Month: March 2018

He’s not just saying he feels her pain—he really is

When couples hold hands and one is in pain, their brain waves synchronize.

Enlarge (credit: ccbarr / Flickr)

The perception of pain is impacted by social, emotional, and psychological factors as well as biological ones, and these factors can all affect one another. Skin-to-skin touch—a clearly social phenomenon—is known to alleviate pain. What is not quite known is how.

 A touch of pain

The Social and Affective Neuroscience Lab at the University of Haifa decided to find out. A team of researchers there designed an experiment in which 20 heterosexual romantic partners were recruited for a study on pain perception. The couples were exposed to six different conditions: holding hands when the woman was subjected to pain and when she wasn’t, just being together but not holding hands when the woman was subjected to pain and when she wasn’t, and being in separate rooms when the woman was subjected to pain and when she wasn’t.

During all conditions, the partners’ brains were simultaneously scanned so the researchers could assess the relationship between brain coupling, pain perception in the suffering partner, and empathy in the observing partner. This simultaneous scanning of individuals while they interact is a pretty new thing and a pretty big deal.

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Vivo isn’t only phone maker thinking about pop-up cameras

2018 is shaping up to be the year of the smartphone notch, as phone makers follow the lead of Essential and Apple and increase screen space by eliminating the bezels on the left and right sides of a phone’s front-facing camera. Chinese phone maker Vivo…

2018 is shaping up to be the year of the smartphone notch, as phone makers follow the lead of Essential and Apple and increase screen space by eliminating the bezels on the left and right sides of a phone’s front-facing camera. Chinese phone maker Vivo showed a different solution at Mobile World Congress last month: […]

Vivo isn’t only phone maker thinking about pop-up cameras is a post from: Liliputing

Scotland’s floating wind farm is showing how powerful offshore wind can be

The turbines withstood some serious gusts.

Enlarge (credit: Statoil)

The world's first commercial floating offshore wind farm, called Hywind, started sending electricity to the grid last October. Since then, the six-turbine, 30MW installation has been working well. Really well. In fact, Hywind has had a 65-percent capacity factor over the last three months according to Statoil, the Norwegian mega-corporation that built the wind farm off the coast of Scotland. (Capacity factor measures a generation unit's actual output against its theoretical maximum output. A capacity factor of 100 percent means the wind farm would be sending 30MW of power to the grid every minute of every day since it's been in operation.)

Hywind's capacity factor exceeds the average capacity factors of many sources of electricity. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), onshore wind installations in the US had an average capacity factor of about 36.7 percent in 2017. Solar photovoltaic installations had an average capacity factor of 27 percent in 2017. Even conventional hydropower only has an average capacity factor of 45.2 percent.

Of course, comparing Hywind's 65-percent capacity factor in the winter, when wind is blowing at its hardest in Scotland, to the average capacity factor of other renewable installations over the whole year isn't quite fair—we can assume that Hywind will have a lower capacity factor in months when winds are milder. But Statoil says that similar offshore wind installations achieve a capacity factor of 40 to 60 percent in winter, suggesting that there's an advantage to be gained in floating wind farms: the turbines can be placed further out to sea where wind is more consistent and stronger.

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Is it time to take the Hyperloop seriously?

“Starting from a movement, Hyperloop has become an industry.” Can it be real transit next?

Tesla Motors

Imagine traveling the length of the United Kingdom—from London to Edinburgh, 400-plus miles—in under an hour. A journey from Los Angeles to San Francisco would take less than 30 minutes (five hours less than the average drive between the two cities). Your journey would be safe and comfortable, your carbon footprint almost non-existent.

Passengers and cargo would be loaded into a pod, which accelerates gradually via electric propulsion through a low-pressure tube. The pod quickly lifts above the track using magnetic levitation and glides at airline speeds for long distances due to ultra-low aerodynamic drag.

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Elektromobilität: Telekom baut 12.000 Ladestationen aus Verteilerkästen

Der Mangel an öffentlichen Ladestationen ist ein großes Hindernis für die Elektromobilität. Die Deutsche Telekom will durch den Umbau von Verteilerkästen das Angebot nun mehr als verdoppeln. (Elektroauto, Technologie)

Der Mangel an öffentlichen Ladestationen ist ein großes Hindernis für die Elektromobilität. Die Deutsche Telekom will durch den Umbau von Verteilerkästen das Angebot nun mehr als verdoppeln. (Elektroauto, Technologie)

Smart Home: Amazon verbannt Nest-Geräte aus dem Onlineshop

Keine Konkurrenz im eigenen Shop: Amazon will die Smart-Home-Produkte von Nest, Googles Schwesterunternehmen, nicht mehr verkaufen. Das ist eigentlich nur konsequent: Amazon hat ebenfalls diverse Alphabet-Produkte nicht im Angebot. (Amazon, Google)

Keine Konkurrenz im eigenen Shop: Amazon will die Smart-Home-Produkte von Nest, Googles Schwesterunternehmen, nicht mehr verkaufen. Das ist eigentlich nur konsequent: Amazon hat ebenfalls diverse Alphabet-Produkte nicht im Angebot. (Amazon, Google)

Comcast’s Protected Browsing Blocks TorrentFreak as “Suspicious” Site

Website blocking is a common tool for copyright holders to keep people away from pirate sites. While these measures are often mandated by court order, ISPs also offer voluntary blocking tools, to prevent subscribers from accessing dangerous sites. Comcast’s Xfinity, for example, offers “protected browsing” which, ironically, will prevent users from reading this article.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons

Regular TorrentFreak readers know that website blocking is rampant around the globe.

Thousands of pirate sites have been blocked by court orders for offering access to infringing content. However, there are plenty of voluntary blocking measures as well.

Some Internet providers offer web filtering tools to help their customers avoid malware, adult content, pirate services, or other suspicious content. Comcast’s Xfinity Xfi service, for example, has a “protected browsing” feature.

While this can be useful in some situations, it’s far from perfect. The blocklists that are used can be quite broad. Websites are sometimes miscategorized or flagged as dangerous while that’s not the case.

This also appears to be happening with Xfinity’s protected browsing feature. A reader alerted us that, when he tried to access TorrentFreak, access was denied stating that a “suspicious” site was ahead.

A pirate logo on the blocking page suggests that there’s copyright-infringing activity involved. While it’s no secret that we cover a lot of news related to piracy, it goes a bit far to label this type of news reporting as suspicious.

Suspicious…..

While we don’t know whether the blockade is intentional or a false positive, this is certainly not the only ‘problem’ with Xfinity’s protected browsing feature.

Previously, Comcast users reported that this system prevented people from accessing PayPal as well, which is a bit much, and others reported that it stopped the Steam store from loading properly.

The good news is that the blocking ‘feature’ isn’t mandatory. Subscribers can enable and disable it whenever they please, by changing their network settings.

Unfortunately, Xfinity’s blocking efforts are not unique. We regularly get reports from users who can’t access TorrentFreak because it’s blocked, often on public WiFi networks. In these and other cases, a VPN can always come in handy.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons

Comcast’s Protected Browsing Blocks TorrentFreak as “Suspicious” Site

Website blocking is a common tool for copyright holders to keep people away from pirate sites. While these measures are often mandated by court order, ISPs also offer voluntary blocking tools, to prevent subscribers from accessing dangerous sites. Comcast’s Xfinity, for example, offers “protected browsing” which, ironically, will prevent users from reading this article.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons

Regular TorrentFreak readers know that website blocking is rampant around the globe.

Thousands of pirate sites have been blocked by court orders for offering access to infringing content. However, there are plenty of voluntary blocking measures as well.

Some Internet providers offer web filtering tools to help their customers avoid malware, adult content, pirate services, or other suspicious content. Comcast’s Xfinity Xfi service, for example, has a “protected browsing” feature.

While this can be useful in some situations, it’s far from perfect. The blocklists that are used can be quite broad. Websites are sometimes miscategorized or flagged as dangerous while that’s not the case.

This also appears to be happening with Xfinity’s protected browsing feature. A reader alerted us that, when he tried to access TorrentFreak, access was denied stating that a “suspicious” site was ahead.

A pirate logo on the blocking page suggests that there’s copyright-infringing activity involved. While it’s no secret that we cover a lot of news related to piracy, it goes a bit far to label this type of news reporting as suspicious.

Suspicious…..

While we don’t know whether the blockade is intentional or a false positive, this is certainly not the only ‘problem’ with Xfinity’s protected browsing feature.

Previously, Comcast users reported that this system prevented people from accessing PayPal as well, which is a bit much, and others reported that it stopped the Steam store from loading properly.

The good news is that the blocking ‘feature’ isn’t mandatory. Subscribers can enable and disable it whenever they please, by changing their network settings.

Unfortunately, Xfinity’s blocking efforts are not unique. We regularly get reports from users who can’t access TorrentFreak because it’s blocked, often on public WiFi networks. In these and other cases, a VPN can always come in handy.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons