Experience tech

The Hungering Deep, the first of several free major Sea of Thieves expansions, will surface on May 29, Rare has announced. The trailer above features a one-eye pirate telling campfire stories about terrifying deep sea monsters, which is surely a hint of what's to come. We know very little about what the update will add other than a "new AI threat", but the video teases a shark-like creature with huge jaws that swallows ships whole. The pirate also tells us that ancient seafarers were able to "summon such creatures", and the video depicts sailors playing instruments to do just that. Make of that what you will. The game's Twitter account also changed its header photo to the following image (h/t to Eurogamer for the spot). Rare previously promised that the update would add a number of new mechanics as well as new rewards for players. It's the first of many major updates on the horizon, with two more incoming over the summer and three oth...

A lot of people have heard of infrared but did you know what this is ? Infrared radiation is a type of electromagnetic radiation, as are radio waves, ultraviolet radiation, X-rays and microwaves. Infrared (IR) light is the part of the EM spectrum that people encounter most in everyday life, although much of it goes unnoticed. It is invisible to human eyes, but people can feel it as heat. IR radiation is one of the three ways heat is transferred from one place to another, the other two being convection and conduction. Everything with a temperature above about 5 degrees Kelvin (minus 450 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 268 degrees Celsius) emits IR radiation. The sun gives off half of its total energy as IR, and much of its visible light is absorbed and re-emitted as IR, according to the University of Tennessee. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, incandescent bulbs convert only about 10 percent of their electrical energy input into visible li...

A new type of flying robot is so tiny and lightweight — it weighs about as much as a toothpick — it can perch on your finger. The little flitter is also capable of untethered flight and is powered by lasers. This is a big leap forward in the design of diminutive airborne bots, which are usually too small to support a power source and must trail a lifeline to a distant battery in order to fly. Their insect-inspired creation is dubbed RoboFly, and like its animal namesake, it sports a pair of delicate, transparent wings that carry it into the air. But unlike its robot precursors, RoboFly ain't got no strings to hold it down. Instead, the miniature bot uses a lightweight onboard circuit to convert laser light into enough electrical power to send it soaring. RoboFly's creators will present their findings about the robot on May 23 at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, held in Brisbane, Australia. Animals' amazing abilities have ins...

A billion operations per second isn't cool. Know what's cool? A million billion operations per second. That's the promise of a new computing technique that uses laser-light pulses to make a prototype of the fundamental unit of computing, called a bit, that could switch between its on and off, or "1" and "0" states, 1 quadrillion times per second. That's about 1 million times faster than the bits in modern computers. Conventional computers (everything from your calculator to the smartphone or laptop you're using to read this) think in terms of 1s and 0s. Everything they do, from solving math problems, to representing the world of a video game, amounts to a very elaborate collection of 1-or-0, yes-or-no operations. And a typical computer in 2018 can use silicon bits to perform more or less 1 billion of those operations per second. In this experiment, the researchers pulsed infrared laser light on honeycomb-shaped lattices o...

Mixed reality with HoloLens Mixed reality brings people, places, and objects from your physical and digital worlds together. This blended environment becomes your canvas, where you can create and enjoy a wide range of experiences. Holograms enhance the real world Interacting with holograms in mixed reality enables you to visualize and work with your digital content as part of your real world. Realize mixed reality’s promise with Microsoft HoloLens. A more natural way to interact Holograms are responsive to you and the world around you. Microsoft HoloLens enables you to interact with content and information in the most natural ways possible. Gaze Built-in sensors let you use your gaze to move the cursor so you can select holograms. Turn your head and the cursor will follow. Gesture Use simple gestures to open apps, select and size items, and drag and drop ...

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Google Inc., speaks during the Google I/O Developers Conference in Mountain View, California, U.S., on Tuesday, May 8, 2018. Imagine having an intelligent conversation with a computer. Imagine that the computer doesn’t need to repeat things back to you or ask you to confirm what you just said or asked. That it responds in a voice that doesn’t sound like a robot. Well, let me introduce you to Google Duplex, which may be the world’s most lifelike computer. Google I/O 2018, Google’s annual developer conference, is just wrapping up, and there are numerous articles sharing highlights of the conference. One that caught my attention was a report about how Google Duplex and the Google Assistant can handle calls. What’s fascinating is that this isn’t a reactive chatbot or voice interactive system. In other words, it isn’t technology to be used by the support center when a customer calls with questions, although it will eventually exp...

Virtual Reality Is Here Virtual Reality is a fascinating way to travel using nothing more than the power of technology. With a headset and motion tracking, VR lets you look around a virtual space as if you're actually there. It's also been a promising technology for decades that's never truly caught on. That's changing with the current wave of VR products. Oculus has the popular Rift, HTC and Valve have the Steam-friendly Vive, Sony launched the excellent PlayStation VR , Samsung recently added a separate controller to its Gear VR , and Google's Daydream is steadily growing from the remains of Google Cardboard . Meanwhile, Microsoft's Windows 10 mixed reality platform and a variety of hardware manufacturers working on it are waiting in the wings. There are a lot of promising headsets across a lot of different price and power spectrums. The Big Question: Mobile or Tethered? Modern VR headsets fit under one of two categories: Mobile or teth...