All posts tagged: machine

The Cumulus Machine Review: Fast and Frothy Cold Brew

The Cumulus Machine Review: Fast and Frothy Cold Brew

Published by skeptic

But, a word on oxygen. The device essentially pumps pure air (79 percent nitrogen, 20 percent oxygen) into the coffee rather than fuss with nitro cartridges. This is cool, but oxygen exposure is the known enemy of fresh-tasting coffee. After the nitro evaporated, side-by-side taste tests did show more flabby oxidation flavors in the nitro than the basic non-nitro. But fresh off the machine, this doesn’t show up much. What you notice is bracing, fun bubbles that also add perceived sweetness. Those bubbles cover a lot of sins, building a dense head atop cold brew that looks for all the world like a well-poured Irish stout. A WIRED editor, looking at a photo of Cumulus’ abundant nitro, jovially suspected chicanery. “I’d swear they used Guinness for the promo shots,” he wrote. The espresso is likewise effervescent—endowed with a thick and genuine crema, formed through the pressure exerted by the device’s powerful compressor. It was the Cumulus espresso’s own natural frothiness that led to my handsomely foam-topped martini—a result that eluded me with chilled hot espresso. …

TikTokkers are turning Google Street View into a nostalgic time machine

TikTokkers are turning Google Street View into a nostalgic time machine

Published by skeptic

Google’s been driving Street View cars around the world for nearly two decades now. And TikTok has recently discovered that backlog of images is ripe with nostalgia. There’s a new trend on the app in which folks dig up old Google Maps images showing their homes, meaningful places, or photos from a specific time via Street View to tell a story — this might involve a relative they lost, a past relationship, a childhood moment, or whatever else. Here’s a TikTok, for instance, of a person showing their now-deceased grandparents working on their lawn in 2008. Here’s another of a grandmother, this time sitting on their porch. Here’s one of someone playing with their childhood dog. Mashable Top Stories Here’s one that’s just stores in someone’s hometown that have closed. Lots of the comments in these wistful posts are about how nostalgic and sad they are. Some folks have even lamented looking for their deceased relatives and not finding them on Google Maps. The trend caught my attention because I wrote about Street View nostalgia …

Time Machine Tutorial: Back Up Your Mac in Minutes

Time Machine Tutorial: Back Up Your Mac in Minutes

Published by skeptic

Time Machine, the built-in backup tool in macOS, provides a straightforward and reliable way to protect your valuable data. Whether you’re safeguarding critical work files, cherished family photos, or your entire system, Time Machine ensures your information is secure and easily recoverable. The video guide below from Apple will walk you through the process of setting up, managing, and customizing your Time Machine backups, empowering you to keep your data safe without hassle. The Importance of Regular Backups In today’s digital age, our lives revolve around the data we store on our computers. From irreplaceable personal memories to essential professional documents, losing this information can be devastating. That’s where Time Machine comes in. This powerful tool provides a reliable, automated solution for backing up your Mac, ensuring you always have a safety net against data loss. Time Machine saves hourly, daily, and weekly snapshots of your data, including applications, system files, user preferences, and more. As your backup drive fills up, Time Machine intelligently deletes the oldest backups to make room for new ones, maintaining …

Gavin Newsom isn’t afraid of Elon, 650 hp Kia, and Green Machine

Gavin Newsom isn’t afraid of Elon, 650 hp Kia, and Green Machine

Published by skeptic

On today’s fact-checking episode of Quick Charge, we’ve got a showdown brewing between California Governor Gavin Newsom and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, an updated 650 hp Kia EV6 GT that’s ready to take on the world, and some sweet deals on battery-powered goodies. We’ve also got new electric buses at UCLA that are powered by inductive current in the road itself, and a massive new solar project on a site more famous for coal than clean. All this and a little bit of fact-checking on some fresh musky nonsense – enjoy! Today’s episode is sponsored by BLUETTI, a leading provider of portable power stations, solar generators, and energy storage systems. For a limited time, save up to 52% during BLUETTI’s exclusive Black Friday sale, now through November 28, and be sure to use promo code BLUETTI5OFF for 5% off all power stations site wide. Learn more at this link. Source Links Prefer listening to your podcasts? Audio-only versions of Quick Charge are now available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn, and our RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players. New episodes of Quick Charge are …

AI could soon be making major scientific discoveries. A machine could even win a Nobel Prize one day

AI could soon be making major scientific discoveries. A machine could even win a Nobel Prize one day

Published by skeptic

It may sound strange, but future Nobel Prizes, and other scientific achievement awards, one day might well be given out to intelligent machines. It could come down just to technicalities and legalities. Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel established the prestigious prizes in his will, written in 1895, a year before his death. He created a fund whose interests would be distributed annually “to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind”. Nobel explained how to divide those interests in equal parts, to be given, “one part to the person who made the most important discovery or invention in the field of physics… the most important chemical discovery… the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine”. He also created prizes for the person responsible for the most outstanding work of literature and to the person who did most to advance fellowship among nations, oppose war and promote peace (the peace prize). What should we draw from the use of the term “person” in Alfred Nobel’s will? The Nobel peace …

The AI Machine Gun of the Future Is Already Here

The AI Machine Gun of the Future Is Already Here

Published by skeptic

Amid a rising tide of low-cost weaponized adversary drones menacing American troops abroad, the US military is pulling out all the stops to protect its forces from the ever-present threat of death from above. But between expensive munitions, futuristic but complicated directed energy weapons, and its own growing drone arsenal, the Pentagon is increasingly eyeing an elegantly simple solution to its growing drone problem: reinventing the gun. At the Technology Readiness Experimentation (T-REX) event in August, the US Defense Department tested an artificial intelligence-enabled autonomous robotic gun system developed by fledgling defense contractor Allen Control Systems dubbed the “Bullfrog.” Consisting of a 7.62-mm M240 machine gun mounted on a specially designed rotating turret outfitted with an electro-optical sensor, proprietary AI, and computer vision software, the Bullfrog was designed to deliver small arms fire on drone targets with far more precision than the average US service member can achieve with a standard-issue weapon like the M4 carbine or next-generation XM7 rifle. Indeed, footage of the Bullfrog in action published by ACS shows the truck-mounted system locking …

Milton Disrupted the Flow of Drinking Water—so Florida Deployed a Machine to Harvest It From Air

Milton Disrupted the Flow of Drinking Water—so Florida Deployed a Machine to Harvest It From Air

Published by skeptic

David Stuckenberg, cofounder and chief operations officer at Genesis Systems, explains that the WaterCube uses proprietary liquid and solid sorbents—materials that absorb water—that essentially “form a handshake with the water in the air.” The machine then heats these materials to extract the water. Atmospheric water generators typically require a substantial amount of energy to run, but Stuckenberg claims the company’s materials work 400 percent better than those that are currently commercially available, and that they have a very high affinity for water. But the tech comes at a steep price. The WaterCube delivered to St. Petersburg is listed at $860,000. The company just started selling a second, smaller device for home use called the WaterCube 100, which retails for $20,000 and is about the size of an HVAC system. That device can generate about 100 to 200 gallons of water per day. Efficiency ranges from 0.07 to 0.8 kilowatt-hours per gallon of water and costs anywhere from $10 to $80 a day to operate, depending on cost of energy and humidity. A WaterCube can run …

Machine Gun Kelly’s unscripted moment with Shania Twain at PCCAs leaves fans in tears

Machine Gun Kelly’s unscripted moment with Shania Twain at PCCAs leaves fans in tears

Published by skeptic

Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Machine Gun Kelly’s unscripted moment with Shania Twain at the People’s Choice Country Awards on September 26 left fans very emotional. On Thursday night, the 34-year-old artist, whose real name is Colson Baker, joined the 59-year-old Canadian singer, who was hosting the ceremony, on stage. Machine Gun Kelly first performed “Lonely Road” with Jelly Roll before the “You’re Still The One” vocalist emerged from backstage to join her fellow artists. “That was awesome! I just love you,” she told Machine Gun Kelly, hugging and congratulating him. “Love you back,” he replied. Twain kept up the praise, admitting “Lonely Road” has become one of her favorite songs since its release earlier this year. As Machine Gun Kelly turned to walk off, leaving Twain close out …

You Can Officially Buy a Diamond-Generating Machine on Alibaba

You Can Officially Buy a Diamond-Generating Machine on Alibaba

Published by José

Any takers? Lab Fad Diamonds may be forever. But their market value? That might prove less eternal. In a sign of the times spotted by Ars Technica, you can now buy a diamond-generating machine on the Chinese online marketplace Alibaba for the humble asking price of just $200,000. It’s as good an example as any that lab-grown hunks of pressurized carbon are easier to make than ever, as the mined-diamond industry continues to lose some of its shine — not to mention its market dominance. The machine, which originates in China — as most of these do — uses what’s known as the high pressure and high temperature process, or HPHT, which essentially mimics the extreme conditions that lead to natural diamond formation deep in the Earth. But to produce diamonds more efficiently, you’re gonna wanna shell out at least twice that amount for a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) machine. This gizmo works by placing a thin diamond “seed” into a vacuum chamber, in which carbon-rich gasses are heated into plasma, leaving pure carbon atoms …

How machine learning is helping us probe the secret names of animals

How machine learning is helping us probe the secret names of animals

Published by skeptic

Some similar research tactics were reported earlier this year by Mickey Pardo, a postdoctoral researcher, now at Cornell University, who spent 14 months in Kenya recording elephant calls. Elephants sound alarms by trumpeting, but in reality most of their vocalizations are deep rumbles that are only partly audible to humans. Pardo also found evidence that elephants use vocal labels, and he says he can definitely get an elephant’s attention by playing the sound of another elephant addressing it. But does this mean researchers are now “speaking animal”?  Not quite, says Pardo. Real language, he thinks, would mean the ability to discuss things that happened in the past or string together more complex ideas. Pardo says he’s hoping to determine next if elephants have specific sounds for deciding which watering hole to visit—that is, whether they employ place names. Several efforts are underway to discover if there’s still more meaning in animal sounds than we thought. This year, a group called Project CETI that’s studying the songs of sperm whales found they are far more complex than …