SpaceX is ready to resume testing rockets following its accident

SpaceX hasn’t yet pinpointed the ultimate cause of its Falcon 9 explosion from September, but it’s far enough into the investigation that it’s ready to get back to business. The private spaceflight firm now says its inquiry is in an “advanced state,” and it’s confident enough that it plans to resume stage testing in Texas within the “coming days.” The company still hopes to resume flight by the end of the year.

As for the accident? SpaceX has narrowed down the likely cause to one of the composite overwrapped pressure vessels inside the liquid oxygen tank. Investigators can consistently reproduce a problem solely through the pressure and temperature conditions experienced while loading helium. Appropriately, SpaceX is improving its helium loading conditions so that it can “reliably” service Falcon 9 rockets going forward.

The updates are good news for SpaceX in more ways than one. It’s in a scramble to regain trust from partners worried that they’ll lose payloads in the future — they need to know that explosions like this are unlikely to happen again for a long, long while. SpaceX also needs to show that its long-term plans for manned flights and Mars colonization won’t face similar setbacks.

Via: Ars Technica

Source: SpaceX

Best Photo Editor for your Chromebook

Polarr Photo Editor is the best way to edit pictures on your Chromebook.

One of the most often asked questions about Chromebooks we get is how to edit photos. You see the same questions in the comments of Chromebook posts and in forums and everywhere else. It’s a valid question.

One of the biggest holes in the Chromebook toolbox has always been content creation apps and utilities. If you need to edit video or audio or do more than some quick touch up work on photos, you likely looked towards a Windows or Mac laptop instead of a Chromebook because the tools were few and far between and many of the available ones were little more than a link to an online utility.

That’s starting to change. The old adage of “if you build it they will come” rings a little true. Chromebooks are selling well even with a down market for traditional computers, and more and more schools are giving students a Chromebook to help them with their schoolwork and get them ready for the “outside world.” This puts more eyeballs on great apps, and developers like to have eyeballs on their stuff. Add in Android app support through Google Play and you have a ton of choices to sift through to find the best. We did it for you.

If you’re looking for the best photo editor for your Chromebook you should install Polarr Photo Editor.

Polarr is a stand-alone program developed for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome. There is even an online version you can use through your web browser. It’s a full-featured program, and not what many people imagine when they think of a Chrome app.

Simply put, it’s the real deal. In fact, it’s one of the best Chrome apps you’ll find and an example of how just good things can be.

Polarr is one of the first Chromebook apps that’s as good as anything on Windows or the Mac.

The feature set is the perfect mix for casual to advanced work, which is exactly where a Chromebook shines. If you just want to add a filter so your photo stands out a little on Instagram, they are there and can be applied with one click. If you just want to let the app do some automatic magic fixes, Polarr can do that, too, and it does a great job smoothing out the noise and sharpening your photo while not destroying the color balance. When you want or need to do more, Polarr has you covered there, too.

You can adjust the color, lighting, detail, vignetting, HSL (hue, saturation, and luminance), RGB channel curves, toning, and distortion. You can even apply photo effects like fringing or film grain. And you can do this on a RAW file up to 40MP in size.

The controls are simple and perfect for anyone who doesn’t have to use Photoshop five days a week to earn a paycheck. All adjustments are in real time so you can see what effect each has and you have a full history panel to undo any or all the changes. You can even drag and drop the controls so the toolboxes work the way you want them to.

Polarr on my Chromebook makes my workflow easy again.

Here at AC taking photos is part of the job, and a big part of that is trying to make sure the stray piece of dust or eyelash doesn’t ruin a photo and the bright screen on Android phones isn’t washed out. That means most of the time our pictures of phones need run through an editing program. I’ve been using Polarr on my Chromebook to do it without any problems. In a lot of ways, I prefer Polarr to Lightroom — I like the tools interface better and the file handling is much better if you only have a few pictures to work on. Most importantly, Polarr does a good job balancing the exposure and cleaning up the noise that gets left behind when your adjusting it.

If you have a Chromebook or Chromebox — especially if you’re all-in and it’s your only computer — you need to try it. You can install Polarr for free from the Chrome Web Store and get most of the experience. All the tool features are available but some of the advanced adjustments are locked. What you get for free is very usable and works great. If you like what you see and want the rest the program is $20. That’s about $100 cheaper than Lightroom and the things most people who don’t need Lightroom would want to do are easy with Polarr. I feel like I got my money’s worth.

Download Polarr Photo Editor for Chrome (Free / full version $19.99)

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After Math: Well that’s terrifying

Halloween is tomorrow so here are some stories to scare the pants off you. Google’s AI can now encrypt its thoughts from its human handlers, Turkey’s descent into a police state is accelerating, Twitter straight up murdered Vine and, horror of horrors, Gilmore Girls is somehow back on television. Numbers, because how else are we going to track the body count?

A real-world Hyperloop preview, and more in the week that was

The Hyperloop cometh: Danish architecture firm BIG just gave the world a sneak peek at a 93-mile track designed to connect Abu Dhabi and Dubai, while the University of Waterloo is set to test the world’s first levitating pneumatic system next week. Tesla is having a great month as it turned a profit for the first time in two years and unveiled its next-generation Powerwall 2.0 system. Meanwhile, Henrik Fisker gave the world a first look at his upcoming ‘Tesla-killer” supercar, which is set to launch next year. And Otto delivered the world’s first shipment by a self-driving truck: 51,744 cans of Budweiser beer.

2016 is on track to be the hottest year in recorded history, but fortunately clean energy is on the rise. According to a new report, the world’s total capacity for generating renewable electricity is now higher than coal. Sunflare debuted a new type of ultra-thin solar “wallpaper” that sticks to just about anything, while Singapore is getting ready to launch a massive floating photovoltaic array. Iceland is sourcing clean energy from another source: the center of the Earth. The nation is drilling the world’s “hottest hole” to harvest geothermal energy from liquid magma.

Could seaweed-eating supercows save the world? A team of Australian scientists found that adding dried seaweed to cattle feed can cut methane emissions by 70 percent. Meanwhile, a futuristic new farm in Indianapolis is able to grow veggies with 100% renewable energy and 90% less water. In other design and technology news, researchers developed a wave-powered desalination buoy that cuts the price of clean water production in half, and the TetraPOT uses mangrove trees to protect seashores from storms and rising tides. Air Shepherd is using drones to hunt poachers poisoning wildlife with cyanide, and a new 3D-printed heart on a chip could end animal testing for good.

Starbreeze deal gives you more freedom to move in VR

If Starbreeze is going to get you wearing VR headsets in IMAX theaters and pods, it’ll have to create a wow-inducing experience… and it might have taken one step closer toward that goal. The company has bought Nozon, a visual effects house whose recent breakthrough is an interactive parallax effect that gives you more freedom when watching computer-generated or 3D-scanned VR video. You ideally get quality closer to pre-rendered 3D, but the freedom to tilt your head and otherwise look around more naturally. You should feel more like you’re present in a given scene, instead of staring at a giant video wall.

You don’t need Nozon’s tech to have freedom of movement in VR tracking — just ask HTC. However, existing approaches are generally designed for gaming, not the pay-per-view experiences Starbreeze wants. This could help studios produce VR recreations of movie and TV scenes that you’d actually want to watch, or guided tours that are more immersive than the usual 360-degree video clips. It’ll take a while for this technology to find its way into something you can watch, but it should give you a better reason to leave home for a VR extravaganza.

Via: VentureBeat

Source: Starbreeze

Terahertz scans could save male chicks from an untimely end

Chicken hatcheries often grind up male chicks as soon as they break out of their shells — they don’t produce enough meat as adults, so they’re considered useless compared to the egg-laying females. It’s not exactly compassionate, and it wastes money as hatcheries incubate eggs they’ll never use. However, technology might just have a way to prevent such a horrifying fate. Vital Farms and Novatrans are partnering on TeraEgg, a technology that uses terahertz spectroscopy to identify the sex of a chicken well before it hatches. The technique traps and analyzes the gas emanating from the pores of eggs, identifying the sex (or infertility) within seconds. You can use it as soon as 2 days after the hen lays her eggs, or early enough that you can sell the male eggs as food.

TeraEgg is starting out slowly with “scaled tests,” and a full launch is expected by late 2017.

The terahertz technology could be tremendously appealing to animal welfare advocates, who are understandably upset by the mass deaths of chicks (up to 7 billion every year, Vital Farms says). It won’t make you completely happy if you object to eating any animal products, but it would be far kinder than what you see today. And the egg industry should save money in the process. Along with making better use of each egg, it’d let hatcheries reduce the number of inspectors and spend less energy heating eggs. It’s theoretically a win for everyone, no matter what you prefer to eat.

Via: NPR

Source: BusinessWire

Scientists find the first known dinosaur brain tissue fossil

That lump you see above many not look like much at first blush, but it’s a big deal for paleontology: scientists say they have discovered that the sample has the first known example of a dinosaur brain tissue fossil. The team used a scanning electron microscope to detect mineralized blood vessels, collagen, membranes and possibly brain cortex in the remains of an iguanodonid that lived about 133 million years ago. The findings suggest that the dino’s brain had a lot in common with those of modern birds and reptiles. Instead of completely filling the cranial cavity, the brain matter significant space for blood vessels and sinuses.

Researchers may understand more about the evolutionary link through technology, too. While the team has already conducted a CT scan, there are hopes of performing future 3D scans that help compare the iguanodontid’s brain to that of present-day creatures.

Don’t expect to see too many discoveries like this in the future. The scientists believe they got lucky — they theorize that the dinosaur’s brain was preserved in highly acidic water (possibly from a bog or swamp), protecting its form before the whole animal was buried. However, the revelation may prompt other paleontologists to revisit fossils they already have in case they missed something.

Via: National Geographic, Reddit

Source: University of Cambridge (1), (2)