Our knowledge of planets like Mars and Jupiter has advanced by leaps and bounds in recent years, but that didn’t just happen as if by magic. Scientists have sent missions to these worlds, like the Juno Jupiter probe and Perseverance Mars rover. But poor Uranus never gets any attention, and (NAS) says it’s time that changed. In the group’s Decadal Survey, a Uranus probe is listed as the top priority. Uranus, in case you are unfamiliar, is the seventh planet, orbiting between Saturn and Neptune. This unassuming blue-gray ball of gas was only visited once — by Voyager 2 in 1986.
(Photo: Kirin Holdings)If your doctor has been nagging you to consume less sodium, you may be in luck. New electric chopsticks out of Japan have made it possible to make food taste saltier than it really is. The chopsticks, co-developed by Meiji University professor Homei Miyashita and Japanese beverage company Kirin Holdings, work through a tiny computer worn on the diner’s wrist. They use a weak electrical current (small enough to not have an effect on the human body) to adjust the function of sodium chloride ions in the food, effectively amplifying any existing salty flavor. To test the chopsticks, Miyashita’s team presented 36 volunteers with gel samples imitating the flavors of “ordinary food” and food with 30 percent less sodium.
(Photo: Thomas Pesquet, European Space Agency)As it’s wont to do, NASA has taken the stuff of our sci-fi dreams and made it reality. The agency has revealed that it used ‘holoportation’ technology to cast a surgeon onto the ISS last fall, when he was really present here on Earth. If you haven’t heard of holoportation before, you’re not the only one. The term (a combination of “hologram” and “teleportation”) refers to a newer capture technique that “allows high-quality 3D models of people to be reconstructed, compressed and transmitted live anywhere in real time,” to NASA flight surgeon Dr.
If you’ve purchased a new, high-end smartphone lately, you might have noticed that it didn’t come with a charger. That’s increasingly common after Apple set the standard with the iPhone 12. Now, Tesla is doing the same with its electric vehicles. If you purchase a new vehicle, it won’t come with the bundled level 1 charger. You can buy one, but it’s probably better to spend that money on a faster charger. Tesla’s high-capacity lithium-ion batteries have made its cars into the most popular EVs in the US. The company sold almost one million vehicles in 2021, which is nearly every unit it was able to produce.
If you’ve been around for awhile you’ll probably recognize the URL Speedtest.net. It’s a website that can show you the speed of your internet connection. It’s run by Ookla (disclosure: Extremetech’s parent company Ziff Davis also owns Ookla), and the company has analyzed the results of peoples’ tests on its site for Q1 2022. With this info it can now reveal which mobile broadband providers are delivering the most performance. The report is focused on mobile broadband, and the big winner is T-Mobile, in every category it measured. The report also sheds some light on the fastest phones, chipsets, and even the regions that offer the best internet speeds.
This may come as a surprise to our younger readers, but there was a time when you bought a game, and that was it. You didn’t need to connect to paid online services to update it on day one, and no one was trying to sell you skins or in-game currency. But today there’s money to be made, and you might not love Microsoft’s latest idea along those lines. According to a new report, Microsoft is looking at putting ads inside free-to-play Xbox games. The is light on details, and what they do have is unexpected. Microsoft is apparently not looking to take a cut of ad sales.
In news that is both surprising and yet completely unsurprising at the same time, Intel may be delaying its highly anticipated desktop GPUs. As you may recall, at the end of its recent launch of the mobile version it released a teaser for its desktop card. The text just said “Summer 2022” which predicts a vague June – August timeline. The latest leaks now say the cards might either arrive at the tail end of that window or be pushed back to Q3. The latest report comes from notable leaker Enthusiast Citizen via , which states Intel might be having driver issues.
(Photo: Christian Englmeier/Unsplash)3D printing has enabled those passionate about DIY automotive modding and repair to physically create parts at home. But some automakers don’t like that. Case in point: Honda is cracking down on those who 3D print their own car parts at home. Until recently, makers have been able to 3D print replacement parts—from hood latches and washer fluid caps to roof latch handles and key housings—from a community-built model database called Printables. The Drive’s Rob Stumpf, who regularly printed parts for his Honda Accord, recently that a part he’d made had disappeared from Printables. Stumpf brushed it off until he saw Reddit posts detailing the removal of other models intended for Honda vehicles.
(Photo: Thomas Park/Unsplash)Intel has partnered with an e-learning software company to produce a program that tracks students’ expressions. The program, called Class, is AI-based and works with Zoom to analyze students’ faces in real time. It’s said to be capable of detecting three emotional states: bored, confused, and distracted. Intel and Classroom Technologies the program will “give [teachers] additional insights to allow them to better communicate,” thus solving the modern problem of disengagement in virtual classroom environments. Class works by capturing images of students’ faces using computer vision technology, then comparing those images against psychological data and current context.
