Month: June 2016

(credit: Flickr user Hullabaloon.)

One of the less satisfying aspects of modern physics is the increasing separation between the phenomena that we measure and the experimenter. We measure almost everything today indirectly. If we operate our lab safely, we never directly detect an electron—instead, that charge creates a tiny potential difference on an amplifier. The amplifier generates a larger current that might drive a coil that is attached to a needle on a dial.

This level of indirection is the reality of modern physics. And the alternative—passing large currents through your body—is discouraged. Yet, the desire to really see what is going on is hard to resist. This has led to an interesting publication that proposes a way to detect quantum mechanical behavior directly with the human eye.

Seeing single photons

The behavior in question is entanglement. But before getting to that, let's talk about the eye. The human visual system is a pretty poor instrument as far as optics go. The eye is actually pretty good; experiments have revealed that the rods in your eye are sensitive to single photons. The brain, however, is smart; rather than try to sort out all the noise associated with every single photon detection, it tells the rods and cones not to bother it until the light reaches a certain intensity.

(credit: cncphotos)

Rovi, the company that's buying TiVo, isn't very interested in staying in the hardware business.

The combined company will be looking to partner with set-top box makers instead of continuing to sell set-top boxes directly to consumers, Rovi Chief Financial Officer Peter Halt said at an investors conference last week. (See transcript and this Light Reading article.)

Halt noted that TiVo's direct relationship with consumers has "been a source of great innovation for them and stuff like that." But he then said that "being in the hardware business isn’t something that necessarily excites us." It sounds like TV watchers could still get boxes powered by TiVo software and services, but the hardware would be made by another company.

(credit: Peter Kaminski)

A former senior finance manager for Oracle claims the software maker fired her for not inflating revenues in its cloud services division. In a whistleblower and wrongful termination lawsuit, Svetlana Blackburn also claims that Oracle ultimately inflated the numbers without her assistance.

"The data, she knew, would end up in SEC filings and be touted on earnings calls, used to paint a rosier picture than actually existed on the ground," Blackburn says in her nine-page lawsuit. (PDF)

The Silicon Valley software maker, having a market cap of roughly $165 billion, said it fired the woman for inadequate work.

Jeff Williams floats into the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module on Monday morning. (credit: NASA)

A little more than a week after NASA astronaut Jeff Williams successfully expanded a new module on the International Space Station, he and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka finally entered it on Monday morning. The expandable module, Williams told mission control in Houston, looked "pristine."

After entering, Williams collected air sample data from the module, which was nominal. He then began to download data from three Deployment Dynamic Sensor units inside that recorded vibration data during the expansion process. Later this week, Williams will also install radiation, impact detection, and temperature sensors before closing the hatch again.

The successful expansion marks a pivotal moment for Bigelow Aerospace, which built the module and has been at the forefront of trying to commercially develop expandable space habitats. In January, the company had to lay off as much as one third of its 150 employees as it sought to pare back expenses.

Playtonic Games

Yooka's the lizard; Laylee's the bat.

7 more images in gallery

In May of 2015, a gaggle of ex-developers from the game studio Rare made the crowd-funding rounds with dreams of resurrecting the 3D-platformer genre—and the results have finally begun to bear fruit. Yooka-Laylee, the debut project from Playtonic Games, looks like a blatant love letter to N64 classic Banjo-Kazooie. This week the game has finally been received a proper video reveal almost exactly a year after the dev team concluded its $3.2 million campaign.

The trailer, seen below, was apparently saved to help fans swallow the hard pill of a game delay. Yooka-Laylee has been pushed back from its original October 2016 promise to "Q1 2017." New publisher Team 17 (of Worms fame) will handle the game's Xbox One, PS4, Wii U, and Steam releases next year.

From the look of things, Playtonic seems dead-set on making a third Banjo-Kazooie (Banjo Three-ie?) in everything but name and main characters. Lizard and bat combine to double-jump, float, roll, and transform into other temporary creatures while traversing what appear to be some large, incredibly colorful worlds. Floating blocks, magically appearing platforms, and races (including a roll through a tunnel and a Donkey Kong Country-esque mine cart ride) fill out the brief preview footage found in an official trailer and a Eurogamer eyes-on preview.