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NewsletterNovember

THE INVISIBILITY CLOAK BY LIVE SCIENCE

Issue 11 I Volume 16 I 2016

Tech M onthly

In the movie "Predator," an alien uses a cloaking device to hide in plain sight, but the effect is far from perfect: The alien's attempt to conceal itself is thwarted by distortions of light bending around it. Now, researchers have built an ultrathin "invisibility cloak" that gets around this problem, by turning objects into perfect, flat mirrors. Invisibility cloaks are designed to bend light around an object, but materials that do this are typically hard to shape and only work from narrow

angles ? if you walk around the cloaked object, for instance, it 's visible. But a new cloak avoids that problem, and is thin and flexible enough to be wrapped around an object of any shape, the researchers said. It can also be "tuned" to match whatever background is behind it ? or can even create illusions of what 's there, they added. Led by Xiang Zhang, director of materials science at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the group

constructed a thin film consisting of a 50-nanometer-thick layer of magnesium fluoride topped by a varying pattern of tiny, brick-shaped gold antennas, each 30 nanometers thick. (For comparison, an average strand of human hair is about 100,000 nanometers wide.) The "bricks" were built in six different sizes, ranging from about 30 to 220 nanometers long and 90 to 175 nanometers wide. Invisibility in Pop Culture] Advertisement The scientists then wrapped up a tiny,

irregularly shaped object measuring about 36 microns across, or a bit more than one-thousandth of an inch. Shining a light, with a wavelength of 730 nanometers, or near-infrared, they found that it reflected back almost perfectly. The light scattering from the cloak still bounced off the object, but without revealing where the object was ? as though there were just a flat mirror in its place, the researchers said.

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Issue 11 I Volume 16 I 2016

Today, Samsung held an event to officially launch its Family Hub smart fridge. We first saw it at CES a few months ago, but Samsung didn't have working units back then. Now it does and now we've played around with the giant 1080p touchscreen attached to this refrigerator ? and it 's just as ridiculous as you might imagine.

It does all the fridge things you'd expect ? "Custom cooling" with a "Triple Cooling System" with an ice maker and custom zones and whatever else. There's a "Flex Zone" that you can set to either be a freezer or a wine fridge. But you're not here to learn about fridge tech, you're here for tech on a fridge. And

Samsung knows how to slap tech on to things better than anybody. It uses the Tizen operating system, which means a few things. First off, Samsung isn't letting users install third-party apps yet, instead sticking to a bunch of apps and widgets that are preloaded. Secondly, it means that this large touchscreen mostly acts like a gigantic phone on your fridge.

The apps are are litt le slow to load and web pages that you load up appear in a phone layout. There are even Tizen-standard phone-style buttons at the bottom, including Home, Menu, Back, and a button to bring up a notifications panel. You rearrange the home screen widgets

with a long-press and tap them to open their app.

The biggest fridge-style you'll care about is "Groceries by Mastercard," which lets you shop from Fresh Direct or Shop Rite directly from the door, so they can deliver those groceries to you. It works, well, like a huge phone app ? and conveniently enough it syncs to a companion app on your phone.

There's an app for doodling notes (the touchscreen response is pretty bad), an app for your family calendar, weather, a timer, an app to control fridge-things like the alarm and temperature zones, and so on. We weren't able to test any voice control (the venue is loud and

THE SMART FRIDGE BY THE VERGE

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THE HEARTBEAT RINGS BY NEXT WEBCreated by The Touch, ?HB? rings use an app, Bluetooth and your phone?s mobile internet to help you feel more connected to your partner. Once connected, you?re able to feel your loved one?s heartbeat in real time through your ring. Your partner can feel yours as well.

There?s utility here.

For long- distance relationships, it could help you feel closer and more connected. For those in the type of relationship that makes people around them sick, well, you can make them even sicker by knowing your partner is with you while they?re downstairs making you coffee. It?s the little things? that make all of us want to vomit.

Reddit, however, managed to poke a few holes in this other-wise romantic technology.

There?s the horror of knowing your significant other died, in real- time? or made their way into a cellular dead zone. While a nice thought that could provide some much- needed comfort for couples who spend a good amount of time without their

Issue 11 I Volume 16 I 2016

Tech Mont hly Issue 11 I Volume 16 I 2016

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Issue 11 I Volume 16 I 2016

Tech Mont hly Issue 11 I Volume 16 I 2016

FAKE NEWS NO MORE BY BBC NEWS

Technologist Daniel Sieradski has developed a plug- in - known as BS Detector - that flags up "questionable" websites on Face-book and Twitter.

The plug- in - has appeared in dozens of news feeds, leading some to think it was an official Facebook feature.

It appears Facebook is currently blocking links to the site.

BS Detector is a plug- in that uses a list of fake news sources as its reference point. It can be added to Chrome and M ozilla browsers and when it spots a potentially false story, flags it with a red banner reading: "This website is considered a questionable source."

It was created, M r Sieradski said, "in about an hour" as a "rejoinder to M ark Zuckerberg's dubious claims that Facebook is unable to substantively address the prolif-eration of fake news on its

platform".

It has had over 25,000 installs since launch. "I and other open source contributors have spent many more hours improving its functionality," M r Sieradski told the BBC. Since that article was published, Facebook appears to have blocked anyone from post-ing a link to the BS Detector website.

"Facebook now provides a secu-rity warning and disallows you to do so," M r Sieradski told the BBC.

Facebook said that it was "look-ing into the matter".

The plug- in is currently a proof-of- concept tool rather than a solution to the issue and some users have reported it has caused their browser to crash.

Facebook faces growing criticism for what some see as a failure to tackle fake news.

In a blogpost in mid- November, founder M ark Zuckerberg said: "Our goal is to connect people with the stories they find most meaningful, and we know people want accurate information.

"We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties."He said that the firm was doing more to allow people to report stories as fake as well as directing people to fact-checking organisations, adding: "We are exploring labelling stories that have been flagged as false by third parties or our community, and showing warnings when people read or share them."

He also announced plans to stop fake news organisations from making money by cutting off their advertising funding.