California governor Jerry Brown recently declared an end to the state of emergency brought on by his state’s historically terrible drought. It’s a mid-level miracle, assisted by record rainfall earlier this year. If you don’t believe me, just look at these before and after images.
If you’ve ever tried to watch YouTube when it’s dark out, you know that the typical bright white of the video service’s page can be a bit blinding. Enter "Dark Mode," a hidden feature that turns the light surfaces black or dark gray so you can get on with those cat videos without all that glare.
1. Open console
2. Paste: document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=fPQ4jCL6EiE"
3. Reload
4. Click your avatar
5. Dark mode!
Enabling the mode is fairly simple, provided you’re using an up-to-date Chrome browser. You’ll need to access the browser’s developer tools and paste in some text from the Tweet above, refresh your browser, and then toggle the mode on in the menu you get when you click on your avatar. You can easily turn the mode off, too, though you only have to use the console command once.
It’s an easy, semi-official way to save you some eye strain. Even though Dark Mode hasn’t been announced by YouTube yet, it could be a great regular feature that may not require all the extra steps in the near future. Why not give it a try now?
On Friday, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) updated its website to reflect that Apple now has a permit to test self-driving cars on public roads.
Apple has been hiring automotive experts—particularly those with experience in autonomous driving—for years. (In 2015, Tesla CEO Elon Musk even taunted the company saying, “If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple.â€) But the company has long kept quiet about its aspirations. That began to change in December, when Apple wrote a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) saying that it was “investing heavily†in machine learning to support autonomous systems, especially in transportation.
The update on the California DMV website confirms that, after years of speculation, Apple is serious about building self-driving car software.
Getting an autonomous-car testing permit with the California DMV requires that a company fill out an application to test its technology and take out an insurance policy for any vehicles equipped with it. Companies testing self-driving cars must keep logs of disengagements, or times when the car had to be taken out of self-driving mode for safety or other reasons.
California’s relatively strict testing rules haven’t deterred companies from seeking testing permits. Uber was a notable hold-out—it refused to apply for a self-driving permit in December after it launched its self-driving car pilot program. California then revoked the registrations of the company’s cars, so Uber took its test cars to Arizona, where no such registration is required. But a few months later, Uber filed all the appropriate paperwork anyway and is currently permitted to test its technology on California roads.
According to Bloomberg, Apple’s California permit “covers three 2015 Lexus RX540h SUVs and six drivers.†Ars contacted Apple for more information, but we have not yet received a response.
Was the Segway ahead of its time, or just an overhyped product that could have never lived up to the anticipation? Being pricier than a used car didn’t help the original Segway’s chances, but at least now, electrical engineer Olaf Winkler has solved that problem with a ball-based self-balancing scooter that features a thousand dollar price tag.
While the Segway balances riders on a pair of large wheels, Winkler’s Üo uses what looks like a soccer or basketball, but it’s actually a solid sphere of rubber that can support a rider’s weight without deforming. To maintain balance, and to propel the Üo in any direction, three motors spin that giant rubber ball using a trio of specially-designed wheels that can rotate in multiple directions.
It means the Üo is more complicated than the Segway in terms of its hardware, with more areas where it can fail, but the unique design also potentially makes it safer. Because the ball can move in any direction, the Üo can ensure it always remains directly below the rider’s center of gravity, making it hard to fall over—assuming the software powering the self-balancing mechanics is working as it should.
Using a small joystick at the end of a long handle, the Ãœo rider can also be spun 360-degrees without the ball moving, making it more maneuverable than the Segway, and easier to navigate crowded areas without bumping into pedestrians.
Winkler has been working on the Üo since 2010 and has finally made his creation available to anyone who loved the idea of the Segway, but couldn’t afford the steep price tag. However, you’ll still need to cough up a little north of $1,300 to contribute to Winkler’s Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in order to secure one. That’s considerably more expensive than a self-balancing hoverboard, but there seems to be less risk here of you ending up on YouTube after a nasty fall.
As with any Kickstarter campaign, there’s always the risk of a product not coming to fruition, or unseen problems delaying its delivery. That’s especially important to remember in this case, given the creators of the original Segway had millions of dollars to develop and perfect it, and the product is still considered a failure. Winkler left his job to pursue his dream of building the Üo, which is risky, but maybe by his efforts Will Arnett’s automotive of choice will finally get its moment in the spotlight.
Nintendo has been proclaiming that the Switch is its fastest-selling console ever since the system launched, but now it has numbers to back that up. Based on NPD reports, it says the Switch sold 906,000 units in the US in March. What’s surprising, however, is that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is not just its fastest-selling launch title of all time, its Switch version actually outsold the console, moving 925,000 copies (add 460,000 for the Wii U and you have 1.3 million total).
According to Nintendo, reaching an attach rate of over 100 percent could be attributed to people buying limited editions of the game to collect plus a second copy to play. Whatever it is, the game, and system, both sold well and it sounds like things are well on their way to meeting or beating Nintendo’s scaled-back projections. We should find out more about its worldwide sales performance when Nintendo issues its quarterly earnings report on April 27th.
As robots take on greater roles in society, one simple question remains without a satisfying answer: How are they going to move around?
Researchers have devised robots that run, walk, roll, hop and slither, but each method of locomotion comes with advantages and inherent drawbacks. Wheeled robots are great indoors, but get stuck when faced with even a single step. Legged robots are good at navigating rough terrain, but have difficulty moving quickly and efficiently. There won’t be one sol
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The team’s prototype, called DxtER (pronounced Dexter) works with an iPad and is designed to walk a patient through self-diagnosing 34 medical conditions, the Washington Post reports. The team beat out 312 other teams, including some backed financially by governments and corporate sponsors.
The team was led by Dr. Basil Harris, an emergency medicine doctor from Pennsylvania who founded Final Frontier Medical Devices with friends and three of his siblings to come up with device. They will now move their beta version on to the next stages of development and, potentially, FDA-testing.
Despite being based on the idea of a tricorder—a handy unit that magically scans a person and reveals medical information—DxtER is a bit more clunky. It’s a shoe-box-sized kit that contains individual diagnostic devices and sensors that patients can use.
The X Prize competition, which began in 2012, challenged participants to come up with a kit weighing five pounds or less that could continuously monitor health metrics and diagnose 13 health conditions. Those conditions were: anemia, urinary tract infection, diabetes, atrial fibrillation, stroke, sleep apnea, tuberculosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumonia, otitis, leukocytosis, and hepatitis. Throughout the competition, Harris and his team added to that list.
But the devices had to do a little more than the fictional tricorder, which seemed to just serve up medical information and stats to Dr. McCoy. These X Prize tricorders had to be able to come up with a diagnosis on their own, too. This led Harris and his team to develop an iPad-based app that walks patients through questions, then algorithms based on a bank of patient data interpret the answers and diagnostic data.
Harris is hopeful that future, fully-developed versions will improve care, giving patients a way to monitor their health on their own, and provide needed diagnostics to under-served communities.
The second-place prize went to Dynamical Biomarkers Group, a team of 50 doctors, scientists, and programmers led by Harvard doctor, C.K. Peng. The project was financially backed by cellphone company HTC and the Taiwanese government. Their team received a $1 million prize.