Before 1973, mobile telephony was limited to phones that were equipped in cars and other vehicles. Motorola was the very first company to develop a handheld mobile phone. On April 3, 1973, Motorola engineer Martin Cooper made the first mobile telephone call from handheld subscriber equipment, placing a call to Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs, his rival. Thie prototype handheld phone he used weighed 2.4 lb and measured 9.1 by 5.1 by 1.8 in. It boasted a talk time of just 30 minutes and took 10 hours to re-charge. Read more for another video explaining why it was an epic troll, along with a bonus clip.
Google Translate breaks your speech down into text-based words, performs a text-to-text translation, and then plays back the translated text using TTS (text-to-speech synthesis). Google’s all-new Translatotron relies on a direct speech-to-speech translation model. In other words, it directly translates input taken as speech and plays it back using a single attentive sequence-to-sequence model, thus offering “faster inference speed, naturally avoiding compounding errors between recognition and translation, making it straightforward to retain the voice of the original speaker after translation, and better handling of words that do not need to be translated,” said Google. Read more for a video and additional information.
NASA has just released a new video showing a fly-over of Mount Sharp, where Curiosity rover is currently exploring and the path that it will take over the next few years as it wends its way up the mountain to learn more about the planet’s geology as well as history. This 3D model was made using data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which carries a host of instruments, like the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), and the Context Camera (CTX). Read more to watch the video and for additional information.
Tesla vehicles are known for their minimalistic interior, including only the essentials that seamlessly blend function and form, but one Model S owner decided to break away from that tradition. Looking like something straight from a Crocodile Dundee movie, you’ll find plenty of leather covered panels, complete with strange buttons on both sides of the touchscreen display, as well as a U.S. Army sticker. Read more for another picture and additional information.
You know a concept is just about to become a reality when the company rumored to be making it posts a fan-made concept on their own social media account. That’s exactly what happened when Lenovo recently shared a foldable Motorla RAZR mobile phone concept by WaqarKhanHD online. No technical specifications are currently known, but it’s rumored to be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 SoC and features a USB-C port as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack. Read more for the video and additional information.
NASA has just completed its first hardware test for Bumble, one of three Astrobee robots designed to research automated caretaking aboard the International Space Station. It arrived on April 17th, and will perform automated tasks in the spring, including recharging at its docking station, Kibo. Read more for a video and additional information.
The Trump administration has requested an additional $1.6 billion for NASA’s $21 billion 2020 budget request to kick start plans to return American astronauts to the moon by 2024, four years earlier than previously planned. The space agency is developing plans for the lunar “Gateway” space station that will be assembled in orbit around the moon to serve as a staging base for eventual piloted flights down to the surface using commercially landers and ascent vehicles. “Our charge is to go quickly and to stay, to press our collective efforts forward with a fervor that will see us return to the Moon in a manner that is wholly different than 50 years ago. We turn towards the Moon now not as a conclusion but as preparation, as a check point toward all that lies beyond,” he adds. “Our greatest adventures remain ahead of us. We are going,” said William Shatner in the newly released video. Read more for a selection of fascinating images from around the web.
HP launched OMEN X 2S, the world’s first dual-screen gaming laptop at the HP Gaming Festival in Beijing this week. Featuring an easy-to-use 6″ 1080p touchscreen that lets players message friends in WeChat and WhatsApp, browse in Spotify, watch Twitch and YouTube, or even serve as a hub for OMEN Command Center software, along with a 15″ 1080p display that boasts a 144Hz refresh rate with the option to upgrade to a 240Hz model or a 4K HDR panel. Other specs include an Intel 9th Gen Intel Core i9 8-core processor, up to 32GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q GPU. Read more for a hands-on video, additional pictures and information.
Anker’s Roav DashCam S1 comes equipped with a Sony Starvis sensor, and it’s being offered for just $71.99 shipped, today only, originally $89.99. An integrated GPS system automatically tracks and indexes every journey so you can review it at a touch. You can also quickly download videos and share them online with the Roav app. Simultaneously record 4 lanes of traffic for a full view of the road, while exposure is automatically fine-tuned to create balanced images and footage in any lighting conditions. Product page. Read more for an in-depth video review and additional information.
How about a wearable armband that can keep your body at the ideal temperature inside the house? That’s exactly what scientists at UC San Diego have created. It works inside for more than eight hours and can lower skin temperature by up to 10°C (50°F), making it a more viable solution when central heating and / or air conditioning is not available. How does it work? Well, is relies on thermoelectric alloys, which use electricity to create a temperature difference, placed between heat-conducting stretchy sheets and connected to a small battery pack. Read more for additional pictures and information.