The Technology Thread

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

YouTube's Ready To Blow Your Mind With 360-Degree Videos

We told you that YouTube would support 360-degree videos. Now, they're here: as of today, Google's streaming video service now serves up videos that let you look in any direction—not just where the camera is pointing. Needless to say, this could be a Big. Freaking. Deal.

Ever wanted to see from the perspective of a race car driver, or experience a concert from the best seat in the house? You can do those exact things in YouTube's example videos below. As long as you're using a Chrome browser, you can tap and drag to look around. Or, with the YouTube app on an Android device, you can pan by simply moving your phone.

[YT]ClAuhgFQpLo[/YT]

Yeah, the quality's a little low right now—unless you bump these up to super high resolutions, it's a bit of a mess. (Project lead Anjali Wheeler says 360 degree videos take up 4 to 5 times as much bandwidth as a traditional YouTube video.)

[YT]7IaYJZ2Usdk[/YT]

But think about the possibilities. You could create videos like this yourself. If you've got a crazy new 360-degree camera like the Ricoh Theta and Kodak SP360 (or the upcoming Giroptic, Bublcam, and Allie) you can now share moments from your life and practice 360-degree storytelling on YouTube's hugely popular video sharing platform.

[YT]j81DDY4nvos&t[/YT]

Imagine capturing a perfect sunset—or the birth of your child—then inviting someone to experience it in virtual reality. That's coming, too. YouTube product manager Sanjeev Verma tells Gizmodo that Google Cardboard and stereoscopic 3D support are definitely on the roadmap. Livestreaming, as well.

Mind you, there are quite a few caveats to 360-degree uploads right now. Not only do they only work on Chrome and YouTube for Android (more platforms on the way), you also have to output your footage in "equirectangular" format, which is a fancy way of saying that your spherical shot has to be stretched out into a flat rectangular shape to process it properly.

Also—and Google assures us this is going away ASAP—you've got to use a freaking Python script to inject metadata into every video so YouTube knows you mean business. No kidding:

Eventually, the hope is that YouTube will unite the growing number of 360-degree camera makers under its one roof, get them all to embrace the same format, so that all you need to do is figure out where to put the camera to capture incredible moments and share them with the world. Google's even planning to offer the cameras to the creators in its YouTube Space in Los Angeles, and work with them to figure out ways to tell 360-degree stories.

It's not all that easy right now. There aren't a lot of consumer-grade cameras available yet, the footage they produce is fairly low quality, and conversion's a bit of a chore.

http://gizmodo.com/youtubes-ready-to-blow-your-mind-with-360-degree-videos-1690989402

Damn that's cool, will be neat to see where this goes in a couple of years

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Is IBM Building Its Own Digital Currency?

Bitcoin may still be the fringe coinage of technophiles, but the idea behind the cryptocurrency is rapidly marching towards mainstream.

Reuters reports that IBM is considering adopting Bitcoin's blockchain technology to create a new digital cash and payment system. "IBMCoin" would allow users to send money anywhere in the world without having to use a third party that charges service fees.

The unconfirmed rumor stems from an anonymous "person familiar with the matter." So far, official media representatives at IBM and the US Federal Reserve have declined to comment.

The blockchain is considered to be Bitcoin's main technological innovation. It's a public ledger that records digital transactions, allowing users to make anonymous payments without government regulation. But unlike Bitcoin, where the network is decentralized, IBMCoin would be controlled by central banks and linked to users' bank accounts, according to the unnamed source.

"It's sort of a bitcoin but without the bitcoin," the source said. "These coins will be part of the money supply. It's the same money, just not a dollar bill with a serial number on it, but a token that sits on this blockchain."

While it's worth emphasizing again that this is an unconfirmed rumor, IBM is not the only major company or government entity that's purported to be dipping its toes in the digital economy: Rumors of both a "Fedcoin" and "Eurocoin" have bubbled up recently. There's no doubt that if IBM were to become the preferred government partner for next-gen fintech, the payoffs could be enormous.

Hey, if you can't stamp out cryptocurrency, might as well build your own.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/12/us-bitcoin-ibm-idUSKBN0M82KB20150312

Interesting

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Android 5.1 Is Coming and These Are Its Best New Features

For all you Lollipop-ers out there, Android just began pushing out its first major update to its Material Design-dressed OS, and unlike some updates that are usually just for "stability and performance," Android 5.1 actually comes with some stuff you're definitely going to want to know about.

Welcome back, Silent Mode

For all its wonderful additions and design upgrades, Google actually made Android more annoying in one specific case—they took away silent mode. This meant you could no longer just get LED notifications without your phone buzzing or making some audible sound. C'mon, Google. That's bush league. Luckily, they're righting the ship with 5.1 and bringing back the much-loved feature. Now you can ignore your friends and family in peace!

Death to Crappy Wifi!

There's a public wifi signal that permeates the walls of my apartment and makes connecting to the internet a nightmare. Every time friends come over they think they have a signal, only to realize that nope. Nada. Zilch. But! Android 5.1 fixes the problem. Now, when you connect to one of these ne're- do-well networks, your phone will remember this bum connection like the terrible nightmare that it is and won't auto-connect to that network in the future. It's a little feature, but a great one—and one that I want in every single smart device I own.

Practice Safe Browsing

In addition to making sure you never get an unwanted wifi network, Google may also be working on a VPN service so you can browse networks more securely. This is still in rumor-y territory, but Pocketables discovered a new app tucked away in the All Apps folder called "Google Connection Services." After popping it open, the app greeted them with "To help protect you on open Wi-Fi networks, your data will be transmitted securely through a Google VPN." Considering this was discovered on a Nexus 6, supposedly the only device (at first) that will be compatible with Google's upcoming wireless service, it's possible that Google is waiting for service that to roll out first. Either way, super neat feature!

Practice Safe Smartphone-ing

Google is also upping its anti-theft game, at least for Nexus 6 and 9. According to Android Police, a new anti-theft feature would make it difficult for a would-be thief to a.) replace your account as a primary account b.) add any accounts of their own, and c.) access the phone if they wipe the phone and try to login with their own creds. However, right now the rollout seems pretty restricted. Hopefully, Google will grace more smartphones with this feature in the future. Or at the very least, legacy Nexus devices.

Notifications Are Now Even Smarter

Android 5.0 let you silence most, if not all, your notifications set for certain down times. Now, Google smartly implemented an "until next alarm" option, so now you'll be able to keep people from disturbing you once you sent an alarm and you wake up or do whatever. This is a good thing. This will help me keep friendships.

http://gizmodo.com/android-5-1-is-coming-and-these-are-its-best-new-featur-1691374322

Some cool features there

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

This Lego-Modded Glue Gun is A Handheld 3D Printer

Tired of the same old, boring laminated pattern that's in all of your 3D printed stuff? Industrial design student Vimal Patel was, and so he decided to fashion himself a 3D doodler, out of a hot glue gun which he modded with a custom Lego extruder. You know, obviously.

According to Patel's website, the idea began with a university project where he was asked to design something using biodegradable, 3D filament. The goal was to explore monomateriality, or making products with a single material—a concept that's grown in popularity since the advent of 3D printing. While a typical multimaterial consumer product may contain foam, plastic, adhesive and half a dozen more materials, all shipped from different parts of the world, products composed of a single material cost less carbon to produce and are far easier to recycle.

Patel's aim was to replace the functionality of multimaterial products by creating a monomaterial with "varying zones of stiffness." As Patel describes on his website, this is a pretty tough thing to do with a standard 3D printer:

It was clear that the layer-by-layer deposition of material constrained the plane of flexibility to a single axis which made it difficult to make complex shapes (like a helmet). The ideal situation would be to extrude material along a path in multiple axes (i.e., with a robotic arm). This is a damned difficult thing to model and program, so I sought a simpler way.​

So, he ditched the printer entirely, and used Lego parts to build a custom attachment that would feed 3mm biodegradable filament through the nozzle of a hot glue gun. The product he ended up designing—a helmet that looks a bit like a bird's nest—isn't very realistic, but Patel is more excited by possibilities his new tool offers. To get other would-be 3D doodlers started, he made a digital file of the Lego extruder that's free to download so that anyone can replicate it.

Now, if this isn't a great Sunday afternoon project, I don't know what is.

http://hackaday.com/2015/03/13/lego-based-3doodler-uses-regular-filament/

It's amazing what people can do when they think outside of the box

 

[Iceman]

3D printing still seems totally insane to me.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

It's def gonna revolutionize the world when it gets cheap enough.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

The Internet's Hottest New Domain: .SUCKS

The internet-naming powers that be (otherwise known as ICANN) have already blessed us with such distinguished, venerated domains as .WANG, .SEXY, and .FISH. But now, it's gearing up to grant us with every diligent #Brand's worst nightmare: Welcome to the .SUCKS era.

Of course, something as timeless as a .SUCKS domain isn't going to come cheap. Before the address officially goes on sale June 1, companies with trademarked names will have an early window to cough up a hefty $2,500. Leaving consumers with a decidedly more reasonable $250. Or, if you're paranoid/just want to block a certain domain from being registered (temporarily), you can pay $200 "to place any domain available as a Standard Registration domain on the reserved list for a year."

Brands are understandably freaking out about consumers potentially snatching up their names before they get a chance, but in reality, it probably won't make a difference. Because even if a company wins the .SUCKS race, where there's a will to screw with a brand, there's a way.

http://arstechnica.com/information-...rise-registrations-soon-but-theyll-be-pricey/

This will lead to a lot of amusement down the road

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Liquid-Cooling For Seriously Overkill Smartphones

Are you worried about the classic hot smartphone problem? Into overclocking your pocket PC? If you are, you'll be thrilled about Fujitsu's new technology for a liquid-cooled smartphone. It's a bit like putting your car's radiator into your phone—a cool idea even if you probably wouldn't need it.

Fujitsu's new "loop heat pipe" transfer system would attach to a smartphone or tablet's CPU. The rig is less than one millimeter thick but would still be able to pump a liquid coolant through your phone's guts to dissipate heat. The company explains:

A working fluid is encapsulated inside this closed loop as a coolant. The heat from the heat source evaporates the coolant, and the energy that goes into evaporating the coolant is taken away from the heat source, lowering its temperature. It is based off of the same principle used when sprinkling water on pavement to reduce heat.​

Sounds pretty cool! In theory this is supposed to improve your phone's performance without any additional drain on the battery power. The thing is, smartphones pretty much already perform preeeeeety well without overheating too bad, unless you're trying to do VR or something. And the chips that run them are only getting more efficient as time goes on.

The hypothetical idea that we're gonna need hulking, hot processors to keep texting our friends isn't too convincing. But if we do someday need to cool off phones the same way we cool off high-end gaming PCs, it's good to know there are options out there.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/fujitsu-has-a-cool-liquid-answer-to-hot-spots-in-smartphones/

I want to do this just to say I have it haha

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

A Smartwatch For Kids That One-Ups Apple's With a Built-in Camera

Adding a functional miniature camera wouldn't do the Apple Watch any favors when it comes to battery life, so maybe Takara Tomy has an opportunity to swoop in and snatch away a few potential customers with its own smartwatch that's targeted at kids. The $70 price tag alone makes this an easier sell to parents with kids demanding a smartwatch.

To keep the price tag down and the battery life up, Takara Tomy's Play Watch doesn't actually communicate with a smartphone. There's no notifications, no voice searching, and no browsing the web. But it does play games, has multiple watch faces to choose from, a 1.41-inch touchscreen display, and a built-in camera. Images are limited in resolution, and video is capped at 320x240, but that's OK because it can means you can capture a six-minute clip to the Play Watch's limited 128MB of onboard storage.

The watch even has a voice recorder, and can be tethered to a USB port for charging or offloading multimedia. The selection of strap colors might be limited compared to Apple's offering, and few kids will probably care that there isn't an obscenely priced solid gold option either.

http://fareastgizmos.com/wearable/tomy-announces-toy-smart-watch-play-watch.php

Very cool idea, hopefully the release it or something similar for westerners

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

All Your Favorite Apps Can Soon Tap Into Google Now

In January, Google announced a limited Google Now pilot program, integrating 40 third-party apps with its popular digital secretary. At SXSW this weekend, Google's director of product management Aparna Chennapragada said they'll soon be opening the doors to any app that's interested.

What that means is any third-party app can plug into Google Now with the program's upcoming open API. That is quite an expansion and would fundamentally change Google Now from just a convenient digital assistant to a must-have hub for everything on your smartphone.

In addition to this upcoming app-splosion, Google Now is also toying with new first-party tricks, like relaying ride line times at theme parks and making some Google Now-specific Easter eggs. Because, who doesn't love "do a barrel roll."

http://thenextweb.com/google/2015/0...-and-support-for-theme-park-ride-queue-times/

Google's quest to become ubiquitous in our lives grows ever deeper

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

This Is How You Make the Wheels For a 1,000MPH Car

The wheels that will hopefully power the Bloodhound SSC car to speeds of over 1,000mph are now in production, with four of the finest aluminium alloy wheels being carved to extremely precise shape.

Scotland's Castle Engineering is heading up the wheel team and see the development of the car and its cutting edge bits as a showcase for the UK's engineering talent. The wheels have an international edge to them, though, with the metal sourced and initially forged in Germany, before the raw 200kg lumps were shipped over to be precision cut to shape to an accuracy of just a few thousandths of a millimeter.

Once cut, the wheels are balanced for extra accuracy, through a process that shaves even finer layers of the fancy alloy off the surface to ensure there's no unevenness that could introduce car-tearing wobbles when magnified by pushing them through the sound barrier.

Impact damage and loading are key to surviving an attempt on the 1,000mph mark, with the makers suggesting stones fired up from the front wheels when they're spinning at 10,500 rpm could hit the rears with the power of a bullet. Hence they're being cut from the finest, roundest, lumps of metal that can be found.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31845234

It will be crazy if that car breaks the kind of records it's shooting for

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Peer Into the Inside of Our Planet With This Trippy Computer Simulation

This trippy orb isn't the result of a youth misspent. Instead, the it's the fruits of complex computer simulations which use the speed of seismic waves from earthquakes to visualize the existence of subterranean structures far beneath the surface of our planet.

Created by Ebru Bozdağ from the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis and David Pugmire of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the image above shows a view of Earth's mantle—the semi-solid rock layer that stretches to a depth of 1,800 miles beneath our feet—seen from the Pacific Ocean. Red and orange areas show where seismic waves travel slower; faster waves are shown in green and blue. The areas where waves move fastest are typically the one where tectonic plates sink away beneath another.

With the a growing network of earthquake detection systems now in place, a team of researchers from Princeton, led by Professor Jeroen Tromp, are now seeking to move from theory to reality. In a newly launched project, his team will use real data to create similar visualizations—churning through mountains of numbers at a rate of 20 quadrillion calculations per second using Oak Ridge National Laboratory Titan supercomputer.

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S42/59/33Q27/index.xml?section=featured

That's very cool and could also very well save lives

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Oculus Rift Might Not Even Launch This Year

It's been a long few years since the Oculus Rift's Kickstarter took $2.4 million in funding, becoming a "real thing" on the first step towards this latest wave of virtual reality enthusiasm. But we've yet to see a consumer release date announced and, according to inventor Palmer Luckey at a SXSW 2015 panel, that's unlikely to come any time soon — possibly not even before the end of this year.

"I did say that before we made a lot of changes to our roadmap and we've expanded a lot of the ambition we had around the product and what we wanted to do," said Luckey of the initial 2015 launch window, according to a Gamespot report.

"Us partnering with Facebook allowed us a lot of things that we wouldn't have been able to do otherwise like hire 300 people to be working on getting the Rift out as quickly as possible at the level we want it.

However, Palmer doesn't see a possible delay as a cause for concern. In fact, he seems incredibly positive about the headset's development:

"I can't comment on the date one way or another in either direction but I can say that nothing is going horribly wrong. Everything is going horribly right."

Despite competition from the HTC Vive and Sony PlayStation's Morpheus, Luckey believes the Rift will remain the best of all VR headsets at its launch.

"I do still think that it will be [the best VR headset at any price]," he said. "That could change because that means that there's something even better out there, but I think that's unlikely right now."

That may be the case, but the best headset in the world, relegated to a testing lab, will mean little when rivals hit shelves. With Morpheus now announced for an early 2016 launch, Oculus will have to start getting some concrete information out there before it loses its early lead. Oculus will argue that the Gear VR headset, built in partnership with Samsung, will fill the gap when it commercially launches shortly. But for those with dreams of exploring a VR Skyrim or City 17, the mobile-powered stepping stone won't be enough.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/oculus-says-rift-may-not-launch-in-2015-but-nothin/1100-6425921/

Loving the VR wars we are in right now.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

New Li-On Battery Lasts Twice as Long—and, Backed By Dyson, Could Sell

Rarely a week passes without the report of a new battery technology, but most appear destined to remain within the lab for years. Now, though, a start-up called Sakti3 has a li-on battery that lasts twice as long as most—and $15 million of support from Dyson to make it a reality.

Sakti3's new batteries make use of a variety of new materials and processing techniques to increase their capacity, Technology Review reports. Perhaps chief amongst them is the fact that it embraces solid-state battery technology—meaning that the flammable liquid electrolyte that causes battery fires is swapped out for a solid material. In turn, that allows the company to use new high-energy storage materials that only work in a solid-state set-up. Those changes provides twice the energy density compared to normal li-on batteries.

The technology—the exact details of which remain under wraps—is compelling enough to have drawn the interest of James Dyson, who has now invested $15 million into Sakti3 to give it's final push from prototype to market. Perhaps it's the design philosophy of the company that appealed to the engineer: Sakti3 prepares its prototypes on standard manufacturing equipment instead of custom lab kit, in order to make it as easy as possible to make them commercializable in the future. Whatever the reason, Dyson claims that "Sakti3 has achieved leaps in performance which current battery technology simply can't."

Of course, taking the technology from its existing prototype to market won't necessarily be easy, even with Dyson's support—but the partnership makes it far more likely. Perhaps your next vacuum cleaner will be powered by Sakti3.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/535811/a-breakthrough-battery-gets-a-big-backer/

If this means my cell phone can last longer than I'm all for it

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Withdrawing Cash With a Smartphone Could Beat The Card Skimmers

The U.S. loses more money to card fraud than the rest of the world combined — something that's mostly down to the magnetic stripes that make our cards incredibly hackable. Although more secure technologies are coming, they'll require time and money to adopt. But one kindly Canadian bank has a secure system that only needs a smartphone and a QR code.

Magnetic stripe cards, the kind that are ubiquitous in everything from credit cards to hotel keys, are incredibly easy to clone. It just takes one pass through a reader to take all the information from the chip, and one further pass to put that data onto a fake card — and thereby get a working clone of your credit card.

One of the easiest ways to clone cards is to graft a nearly-undetectable skimmer onto an ATM, which lurks undetected whilst accumulating thousands of card numbers. That makes ATMs a great target for hackers, and therefore first in line for a security upgrade.

The system that BMO Harris Bank has come up uses a smartphone app, and a QR code on the ATM screen. The customer uses the app to choose their amount of money in advance, then walks up to the ATM, and chooses the option for mobile money. The ATM screen displays a QR code, which you scan with the app, and the machine spits out sweet sweet money.

The beauty of the system is that it's secure — a fraudster would need your particular smartphone and the app password to impersonate you — and has no physical contact between any card and the ATM, meaning there's nothing for a card skimmer to clone. Win-win.

According to the WSJ, the service will initially be available on 750 ATMs, with 900 online by June. While that's a drop in the bucket compared to 425,000+ ATMs in the country, it's a healthy percentage of BMO's 1300 machines. Moreover, a successful trial may well persuade other banks to add support for the system. Just don't lose your smartphone — and set your password to something other than 'password', okay?

http://www.wsj.com/articles/withdraw-cash-without-a-card-theres-an-app-for-that-1426459107

That's a great idea

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Elon Musk Promises An End To Range Anxiety This Thursday

Elon Musk says he's "about to end range anxiety" through a software update to the entire Tesla Model S fleet. It's happening this Thursday, and the sound you hear is the Speculatron5100 grinding to life as everyone tries to figure out what the hell Musk is planning.2

Naturally, Musk took to Twitter to make the announcement, offering about as many details as his infamous D tweet last year.

@ElonMusk tweeted: Tesla press conf at 9am on Thurs. About to end range anxiety ... via OTA software update. Affects entire Model S fleet.

First few thoughts:

-This could have something to do with the "torque sleep" mode Musk promised for Tesla's dual-motor models that boosts efficiency by intermittently tweaking power output to each motor while coasting. However, Musk says this over-the-air update affects all Model S sedans, so that's probably not it, and just managing power output might not be "the end" of range anxiety.

-Then there's the battery swap possibility, which hasn't rolled out to anyone beyond one station accessible to maybe a few dozen (at the most) hand-picked Tesla owners (likely employees). That's more of a hardware thing than a software thing, so maybe there's more to read between the lines.

-Finally, Musk and his engineers have figured out how to wirelessly send power to the Model S using a combination of satellites, mirrors, and thousands of solar-powered lasers that charge the batteries using magic crystals and unicorn tears while the cars are in motion.

We've got an email into Tesla for more details on Thursday's event, and Musk is also speaking at the NVIDIA GPU conference on Tuesday, where we'll be reporting live. Expect a flurry of questions – and probably no answers – then.

http://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-promises-an-to-end-range-anxiety-this-thursda-1691567367/+maddiestone

Elon always has something cool up his sleeves

 

[Iceman]

I really hope they sort out payments security. So frustrating at the moment when it doesn't even get investigated meaning free riskless millions for crooks around the world.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Pretty much, right now is a good time to be a black hat hacker with intent on scamming the banks. The problem is it's actually not costing them as much as we think so until they really get hit and feel it they will be slow to change

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Hotel My Phone Temporarily Moves Your Number to Another Phone

[YT]0GmKldv1D2Q[/YT]

iOS/Android: It happens to the best of us: you forget your phone when you go out, or it runs out of juice. Hotel My Phone lets you use a friend's phone, but still use your phone number.

When you want to borrow someone else's phone, all you do is log in to your Hotel My Phone account on their phone. You'll start getting SMS messages and phone calls on that phone. They'll also store your contact list on their server (read the privacy policy first), but that's optional.

Both phones need to have Hotel My Phone installed in advance, so it isn't perfect in every situation, of course. It's unlikely you'll randomly find a stranger willing to install this app to help you out. It's good for you and your spouse, or when you have a work and a personal phone. When you're in a bind, you can switch numbers without having to switch phones. I tried this with a spare pay-as-you-go phone and it worked great when my iPhone was being repaired.

Calls within your "friend network"—people you've pre-authorized—are free. Otherwise it's $1.00 every time you use someone else's phone.

http://hotelmyphone.com/

Cool idea, I hardly ever run out of juice though

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

A Slimmed Down Windows 10 Could Make Cheap Tablets Suck Way Less

Windows 10 already seems waaay better than Windows 8. Cortana integration, Spartan browser, a Start Menu—yes please. But how about some more storage space on your tiny solid state drive? Yeah, that sounds nice, too.

Bloated software has been an issue for Windows 8 and RT devices—particularly cheap tablets and laptops that come with as little as 32GB to start. Hell, remember when you could buy a 64GB Microsoft Surface that only came with 23GB of usable storage? With Windows 10 it shouldn't be nearly as much of an problem.

First and foremost, Windows 10 doesn't require a separate recovery image to restore your operating system anymore, and that's huge: the space-saving shrewdness could save you anywhere from 4GB to 12GB of space. That's without giving up the ability to restore your computer, because Microsoft claims Win 10 can do that from your existing runtime files.

But that's not all. If your CPU and RAM are fast enough to decompress files on the fly, Win 10 will also give you 1.5GB of storage (for 32-bit) or 2.6GB of storage (for 64-bit) by compressing your system files as well. Windows 10 will actually analyze how much RAM is on your machine and give you that space as long as your device won't take a perceivable performance hit.

Windows phones are already pretty space-friendly but will get a bonus 1.5GB or 2.6GB as well.

So far, Windows 10 seems to be all around good news. Hopefully when it releases later this year, it won't disappoint IRL.

http://gizmodo.com/a-slimmed-down-windows-10-will-make-cheap-tablets-suck-1691769636

Everything is sounding damn good for 10 so far

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

I Will Literally Eat The Sun If This Flying Car Is Released by 2017

We constantly read that the flying car is just two years away. In fact, we've been hearing this for decades. So who's promising one this week? A little company called AeroMobil, whose CEO made a big splash at South by Southwest with his announcement of a release by 2017. But if the AeroMobil flying car is released in the U.S. within the next two years I will literally eat the sun.

Flying cars are hard. We've actually had some version of them since the 1950s, but they never look like ones that we were promised in shows like The Jetsons and movies like Blade Runner. And the AeroMobil is no different.

It's impractical, and even though it flies (unlike many other flying cars of the last 50 years) there are plenty of other hurdles before this thing can be sold in the U.S. — like that pesky FAA approval. Even flying car companies that have gotten FAA approval, like Terrafugia in 2010, still haven't delivered on their cars. They always seem to be "just two years away."

Which brings me back to my promise if this thing is sold in the U.S. by 2017...

You may be asking yourself, how does one eat the sun? To be honest, I don't have a great plan of action yet. One imagines that you'd have to break the sun up into many smaller pieces to even begin eating it, but then there's the problem of what tool to use to break it up. Any common knife seems like it might do, but having never attempted to eat the sun, I just can't say for sure. Worst case scenario: I guess we can pick up a machete at Walmart.

There's also the problem of getting to the sun. Or, better yet, bringing the sun to me. A common lasso seems impractical, if only because I don't know how to tie one. But I guess that's what instructional YouTube videos are for.

Please check back in 2017, where we'll either be living in a wondrous world of ubiquitous flying cars, or you will be watching me devour the sun like it's literally my job.

http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/i-wi...-flying-car-is-rele-1691753404/+AnnaleeNewitz

Flying cars would be a logistical nightmare IRL

 

[XtremelyBaneful]

http://www.iflscience.com/technology/water-saving-tap-makes-pretty-patterns#

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

http://www.iflscience.com/technology/water-saving-tap-makes-pretty-patterns#

I've seen those before, very cool

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Apple May Be Launching A Genuine Alternative To Cable In The Fall

Rumors about an Apple TV, and associated Apple TV service are about as old as the history of rumor blogs. But according to a WSJ report, this fall could finally see Apple launching a streaming TV package, featuring a bunch of big-name broadcasters, available only on Apple devices.

The WSJ report lists ABC, CBS and Fox as broadcast partners at launch, which would meant that most of the big-name channels — crucially, including ESPN — would be available without having to shell out for a cable package. Guesstimates put the likely price point at $30 to $40 a month for 25 channels.

The only name missing out? NBC (which also means USA and Bravo), which is owned by Comcast, a company that apparently had a falling-out with Apple last year over — surprise surprise! — a streaming TV service.

One fact that adds a lot of weight to these rumors was the recent announcement that HBO's new streaming service will launch exclusively on Apple devices. That shows that Apple is serious about its future in TV, and according to the WSJ, is just the first move, with Apple's full masterplan set to launch this fall.

It goes without saying that an affordable streaming package, marketed to everyone who owns an iOS device, and easily connectable to your big screen through Apple TV, would be a Big Deal. Although other streaming services exist — and some aren't even half-bad! — Apple's size and reach could make cord-cutting go truly mainstream. We'll just have to wait and see if the WSJ's tea leaves are all in order.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-in-talks-to-launch-online-tv-service-1426555611

Now I can get behind an Apple product that takes out the big cable companies

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

You Can Now Control Your Chromecast With A Normal TV Remote

A Chromecast is just about the cheapest (and best) way to get Netflix onto your TV with minimum hassle, but one of the tradeoffs is that you have to control everything from your smartphone or laptop — which kinda sucks. But as of now, you can at least play and pause without poking a screen.

Chromecast already uses the HDMI-CEC standard to control your TV (for example, switching the TV on and turning the input over the Chromecast), and the latest update just extends that functionality to your TV remote, letting it play and pause apps on Chromecast. At the moment, it seems like most of the big video-streaming services work with the remote, bar Netflix, which has traditionally been slow with Chromecast updates.

It's a tiny update, but one that goes a long way to making the Chromecast more useable. Although I love most everything about how the little streaming stick works, having to dig into your phone when you get up to answer the door kinda sucks. Or, at least, it used to.

https://medium.com/@jankoroettgers/chromecast-now-works-with-your-tv-s-remote-control-b8572fe2d0b1

Loves me some Chromecast