New form of light could make fiber optics more secure

When light hits your eyeball, the spinning photons actually twist it (infinitesimally). The force of that spin, known as angular momentum, has always been thought to be a direct multiple of a quantum physics number called Planck’s constant. However, scientists from Trinity College Dublin discovered a form of light with an angular momentum that’s exactly half that amount. Though that may not sound like a big deal, the discovery could have “real impact on the study of light waves in areas such as secure optical communications,” says Professor John Donegan.

The team devised an experiment to effectively reduce the number of dimensions that the light operates in. First, they passed the light beam through a crystal, turning the beam into a hollow cylinder with a “screw-like structure.” Then, they built a device that measures angular momentum both when the light passes through the crystal and when it bypasses it. In the latter case, the spin was an exact integer multiple of Planck’s constant, as expected, but when it passed through the crystal, the angular momentum shifted by one-half.

What I think is so exciting about this result is that even this fundamental property of light, that physicists have always thought was fixed, can be changed.

The result isn’t completely unexpected, as scientists have long theorized that fractional angular momentum in photons is possible in certain instances. However, this is the first time experiments have proved the results — much like how scientists recently proved that theoretical gravitational waves are a real thing. Practically, engineers could exploit the finding to create faster and more secure forms of data transmission. More importantly, the discovery represents a true breakthrough in quantum mechanics if it stands up. “What I think is so exciting about this result is that even this fundamental property of light, that physicists have always thought was fixed, can be changed,” says lead researcher Paul Eastham.

Via: Science Alert

Source: Science Advances

Berkshire Hathaway Discloses Nearly $1 Billion Stake in Apple

A regulatory filing by multinational conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway — which is run by Warren Buffett — today revealed that as of March 31, the company owned 9,811,747 shares in Apple stock (via Bloomberg). Berkshire Hathaway’s shares were valued at over $1 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2016, but given Apple’s recent dip in stock value, it has subsequently declined to nearly $900 million.

Berkshire Hathaway’s stake in Apple appears to be a bet that the Cupertino company’s stock will rebound, following its first ever year-over-year revenue drop in 13 years. The slump comes after Apple’s April earnings call where it announced the first ever drop in iPhone sales in the 9 years that the smartphone has been on the market. Last week, shares of the company fell below $90 for the first time in nearly two years, but after Berkshire Hathaway’s disclosure, Apple’s stock price rose 2.2 percent to $92.50 in early trading Monday morning.

Earlier in April, Apple investor Carl Icahn decided to sell his stake in the company, explaining that he did so due to concern over China’s attitude towards Apple’s encroaching presence in the country. A second Apple investor, David Tepper, also dumped his shares of the company as its value continued to lessen. Tepper had 1.26 million shares that were valued at around $133 million.

Tag: Berkshire Hathaway
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How Adobe helped The Simpsons’ Homer speak live in groundbreaking episode

Last night in the US a segment of The Simpsons was broadcast live. Homer Simpson spoke live to the audience in a groundbreaking television first.

Voice actor Dan Castellaneta improvised a three-minute live section of the cartoon, talking about current events and answering viewer’s phone-in questions. And all without a drop in the usual animation quality.

This was possible because The Simpsons team used Adobe Character Animator – a new feature in After Effects CC that lip syncs the actor and animates the on-screen mouth to reflect the live words.

Keyboard commands can also be used to instantly animate aspects of a 2D cartoon.

Layered characters can be drawn and created in Photoshop or Illustrator and imported into Character Animator. Then a webcam can be set to capture the live movements of the actor and translate those in animation.

This is the process used by The Simpsons for the live episode.

The software was originally devised for off-screen aid, as a tool for animators to see how a performance might work in real time. However, the potential for broadcast was soon realised.

“We created a live interface so animators could get immediate feedback on their performances, but as more people asked about live broadcasts, we knew we had something special,” said David Simons, co-creator of Adobe After Effects.

“I’ve been a fan of The Simpsons since the early 90s, so, when they contacted us, we jumped at the opportunity to work with them on their first live broadcast.”

Is this a gold iPhone 7 in hands-on pictures?

Images have appeared in China of what some are claiming to be an iPhone 7. However, they are shonky to say the least. And although some aspects of previous rumours can be seen, we’re not convinced they’re kosher.

The images appeared on Chinese site Weibo and subsequently reported on by Mobipicker.

Both pictures show a gold device that doesn’t look too dissimilar to the current iPhone 6 or 6S. But they also show the much-rumoured removal of the white straps at the top and bottom of the casing. The rounded trim is still there, but the intersecting lines have gone.

To be honest, to us it looks like a Photoshop job. After all, we’ve created something similar ourselves as an illustration before (as seen below).

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Pocket-lint’s own Photoshopped iPhone 7 image based on original rumours

Another tell-tale sign that this is unlikely to be genuine is that instead of being more flush, as rumoured, the camera unit sticks out seemingly further. And its wobbly and unfinished in the image too – hardly an Apple trait.

A new, smaller hole has appeared next to the flash, which Mobipicker suggests could be thanks to a laser autofocus module.

Again, we’re not wholly sold on that.

READ: Apple iPhone 7 in pictures: Renders and leaked photos gallery

If they are genuine then we’re looking at evolution rather than revolution for the next generation of iPhone. We’ll wait until better evidence for now though.

Mobipicker

Misfit Ray review: Design over delivery

Misfit has long understood that an activity tracker doesn’t have to look like a wrist-worn rubber band. With some of its products worn in a trainer or sock, plus a partnership with Swarovski, there are a multitude of options on its roster.

But if giant crystals aren’t your thing and you just want a tracker to wear on your wrist, then the company’s Shine and Flash trackers are a non-fit: their circular designs mean wearing them with a watch looks pretty ridiculous.

Enter the Misfit Ray, the company’s most minimal tracker yet. Can it solve all activity tracker woes and do its job while looking half decent at the same time? Or is it a case of design over delivery?

Misfit Ray review: Design

We think the Ray is Misfit’s best-looking activity tracker to date. It’s simple, minimal and you might even say it’s sophisticated.

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The anodized aluminium tube is miles better in terms of looks than the circular nature of the Shine and Flash, even if not quite as comfortable. As the tube doesn’t follow the natural form of the wrist, it does dig in a little after a while.

Importantly, though, we’ve been able to wear it with our normal watch, as well as with various pieces of jewellery and other smartwatches without it clashing. This review model is the Carbon Black version – but there is also a Rose Gold finish for those after a softer look.

Misfit has kept to what it knows best by offering various bands to further smarten up the Ray (additional accessories are incoming too).

Our review device featured the standard sports band, which is secured by threading one end through a loop on the other, fastened with a adjustable plastic pin that slides along the ridges of the rubber band. It’s both secure and comfortable – certainly more comfortable than the tube itself – although it’s not super easy to adjust the pin. Loosening the band or tightening it is tricky solo and getting it the right size first time is unlikely.

Inside the tube are hidden 8mm spring bars for the accessories, as well as three replaceable button cell batteries. To change the bands or batteries, it’s simply a case of pushing in the strap and twisting. It’s something that isn’t immediately obvious and requires a bit of force, but it’s also a mechanism that means the tube is very secure once the band is on. The Shine and Flash are renowned for popping out of their bands, making them easy to lose.

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On the underside of the tube is a small Misfit logo, while the top features a small multi-coloured LED light. Tapping this activates it into showing progress in the form of red, orange and green lights.

Additionally, there is a small disc at each end of the tube that makes the Ray water-resistant up to 50 metres – something market-leader Fitbit doesn’t offer on any of its eight trackers.

Misfit Ray review: Activity tracking and notifications

The Misfit Ray tracks steps taken, distance travelled and calories burned, along with sleep duration and quality. There is no heart-rate monitoring and no altimeter for elevation data. It’s possible to tag specific activities such as cycling using the associated app, assuming the Ray recognises activity in the first place.

The app also offers smartphone notifications (for messages and calls only), but as there is no physical display these come in the form of a vibration and a flash of the LED light. There is no support for third-party apps such as WhatsApp, it’s not possible to change the colour of the notification light, or filter notifications to just calls or texts. We’d like to see more options – although not too many, as without the visuals that would just get complicated.

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The Ray also features a silent alarm function like many other activity trackers, as well as an idol alert function, called Misfit Move, that vibrates and lights-up the screen when you’ve not moved within a set period of time. Most trackers offer this function so it’s not something new, but every company does it a little differently.

Misfit enables you to set the time period to be alerted within, such as from 9am to 6pm only, but it’s also possible to set the frequency of the alert. With Misfit you have the option of 20-minute intervals (from 20-minutes up to 2-hours), while Fitbit users are simply alerted 10-minutes before the end of an hour if they haven’t completed their 250 steps. Different methods, both designed to get you moving.

Misfit Ray review: Performance and accuracy

The best thing about the Misfit Ray, and other Misfit products for that matter, is that no charging is required. It means you can wear it 24-hours a day, seven days a week. A night’s sleep data won’t ever be missed because the Ray is charging on the bedside table, which is great for constant data.

In terms of step-counting accuracy, we found the Ray to return figures a little lower than expected. In the past we’ve found Fitbit to be almost spot-on in terms of steps. As a point of comparison we wore two devices together and found the Fitbit Charge HR measured 30,011 steps compared to the Misfit Ray’s 27,092 measure. Now, we would rather it underestimated than overestimated, but there’s a big difference there.

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When it comes to distance accuracy, we were even more disappointed because, frankly, the Ray is terrible here. We’ve done two 16-mile walks and a 20-mile walk during testing, which we measured using MapMyWalk and the GPS from our smartphone. The Ray recorded 10.3-miles for the first 16-miler, 9.9 miles for the second 16-miler and 11.2-miles for the 20-miler. Even if the GPS was slightly out, it wouldn’t have been this far out and after you’ve walked 20-miles you at least want your fitness tracker to recognise most of it – that’s the point of the product after all.

Calories burned accuracy is a little harder to determine, not that such data should be taken as gospel on any activity tracker. As the Ray doesn’t offer heart-rate monitoring, it is unlikely to offer a particularly accurate measurement, but it will give you a ballpark figure. For the first 16-mile walk, we wore the Fitbit Charge HR on our other wrist, which does record heart rate, even if not as accurately as a chest strap would. The Fitbit Charge HR recorded 3235 calories burned, while the Misfit Ray recorded 2834 – which probably comes down to 3000 fewer steps it recorded anyway.

The Ray is pretty good at picking up activity in general, though, allowing you to tag activities as swimming, cycling, basketball, soccer, tennis, running or simply keeping it as default. It doesn’t have a flawless track record though, nor as wide a variety of options as Fitbit. The biggest downer is that it’s not possible to instruct the device that you’re about to commence an activity: we took several yoga classes while wearing the Ray and after an hour-and-a-half of blood, sweat and tears, it gave us nothing. Absolutely nada, which was pretty annoying. It can be added manually but we would rather these things were automatic or user-triggered.

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However, the Ray’s sleep tracking ability is good from what we can gather. That’s a few points back on side. We aren’t especially keen sleeping while wearing an activity tracker on our wrist, as it’s not the most comfortable experience, but if you want the data that’s what you’ll have to do. Each morning the data correlated with our sleep experience and the times we woke up and looked at the clock. It isn’t as comprehensive as the Jawbone Up3, as one example, but the Ray will present time awake, time in light sleep, and time in restful sleep in an easy-to-understand graph.

Misfit Ray review: App

Misfit has been in the activity tracking game for a while but its app would suggest otherwise. Compared to Fitbit, Withings and Jawbone, the Misfit effort just isn’t as enticing – and it’s points system is well, pointless really. However, the app is easy to navigate across its four tabs –  Home, Social, Devices and Me – so all is not lost.

The Home tab shows your activity points and progress in the surrounding circle, with the option to flick between activity and sleep info. Under activity, you can see distance travelled, calories burned and steps taken, followed by the story of your day – a selection of data from activity performed, to food consumed, pulling in data from various third-party apps like MyFitnessPal if they have been linked up. The points circle can be switched for a graph by tapping the icon in the top right of the app, or a weekly and monthly view by tapping the top left icon.

The plus symbol in the bottom right corner of the Home tab allows you to manually add sleep, weight, food and activity, while activities can be edited by tapping “edit” under whichever activity needs changing. All pretty simple with no hidden agendas.

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The Social tab is all about the Misfit community, something that is offered across all platforms. It allows you to compete with other Misfit users, whether for fun or a bit of friendly competition to keep you motivated.

The Devices tab is where you can set various preferences, such as wearing position, as well as the Misfit Move idol alert that we mentioned earlier. This section is also where the call and text notifications can be toggled on or off, and where silent alarms can be set. There is no way to determine things like stride length or which wrist you are wearing your Ray on though, both of which you can do with Fitbit.

The final tab, Me, offers a few more settings, accessed via the cog wheel in the top right-hand corner. Tapping this brings up three options: Account Info, Goals and Apps – all of which have their own deeper settings to tweak, such as linking-up to third-party apps such as MyFitnessPal, Nest Thermostat and RunKeeper, among others. Having goals in here feels a bit more tucked away than it should be though.

Verdict

The Misfit Ray is a good-looking and affordable activity tracker. Its subtle design means it can be worn alongside a traditional watch without looking like you’re doubling-down to placate your time-telling OCD. No need to constantly recharge it is a big plus point too.

The problem, however, is that the Ray doesn’t bring that much to the table. Its activity tracking is basic and not hugely accurate from our experience, while the app platform is not nearly as comprehensive as some competitors. That tube design isn’t the most comfortable to wear either.

Misfit does have price on its side, the incoming customised accessories might add more appeal too, but right now it’s design over delivery – when what we want is the accuracy to match. 

Garmin’s new fitness tracker is a more accurate Vivosmart HR

Garmin’s been busy introducing a raft of new wearables in recent weeks. First, it was the Approach X40, then the Vivomove and, most recently, the Forerunner 735XT. Each one is geared toward different types, including golfers, runners and casual users who simply want to be more active. But Garmin isn’t done yet. Today, it’s taking the wraps off of its Vivosmart HR+, a fitness band with a built-in GPS sensor for more accurate distance and pace tracking.

Thanks to that GPS radio, the Vivosmart HR+ will have a few advantages over the Vivosmart HR didn’t, including a virtual pacer mode and the ability to keep track of personal records. Design wise, though, the Vivosmart HR+ is nearly identical to its predecessor, with a 1-inch (160 x 68) touchscreen and a single button on the band. The main difference here is the GPS functionality which, in addition to the other features mentioned earlier, will let you view a map of your activities via Garmin’s Connect app (iOS and Android).

That all complements the device’s 24/7 heart-rate monitoring and water-resistance, as well as being able to track steps, calories burned, floors climbed and what Garmin calls “activity intensity.” Like the original Vivosmart HR, this version supports smartphone notifications too, along with inactivity alerts to make sure you stay moving periodically.

There is a caveat to having GPS in the Vivosmart HR+, however, and that’s reduced battery life. Garmin says you can get up to eight hours with that feature on, compared to five days when it’s turned off — so choose your settings wisely. Unfortunately, the demo we were given wasn’t long enough for me to put the fitness tracker through its paces, but hopefully we’ll get to do that at a later time.

The Vivosmart HR+ is available now for $220 and comes in a variety of colors, like the black and blue models pictured above.