Google becomes the 1st company in the U.S to deliver packages by drone
Alphabet, Google's parent company has a subsidiary company called 'Wing', Wing has now become the first company in the United States to deliver a package by drone. Achievement unlocked!
A small town in Virginia is home called Christiansburg is home to Wing's testing grounds as residents can order products as per normal but instead of getting them driven by FedEx, they can get a drone drop off. Families can use the Wing app to order products, and one family who has already used the app bought Tylenol, cough drops, Vitamin C tablets, water and tissues.
The Wing drones are capable of transporting a maximum of three pounds of goods to a consumer that is located within six miles of the drone loading center called the "Nest". You are probably wondering how the dropping off transition happens, so once the drone has arrived at the marked address it hovers above the house and instead of landing it lowers the cargo via a cable to purchaser.
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NASA makes history with a successful first all-female spacewalk on ISS
NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir made history this past Friday with a successful spacewalk mission to replace a broken part on the International Space Station's (ISS) power grid.
The astronauts main goal was to replace a faulty 19-year old charge-regulating device for one of the new batteries that was installed last week. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine spectated the historical event from the NASA's HQ in Washington, here is what he had to say about the achievement "We have the right people doing the right job at the right time. They are an inspiration to people all over the world including me. And we're very excited to get this mission underway."
For those that don't know, the astronauts aboard the ISS are replacing old nickel-hydrogen batteries with new next-gen lithium ion batteries that are expected to last the rest of the floating laboratories lifespan. If you are after a more in-depth explanation at what these batteries are powering, check out my breakdown post here. In summary, congratulations to both Christina Koch and Jessica Meir for this achievement, women around the world are no doubt looking up to them both.
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Twitch 'Watch Parties' allows streamers & viewers to watch Prime Video
It seems that Twitch have started testing a brand new feature that will allow for streamers to share a selection of Amazon Prime Video content with their viewers.
This new feature is called 'Watch Parties' and according to an email sent to Travis Shreffler, a content creator and author, Prime Video has asked him to test this new feature that will allow for selection of Prime Video and movies to be shared on his channel while he is streaming.
The email also says that this feature will only be available for viewers who already have Prime Video, and to kick off the new feature Amazon will be making Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Mission Impossible: Fallout and Pokemon available. Amazon also says that after some more testing time they will continue to add more titles to service, but for the time being it will only be available in the US and with the previously mentioned titles.
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Qantas breaks flight length record with non-stop 19-hour flight
Qantas has taken to their newsroom section on their website to announce that they have broken the record for the longest non-stop commercial flight.
The press release says that the flight airline took off from New York and was heading to Sydney over the course 19 hours and 16 minutes. The flight successfully touched down in Sydney and according to Qantas it was a test to monitor pilots brain waves and melatonin levels. Medical researchers and scientists that partnered with Qantas for the experiment said that cabin lighting and in-flight meals were also adjusted in ways to help reduce jetlag on passengers.
According to Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce, "This is a really significant first for aviation. Hopefully, it's a preview of a regular service that will speed up how people travel from one side of the globe to the other. We know ultra long haul flights pose some extra challenges but that's been true every time technology has allowed us to fly further. The research we're doing should give us better strategies for improving comfort and wellbeing along the way."
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Dentist plonks down $1 million for 40 factory-sealed retro games
Eric Naierman has just plonked down a cool $1.02 million on some sticker-sealed classic games, with it being one of the largest single-transaction sales in gaming history.
Eric Naierman is a dentist out of South Florida where he flew over to Denver in September to add to his gaming collection. He secured over three dozen of the most-wanted vintage games in the world, spending $1.02 million on it -- this sale is now one of the largest in gaming history.
All of the games that Naierman secured are "black box" and "sticker-sealed" games, meaning they're in absolute perfect condition. Naierman and a small group of partners called the Video Game Club secured a bunch of games for the original NES including sticker-sealed copies of Mario Bros. arcade edition, the two known copies of Gold, and the only copy of Balloon Flight and Gumshoe.
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So, researchers made artificial HUMAN SKIN that covers a smartphone
In some news that should be categorized as "why the hell did they do this", researchers from Telecom Paris have made an artificial skin that has some truly unique properties. Check out this video:
The new artificial human skin is interesting, as it reacts to stroking, pinching, tapping, and even tickling... with the researchers covering a smartphone with it and using it on the back of the device. They also used it on a smartwatch, and I'm sure it'll have a million-and-one use cases, but for now I'm just scratching my head.
Skin-On Interfaces are "sensitive skin-like input methods than can be added to existing devices to increase their capabilities" which is explained on this website. This project saw the researchers wanting to make the "perfect human interface that is the skin for existing devices". The researchers took inspiration from human skin in order to design the "perfect artificial skin".
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Adidas brings the force with Star Wars basketball shoes
Disney is ramping up to the release of Star Wars: Rise of the Skywalker in theaters in the coming weeks, with the company teaming up with Adidas on some themed basketball shoes.
Enter the new Star Wars x Adidas collection of basketball shoes, which will go on sale on November 1. The company will be offering up R2-D2 and Stormtrooper variants of the Nite Jogger, while Adidas will also throw up the Pro Next 2019 with Light Side and Dark Side graphics (as you see in the image above).
Adidas will also have special versions of the Harden Vol. 4, Dame 5, D Rose 10, D.O.N. Issue #1, and Crazy 1 shoes. The entire collection of Star Wars x Adidas Basketball shoes will be available on Adidas.com and select Adidas retailers starting November 1.
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GTA addict will drive NON STOP in GTA 5 until GTA 6 is released
If you thought you were a fan of Grand Theft Auto... think again, because you're not as dedicated as this one gamer who has said they'll drive around GTA 5 until GTA 6 is released.
Rockstar Games confirmed Grand Theft Auto 6 back in 2015 saying they had "some ideas" on where it was going to take the franchise next, and while 4 years have passed since then, no new details on GTA 6 have surfaced. One gamer is now dedicating a lot of time into driving around the map of GTA 5 until GTA 6 is released.
YouTuber 10HoursMovies has already smashed through around 885 laps in GTA 5 so far... but what if Rockstar doesn't release GTA 6 until after the next-gen Xbox Scarlett and PlayStation 5 consoles are released? We're looking at December 2020 for the PS5, so Rockstar could wait until 2021 for Grand Theft Auto 6... that's a lot of driving in GTA 5 between now and then.
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Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 details: 100MP camera and 5G support
Qualcomm doesn't sleep, as it is on a mission to power virtually every single product you touch -- and rightfully so, they kick ass at it. What's next for the San Diego-based giant? The next-gen Snapdragon 865, that's what.
The next-gen Snapdragon 865 chip will be making its way into 8848's new Titanium M6 5G smartphone (8848 is a luxury smartphone and watchmaker in China). They've already outed Qualcomm's unannounced Snapdragon 865 SoC, which will reportedly arrive in two different varieties: one with 4G LTE and another with much faster 5G connectivity.
8848's interesting new Titanium M6 5G smartphone rolls out with a 6.01-inch AMOLED display, a huge 12GB of RAM and equally-as-large 1TB of on-board storage. Camera wise, 8848 is throwing in a 64-megapixel camera that will snap 100-megapixel photos thanks to advanced interpolation.
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AORUS TRX40 mobo teased, should support 64C/128T next-gen Threadripper
AMD is still in the kitchen cooking up its next-gen Ryzen Threadripper CPUs based on the exciting and kick-ass Zen 2 architecture, but what about motherboards to support them? We know about the new sockets in TRX40/TRX80/WRX80 that will support 24C/32C/48C/64C next-gen chips from AMD.
VideoCardz has the scoop here of a next-gen AORUS TRX40 motherboard on the E-ATX standard (i.e. it's chunky AF) and packs 4 x PCIe 4.0 x16 ports, and 8 x DDR4 DIMM slots for quad-channel memory goodness. There's a chipset fan to keep it cool, and a debug LED that can be spotted from this single, mysterious image.
You can see there is a bunch of fin arrays near the CPU socket, which would point to the third-gen Ryzen Threadripper CPUs chewing through copious amounts of power. Given that the new Zen 2-based Ryzen Threadripper CPUs will have up to 64C/128T and up to 280W TDPs, this is no surprise.
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