This App Tells The Visually Impaired What They're Looking At

You have to wonder if the engineers and designers behind smart phones knew the potential of the devices they were building. They must have known they were onto something big, but could they possibly have grasped how big? These pocket computers have changed all of our lives forever, and people are always finding new ways to use them.

Just look at this app from Aipoly. They've developed a way for the phone's camera to help out the visually impaired. If you think your phone has changed your life, just imagine what this will do for people who can't see. It's just amazing.

People with low-vision or no-vision have a new, life-changing tool at their disposal: a cell phone app that can read out what the camera is pointed at.

It can tell large objects, like a table and chairs, apart from smaller objects, like a coffee cup on the table, and identify up to 900 colors, all in a matter of seconds. 

It can make a huge difference. Think about it: there have to be many times when blind people don't want to have to feel around with their hands.

With this app, they can just point their phone in front of them and listen to it read out what they're looking at. And if it's not in the app's already large database, a sighted helper can put it in for future reference. 

If there was any doubt about what this app might mean to someone who's visually impaired, just look at this guy's smile. 

It's not perfect yet, but you can't say it doesn't show incredible promise for opening up a new world to the visually impaired.

Check it out in the video below!

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Everything In Apple's New HQ Is Inspired By The iPhone, Even The Toilets

When you're the world's richest company, people are going to expect big things from you, and rightly so. And when you're the world's richest company, you can do pretty much whatever you want when you're building your new headquarters. Trust Apple to do just that – they've always had strict design standards, and that attitude has clearly served them well. They know what they want, and they'll pay to get it. What they wanted looks an awful lot like an iPhone, by all reports.

Apple's new headquarters, Apple Campus 2, represents one of Steve Jobs' last projects, so it's only fitting that so much attention is being paid to the smallest of details.

Apple hasn't been timid in its demands, and they often seem to fly in the face of conventional construction. However, in the end, they'll have a building like no other that truly reflects the company.

The new campus, with 2.82 million square-feet of office space, is believed to have set Apple back a cool $5 billion. 

According to many of the project's former workers, Apple has spent a lot of time and money on tiny details to make the building as smooth and flawless as the iconic iPhone. Even the the signage for the fire escape plans required at least 15 meetings, and no vents or pipes can be reflected in the glass. Apple went so far as to provide 30 pages of guidelines about what wood could be used where in the building.

It's all about re-creating the phone that made the company, but on a massive scale. One architect who worked on the project, German de la Torre, saw the iPhone everywhere he looked, from the home-button-like elevator buttons to the curve of a rounded corner.

Another former manager saw the iPhone in the building's sleek new toilets. Even the tolerances required by Apple were iPhone-like, much smaller than the industry standard of 1/8 inch. 

It's ultimately not necessarily the iPhone they're seeing, but Apple's design principles overall – the same ones responsible for the iPhone itself.

And that might not make for the most practical building – the fastest trip to the other side of the building will require leaving the building – but from the polished concrete ceiling tiles to the flat, threshold-less doorways, Apple is building a unique structure that everyone will want to see inside.

h/t Reuters

Advertisement

Continue Reading

When Apple Transports iPhone Prototypes, They Use This Secret Stealth Case

In the Internet age, companies have to go a few extra miles to prevent leaks. Just look at some of the steps Hollywood studios have had to take to keep spoilers from dropping and ruining their box office results. It's the same with hot gadgets, and there are no gadgets hotter than iPhones. Apple has suffered some big leaks in the past – now we're getting a look at some of the things they'll do to keep leaks from happening again.

Before we ever get to spend money on an iPhone, or even get into line for the newest model, Apple has to send prototypes back and forth between the Apple Campus in Cupertino and their manufacturing facilities in China.

And when they do, this is the case they use to send their prototypes, a plain, matte black shell that hides most of the details and is bound with bright yellow tape to show if somebody tries tampering and peeking.

That stealth case travels with a "passport" that documents all the testing the prototype goes through.

As it makes its way from test to test, each technician initials the passport and notes how the prototype performed on their particular test.

Each prototype also has a QR code on the back, which allows Apple to track it.

Of course, these measures haven't completely stopped leaks in the past. Pictures of the iPhone 7 Plus leaked six months before it launched, and an Apple engineer left a disguised iPhone 4 prototype at a bar back in 2010.

Any of the leaks that have dropped in the past haven't exactly hurt Apple's bottom line. If anything, getting an early glimpse has just ramped up anticipation.

The difference, of course, is that Apple doesn't get to control the information when it gets leaked. And big changes can happen between the prototype stage and the actual product launch, so consumers can get the wrong idea and not know what to expect. 

h/t MacRumors

Advertisement

Continue Reading

17 Pictures That Prove The Future Is Now

Advertisement

The future is now... right? I mean, I'm still waiting for my hoverboard, but these inventions are all proof that we are definitely living in the future. From insanely clever to just a little bit bizarre, these inventions are all seriously futuristic. 

Just look at all the neat things you can do:

1. Control your electronics with your gestures

2. Translate signs with an app

3. Climb stairs in a wheelchair

4. Know when the bathroom is occupied

5. Eat a cheeseburger from a can

6. Have your beer delivered by a drone

7. Toss your garbage and always have it land in the trash can

8. Be entertained while waiting for your ice cream to soften

9. See what's in your fridge without opening it

10. Check the time because it's been written out for you

11. Ride in a car that drives itself

12. Know how much time you have at a traffic light

13. See ads interact with their surroundings

14. Learn to cook without burning anything

15. Watch a robot solve a Rubik's cube faster than you ever could

16. Doodle in 3D

17. And lastly, this:

So, these might all look super incredible, and you might be curious (and maybe a little outraged) about the fact that these products aren't in your hand right this second. Well, we don't want the robots taking over right away, do we? Some of these designs are still prototypes and aren't on the market yet. The fact that they've been invented is a major indication at the future, though.

Continue Reading

Smart People Think We're Living In A Matrix-Like Simulation, With Surprising Evidence

Okay, it sounds ridiculous. Obviously it does. The Matrix was a cool movie, and it got a huge cult following. Would anybody really be surprised that some easily persuaded folks might take it too seriously and think it hit too close to home? Well, the thing is, it's not all easily persuaded folks that think we might be living in a computer simulation. There are some bright minds out there who think it's possible, too – and their theories aren't completely laughable.

In the spring of 2016, Neil deGrasse Tyson moderated a debate on whether or not we're all living in a simulation run by super-intelligent, highly advanced beings.

He put the odds that we are at a surprisingly high 50-50, noting the difference in intelligence between humans and chimps despite sharing 98 percent of our DNA. “We would be drooling, blithering idiots in their presence,” he said. “If that’s the case, it is easy for me to imagine that everything in our lives is just a creation of some other entity for their entertainment.”

Neil was backed up by Max Tegmark, an MIT cosmologist, who noted that the mathematical laws that govern the universe look a lot like computer code.

“If I were a character in a computer game, I would also discover eventually that the rules seemed completely rigid and mathematical," he said. And University of Maryland theoretical physicist James Gates said he “was driven to error-correcting codes—they’re what make browsers work. So why were they in the equations I was studying about quarks and electrons and supersymmetry? This brought me to the stark realization that I could no longer say people like Max are crazy.”

The theory was first put forth by Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom in a 2003 paper in which he suggested that sufficiently advanced beings would have computers powerful enough to run simulations of the lives of their ancestors.

Not only that, but there would be so many simulations running that artificial minds would outnumber real minds. Statistically speaking, it would be more likely for us to be a simulation than real. He has some notable followers, too, including Elon Musk.

Many other adherents point to weird occurrences, like the crazy Super Bowl finish, the crazy Oscars finish, and the crazy World Series finish, as proof we're living in a simulation and it's glitching. What do you think?

There are plenty of skeptics too, of course. Harvard theoretical physicist Lisa Randall, who was also in that spring debate, says the chances we're living in a simulation are "effectively zero... The argument says you'd have lots of things that want to simulate us. I actually have a problem with that. We mostly are interested in ourselves. I don't know why this higher species would want to simulate us." 

Advertisement

Continue Reading

This Cube Can Balance Itself, Jump, And Walk

Technological breakthroughs don't always come from likely sources. Sometimes they're complete accidents, or at least unrelated to what researchers were intending to find. And sometimes it's all about trying a thing to see what will happen and worrying about what to do with it down the road. 

Take, for example, the Cubli. It sure doesn't look like it has many practical applications. It looks more like a grad school project that tests a principle, or something somebody put together just to see if they could rather than a serious machine. On closer inspection, the Cubli is definitely a real machine capable of some amazing feats – just don't ask what it's for.

There are no strings holding this cube up. It's balancing on one of its corners all by itself. Try to push it over with your finger, and it will right itself.

Inside, there are three reaction wheels, each driven by a brushless DC motor, motor controllers, inertial sensors, an embedded processor, and batteries. It's the same sort of technology that keeps satellites steady in space, although the algorithms are different because of gravity.

Even if you change the angle of the surface it's balancing on, it will adjust and keep its balance.

That's not even the most amazing thing this cube can do. It can rotate on its own, balance on its edge, and even jump up onto its edge from a flat position.

Combining a jump up onto its edge and a controlled fall, it can walk across a table.

Yep, just a cube out for a stroll on a table. It's neat enough on its own, but researchers are looking into how they might use this technology for planetary exploration or for self-assembling robots.

Check out the Cubli in action below!

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Smartphones And Calculators Were Given Different Designs Because Of The Rotary Phone

Common sense isn't nearly as common as it sounds. Sometimes we just get stuck in ruts and do things the way we've always done them, whether that way makes much sense or not. And we get used to seeing things in familiar ways, not necessarily picking out what's relevant or rational.

A great example is something we all carry in our pockets: Our phones. Most of us have probably never noticed the big difference between the phone's keypad and the calculator's. But you won't be able to un-see it now!

SHARE this cool explanation today!

Have you ever noticed that the keypads for calculators and phones are different?

Which is weird, right? They use the same nine digits in a three-by-three pattern, but the only digit in the same place on both layouts is the 5.

Okay, so that's old tech, but even on the latest devices, the layout stays the same.

On the phone, the 1 is in the top left; on the calculator, the 1 is in the bottom left. Does this make any sense?

You would think it would be easy enough to just standardize the designs, right?

And yet they remain different. So what's going on?

Well, it's easy to forget that phones didn't always have keypads.

Once upon a time, phones had rotary dials...

It seems more than a little odd that, when phones made the switch from rotary to touch-tone, they didn't just port over the pre-existing layout from calculators.

This adding machine was the first to arrange the numbers three-by-three with the 1 in the lower left position. The bean counters and number crunchers who used them every day had no difficulty with them, and machines like this one were in offices everywhere by the late 1950s.

You can't say Bell Labs didn't do their research when they were developing keypads. They tried out many different variations of layouts to find out which worked best.

They weren't thinking about what already existed; they were thinking about how people would use their phones in the future.

Engineers discovered that people simply found having 1-2-3 in the top row easiest to use. 

But when it comes to the phone, the keypad has an additional use that the calculator doesn't: Punching in letters. And it just makes sense, reading-wise, to have the letters start at the top. But nobody would associate the progression of the alphabet with a series of digits starting at 8. As if texting before phones came with keyboards wasn't bad enough, right? 

Still, it makes you wonder why calculators didn't start with 1 in the top left in the first place.

Rumor has it the Bell engineers wondered that as well, and put the question to the big minds at the major calculator makers. None of them had a particularly good answer, however. They just went with the design that people were used to.

It's worth noting that new keypads for things like ATMs use the phone layout rather than the calculator.

SHARE this cool fact today!

Continue Reading