Ouya will be shut down for good on June 25th
The Ouya gaming service and all games on the platform will cease functioning on June 25th, Razer has announced. That date will mark the unremarkable end of what began as a runaway Kickstarter success story: the inexpensive Ouya mini-console was powered by Android and introduced games such as TowerFall. But despite being positioned as the indie console, Ouya never quite took...
‘League of Legends’ might be coming to smartphones
Riot is said to be working with parent Tencent to bring the MOBA to your pocket. League of Legends might eventually take up residence on fans' iOS and Android homescreens. Developer Riot is said to be working with parent company Tencent on a mobile version of the ultra-popular MOBA. The pair have been working on the port for over a year, according to a Reuters report,...
Apple summoning media to WWDC 2019 keynote with unicorn emoji invites
Apple has started to send out invitations to members of the media to attend the keynote address of WWDC 2019, an event that typically has Apple providing a first look at operating system updates and features it will be releasing later in the year. Apple will be holding its Worldwide Developer Conference from June 3 at the McEnery Convention Center in San...
An AI System Spontaneously Develops Baby-Like Ability to Gauge Big and Small
Training software that emulates brain networks to identify dog breeds or sports equipment is by now old news. But getting such an AI network to learn a process on its own that is innate to early child development is truly novel. In a paper published Wednesday in Science Advances, a neural network distinguished between different quantities of things, even...
How Wild Should We Let the Solar System Be
Space, as Douglas Adams so aptly put it, is big. Compared with the confines of our own planet, the solar system’s expanse is absurdly huge. The idea that we could deplete its vast reserves seems almost laughable. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos touched on such sentiments on May 9, during a speech unveiling Blue Moon, his spaceflight company’s lunar lander. “If...
Wayne Rooney has driven a revolution at DC United
For years, DC United had targeted June 2018 as a turning point. It was the moment everything would change for one of American soccer’s most storied institutions, which had fallen on tougher times in recent years. And, as it happened, the opening of a new $400m stadium last summer did coincide with a dramatic upturn in fortunes for the...
Indoor Plants Can Clean Your Air
https://youtu.be/y6sDb48pIBg The indoor pollutants that affect health are formaldehyde, Volatile Organic Compounds (benzene and trichloroethylene or TCE), airborne biological pollutants, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides, pesticides and disinfectants (phenols), and radon. These pollutants contribute to ‘sick building syndrome’, which causes symptoms ranging from allergies, headaches and fatigue through to nervous-system disorders, cancer and death. Through studies conducted by NASA, scientists have...
Smartphone App Screens Kids for Ear Problems
By the time they reach school age, about 90 percent of children will have experienced a condition in which fluid fills the middle ear, muffling sound and sometimes triggering infection. Diagnosis usually requires a visit to a specialist—but researchers have now developed an app that detects this fluid just as accurately, with only a smartphone and a paper funnel. “Based...
Forbidden planets: Understanding alien worlds once thought impossible
When astronomers discovered the first exoplanet around a normal star 2 decades ago, there was joy-and bewilderment. The planet, 51 Pegasi b, was half as massive as Jupiter, but its 4-day orbit was impossibly close to the star, far smaller than the 88-day orbit of Mercury. Theorists who study planet formation could see no way for a planet that...
Dark Matter Gets a Reprieve in New Analysis
fter the sun formed, the dust and gas left over from its natal cloud slowly swirled into the eight planets we have today. Small, rocky things clung close to the sun. Gigantic gas worlds floated in the system’s distant reaches. And around countless stars in the galaxy, a version of this process repeated itself, forging plentiful planets in a...
