The home security company Ring, owned by Amazon, creates a range of smart home security products. But now Ring products might go further, not just protecting you from crime but warning you about crime news too.
The post Amazon and Ring want to deliver crime news to you through your doorbell appeared first on Digital Trends.
Everyone loves a good trailer, but keeping up with what's new isn't easy. We round up the best ones for you. This week, it's Gemini Man, Deadwood, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and other upcoming films.
The post The best new movie trailers: Gemini Man, Deadwood, Godzilla, and more appeared first on Digital Trends.
The eyes of the world turned to Messier 87 earlier this month when scientists released the first ever image of a black hole. Now an image from the Spitzer telescope shows the giant galaxy in which the now-famous black hole resides.
The post Supermassive black hole resides inside a supermassive galaxy appeared first on Digital Trends.
An upcoming firmware update will bring Eye AF to the Nikon Z6 and Z7 -- along with improved autofocus performance in low light. The update will also give the cameras support for the CFexpress format.
The post Eye-detection autofocus coming to the Nikon Z7 and Z6 on May 16 appeared first on Digital Trends.
Sounds can't travel through a vacuum, but stars nevertheless give off subsonic vibrations from deep inside their structures. An astrophysicist has been working on how this stellar symphony can teach us about the interior of stars.
The post Listen in on a stellar symphony to understand the inner workings of stars appeared first on Digital Trends.
During some seasons, Pluto's atmosphere gets cold enough for the nitrogen in the atmosphere to freeze. As atmospheric pressure increases over time, this could result in the atmosphere freezing away by 2030.
The post Pluto’s atmosphere could freeze and disappear by the year 2030 appeared first on Digital Trends.
NetherRealm Studios acknowledged the extreme difficulty of Mortal Kombat 11's Towers of Time. The developer is in the process of rolling out changes, and has also offered players in-game currency as part of its apology for the issue.
The post Mortal Kombat 11 players to receive in-game currency as Towers of Time mea culpa appeared first on Digital Trends.
The right thermostat can do more than just adjust the temperature of your home, it can also learn about you and help you save money. Check out our picks for the best smart thermostats on the market right now.
The post The best smart thermostats you can buy appeared first on Digital Trends.
We recently tried out several of the best travel adapters on our journeys around the globe, and these are our favorite models so far. If you want to keep your gadgets juiced on the go, then snag one of these.
The post The best travel power adapters for international jet-setters appeared first on Digital Trends.
Whether you're looking for a dorm room fridge or an addition to your basement bar, you'll find the perfect compact fridge in our best mini fridges guide, and your brews will be chilling in no time.
The post The best mini fridges on the market in 2019 appeared first on Digital Trends.
Check out our roundup of the best new crowdfunding projects and product announcements that hit the web this week. You may not be able to buy this stuff yet, but it's fun to gawk!
The post Awesome Tech You Can’t Buy Yet: Inflatable tents and a light gun for LCD TVs appeared first on Digital Trends.
The Global Underwater Explorers dive in the waters around Seattle, which are filled with shipwrecks and sunken planes. Kees Beemster Leverenz uses photogrammetry to make 3D models of the wrecks.
The post How a clever photography trick is bringing Seattle’s shipwrecks to the surface appeared first on Digital Trends.
Hideo Kojima revealed more cryptic information about Death Stranding at the Tribeca Film Festival. Kojima kept doubling down on the word "connection," which suggests that the secretive project may be some kind of MMO.
The post Kojima reveals more cryptic Death Stranding details: Is it an MMO? appeared first on Digital Trends.
Mario Kart Tour opened registrations for players who would be interested in joining the game's closed beta. Only Android device owners will be able to sign up for the program and be the first to peek into the long-delayed project.
The post Nintendo opens registrations for Mario Kart Tour closed beta on Android appeared first on Digital Trends.
The never-ending quest to kill Comcast is poised to receive some renewed investment as an ambitious startup readies to secure some new cash.
Starry, a Boston-based wireless broadband internet startup, has filed to raise up to $125 million in Series D funding according to a Delaware stock authorization filing uncovered by PitchBook. If Starry closes the full authorized raise it will hold a post-money valuation of $870 million.
A spokesperson for the company confirmed it had already raised new capital, but disputed the numbers. The company has already raised over $160 million from investors, including FirstMark Capital and IAC. The company most recently closed a $100 million Series C this past July.
The internet startup takes a different approach from fiber-toting competitors by relying on radio tower and high-rise-mounted transmitters that dispatch millimeter wavelength signals to receivers connected to a building’s existing wiring. Customers with Starry’s slick touchscreen routers can whirl through setup, contact customer service, tailor parental controls and conduct speed tests. The company claims its solution can provide up to 200 Mbps up/download service for just $50 per month with no data caps or long-term contracts.
The technology is not without its skeptics; while laying fiber-optic cable has proven to be an expensive task for internet companies, going over the airwaves with the company’s high-frequency radio waves has its own set of problems. Signals can be affected by harsh weather and obstacles, though Starry has indicated they are content with their performance in less-than-ideal conditions.
“We’ve built a robust network in Boston and our technology is working well,” CEO Chet Kanojia told us last year. “We’ve gone through a full year of seasonality to test various weather and foliage conditions and we’ve been very happy with our network’s performance.”
Last year marked a major period of expansion for Starry, which expanded beyond its home market of Boston and now holds a presence in Los Angeles, New York City, Denver and DC.
Kanojia previously founded Aereo, which raised $97 million in VC funding with the dream of letting consumers watch live TV over the web. The company proved a little too disruptive for its time, and was shut down as the result of a Supreme Court case brought about by major broadcasting networks.
Carbon, the poster child for 3D printing, has authorized the sale of $300 million in Series E shares, according to a Delaware stock filing uncovered by PitchBook. If Carbon raises the full amount, it could reach a valuation of $2.5 billion.
Using its proprietary Digital Light Synthesis technology, the business has brought 3D-printing technology to manufacturing, building high-tech sports equipment, a line of custom sneakers for Adidas and more. It was valued at $1.7 billion by venture capitalists with a $200 million Series D in 2018.
Carbon declined to comment on its upcoming fundraising plans.
Redwood City-based Carbon is well-capitalized. To date, it’s raised a total of $422 million from investors like Sequoia, GV, Fidelity, General Electric, Hydra Ventures and Adidas Ventures, not including the incoming round of capital.
Carbon wants to help designers and manufacturers be more efficient, cut costs and waste less energy and materials. Under the leadership of co-founder and chief executive officer Joseph DeSimone, the company recently promoted Craig Carlson, their former vice president of engineering, to chief technology officer.
“We are at the forefront of digital manufacturing, creating a new standard for the industry. In order to continue pushing the boundaries of what our technology can do and to execute our global growth strategy, we need to have the best team at the top,” DeSimone said in a statement following news of the promotion.
Over the past few months, Sinemia has gone from promising MoviePass competitor to the source of frustration for moviegoers across the country. After rumors surfaced earlier this week that it would be backing away from its troubled subscription-based movie ticket offering, it posted official word tonight that it will be shutting down operations in the U.S.
“Today, with a heavy heart, we’re announcing that Sinemia is closing its doors and ending operations in the US effective immediately,” the company writes in a statement posted to its front page.
The service has also struggled with issues of monetization (not unlike MoviePass), leading onlookers to wonder ultimately how sustainable the subscription model is. Those issues have been coupled by increased competition from movie theater chains like AMC offering up their own services, even as Sinemia attempted to create a white label version for theaters.
In recent months, the company has been plagued by lawsuits from both MoviePass and moviegoers, the latter of whom took issue with app problems, hidden charges and policies of shuttering accounts.
“While we are proud to have created a best in market service, our efforts to cover the cost of unexpected legal proceedings and raise the funds required to continue operations have not been sufficient,” the company writes. “The competition in the US market and the core economics of what it costs to deliver Sinemia’s end-to-end experience ultimately lead us to the decision of discontinuing our US operations.”
Sinemia has expressed surprise at the breadth of negative reactions its received from users. In a recent interview CEO Rifat Oguz told TechCrunch, “We are taking it seriously. We are looking at every comment. We didn’t found the company a year ago. It started about five years ago. We are taking every negative comment very seriously.”
To that end, the company has set up multiple sites aimed at addressing user problems. Ultimately, however, operations were just not sustainable here in the States. The note doesn’t clarify whether the service will continue to operate abroad in places like the U.K., Canada, Australia and Turkey, where much of its staff is currently based. Nor is it clear when the end of operations in the U.S. will mean for those customers who are owed money on their accounts. From the note, however, it does sound as if active accounts will be terminated immediately.
We’ve reached out for additional clarification.
Uber is reportedly looking to sell shares between $44 to $50, aiming to raise $8 to $10 billion in the offering. This would value the company between $80 billion to $90 billion, Bloomberg reports.
Previous reports had pegged Uber’s valuation at around $120 billion. Still, that valuation is higher than its last valuation of $76 billion following a funding round.
It’s likely this decrease in valuation is influenced by Lyft’s performance on the public market. Since its debut on the Nasdaq, Lyft’s stock has suffered after skyrocketing nearly 10 percent on day one.
While Uber has yet to officially set the terms of its IPO, the company is reportedly expected to do so as early as tomorrow. Even if Uber seeks the low end of the expected range, it would be more than three times the amount of Lyft’s $2.34 billion IPO. It would also make Uber’s IPO the largest one in the U.S. since Alibaba’s in 2014.
In 2018, Uber reported 2018 revenues of $11.27 billion, net income of $997 million and adjusted EBITDA losses of $1.85 billion. Uber, which filed for its IPO two weeks ago, is expected to list on the New York Stock Exchange in May.
The Markup appears to be facing a staff revolt — and its financial backers may be reconsidering their support — following the firing of editor-in-chief Julia Angwin.
When the site was announced last fall, it was backed by $20 million from Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, with additional funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The goal was to do data-driven journalism about the impact of technology on society.
Angwin and her co-founder Jeff Larson seemed particularly well-suited for the job — both are award-winning journalists who worked together at ProPublica, where they did impactful reporting around topics like Facebook’s ad practices.
However, Angwin was fired on Monday, a move she blamed in interviews on executive director Sue Gardner’s plan to turn the site into “a cause, not a publication,” with headlines like “Facebook is a dumpster fire.”
This, Angwin said, was at odds with her own dedication to “evidence-based, data-driven journalism.”
Larson, who’s now become editor-in-chief, offered a different account on Medium, where he said work had fallen “far, far behind” by the end of 2018: “Hiring was slow. Recruitment was slow. Even as of this month, we didn’t have stories banked. We didn’t have editorial processes in place to accept and develop pieces.”
He said that he and Angwin were both asked to take management classes, but she refused. (Angwin acknowledged that she may have had things to learn about being editor-in-chief, but she noted that she’s led investigative teams in the past, and she said, “There was never any attempt to guide me into that learning.”)
Larson also alluded to other issues that led to “a breakdown in trust between the three of us as co-founders.” He said there were attempts to find other roles for Angwin, but she “refused to discuss any role other than Editor in Chief, and would not consider any other configuration. So unfortunately we made the decision to remove her from that role.”
The editorial team has sided with Angwin, with all of them posting a statement supporting her and praising her “effectiveness as a manager and an editor.” Five of the seven editorial team members also resigned in protest.
As a result of all the controversy, Newmark and the other funders of The Markup have issued a statement of their own, saying that while they’re still “committed to the mission of The Markup,” they’ve also decided “it is necessary to reassess our support and we are taking steps to do so.”
If you’re a student at UC Berkeley, the diminutive rolling robots from Kiwi are probably a familiar sight by now, trundling along with a burrito inside to deliver to a dorm or apartment building. Now students at a dozen more campuses will be able to join this great, lazy future of robotic delivery as Kiwi expands to them with a clever student-run model.
Speaking recently at TechCrunch’s Robotics + AI Session at the Berkeley campus, Kiwi’s Felipe Chavez and Sasha Iatsenia discussed the success of their burgeoning business and the way they planned to take it national.
In case you’re not aware of the Kiwi model, it’s basically this: When you place an order online with a participating restaurant, you have the option of delivery via Kiwi. If you so choose, one of the company’s fleet of knee-high robots with insulated, locking storage compartments will swing by the place, your order is put within, and it brings it to your front door (or as close as it can reasonably get). You can even watch the last bit live from the robot’s perspective as it rolls up to your place.
The robots are what Kiwi calls “semi-autonomous.” This means that although they can navigate most sidewalks and avoid pedestrians, each has a human monitoring it and setting waypoints for it to follow, on average every five seconds. Iatsenia told me that they’d tried going full autonomous and that it worked… most of the time. But most of the time isn’t good enough for a commercial service, so they’ve got humans in the loop. They’re working on improving autonomy, but for now this is how it is.
That the robots are being controlled in some fashion by a team of people in Colombia (from where the co-founders hail) does take a considerable amount of the futurism out of this endeavor, but on reflection it’s kind of a natural evolution of the existing delivery infrastructure. After all, someone has to drive the car that brings you your food, as well. And in reality, most AI is operated or informed directly or indirectly by actual people.
That those drivers are in South America operating multiple vehicles at a time is a technological advance over your average delivery vehicle — though it must be said that there is an unsavory air of offshoring labor to save money on wages. That said, few people shed tears over the wages earned by the Chinese assemblers who put together our smartphones and laptops, or the garbage pickers who separate your poorly sorted recycling. The global labor economy is a complicated one, and the company is making jobs in the place it was at least partly born.
Whatever the method, Kiwi has traction: it’s done more than 35,000 deliveries at an increasing rate since it started two years ago (now up to over 10,000 per month) and the model seems to have proven itself. Customers are happy, they get stuff delivered more than ever once they get the app and there are fewer and fewer incidents where a robot is kicked over or, you know, catches on fire. Notably, the founders said onstage, the community has really adopted the little vehicles, and should one overturn or be otherwise interfered with, it’s often set on its way soon after by a passerby.
Iatsenia and Chavez think the model is ready to push out to other campuses, where a similar effort will have to take place — but rather than do it themselves by raising millions and hiring staff all over the country, they’re trusting the robotics-loving student groups at other universities to help out.
For a small and low-cash startup like Kiwi, it would be risky to overextend by taking on a major round and using that to scale up. They started as robotics enthusiasts looking to bring something like this to their campus, so why can’t they help others do the same?
So the team looked at dozens of universities, narrowing them down by factors important to robotic delivery: layout, density, commercial corridors, demographics and so on. Ultimately they arrived at the following list:
What they’re doing is reaching out to robotics clubs and student groups at those colleges to see who wants to take partial ownership of Kiwi administration out there. Maintenance and deployment would still be handled by Berkeley students, but the student clubs would go through a certification process and then do the local work, like a capsized bot and on-site issues with customers and restaurants.
“We are exploring several options to work with students down the road, including rev share,” Iatsenia told me. “It depends on the campus.”
So far they’ve sent 40 robots to the 12 campuses listed and will be rolling out operations as the programs move forward on their own time. If you’re not one of the unis listed, don’t worry — if this goes the way Kiwi plans, it sounds like you can expect further expansion soon.
A couple of weeks ago, when Pinterest filed its S-1, its AWS bills raised eyebrows and questions about cheaper alternatives for startups. Render is a small startup with a big idea to provide infrastructure services for developers, who might be looking for a cheaper and easier alternative to bigger, more familiar names. The company launched today with broad ambition and $2.25 million in seed funding from General Catalyst and the South Park Common Fund.
As developers work with increasingly complex sets of technologies, it often requires teams of people to launch an application and keep it running.”What we’re doing at Render is making it incredibly easy and quick for application developers to deploy their applications online without knowledge of servers, and without having a DevOps person with them,” Anurag Goel, founder and CEO, told TechCrunch.
Steve Herrod, managing director at General Catalyst and former CTO at VMware, knows a thing or two about infrastructure, and he sees a company that could provide a viable alternative to the established players in this space. “Render is building the logical next step to cloud infrastructure — making it disappear. Application developers clearly want to focus on the functionality and usability of their work, and not on server setup, deployment and scaling. Render is enabling exactly this focus and that’s why early developer users love it so much,” he said in a statement.
The company is going after companies like Salesforce and Heroku on the platform side and AWS, Azure, GCP and even DigitalOcean on the infrastructure side. It is not an easy market to ease your way into, but Goel believes he has come up with a solution that is cost-effective and easy to use, and that could help separate him from these established brands.
The complexity of today’s application environment requires teams of highly trained engineers to implement. While a company like Harness is trying to reduce that complexity by providing Continuous Delivery as a Service, Render is going at it from a different angle by providing a platform and infrastructure to launch and manage applications more easily.
“We’re focused, first and foremost, on developer experience and ease of use. And we’ve seen over and over again, that when you look at AWS and Azure and GCP, they force you to build out these large DevOps teams that take care of all the infrastructure needs,” he said. He believes part of the problem with the larger company approaches is that they put this expensive engineering layer between the developer and the application they created, and Render brings the developer closer to the process.
The company got the funding last year, but is announcing now because it wasn’t really ready to launch at that point, and didn’t want to announce the funding before it had a viable product.
Goel got his start as an early employee at Stripe, a company that made it simple for developers to add payment infrastructure to an application. He is hoping to bring that same level of simplicity to application hosting.
The Augmentation of Douglas Engelbart (2019) es una documental de Daniel Silveira acerca de uno de los pioneros de la informática, visionario e inventor del ratón entre otras cosas. Fue una de las personas que realizó la primera demostración de una interfaz gráfica (a.k.a. «la madre de todas las demos») y sin duda hizo la informática mucho más accesible para todos.
El documental puede verse en Amazon Prime Video, de momento sólo en Estados Unidos (espero que acabe llegando a España también como es habitual). Por aquà ya estamos salivando, com solemos decir.
Entre otras figuras aparecen por ahà Vint Cerf, Leonard Kleinrock, Guerrino de Luca, John Markoff y otros pioneros de la época.
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Este curioso invento se llama Máquina de Canicas X y tal y como cuentan en el canal de Wintergatan, combina «música, ingenierÃa e innovación». Pero sobre todo resulta hipnotizante y a la vez un tanto intrigante, al tiempo que transmite calma y sosiego. Basta mirarla un rato para quitarse el estrés: es como una caja de música pero a lo bestia.
Trabajar en el nuevo proyecto (no es el primero de este tipo) no ha sido baladÃ: tuvieron que esperar cinco meses a que llegara la cadena principal desde Japón, calcular el tamaño exacto de los pistones con precisión milimétrica y hacer que todas las poleas y ruedas dentadas reductoras encajaban para funcionar a la velocidad adecuada.
Además de la parte mecánica y de ingenierÃa, Martin Molin –el lÃder del proyecto– compuso la música que se oye cuando comienza a funcionar, lo cual incluye diversos instrumentos como la caja de ritmos, xilófono, cuerdas de piano y demás.
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El último Consejo de Ministros del Gobierno de España antes de las elecciones generales del 28 de abril de 2019 ha aprobado un aumento del techo de la participación española en los programas espaciales de la Agencia Espacial Europea en el periodo 2020-2026.
AsÃ, de una inversión máxima inicial prevista de 956,3 millones de euros en ese periodo España va a aportar ahora 701,7 millones de euros más, lo que suma un total de 1.658 millones de euros. Es un aumento de ni más ni menos que el 73% en la cifra prevista. Esto elevará el porcentaje de participación de España en los programas de la ESA de un 5% al 7,12%.
España ya es el quinto paÃs que más contribuye al presupuesto de la ESA tras Francia, Alemania, Italia y el Reino Unido, pero este aumento de la inversión contribuirá a afianzar su posición. Y no hay que olvidar que –en cálculos de la ESA, eso es cierto– cada euro que se invierte en programas espaciales supone un retorno de la inversión de otros tres euros.
En LiveScience dan una explicación a la imagen viral que está haciendo las rondas por internet como meme: una especie de foto en la que aparecen muchas cosas pero es imposible reconocer ninguna como un objeto concreto. Básicamente, es imposible nombrar algo de lo que allà se ve. Según parece circuló desde Twitter saltando a Instagram y Reddit hace tres o cuatro dÃas.
En LiveScience han investigado un poco (véase: Why Is This Viral Image of Unrecognizable Objects So Creepy?) confirmando que no está muy claro su origen, ni si lo que se dice acerca de ella. Una explicación que apareció en reddit dice más o menos que
La imagen está diseñada para proporcionar al espectador una experiencia acerca de de lo que supone un ataque cerebrovascular en el lóbulo occipital de la corteza cerebral, donde se produce la percepción visual. Básicamente, todo parece familiar, pero no puedes reconocer nada.
También han circulado otras «explicaciones», del tipo «esto es lo que se ve mientras sueñas», ninguna con fuentes fiables. En cualquier caso el fenómeno ha causado sensación por el efecto que ha producido entre muchas personas: para algunas resulta pertubardora e incluso inquietante. Es como esas fotos panorámicas que salen mal (o se toman mal adrede) en las que aparecen brazos alargados, personas con dos cabezas o gatos que parecen salchichas. Nuestro sentido arácnido se dispara porque todo eso se ve muy raruno.
La imagen desde luego no es una foto: parece más bien una imagen generada mediante algoritmos y más concretamente con BigGAN de Google, una Red Generativa Antagónica. Hace poco hablábamos de cómo estas imágenes a lo que más «perturban» es a los algoritmos de visión artificial, quizá por la misma razón. Es posible que la técnica para crearla haya sido precisamente esa: generar una imagen con «trozos» de fotografÃas auténticas comprobando a cada paso que nada en el resultado es reconocible para los algoritmos de visión artificial, lo que producirÃa una imagen irreal imposible, en la que no hay «nada reconocible» ni «nada nombrable» pero aun asà resulta familiar.
Curiosamente hay un hilo de gente que la examinado con diversos algoritmos de reconocimiento visual: algunos sistemas responden que es «una mesa sobre la que hay animales de peluche» –sin decir cuáles– otros que es «un selfie», «un disfraz», «una tienda de juguetes» o incluso «una panaderÃa» (!) Toda una muestra de que definitivamente lo único claro es que no se ve nada claramente reconocible.
Este invento de Shy Vardi es una curiosa máquina con aspecto de haber salido de un laboratorio de cientÃfico loco, pero lo importante es que ¡funciona! Está fabricada principalmente con piezas recicladas de impresoras, una buena forma de darles una vida mejor en vez de tirarlas a la basura. Algunas otras piezas especiales que no son fáciles de encontrar están impresas en 3-D.
El resultado es una máquina con forma de carril lanzador que empieza por una bandeja de alimentación de papel de 200 hojas. Un motor hace pasar las hojas por ruedas y engranajes; luego se doblan por los pliegues adecuados mediante piezas metálicas y de plástico. Finalmente, cuando el avión –modelo Dardo Básico– tiene ya la forma adecuada se lanza con cierta velocidad, aunque sin mucha «gracia», todo hay que decirlo.
No es que sea un concepto tremendamente original porque máquinas de estas ya habÃamos visto alguna que otra, pero tiene su mérito. Especialmente porque parece funcionar bien y rápido. No hay más que ver la pila de aviones plegados a partir de hojas recicladas que van amontonándose en el suelo.
Como proyecto para realizar en una clase de tecnologÃa y concienciar sobre el reciclaje (de piezas y de papel) tiene aspectos interesantes: todo parecen ser mecanismos relativamente fáciles de encontrar, motores y gomas. Y papel, mucho papel. ¿Qué mejor nueva vida para una impresora inútil?
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La hoja de papel con un dibujo que cuelga del jersey del sujeto de la derecha consigue engañar al popular algoritmo de visión artificial y clasificación YOLO haciendo que no detecte a esa persona como a una persona. Es una forma de engañar a los algoritmos de las cámaras de seguridad, generando lo que se conoce como muestra «adversarial» o «antagónica» que confunde al algoritmo. Lo han desarrollado investigadores de la Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Bélgica).
Tradicionalmente lo que se hace en estos engaños es modificar algunos pÃxeles o trozos de otras imágenes («parches») sobre una imagen digital, de modo que la imagen resultante «confunda» al algoritmo. Pero algunas de estas técnicas sólo funcionan con imágenes concretas o estando previamente digitalizadas.
Este truco en particular funciona en tiempo real y especialmente con personas, que son un tipo de imágenes fácilmente clasificables debido a la gran variedad de muestras con que se suelen entrenar las redes neuronales. PodrÃa decirse que es una especie de «truco para hacer desaparecer personas completas» que engaña a los algoritmos más capaces precisamente en «detectar personas».
Se pueden leer los detalles aquÃ: Fooling automated surveillance cameras: adversarial patches to attack person detection (arXiv). No es el único ejemplo de esto tipo de imágenes adversariales, algo que hace que las personas confundan imágenes sintéticas como si fueran imágenes verdaderas y, como en este caso, a las máquinas haciéndolas no reconocer imágenes auténticas como lo que son.
(VÃa MIT Technology Review.)
Este fantástico vÃdeo de BBC Earth y SentItToSpace.com muestra algo difÃcil de ver: un eclipse total desde gran altitud (38 km) grabado con una cámara que proporciona imágenes 360 VR. Todo convenientemente montado y con explicaciones detalladas. Se puede disfrutar desde cualquier ángulo moviendo el ratón (o con unas gafas de realidad virtual).
El vÃdeo está acelerado en los momentos adecuados para que no sea demasiado aburrido, especialmente en la subida y descenso. Condensa la suelta del globo desde un jardÃn de Wyoming al momento en que comienza el eclipse (02:40). El cÃrculo blanco es el globo, que queda por encima del módulo donde va la cámara. En ese momento empieza a verse la gigantesca sombra de la Luna sobre la Tierra, moviéndose a una velocidad aparente de 2.600 km/h. La zona de negrura total impresiona bastante.
Cuando el eclipse ha pasado el globo todavÃa está subiendo –turbulencias incluidas debido a las fuertes variaciones de temperatura entre sol y sombra– hasta que llega el momento en que se alcanza la altitud máxima en la estratosfera, unos 38.000 metros, y simplemente explota (05:00).
El módulo donde va la electrónica y la cámara que graba las imágenes se salva con la ayuda de un paracadÃdas: un aterrizaje simple y práctico.
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The Goddesses of Venus: A topographic map es una infografÃa con un precioso mapa topográfico de Venus obra de Eleanor Lutz que gira alrededor de varias ideas, especialmente que los lugares, estructuras y detalles de Venus tienen prácticamente todos nombres de mujeres o figuras mitológicas femeninas, asà que se puede leer un buen rato sobre la etimologÃa de cada uno de ellos.
Por otro lado hay una guÃa que explica cómo están indicadas en la infografÃa las caracterÃsticas topológicas del planeta: cráteres, dunas, llanuras, colinas, montañas, etcétera. Cada una tiene un icono distinto y un código de colores, asà que son fáciles de localizar; también se utilizan colores degradados para la elevación.
Finalmente, unos grandes sellos a modo de X muestran los lugares en los que aterrizaron (o se fostiaron) las sondas espaciales que hemos enviado allà a lo largo de muchas décadas, especialmente las misiones Venera soviéticas y la Pioneer Venus.
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