Google Home And Google Assistant - The Tools To Customize Your Home And Your Daily Activities

Google Home is a voice activated speaker powered by an AI (Artificial Intelligence) based technology, known asGoogle Assistant. It accepts your voice commands and carries out the instruction as interpreted by the Google Assistant. Google Assistant, itself, is an AI based learning platform that is especially built by Google to provide a personalized service. Let us first introduce ourselves with the all new ‘Google Assistant’ so that we can dig deeper into the functions offered by Google Home.

Google Assistant's Logo​

It all started with the Google search engine. The search engine was created to bring an instant help about anything from around the world to the seeker. But, sometimes, we require help within our own world, with our own smart devices, reservations, bookings, etc. and we need a companion to sort these things out. Google has analysed the need and presented us with ‘Google Assistant’, a platform built to provide a personalized service. It responds to your need, learns your trait, connects with almost all of your smart devices and provides information or carries out instruction as per the user. It offers a personalized Google environment and is completely safe and secure. Whether you want to book a hotel or listen to music, it does it for you. Google made search engine for everyone but they made ‘Google Assistant’ especially for you.

Check out this video and meet your own personal assistant – 

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Already mesmerized with this AI platform, then think what happens when it is coupled with a voice activated speaker. Google Home is what we are now discussing about. It gets activated by a simple voice request ‘Ok Google’ and it becomes ready to follow your instruction. It can play your favorite music from services like –Google Music, YouTube Music, Spotify, Pandora and TuneIn. Further, you can ask anything and it tries its best to answer you back. It uses the Google’s rich history and information available from sites like Wikipedia, etc. to deliver what you need. Coupled with ‘Google Assistant’, it not only handles your schedule, reservations, etc. but also controls your other smart devices. Alarms, Smart home switch control, music, podcast, it offers infinite features customizing your home and your life style.

Google Home In One of Its Avatar ​

It has a very simple design and is easy to get started with. It has a touch sensitive surface at the top provided with indicating LED’S that helps us to configure whether it is on or off. The touch sensor allows to control audio level and instantly turn off notification and services like alarms, etc. It comes with a button which turns the microphone on/off providing user to decide what the Google Home should hear. Not only that but, voice request commands can also turn it on/off providing both security and privacy to its user.

Google Home - Design And Layout



Google Home - Important Notifications​

It also fits well with your home environment. Provided with Hi-Fi speakers and features like far-field voice recognition, it is ideal for your home environment. Also available in multiple replaceable base, it easily finds a place and becomes a part of your home.

Google Home - Features At A Glance​

Take a quick look at this video to know more about Google Home – 

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Overall, whether you call it a home music system, a smart-voice controller, or anything else, Google Home is a revolutionizing product which is coupled with powerful ‘Google Assistant’ and comes with the trust of Google. Available now for pre-order, this device is a must for those who want to simplify their daily routine and improve their lifestyle with the help of Google. At a price of $129, Google Home is the device you shouldn’t miss out – after all it is your very own Google!

Check out this video to get a grasp of what Google Home can offer – 

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source:crazyengineers

Rimac's pretty e-bike "Greyp G12H" promises 240km range

Rimac Automobili owned, Croatia based Greyp Bikes has announced its latest bike that can do 240 kilometers on a single charge. Named 'Greyp G12H', the bike was unveiled at INTERMOT show in Germany. The pretty looking G12H draws the same design philosophy as Rimac's 'Concept One' supercar and promises to be an attention grabber on the streets. 

Kresimir Hlede, the chief operating officer at Greyp Bikes is confident of taking over the competition by the end of the year. Hlede informed the media that the actual range and capacity of the battery will be determined by the configuration of the bike you choose. The maximum range being offered is 240 km with a 3 kWh battery. 

The G12H premium model has the rated top speed of 45 km/h. Hlede further said that with the range way over the 'magical 200 km on single charge' limit, the bike can be a perfect commute option for daily office trips. 

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We do not have official information about the price of the G12H, but given the $9400 price tag for Greyp's G12S, the new bike won't certainly be cheaper. It's got almost double the battery size over the G12S. The USP of the G12S continues to be its 70 kmph speed. 
sourse:crazyengineers

Debut Ubuntu phone's first flash sale announced, more to come

The first Ubuntu phone goes on sale in a limited run Wednesday, but don't worry if you miss out: there'll be around three more "flash sales" before the end of the month.

The BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu edition is the first phone that will let phone fans snap up an Ubuntu-running device for themselves. Best known as an open-source operating system for computers, Ubuntu is expanding to phones as part of a plan that will see the software power everything from TVs to drones. And to kick things off, the BQ phone will be up for grabs between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. (CET) on Wednesday 11 February.

Ubuntu is developed by British company Canonical. Canonical is showing off both the BQ phone and the forthcoming Ubuntu version of the Meizu MX4 at the Mobile World Congress 2015 industry trade show, which opens on 2 March. Before that, Canonical is expecting to run three sales, with up to five possible depending on how they go.

The Aquaris E4.5 is not an entirely new device, it's been available for some time booting Android KitKat. The specsheet of the smartphone is nothing to write home about, but it's still a balanced package.

The name reveals the screen size of 4.5 inches, and the qHD resolution of the IPS panel results in a pixel density of 244ppi. Running the show is a Mediatek chipset with its Cortex-A7 CPU clocked at 1.3GHz. A single gig of RAM is onboard as well as 8GB of internal storage, of which 5.5GB are available to the user. A microSD slot offers expansion up to 32GB.

The dual-SIM phone is limited in connectivity options, only packing radios for 850/900/1800/1900MHz GSM bands and 900/2100MHz 3G. Battery capacity is 2150mAh, stuffed in a 137 x 67 x 9 mm body weighing 123g.

Hardware is not the main topic here, though, the new OS is. The Ubuntu for smartphone has long been in the works, and after years of development British company Canonical has managed to bring it to market. The new mobile OS is unique in concept, ditching the common app grid in favor of content-grouped tabs. Dubbed Scopes, the innovative interface learns from previous experience and aggregates user-specific content in easy to navigate panes.

3,200 MP Digital LSST Camera Receives Critical Decision 2 Approval From DOE

Last year in August, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) was given the charge of managing the construction of Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) observatory by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The key component of LSST is the 3,200 MP digital camera, approximately the size of a small car weighing more than 3 tons. The LSST team received construction funding from the NSF in August. But, now it has received the much awaited ‘Critical Decision 2’ approval from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that will endorse the world's largest camera's fabrication budget.

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The Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is leading the construction of the LSST camera and its components will be developed by an international collaboration of labs and universities, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, along with multi-program laboratory SLAC. The assembling and testing of the camera will also be carried out by SLAC. It is being expected that the LSST will be ready by 2020 and will begin its science operations in 2022. By capturing digital images of the complete visible southern sky from the top of Cerro Pachón mountain in Chile, LSST will provide the widest, deepest and fastest views of the night sky. In its 10 years life span, the observatory will detect wide range of objects (about tens of billions of objects). About 6 million gigabytes of data per year (equivalent to 800,000 images by a regular 8 MP digital camera every night) will help the researchers to study the formation of galaxies, understand dark matter and dark energy, et al.

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The objective behind developing the LSST is to revolutionize cosmic knowledge and to achieve an unprecedented information about the universe. This will help to address and solve the biggest mysteries of the universe. According to LSST Director, Steven Kahn of Stanford University, LSST survey will enhance the understanding of the dynamic Universe on timescales that will range from its earliest moments after the Big Bang to the motions of asteroids in the present solar system. ‘Critical Decision 3’ review process for the actual fabrication of the camera will take place in next summer.

Source: SLAC

Huge 3D Displays Without The Need Of 3D Glasses Possible - TriLite And TU Vienna

Public display boards, electronic billboards, advertisement hoardings are seen almost everywhere these days. With what TriLite Technologies and Vienna University of Technology are proposing, these displays could become 3D and we could view them without the need of 3D glasses. The Austrian scientists and engineers have developed a sophisticated laser system that sends laser beams into different directions so that from different angles, different pictures are visible. The display resolution is so fine that the right eye see a different picture than the right eye, thus creating a 3D effect. The folks over at TriLite and TU Vienna have created the first prototype.

The first prototype​

Even though the first design has only a 5x3 pixel resolution, the team is content that the design works and are now gearing up for their second prototype which will have a higher color resolution. Every single 3D-Pixel also know as “Trixel” is formed of lasers and a moveable mirror. The laser beams are directed by the mirror across the field of vision, while modulating the laser intensity to send laser flashes in various directions. This system is most suitable for huge billboards as the viewer must be positioned in a certain distance range from the screen to experience the 3D effect. The creator can set the range in which the 3D image can be experienced by viewers. If it's too short or too long, both eyes will receive the same image and hence only a normal 2D picture can be seen.

Billboards of the future​

Instead of showing just two pictures, this advanced laser system can show hundreds of pictures. Therefore, when someone walks by the display, he can get a view of the displayed object from different sides, as if he is passing a real object. To make this work, the research team has created a new video format. Even though the system is capable of using the 3D format converted from the 3D cinema movies we see today, the team wants to use new footage created especially for their displays.

The team has taken care of the fact that the displays should be visible in bright sunlight outdoors so the display is developed to be very vivid. For now, the team is happy about the success of their project in such a short period of time. The second prototype should be completed by mid-2015 and a commercial launch can be expected in 2016.

What are your thoughts on the latest 3D Display technology? Share with us in comments below.

Source: Vienna University of Technology

IBM Z13 Mainframe Server - The Most Powerful and Secure System Ever Built Now In India

After 5 year of continuous development, IBM India is proud to announce the launch of IBM Z13 Mainframe is one of the most sophisticated computer systems ever built in the country. Designed especially for the mobile app economy, this is the first system to make practical real-time encryption of all mobile transactions at any scale. If you take a look at the amazing features of the new IBM system, you will be baffled to find the system is capable of processing 2.5 billion transactions a day, has 2x faster processors, 300% more memory and 100% more bandwidth than its competitors. If you are convinced about the system's processing power, you will know why the system is called the most secure. IBM has integrated about 500 new patents in the mainframe server, which includes cryptographic encryption technologies for enhanced security features targeted at mobile initiated transactions. Moreover, in a series of firsts, the IBM Z13 is also the first one to be providing providing real-time analytics on all transactions. 

We are all aware of the insane speed of growth in mobile application consumers who want mobile transactions to be superfast, seamless and without glitches. Biggest of the big tech companies are trying to cope with this demand by trying to build the IT infrastructure needed to be able to compete with its peers. With IBM Z13, they now have a solution right here in India. 
After 5 year of continuous development, IBM India is proud to announce the launch of IBM Z13 Mainframe is one of the most sophisticated computer systems ever built in the country. Designed especially for the mobile app economy, this is the first system to make practical real-time encryption of all mobile transactions at any scale. If you take a look at the amazing features of the new IBM system, you will be baffled to find the system is capable of processing 2.5 billion transactions a day, has 2x faster processors, 300% more memory and 100% more bandwidth than its competitors. If you are convinced about the system's processing power, you will know why the system is called the most secure. IBM has integrated about 500 new patents in the mainframe server, which includes cryptographic encryption technologies for enhanced security features targeted at mobile initiated transactions. Moreover, in a series of firsts, the IBM Z13 is also the first one to be providing providing real-time analytics on all transactions. 

We are all aware of the insane speed of growth in mobile application consumers who want mobile transactions to be superfast, seamless and without glitches. Biggest of the big tech companies are trying to cope with this demand by trying to build the IT infrastructure needed to be able to compete with its peers. With IBM Z13, they now have a solution right here in India. 
Simple actions on a smartphone such as tapping on the refresh button can trigger a series of events on the back end, that need to be handled by the company's servers. As stated above, IBM Z3 server is designed to handle billions of transactions by bringing the power of super secure data-centers under one roof. The facility to be able to have real-time scoring could reduce fraud detection on 100% of a client's business transactions. 

As far as technologies employed under IBM Z13 are concerned, there's support for Hadoop, addition of DB2 BLU for Linux and compatibility with hybrid cloud architecture. The system is going to be capable of running 8,000 virtual servers with 50+ virtual servers per core. Do take a look at the following video to see how the system was designed -With that we come to the end of the handful yet important important features on IBM Z13 Mainframe servers. What are your thoughts on that? Share with us in comments below.

3Doodler 2.0: Faster, Slimmer & Lighter Successor Of World’s First 3D Printing Pen

Two years ago a team from WobbleWorks LLC had managed to create history by inventing the world’s first 3D printing pen, 3Doodler. 3Doodler went on to become one of the most successful crowdfunded projects by garnering more than 70 times of its funding goal. Two years hence the team is back on Kickstarter to unveil 3Doodler 2.0. The old version which was sold in millions was quite unwieldy, slow and cumbersome to use. The new version looks more like a marker as it is 75% smaller than its predecessor. The reduction of size has also resulted in a lighter 3Doodler that now weighs 50 grams. The team has added an anodized aluminium casing which gives a more premium feel to the 3Doodler.

One of the problems with the previous version was that you had to keep your finger pressed on start button while creating 3D drawings. On the new version you have to double-press the start button for nonstop doodling. As you have read earlier the 3Doodler works in the following manner. First you plug it in and switch it on. Once the 3Doodler heats up to a certain temperature insert the plastic refill and start creating three-dimensional doodles. The new version allows you to make adjustments in nozzle flow and cools the molten plastic faster for quicker drawings. The slimmer pen also consumes less power. Along with the product, the team has launched several accessories for 3Doodler 2.0 such as Doodle Stand, portable power pack, adjustable nozzles and a foot pedal for controlling ink flow.

The project has again proved to be a roaring success as it has received funds more than 5 times its pledged goal within a single day. Early backers managed to grab one for as low $50 but the retail price is expected to be around a hundred dollars.
 

Wi-Fi Backscatter Technology Connects Battery-Free Devices To Internet

With a perspective of providing no-power connectivity to ‘internet of things’ devices, a research team at University of Washington has developed a power-efficient technology called Wi-Fi Backscatter that will enable the battery-free devices to connect to Wi-Fi infrastructure. This technology provides internet connectivity to battery-free prototype devices by using radio frequency signals as a source of power. The new, ubiquitous communication system reuses present Wi-Fi infrastructure in order to extend the internet connectivity to these devices. Now, everyday battery-free objects will be able to connect to your internet profiles and can also store information about your day-to-day activities.

The technology is built upon the previous research called Ambient Backscatter which showed that low-powered devices such as temperature sensors or wearable devices like wristwatch can run without batteries by leveraging existing radio and wireless signals present in the air. The following video demonstrates how the two devices without batteries can work by using existing TV or radio signals and can also communicate with each other.
The team has developed a novel ultra-low power tag prototype consisting of antenna and circuitry that can communicate to Wi-Fi enabled devices such as laptops, smartphones by using negligible amount of power. This prototype helps the battery-free devices to communicate through Wi-Fi by consuming less power than the power required by a typical Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi backscatter tag can communicate with Wi-Fi devices with a speed of 1 kilobit per second and the range for communication between the two devices is about 2 meters. The team is planning to increase the range to about 20 meters.

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The research will be published at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Data Communication‘s annual conference this month in Chicago. The project received funding from the Washington Research Foundation, UW Commercialization Gap Fund, the National Science Foundation, the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship and the UW.

World’s Fastest Camera Shoots at 4.4 Trillion Frames Per Second

Researchers from the Keio University and the University of Tokyo in Japan have jointly developed the world’s fastest camera that is able to capture consecutive shots with a frame interval of 4.4 trillion frames per second. It is thousand times faster than conventional high speed cameras which can capture an image every one-billionth of a second. Apart from the mind boggling frame-rate, the Sequentially Timed All-optical Mapping Photography (STAMP) camera has a high pixel resolution of 450 × 450 pixels. In order to understand the working of STAMP camera you need to first see how a conventional high speed camera works. A conventional high speed camera works on the pump-probe process where a pulse of light is initiated (pumped) at the object and then captured (probed). The drawback of this process is that it requires repetitive measurements to construct an image and during these measurements it often misses in probing non-repetitive events such as chemical reactions.

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The STAMP motion picture camera made by the Japanese researchers uses the method of femtophotography to capture images in a single burst without the need of repetitive measurements. Femtophotography involves optical mapping of the target's time-varying spatial profile onto a burst stream of sequentially timed photographs with spatial and temporal dispersion. The researchers have already captured plasma dynamics and lattice vibration waves and hope that their camera will be put to use to study fast dynamics in photochemistry, spintronics , phononics, fluidics and plasma physics. Before launching the camera to the public the team is working on shrinking its size as currently is measures about a square meter.

This Dashboard Camera Knows When You Are Talking On Phone While Driving

Researchers at the Santa Catarina State University in Brazil have developed a software and hardware solution for your car that is able to detect and warn you when you are using your mobile phone behind the wheel. Lead researcher Rafael Berri and his team started by installing a camera on the dashboard of the car just behind the steering wheel. They chose that spot to set up the camera because people talking on their mobile phones while driving tend to fix their gaze straight ahead instead of scanning the road like they do normally. After installing the camera the team programmed the system to work in three steps. First, the camera locates the driver and records a cropped video of him/her just focusing on the face and the area to each side of the face. It monitors these locations to find out if you have raised your hands to bring the mobile phone to your ears.

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Next the system looks for any skin pixels in the image and plots the location of these pixels. It further divides the image into areas showing the hands and faces calculating the probability of the driver talking and warns accordingly. The team put their algorithm to the test on a set of five videos shot by a dashboard camera. The camera shot videos with a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels at 15 frames per second. The videos were divided into three second ones and sent to the system for analysing. The system had an efficiency of 87.43 percent. The team warns that the system isn’t perfect and in some cases the accuracy of the algorithm drops drastically such as direct sunlight on the driver’s face.

The system however is not completely fool-proof as MIT Technology Review points out that the researchers have yet not finalised a warning system and the system has no provisions to check whether the car is moving or not. It also cites privacy concerns of constant monitoring by a video camera.

Indian Creates Google Glass Replica "Smart Cap" That Costs < Rs 4,500/-

Arvind Sanjeev, Chief Inventor and Founder of A.R.S. Devices, has developed 'Smart Cap'an augmented reality head-mounted display that works just like Google Glass, for less than $75 or Rs 4,500 within a month using open-source hardware. Arvind has even listed down the steps+hardware+software he employed to create the device on the blog DIY Hacking, so that anyone interested may go ahead and develop their version of the same. Arvind believes that while technologies like Google Glass and Oculus Drift are surely fueling the fad, they are quite expensive to use.

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In case you don't want to shell out $1500 to experience similar functionalities and want to create a similar device of your own, then the creator states that this DIY Head Mounted Display tutorial is what you need. Using this tutorial, he aims to show how one can develop one's head mounted, virtual reality or augmented reality displays from scratch. He then goes on to list down the steps he undertook to create the 'Smart Cap', a first of its kind. His system comprises a webcam for video sharing/recording and voice recognition to render a hands-free experience.

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During his engineering days, confesses Arvind, he wasn't able to understand how a calculator works and found it difficult to develop computer hardware. To make away from these discrepancies in knowledge transfer, he created the blog DIY Hacking to provide useful information/tutorial to students and hobbyists so they don't feel as lost as he did in college. It was in college where he created some veritable gadgets and systems in the connected devices genre, and the attention these projects got him was enough motivation for him to start his own company which later developed many product prototypes like RideSmart, etc.

Vision Correcting Displays Could Spell The End Of Spectacles Era

Wearing glasses or contact lenses for being able to read or see properly has become more common than ever before, thanks to the constant viewing of display screens. What if we could find a corrective solution for our eyes using exactly the same displays as a medium? Well, a team of engineers & researchers from MIT and University of Berkeley has come together to develop a new form of screens called 'vision correcting displays'. The new computational display technology is simply marvelous because the images it displays are pre-distorted so that the viewer can see them clearly without the need of any eyewear. The applications of this tech are immense. Right from our e-readers and tablets, such displays can be used in dashboard mounted GPS devices for cars and other vehicles.

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For thousands of years, our spectacles have undergone little or no change, ever since their invention in the 13th century. In recent times, there have been the upsurge of contact lenses and corrective eye surgery. However, most of these measures are invasive. With the vision correcting displays, the engineers from UC Berkeley and MIT have achieved something that was unthinkable so far. Their solution basically puts the glasses on the display, instead of on your eyes. Considering the fact that, most bespectacled individuals spend a major part of their lives interacting with the digital world, the vision correcting displays are really a great boon in disguise (you won't even know they are there).

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Fu-Chung Huang, the lead author of the paper based on this project and Brian Barsky, a Computer Science professor at UC Berkeley along with Gordon Wetzstein and Ramesh Raskar, researchers from MIT developed computer algorithms that can be used to compensate for a human's visual impairment. Their prototype setup involves a printed pinholes (each 75 micrometers and distanced at 390 micrometers) in a screen placed between two layers of clear plastic to an iPod display to enhance image sharpness. Based on the user's specific kind of visual impairment, the team's algorithm works by adjusting the intensity of each direction of light that emanates from a single pixel in an image. This light then passes through the pinhole array in such a way that the user sees a clear & sharp image.

MIT Media Lab's Camera Culture Group had earlier developed a glasses-free 3-D technology (Take a look here). The vision correcting display seems like a variation of the same. The new system operates by simulating an image at the correct focal distance, between the display and the viewer’s eye. Moreover, the MIT and Berkeley researchers have adapted the algorithm to the problem of vision correction, therefore the new display results in very little loss in resolution.

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In the prototype developed by this team, they had to mask the display pixels from the parts of the pupil for which they’re not intended. To achieve this, they laid a transparency patterned with an array of pinholes so that the appropriate parts of the light emitting are blocked.

Now steal data from laptop just by touching it!

New research at Tel Aviv University (Israel) might just take out the 'heroism' out of being a hacker or a cracker. A team of researchers has developed a technique that lets you steal data from a laptop just by 'touching it'. All you need to do is wear a special wristband and touch the exposed part of the machine that you want to victimize. The wristband will measure all the minute changes in the ground electric potential and figure out encryption keys. You can touch the machine with your bare hands or with a wire.

In their research paper, to be presented at the CHES 2014, the researchers will describe how they were able to extract 4096-bit RSA keys and also 3072-bit ElGamal keys from the test machine. They say that though the machines work at GHz scale frequencies, a full blown attack will require just a few seconds to measure the frequencies using Medium Frequency signals ~2 MHz. The attack would require about an hour, if Low Frequency signals are used ~40 KHz. The team could extract keys from several test machines running a popular open source encryption software called GnuPG, which implements the OpenPGP standard.

The good news is that there's nothing to worry about just yet. The technique has all the focus on the encryption software. While GnuPG's got a patch ready to fix the problem to some level; the crackers will have to monitor the electricity changes during the decryption process to get hold of your data - which isn't quite easy. 

Robo Brains "Digs internet To make Machines More Humans

Robo Brain', a collaborative project between two Indian-origin researchers, is a large-scale computational system that comprehends everything from publicly available Internet resources, in order to teach robots natural human behavior. This complete data-bank for robots shall help the machines with finding keys, pouring a drink, putting away dishes and not interrupting two people when they're amidst a discussion. Lead researcher Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University (New York) explained about the project, stating that out computers and cell phones have access to all information we require, and if in case a robot encounters a situation it has not experienced before, it can simply query Robo Brain in the cloud.

At present, as you're reading this article, Robo Brain is downloading and processing about 1 billion images, about 120,000 YouTube videos and nearly 100 million how-to documents and appliance manuals. All this information is being translated and saved in a robot-friendly format that the robots will understand when required, Saxena stated. As per him, Robo Brain shall process images in order to pick out the objects in them and by connecting these images and videos with text shall it identify objects and their usage, coupled with human language and behavior.

Take for example, of a robot comes across a coffee mug, it can learn from Robo Brain not only that it's a coffee mug but also the liquid content that can be poured in or out of it, that the mug could be grabbed via the handle, and that it must always be held upright when it's full. Aditya Jami, the large-scale database designer of Robo Brain, states that it'll look like a gigantic branching graph "with abilities for multi-dimensional queries."

Similar to a human learner, Robo Brain shall have teachers thanks to crowdsourcing, concluded Saxena who presented the project at 2014 Robotics : Science and Systems Conference held in Berkeley lately.

Supersonic Submarine Can Travel At Unthinkable Speeds!

While most of the speed experiments are focused on ground and air; the Chinese engineers want to break speed records under water. The latest super high speed submarine prototyped by the team of engineers at the Harbin Institute Of Technology makes it possible to travel underwater at never imagined before speeds. Li Fungchen, professor of fluid machinery and engineering at the HIT informs that the technique is called 'supercavitation'.

Supercavitation isn't an entirely new technique per se. During the cold war, the Russians had developed VA-111 Shkval, a torpedo capable of traveling underwater at the speeds of 370 kmph using supercavitation; and continues to be one of the fastest torpedos till date. Supercavitation is about forming a wrapping air bubble around the torpedo to minimise the direct contact of the body of vessel with water, in order to minimize the drag offered by water. Theory suggests that a supercavitating vessel can reach the speeds of about 5,800 kmph; allowing travel-time from Shanghai to San Francisco cut short to just 1.5 hours
The main issue with the supercavitating vessels is that it's difficult to maneuver them. Also these vessels need to be launched into the water at the speeds of about 100 kmph to maintain the cavitation. The Chinese researchers have succeeded in addressing both these problems. They found out a way to cover the vessel with a specialised liquid membrane allowing a very controlled friction between water and vessel body. It also allows to take care of the challenges associated with high-speed launch required.

Li Fungchen said they need to solve several problems before these vessels can be adopted in the mainstream. The biggest challenge now is to develop an underwater rocket engine that can sustain longer range. The Shkval torpedo could travel only between 11 - 15 km under water.

New Camera System Doesn't Use Mirrors To Capture Objects Placed Around A Corner

Capturing an object positioned around a corner from a camera seems like an impossible task if you don't have a mirror at hand. Well, no magic tricks involved when it comes to the work of a research team from University of Bonn and the University of British Columbia, Vancouvera have developed a camera that can actually "see" around the corner. The novel technology introduced here makes use of diffusely reflected light for reconstructing the shape of objects that's not in the direct field of view of the camera or the person holding it. Prof. Dr. Ing. Matthias B. Hullin from the University of Bonn, who works on this project, shares that the mathematical procedure they created, was coupled with the camera system so that they could transform the wall virtually into a mirror.

In their setup, the laser light shone on the wall would itself act as the source of information. Some of the laser light that gets rebound from the wall also contains some valuable data about the appearance of the object beyond the wall and around the corner. The team has been successful in capturing this "light echo". This light is nothing but the time-resolved data which is later used to reconstruct the object. To achieve this, the team developed a special camera system that records not only the direction from which the light is coming but also how long it took the light to get from the source to the camera.

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Using readily available image sensors from video controllers and spare cameras, the team measured the sum of numerous light reflections which reached the camera through multiple paths. On superimposing them over each other on the image sensor, they were able to get the desired image capture.

The ability to extract only the desired information from this data has been a challenge for the engineering team. Their exclusive mathematical procedure they employed was able to achieve them reasonable results. Thanks to some smart coding and their call on keeping the technical complexity to the very minimal, the researchers were able to do a rapid development of the novel camera system. Their method isn't of course full-proof yet. It comes with its own set of limitations. Even though that's the case, the team looks confident about achieving an even higher resolution soon enough. The applications of the new tech can be found very useful in the field of medical imagery, remote sensing as well as telecommunications.

Source: University of Bonn

PhoneGap 2.0

Everyone seems to agree that mobile is the new black. And since that's the case it's a major pain in the proverbial that this 'new' platform managed to recreate so many of the problems faced by the desktop: different APIs, languages, browsers, file formats… Thankfully, PhoneGap has gone a long way towards smoothing out those difficulties.

PhoneGap 2, the first release since Adobe took the reins, is a significant advance for at least two reasons. The first is the simple increase in platforms reached, Windows 8 phone included. The second is the availability of PhoneGap Build, giving developers a single compile point capable of reaching every platform. No wonder there's so many apps.

BitTorrent Unveils Bleep: A Decentralised & Encrypted Chat Client For Windows

The people behind the massively successful and controversial BitTorrent technology have unveiled Bleep, a new chat client that promises secure and snooping free communication. BitTorrent have implemented their knowledge of decentralised infrastructure to build Bleep. Instead of having a centralised server to handle chats and client metadata, Bleep uses the same BitTorrent technology to build a fully distributed SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) server that serves as an engine for Bleep. Ever since the NSA-Snowden saga many chat clients have included the option of encrypted communication. While the encryption is sufficient to safeguard the messages, the client’s metadata has to remain in the company’s servers making it vulnerable to government snooping and hacking. Bleep does not maintain a central repository of chat log and contact information. People on Bleep can find each other through other nodes in the network. Bleep employs secure encryption protocols such as curve25519, ed25519, salsa20, poly1305, and others for end to end encryption. 

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On Bleep you can communicate with others in text and voice. Since the makers of the chat client believe in the idea of open internet, they have made the Bleep engine to serve as the back-end to any chat and voice application. The company has launched Bleep in its pre-alpha form and is asking users to register their e-mail ids on the website and wait for the invite. Once your request is processed they shall be mailing you back with the download link for the client. The company is targeting the application towards journalists, diplomatic corps, business and individuals who want to safeguard their messages from illegal snooping. The client is currently available for Windows desktops only. The testers have the option of inviting their friends to use the application. BitTorrent warns that since it is an early build users can expect some bugs in the system which will be rectified in future builds.

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To get your Bleep client, you can register on this link and to obtain more information about it head over to theBitTorrent blog (1) (2).

Critical Security Flaw In USB

Security researchers Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell of Security Research Lab have managed to exploit a fundamental flaw in USB technology that makes us rethink the way we use this versatile technology. We use USB devices every day; we use them as storage devices, computer peripherals, cell phone chargers, data cables for smartphones and printers and much more. To make USB work with any device a programmer has to reprogram the USB controller chip present in the peripheral. The only problem with this is that most USB controller chips including the ones used in thumb drives have no protection against reprogramming. These researchers exploited this flaw by developing a proof-of-concept malware called BadUSB. Once BadUSB infects a USB drive, it reverse engineers the USB firmware and turns them malicious. They can program any USB device to behave as a keyboard and issue commands to the computer to install harmful malware and corrupt users’ files. The downloaded malware can then be used to infect controller chips of other USB devices connected to the computer. The tainted USB device can also be used to emulate a network card which has the capability to change the computer’s DNS and redirect the traffic to hackers. Finally, there is the threat of injecting a computer with a boot virus with the help of a thumb drive which has been programmed with BadUSB. 

Image Courtesy: CurveFever​

Normally when you discover a malware on your computer you have to rely on your trusted antivirus or in the worst case perform a system format to get rid of the threat. In case of a BadUSB infiltrated system however you do not have any defences because of three reasons. First, antivirus software cannot check the firmware running on a USB device. Second, when a BadUSB infected device is plugged into a computer, the antivirus does not perform a heuristic analysis (checking unusual behaviour for unknown malware detection) because the changed persona of the new device makes it think that the user has plugged in a new device. Finally, a full operating system reinstallation cannot get rid of this because all the while the computer was infected it could have downloaded the malicious software which would have reprogrammed other USB devices connected to the computer such as a hardwired USB webcam on a laptop or worse it could have reprogrammed the computer’s BIOS because as we have mentioned earlier it can behave as a keyboard.

While talking to Wired, the researchers said that once infected with BadUSB one has to think that the USB device is a hypodermic needle which should not be shared among users and immediately thrown away because a technical patch cannot fix the problem. During their research they contacted a Taiwanese USB device maker whom they refuse to name citing the problem but the company insisted that such infection was not possible. The duo is planning to give more details of their research and demonstrate BadUSB at the BlackHat USA 2014.

Adobe Edge Inspect

A great little app for mobile developers, formerly known asAdobe Shadow, which cuts a huge amount of hassle from the design process. Just pair your devices (Android and iOS) with your main machine. Then the sites you browse to are echoed direct to every connected device.

If you've got conditional code or responsive templates then these should work fine. And if you want to tinker with the code, just hit the angle brackets next to your paired device (in Chrome) and away you go.