New Florence. New Renaissance.

Tri-Alpha’s Fusion machine

The machine that orchestrates this plasma-on-plasma violence is something of a monster, 23 meters long and 11 meters wide, studded with dials and gauges and overgrown with steel piping and thick loose hanks of black spaghetti cable. Officially known as C-2U, it’s almost farcically complicated–it looks less like a fusion reactor than it does like a Hollywood fantasy of a fusion reactor. It sits inside a gigantic warehouse section of Tri Alpha’s Orange County office building surrounded by racks of computers that control it and more racks of computers that process the vast amounts of information that pour out of it–it has over 10,000 engineer control points that monitor the health of the machine, plus over 1,000 physics diagnostic channels pumping out experimental data. For every five millionths of a second it operates it generates about a gigabyte of data.

In August, Tri Alpha announced that its machine had generated some very interesting data. So far the company’s primary focus has been on the long-enough problem, rather than the hot-enough part; stabilizing the plasma is generally considered the tougher piece in this two-piece puzzle. Now Binderbauer believes that they’ve done it: in June the reactor proved able to hold its plasma stable for 5 milliseconds.

Time (sub required)

 

Digital Handymen

“How do I change my account back to English? I don’t know what I did, but now it’s in Slovak!” An anonymous user posted this cry for help on Fixya.com, a free question-and-answer site, on Feb. 20, and by the next day, a “Facebook Master” named David Payne had answered with step-by-step instructions and a video tutorial. By September, more than 50 other people had viewed the exchange. “There’s this huge void of people who need help, and they have nowhere to go to,” says Fixya CEO Yaniv Bensadon, whose site has more than 150 categories, ranging from welding tools to bridal attire.

Startups have turned their attention to fixing up the world of repair and offering service on demand. Immediacy and the promise of a live person have big appeal in a world where toll-free support is detested, visiting local shops is time-consuming and online tutorials aren’t always there.

Time (sub required)

Photo Credit

Disrupting Western Union?

Dozens of new startups running websites and apps now provide cheaper, easier ways to transfer money abroad. Remittance senders paid banks approximately 8 percent of the $583 billion that people sent across borders last year. On the other hand, WorldRemit and other digital competitors take only 1.3 percent or less to send up to $1,000. The startups only operate digitally, buy currency in bulk to get volume discounts, and offer better exchange rates. To speed transactions—and maximize fee volume—most of the startups automate ID verification and check against money laundering.

WorldRemit and its rival Azimo market mainly to blue-collar migrants who typically send money home in increments of $1,000 or less, while another startup, CurrencyFair, targets professionals who send larger amounts. The startups are concentrated in Europe because of the ease of complying with regulations. Although most of the transfer startups aren't profitable, investors are interested in their expanding market share, which is currently very small compared to traditional providers such as Western Union.

BusinessWeek

 

 

For Black Friday

Wired and Reviewed.com have 20 suggestions for personal technology, home entertainment devices, appliances for the home, and gear to use on the job.

The evolution of the pumpkin

As you enjoy pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving and pumpkin spice lattes through the cold season, think about its evolution over 10,000 years.

From Txchnologist

“Fortunately, the fruit found a new mammal to rely on: humans. People had been using wild gourds for containers and possibly even floatation devices for fishnets. But over time, they began eating the fruit, replanting the ones that were most palatable. Eventually, over thousands of years, the fruit evolved to become mild and tasty — and now icons of the fall season.

Scientists have previously known that Cucurbita was domesticated. But to gain more insight, the researchers analyzed the genomes of ancient Cucurbita samples — bits of seeds and rind — found in caves in places such as central Mexico and the Ozark Mountains in the central U.S. The genetic patterns of the samples reveal human agricultural fingerprints all over the plant’s evolutionary history.”

Your auto as wallet

Using an iPad that stood in for a car's infotainment screen, DocuSign head of product Ron Hirson showed how a combination of digital taps and finger signatures is all it takes to select a lease payment plan (based on annual mileage), choose an insurance carrier (three companies' options were offered) and authorize the car to pay tolls and other in-car expenses.

Engineers with  Visa Innovation Labs and DocuSign Labs came up with a system that effectively turns the automobile into an extension of its owner's wallet.  By combining DocuSign’s Digital Transaction Management platform and eSignature solution with Visa’s secure payment tech, the car’s identity is then registered on the Bitcoin Blockchain, the secure ledger database used by the alternative currency platform to record transactions over broadly-distributed computer networks.

USA Today

 

 

Ok, Google

Digital personal assistants are increasingly more sophisticated and we all have our favorites – Apple Siri, Amazon Echo, Microsoft Cortana. Well, Google is not slouching.

“You pick up your phone and say “OK Google”... and then what? Your phone is listening. The microphone icon is pulsing. What do you say to your phone?”- Greenbot has a long list of commands

Google has its own list of suggestions below

 

“Our Season”– the USPS time to shine

The Postal Service expects to deliver a total of approximately 15.5 billion cards, letters, flats, and packages during the 2015 holiday season. In addition, they are projecting approximately 600 million packages will be delivered between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, which is an increase of 10.5 percent over last year’s volume.

The service is making the holidays efficient and fun. You can sign up for notifications within a few minutes of the delivery scan of packages. You can order a batch of Priority mail boxes delivered for free. You can take the kids to a kiosk at a local post office and buy holiday stamps. Actually even more fun for the kids - download the augmented reality app, point it at the eagle logo on any of the blue mailboxes and enjoy the animations (which change twice a week).

“Granny Pods”

The MedCottage, designed by a Blacksburg company with help from Virginia Tech, is essentially a portable hospital room. Virginia state law, which recognized the dwellings a few years ago, classifies them as “temporary family health-care structures.” But many simply know them as “granny pods,” and they have arrived on the market as the nation prepares for a wave of graying baby boomers to retire.

Washington Post

 

 

Lightest Metal. Ever.

HRL Laboratories, a research institute that does R&D for Boeing, has developed what they're calling "the world's lightest material." And despite it being 100 times lighter than Styrofoam, it's actually made out of metal. The researchers achieved this by creating "a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness of 100 nanometers, 1,000 times thinner than a human hair," resulting in a piece of metal (nickel, at least in the prototypes) that is 99.99% air.

Core 77