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Maria Gurova

The first around-the-world flight in a solar airplane will launch this March | The Verge - 0 views

  • In around two months, the team behind the solar-powered aircraft Solar Impulse 2 will attempt the first ever around-the-world flight powered only by sunlight.
  • After taking off in Abu Dhabi, the Solar Impulse 2 will make stops in Oman, India, Myanmar, China, the US, and Southern Europe or North Africa before landing back in Abu Dhabi sometime in August.
  • The Solar Impulse 2's across-the-world flight should clock 500 hours total flight time and around 21,748 miles
Maria Gurova

The Airbnb vs. New York hearing: Lots of yelling, no decisions - 0 views

  • The City Council's Housing and Buildings Committee heard testimony Tuesday from residents, housing advocates, city officials and companies about the effects of the growing industry on the city.
  • In November 2014, about 15,300 New York City listings were entire homes or apartments representing about 59% of the available listings on the site that month, according to Slee. There were also 9,704 listings for private rooms, and 753 listings for shared rooms. The analysis also showed that 2,764 users were renting out two or more units, which opponents have cited as evidence the service is helping illegal hotels. More than 200 users were renting out five units or more
  • Airbnb is calling for "smart regulation," which it has had success with in cities including Portland, Oregon; San Jose and San Francisco, California; Amsterdam; and Paris. Airbnb collects lodging tax directly from hosts in those cities, and several local governments have passed laws that allow short-term rentals in some form.
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  • Both sides agreed on seemingly only one thing: That a discussion and regulation of short-term rentals in New York City is overdue.
Maria Gurova

Microsoft HoloLens: Real life holograms unveiled as part of Windows 10 - News - Gadgets... - 0 views

  • Microsoft unveiled a new hologram platform today as part of its new operating system
  • The holographic software is built into Windows 10 already, the company said. Though Microsoft is working on its own hardware, the platform will also work for other virtual reality software like Oculus Rift and Google Glass
  • Microsoft executive built a virtual flying drone, which the company then showed could be 3D printed. Alex Kipman, who helped lead the project, called it “print preview for 3D printing”.
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    Microsoft tackles the field of VR headsets 
Maria Gurova

Nickelodeon hopes SpongeBob SquarePants will get kids coding | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

  • Nickelodeon UK’s launch of a website called Code-It that aims to teach programming skills to 6-12 year-olds.
  • While they will earn badges for their progress through the site’s set lessons, children will also be able to write their own programs animating the characters, and share them with their peers.
  • In May 2014, producer Aardman Animations launched Shaun’s Game Academy - a website challenging children to create and share their own games
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  • the BBC followed with The Doctor and the Dalek, a web game based on Doctor Who that featured a series of programming challenges
Maria Gurova

ВЕДОМОСТИ - Максим Трудолюбов: Государство беззащитных - 0 views

  • Дело в гуманизации безопасности. И в воплощении в политике идеи, что мир состоит прежде всего из людей, а не из государств.
  • Российское государство ни в какой из своих инкарнаций не было чемпионом защиты индивидуальной безопасности и формирования среды.
  • Мы уже недалеки от признания, что индивидуальная и национальная безопасность исключают друг друга.
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  • Но традиции незащищенности граждан есть в прошлом каждой страны. Сила не в том, чтобы за такой опыт держаться, а в том, чтобы его преодолевать.
  • что стабильных правил игры ждать не приходится: то, что можно сегодня, станет запретным завтра. Ощущение опасности, которое внушают представители власти, — не стихийные эмоции, а вполне намеренная технология управления населением.
  • Нежелание заниматься развитием инструментов для вложения денег, изъятие накопительной части пенсии и нынешнее обесценение рубля — все это подтверждение того, что государство в лучшем случае не справилось с обеспечением безопасности сбережений и инвестиций граждан.
  • Переключение внимания общества на внешних врагов — почти неизбежное следствие провала создания внутри России достойной среды человеческих отношений.
  • Содержание большинства телепрограмм российского ТВ — это не страх перед внешними врагами, а концентрированный страх общества и власти друг перед другом.
  • Готовность к дурному исходу, к человеческим и экономическим утратам — не мистика и не фантазия. Это и не просто национальное свойство, замечаемое иностранцами и прочитываемое даже в российских лицах, а выражение незащищенности. То, что за тобой могут прийти; то, что могут отнять все, что ты делал и берег, — не болезнь, а правда жизни.
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    this is a very good piece on why Russians are so "fortress thinking" and are incapable of planning for the long term 
Maria Gurova

ВЕДОМОСТИ - РПЦ получит из бюджета около 2 млрд рублей на создание духовно-пр... - 1 views

  • федеральной целевой программе «Укрепление единства российской нации».
  • В мае первые 23 организации такого типа получили первые 1,1 млрд руб.
  • в 2015 г. в рамках ФЦП еще 958 млн руб. будут выделены на создание духовно-просветительских центров. Весь бюджет ФЦП на 2015 г. составляет 1,4 млрд руб.
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  • Бюджет федеральной целевой программы был увеличен на 358 млн руб. после визита на Валаам президента Владимира Путина в апреле 2014 г.
Maria Gurova

Russia and the Menace of Unreality - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • The new Russia doesn’t just deal in the petty disinformation, forgeries, lies, leaks, and cyber-sabotage usually associated with information warfare. It reinvents reality, creating mass hallucinations that then translate into political action.
  • today’s Russia, by contrast, the idea of truth is irrelevant. On Russian ‘news’ broadcasts, the borders between fact and fiction have become utterly blurred.
  • there is one great difference between Soviet propaganda and the latest Russian variety. For the Soviets, the idea of truth was important—even when they were lying.
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  • “The public likes how our main TV channels present material, the tone of our programs,” he said. “The share of viewers for news programs on Russian TV has doubled over the last two months.”
  • The point of this new propaganda is not to persuade anyone, but to keep the viewer hooked and distracted—to disrupt Western narratives rather than provide a counternarrative.
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    the tone is a bit hysterical, but this is how the world sees us from the outside and also a good inspiration for a Fortress scenario 
Maria Gurova

How To Get More People Into Movie Theaters (Without Higher Ticket Prices) - 3 views

  • Its newest toy is called Barco Escape and right now it’s essentially three theater screens in one space — the main screen and then additional screens on the left and right walls. The effect is a 270-degree image that makes viewers feel like they are in the middle of the action.
  • It’s the kind of premium experience that most people would expect to pay extra for but Schilowitz says part of the point of Escape is to give viewers a more theme-park like experience without charging any more for a ticket.
  • One of the biggest trends right now is people watching other people play video games.
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  • Schilowitz hopes to engage brands to make 270-degree short films to show before the actual movie. Think Red Bull's Red Bull's many extreme sports videos. Now picture them in an immersive experience.  The money coming from brands could help offset the costs of the Escape screen.
  • Schilowitz believes you could take that experience into the theater. Have two people playing a virtual reality game while strapped into Oculus Rift-type devices and people would pay to watch the game on the big screen if top- ranked players were competing.
  • Escape will also be used to show things like concerts which can be better experienced with a wider screen. A Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett show will debut in Escape theaters in 2015.
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    The new technology that may transform all that real estate Theaters owns into the arcades of the future.  
Maria Gurova

Become Your Favorite Super Hero with 3DPlusMe | News | Marvel.com - 0 views

  • The SUPER AWESOME ME experience begins when the fan visits an in-store scanning station where a 3D face scanner captures their likeness to create a 3D model.
  • At launch, fans can visit one of 10 Walmart or two Sam’s Club stores to create a personalized 12” action figure. The SUPER AWESOME ME figure features a traditional 12” articulated plastic action figure body and a full color 3D printed head. Recommended for fans ages 4 years and older and available for an approximate retail price of $45, the SUPER AWESOME ME figure will be available for pick up at Walmart locations or ship to Sam’s Club customers in four weeks.
Maria Gurova

Pixar Vets Reinvent Speech Recognition So It Works for Kids | WIRED - 0 views

  • Though characters like Woody and Buzz Lightyear are wonderfully realistic and lovable, the relationship that kids have with them is largely one-sided. Kids can hear these characters talk—not only through movies, but games, toys, and other movie merchandise—but they can’t engage them.
  • It was this idea that inspired Jacob to team up with his former Pixar colleague, Martin Reddy, and launch a new company, ToyTalk. The San Francisco-based outfit develops mobile games that let kids have conversations with animated characters—dialogues that can last for hours
  • Known as PullString, it’s equal parts speech recognition engine and script writing tool, and it’s quite a departure from other speech rec tools developed by the likes of Microsoft, Google, and Apple. It’s tailored specifically to kids, whose sentence structure, pitch, and vocal tone have posed challenges for traditional tools.
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  • Kids don’t want to ask a monkey character in a game what the weather will be on Tuesday. They want to sing him a song or ask him about life in the zoo.
  • But as he points out, the way today’s children use technology will likely dictate the tech landscape for decades to come. If you can get kids hooked on speech technology young, they’ll stay with it forever.
  • “The way kids talk and communicate is very different from how adults do, both in terms of how they use language and the fundamental frequencies that come out of their throats,
  • While ToyTalk uses existing third party technology for its raw speech recognition, it works with those partners to develop better recognition models using ToyTalk’s own data. Now, ToyTalk has a trove of some 20 million children’s utterances, which Jacob believes is the largest database of kids conversation in the world
  • “Virtual assistants are awesome when they can answer every question. In our case, it’s the opposite,” Jacob says. “I have to know a lot of things that I’m not able to answer, and redirect the conversation to something that is within character.”
  • And Jacob says some toy companies are already testing PullString to power apps based on existing characters.
  • this technology could give kids a whole new way to play that falls somewhere in between the playground and the imaginary friend. “I think at some deep level if we succeed, we’ll inspire the imagination of kids to talk about things they might not otherwise talk about,”
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    the voice rec technology developed by ex-Pixar guy that is targeted to kids. It considers all nuances of kids speech behavior and analyses millions of kids conversations to make interaction with favorite characters within all possible media truly engaging
Maria Gurova

HeroMe: Create the Hero You Want to Be! by HeroMe - Kickstarter - 1 views

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    Kickstarter project that allow kids create their own physical superhero action figures and stories for them 
Maria Gurova

Shell Creates 'Player' Powered Football Field | Digital Buzz Blog - 0 views

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    Shell build a field in one of the Rio's favelas, which generate electricity from the player's footsteps 
Maria Gurova

New era of self-driving cars will transform cities - 0 views

  • it will certainly transform our daily routines: imagine driving hands-free while having the luxury of reading a book, taking a nap, or guiltlessly texting on the road. At the same time, something far more interesting - and still unexplored - is the potential transformation of our cities themselves
  • blurring the distinction between private and public modes of transportation. "Your" car could give you a lift to work in the morning and then, rather than sitting idle in a parking lot, give a lift to someone else in your family - or, for that matter, to anyone else in your neighbourhood, social media circles, or city.
  • This implies a city in which everyone can travel on demand with just one-fifth of the number of cars in use today
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  • Fewer cars may also mean shorter travel times, less congestion, and a smaller environmental impact.
  • Real-time data planning and smart routing are already a reality, and more advances are coming in the wake of "intelligent city" initiatives around the world,
  • Imagine a world without traffic lights, where vehicular flows "magically" pass through one another and avoid collision
  • Traffic accidents, though rarer, would still be a possibility; in fact, they might be one of the main impediments to implementation of autonomous systems, demanding a restructuring of insurance and liability that could sustain armies of lawyers for years to com
  • We are all familiar with viruses crashing our computers, but what if a virus crashes our cars? Resolving these issues is crucial, but none is insurmountable.
Maria Gurova

Disrupting the Playground - NYTimes.com - 1 views

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    it's not only contains lot's of trends about the shifting behavior patterns among younger generation, it's a fun read and may also be an idea for scenario format - a chain of emails from a nursery school teacher to the parents of a very disruptive and entrepreneurial minded kid 
Maria Gurova

Wearables in the workplace: Employers buy fitness trackers to boost employee health - 1 views

  • The technology, known as UltraHaptics, is a haptic feedback system using ultrasound that provides users with a buzz-like feeling of pressure on their hand.
  • The technology does not just provide the sensation of flat surfaces, but can also be used to create the feel of 3D objects.
  • Sculptors could also use the technology to shape virtual objects using just their hands
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  • Hologram projections could be given a texture, with museum visitors
  • it could be used to indicate to drivers when a car is in their blind spot by providing a buzzing sensation on their neck, or developed as a wearable for blind people to indicate the presence of a road or obstacle
  • consumer fields are likely to be most interested due to the technology’s ability to augment existing entertainment systems.
Maria Gurova

Virgin Galactic Wants to Fly You From LA to Tokyo (Through Space, In One Hour) | Mother... - 0 views

  • When Virgin Galactic finally takes its first tourists to space, it'll just be a a stepping stone to what the company's ultimate mission is: Flying people from one place on Earth to another place on Earth, just like any other airline. Except in this version, you'll travel through space and be able to fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo in an hour.
  • Virgin's daring, sometimes insane chairman Richard Branson has long had his eyes on a supersonic commercial airline
  • He's discussed creating a supersonic passenger plane himself, but why settle for an incremental change when, if it works, "point-to-point suborbital space transportation" promises to be a complete paradigm shift?
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  • The Concorde failed for a lot of reasons, not least of which the fact that it was very, very expensive. So far, hundreds of people  have shelled out $250,000 to take a quick suborbital spaceflight with Virgin Galactic, but are they going to be willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to save 12 hours flying halfway around the world?
Maria Gurova

Виктор Шкулев: «Эта норма - из прошлого» - Россия - Slon.ru - 0 views

  • Сегодня нижняя палата парламента приняла  в первом чтении поправки в закон «О средствах массовой информации»,
  • запрещается «владеть, управлять или контролировать прямо или косвенно (в том числе через подконтрольных ему лиц или посредством владения более 20 процентов долей (акций) любого лица)
  • ограничение с 1 января 2016 года предполагается ввести для «иностранного государства, международной организации, а также находящихся под их контролем организаций, иностранных юридических лиц, российских юридических лиц с иностранным участием, иностранных граждан, лиц без гражданства, граждан Российской Федерации, имеющих гражданство другой страны».
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  • Инициаторы проекта указывают его причиной информационную войну против России
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    Интервью с генеральным директором HSM о перспективах развития российского медиа рынка в условиях нового законодательства, которое сократит долю иностранного владения в медиа до 20% 
Maria Gurova

Minecraft firm Mojang bought by Microsoft for $2.5bn - Business News - Business - The I... - 0 views

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    microsoft buying Minecraft with the hope to sell more of their devices to game fans
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