mirrors
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Honda's compact EV swaps mirrors for side cameras
Not only will Honda's cool little electric vehicle, the Honda E, come with cameras instead of side mirrors, they'll be offered as a standard feature. The compact cameras will sit where their mirror predecessors did, and inside, drivers will find a six-inch screen at each end of the dashboard. Honda says they'll reduce drag, boost efficiency and offer a better perspective.
'Untrained Eyes' explores how computers perceive you
If you search for "man" on Google, most of the image results you'll get are of white males looking confidently at the camera. "Woman," meanwhile, brings up pictures of women that appear to have been taken from a male gaze -- and yes, you guessed it, they're also predominately white. That lack of inclusion in machine learning is what "Untrained Eyes," an interactive art installation, aims to shed light on. The project, created by conceptual artist Glenn Kaino and actor/activist Jesse Williams, comes in the form of a sculpture that uses five mirrors and a Kinect to get its point across. Stand in front of it, wave and, within seconds, you'll be presented with an image that will "match" your appearance.
Softlab transforms 'empty' space with light and mirrors
Recently, Engadget visited The Lab, HP's trippy art exhibition incongruously placed in the middle of the Panorama Music Festival in NYC. It proved surprisingly popular among festival-goers thanks to the visual and auditory sensory experiences (and possibly because illegal substances were involved). One in particular stood out from a technological and artistic point of view, however: "Volume," an installation by NYC's SOFTLab.
Scientists achieve X-ray vision with safe, visible light
If you think X-rays and other forms of radiation have a monopoly on penetrating opaque objects, visible light begs to differ. It actually can pass through things like paint and human tissue, which has powerful implications for medical research and other fields. Regular lightwaves could one day replace X-rays or even allow scientists to remove tumors with lasers instead of risky surgery. The problem is, such light is either absorbed or scattered once it passes through non-transparent items -- making it useless for imaging. Or is it? According to Nature, scientists are honing methods to reassemble scattered light that passes through opaque objects to create a usable image on the other side, Superman-style.
Panasonic's smart mirror turned me into a 1970s space princess
It was going to be either me or my male colleague. That's a lie: It was absolutely going to be me. It was my last day at IFA, Europe's biggest technology show, and Brad Molen and I were sitting inside a sparsely decorated smart home that Panasonic had built in the middle of the demo area. Panasonic needed a volunteer to sit in front of its prototypical smart mirror, which applies digital "makeup" so you can sample new looks. I exchanged a look with Brad, imagining his bearded cheeks with blush on them. Then I sat down and agreed to let a machine tell me everything that was wrong with my face.
Fisker confirms Q&A outlining Karma woes and fixes, may establish council to talk issues in person
Fisker has had more than its fair share of teething troubles with the Karma, but it has to be given credit for going out of its way to listen to early adopters. The hybrid car builder has confirmed to Autoblog that a question and answer session making the rounds is the official result of town hall discussions that have both acknowledged problems and promised fixes where they're possible. The answers we've been given are a mix of sober realities and practical remedies. Drivers hoping for outright hardware upgrades to improve performance with existing Karmas will have to keep wishing; thankfully, a host of firmware fixes are on the way to improve at least the sedan's Command Center system and mirrors. PR lead Roger Ormisher even hints that there could be an in-person council that would tackle concerns more directly than the remote pep talks. We're mostly hoping for the day when Fisker stamps out the bugs and doesn't need the Q&A to put Karma owners' minds at ease.
Thermo Mirror measures body temperature, gives us something else to stare at
As good looking as we are -- and you know we are -- we sometimes get tired of staring into the mirror. Honestly, aside from reminding us of our resemblance to a young Sean Connery, the standard mirror really doesn't do much, but the Thermo Mirror is another story. The device, designed by Japanese electronics firm NEC/Avio, uses an infrared sensor to measure an onlooker's temperature from up to 30 centimeters (about 1 foot) away, without physical contact. The subject's temperature appears on the mirror's surface, and, if they have a fever, an alarm sounds. Thermo Mirror is available in two versions and costs between 98,000 and 120,000 yen (or $1,180 and $1,440). When not in use, its face displays date, time, humidity, and temperature. Now if it could just make us a martini -- shaken, not stirred, of course.
Art Lebedev's Reflectius clock tells time with a single laser beam
Art Lebedev managed to impress us with its Segmentus analog clock last month, but it looks like the prolific design firm has now already outdone itself with its new Reflectius clock concept, which uses a single laser beam and sixty rotating mirrors to display the time. That impressive mechanism is matched by the clock's angular exterior (pictured after the break), which Art Lebedev describes as "a complex triangulated surface that reminds of the complicated trajectory the beam of light travels in no time." Unfortunately, it is still just a concept, but you can at least get your usual glimpse of Art Lebedev's design process at the source link below.
World of Warcraft Patch 3.1.2 mirror
Patch 3.1.2 was released today, and that means the Blizzard downloader will inevitably become clogged and congested tonight as millions of people around the world try to update their game to the latest version.Our sister site Big Download has posted a patch mirror for us all, and you can head over there and grab the file to download. They are currently hosting both the PC and Mac versions, and we'll have international versions up soon.Stay tuned to WoW Insider for the latest on the patch, and what will hopefully be a smooth and bug free transition from 3.1.1. Comments on this post have been disabled.
EU patches up at Big Download
When we posted links to the recent patches mirrored on our sister site Big Download yesterday, several of you bemoaned the fact that the European patches were not up yet. Rejoice! Now you can directly download the European 3.0.1 and 3.0.2 patches, without having to muck with the Blizzard downloader. Currently the German, English, French, and Russian patches are up (the 3.0.2 patch is langugae-specific, while the 3.0.1 patch is not). They promise to have the Spanish patch up within the hour. The Spanish patch is up now too. Also currently only the Windows version of the 3.0.2 patch is available; I'm sure they'll get the Mac version up if and when they can. Remember to apply the patches in order, 3.0.1 first then 3.0.2. Oh, and don't delete your patch files when you're done patching (more on this soon).
Mirrors to get you caught up with patch 3.0.2 [UPDATED]
It's going to be important for everyone who wants to play tomorrow to download all the available parts of the 3.0.2 patch. Right now the download consists of over 1gb of data. Tomorrow there'll probably be another 250mb to 400mb final part released, which you'll either need to get via the patch downloader or check here for mirrors. If you don't get the parts of the patch file that are available now, you'll be waiting a long time to get them on Tuesday.Check after the break for our listing of virus free patch mirrors. And be sure to check back tomorrow; as soon as we have a few spots for you to download the final part we'll get them up ASAP.Article updated with European patch mirrors.
PTR 3.0.2 Patch mirrors
Everyone seems to be having problems downloading the Public Test Realm (PTR) client still. This can be a real problem for some, especially if you don't have access to a high speed internet connection all the time. You can read the PTR patch notes multiple times over and still not be finished with the download.WoWWiki has a great list of a few mirrors, and I've linked to the most trusted ones I use all the time after the break.Please keep in mind that it is always possible, although highly unlikely, that one of these files might contain a virus. You should be running something to scan for viruses on all incoming files, like the free AVG.See below after the break for the mirrors list.
Get your bare bones raiding addons here
Tonight many people are going to rush into raiding. It's going to be a fun time for many – perhaps you're going to explore the Sunwell Plateau for the first time, or perhaps you'll no longer be stuck at 5/6 and 3/4. Rage Winterchill awaits you and he's a big push over. He goes boom pretty easily.The common component amongst all of us raiders, whether we're in Kara or pushing onto Sunwell, is that we need addons to make our life easier. There are several necessary ones: Deadly Boss Mods, Omen, ora2, Recount, DrDamage, etc... If you don't have these tonight, things can get markedly more complicated and difficult. The big problem with getting these addons is that they can be dreadfully hard to get a hold of. Most sites are bogged down to the point they're not working.So let me make this easier for you. I've provided mirrors of several key updated patch 2.4 mods that I'll be using tonight to raid. Feel free to grab them from the links I've listed after the break. They'll only be up on these links for the next 24 hours or so – after that I'll replace the links with the addon's main site. The traffic should have subsided by then.Read on after the break for addon mirrors!
Mirror, mirror, on the wall...
...who has patch 2.4 for you all?I've spent the day collecting patch mirrors for everyone. Some may require a short free registration. All of them are sources I, and others, use and trust. However with that said, we can't be responsible if something goes wrong. But I've never heard of that happening.2.3.3 to 2.4.0 patch mirrors: AoA Files FilePlanet MacGameFiles RapidShare MegaUpload Games32 GamersFeed DownloadGeek Internode Full 2.x to 2.4.0 patch mirrors: MegaUpload Games32 Internode There are more lists available at WoWWiki and Nihilum. However, there are several sites on there that I haven't been able to test or havne't used before - so your mileage may vary.Enjoy your speedy downloads!
Snarkiness concerning Linden Lab's Knowledge Base
The Daily Evergreen Online, a publication with which I'd had no previous contact, has won my immediate love with this article on Second Life's Knowledge Base. Apparently the author was trying to find a solution to a friend's avatar problem and got distracted by the tempting, low-hanging fruits on offer. Here, he offers up a random sampling, and answers each question with Snark.They're funny answers, but here I'm going to expose my geekiness: His answer to "How do I find out everything I'm wearing?" mentions mirrors, but there really aren't any in SL. Well, there's a way to make one, but it's complicated, and doesn't really work the way a mirror should. So minor points off for that one, but go check out the rest, they're great.
Mirror-enabled videoconferencing on the iPhone
The iPhone application community continues to amaze me-- this time, Engadget's got the heads up on an iPhone video conferencing system, made possible by not only a cool little piece of code (designed for a C4 contest) that fetches an iPhone's camera input and feeds it out to another iPhone via a webserver, but also these ingenious mirror settings that work as a little periscope around the phone, and let you both see the image on the front while the camera on the back grabs yours. Wild!The Ecamm folks are old hands, apparently, at the ingenious use of mirrors around an Apple camera, but this definitely tops anything I've seen in the past. Just an amazing hack, both in terms of software and hardware. Unfortunately, the source (for either hack) isn't available yet, but they promise that something is coming soon. In the meantime, just bask in the glow of what these iPhone guys are capable of.Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
Seura brings HDTV into mirrors
LCDs have been in mirrors for sometime now. But Seura is 'kickin' it up a notch' by installing 1080p Sharp LCDs in 'em. These, dare we just call them mirrors, are Cable Card enabled to allow for watching Good Morning America HD during your morning shave. But you aren't going to be seeing Diane Sawyer on a small screen as these LCDs can range from 26 to 45-inches with 60-inches on its way. What? who has a mirror that big to start with...nevermind. They come with remotes and are compatible with satellite, sound systems and DVD players. The LCDs mirrors are currently available but you need to contact the company or its dealers for a price.
