EVERY 95 MINUTES, the Chinese satellite Zhuhai-1 02 makes a full pass around the planet, its solar-panel arms extending from its boxy body as it observes Earth. Sometimes, its path takes it over Pueblo, Colorado. There, more than 300 miles below, Mike Coletta’s receiving station can pick up Zhuhai’s transmissions. Because as sophisticated as space technology is, the terrestrial tech necessary to make contact with celestial satellites is surprisingly low. Coletta just has four TV antennas—the kind that look like 2-D pine trees—each pointed in a cardinal direction. They’re bolted into place along garage beams, a patio post, and the rooftop of his house. Inside his home office, on Tuesday, Coletta waits for Zhuhai's signals to appear. He sits in front of a laptop and an iPad, a big shelved monitor hovering above. Coletta has, since 2012, spent his free time eavesdropping on the sky, picking up satellite signals—signals that, for the most part, were never meant for hi...
Magic Leap has finally revealed the Magic Leap One, its first consumer-orientated augmented reality goggles, are set to release to the public in 2018. After years of hype with very little sign of a product to match, it now seems the company is ready to unleash its AR technology upon the world. Similar in principle to Microsoft's HoloLens, the Magic Leap One is worn around the head and over the eyes, but looks more like a pair of ski goggles than the VRor mixed reality headsets we've seen previously. Shipping with a handheld pointer controller, the unit works independently of a games console or phone, instead sharing processing duties between a computer embedded in the goggles, and a separate processing unit that sits in a puck that can be worn on a belt or in a shoulder pad. That puck is said to have power relative to a MacBook Pro or gaming laptop, with the headset keeping track of "multiple input modes including voice, gesture, head pose and ey...
THIS WEEK SAW a tragic start, when late Sunday night a man named Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and wounded hundreds more in Las Vegas. Hoaxes and conspiracy theoriesflooded the internet in the immediate aftermath, as did questions—since answered—around how Paddock was able to fire at automatic speeds. We also took a look at gun-control tech—but didn't find much that's promising. There's at least a little levity—although more tragicomic, really—in Yahoo announcing that its one-billion account leak in 2013 was actually a three-billion account leak. You also might enjoy this handy guide to when Donald Trump is tweeting, and when one of his staffers has commandeered his account. Also, the Department of Energy's email about not leaking leaked, so that's fun. OK, back to terrible things. There's been an alarming rise incyberattacks against abortion clinics lately. Another NSA contractor let critical data slip. The Equifax leak took on a ...
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