Joshua Vasquez walks through his adventure of making his own cool looking Portal light plate. He introduces us to Snell’s law, how companies do this for other purposes with a sandwich approach with acrylics, window tint layers, diffuser layers, prism layers, reflective backing layers, etc).
Definitely a cool little project and worth a read if you’re interested in creating such a panel
Oregon was hailed as a national leader by Bernie Sanders and Democratic leadership when it pass Senate Bill 81 in 2015 offering free community college to residents. Fast forward to 2023 and it’s now on the chopping block.
A new report by the Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Committee (Which has been interestingly removed by the state and replaced with a much slicker brochure-style with NONE of the relevant data that summarizes these failures. The original report is still on the wayback machine and I include a local copy here) found that the Oregon Promise has failed by almost every measure. Here’s just one of their conclusions:
It has failed to encourage more high-school graduates to enroll in college, failed to narrow equity gaps in enrollment, and failed to increase college completion rates. And while it has helped a small number of students afford to go to college, most low-income students approved for the program still can’t meet the costs of higher education.
“While Oregon had some unique issues, overall the findings are not unique to Oregon,” he said. “Other places where this has been tried, you find a small pop in enrollment the first couple of years, and then it comes back down to pre-program levels, doesn’t really seem to do much in the long run to boost enrollment, or even movement onto four-year degrees.”
Articles:
Rie Kudan has won Japan’s most prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, with her most recent book: The Tokyo Tower of Sympathy. The judges praised the book, with one even calling it ‘flawless’.
What came next is unexpected. She revealed that she use AI to write parts of her novel (The Times). She revealed about 5% of the book was verbatim sentences she generated using AI.
This wasn’t the first time AI has won a top prize either. The winner of 2022’s Colorado State Fair’s prize for digital art also turned out to be AI-generated.
Nor is it the first time AI has won a writing prize. Journalism professor Shen Yang at Beijing’s Tsinghua University wanted to write a science fiction novel about the metaverse and humanoid robots. The AI ended up generating his entire book – which then took out a national science fiction award Jiangsu Science Writers Association . Using 66 different prompts, the AI drafted ‘Land of Memories‘ in just 3 hours.
After we went through dozens of prompts, the AI generated all of the content – from the pen name, title and text to accompanying pictures. And it’s not half bad. Here’s an excerpt:
In the metaverse’s edge, lies the ‘Land of Memories’, a forbidden realm where humans are barred. Solid illusions crafted by amnesiac humanoid robots and AI that had lost memories populate its domain. Any intruder, be it human or artificial, will have their memories drained away, forever trapped within its forbidden embrace.
Land of Memories
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I didn’t even know an Excel world championship even existed, but Andrew Ngai, a 37-year-old Australian actuary, has won for the 3rd straight time.
He gives us mere mortals some tips
Todd Pierce was a hard drinking, hard fighting, top-tier professional bronc rider that now teaches a lot about God through his work with wild horses. I think a lot of the struggles he went through are ones we all know – especially dealing with childhood hurt, loneliness, and the emptiness of the world despite success. His clarity came when he realized how he wasn’t that different than the wild horses he trained and embraced a higher truth in God.
The amazing lessons he learned through horses should not surprise us. We’re are part of a whole universe full of beauty that all echoes the wisdom of God. Definitely worth a listen.
There’s lots of different door locks out there that use manual keypads, RFID card, biometric device, WiFi, Bluetooth, etc. Mirko Pavleski shows off an arduino powered door lock that works by correctly timing a light pulse for an exact number of milliseconds.
I wouldn’t call it the most secure kind of lock since it only requires a single timed light pulse. A more secure solution would be a pattern of on/off lights. While clever, it’s likely vulnerable to ‘shoulder surfing’ by others watching from a distance with a detector (even if it was UV). This would be true at night when the light would be quite visible. But it’s a fun idea.
Interesting visual effect where objects animated on a random field of black and white pixels are only visible when they are moving. Still images just look like random noise. Maybe this is how animals with highly motion based vision experience the world?
A game called Lost in the Static uses a very similar effect: https://silverspaceship.com/static/ Lost in the Static dev Sean Howard wrote a blog entry on how it works.
The graphics for the youtube video were generated by a simple Win32/C++ app at https://github.com/ChrisBLong/POV
VR and AR have been on a tear lately. But one of the things missing from VR is actual physical feedback when interacting with objects. Haptic feedback isn’t new; but the methods used so far are pretty crude. Currently developed/in development systems from Meta and Haptx use tubes with compressed air. The physical limitations of these systems make them expensive, noisy, and bulky. (A recent Apple patent also hints at their methods)
Enter Fluid Reality. They have developed a system that utilizes an electro-osmotically powered array of pixels that are placed on the fingertips in the gloves. These give a sensation of touch feedback by physically raising/lowering the pixels to simulate the surface (rough, smooth, ridges/edges, etc). But they don’t use air, they use liquid. That method means they can use much smaller, solid state osmatic pumps. This means the entire apparatus can likely fit entirely on the hand instead of needing bulky air systems.
Harrison’s team uses liquid to create touch sensations, resulting in a more precise and quieter system compared to conventional VR gloves that run on pressurized air. This technology can generate more complex touch sensations and is based on the principle of electromagnetic induction, using an electromagnetic field to move liquid within the glove’s liquid chambers. A small battery and standard printed circuit board (PCB) hardware are sufficient for the operation of this technology.
They use solid state, electro-osmatic pumps which means they are much cheaper and all the electronics can fit on the hand instead of needing connection to larger external apparatus.
Read more about it in their paper.
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The Nopia is a midi chord generator from Martin Grieco that lets you play around with different parts of tonal harmony theory to build really cool musical chords and arpeggios. It seems like a great beginner tool for building up great backing sounds.
It’s a beautiful little device that almost looks like something right out of original Star Trek. Perhaps they took some inspiration from Teenage Engineering.
Teenage Engineering is a funky little product design company. They have an eclectic collection of beautifully designed products from a desk, to bags and clothes, to a flat pack computer case – but primarily focus on audio devices. What they’re really known for above the products themselves – is there incredible design.
One of the coolest new devices is probably the TP-7 audio recorder. These devices do a top-notch job technically; and are even more striking for their design. This one features a spinning wheel while recording and playing back that you can hold to stop playback or shuttle back and forth like a mixing dj.
The devices aren’t for everyone. They come at eye-watering prices that relegate them to lifestyle purchasers that care more about looks than price. As an example, the TP-7 is $1499. And less you think that’s ridiculous for a hand-held audio recorder – it is currently sold out.
There seems to be a trend towards interesting new designs for our gadgets. It reminds me a bit of the Nopia.
