Basics of quantum teleportation now fit on a single chip
Until now, quantum teleportation (that is, sending quantum data from one place to another) has required a room-filling machine. That’s not going to usher in a brave new era of quantum computing, is it? However, a team of British and Japanese researchers has shrunk things down to a much more reasonable size. They’ve stuffed the core optical circuits for quantum teleportation into a single silicon chip that’s just slightly longer than a penny — in contrast, an experimental device from 2013 was nearly 14 feet long. While scientists built the chip using “state-of-the-art nano-fabrication,” it should be more practical to make than its ancestors, which took months.
This doesn’t mean that a whole quantum data transmission system fits on a chip yet — that’s the next step. Even so, this is a big deal for quantum computing as a whole. It’s no longer outlandish to imagine reasonably-sized quantum cryptography devices that give you airtight communications, and the technology you see here is ultimately vital to building true quantum computers. This chip may just be a stepping stone, but it’s a big one.
[Image credit: University of Bristol / NTT Device Technology Laboratories]
Filed under: Science
Via: Phys.org
Source: University of Bristol, Nature
Ready Steady Mental turns Google Cardboard into a stress reliever
Put on Google Cardboard and go crazy. In Ready Steady Mental, developer Submachine Factory encourages users to kick and scream all they want to earn points. The virtual reality game simply asks users to “scream and shake” their heads for ten seconds. Apparently, Ready Steady Mental has “bleeding edge graphics and never-before-seen gameplay.” So, get your Google Cardboard on and let us know how crazy you went in ten seconds with this game. Who knows, it could relieve some of that stress you’ve been feeling.
Hit the break for the trailer, gallery, and download links.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Source: DroidGamers
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Top 8 tips to make you an Android photography expert
You can make a smartphone camera of any quality better just by knowing a few tips to make the most of it.
While the average smartphone camera is increasing in quality — both in terms of hardware and software — at a rapid rate, some of the biggest strides in improving your photos can be accomplished regardless of the camera you use. Smarpthones have turned everyone into photographers, but that doesn’t mean we always follow some photography basics that can really kick up our photos to the next level. If you’re ready to move from beginner to expert with your smartphone pictures, read along for a few tips.
Energizer 2X Charging System for Xbox One makes sure your controllers never run out of battery
An accessory that all Xbox One owners should have is the Energizer 2X Charging System. It keeps your Xbox One controllers powered and ready for use. No more worrying about having to replace your AA batteries in the middle of a game. It charges up to two controllers at once, and has green and red LED lights that gives you the status of your battery pack while it’s charging. It works like it should. Watch our hands-on video to see it in action.
Antutu: Top performing smartphones for Q1 2015
With Quarter 1 of 2015 already behind us, we can look back at the top performing phones of the year so far.
Popular benchmarking app Antutu have released their scores for Q1 of 2015 and perhaps of no surprise the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge tops the charts with over 10000 points higher than the closest competitor – the HTC One M9.
Following on from the latest flagship devices are the Galaxy S5, Meizu MX4, Google Nexus 6, and the Note 4.
Antutu also broke out the GPU performance for the different processors found in the most common devices in Q1 of 2015.
It seems Samsung has pipped the top of the charts with their own in-house Exynos 7420 processor, which perhaps is of no surprise given the how far ahead of the bunch the Galaxy S6 is in the charts.
Let us know if the results surprise you in the comments below.
The post Antutu: Top performing smartphones for Q1 2015 appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Google’s ARC Welder tool makes it easy to run almost any Android app on Chrome
During Google I/O 2014 it was announced that Chrome OS would be getting limited Android app support, thanks to the creation of a new “App Runtime for Chrome” (aka ARC) that runs Android code at nearly native speeds via a sandboxed Dalvik VM. Since then, several Android apps have made their way over to Chrome OS, though the number is still quite low, coming in under 50. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before this situation improves. In order to make testing out Android apps easier than ever for developers, or even just everyday tinkerers for that matter, Google has now released a new tool called ARC Welder.
Basically you install the ARC Welder Chrome app and then you direct it to the zip or APK where the Android app you want to test out is located, and it’ll then go through a setup process of sorts where you’ll chose whether to run it in portrait or landscape, phone or tablet mode, and a few other options. After that, you’ll have a functioning Android app that will run on both Chrome and Chrome OS.
It’s important to note that not all apps will play nicely with ARC Welder, and this really is meant more as a way for developers to test out and make changes to their apps in anticipation of bringing them to Chrome OS. What do you think, excited to see more developers bring over their apps to Chrome OS?
Acer Chromebase announced, touchscreen in tow
When the very first Chromebook debuted, a number of people wrote off the idea, saying a web-centric ‘computer’ experience would never take off. Fast-forwarding to today, the Chromebook market is slowly but surely gaining traction, in large part due to its consumer-friendly pricing. Will 2015 be the year that Chrome OS truly pushes its way out of niche territory and into the mainstream? It is certainly starting to look that way.
Just yesterday, Google unveiled a number of new Chromebooks and even new Chromebit dongle for transforming monitors and TVs into Chrome OS devices. Today the Mountain View giant revealed a new tool that will make it easier for developers to test out their Android apps on Chrome, with the end goal of bringing these apps over to Chrome OS. And now Acer has announced a new touch-driven Chromebase.
The new Chromebase features a 21.5-inch 1080p touchscreen, a Tegra K1 processor, HDMI out, USB 3.0, USB 2.0, 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and two 3W audio speakers. As for other details like internal storage, RAM, or even the price tag? At this stage, we have no clue, though they say the device is heading our way this summer, so we’ll learn more in the coming months.
The big question is whether anyone is actually interested in a desktop Chrome OS experience. Current Chromebox and Chromebase units haven’t exactly had the same level of growth as the Chromebook. Perhaps the combination of touchscreen optimization and a (hopeful) growth in the number of supported Android apps will be enough to make the Acer Chrombebase appeal to more consumers? Only time will tell for sure.
What do you think of the Acer Chromebase? How much would you be willing to pay for such a device?
Upcoming São Paulo Retail Store Gains Apple-Decorated Barricades as Opening Approaches [Mac Blog]
Over the course of the last several weeks, Apple has been hiring new employees for its upcoming Apple Store in São Paulo, Brazil, and as of this week, barriers decorated with Apple logos have gone up around the store, suggesting the store’s official launch is growing closer.
Shared by Brazilian site Blog do iPhone [Google Translate], the barricades feature an Apple logo surrounded by dots in varying sizes in silver, gold, and space gray, the colors of the iPhone, the iPad, and the upcoming MacBook.
The words on the walls read “Apple Store Morumbi. Em Breve,” which translates to “Coming soon,” and another section reads “Entre nessa fessa,” roughly translating to “Enter this party.”
The São Paulo store is something of a big deal for Apple, because it’s only the second store in the country and the first in the metropolis, which is Brazil’s most populous city. The first Apple Store in Brazil was opened in Rio de Janeiro in February of 2014.
Apple has a bit of a tough time selling its products in Brazil because the prices are much higher than in other countries. Because of taxes and tariffs on imported goods, the entry level iPhone 6 is priced at R$ 3.499 in the country, equivalent to $1,100 in U.S. dollars, and $450 higher than the price in the United States.
Still, Brazil’s first store opening in Rio was very popular, drawing more than 1,700 attendees, and the São Paulo store opening will likely garner even more attention due to the city’s size. Last week, we got an early look into the São Paulo store, depicting a standard layout with no particularly impressive architectural flares.
When the Rio store opened, there were 20 days between the time when the barricades went up and launch took place, so if the São Paulo store follows a similar timeline, it could open in late April or early May.
Yale Study discusses disconnect between what you actually know and what you assume to know from Googling
In a world where everything you want to know about anything is readily available by just visiting Google, it’s never been easier to educate yourself in the vast varieties of human knowledge. From mathematics to sociological theories, it’s all there for your cherry-picking pleasure.
But if you’ve spent any time on Internet forums or maybe even at real-life social events, you inevitably come into contact with “Internet Intellectuals”. This term is not for those who just simply read something cool on the Internet, but rather those theoretical physicists who were awarded their PhD from the University of Google or the YouTube Institute of Technology.
Well, psychologists from Yale have made a recent publication in the Journal of Experimental Psychology that discusses this very phenomenon.
Here is the abstract of the article in case you don’t feel like visiting the .pdf link just at this moment:
As the Internet has become a nearly ubiquitous resource for acquiring knowledge about the world, questions have arisen about its potential effects on cognition. Here we show that searching the Internet for explanatory knowledge creates an illusion whereby people mistake access to information for their own personal understanding of the information. Evidence from 9 experiments shows that searching for information online leads to an increase in self-assessed knowledge as people mistakenly think they have more knowledge “in the head,” even seeing their own brains as more active as depicted by functional MRI (fMRI) images.
What this really means is that many people go from just having “read something cool on the Internet” to making assumptions that they’re knowledgeable in the subject material, to the extent that they feel comfortable saying they feel knowledgeable in tangential topics. People confuse what they actually know with what they know they can look up.
You might be thinking, “Well, how is this any different than learning from a library?” The psychologists state that this too is possible.
This illusion of knowledge might well be found for sources other than the Internet: for example, an expert librarian may experience a similar illusion when accessing a reference Rolodex. An individual in a highly integrated social environment (Hutchins, 1995) may conflate knowledge “in the head” with knowledge stored in other human sources, such as fellow members of a cockpit crew. While such effects may be possible, the rise of the Internet has surely broadened the scope of this effect.
This may all be typically innocent, though obnoxious, but, in my opinion, the real issue comes into play when you start entering the realm of policy making. I can think of one topic right off the top of my head where armchair scientists reign supreme: anthropogenic climate change. Or just look at the recent vaccination-deniers debacle.
Just remember, wisdom is knowing just how ignorant you are, and that’s okay and admirable.
Source: Yale via Engadget. Banner image: Science Over a Cuppa
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Dead Trigger 2 makes its zombie-shooting debut on Windows Phone
As promised last week, developer Madfinger Games has brought its popular free-to-play zombie-themed first person shooter Dead Trigger 2 to Windows Phone owners.
AIVAnet 