Day: August 17, 2016

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VW will make Tesla sweat with 300-mile EV prototype at Paris show

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That 300-mile figure is a real-world estimate, but if it’s even remotely close, Volkswagen could be preparing the first affordable, mass-market, high-range EV. Don’t tell Tesla.

Continue reading VW will make Tesla sweat with 300-mile EV prototype at Paris show

VW will make Tesla sweat with 300-mile EV prototype at Paris show originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2016 17:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook Can’t Win Against Ad Blockers, and Here’s the Proof

Facebook can’t win the war it started on ad blockers last week.

So say Princeton assistant professor Arvind Narayanan and undergraduate Grant Storey, who have created an experimental ad “highlighter” for the Chrome browser to prove it. When you have Facebook Ad Highlighter installed, ads in the News Feed are grayed out and written over with the words “THIS IS AN AD.”

Facebook only announced that it was taking measures to prevent ad blockers from working on Tuesday last week. On Thursday the largest ad blocker out there, Adblock Plus, informed users of a simple tweak to their settings that would defeat Facebook’s blocker blockade.

Princeton researchers say Facebook can’t prevent their experimental add-on for the Chrome browser graying out ads in your News Feed.

We’re still waiting for Facebook to fire back, as the executive leading its ad technology has promised it will. But Narayan argues in a blog post introducing his ad highlighter that Facebook simply can’t win.

The ad blockers in use today work by looking at the HTML code that tells your Web browser how to render a page and where to get the images and other files embedded into it. Facebook’s initial move against ad blockers removed clues in its HTML that gave away which parts of a page were ad content.

The Princeton duo’s ad highlighter works differently. It looks at the parts of the webpage visible to humans. Facebook Ad Highlighter simply looks for and blocks any posts with a giveaway “Sponsored” tag. It appears to be quite effective. Facebook must clearly label ads to stay within Federal Trade Commission rules on transparency and its own commitments to its users.

Narayan concludes in his post that Facebook’s anti ad blocking campaign is doomed, at least if it continues in the current vein of acting as if the social network can somehow neutralize ad blockers completely.

“This is a simple proof of concept, but the detection method could easily be made much more robust without incurring a performance penalty,” he writes. “All of this must be utterly obvious to the smart engineers at Facebook, so the whole “unblockable ads” PR push seems likely to be a big bluff.”

Narayanan suggests that to reach the hundreds of millions of people that use ad blockers, Facebook should focus on making its ads less objectionable, so people don’t feel the need to block its ads at all.

(Read more: “Facebook Has Nuked Ad Blockers, For Now,” The Ad Blocking Kingpin Reshaping the Web as He Prefers It,” “Are Ad Blockers Needed to Stay Safe Online,” “Facebook Blocks Ad Blockers, but It Strives to Make Ads More Relevant,” “The Rise of the Anti Ad Blockers.”)

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3D Print an Archway of LED Lighting to Illuminate Your Work Table

The intention of this lamp is to be able to control shadows while doing assembly and soldering works. Instead of simply gluing an LED strip to an aluminum bar, I decided to make something fancy and inspiring. To me, Art Deco and imperial architecture (hello, Gotham City) are endless sources of excitement and admiration. I spent some time researching old Roman architecture on the internet, to design the base for the bridge.

A year ago I made a promise to myself, that when I finished designing it and had all the files ready for printing, I would order my first 3D printer. After quite long research I picked the original Prusa i3, which I’m very happy about.

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It was quite a challenging print. I was just learning 3D printing on the go, and had many small failures: Some of the lattices were knocked off by the extruder head, and then during assembly I broke some by pressing too hard. Luckily, since duct tape was invented, there is nothing impossible to repair and ABS can be easily glued by acetone.

I’m very satisfied with the finished project. The RGB addressable LED strip I used makes it easy to adjust the color and intensity of the light on my desk. It’s also a very inspiring object, I feel it improves the way I design things.

Soon, I will add some magic to it: IR proximity sensors inside each segment to switch it on and off with hand gestures and three rotary encoder knobs to adjust RGB components of the LED strip. The project page includes detailed information, parts sources and build instructions. I’m working on an improved version, which will be possible to mass-produce as a kit.

It’s beautiful the way it is, as an art object, but very hard to mass produce. So I have completely redesigned it. Previously each segment was unique, because the arc was oval. Due to many requests I made the arc round, the segment universal with option to print pieces flat. I made it less fragile and left some room for the embedded electronics module I’m now working on. There are many more improvements described in the new project page.

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A Foot Hammock That Attaches To Your Desk

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What’s the first thing that you think of when you hear the word hammock? Banana? I like the way you think. Just kidding, you probably thought tropical beach. I’m not going to hold that against you, but I’m also not going to dance for you in my jungle safari inspired stripper outfit. That’s for my lover’s eyes only. Plus, okay, anybody passing by the house because I tripped and tore the blinds down. I’m going to push-pin a tapestry up there later this week. This is the $30 Desk Feet Hammock. It’s a hammock for your feet that attaches to your work desk. It’s perfect for people who like sleeping at work. It’s also perfect for people too afraid to put their feet on the floor at work because of a rat problem.

Keep going for a couple more shots.

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Thanks to Lin, who agrees it’s hard to use a foot hammock without the rest of your body getting jealous.

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China’s quantum satellite enables hack-proof communications

China has made history by launching the first ever quantum satellite developed by a team of Chinese and Austrian scientists, according to state-run media and The Wall Street Journal. If it works just as planned, then it signifies the beginning of a communications network that no hacker can infiltrate. See, a quantum-enabled network relies on the laws of physics rather than on common techniques for encryption. This satellite, which is named after the fifth century BC Chinese scientist "Micius," reportedly carries a crystal that can encode data and encryption keys in quantum particles beamed back to Earth.

Only authorized ground bases can read the encoded data, because the particles are destroyed if anybody else tries to decipher whatever is in them. As Gregoir Ribordy of Geneva-based quantum cryptography firm ID Quantique told the WSJ, "If someone tries to intercept [a particle] when it’s being transmitted, by touching it, they make it burst." Further, the bases will know if someone tried to tamper with their data, since their computers can monitor changes in the particles’ state. Clearly, a quantum-enabled network will beef up China’s defenses against cyber spies deployed by other superpowers. It won’t, however, boost the country’s ability to launch cyberattacks.

Scientists from US, Japan, Canada and various parts of Europe have been pushing for the development of their own quantum communications systems. Unfortunately, their countries’ governments haven’t been as willing to invest in the development of the technology. While China’s state media didn’t mention how much was spent to build Micius, the WSJ notes that it forked out $101 billion for the research phase alone.

The team behind the project will test if the system works by beaming data to ground bases in Beijing and Vienna once the satellite is ready. If all goes well, China plans to deploy 19 more satellites or so to form a network that covers the entire planet.

Source: Xinhuanet, The Wall Street Journal

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World’s largest aircraft completes its first flight

The world’s largest aircraft is finally flying!

The giant blimp-like Airlander 10 spent 20 minutes in the air on Wednesday, after months of flight preparations and years of searching for funding, and landed safely at Cardington Airfield north of London.

Part airship, part helicopter, part plane, the 300-feet long aircraft is about 50 feet longer than the world’s biggest passenger planes.

The aircraft’s maiden flight was originally scheduled for Sunday, but was postponed due to a technical problem.

The Airlander, made by British company Hybrid Air Vehicles, has four engines and no internal structure. It maintains its shape thanks to the pressure of the 38,000 cubic meters of helium inside its hull, which is made from ultralight carbon fiber.

Together with the aerodynamic shape of its hull, the lighter-than-air helium gas provides most of the lift. The aircraft’s odd shape has led some observers to describe it as a “flying bum.”

Related: Avoiding air turbulence may soon get easier

The aircraft was originally designed for U.S. military surveillance. But the project was grounded in 2013 because of defense spending cuts.

Hybrid Air Vehicles then managed to raise over 3.4 million pounds ($4.4 million) through two crowd funding campaigns. It also received a grant from the European Union and funding from the U.K. government.

The Airlander has a significantly lower carbon footprint than other forms of air transportation, and the team behind it hopes it will be used in a wide range of commercial jobs.

They said the aircraft could carry communications equipment or other cargo, undertake search and rescue operations, or do military and commercial survey work.

The Airlander can stay airborne for up to five days at a time if manned, and for more than two weeks if unmanned. It can carry up to 10 tons of cargo at a maximum speed of 91 miles per hour.

The aircraft doesn’t need a runway to take off, meaning it can operate from land, snow, ice, desert and even open water.

— Barry Neil and Lauren Said-Moorhouse contributed reporting.

CNNMoney (London) First published August 17, 2016: 3:47 PM ET

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World’s longest aircraft takes its first flight

That aircraft you see above may look more than a little odd, but it just made history… and it might be the future of flight. Hybrid Air Vehicles has successfully flown the Airlander 10, a long-endurance airplane/airship hybrid billed as the longest aircraft ever at 302ft end to end. It was just a short, minutes-long trip around the countryside in UK’s Bedfordshire, but it showed that the massive (if more than a little posterior-like) design is airworthy.

It’s going to take a while before you see production models of the vehicle, which was originally designed for US surveillance before it was scrapped. HAV only expects to make 10 per year by 2021. If it meets its goals, though, it could prove to be crucial to the aviation world. Ideally, Airlander 10 will stay aloft for about 5 days at a time — that’s ideal for communications, manned military recon and even long-distance passenger flights. They’re much quieter and produce less pollution than typical aircraft, so they could fly in areas and at altitudes where other flying machines would create too much of a disturbance.

Via: BBC

Source: Hybrid Air Vehicles (Twitter 1), (2)

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