If Spider-Man goes skiing, this will be the jacket he brings along

Sports apparel manufacturer Goldwin and biomaterial research company Spiber are teaming up to deliver a new prototype ski jacket. This garment features QMONOS construction, a protein material that takes inspiration from spider silk, and it is the first of its kind. Produced without the need for petrochemicals, this material could revolutionize the production industry.

QMONOS is still in the testing phase and not ready to go to market. Goldwin and Spiber are burning the midnight oil to bring this new fabric technology to the public, and will be displaying it at the Outdoor Retailer and Snow Show in Denver at the Goldwin booth. The event runs from January 25-28, and a representative from Spiber will be available for discussions.

The coming together of Goldwin and Spiber follows the time when the former opened its new research and development facility, the Goldwin Tech Lab, in November in Oyabe City, Toyama Prefecture, Japan. The R&D is in full swing, and we will soon see the results. Among the Tech Lab’s first objectives was to produce the QMONOS prototype on an actual manufacturing line, thus validating the technology.

The lab houses various facilities, including the Archive Gallery, Quality Inspection Office, Stable Environment Room, Scanner Studio, CAD Room, Prototype Room, Exercise Research Room, Artificial Weather Room/Rain Chamber, and the Meeting and Presentation Space. All together, these rooms showcase the company’s history while contributing to quality control and development of current and future products.

Goldwin’s home is in Oyabe City, where the company was originally formed. It is also the location of the Goldwin Technical Center (GTC), which is where most of the company’s R&D took place. The Tech Lab will augment the company’s activities and bring further advancement.

“At Goldwin Tech Lab, Golsdwin will endeavor to develop products that incorporate new and unique values, by taking full advantage of the R&D capabilities GOLDWIN has fostered in the 67 years since the brand’s establishment, as well as the product development expertise, which combines human insights with advanced intelligence aided by state-of-the-art instruments, and GOLDWIN’s unique and comprehensive inspection system, which ensures high quality and reliability,” the company wrote in a release.

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Epic Games is pulling the plug on ‘Paragon’ after the success of ‘Fortnite’

Paragon, the free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game that launched on PC and PlayStation 4 in 2016, is shutting down on April 26. Epic Games announced in a blog post that “there isn’t a clear path for us to grow Paragon into a MOBA that retains enough players to be sustainable.”

Although the game had a dedicated following in a genre sadly underrepresented on consoles, its demise is likely due to the massive success of Epic’s free-to-play multiplayer shooter Fortnite, which has garnered more than 45 million players, with two million playing concurrently.

Although the announcement didn’t address it directly, a Reddit posting last week from a representative of the company wrote that “a number of Paragon team members jumped onto Fortnite to help sustain the game as it has grown far larger than anything in Epic’s past.”

The game was available in Early Access in 2016 and a successful open beta followed before the full digital release. Frequent updates added new heroes, rebalanced various abilities, and often overhauled entire core game mechanics. To say the developers were responsive to the player community is an understatement.

The representative cited the difficulty of retaining players after their first few forays into the game. “The core challenge is that, of new players who try Paragon, only a small number continue to play regularly after a month. Though Paragon has evolved, no iteration has yet achieved that magical combination of ingredients that make for a sustainable game.”

Members of the Unreal Tournament team have also been reassigned to Fortnite, according to Kotaku.

Fortnite has held its own against the other big multiplayer shooter of the year with a “Battle Royale” mode, Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds. Although both games use the Unreal engine, PUBG developer Bluehole has grumbled that the 100-player Battle Royale mode is a close copy of its own game.

Although Paragon is free to play, it does have in-game purchases. And if you’ve spent any money on the game, Epic is offering full refunds for all Paragon players on all platforms. If you’re playing on PC or you’ve already linked your PS4 to an Epic account, you can request a refund here.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Hit up the group chat! ‘Fortnite Battle Royale’ adds new 50-on-50 mode
• ‘Call of Duty: WWII’: Everything we know so far
• ‘Call of Duty: WWII’ temporarily ditches dedicated servers
• Standby for Titanfall: Electronic Arts acquires Respawn Entertainment
• ‘DayZ’ will finally leave Steam’s Early Access in 2018, still headed to Xbox

How to delete a user on a Mac

Do you have a user profile on your Mac that needs to be removed to save space or clear up confusion? You can get rid of it, as long as you know what you want to do with the data attached to that user account.

Here’s how to delete a user on a Mac (in MacOS High Sierra), and what choices you should make along the way!

Step 1: Have administrator access

You can’t do anything else here without the right administrator access to work with, so first make sure that you are logged into an administrator account, and know the administrator account name and password. This is why administrator access is important at the workplace! It’s also a good idea to have this info saved somewhere for your home Mac and make sure everything is up to date.

When ready, sign in to your Mac, but avoid using the user profile you want to delete.

Step 2: Users & Groups

Head down to the dock, and look for the menu icon that says System Preferences, or the square with a gear inside it. Select this option, and then search for the icon that says Users & Groups (typically in the lower portion of the System Preferences window), with portrait silhouettes as the symbol. Head here.

In the Users & Groups window, you will first want to head down to the bottom left corner and find the gold lock icon. Select it to make permanent changes to these profiles. This process will ask you for your administrator login and password, so be ready to put them in and select unlock. The padlock should now be open, and you can start making changes.

Step 3: Deal with the data

Once Users & Groups is unlocked, look at the panel on the left side of the window. This will show the current user signed in (which should be the admin), which you cannot delete, and all the other users and guests that have logged into this Mac. Select the user profile that you want to delete here.

You will see data on this particular profile now, but what you are really looking for is the plus and minus signs at the bottom of the user list section, next to the settings gear icon. Select the minus sign to get rid of a profile.

Now you will have several options to deal with the unique data on this user account. First, you can choose to Save the home folder in a disk image, which will create a new space that pops up in a Deleted Users subsection of the Users folder. This is handy if you frequently delete profiles but want to keep their general data (at a workplace, for example).

Second, you can choose to Don’t change the home folder. This will keep all the data under the user name in the Users folder, relatively unchanged. This option may be useful because it allows you to restore the user profile at a future date if necessary.

Third, you can choose to Delete the home folder. As expected, this gets rid of all the data and helps you clear some storage space—handy if this is your primary goal.

Note that if the user is only sharing access to this Mac, then these options probably won’t appear—that data is held elsewhere and doesn’t affect this removal.

Step 4: Finish up

Once the data is taken care of, chose Delete User to finish up the process and remove the profile. Confirm your choice, and users the rest should happen automatically.

Extra tip: Guest access

Guests on a Mac can access features and data, but only via a shared link. Typically these shared profiles are added to give specific people remote access to the Mac and its files as needed for a project. If you have a lot of people who need access to the same Mac, or a rotating group that changes frequently, it’s probably a better idea to create a sharing only guest profile that is much easier to delete than a regular profile.

It’s also worth noting that you can change the name of user profiles rather than delete them. This may be another desirable option if you want to keep data but switch a user around to someone else with minimal fuss.

Editors’ Recommendations

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The 20 best icon packs for Android let you refresh your phone’s style

Sometimes your Android phone’s style could do with a bit of a refresh. There are a ton of ways to do that, from changing your wallpaper to installing a custom launcher that completely overhauls your experience. But did you know that you could change the look of the app icons on your home screen and app drawer? The humble app icon is a mainstay of our devices, and you’re probably seeing those little symbols more often than anything else on your phone. So why not mix things up and change how they look?

A note before we begin: Icon packs pretty much always require a custom launcher to function. While some phones have launcher functionality built in (like Nova Launcher on the Razer Phone), you’ll likely have to install and run a custom Android launcher to get these icon packs to work.

Pixel Icon Pack 2 (free)

The Google Pixel 2 icons follow Google’s design trends, and this icon pack means that your phone can, too. This pack has more than 6,500 icons (and counting) that can be altered to look like the rounded, clean icons you’ll find on the Pixel’s screens. It’s supported by a wide variety of launchers, and the app’s description has a lengthy list of settings for Nova Launcher to help you get started as quickly as possible.

Download now:

Play Store

OS X Icon Pack ($1)

It might be something of a heresy in Android circles, but if you’ve come from an iOS device or are just curious, then you might be interested in this icon pack that makes your icons look like their corresponding icons on iOS. It’s relatively pedestrian compared to most icon packs, and pretty much just changes the icon shape to match the iOS design, but it’s a fun addition nonetheless, and at a buck, you’re not exactly breaking the bank. However, there are definitely better packs if you want to stand out.

Download now:

Play Store

The Grid (free)

Tron, is that you? The Grid changes your icons into awesome, glowing ’80s-era sci-fi versions of their normal, boring selves. If you want to give your phone a cool, Tron-style look, then this pack is a great place to start. It replaces over 2,500 icons, includes over 30 wallpapers, and boasts an analog clock widget to match. There’s also a Pro version that comes with 200-plus wallpapers and 3,700-plus icons that’ll set you back $2. Try it out, and buy the Pro version if you’re sold.

Download now:

Play Store

Typewriter Button Icon Pack ($1)

Not everything needs to be high-tech. This pack makes your icons resembles old-time typewriter keys. Unfortunately, you can’t change the audio to do a little “clack” every time you press one, but you can’t have everything right? If you’re not sold on the cool futuristic designs, then maybe this one will tickle your fancy. The pack also comes with some matching wallpapers, so you can really go all-in on the theme. It’s compatible with a bunch of launchers, but always check if your chosen launcher is on the list.

Download now:

Play Store

Polycon (free)

Polycon takes Google’s Material design ethos and puts its own special spin on it, removing the penchant for rounded edges, but keeping the emphasis on simple design that stands out from the crowd. Each of Polycon’s designs is a fun spin on a familiar style, and although it won’t be developed any further, it still supports 800-plus app icons, and comes with a selection of wallpapers to boot. It’s not the coolest and craziest pack out there, but with more than a million downloads, Polycon clearly has its fans. And since it’s free, it’s certainly worth a shot.

Download now:

Play Store

Paper Shaped Icons ($2)

Here’s one of the most stylish and intensive packs on the list. It makes each of your icons look like they’ve been torn out of a piece of paper. It’s a seriously cool premise, and we really dig the look. It’s one of the most expensive packs on this list, but you certainly get a lot for your money, with support for more than 5,000 icons, as well as a feature that imitates the theme for unsupported app icons. It even comes with a dynamic calendar and a bunch of HD wallpapers. Definitely worth your investment.

Download now:

Play Store

Umbra ($1)

An “umbra” is basically a shadow, so there are no prizes for guessing the central theme of this pack. Each of the 4,200-plus icons altered by this pack feature a rounded shape with a long shadow cast across the icon by each app’s logo. It’s a neat idea, and it’s really well implemented, with extra alternative styles and a masking feature that mimics the style on unsupported icons.

Download now:

Play Store

Flight – Flat Minimalist Icons (free)

Sometimes less is more, and if you’re a fan of a minimalist style, then you might want your phone to reflect that. Flight is a minimalist icon pack that reduces more than 800 app icons down to the bare minimum they need to be recognizable, with simple white lines and block color. It also comes with a pack of suitably minimalist wallpapers, and supports a wide range of the most popular Android launchers on the market. It’s  great choice for anyone who wants a stark difference to the bold style of Android.

Download now:

Play Store

Minimalist ($1)

No surprises here — Minimalist is another minimalist-style app icon pack. However, this pack has a different take on the minimalist style. Each icon in Minimalist has been heavily simplified from its original icon, and depicted in a smooth pastel style. Each app icon is still obviously different from the next, and you may need to spend some time relearning which app is which, but that’s much the same for any icon pack. Minimalist has more than 3,800 icons included, and 70 wallpapers.

Download now:

Play Store

CandyCons (free)

Another fun spin on Google’s Material Design, CandyCons takes more than 1,000 icons and puts a little extra oomph into them. Chrome’s iconic swirl has been pushed up to 11, Google Photos is more flower-like than ever, and every other icon has been taken out of its rounded shell and allowed to really blossom. Each icon has been pushed to a new extreme, but is never allowed to become unrecognizable. Best of all, each icon now somehow looks a little bit cuter.

Download now:

Play Store

I tried using the Surface Book 2 as my only PC, and it let me down

Microsoft wants the Surface Book 2 to be your only PC. Its website calls the Book 2 a “versatile laptop, powerful tablet, and portable studio in one,” going on to tell users it will “speed through intensive tasks,” and even handle Windows Mixed Reality.

It’s an appealing idea. I’ve long been a three, even four-PC guy; I have a desktop and laptop for work, and often have both at home, too. That’s a lot of computers, and while cloud connectivity has bridged most gaps between them, it seems wasteful. What if one PC could do it all?

I thought the Surface Book 2 15-inch would be that device. It certainly seems powerful enough on paper. With a Core i7 quad-core processor, Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics, and 16GB of RAM, the Book 2 is quicker than my work desktop. Seeing a chance, I eagerly cleared it a place in my battlestation — but it wasn’t meant to be.

The scale of the problem

The Surface Book 2 15-inch has a beautiful, pixel-dense display with a 3:2 aspect ratio that packs about 250 pixels per inch. It’s fantastic. My work desktop, however, pairs well with a humbler 2,560 x 1,440, 27-inch monitor. The Surface Book 2 doesn’t seem to play nicely with it.

Fine text wasn’t as smooth as I expected, and everything on the screen looked and felt slow.

I noticed the problems almost immediately. Connecting the monitor was easy enough, but when I made it the primary display, the (now secondary) Book 2’s screen looked off. Fine text wasn’t as smooth as I expected, and everything on the Book 2’s screen looked and felt slow, as if it were refreshing at a slower rate than it should.

“That’s too bad,” I thought, and then closed the Surface Book 2, thinking the problem solved. Boy, was I wrong. My problems were just starting.

They were minor at first. The icons on the desktop spaced themselves strangely. A few hours later, I noticed the title bar of several windows had shrunken. Not a big deal. Then, my cursor began to disappear as it entered certain application windows, including Word and Outlook. That was more of an annoyance, and I rebooted the Book 2. That fixed the problems, but they soon returned.

Mark Coppock/Digital Trends

As it turns out, my unusual behavior is the cause. I sometimes disconnect the Book 2 to use it as a laptop, and then re-connect to my monitor when I return. Crazy, right?

Microsoft even has a support page for this, titled “Windows scaling issues for high-DPI devices.” According to the page, “These symptoms also occur when the hardware configuration changes, such as when you dock and undock a device that uses external monitors, or you detach an external monitor from the device.” The fix? Log off, and log back in. This “resets the display information and improves the behavior.”

Let’s summarize. The Surface Book 2 — and all Windows devices, apparently — can’t properly handle docking/undocking from an external display. The result is a snowball of UI rendering issues that eventually force the user to log off. There’s no fix. That’s just how it is.

Ouch.

What are you doing, GPU?

Alright. So the icons don’t always look quite right. It’s annoying, sure, but does it really matter? Is logging off and back on that annoying? Perhaps not, but it’s not the only problem.

I frequently saw the Surface Book 2 slow to a crawl for no obvious reason.

Surface devices are notorious for odd bugs. They’ve earned plenty of criticism in the past. Consumer Reports made waves last year when it revoked recommendations from Surface products, citing a high rate of reported problems. Prior to that, in 2015, Microsoft apologized for problems with the Surface Book and Surface Pro 4, saying “For those of you who’ve had a less-than-perfect experience, we’re sorry for any frustration this has caused.”

The frustration continues. I frequently saw the Surface Book 2 slow to a crawl for no obvious reason. Upon investigating, I found it was linked to extremely high GPU use by the Desktop Window Manager. As with UI scaling, this isn’t a problem specific to the Book 2, but that didn’t make my experience any better. I ran out of patience with it quickly, and I’m using a review unit. I don’t know what I’d do if I saw this performance after spending at least $1,500 or, in the case of our review unit, $3,300 — but I’m sure it’d include cursing.

While that’s the most headache-inducing problem, there’s plenty more. Why doesn’t OneDrive work when I try to browser it through an Office application? Why do I hear strong coil whine when I connect the Book 2 to a monitor, and only then? Why did Microsoft ship it with a power brick that’s too small, so the battery discharges under heavy load?

I work with PCs all the time. It’s my job. I’m fine with seeing a glitch here or there, and on their own, each problem I had with the Surface Book 2 wouldn’t be a dealbreaker. Together, they’ve ruined my experience, and I’m going back to my multi-PC lifestyle. The Surface Book 2 is still a great 2-in-1, and is a solid choice if you need a workstation laptop, but we can’t recommend tossing your desktop for it.

Editors’ Recommendations

• After a quiet year, is Microsoft ready to wake up, or settle down?
• Microsoft Surface Book 2 13-inch Review
• Windows 10 Timeline hands-on
• We tested it: The Surface Book 2’s 15-hour battery easily outlasts your workday
• Battle of the high-end laptops: HP Spectre x360 vs. Microsoft Surface Book 2

HQ Trivia scraps $20 minimum requirement to withdraw prizes

Got a few bucks sitting in HQ Trivia limbo these past couple of months? You’ll be happy to hear this, then: the app no longer requires a minimum balance for withdrawal. You can get your prize money no matter how small it is, so you don’t have to endlessly try to win again and again just to be able to collect $20. HQ Trivia, which debuted to great success late last year, is a trivia app that takes on a gameshow format. Gameplay is live, and you can only play at specific times twice a day.

While you do win real money if you get all the answers in a round correctly, the app made it incredibly tough to collect. In addition to the $20 minimum, you’ll also have make a withdrawal within 90 days or lose what you’ve already won. As anybody who’s ever played HQ Trivia will tell you, it’s not easy to win multiple times, and it’s even harder to rack up prizes. Although each round’s prize money is worth thousands of dollars, there are so many players that each winner usually just get a couple of bucks. Now that you can withdraw your money no matter the amount, you can finally treat yourself every time you win… even if it’s just something from McDonald’s dollar menu.

Source: HQ Trivia (Twitter)

Amazon teases Alexa Super Bowl ad starring Jeff Bezos

If you want a good barometer of how far Amazon Alexa has come, you just need to look at the company’s teaser for its Super Bowl LII ad. Where Amazon’s first-ever Super Bowl commercial was eager to sell you on the still-unproven Echo using as much star power as possible, the biggest star (so far) in the teaser is Jeff Bezos — you know, the company’s own CEO. The clip has Bezos giving the tentative go-ahead for a sketchy Alexa replacement after the AI assistant loses her voice.

Both the inclusion of Bezos and the very subject of the ad (a national panic caused by the absence of Alexa) show the kind of confidence Amazon has going into 2018. The 2016 ad reflected Alexa’s young state. The Echo had only been on the market for slightly over a year, and Amazon had to explain the product to a public that had never heard of a smart speaker. Flash forward to 2018 and it’s a different story — Alexa is seemingly everywhere, including new Echo speakers, cars, and thermostats. Amazon doesn’t have to introduce Alexa so much as defend it against incursions by Google and Apple.

Via: Recode

Source: Amazon (YouTube)

What is Litecoin? Here’s everything you need to know

As much as bitcoin is the cryptocurrency that has the most mainstream attention, there are hundreds upon hundreds of alternative coins which have been created over the years since it was born. While some alternatives like Ethereum and ZCash have become vogue in only the past couple of years though, some cryptocurrencies have been around for much longer, like Litecoin.

But what is Litecoin? In a nutshell, it’s a cryptocurrency like many others, built on a similar framework and ideal as bitcoin itself. Created by an ex-Google employee a few years after the first cryptocurrency, it’s now one of the most commonly traded crypto-coins out there, with a market value in the billions.

A crypto-what?

If you’ve heard of Litecoin, you’ve heard of bitcoin and have a reasonable idea of what the whole cryptocurrency scene is all about, but it never hurts to have a quick refresher. Cryptocurrencies are entirely digital currencies. Think of them as the way you operate your online banking. It’s not a ‘real’ or physical currency, but it can have real value. That currency can be transferred between users all over the world with low fees and far faster than most traditional currencies.

One key difference between your online bank account and cryptocurrencies is that they are (for the most part) entirely decentralized. That is, they aren’t controlled by any one authority. The ‘ledger,’ or “blockchain,” that records and confirms all transactions as valid is publicly viewable and editable by a large system of users all over the world.

In the case of Litecoin, those confirmations are created by a process known as “mining.” That’s a rather complicated topic in its own right, but suffice to say it involves performing complex mathematical calculations with powerful computing hardware. Miners who take part in it also create new Litecoins, which they are rewarded with for performing the service, along with a transaction fee.

Those calculations get more and more complicated as time goes on, limiting the influx of new Litecoin. There is also a hard limit of 84 billion Litecoin, which means there will come a day where no new tokens are created. Those factors create a scarcity which has helped drive up Litecoin’s value over the years, among other factors.

Second out the gate, but not second-fiddle

BTC Keychain/Flickr

Launched in October 2011, just under three years after the debut of its inspiration, bitcoin, Litecoin was created by former Google employee, Charlie Lee. Described by its creator as the “silver” to bitcoin’s gold, Litecoin is based on the Bitcoin Core client. Litecoin was designed to emulate its predecessor, extolling the same virtues of decentralization but with a few key features that arguably make it a more nimble alternative.

While bitcoin blocks can only be processed every ten minutes — part of the reason it has experienced longer confirmation times with the recent influx of users — Litecoin reduced that to a targeted 2.5 minutes per block. While that hasn’t always been possible throughout the cryptocurrency’s history, it is the average that makes transactions faster — and cheaper — to confirm, or validate.

The other key difference Lee employed with Litecoin’s creation, was in his choice of hashing algorithm. All cryptocurrency mining employs complicated algorithms. Most are based on the same SHA-256 algorithm that bitcoin uses, but Litecoin leveraged the Scrypt algorithm instead. Easier to compute, lighter on the workload, it’s what enables the faster confirmation of Litecoin transactions. There is an argument to be made that its enabling of faster transactions is a security issue, since less thorough checks of the data are required, but it hasn’t manifested in an obvious problem in the real world as of yet.

These two main differences from bitcoin make Litecoin very much its own cryptocurrency and more than just a pretender to the throne. Over the years it has garnered a base of thousands of owners all over the world, who between them trade millions of dollars worth of Litecoin every day.

Litecoin for transactions

Although cryptocurrencies (and the blockchain technology it’s built upon) could have serious potential for streamlining a variety of industries around the world — especially when you factor in smart contracts — they have two main functions as it stands. The first of those is in transactions.

Cryptocurrency, operating in the same manner as traditional, “fiat,” currencies can be used to pay for goods and services. Although cryptocurrencies have a reputation for being used on the darknet for drug transactions and facilitating ransomware attacks, a growing number of legitimate, legal outlets accept Litecoin as legal tender. Whether you’re looking for jewelry, clothing, or even luxury cars, there are many places you can spend Litecoin.

Litecoin is also a great cryptocurrency for giving ‘money’ to friends and family. Due to its shorter block time, fast confirmations and fees that rarely go north of a fraction of a dollar, Litecoin can be transferred to anyone quickly and cheaply if you have their wallet address.

Like some of the other alternative cryptocurrencies out there, interest in Litecoin as a transactional medium has increased in recent months thanks to bitcoin’s value spike and its escalating transaction fees. Although there is no guarantee that Litecoin won’t bump up against such problems itself should it see a large influx of new owners, for now at least it’s a great medium for transferring wealth quickly online.

Litecoin as a store of value

Although cryptocurrencies like Litecoin were originally intended to conduct transactions online, much like traditional currencies, their value does increase and decrease based on a number of market factors. Cryptocurrencies however, with their lack of governmental backing, tend to fluctuate far more — that’s why bitcoin and others have seen such an interest from mainstream investors in recent months.

Litecoin too has been on quite the tear and has made many people very wealthy in a relatively short period of time. Like many other cryptocurrencies in the past year, its value has increased exponentially. At the start of 2017 a single Litecoin was worth just $4. At its peak in December that same year it hit $371, correcting to $178 at the time of writing.

That’s an enormous increase that shows that just because bitcoins are worth thousands of dollars, that Litecoin can’t also be a great store of value. Some, like its creator, would argue that Litecoin has a greater potential as a cryptocurrency because of its better transactional abilities. While that might not necessarily affect its value directly, it could make it more popular, which in turn creates its own potential for a value increase over time due to demand.

Long-term relevance

When Litecoin was first created, it was just one of a handful of cryptocurrencies. Today it’s one of many — more than 1,300, with more being created every day. While it has greater name-recognition than most cryptocurrencies, its market cap of near $10 billion is far less than the biggest players and individual coins are worth much less too.

That shouldn’t put people off it though. It truly shines as a regular transactional medium, with only bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple seeing a greater daily trade volume. There may be leaner coins and some with more advanced features than Litecoin today, but it has firmly cemented itself as one of the most important cryptocurrencies. It might not quite be the silver to bitcoin’s gold anymore, but it is one of the most precious digital metals we have, and it doesn’t seem likely to fall from favor anytime soon.

Editors’ Recommendations

• The best bitcoin alternatives
• Ethereum vs. bitcoin: What’s the difference?
• What is Ripple?
• What is a blockchain? Here’s everything you need to know
• How to trade bitcoin for other cryptocurrencies

Ever wondered how lasers work? Here’s everything you need to know

Lasers! Clearly they are awesome — but how do they work, exactly? Why aren’t we all carrying them around in our pockets? Well, believe it or not, you probably are — thanks to modern electronics. Here’s the story of how a laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) operates, and what it does when it hits an object.

It’s all about electrons

Let’s spend a little time back in physics class: A laser owes its existence to electrons, which you may remember are those energetic particles that hover/exist around an atom, forming its “shell.”

Some electrons have the ability to absorb energy from outside sources and jump to higher-energy orbits, at least temporarily. However, the electrons quickly return to their normal orbits, and release the extra energy they used, which then ripples outside of the atom.

Electrons do this all the time—it’s how most radiation is created! Switch on a flashlight, and there’s a bunch of electrons cascading energy levels all over the place. But the reason that your flashlight is not a powerful laser beam (sorry) is that those electrons aren’t in sync. Instead, they hop all over the place, release energy randomly, and are hardly ever at the same wavelength or the same timing. In fact, electrons seem to naturally disperse their wavelengths and timing in these situations, which makes accidental lasers almost—but not entirely—impossible.

When creating a laser, engineers have to act like orchestra conductors for an innumerable number of electrons, getting them all to gain energy and release it in sync. When successful, this creates a coherent stream of photons that all move in the same manner, at the same time, in the same direction…and a laser is born. This happens thanks to a carefully constructed process and the right materials, which we will talk about in the next section!

Anatomy of a modern laser

Christian Delbert/123rf

Lasers come in all sizes, from tiny little lasers in microchips to vast lasers in science research facilities. However, most can be broken down into three very important parts that allow the laser to function.

Energy source: First, lasers require an energy source (also called pump sources or excitation mechanisms) to pump energy into the laser so that its electrons have a lot of juice to work with. There are several different popular types of energy sources, including direct electrical discharges, chemical reactions, and powerful sources of light like flash lamps.

Medium: The medium (typically called the gain medium or laser medium) is where the energy is directed. Its job is to gather that energy, get its electrons to jump around like crazy, and emit powerful bursts of light that are ready to be formed into a laser. Mediums cover a wide range of materials: Some are liquids, some are gases, and some are crystalline solids. Even a humble semiconductor can act as a laser medium.

Optical cavity: The optical cavity or resonator takes all the light released by the medium and focuses it. In the classic laser setup, it uses two mirrors to bounce that light back and forth to sync up the pulses, amplifying the energy and routing it toward a small opening where the laser is directed.

What happens when a laser hits something

When a laser strikes a material, it acts just like other radiation: Some is absorbed, some is reflected, and some may pass through or be transmitted. But that doesn’t tell us much about what a particular, focused laser actually does to the material, so let’s take a closer look at several major categories of practical laser uses, and how they work.

Illumination: In this case, lasers are simply used to illuminate something that’s hard to see. That’s right, sometimes even the trusty flashlight won’t do, especially at very long distances — or when teachers really want to use a laser pointer. And yes, this can be dangerous.

Reflection: When lasers focus on reflection, they are typically transmitting information. The best example here is an optical disk drive found in Blu-ray players, computers, and so on. However, there are many smart device applications too.

Pyrolitic/photolytic reaction: Here, the laser is generally intended to change something…destructively. Pyrolitic versions heat a material, usually to melt it (and hey, sometimes zap birds). Photolytic versions break down chemical bonds within a material to accomplish similar goals.

Transmission: Here the laser is designed to pass down a code that encases valuable data, as in fiber optics.

State change: This is sort of a catch-all category, but in a number of cases the purpose of the laser is to change the material or change itself into a different type of energy (without burning anything). In this case, the material absorbs the laser and then undergoes an interesting transformation. For example, some lasers turn light into sound. Many such devices have valuable applications in everyday engineering.

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Deep learning vs. machine learning: Demystifying artificial intelligence

In recent months, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, and other entities have declared that we no longer live in a mobile-first world. Instead, it’s an artificial intelligence-first world where digital assistants and other services will be your primary source of information and getting tasks done. Your typical smartphone or PC are now your secondary go-getters.

Backing this new frontier are two terms you’ll likely hear often: machine learning and deep learning. These are two methods in “teaching” artificial intelligence to perform tasks, but their uses goes way beyond creating smart assistants. What’s the difference? Here’s a quick breakdown.

Computers now see, hear, and speak

With the help of machine learning, computers can now be “trained” to predict the weather, determine stock market outcomes, understand your shopping habits, control robots in a factory, and so on. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, LinkedIn, and more popular consumer-facing services are all backed by machine learning. But at the heart of all this learning is what’s known as an algorithm.

Simply put, an algorithm is not a complete computer program (a set of instructions), but a limited sequence of steps to solve a single problem. For example, a search engine relies on an algorithm that grabs the text you enter into the search field box, and searches the connected database to provide the related search results. It takes specific steps to achieve a single, specific goal.

Machine learning has actually been around since 1956. Arthur Samuel didn’t want to write a highly-detailed, lengthy program that could enable a computer to beat him in a game of checkers. Instead, he created an algorithm that enabled the computer to play against itself thousands of times so it could “learn” how to perform as a stand-alone opponent. By 1962, this computer beat the Connecticut state champion.

Thus, at its core, machine learning is based on trial and error. We can’t manually write a program by hand that can help a self-driving car distinguish a pedestrian from a tree or a vehicle, but we can create an algorithm for a program that can solve this problem using data. Algorithms can also be created to help programs predict the path of a hurricane, diagnose Alzheimer’s early, determine the world’s most overpaid and underpaid soccer stars, and so on.

Machine learning typically runs on low-end devices, and breaks a problem down into parts. Each part is solved in order, and then combined to create a single answer to the problem. Well-known machine learning contributor Tom Mitchell of Carnegie Mellon University explains that computer programs are “learning” from experience if their performance of a specific task is improving. Machine learning algorithms are essentially enabling programs to make predictions, and over time get better at these predictions based on trial and error experience.

Here are the four main types of machine learning:

Supervised machine learning

In this scenario, you are providing a computer program with labeled data. For instance, if the assigned task is to separate pictures of boys and girls using an algorithm for sorting images, those with a male child would have a “boy” label, and images with a female child would have a “girl” label. This is considered as a “training” dataset, and the labels remain in place until the program can successfully sort the images at an acceptable rate.

Semi-supervised machine learning

In this case, only a few images are labeled. The computer program will then use an algorithm to make its best guess regarding the unlabeled images, and then the data is fed back to the program as training data. A new batch of images is then provided, with only a few sporting labels. It’s a repetitive process until the program can distinguish between boys and girls at an acceptable rate.

Unsupervised machine learning

This type of machine learning doesn’t involve labels whatsoever. Instead, the program is blindly thrown into the task of splitting images of boys and girls into two groups using one of two methods. One algorithm is called “clustering” that groups similar objects together based on characteristics, such as hair length, jaw size, eye placement, and so on. The other algorithm is called “association” where the program creates if/then rules based on similarities it discovers. In other words, it determines a common pattern between the images, and sorts them accordingly.

Reinforcement machine learning

Chess would be an excellent example of this type of algorithm. The program knows the rules of the game and how to play, and goes through the steps to complete the round. The only information provided to the program is whether it won or lost the match. It continues to replay the game, keeping track of its successful moves, until it finally wins a match.

Now it’s time to move on to a deeper subject: deep learning.