Chrome: Facebook collects a lot of your data, but you might never get to see what they really learn about you. Data Selfie aims to give you a glimpse by letting you analyze your own Facebook usage.
from Lifehacker http://ift.tt/2l3crdI
via IFTTT
AMD RYZEN 7 1700X Benchmarks Show Strong Performance
We have more leaks today with regards to AMD’s much-anticipated Ryzen CPUs and this time it involves several leaked benchmarks that show how the AMD Ryzen 7 1700X processor performs. For starters, the Ryzen 7 1700X has 8 cores, 16 threads that are running at a base clock of 3.4 GHz and a boost clock of …more
The post AMD RYZEN 7 1700X Benchmarks Show Strong Performance appeared first on Legit Reviews.
from Legit Reviews Hardware Articles http://ift.tt/2l3K9zW
via IFTTT
Disney Develops a Method for Wirelessly Powering an Entire Room
Free-roaming wireless power has been a dream of engineers since the days of Tesla and Edison waging their war of innovation but a number of technical hurdles have prevented it from becoming a reality. The folks at Disney Research have revealed that they’ve successfully built a method to provide full coverage of an…
from Gizmodo http://ift.tt/2l1zKob
via IFTTT
Magical: A Song Made From A Picture Of A Unicorn
This is a song made from the picture of the unicorn seen above. Youtuber Andrew Huang used a picture he drew (inspired by the Archie McFee Magical Unicorn Mask) to map out a MIDI file and play it (the trend was apparently started by Savant, who has a bunch of other examples of musical pictures on his Facebook). It’s surprisingly beautiful. It kind of reminds me of a song from an old point-and-click King’s Quest game. I miss those games. I tried playing the new Telltale King’s Quest game but it just wasn’t the same. Times change. Maybe I’ve changed. Do you…think I’ve changed? "Only for the better." Did my mom pay you to say that? I know she worries about me.
Keep going for the video.
Thanks to Dunc, who gives it till noon before we have a poop emoji song.
from Geekologie – Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome http://ift.tt/2lvxx5u
via IFTTT
Robot probe no. 2 dies while exploring a Fukushima reactor
The second robot Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) sent into Fukushima’s unit 2 reactor also failed to finish its mission. Earlier this month, the cameras of the first "scorpion" robot that ventured into the reactor malfunctioned after two hours due to extremely high radiation levels. Now, it’s the machine’s left crawler belt that stopped working (PDF) altogether, forcing TEPCO to cut off its tether and to leave it inside.
Toshiba designed these scorpions specifically to examine Unit 2’s condition and to locate the melted uranium fuel within. The information would help Tepco figure out the best and safest way to clean the fuel up. if you’re wondering, these machines are called "scorpions" because, with their camera-equipped tails above their bodies, they look quite like the arachnid:
The power company still isn’t sure whether the robot’s crawler belt stopped working due to the radiation levels inside or due to all the debris the first machine wasn’t able to clear. It managed to send some data back, though, and TEPCO plans to evaluate whatever information it got.
Every little thing will help, after all, since the company chose to stick to its cleanup schedule even though both exploration missions failed. It will begin conjuring up plans for fuel removal this summer and will start the actual cleanup process in 2021. But before that, TEPCO will send a tiny underwater robot to explore the Unit 1 reactor in the next few weeks — we’ll let you know how that one fares, as well.
Source: Tepco (PDF), PhysOrg
from Engadget http://ift.tt/2kAfs9j
via IFTTT
Bill Gates wants a robot tax to compensate for job losses
How would you deal with the likelihood that robots and automation will likely lead to many people losing their jobs? For Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the answer is straightforward: tax the robots. In an interview with Quartz, Gates argues that taxing worker robots would offset job losses by funding training for positions where humans are still needed, such as child and senior care. It could even slow automation to a more manageable rate, if necessary.
Gates is well aware of potential pitfalls — he knows that taxation could ultimately slow innovation by making worker robots prohibitively expensive. However, he’s convinced that governments should be "figuring [policy] out" so that they’re ready when there’s a sudden glut of unemployed workers.
He can’t expect much sympathy from Europe for his ideas, though. The European Parliament has rejected a proposed robot tax, and is instead interested in crafting regulation that guides the ethics behind creating and deploying robots, including liability when something goes wrong. Officials don’t want to leave these guidelines to "third countries," according to a statement. Robot makers will undoubtedly be happy (they were concerned a tax would hamper growth), but the move won’t please those who want a safety net in place when the machines arrive in force.
Source: Quartz
from Engadget http://ift.tt/2ladzPq
via IFTTT
Event Horizon Telescope will soon take the first black hole photo
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is finally ready to take a picture of Sagittarius A*. From April 5th to 14th this year, the virtual telescope that’s been in the making for the past two decades will peer into the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy. EHT is actually an array of radio telescopes located in different countries around the globe, including the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile.
By using a technique called very-long-baseline interferometry, the EHT team turns all the participating observatories into one humongous telescope that encompasses the whole planet. We need a telescope that big and powerful, because Sagittarius A* is but a tiny pinprick in the sky for us. While scientists believe it has a mass of around four million suns, it also only measures around 20 million km or so across and is located 26,000 light-years away from our planet. The EHT team says it’s like looking at a grapefruit or a DVD on the moon from Earth.
To prepare the participating observatories, the team equipped them with atomic clocks for the most precise time stamps and hard-drive modules with enormous storage capacities. Since the scientists are expecting to gather a colossal amount of data, they deployed enough modules to match the capacity of 10,000 laptops. Those hard drives will be flown out to the MIT Haystack Observatory, where imaging algorithms will make sense of EHT’s data, once the observation period is done.
The researchers said it could take until the beginning of 2018 before we see humanity’s first photo of a black hole. As for what they’re expecting to see, it’ll be something like what their simulation yielded last year:
Based on Einstein’s theory of general relativity, we’re supposed to see a crescent of light surrounding a black blob. That light is emitted by gas and dust before the black hole devours them, while the dark blob is the shadow cast over that mayhem. But what if we see something else altogether? Team leader Sheperd Doeleman from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told BBC:
"As I’ve said before, it’s never a good idea to bet against Einstein, but if we did see something that was very different from what we expect we would have to reassess the theory of gravity."
[Image credit: NASA/UMass/D.Wang et al., IR: NASA/STScI / Feryel Ozel (event horizon simulation)]
Via: ScienceAlert
Source: BBC
from Engadget http://ift.tt/2mcEIim
via IFTTT