Bloodhound’s land speed record revived by Chinese car giant

Bloodhound will, eventually, maybe, probably attempt to break the world land speed record next year. The project has been hit by countless delays, but new funding announced in July has, the team insists, put the dream of a 1,000MPH car back on track. Today, it’s announced a major new sponsor: Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, a China-based monolith that owns Volvo, The London Taxi Company and its own domestic car brand, Geely. It’s not clear exactly how much money is involved, however the Bloodhound team has described it as “the largest in the history of the project.” As part of the three-year deal, Geely will provide the crew with technical support too.

Engadget saw the Bloodhound car — or most of it, some panels were removed — at a glitzy event in London’s Canary Wharf last September. It was technically a “dry build,” however, and has since been stripped down ahead of race-ready assembly. Measuring 13.5 meters, it’s an imposing vehicle that looks more rocket than car. That’s because it kind of is; Bloodhound is powered by a Rolls-Royce EJ2000 jet engine from an RAF Eurofighter Typhoon, a cluster of Nammo hybrid rockets and a supercharged Jaguar V8 engine that drives the rocket oxidizer pump. Together, they produce a whopping 135,000 brake horsepower.

The Bloodhound team plans to break the world land speed record next year, at a desert in South Africa. RAF Wing Commander Andy Green, who set the previous record in the Thrust SSC, will be targeting 763MPH (1228KMH) during this attempt. The team then hopes to set a second record of 1,000MPH (1609KMH), solidifying its place in the history books and setting a difficult record for other teams to beat. Before then, however, it has to complete some slower, controlled tests here in the UK. They had been scheduled for June 2017, but will now take place in July and August.

It’s been a long wait, but soon, finally, we might see Bloodhound in action.

Researchers think chaos theory can get us past Moore’s Law

Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, believed that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every year or two. And, to his credit, that rule pretty much held out between 1965 and 2015, when the laws of physics began to get in the way. Now, researchers at North Carolina State believe that we don’t need to obsess over ever-smaller transistors to make chips even more powerful. Instead, they’ve turned to chaos theory in the hope that mixing things up will provide the performance boost that Intel can’t.

Lead researcher Behnam Kia explains that we are now “reaching the limits of physics in terms of transistor size.” If you’ve ever listened to one of Intel’s presentations, you’ll notice that every new production process is getting harder to achieve. It’s not that easy to crank out perfect 14-nanometer chips, and the company has delayed its 10-nanometer chips several times as a consequence. But Kia and the team believe that our obsession with size has obscured a key fact about how chips are currently built.

In the average PC chip, there are a series of circuits that use transistors, and each one is designed to perform a specific function. Imagine a factory where each circuit is an employee holding a calculator, and their job each day is to do a single equation over and over. The first chips had a handful of employees, but over time walls were knocked down, calculators were shrunk and employees lost weight. That means more folks are crammed into the same building, but each one is still just doing one bit of math when required.

That means that plenty of transistors are being left dormant, a quantity of wasted capacity in the system that we could harness. As Kia explains, the new chip design uses “chaos theory — the system’s own nonlinearity — to enable transistor circuits to be programmed to perform different tasks.” In our labored metaphor, your factory would stop employing more people, and instead train those already there to do multiple calculations. That way, you could do more work/math with the same number of transistors/employees, and apparently it’s not that hard to implement.

The team at NC State believe that while their idea is currently theoretical, creating a programmable transistor circuit isn’t difficult. The team thinks that these reconfigurable chips could be produced with almost the exact same tools as Intel currently uses on the production lines. If so, then it could offer up a way for CPU power to increase while we wait for the materials scientists to work out exactly how to produce workable chips below 5-nanometers.

Source: NC State, IEEE

Five scenarios for getting more from Apple HomeKit

With the launch of iOS 10, the very powerful HomeKit ecosystem adds new automation features and gets its very own Home app that will allow you to start to automate your house through a series of sensors, intelligent switches, or lights.

On its own the Home app isn’t very smart, Apple is just providing the software, but with the right hardware, you can really start to change the way you enjoy your house. Here are five scenarios that might sound futuristic, but are all possible today with either the Home app or Elgato’s Eve ecosystem offering.

Welcome home

By year’s end there will be over 100 different devices available that are HomeKit compatible. As you can imagine there are plenty of different ways the system could welcome you home. One simple and easy way is to have a HomeKit scene to automatically turn your lights on and start boiling a cup of tea for you as you walk in the door. You can do this through the Eve Energy Switch & Power Meter.

The intelligent plug socket, when used in connection with an Apple TV 4 in the home can automatically turn on anything connected to it when your phone sends a location trigger to notify your home hub that you’re getting close. No longer do you have to come home to a dark house again.

Is everything turned off?

We’ve all been there, I can’t remember if I turned xyz off as you are driving away from your house. There is an easier way. With HomeKit enabled door sensors, like the Eve Door & Window sensor for example, you have the ability to ensure all your HomeKit enabled and connected devices turn off when you walk out a certain door as the sensor is triggered.

Good morning world

Still waking up to an alarm? Why not wake up to light gently glowing, a warm bathroom and a fresh port of coffee while Siri tells you what the weather is doing outside. You can do some of that using Eve Thermo, a HomeKit enabled thermostatic radiator valve that can control your radiators via pre-programmed schedules, a Siri command, or the Home app, alongside Eve Energy that could be plugged into an electric blind that slowly raises at a given time. A HomeKit enabled coffee machine could then start you a brew. Wide awake.

What time did you get home?

If you’ve got teenagers that are starting to venture out, knowing when they eventually did get home could be advantageous. Fit an Eve Door & Window sensor to your front door and whenever anyone comes and goes the Eve app will notice. Now when they say they got in at 11pm and the historical data chart in the Eve app reports activity at 4am, you’ll know the real truth.

Breathe Easy

With Eve Room and Eve Energy, automatically keep your home fresh as a daisy and free from poor air quality. The room sensor will allow you to monitor not only the quality of the air in the room, but also the temperature and humidity of the room too. If you want to do something based on the results, the accompanying Eve app allows you to action things based on the results, perhaps like activating an air cleaner connected to an Eve Energy, turning the radiator down (if you’ve got the Eve Thermo) or going as far as turning on your cassette radio to play Summer In The City by The Lovin’ Spoonful.

Snapchat changes name and launches first retail product, Spectacles

Snapchat is going through a period of change, first, it has shortened its name to Snap Inc. and now it’s released its first retail product, Spectacles.

The name change is because of the new product, until the new glasses, Snapchat’s only product was the ubiquitous app for smartphones. The app will still be called Snapchat, it’s just the company name that’s changed.

• What’s the point of Snapchat and how does it work?

Immediately following the announcement of the name change, Snap Inc revealed its first ever retail product, Spectacles.

They’re exactly what the name suggest, a pair of glasses that you wear on your face. But these spectacles have camera built in to record 10-second snaps on-the-go. To record a snap all you need to do is tap in the top left corner, and you can tap a couple more times to record up to 30 seconds of continuous footage.

A light on the inside of the glasses lets you know you’re recording while a light on the other side lets oncomers know you’re recording them too.

Recorded footage gets sent to your smartphone: via wi-fi for Android devices and Bluetooth for iOS. High-quality footage can be sent to iOS devices via wi-fi, and is played back in the Memories section of the Snapchat app. You don’t need your phone nearby to record footage, as the glasses have built-in storage for holding it until you’re ready to transfer.

What sets Spectacles’ footage apart from the video you can simply record from your smartphone is that Spectacles record in a new circular format with a 115-degree field of vision, which can viewed back in any orientation.

• Snapchat’s Memories feature totally changes the app, and here’s how
• Instagram just basically ripped off Snapchat Stories
• Facebook Live to offer Snapchat-like lenses through MSQRD app

Spectacles come in three colours and we have to say, we’re not sure just how many people would be happy to be seen wearing them down the high street. Although from the promotional video they look ideal for wearing skateboarding some friends.Fortunately, Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel is quite laid-back about them too, saying they’ve been designed to be a “toy” and to try and persuade people to use something other than their phone to record moments. He thinks using a phone can likened to having a “wall in front of your face”.

Snap Inc.’s Spectacles will initiially have a limited launch in the US later in the autumn for $129.99 and will come supplied with a carry case which doubles as a charger. You’ll need to pop the glasses in the case each night as the built-in battery lasts around a day.

EE Pocket-lint Gadget Awards 2016: Best tech and games of the year in pictures

At the end of each year, we look back at the last 12 months worth of reviews on Pocket-lint and choose the very best tech and games products we’ve had the pleasure of trying out in that time. We then put them forward as potential candidates for nomination in the EE Pocket-lint Gadget Awards.

There are 14 individual categories that cover different product segments, including Best Phone, Best TV and even Best Car, and a total of 136 different products we feel are worthy for inclusion. So we’ve put together a handy gallery, which you can access above, to give you an idea of the best of the best in each individual tech division.

Only five in each category will make it onto the prestigious EE Pocket-lint Gadget Awards 2016 shortlist, and only one in each will be crowned the winner at a special event held in Shoreditch Town Hall on 23 November. But whether they make the final cut or not, all the products are worth checking out if you’re looking to spend some cash for top quality and performance.

You can even have a say yourself, by heading to our dedicated EE Pocket-lint Gadget Awards micro-site and voting for products you’d like to see in the final five. You can also do it by category, missing those you feel you’ve got less knowledge of.

So flick through the gallery above and decide which of the mighty list would make it to the top of your pile.

SpaceX test-fires ‘Raptor’ rocket that will take humans to Mars

SpaceX has done its first test of the Raptor rocket engine that will take humans to Mars as early as 2024, Elon Musk said in a series of tweets. It was fired at the company’s McGregor, Texas facility on a stand that can handle the extreme thrust. Pointing out the “mach diamonds” from the test (above), Musk said the “production Raptor goal is a specific impulse of 382 seconds and thrust of 3 MN [680,000 pounds],” more than three times that of the current Falcon 9.

SpaceX propulsion just achieved first firing of the Raptor interplanetary transport engine pic.twitter.com/vRleyJvBkx

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 26, 2016

With nine of the methane-fueled motors, the Red Dragon will be far more powerful than any current rocket. It’ll eventually lift the Mars Colonial Transporter, loaded with 100 tons of cargo, toward the red planet. The company plans to launch an unmanned craft to Mars by 2018 and get humans there by 2024. That’s an ambitious target, especially considering its recent launchpad mishap.

Elon Musk will give a speech tomorrow at the International Astronautical Conference in Mexico, titled “Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species.” He’s expected to unveil the design of the Mars Colonial Transporter and overall plan for colonizing the red planet. Musk will also reportedly talk about the budget and try to convince government and the scientific community to help pay for the undertaking. After the recent disaster, a successful test-firing of the Raptor will no doubt help his cause.

Facial recognition will find your disappointing sex-cam double

Using your face to unlock your smartphone, or seeing Google or Facebook’s algorithms identify your friends and family proves that facial recognition tech can be useful. But where there’s a will, there’s a way to… repurpose technology for the adult entertainment industry. On webcam show hub Megacams, you can upload a picture of yourself and it uses machine-learning facial recognition magic to find your sex-cam lookalike. I’m not sure why you’re looking for someone that’s pleasing themselves on camera when they look just like you. Regardless, the technology is here — although the site is (obviously) not at all safe for work-time browsing. I warned you.

Out of morbid curiosity. I sent my photo into the site’s webform to see if I had any exhibitionist clones out there. The summary: nope. No-one looked anything like me, and I’m not being subjective — or at least don’t think I am.

This is me:

Wholesome, fully clothed, not-smiling Brit that I am. Disregarding the lookalikes that had their junk out, here are my apparent doppelbangers:

The percentage match here was 46, 42 and 40 percent respectively, with other 40-percenters looking even less like me. And let me repeat: these people do not look like me either. The biggest similarity here is that I’m showing a bit of arm (risque!) as seen in Doppelgangers #2 (“fat gamer Mat,” according to a colleague) and #3.

The site isn’t revealing exactly which face algorithm tech it’s using, although TechCrunch points to Microsoft’s Face API recognition software as a possible culprit. There’s no shortage of options: it could even be using open source tools like openCV, used in everything from cars, to smile-spotting apps, to virtual pottery wheels.

Natasha Lomas at TechCrunch had a similar experience with her matched webcam artists, noting most of her webcam “twins” that scored under 40 percent looked nothing like her. Results are more disheartening than Microsoft’s age-guessing bot getting it wrong. I think I’ll tape up my webcam. Forever.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Megacams