-inch size. (Last year’s edition came in 43-, 55-, and 65-inch sizes.) Samsung markets The Frame to...

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