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You know those conspicuously narrow paper condiment cups that make it tough to dip more than a few fries, let alone a burger? Ever notice they’re built to fan out? More »
from Lifehacker
The idea of a mass-market virtual reality headset that totally immerses players in a game world died out pretty quickly in the ’90s, a time when the technology wasn’t quite up to the heady concept. Now, a hardware designer named Palmer Luckey thinks that technology has finally caught up with the dream, and seems to have done a good job convincing a lot of game designers that he’s right.
Luckey’s head-mounted display, the Oculus Rift, launched on Kickstarter today after first being previewed at E3. The device quickly surpassed it’s $300,000 funding goal (approaching $600,000 at the time of this writing), primarily by selling $300 development kits to thousands of backers. Those developers include id Software’s John Carmack, (who’ll be bringing Doom 3 BFG as the first game to support the headset), Epic Games’ Cliff Bleszinski, Unity CEO Dave Helgason and Valve president and owner Gabe Newell, who offered up supportive quotes on Rift’s potential for truly immersive virtual reality.
What makes Oculus Rift different from the failed consumer head-mounted displays of the past (and present)? The creators tout a 110-degree diagonal field of vision that eliminates the “tunnel vision” effect of some displays with smaller screens, and an “ultra low latency” head tracking system that prevents the nausea that can come when the image lags slightly behind your craning neck. The Oculus Rift SDK will support games created in both the Unreal and Unity engines, which should make it relatively easy to convert a wide variety of games to the stereoscopic headset when it’s finally ready for release.
from Ars Technica
A stock-trading algorithm gone awry appears to have thrown American stock markets into chaos on Wednesday, following a surge of volatile trading after the opening bell. Many of the country’s biggest companies were affected, including Bank of America, Alcoa, General Electric, Berkshire Hathaway, Citigroup, and American Airlines.
Financial news sites have pinpointed the problem to Knight Capital Group. The brokerage firm’s algorithm appears to have triggered purchases and sales of millions of shares for 30 minutes.
Algorithmic trading, where stock transactions are mediated by high-speed data connections and software rather than humans, is something that’s been rapidly overtaking the industry in recent years. The infamous “flash crash†of 2010 led to a loss of 573 points on the Dow Jones Industrial Average in five minutes.
from Ars Technica
A federal appeals court Wednesday ordered the Transportation Security Administration to answer why it hasn’t complied with the court’s year-old decision demanding the agency hold public hearings concerning the rules and regulations that have led to the deployment of so-called nude body scanners across U.S. airport security checkpoints.
from Wired Top Stories
Red eye flights aren’t fun, but sometimes they’re inevitable. The worst part is getting to your destination early in the morning without sufficient rest. You have to go about your day tired, and that’s tough. A thread on Quora, however, suggests you can avoid this problem with a few adjustments to your eating (and drinking) schedule. More »
from Lifehacker
The human body already has a highly efficient cooling system: As perspiration evaporates, it draws heat away from the body. Wicking fabrics facilitate this process by distributing sweat evenly over the fabric, so that it dries more quickly. Despite devising cheats, such as menthol-like chemical coatings added to fabrics, companies have never actually improved upon the body’s natural cooling process. Designers at Columbia Sportswear have now made a fabric that does.
The wicking polyester base of the Omni-Freeze ZERO T-shirt is embedded with thousands of 0.15-inch hydrophilic polymer rings (a men’s medium has more than 41,000 of them). As the base spreads sweat, the rings absorb moisture and expand into three-dimensional doughnuts. In order to swell, the rings require energy, which they gather as body heat. In tests, the shirt was up to 10 degrees cooler against the wearer’s skin than shirts made from any other material.
Weight: 4.8 ounces
Material: stretch polyester
Sun Protection Factor: 50
Price: $60
Designers at Brooks worked with a team at the Loughborough University Sports Technology Institute in the U.K. to ensure runners wearing the Nightlife Jacket III remain visible to drivers in any light. The darker the surroundings, the more heavily eyes rely on contrast to pick out objects, so the team added black stripes to the arms and shoulders to offset the fluorescent base and better outline runners. Brooks NightLife Jacket III $115
from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now
The pills, made by Proteus Digital Health, have sand-particle-sized silicon chips with small amounts of magnesium and copper on them. After they’re swallowed, they generate voltage as they make contact with digestive juices. That signals a patch on the person’s skin, which then relays a message to a mobile phone given to a healthcare provider. It’s only been approved for use with placebos right now, but the company is hoping to get it approved for use with other drugs (which would be where it would get the most use).
Even if there’s a slight whiff of dystopia about a pill that tracks your actions, it does help with a major problem. Patients aren’t the best at taking their pills, especially those suffering from chronic illnesses, so it’s one step of many toward a future where they don’t have to.
[Nature]
from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now