Inventor to cross English Channel on jet-powered hoverboard
the “flying soldier” will attempt to cross the English Channel this week on a jet-powered hoverboard.
Franky Zapata, who wowed crowds in France with a demonstration of his flyboard at the country’s Bastille Day parade, wants to make the journey to mark the 110th anniversary of Louis Bleriot’s first cross-channel airplane flight, according to The Guardian.
“I used 3 percent of the machine’s capabilities [on Bastille Day] and I’ll need 99 percent for the channel. It won’t be easy at all and I reckon I’ve a 30 percent chance of succeeding,” he said.
Zapata has said he expects to cross the channel, which ranges in width from 20 to 150 miles depending on the location, in about 20 minutes.
“This has made the challenge 10 times more difficult,” Zapata said, adding that he will refuel once midway instead of twice as he had planned. “It’s a completely arbitrary and unreasonable decision.”
Zapata’s flyboard is powered by five mini turbo engines and can reach speeds of up to 118 miles per hour.
Engineers restore audio recordings from Apollo 11 mission
https://app.exploreapollo.org/apollo11
https://app.exploreapollo.org/moments/moment/6
when a college professor of speech communications wanted his students to study a prime example of teamwork, the U.S. government sent them to NASA, which is notorious for recording everything it does. NASA would send Dr. John H.L. Hansen of the University of Texas at Dallas to the Johnson Space Center, in Houston, and a room with a bunch of old tape reels on which were recorded the mission control audio of Apollo 11.
“This was really the first time where m any of our students were listening to people who literally made history… and a lot of people behind the scenes,” says Hansen.
the recordings were contained on special 30-track tapes recorded on long-forgotten machine called SoundScriber. Each person was recorded to their own track. Hansen and his students had to fix the machine and connect it to a computer to speed along what ended up being more than 19,000 hours’ worth of audio.
Hansen’s team was able to not just digitize the recordings, but with use of algorithms, provide transcripts noting who was speaking and when in terms of date and time. The results were turned over to NASA and are also being included on the ExploreApollo.org website.
Cat filter activates during police live stream about double murder
Police in British Columbia, Canada, issued an apology Friday after a cat filter was mistakenly applied to a live stream of a news conference about a double murder.
When the filter activated, a sergeant with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police suddenly appeared on computer screens with cat ears on her head and whiskers on her face as she spoke to reporters about the slayings of a young couple,
The cat filter had apparently been on an “automatic setting” and police said Friday on Twitter that they were working to fix the problem — and a video of the news conference was later made available without the filter.
Foxtel will revamp its menu and remote control with Netflix deal
Arriving by November, the software will completely change the way shows are presented, categorised, and accessed
no longer hunting down repeats or series linking shows but simply selecting them from a scrolling entertainment buffet.
THIS WEEK IN TECH HISTORY
First Launch from Cape Canaveral
July 24, 1950
The first successful rocket launch occurs at Cape Canaveral. The rocket, Bumper 8, was a captured German V-2 modified with a US Army Corporal second stage.
Commodore Amiga Introduced
July 23, 1985
Commodore introduces its Amiga personal computer, also known as the Amiga 1000 or A1000. Featuring a multitasking, windowed operating system, color graphics, and stereo sound among other features ….
Apple Introduces iBook Laptop
July 21, 1999
Apple introduces the iBook laptop, the first mainstream computer designed and sold with built-in wireless networking.
Intel Founded
July 18, 1968
Robert Noyce, Andy Grove, and Gordon Moore incorporate Intel in Santa Clara, California to build microprocessors. Their first processor, the 4004, was released in 1971 for use in calculators. IBM’s choice of Intel’s 8088 processor for use in the IBM PC led to Intel’s emergence as the premier manufacturer of processors still to this day.