Cosmetics giant L’Oreal announced last year that it was buying augmented reality beauty app maker ModiFace. Since then it’s deployed virtual makeup try-ons across a number of its own brands, allowing shoppers to test different shades of makeup in a live video or selfie of themselves. Now, the AI-powered beauty technology is coming to Amazon.
From today, Amazon mobile users in the US and Japan will be able to try out Live Mode via the Android app, with iOS slated for launch later this year. Using the front facing camera, shoppers can digitally try on different shades of lipstick, thanks to AI-powered analysis of information provided by make-up brands, as well as images and descriptions found on social media.
This isn’t the first wave AI has made on the beauty landscape. Last year Target unveiled its at-home makeup studio, while IL MAKIAGE has developed a shade-matching algorithm that aims to find your perfect makeup shade without ever seeing your face. And on the skincare side of things, Neutrogena announced its 3D scanning face app for perfect-fit sheet masks earlier this year. The way we choose and purchase cosmetics is changing, so it makes sense that a retail giant as big as Amazon would get in on that sooner rather than later.
On Monday, news started to spread about a radical new design of passenger plane. Shaped like the letter V, (and called the Flying-V), it does away with a conventional fuselage and even the middle bit of a blended wing body design—this plane is all wing. As a result, sections of the wings are much thicker than on a normal passenger jet, with a pair of engine nacelles mounted above the rear trailing edges. Passengers sit along the leading edges, with fuel and cargo also stored in the wings. The advantage of this unusual shape? It could carry as many passengers as an Airbus A350—314 of them in a standard configuration—but use 20 percent less fuel for the same journey.
The design is courtesy of TU Delft, a Dutch university, which has been partnering with Dutch airline KLM on the project to make air travel more sustainable. “Radically new and highly energy-efficient aircraft designs such as the Flying-V are important in this respect, as are new forms of propulsion. Our ultimate aim is one of emission-free flight. Our cooperation with KLM offers a tremendous opportunity to bring about real change,” said Henri Werij, Dean of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at TU Delft.
A flying model is meant to take to the air during KLM’s 100th anniversary celebration in October, along with a full-size mockup of part of the interior. The interior will also be a little out of the ordinary, according to Peter Vink, a professor of applied ergonomics and design at TU Delft. “The new shape of the aircraft means we have exciting opportunities to design the interior, making flying more comfortable for passengers. For instance, as part of the Flying-V research, we’re looking into new options to having a rest or taking meals on a plane,” he said.
Sadly for the Flying-V, it will probably fail like the blended wing body designs we’ve seen down the years. It’s for the same reason, too: airplanes bank as they turn. That’s not much of a problem in a conventional airliner design, where passengers are never that far from the plane’s central axis. But as you move further out from that central axis the effect becomes a lot more pronounced.
That said, it’s easy to be a naysayer. Climate change isn’t going away on its own and neither is commercial air travel, so I’m all for fresh ideas. And now I think about it, some people will queue for hours to ride roller coasters—maybe they’d actually enjoy it?
just announced an awesome new service today called Complimentary Tow for Life. It means exactly what it says. If you own a Volvo, roadside towing is now available free of charge. The coolest part? It doesn’t matter how old your Volvo is, the service applies to every Volvo ever sold in the U.S.
This means that 1958 Volvo P-121 sitting in your garage gets a free tow. Same goes for the
as part of its roadside assistance services. Those who take advantage of the program can expect to be towed to the nearest Volvo retailer covered under the program.
Volvo’s head of customer service, Scott Doering said, “Tow for Life ensures that in the event of a breakdown, help is on hand no matter the age of the vehicle. It’s a commitment to all our customers that cars will be taken to experts who use genuine Volvo parts and
Apple wrapped up its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) today with a bevy of announcements for both its hardware and software. Kicking the conference off was an unexpected surprise: PS4 and Xbox One controller support is headed to both iPhone (via iOS 13) and the Apple TV.
According to Apple’s official iOS 13 features preview, the upcoming software update–slated to launch this fall–will allow PS4 and Xbox One controllers to work on iPhones via Bluetooth compatibility. With Apple’s tvOS update–also slated to launch this fall–both controllers will work on the Apple TV as well. As a CNET report states, Apple hasn’t confirmed whether all controller features–such as rumble vibration and headphone functionality–will work once both products receive their respective updates.
In other WWDC news, iOS 13 will introduce the highly-requested dark mode feature to the entire platform. The iPad is getting its own software titled iPadOS and will implement new features like a column view for better multitasking. A dedicated app store is heading to the Apple Watch which will make downloads much easier and more streamlined. Apple also brought back the Mac Pro with 28 cores, a six-channel memory system, eight PCI expansion slots, and more.
The Apple TV got a 4K overhaul in September 2017 and is currently available for $179. CNET called the device an answer for those who have a 4K HDR TV and lots of iTunes purchases.
Xiaomi took to Twitter this week to show off its upcoming under-display selfie camera tech, which is looking pretty good. Once this becomes mainstream, we can say goodbye to notches, cutouts, and mechanized pop-ups. Those will be good times.
When the display is off, you can clearly see a darker circle in the screen, which is obviously the camera. However, when the display is on, it’s not noticeable in the below video. The user in the video opens up the camera app, switches to selfie mode, then shows off that it works.
The European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft saw material and gases – including oxygen – erupt off the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA)
Space is an inhospitable place. For now, when humans go out in space capsules and stations, they need to bring their own air and water — and do without gravity — during their stay. In the future, if humans want to stay in space long-term (and they do), they’ll need t
HELSINKI — China remains on schedule to ready its first independent mission to Mars in time for a short launch window in mid-2020, according to a leading space official.
Ambitiously, the mission consists of both an orbiter and a rover, with a total of 13 science payloads. The NSSC will be involved in integration of the instruments with the spacecraft.
The orbiter will be equipped with a high-resolution camera comparable to HiRise on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a medium-resolution camera, subsurface radar, minearology spectrometer, neutral and energetic particle analyzers and a magnetometer.
The 240-kilogram solar-powered rover, nearly twice the mass of China’s Yutu lunar rovers, will carry a ground-penetrating radar, multispectral camera, a Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy instrument and payloads for detecting the climate and magnetic environment.
Meanwhile, the Academy of Aerospace Propulsion Technology, an institute under main space contractor the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), this month completed testing of a variable thrust engine, capable of 7,500 Newtons of thrust, which will provide the majority of deceleration for the landing.
Two preliminary landing areas have been selected. The first is Chryse Planitia, close to the landing sites of NASA’s Viking 1 and Pathfinder, with the second covering Isidis Planitia and stretches to the western edge of the Elysium Mons region, between the landing sites of Curiosity and Viking 2.
A map indicating two preliminary landing areas for China’s 2020 Mars rover presented at the sessions of COPUOS in Vienna, Austria in June 2018.
Site selection has been driven by a range of factors including flight system engineering constraints and the challenges of entry, descent and landing (EDL) on the Red Planet, and the science goals of the mission.
China has landed two spacecraft, Chang’e-3 and Chang’e-4, on the moon, but the challenges for Mars are greater and more varied. The presence of a thin atmosphere poses dangers to the spacecraft through aerothermal heating but does not provide great assistance for slowing or descending via parachute, while the remoteness of Mars means EDL process will be automated.
The spacecraft will employ blunt body aerodynamics, a supersonic parachute and powered descent for its landing attempt. Only NASA has succeeded in successfully landing and operating spacecraft on Mars, while Russia and European Space Agency have failed will multiple attempts.
A Long March 5, China’s most powerful launch vehicle, is required to launch the mission, though the heavy-lift rocket has not flown since a failure in 2017. A return to flight scheduled for mid-July appears to have slipped, as the rocket components have yet to be slipped to the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center.
A successful launch of the Long March 5 will be required for China to be ready for the Mars Hohmann transfer window in 2020, and missing this low-energy launch period would bring a wait of 26 months until the next mission launch opportunity.
Also launching missions to Mars during the launch window in July-August 2020 will be NASA, sending a 1,050-kilogram rover to Jezero crater, the ESA-Russia ExoMars 2020 lander and rover, and an orbiter from the United Arab Emirates.
India became the first Asian country to succeed with a mission to the Red Planet with the Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft which entered orbit in 2014. China’s own first attempt, the Yinghuo-1 spacecraft which piggybacked on the Russian Phobos-Grunt sample return mission, was lost when its Zenit-2SB rocket failed to leave Earth orbit.
Chang’e-4 begins lunar day 6
China’s Chang’e-4 spacecraft on the far side of the moon began a sixth lunar day of activities earlier this week, with the Yutu-2 rover awakening at 2:16 p.m. Eastern May 27, and the lander following at 6 a.m. May 28.
The Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration made the announcement May 28, stating that all eight science payloads would continue operation.
Despite a decrease in drive distances across lunar days, Wang Chi states that Yutu-2, “keeps roving and making observations as scheduled.”
China’s Yutu 2 moon rover looks back at its Chang’e 4 lander on the far side of the moon.
Yutu-2 drove just 11.76 meters across day five, having covered 120 meters across the first two lunar days of operations.
A Chinese language space popularization blog stated following the end of lunar day five that sunlight reflected from the rover body onto the surface was causing issues with the obstacle detection systems, preventing roving.
Early results from the Visible and Near Infrared Spectrometer aboard Yutu-2 reported in Nature this month suggest the in-situ detection of materials originating from the lunar mantle in the regolith of Von Kármán crater.
