Jean-Philippe Encausse

Dice, in one form or another, have been used for thousands of years, in fact “since before recorded history” according to Wikipedia. While manufacturing methods have certainly changed, dice have remained roughly the same throughout the ages. Jean Simonet, however, has ambitiously set out to make something new — a die that lights up depending on the number thrown.

Although this would be a relatively attainable job at a larger scale, Simonet’s design measures just 17mm on a side, compared to standard die that comes in at 16mm. Inside, he’s packed 21 LEDs, an accelerometer to detect motion, and even a Simblee module that combines a microcontroller with a Bluetooth radio and chip antenna. This allows it to not only illuminate with LEDs corresponding to the roll, but communicate with a nearby smartphone as well. With this interface, the die can be preset for certain games, lighting up in custom modes or even resolving competition automatically. It can also be used without a host smart device as drop-in replacements for normal “number-cubes,” but with new effects.

According to Simonet, there’s still a lot of work to do, but as it stands today it’s an incredible feat of 3D printing and careful flexible PCB design to wrap everything in the cube along with a tiny CR-1/3N battery. Future plans include the possibility of RGB lighting, along with further app development, and there’s even a 20-sided die prototype. It will be interesting to see this project’s progress. Code is available on GitHub, and you can sign up on electronic-dice.com to “get notified of future developments.”

https://medium.com/media/06048e62dd4c8f032382bbdc5510a7a9/href

---

This Electronic Die Lights Up and Communicates with Every Roll was originally published in Hackster Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

• Global smart speaker sales overall rose by 55% in Q2 2019 compared to Q2 2018 according to research firm Canalys.
• Canalys also estimates that Google’s global smart speaker sales market share fell from 32.3% in Q2 2018 to just 16.7% in Q2 2019. That also reflected the sale of 1.1 million fewer smart speakers in Q2 2019 while all other vendors saw significant growth.
• Google’s decline was accompanied by a rapid rise by Baidu to climb from near zero to over 17% sales share in Q2 2019.
• Amazon took the top spot in global smart speaker market sales with 25.4% share and 6.6 million devices sold.
• Canalys also noted more than half of quarterly smart speaker sales are now outside the U.S. for both Amazon and Google.
• U.S. smart speaker sales declined 2.4% compared to the comparable quarter in 2018.

New data from research firm Canalys suggests Google’s share of the global smart speaker shipments in Q2 2019 trailed both Amazon and Baidu. Canalys estimates Amazon shipped 6.6 million smart speakers in the quarter compared to 4.5 million for Baidu and 4.3 million from Google. The figures place Amazon’s sales market share at 25.4% followed by 17.3% and 16.7% for Baidu and Google respectively. This is the first quarter that Google has not been first or second in global smart speaker shipments since launching a device in 2016.

Google’s sales were followed by Alibaba with 4.1 million units and Xiaomi with 2.8 million which accounted for 15.8% and 10.8% market share respectively. Other smart speaker makers shipped 3.7 million devices for a 14.1% combined share. Overall, smart speaker shipments rose 55.4% over the comparable 2018 quarter to reach 26.1 million units.

Google Smart Speaker Shipments Decline for the First Time

Notably, Q2 2019 marks not just Google slipping behind Baidu, but also that first time that the company has shown a year-over-year decline in smart speaker shipments for a quarterly total. In Q2 2018, Canalys says that Google led all smart speaker sellers with 5.4 million devices shipped and 32.3% market share. The Q2 2019 figures represented a halving of the company’s market share and a reduction of 1.1 million smart speakers sold. Google’s 20% year-over-year decline compares to every other vendor’s sales increase of at least 37%.

Factors Contributing to Google’s Sales Decline

Google may be suffering from three factors that are undermining its sales volume. First, the flagship Google Home smart speaker launched in 2016 and has not been updated. The value segment Google Home Mini followed in 2017 and has similarly not seen an update other than additional color options. By contrast, Amazon has regularly introduced updates to its core smart speaker portfolio approximately every two years for each device. Google is said to be working on an update to the popular Google Home Mini and that will likely arrive in the company’s annual hardware event in October. Google Nest Hub Max, a smart display designed to compete with the Amazon Echo Show and Facebook Portal, is also due to start shipping soon so we may see a turnaround as new products entice consumer interest.

Second, Google decided in Q2 2019 to change the product branding away from “Home” to “Nest.” The Google Home Hub was rebranded Google Nest Hub and all devices are expected to gain the “Nest” branding. This isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but it may be creating consumer confusion. “Google’s transition to the Nest branding while pivoting to smart displays proved to be a challenge, especially as it began rolling out its Nest Hub globally. Google urgently requires a revamped non-display smart speaker portfolio to rekindle consumer interest,” said Canalys senior analyst Jason Low.

No New Country Launches in Q2 2019

Another challenge for Google’s unit sales may be a lack of new country introductions in Q2 of this year. In April 2018, Google Home began shipping in Italy, India, Singapore, Spain, Australia, Ireland, and Mexico. There was also aggressive discounting in Q2 2018 with deals for purchases of multiple Google Home Minis. Maybe even more important, was the interest that Google Duplex, first demonstrated in May 2018, drove around Google Assistant capabilities in general. That has since launched but its features are limited to use from a smartphone.

Q2 2019 saw the introduction of Google Assistant in Belgium. However, Google Home smart speakers were not introduced into any new countries for the first time. The Google Nest Hub did start shipping in Canada for the first time, but the country has had Google-enabled smart speakers for two years and the smart display immediately received added competition from the new Amazon Echo Show 5. So, the lack of new country launches is the most likely culprit for depressed unit sales, but it is also worth noting that Amazon didn’t have any new country launches during the quarter and still experienced 61% year-over-year unit growth. Google’s Q3 and Q4 sales volume will merit close scrutiny to assess whether the decline is cyclical or representative of waning consumer interest.

Amazon and Google Smart Speaker Sales More Global Than 2018

Canalys also noted that Amazon and Google both sold more than 50% of their smart speakers outside of the U.S. in Q2 2019. That is the first time Canalys has found more international sales for Amazon and Google smart speakers.

This shift is particularly important for Google and Amazon because Canalys also reported that total smart speaker sales in the U.S. declined 2.4% to 6.1 million units in Q2 2019. That year-over-year quarterly contraction is also a first since smart speakers first came to market in 2014. Amazon was clearly able to manage this shift in demand more effectively than Google. Going forward, this will be another data point to monitor to see if U.S. sales begin to rise again and how non-U.S. sales trend for the leading smart speaker manufacturers.

Follow @bretkinsella Follow @voicebotai

Google Gave Away 19,596 Google Home Minis at the Warriors – Trail Blazers NBA Playoff Game This Evening. Here’s Why.

The post Google’s Smart Speaker Sales Decline in Q2 2019, Falls Behind Baidu While Device Shipments Rise 55 Percent Globally appeared first on Voicebot.

As people strive ever harder to minutely quantify every action they do, the sensors that monitor those actions are growing lighter and less invasive. Two prototype sensors from crosstown rivals Stanford and Berkeley stick right to the skin and provide a wealth of physiological data.

Stanford’s stretchy wireless “BodyNet” isn’t just flexible in order to survive being worn on the shifting surface of the body; that flexing is where its data comes from.

The sensor is made of metallic ink laid on top of a flexible material like that in an adhesive bandage. But unlike phones and smartwatches, which use tiny accelerometers or optical tricks to track the body, this system relies on how it is itself stretched and compressed. These movements cause tiny changes in how electricity passes through the ink, changes that are relayed to a processor nearby.

Naturally if one is placed on a joint, as some of these electronic stickers were, it can report back whether and how much that joint has been flexed. But the system is sensitive enough that it can also detect the slight changes the skin experiences during each heartbeat, or the broader changes that accompany breathing.

The problem comes when you have to get that signal off the skin. Using a wire is annoying and definitely very ’90s. But antennas don’t work well when they’re flexed in weird directions — efficiency drops off a cliff, and there’s very little power to begin with — the skin sensor is powered by harvesting RFID signals, a technique that renders very little in the way of voltage.

The second part of their work, then, and the part that is clearly most in need of further improvement and miniaturization, is the receiver, which collects and re-transmits the sensor’s signal to a phone or other device. Although they managed to create a unit that’s light enough to be clipped to clothes, it’s still not the kind of thing you’d want to wear to the gym.

The good news is that’s an engineering and design limitation, not a theoretical one — so a couple years of work and progress on the electronics front and they could have a much more attractive system.

“We think one day it will be possible to create a full-body skin-sensor array to collect physiological data without interfering with a person’s normal behavior,” Stanford professor Zhenan Bao said in a news release.

Over at Cal is a project in a similar domain that’s working to get from prototype to production. Researchers there have been working on a sweat monitor for a few years that could detect a number of physiological factors.

Normally you’d just collect sweat every 15 minutes or so and analyze each batch separately. But that doesn’t really give you very good temporal resolution — what if you want to know how the sweat changes minute by minute or less? By putting the sweat collection and analysis systems together right on the skin, you can do just that.

While the sensor has been in the works for a while, it’s only recently that the team has started moving toward user testing at scale to see what exactly sweat measurements have to offer.

“The goal of the project is not just to make the sensors but start to do many subject studies and see what sweat tells us — I always say ‘decoding’ sweat composition. For that we need sensors that are reliable, reproducible, and that we can fabricate to scale so that we can put multiple sensors in different spots of the body and put them on many subjects,” explained Ali Javey, Berkeley professor and head of the project.

As anyone who’s working in hardware will tell you, going from a hand-built prototype to a mass-produced model is a huge challenge. So the Berkeley team tapped their Finnish friends at VTT Technical Research Center, who make a specialty of roll-to-roll printing.

For flat, relatively simple electronics, roll-to-roll is a great technique, essentially printing the sensors right onto a flexible plastic substrate that can then simply be cut to size. This way they can make hundreds or thousands of the sensors quickly and cheaply, making them much simpler to deploy at arbitrary scales.

These are far from the only flexible or skin-mounted electronics projects out there, but it’s clear that we’re approaching the point when they begin to leave the lab and head out to hospitals, gyms and homes.

The paper describing Stanford’s flexible sensor appeared this week in the journal Nature Electronics, while Berkeley’s sweat tracker was in Science Advances.

Keep things rustic yet stylish in your bathroom by replacing your existing sink for this distinguished wooden log bathroom sink. Made from cherry wood, each sink is hand sculpted, ensuring that each piece is truly unique.

Check it out

$759.64

IKEA propose depuis tout récemment des produits de domotique. Des ampoules, des lampes et autres volets connectés. Le marché est assurément porteur puisque le géant suédois a décidé de mettre sur pied une équipe dédiée à ce segment de la maison.

DoodleChaos used 213 ping pong balls to play the xylophone. The song is Jacques Offenbach’s “Galop Infernal” in the operetta Orpheus in the Underworld, which most of us call “the Can-can.” You can hear it better if you run the video at double speed (under settings). How the balls were tossed into the cups so precisely has me skeptical that there aren’t any video shenanigans going on here, but he says,

I underestimated how random ping pong ball bounces are. Even on a perfectly flat tile, there can be over a foot diameter where the final bounce ends up. My first design for this contraption included 3 bounces, but I ended up redesigning it to be more reliable. I’m thankful for this decision because it meant less time tracking the ball paths in Premiere. If you’re curious how I achieved this effect, I moved a mask to cover every single movement of every ball’s path by hand. Repeating and overlapping multiple layers became very complicated because the balls would cross paths. Once I learned tracks could be nested together I became more organized.

Well, that explains that.

The post Ping Pong Trickshots Play the Xylophone appeared first on Geeks are Sexy Technology News.

Guy Documents His Hair Growth For 2 Years..(Read...)

Unless you’re some sort of monster, you probably like animals. But you’re also a busy person who may not have the time to take care of a real, living pet. That means you’re left coming home to a cold, empty apartment with no one to greet you. That’s just depressing. Luckily, technology can help! Thanks to the Kiki AI-enabled robot “sidekick,” you can have an artificial pet that never needs to be fed or taken for a walk, but will still act like it loves you.

Kiki, created by a company called Zoetic AI that was founded by two former Google employees, recently launched on Kickstarter. So far, it has raised about $10,000 — which is 10 percent of the funding goal. As the campaign video will confidently tell you, “you’ve always dreamed of having a robot companion.” Now you can have one!

https://medium.com/media/bed4b692fc3985b3769365a629962274/href

Like many other competing products that have hit the market recently, Kiki is pretty darn adorable. It can’t drive around or anything, but it can move its head and show emotions using eyes on an LCD screen, RGB LEDs, and cute little sounds. You can interact with Kiki by petting one of its touch sensors. Kiki will also watch you with a camera and can recognize you and your friends. Zoetic AI does, however, promise that the data collected will never be uploaded to the cloud.

Despite having “real-time onboard intelligence,” Kiki isn’t a voice assistant like the Amazon Echo or Google Home. It can’t order you toilet paper, tell you tomorrow’s weather forecast, or put appointments on your calendar. Instead, it’s designed simply to provide you with social interaction. It will develop a personality, understand your feelings, and — as the copy proudly proclaims — Kiki “loves you back.”

If that sounds like something you want in your home, the Kiki Kickstarter campaign will be running until September 28th. A single Kiki robot — with birth certificate included — will cost you a whopping $799. Rewards are expected to be delivered in May of 2020. Or, you could just go to your local animal shelter and adopt a real animal that needs a home.

---

Kiki Is an AI-Enabled Robot “Sidekick” That’s Like a Pet You Don’t Have to Feed was originally published in Hackster Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Thanks to modern machine learning techniques, text-to-speech engines have made massive strides over the last few years. It used to be incredibly easy to know that it was a computer that was reading a text and not a human being. But that’s changing quickly. Amazon’s AWS cloud computing arm today launched a number of new neural text-to-speech models, as well as a new newscaster style that is meant to mimic the way… you guessed it… newscasters sound.

“Speech quality is certainly important, but more can be done to make a synthetic voice sound even more realistic and engaging,” the company notes in today’s announcement. “What about style? For sure, human ears can tell the difference between a newscast, a sportscast, a university class and so on; indeed, most humans adopt the right style of speech for the right context, and this certainly helps in getting their message across.”

The new newscaster style is now available in two U.S. voices (Joanna and Matthew) and Amazon is already working with USA Today and Canada’s The Globe and Mail, among a number of other companies, to help them voice their texts.

Have a listen for yourself:

Amazon Polly Newscaster, as the new service is officially called, is the result of years of research on text-to-speech, which AWS is also now making available through its Neural Text-to-Speech engine. This new engine, which isn’t unlike similar neural engines like Google’s WaveNet and others, currently features 11 voices, three for U.K. English and eight for U.S. English.

You can hear a few more of these voices here.

In this age of fake news, having life-like robot voices that sound like real newscasters feels a bit problematic at first. For the most part, though, whether a robot or human reads the text doesn’t make all that much of a difference. There are plenty of good use cases for the voices, and given the examples that AWS provided, you’ll be able to listen to these voices for significantly longer than the old ones before you want to cut your ears off.

CRISPR Drawer

Up to 18 people, ages three and up, will be part of the first ever human study in the U.S. that uses the gene-editing technique CRISPR inside the body. The goal is to treat an eye disorder that causes blindness, according to the Associated Press.

In many cases the heritable disorder, Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), eventually causes complete loss of vision. In fact, it’s the number one cause of inherited blindness in children.

The trial, which will be carried out by pharmaceutical companies Editas Medicine and Allergan, will attempt to address a specific variant of LCA called LCA 10. Researchers will use CRISPR to supply a healthy version of a gene that the patients lack through a subretinal injection.

See the Light

But this change will not be passed on to future generations, as the AP points out. That makes it different from the highly controversial series of human embryo trials by Chinese scientist He Jiankui, who used a similar technique to edit the germline of future human generations.

A different, non-CRISPR gene therapy treatment for LCA already exists, called Luxturna, which involves injecting a modified virus that delivers the corrected gene into the retina’s cells.

READ MORE: First CRISPR study inside the body to start in US [Associated Press]

More on CRISPR: Chinese Scientists Say They’ve Found a Safer Alternative to CRISPR

The post This Human Gene Editing Trial Will Use CRISPR to Treat Blindness appeared first on Futurism.

Probablement lassé de voir ses terminaux fuiter de tous les côtés, Google prend désormais les devants et vient de dévoiler deux nouveautés prévues sur les futurs Pixel 4 (attendus en octobre). Dans une vidéo publiée sur YouTube, le géant de la recherche confirme deux rumeurs qui enflaient ces derniers mois : les Pixel 4 auront bien le droit à la reconnaissance...

A lot of video games these days end up being a lot like second jobs. Some, like World of Warcraft, require grinding — a term for completing dull, repetitive tasks in order to gain experience, currency, or items. Others, such as the infamous Facebook game Farmville, are essentially job simulators. But, unlike real work, those games are addicting because you earn frequent and regular rewards that trigger a dopamine release in your brain. One of the earliest examples of that game genre was the Tamagotchi, and now you can replicate that experience with your real plants using the Lua smart planter.

Lua is being crowdfunded through Indiegogo, and the campaign has already tripled its goal with five days still left to go. This smart planter essentially uses gamification to motivate you to take care of your plant. Like a Tamagotchi, the Lua smart planter displays emotions that correspond to its health, and the only way to make the planter happy is to ensure that it is properly taken care of. This gamification gives you an instant reward in the form of a happy response when you take care of the plant, which is much more of a motivation than the slow growth that is the normal reward for gardening.

It works by monitoring the plant’s conditions using a variety of sensors, which can detect moisture, temperature, and light exposure. Using a smartphone app, you tell the Lua planter what kind of plant you’re trying to raise. Doing so lets the planter know that plant’s ideal conditions. The planter can then display a number of emotions, such as panting when water is needed, on an LCD screen to let you know what you need to do to keep the plant healthy. It can even use a built-in motion sensor to display additional animations based on your movement.

If you want a Lua smart planter, the Indiegogo campaign will be running for another five days. A single planter will cost you $110, and there are different color options to suit your decor. Rewards are expected to be shipped in December.

---

Take Care of Your Plant Like a Tamagotchi with This Smart Planter was originally published in Hackster Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

Amazon’s surveillance camera brand Ring has partnered with more than 200 police departments across the country, according to a new report by Motherboard.

It’s been widely known that Ring has worked with law enforcement: Motherboard recently reported on a contract between the company and a police department, and Amazon has even used footage of suspected thieves to promote the products. But the news highlights the scope of the relationship between the company and police.

Motherboard obtained notes from an officer given a webinar by Ring. According to the notes, Ring lets officers request footage from owners through Ring. While police reportedly need consent from owners, a warrant isn’t...

Continue reading…

Today, getting on the Internet is as easy as picking up your phone. For that matter, “getting on” the Internet seems like a bit of a misnomer, as unlike circa 20 years ago, you never really log on or off, you’re mostly just connected with periods where you aren’t actually staring at a screen. This certainly makes things easier, and is (maybe) for the best, but what if you miss the adventure of plugging in arcane commands and numbers for access?

While it won’t bring back the screeching modem tones of old, Jan Derogee’s Rrotary dial phone for your web browser (for your windows computer)” at least brings back some of the confusion and inconvenience. The setup acts as an auxiliary keyboard, but instead of making things more accessible with single button press as you’d normally expect, it forces you to dial a series of numbers on a rotary phone. This, along with a shift button, allows you to either access websites using Firefox, or perform convoluted on-screen calculations via your computer’s calculator app.

In action, the device uses a SparkFun Pro Micro with an ATmega32U4 microcontroller to read pulses from the rotary dial, then convert them to emulated keyboard commands. This means that no special software is needed to run the device, though your computer needs to be set up correctly to properly respond to the issued commands. The phone plugs in via a modified wall-mount phone outlet, which theoretically enables any rotary phone to be plugged in as “needed” for this unnecessary shortcut keyboard.

https://medium.com/media/a3287a40fe63c6238d3f9a978c270f9c/href

---

Browse the Internet with a Rotary Phone was originally published in Hackster Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Artist s0alaina re-imagined some of the most popular animals from Disney franchises as humans while keeping in mind the style and spirit of the era they’re in while designing them.

[Source: s0alaina on Deviantart | Via NA]

The post Disney Animals as People [Pics] appeared first on Geeks are Sexy Technology News.

Spotted: Immersive technology company Arcade uses augmented reality (AR) to enhance visitors’ experiences of tourist attractions and public spaces. Working with the Sea Life London Aquarium, Arcade created the multi-award winning Roxy the Ranger, an AR chatbot.

Roxy interacts with visitors, who can pilot her vehicles in and through the aquarium’s tanks. With the app, the Aquarium hoped to increase engagement and time spent at the attraction. On average, visitors that used the app spent 25 percent more time there and expressed much higher satisfaction with their experience.

The company’s latest launch is the Fame Cam for London’s Madame Tussauds. Using AR, the Fame Cam app allows visitors to learn more about their favourite celebrities and see different facial expressions. If sightseers use the app with all the waxworks on display, they receive discounts in the gift shop. Arcade works with governments, heritage centres, businesses, event organisers and more, always with the goal of turning bystanders into participants. 

Arcade is part of the Augmentor Programme at Digital Catapult.

Selected for the Createch 2019 Ones to Watch, produced by the Creative Industries Council with the support of Digital Catapult, London & Partners and Springwise.

The post An AR chatbot serves as a tour guide appeared first on Springwise.

Véritable fléau environnemental, la pollution due aux mégots de cigarettes est partout : sur les plages, dans les rues, en haut des montagnes… Chaque année en France, 30 milliards de mégots sont jetés dans la nature. Le chiffre s’élève à 4 300 milliards à l’échelle du globe ! Ce reliquat de cigarette – dont le filtre est composé d’acétate de cellulose, qui est une matière plastique – peut mettre jusqu’à 15 ans à se décomposer. Un désastre environnemental en somme…

En plus de la pollution visuelle qu’ils représentent, les mégots engendrent également des risques de pollution chimique car ils contiennent de nombreux composants nuisibles à l’environnement tels que la nicotine, l’ammoniac, l’arsenic, le mercure, etc. Afin de lutter contre cette situation qui ne fait que s’aggraver, Audrey Speyer, une designeuse française, et sa startup PuriFungi, ont conçu un cendrier qui digère les mégots de cigarettes !

En fait, il s’agit d’un champignon capable de faire disparaître totalement ces déchets. Mais comment ça marche ? Et bien, une litière de paille, de copeaux, de bois et de carton sert de lieu de culture aux champignons : c’est ici que vous déposez votre mégot. En deux semaines, le mycélium

(la racine du champignon) se développe et recouvre le mégot. Ensuite, ses enzymes le digèrent et en deux mois, il a disparu !

Résultat : on récupère une espèce de résine que l’on peut utiliser comme brique de construction et peut même se substituer au cuir ou au plastique ! Enfin, le champignon “mange-mégots” sera testé pour la toute première fois au Cabaret vert, du 22 au 25 août 2019, à Charleville-Mézières.

Dans les Pyrénées-Orientales, la commune de Collioure a scellé une plaque près des bouches d’évacuation des eaux fluviales pour lutter contre la pollution.

Imaginé par : Audrey Speyer
Source : francebleu.fr

L’article Cette Française a créé un cendrier à base de champignons qui “digèrent” les mégots de cigarettes est apparu en premier sur Creapills.

As you might have heard, Natalie Portman will become The Mighty Thor in the upcoming Phase 4 marvel movie, Thor: Love and Thunder. Unfortunately, we still don’t know what will happen to Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, but one thing is for sure, people are really divided over Portman’s return to the MCU. If you’re wondering what the actress will look like as the female incarnation of Thor, artist apexform has done a wonderful job in portraying her as the character. Check it out below!

[Source: Apexform on Instagram]

The post Artist Portrays Natalie Portman as The Mighty Thor appeared first on Geeks are Sexy Technology News.

Décidément, jusqu’où ira la hype autour de la série Stranger Things ? Dévoilée sur Netflix au tout début du mois de juillet, la saison 3 de la série phare des frères Duffer n’a visiblement pas fini de faire parler d’elle. Et si vous avez, comme beaucoup, déjà terminé la saison 3 et que vous êtes déjà nostalgique des aventures de Dustin, Elfe, Mike et les autres, vous allez sans aucun doute tomber sous le charme de cette collaboration qui s’annonce… brûlante !

Si vous suivez un peu l’actu autour de la série, vous avez peut être vu que récemment, Nike a officialisé une collaboration avec Stranger Things en révélant trois modèles exclusifs qui revisitent des paires emblématiques de la marque : la Cortez, les Blazers et la Tailwind. Mais c’est ce dernier modèle qui nous intéresse plus particulièrement.

En effet, la paire de Tailwind exclusive cache une petite subtilité qui se révèle… lorsque vous brûlez le tissu de la chaussure. Et oui : si vous brûlez la paire de sneakers, vous pouvez découvrir le logo de la série placé sur le talon en lieu et place du logo Nike. Vous pouvez également brûler la chaussure à plusieurs endroits pour dévoiler le coloris rouge et noir emblématique de la série. D’autres détails sont également présents pour les connaisseurs, comme le fameux code russe “cracké” par Robin, Steve et Dustin à l’intérieur de la chaussure.

Une collaboration plutôt bien trouvée avec un gimmick amusant qui devrait sans aucun doute faire le bonheur des fans de Stranger Things, toujours plus nombreux à travers le monde. Ce modèle exclusif n’est néanmoins disponible qu’en édition ultra-limitée aux USA chez BAIT. Et oui, si vous souhaitez vous les procurer, il faudra passer par des revendeurs tiers et attendez-vous à lâcher plusieurs centaines d’euros…

Imaginé par : Nike et Netflix
Source : metro.co.uk

L’article Nike dévoile des sneakers qui se brûlent pour révéler le logo de la série Stranger Things est apparu en premier sur Creapills.

On a tous déjà gribouillé sur nos cahiers d’école ou dans nos agendas… Mais que se passerait-il si vous pouviez donner vie à ces dessins ? L’artiste du jour, Pietro Cataudella, plus connu sous le pseudo citylivesketch, s’illustre également dans cette discipline mais à un tout autre niveau.

Les illustrations de Pietro Cataudella sont si réalistes qu’on dirait que les monuments célèbres, comme la Tour Eiffel ou la Tour de Pise, prennent vie sur son carnet de voyage. Avec un effet de profondeur, l’artiste nous emmène dans un monde où les bâtiments ne sortent pas de terre mais d’un cahier aux pages blanches. Découvrez comment l’Italien donne naissance au Temple de la Concorde d’Agrigente (Italie) en regardant la vidéo ci-dessous :

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bqwykb6hmjC/

Pietro Cataudella est doué pour dessiner des illustrations qui complètent d’illustres monuments du monde entier. De Florence à Paris, de Venise à Moscou : les destinations varient mais l’art reste le même. L’artiste continue de faire vivre son âme d’enfant (et la nôtre par la même occasion !) avec ce talent remarquable. Nous vous conseillons donc vivement de suivre cet artiste et toutes ses créations sur Instagram. Et si vous aimez les illustrations qui prennent vie, découvrez les mises en scène 3D créatives de David Troquier.

Tour Eiffel – Paris

Tower Bridge – Londres

Tour de Pise – Pise

Basilique Santa Maria della Salute – Venise

Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption – Pise

Sanctuaire Saint-François-de-Paule – Paola

Baptistère Saint-Jean – Florence

Cathédrale Santa Maria del Fiore – Florence

Cathédrale de Noto – Noto

Musée historique d’État – Moscou

Tour ATC – Istanbul

Cathédrale Basile-le-Bienheureux – Moscou

Basilique Santa Maria Novella – Florence

Temple de la Concorde – Agrigente

Imaginé par : Pietro Cataudella
Source : laughingsquid.com

L’article Cet illustrateur donne vie aux monuments célèbres avec son petit carnet de voyage est apparu en premier sur Creapills.

Wirecard has revealed a prototype for a new smart mirror, developed by its Innovation Lab. This is pitched as Germany's first intelligent mirror through which people can also pay.

Shoppers can access a range of information while in the changing room: alternative sizes, different colours, matching products etc. If they click on ‘purchase’ and scan a QR code with their mobile device, payment is triggered. Items can then be picked up or delivered to their home address.

“The shopping experience is made unique by the buying process on the smart mirror: it offers individual recommendations and the possibility to request other colours or sizes without leaving the changing room,” says Jörn Leogrande, EVP Wirecard Labs.

“This concept is not only appealing to customers, but also offers merchants many benefits from additional sales opportunities. One of the key features is the easy and fully digital checkout, which can be done with the customer’s own device – no need to queue or take out their credit or loyalty cards.”

Sign up for our free retail technology newsletter here.

Ever wanted to see The Shining with Jim Carrey instead of Jack Nicholson? How about Stallone in Terminator 2: Judgement Day instead of everyone's favorite governator? Thanks to deepfakes, it's now possible -- just ask YouTuber Ctrl Shift Face.

Telepathy is a hallmark of both the fantasy and science fiction genres. In fantasy stories, telepathy is usually performed magically or by people with supernatural abilities. But science fiction tales take a more realistic approach where characters can communicate telepathically using some sort of technology, such as brain implants. Given how little we know about the brain and how it works, it’ll be a long time before real telepathic communication is possible. However, researchers from the University of Washington have developed a brain-to-brain interface that allows three people to play a Tetris-like game together.

The game itself is similar to Tetris, but far more simple. The only things on the screen are a block at the top and a line at the bottom. Players have to rotate the block in such a way that it will fit into a gap in the line when it falls down. This game would, of course, be extremely easy for a person to play on their own. But the players aren’t controlling the game by themselves, and instead are coordinating the gameplay with two other players through brain-to-brain interfaces. The person who actually controls the game is dubbed the “receiver,” while the other two people are the “senders.”

The senders can see both the block and the line, but can’t actually control the game. The receiver can only see the block — not the line. Each person is sitting in a separate room and can’t see or hear the others. The idea is that the senders will let the receiver know if they should or should not rotate the block. To do that, they concentrate on either a “yes” light that blinks 17 times per second, or a “no” light that blinks 15 times a second. Concentrating on one of those lights produces unique brain activity that can be picked up by a electroencephalography cap that the senders wear.

Once the senders make a decision, it is sent to the receiver using a unique device that can stimulate brain activity. If the answer was “yes” they will see bright arcs of light. If the answer is no, they won’t see anything. The receiver can then use the same method as the senders to make a decision on whether the block should be rotated. In testing, they had five groups of three players participate in 16 rounds of the game. They found that, on average, the players successfully cleared the line 13 out of those 16 times. The game itself may be simple, but this technology is a huge step forward for brain-to-brain interfaces.

---

This Tetris-Like Game Is Played Telepathically by Three People Simultaneously was originally published in Hackster Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Google Glass smart glasses were originally released as a limited prototype run back in 2013. They were intended to provide a science fiction-like heads-up display (HUD) that users could wear as they went about their daily lives. But they were a massive flop. That wasn’t necessarily because the technology itself was lacking — it was really more of a result of them causing privacy concerns and being incredibly unfashionable. However, that doesn’t mean the concept isn’t interesting, which is why Redditor Infranix has built his own DIY smart glasses using a Raspberry Pi Zero W.

The original Google Glass smart glasses were essentially a small computer mounted to the frame of a pair of glasses. Users could interact with it using a touch pad or voice commands, and information was displayed on a small projection in their field of view. The Google Glass also included a forward-facing camera that could be used to analyze the world or take photos and video — a major factor contributing to the privacy concerns. Infranix’s smart glasses work in a similar way, but omit the camera.

The computer that Infranix used is a Raspberry Pi Zero W single-board computer (SBC) that is mounted to one side of the glasses. On the opposite side, there is a 1200mAh LiPo battery and charging circuit. A small microphone is used to pick up voice commands, which are then processed using a speech-to-text app and used to trigger some action via a Python3 user interface software. The final component is the heads-up display, which Infranix built used a small OLED screen that is reflected off of a piece of transparent plastic so the user can see it. It may not be as polished as the Google Glass, but this is still a fantastic wearable project.

---

DIY Smart Glasses Built with 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.

Le programme de fidélité personnalisé et gamifié de UntieNots, en test chez de nombreux acteurs de la grande distribution comme Auchan France et Carrefour Belgique, affiche ses premiers résultats : les joueurs dépensent en moyenne de 10 à 12% plus et réalisent une visite supplémentaire chaque mois.

Great Mystery

Since we can’t travel billions of years back in time — not yet, anyways — one of the best ways to understand how our universe evolved is to create computer simulations of the process using what we do know about it.

Most of those simulations fall into one of two categories: slow and more accurate, or fast and less accurate. But now, an international team of researchers has built an AI that can quickly generate highly-accurate, three-dimensional simulations of the universe — even when they tweak parameters the system wasn’t trained on.

“It’s like teaching image recognition software with lots of pictures of cats and dogs, but then it’s able to recognize elephants,” researcher Shirley Ho said in a press release. “Nobody knows how it does this, and it’s a great mystery to be solved.”

Speedy System

The scientists detail how they created this universe simulator, which they’ve named the Deep Density Displacement Model (D³M), in a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The goal was to teach D³M how to model the way gravity shapes the universe. To that end, they started by feeding the system 8,000 different gravity-focused simulations created by a highly accurate existing universe simulator.

That system needed 300 computation hours to create just one of its simulations, but after training on the data, D³M was able to produce its own simulations of a cube universe 600 million light-years across in just 30 milliseconds. Those simulations were more accurate than those of the existing “fast” systems, which need a couple of minutes to create a simulation.

Knowledge Gap

But speed isn’t the most remarkable thing about D³M.

That would be its ability to accurately simulate what the universe would look like even if the researchers changed parameters that weren’t included in its training data. For example, they could tweak the percent of dark matter in their universe, and D³M could accurately simulate that universe’s evolution.

In addition to helping physicists like Ho better understand the universe’s evolution, this strange behavior has the potential to help computer scientists better understand AI.

“We can be an interesting playground for a machine learner to use to see why this model extrapolates so well, why it extrapolates to elephants instead of just recognizing cats and dogs,” Ho said in the press release. “It’s a two-way street between science and deep learning.”

READ MORE: The first AI capable of simulating the universe works so well it’s scary [The Next Web]

More on computer simulations: Scientists Produce Most Precise Black Hole Simulations Ever

The post World’s First AI Universe Simulator Knows Things It Shouldn’t appeared first on Futurism.

Bien plus qu’un soin dont on s’enduit l’été, la crème solaire peut devenir un véritable atout pour votre peau si elle est bien choisie. Elle se doit de préserver la beauté du teint et sa fraîcheur, tout en repoussant les UV néfastes. Sous la crème de jour ou dans une BB crème, le plus important, c’est qu’elle soit adaptée à l’usage que vous allez en faire et que vous n’oubliez pas d’en mettre ! Pour cela, une marque australienne d’écrans solaires a imaginé la solution…

Blue Lizard vend des protections pour la peau depuis plus de vingt ans. Ses crèmes solaires résistent aux éléments et ont gagné la confiance d’innombrables dermatologues. Pendant des années, elles n’étaient presque exclusivement disponibles que dans leurs cabinets, désormais elles sont sur le marché pour le grand public. Et Blue Lizard est justement là pour vous le remémorer grâce à son emballage qui change de couleur : le packaging blanc devient bleu lorsqu’il est exposé aux rayons UV. Une manière de vous rappeler de mettre (ou remettre) votre protection solaire et de prendre soin de vous !

Dans la composition, on retrouve des produits minéraux ou à base de minéraux qui offrent une véritable protection. “Ces écrans solaires utilisent de l’oxyde de zinc ou du dioxyde de titane (et parfois les deux) pour former une barrière invisible sur la surface de votre peau, qui réfléchit et diffuse les rayons UV loin de votre corps. Ces minéraux ne se dégradent pas à la lumière UV, donc vous restez protégé“, peut-on lire sur le site australien.

La marque Blue Lizard n’a pas manqué de créativité pour se démarquer. Le packaging s’associe parfaitement à l’idée qu’elle a voulu faire passer, soit prendre soin de tous de manière naturelle. Alors si cet écran solaire vous intéresse, on vous conseille de vous rendre sur le site de Blue Lizard. Et si les emballages insolites vous intriguent ? Découvrez les dix packagings créatifs qui révolutionnent l’univers de la beauté et de la santé détectés par Creapills pour ALL4PACK Paris.

Crème solaire à base de minéraux VS.
crème solaire chimique

Imaginé par : Blue Lizard
Source : updateordie.com

L’article Ce packaging de crème solaire change de couleur pour vous prévenir quand il faut en mettre est apparu en premier sur Creapills.

Avec son art, Ekaterina Mango nous emmène autour du monde. Elle propose en effet un voyage visuel au travers de ses aquarelles colorées. Peintre autodidacte, elle a ici dépeint des endroits précis de 23 pays, tels que le lac Blausee en Suisse; l’île de Skye en Ecosse; la Place d’Espagne à Séville, en Espagne; ou le Parc National des lacs de Plitvice, Croatie… C’est l’amour d’Ekaterina pour les voyages qui l’ont poussée à décider de faire cette série, composée, donc, de différents paysages et vues. Certains endroits n’étant pas forcément très touristiques, Mango espère que son public sera intéressé à les (re)découvrir.

Quoi de mieux qu’une bonne tasse de thé après une longue journée ? Malgré la fait que la culture du thé et sa popularité ne cessent d’accroître, le design du sachet de thé est toujours relativement traditionnel, et n’a pas changé de forme depuis des années. Il serait enfin temps de trouver une approche davantage créative à ce packaging ennuyeux, non ? C’est ce qu’a fait Ocean Teabag, une entreprise japonaise, qui a réinventé le sachet de thé !

Avec leurs adorables petits sachets en forme de créatures des océans, la marque chamboule les codes établis dans le domaine. Ocean Teabag s’est donc associé avec une boutique des curiosités, ainsi qu’une librairie, Village Vanguard, pour créer cette petite série de sachets.

Ces sachets en question incluent donc une méduse, une pieuvre, un isopode, un calamar, et encore plein d’autres. Une fois dans votre tasse d’eau chaude, le sachet donne l’illusion qu’un animal marin est en train de nager dans votre thé !

Le sachet en forme de calamar est rempli de Thé Noir Pu-erh, inspiré par l’encre que celui-ci rejette. Celui de la pieuvre renferme du Thé Keemun. Alors, même si ces deux-là sont les plus populaires parmi les acheteurs, il existe d’autres sachets tout aussi adorables, comme celui en forme de pingouin, rempli de Thé à la Camomille.

Mais Ocean Teabag ne compte pas s’arrêter là : dans un futur proche, ils prévoient de créer d’autres sachets, qui bougeront ou qui pourront briller dans le noir. Mais pour l’heure, vous avez déjà le choix parmi plus de 50 sachets sur leur site internet.

Seulement, affiché au prix de 1820 yens (à peu près 15 euros le sachet), le thé aura intérêt à être savouré et bien observé. Il n’empêche malgré tout que le concept est d’une créativité sans limite. Et surtout, c’est très joli à voir !

Imaginé par : Ocean Teabag
Source : laughingsquid.com

L’article Au Japon, ces sachets de thé en forme d’animaux marins prennent vie dans votre tasse est apparu en premier sur Creapills.

Monopoly is one of the board games where people cheat the most and is known for turning entire families against each other. The new “Voice Banking” edition replaces the person in charge of the bank with a Smart A.I top hat that takes care of all transactions.

The new virtual banker is no Siri, though, and does not require access to your wi-fi network or the Internet. Players start the game by identifying themselves via one of four buttons located on top of the hat, and then sends verbal instructions to the assistant via commands such as “Buy Atlantic Avenue.” The assistant takes care of all financial transaction, so no paper money is included with the game, which eliminates one method of cheating.

For those interested, the “Voice Banking” edition of Monopoly is available for pre-order on Amazon and will be available for shipping on June 26 for $29.99.

The post New Version of Monopoly Has a Smart A.I. Banker That Prevents Cheating appeared first on Geeks are Sexy Technology News.