Get your Sagan on with these 47 awe-inspiring photos of the final frontier

Once Sputnik 1 was successfully hurled into orbit in 1957, spaceflight was no longer a mere pipe dream reserved for the pages of pulp fiction. Not long after the peculiar satellite’s stunning series of orbits, an entire planet watched as mankind, against all odds, set foot on the moon, marking the dawn of the spacefaring age and leading to some of the best space photos to date. In the ensuing half century since these historic achievements, we have launched a panoply of instruments into outer space, allowing us to better understand our infinitesimal sliver in the infinite void of the cosmos.

At times, the space agencies around the globe have proposed some rather bizarre missions to whet our curiosities in the name of science. While many of these more, we’ll say, “far out” programs never left the launchpad — let alone the drawing board — there have been plenty of other pioneering probes that have blasted through our atmosphere, into the our solar system, and, at least on one occasion, drifted into interstellar space. We have rendezvoused with asteroids, sailed through the rings of Saturn, and quite literally roved robotic marathons on the red planet. (In pure, 21st-century fashion, at least one of these rovers can’t seem to resist the occasional selfie.)

While most of us will probably never escape Earth’s gravity, a joint partnership between the International Space Station and Google recently unveiled an interactive Space View platform — a variation of Google Street View program. This allows those of us who never fully achieved our childhood dream of becoming an astronaut to virtually tour the ISS and even peer out at a panoramic Earth from the Cupola bay.

Luckily for us, some of the most sophisticated imaging technology is currently making its way through our solar system, transmitting breathtaking images of the final frontier back to Earth for our gawking pleasure. From the early, grainy images of the Martian surface sent from the Viking 1 lander to humanity’s first close-up of Pluto’s moon, glimpses of our celestial neighbors and those light-years away have long-since filled us with a sense of wonder.

Without further ado, here are 47 of the best space photos to help you put our Pale Blue Dot in perspective…

First Amendment suit halts anti-‘Pokémon Go’ law

A legal battle against AR games like Pokémon Go has been brewing in Wisconsin and this week, the games scored a win. In February, Milwaukee County introduced a new law that required AR game makers to get a permit before their games could be designed for use in the county’s parks. The move came after the parks saw large increases in traffic after the release of Pokémon Go last year.

But Candy Lab, maker of the AR game Texas Rope ‘Em, sued the county and claimed that the ordinance was a First Amendment violation. They also asked the courts for an injunction of the rule before the lawsuit goes to trial next April, which a district judge granted on Thursday. In the ruling, the judge said, “Greater injury will be inflicted upon [Candy Labs] by the denial of injunctive relief than will be inflicted upon [Milwaukee County] by the granting of such relief.”

Milwaukee County has argued that this isn’t a First Amendment violation because the game and its makers don’t have First Amendment rights. “Texas Rope ‘Em is not entitled to First Amendment protection because it does not convey any messages or ideas. Unlike books, movies, music, plays and video games – mediums of expression that typically enjoy First Amendment protection – Texas Rope ‘Em has no plot, no storylines, no characters and no dialogue,” said Milwaukee County in its motion to dismiss the case. It also claims that the game isn’t protected by the amendment because it constitutes illegal gambling.

The permit Milwaukee County began demanding treats AR gaming like a special event, requiring start and end times, expected numbers of participants, portable restroom supply and fees for things like garbage collection. All of which seem rather ridiculous to ask of a game developer.

In response to the judge’s injunction approval, Candy Lab’s attorney told Ars Technica, “I think it’s a huge win for the medium of augmented reality as a whole. It’s a strong affirmation that AR is a medium for creative expression.”

Source: Ars Technica

Missing Malaysia Airlines flight search yields valuable seafloor data

In 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH 370 disappeared from radar and a massive search for the missing aircraft ensued. For two years, scientists used sonar to map the seafloor where the plane was thought to have crashed, and then search for any remnants. Nothing was found and the search was officially called off this past January, but the data collected during the search has now been released.

Existing maps of the Indian Ocean floor didn’t have enough detail to allow for safe navigation during the search, so researchers first mapped the floor with much more detail than before. The researchers collected 278,000 square kilometers of seafloor topography data within the search area and 710,000 square kilometers in total, which included data collected while ships traveled from Australia to the search region. The maps they generated have at least 15 times greater resolution than the ones that existed prior to the search and provide valuable data about the topography of the ocean floor. The images included detailed looks at structures like underwater landslides and volcanoes as well as areas of the seafloor, like the Broken Ridge, that were 40 million years old (follow the links to see videos).

The data from the mapping phase of the search effort are available now as well as an interactive story map. The data collected from the second phase, which actually searched for the wreckage after the maps were generated, produced detailed black and white images, one of which, showing a shipwreck, you can see below. Those data are still being processed but are expected to be released sometime next year. Anyone can download the topography data from Geoscience Australia and you can watch an explanatory video of the project below.

[Image: Geoscience Australia]

Via: Gizmodo

Source: Geoscience Australia

Australia’s first vinyl factory in 30 years will open next year

Thanks to new production technology and the support of big companies like Sony, vinyl is hot these days. Trent Reznor is releasing his Quake score for LP, the Contra soundtrack is available as a record at Comic-Con this year, and Blu-ray versions of Deadpool and Logan come with their own vinyl counterparts. Now there’s a new pressing plant set to open in Melbourne, making it the first modern record press in Australia in 30 years.

Program Records plans to open in early 2018 with “state of the art WarmTone presses made by Viryltech in Toronto, along with a new plating / stamper making system and experienced mastering and lacquer cutting.” Basically, that’s all the latest pressing technology to make vinyl records faster and more accurately than before. According to Mixdown, the Australian plant will start with 12-inch releases in both 140gm and 180gm weights, with plans to produce 7- and 10-inch discs later in 2018.

Via: Mixdown

Source: Program Records

Aphex Twin is the latest artist to open an online record store

Aphex Twin is opening an online record store. For his own music, of course. The Vinyl Factory reports that Richard D. James has started his direct-to-fans store with reissues of his back catalog including … I Care Because You Do and newer stuff like Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2. More than that, there’s a ton of digital-only and unreleased music on offer as well. What’s available today isn’t the half of it, though. “ALL Rephlex material will be going up here in due course+xtras,” a note at the bottom of the site reads.

Of course, James isn’t the first to sell direct to fans (Talib Kweli, Nine Inch Nails and Run the Jewels, for example, have been doing so for awhile), but with someone as enigmatic — not to mention prolific — as he is, this is pretty rad.

Via: The Vinyl Factory

Source: Aphex Twin

Apple Stores Getting All-New ‘Lead’ and ‘Schedule Planner’ Positions

MacRumors has learned that Apple is introducing two all-new Apple Store positions named Lead and Schedule Planner. Apple today informed existing retail employees that applications open Monday, July 24, although it appears that select stores started interviewing candidates as early as a few weeks ago.

Apple says the Lead position will give team members the chance to learn the ins and outs of running an Apple Store firsthand. The majority of a Lead’s time will be spent as the Support Leader on the Floor, responsible for managing employee breaks and zoning in the store, and addressing customer concerns.

Support Leader on the Floor also entails communicating daily objectives, reinforcing store policies, and motivating team members by delivering feedback for career development, according to one employee’s LinkedIn profile.

Apple says Leads will also support opening and closing, and perform a number of other administrative responsibilities, suggesting these employees could be key holders, count and balance cash, and be able to perform overrides when necessary. These have typically been duties carried out by the Store Manager.

It appears that Store Managers will continue to perform some of those responsibilities, in addition to HR and store development.

Meanwhile, working closely with Store Leaders, Apple says the majority of a Schedule Planner’s time will be spent planning and creating the weekly schedule for the entire store. Schedule Planners will also identify trends and make resourcing recommendations to improve team and customer experiences.

Related Roundup: Apple Stores
Tag: Apple retail
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Google tests VR as a replacement for dull training videos

We’ve heard about medical professionals using VR to augment their suites for years, but Google is testing its fit in the broader workplace, starting with employment’s least fun experience: Training. The company’s Daydream Labs hosted an experiment to see if hypothetical new hires learned better by watching training videos or donning a VR headset and walking through simulations — and it turns out, immersive education does a better job. For this single trial, anyway.

The experiment pit two groups against each other in the time-honored competition of brewing better coffee. One watched barista training videos on YouTube, while the other went through a course in VR with a simulated espresso machine (think Job Simulator without the jokes). Ultimately, the VR crew took less time and made fewer mistakes — though Google was quick to point out that neither group made impressive java.

A single trial isn’t enough proof to definitively give VR the work training crown, but it’s certainly promising for anyone making educational tools in virtual reality. It also pointed out the medium’s drawbacks: The VR group might have learned how to twist the right dials on the 3D-modeled espresso machine, but the simulated training didn’t teach the pressure-sensitive art of tamping down grounds into the espresso scoop — something that haptic vibration in controllers doesn’t sell. Plus, hot steam nozzles in VR didn’t carry the same danger as those in real life, and chaperones had to yank the workers’ hands away.

Gloves with better tracking and haptics could make up the difference, but there might just be jobs that can’t be simulated well in VR — at least with our current technology, Google’s Daydream team wrote in a blog post. There were other hurdles with training in virtual reality: Namely, people don’t follow instructions, rush ahead and ignore hints. They also didn’t perform steps in order, so the team had to redesign the training like a video game wherein folks could fulfill tasks in any sequence (steaming the milk before grinding the coffee instead of after, for example).

While this VR session won’t be ported into a Starbucks training course tomorrow, it was still a successful experiment, the Daydream team asserted in the post — and it has promising lessons for learning experiences beyond occupational skill-building.

Via: Road To VR

Source: Google Daydream

Research shows people’s brainwaves sync up when they converse

Why it matters to you

Discovery could help us track agreement, empathy and comprehension in conversations. And maybe even build more effective robots.

Anyone who is a fan of Star Trek is probably familiar with the Vulcan mind meld, a telepathic link between two individuals which allows both participants to temporarily share their brainwaves. Well, as with other Trek fantasies-turned-reality such as teleportation, universal translators, and the holodeck, it seems the idea wasn’t quite as far-fetched as viewers might have thought at the time.

At Spain’s Basque Center on Cognition, Brain, and Language (BCBL), researchers have used electroencephalogram (EEG) brain caps to demonstrate that people’s brain waves really do sync up when they have a conversation. Even if there is not (yet) any telepathy involved.

“Recent evidence has highlighted that the brain’s oscillatory activity, which can be understood like the rhythmic pattern of brain activity at different levels, is modulated by the properties of what the person is hearing — so that the oscillatory pattern gets entrained by the input to favor speech comprehension,” researcher Jon Andoni Duñabeitia told Digital Trends. “In this study, we decided to move a step forward and explore whether brain entrainment also occurs at the person-to-person level, and not just at the person-to-audio level. To this end, we had pairs of people speak to each other in a normal conversation setting and collected EEG data from their brains. Results surprisingly demonstrated that the brains of the two individuals got synchronized in such a way that they showed brain-to-brain entrainment of the oscillatory activity.”

To put this another way, the EEG brain data demonstrated that a person’s brainwaves are synchronized not just to the message they are hearing (which previous studies have shown), but also to the oscillatory pattern of the person they are speaking to. The effect was so obvious that simply looking at brainwave data could reveal whether two people were communicating.

The researchers note that the work is still in its infancy, with plenty more research to be done. For this study, the participants were reading from a set script, but later investigations could open up these parameters.

“There a few [potential applications],” Alejandro Pérez, a postdoctoral researcher on the project, told us. “I envision a future in which we can intervene externally over this ‘brain-to-brain entrainment,’ provoking behavioral changes. In other words, it will be possible by externally stimulating the oscillatory neural activity of two or more individuals to enhance their inter-brain synchronization — boosting the possible outcome of the communicative situation in terms of remembering, agreement, empathy, comprehension and so on.”

Pérez said that specific uses could involve scenarios like improving human robot interfaces by generating robot activity based on a person’s brain state or potentially measuring a person’s willingness to negotiate.

In all, it is fascinating stuff. Even if we are putting in writing right now that we are not going to agree to wear an EEG brain cap next time we negotiate a pay raise — no matter how much our boss assures us it is for research purposes only!

A paper on the work was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

These 4K ‘The Witness’ screenshots are a masterclass in elegant simplicity

When The Witness landed in January 2016, it intrigued players with its silent mystery, mentally demanding puzzles, and picturesque landscape. It showed just how beautiful a game could be with a bit of care and a gentle hand, even with technically simple textures and models. And as these 4K The Witness screenshots demonstrate, it looks even better when you expand the resolution.

It did not take a whole lot of computing power to actually play the game at 4K, but we went ahead and threw everything we had at it anyway. We took the screenshots on our high-end test rig, which is powered by an Intel Core i7-6950X with 16GB of RAM. We chose the Zotac GTX 1080 Ti AMP! Edition with 11GB of graphical memory for our GPU, plugged into an Acer 4K monitor. We also went ahead and turned all of the settings up, and even then, did not see any framerate drops.

One of the more striking elements of the island in The Witness is the juxtaposition between detailed and simple shapes. While trees, rocks, and buildings have a clean, rounded look, there are a number of statues around the island that are deeply detailed, and depict people in lively situations, as if frozen in the middle of a struggle. That stark contrast lends to the eerie nature of the island’s mysteries, even as the colorful atmosphere and booming ecosystem attempt to distract you.

We tried to avoid any spoilers or puzzle solutions in our screenshots, in case you have not gotten around to play The Witness yet. The creator, Jonathan Blow, who is also responsible for the classic platformer Braid, is said to be working on another project. We found out through a post on his personal Twitter account in late March.

We are hiring an experienced 3D character animator to work on a new, unannounced game! Contact me for details.

— Jonathan Blow (@Jonathan_Blow) March 28, 2017

If that sounds like an appealing position, a great place to start would be examining both The Witness and Braid with fresh eyes. The 4K The Witness screenshots up above should give you a good, deep look at the game, with plenty of emphasis on detail, without having to spend a few hours struggling through the often-enigmatic puzzles.

LG Chem to reportedly produce fast-charging L-shaped battery for iPhone 9

Why it matters to you

Apple’s reported plan to have LG Chem produce an L-shaped battery for 2018’s iPhone 9 could increase battery life and charging efficiency.

Still a while away from the iPhone 8 release date, Apple is supposedly already making plans for the iPhone 9. According to an unnamed source Apple has chosen LG Chem as the exclusive battery supplier for the device set to be released in 2018, Korea Economic Daily reports.

The source claims LG has apparently invested “hundreds of billions” of South Korean won specifically for manufacturing facilities and will begin full-scale production early next year. Also added by the source is that the iPhone 9 will be expected to debut in the second half of 2018 and the South Korean company will supply all batteries, AppleInsider notes.

Reportedly, Apple is going to opt for an L-shaped battery module within the iPhone 9 — different than the standard batteries used in current iPhone models. Apple normally uses standard lithium-ion batteries, but this new module is designed to support longer battery life.

The L-shaped battery rumors first started circulating back in February with the iPhone 8. According to MacRumors, KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed the iPhone 8 would include a 2,700mAh L-shaped two-cell battery pack as well. Kuo also explained that with a more expensive logic board design, the OLED iPhone would have dimensions similar to a 4.7-inch iPhone but with comparable battery life to a 5.5-inch iPhone — or possibly even better.

Currently, iPhone models include a battery and motherboard placed vertically next to each other. Kuo said Apple is reportedly working to make the motherboard smaller which would leave room for the extended L-shaped battery. With this design, the iPhone will also be able to charge at much faster speed than any model now.

With a potentially redesigned battery also comes new charging methods for the iPhone. For the iPhone 8, Kuo predicts it will not only have a Lightning port but an embedded USB-C power delivery IC — resulting in higher charging efficiency. The OLED display also adds to saving battery life since it consumes less power by not using a backlight.

It still remains to be seen if Apple will include the L-shaped design in the iPhone 8 along with other features like touch ID, facial recognition, and wireless charging. However, it seems that whatever doesn’t make it into this year’s upcoming iPhone has a good chance of being included in the next one.