Astronomers officially find second Earth in habitable Goldilocks zone

Jak Connor | Science, Space, Health & Robotics | Oct 14, 2019 8:44 AM CDT

Its now official, astronomers have managed to locate another Earth-like planet, the news has recently come out of NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.

Astronomers officially find second Earth in habitable Goldilocks zone

According to PhysicsAstronomy, astronomers using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope managed to discover another Earth located in the Goldilocks zone of our galaxy. The planet is titled Kepler-186f. Its about 500 light-years away from Earth in Cygnus constellation which is a known habitable zone due to its position next to a star and atmospheric pressure that can sustain liquid water on surfaces.

Scientists have recognized that there at least 40 billion Earth-sized planets currently floating around in our Milky Way galaxy. But this is the first time one of these planets has been discovered in the habitable zone of another star. Elisa Quintana, research scientist at the SETI Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and lead author of the paper published in the journal Science said "We know of only one planet where life survives - Earth. When we hunt for life outside our solar system, we emphasis on discovering planets with features that mimic that of Earth. Discovering a habitable zone planet similar to Earth in size is a major breakthrough."

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The Witcher 3 shown running on the Nintendo Switch at a locked 30FPS

Jak Connor | Gaming | Oct 14, 2019 8:04 AM CDT

Tomorrow the Nintendo Switch will be hit with one of CD Projekt RED's most nostoriously amazing titles, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Just before the games release we have already got a framerate test and it actually looks good!

The Witcher 3 shown running on the Nintendo Switch at a locked 30FPS

If you have played The Witcher 3, you understand that the game is small by no means. This raised the question to gamers to how much the game will be down-scaled to run on the Nintendo Switch's hardware. While also in conjunction with that question is 'what framerate will it run at?'

Luckily before the release of the game, we already have some gameplay footage to look at. The above footage has come from Pixelacos Gameplays and it shows The Witcher 3 running on the Nintendo Switch in docked mode at a solid 30FPS. The game looks incredibly down-scaled when compared to its beautiful PC or console counter-parts, but that the expected price to be paid for a large game to go portable. The Witcher 3 on Nintendo Switch will be arriving on the hand-held console tomorrow.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will NOT have loot boxes

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Oct 14, 2019 7:14 AM CDT

The previous rumors of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare having supply drops or loot boxes have been squashed, with Infinity Ward Art Director Joel Emslie, confirming that IW is not working on any form of system like this for COD: Modern Warfare.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare will NOT have loot boxes

In a recent post on the official Modern Warfare subreddit, Emslie explained: "Sigh. There continues to be misinformed and incorrect info being pushed about Modern Warfare. What I can say right now is that we are definitely NOT working on any kind of supply drop or loot box system. Also, functional stuff is unlocked through GAMEPLAY. Stay tuned, we're planning to release info this week".

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare might not have supply drops or loot boxes, but that doesn't mean there are no microtransactions at all. Infinity Ward confirmed the game will indeed have microtransactions, but they should be limited to just cosmetic items inside of the game. We hope. It's not like Activision-Blizzard needs anymore drama right now... right???

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Porsche's Macan EV will cannibalize its gas sister-car in a few years

Jak Connor | Electric Vehicles & Cars | Oct 14, 2019 6:08 AM CDT

Everyone who is constantly on the road these days wonders about when car companies are going to start to make the transition to electric vehicles and phase out combustion engine cars. Porsche are beginning to do that, starting with the Macan.

Porsche's Macan EV will cannibalize its gas sister-car in a few years

According to an interview with Autocar, Porsche's chairman, Lutz Meschke said that when the Macan EV rolls out its combustion engine counter-part will also arrive alongside it, but only for a select period of time. Meschke says that in 2021 both cars will arrive for consumers to purchase, but the gas variant will only be available for a "couple of years" before being consumed by the electric variant.

Meschke says that the transition between the two vehicles will be "different by region", so don't expect it to happen worldwide all at once. Porsche's SUV director, Julian Baumann gave some details on the electric vehicle variant and said that the car will be much more aerodynamic than the gas counter-part, and will still maintain "everyday usability". Meschke also touched on how long it would take for most of Porsche's vehicles to become electric, he estimated that 30 - 40% of Porsche's will be electric within five years.

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Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Holland star in new 'Dr. Dolittle' movie

Jak Connor | TV, Movies & Home Theatre | Oct 14, 2019 5:11 AM CDT

The first trailer for 'Dolittle' has been released by Universal Pictures, and from it we can see Robert Donwy Jr. discovering that he can in fact talk to animals.

Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Holland star in new 'Dr. Dolittle' movie

Robert Downy Jr. returns to the big screen in his first film since his departure from the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Avengers: Infinity War. While Downy played Iron Man in the MCU he will be returning to the big screen as a different type of character, one that can magically talk to animals, Dr. Dolittle. 'Dolittle' is directed by Stephen Gaghan who also co-wrote the film.

Story wise, 'Dolittle' is expected to tell the story of Dr. Dolittle discovering he can speak to animals and how he wants to positively invoke his gift on the world. Throughout his efforts in trying to use his gift for good, he will also be attempting to help a young Queen Victoria, who is played by Jessie Buckley, find a cure for a serious disease. Other actors who are both voice starring and physically starring in the film are; Antonio Banders and Emma Thompson. Voices from Tom Holland, Rami Malek, Octavia Spencer, Kumail Nanjiani, Marion Cotillard and more. 'Dolittle' will be arriving in theaters around the globe on January 17th, 2020.

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Death Stranding file size confirmed: 55GB minimum possible day 1 patch

Jak Connor | Gaming | Oct 14, 2019 4:32 AM CDT

The release of Death Stranding is right around the corner and while many gamers have pre-ordered Hideo Kojima's mystery title, how much space will they need available on their system for the install?

Death Stranding file size confirmed: 55GB minimum possible day 1 patch

According to a snag by ResetEra user, vestan who was looking through Best Buy yesterday and found the listing for the Death Stranding LE PS4 Pro, Death Stranding will require "55GB minimum". This number is located at the bottom of the image, and judging on the size of games that have been recently released, and the world that we have seen in Death Stranding - I think its safe to assume there could be some kind of day one patch. If not a day one patch, the box art could be accounting for a potential future patch.

Then again, Kojima and his team could of done some incredible work on this title and managed to squeeze the entire title down into the Bluray disc space. This would be the best case scenario for gamers, as they wouldn't have to account for potentially more disk space than 55GB. Obviously for those gamers who have the larger storage consoles with not-so-many-games this won't be an issue, but for gamers who have limited storage space on their consoles, its very beneficial to know big their coming game is. Death Stranding is releasing on PlayStation on November 11th.

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Facebook's new legal battle is over stealing other company trademarks

Jak Connor | Business, Financial & Legal | Oct 14, 2019 3:09 AM CDT

Facebook is no stranger to legal battles, and now they are about to jump right back into another one. This time for allegedly stealing the logo of a banking app.

Facebook's new legal battle is over stealing other company trademarks

Facebook formed a subsidiary company called Calibra to watch over its coming cryptocurrency that is planned to launch in 2020. Facebook's cyptocurrency 'Libra' hasn't had the best of weeks, as major backers such as PayPal, eBay, Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard have dropped support for it, and now the company is under fire for trademark infringement.

The trademark infringement has been filed by banking app Current, and judging from their official Twitter page located above, they have some grounds to stand on when saying that Facebook copied their logo they have been using since 2016. It should be noted that Facebook announced Libra in June of this year, meaning that Current had their logo for years before Facebook even conceived the idea of developing a cryptocurrency. Current says in their lawsuit that "is not only confusingly similar to, but virtually identical to the Current Marks."

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AI doesn't know why people with bigger hands have larger vocabularies

Jak Connor | Artificial Intelligence | Oct 14, 2019 2:03 AM CDT

While it might seem like a silly idea at first, did you know that people with large hands actually have bigger vocabularies than people with small hands? Its true.

AI doesn't know why people with bigger hands have larger vocabularies

Dr. Gary Marcus, the director of the NYU Infant Language Learning Center, and a professor of psychology at New York University has spoken out about this very topic and how artificial intelligence (AI) is also thrown into the mix. Marcus says this is an old joke that is tossed around by statisticians, and when a person takes into account the entire population and measure everyone's hand-size, the people with larger hands will have larger vocabularies. This is purely because of the fact that the people with larger hands tend to be older, and that adults tend to know more words then children.

This is correlated evidence, and not causation. Saying that something is causing people to learn new words, and causing them to grow their hands at the same time is an observed correlation between the two measured groups. Saying that growing your hand made your vocabulary grow is suggesting causation, this is a very important distinguishable definition that us humans can understand quite easily. Artificial intelligence on the other hand struggles to see the relationship between the two.

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What happens when a city is Nuked? Just every natural disaster at once

Jak Connor | Science, Space, Health & Robotics | Oct 14, 2019 1:10 AM CDT

Humans have undoubtedly created some quite questionable weapons in our time, and nuclear weapons are definitely within the top five of that category. So what exactly happens if one was to be launched at any city on the planet?

What happens when a city is Nuked? Just every natural disaster at once

Above we have a new video from Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell, they explore the affects of a Nuke hitting a downtown city, and how the events of that explosion would roll out on the residents. Firstly, one millisecond after the detonation a 2km wide ball of plasma hotter than the sun erupts from the center of the blast zone, evaporating everything within its radius.

The light that's emitted from the blast is so hot it produces a thermal pulse which burns anything that is able to burn within 500 squared km, or a 13km radius. As the explosion progresses, a bubble of super heated and super compressed air begins to rapidly expand faster than the speed of sound, decimating most already burning buildings, people and anything else in its way. Then a mushroom cloud made from rubble, fire, dust and ash erupts from the center and rises kilometers into the sky, drawing in an abundance of oxygen fueling the already burning fires.

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The world's largest Ouija board is as big as a brontosaurus

Just in time for Halloween... the world's largest Ouija board has arrived in Salem. Ouijazilla was created by New Jersey-based tattoo artist Rick Schreck, who is also the vice president of the Talking Board Historical Society, of which I did not know existed until just now.

The world's largest Ouija board is as big as a brontosaurus

Ouijazilla weighs a hefty 9000 pounds, and so long that the world's largest Ouija board could have five 18-wheel trucks park on top of it. For those unfamiliar with a Ouija board, the "planchet" is the part of the board that you put your hands-on and it moves around -- with the planchet on Ouijazilla a massive 15.5-feet in length and weighs a huge 400 pounds on its own.

In an interview between Schreck and Talking Board Historical Society's director Karen Dahlman, he explained: "The board that I used, actually, to replicate is the 1998 (board) for Hasboro. The glow-in-the-dark board. That's my favorite. ...Ouijazilla is big enough to put, I think, 2,300 of those boards on top of it".

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