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Child Item

I bet you didnt know that

Cartouche

As people here work in various jobs / professions they might know things from work or study no one here knows yet. this is what this topic is about.

what do you know that we have never heard of?

Eg: you don't need to be great at maths to be an architect

this is obvious to me but everyone says to me "i wanted to be an architect but i was bad at math,i can barely add"

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retalivity

Exclamation Marc wrote: »

Gary Numan is 13 days older than Gary Oldman.

I did know that!

Big mo from eastenders is gary oldman's sister

ohnonotgmail

Melissa Uneven Archer wrote: »

The last horse cavalry charge by the US Army in battle was in 2001..

I know US Special Forces used horses in afghanistan Is that what you are referring to? I dont think they actually charged the enemy.

Melissa Uneven Archer wrote: »

The time before that was in 1942.

Bataan?

nim1bdeh38l2cw

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

I know US Special Forces used horses in afghanistan Is that what you are referring to? I dont think they actually charged the enemy.

They did, special forces in the opening days of the war. There was only 2 units of 12 soldiers in Afghanistan at the time, embedded in 2 Northern Alliance tribes.

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

Bataan?

Exactly, you know your history

[Deleted User]

The human eye is a complex structure with over two million distinct parts and one million nerve connections, developing over hundred of millions of years from small patches of photoreceptor proteins on single cell organisms. The iris of the eye has unique patterns of striae and colour variation, and begins developing just two weeks after conception. These are so individual that an eye has typically 250 unique characteristics, in contrast to fingerprints which while also unique typically number only about 40 singular characteristics.

A study carried out by an anesthesiology professor at Pittsburg university found that women with light coloured eyes experienced less pain in childbirth, less post-natal depression and less anxiety in the weeks after birth than their dark-eyed sisters. NCX-4 is a gene associated with eye colour which controls a number of proteins, some of which are linked with pain and its likely to be part of the explanation.

Lighter eyed people, especially those with blue eyes, are more tolerant of alcohol and so drink more. Brown eyed people are less likely to become alcoholics. In this case it appears that melanin makes people more susceptible to alcohol, so dark eyed people tend to drink less.

Melanin also acts as an insulator for electrical connections in the brain and the more melanin in the brain, the faster the processing speed and reaction times, so dark eyed people may not be able to hold much in the way of drink but are more likely to be good tennis or baseball players.

4068ac1elhodqr

Candie wrote: »

The human eye is a complex structure with over two million distinct parts and one million nerve connections, developing over hundred of millions of years from small patches of photoreceptor proteins on single cell organisms.

In terms of sight and perception, artificial reality (VR) is quickly catching up with reality itself, and all just within the last decade of human history.

One headset (Quest) due out Spring 2019 will be the 1st to be powerful and completely wire free. Allowing for 6DOF (6 degrees of freedom). 1600 x 1440 (per eye) display resolution on 75hz in full-wide FOV. Not to mention immersive 360 audio and physical tracking for 4,000sq'. 64GB, Snapdragon 845 processing etc. Other folks wil be releasing similar.

Essentially VR will soon reach a point wherby it's sensory load (inc. touch, smell, taste) will make it difficult to distinguish, from actual reality.

Aside from gaming, VR has already proved useful in other sectors and applications from health (PTSD, Phobias) to combat theatre, space exploration, legal courtrooms, education, manufacturing, museum simulation.

Facebook own the (Oculus) Quest and aim to have about half it's 2bn user-base using VR in the future. In 5yrs you won't be telling your offspring to stop watching lol cats on phones, but more so - to return to the actual real physical world.

thesandeman

There are ten black dots in this picture but your eyes won't let you see them all at the same time:

jasonb

KevRossi wrote: »

There are only two companies left on the planet that make globes by hand. One of them is Bellerby & Co in London.

They hand assemble and hand paint the globes and will customise each one to your needs.

What, like leaving out countries you don’t like, or naming cities after your friends?

VW 1

thesandeman wrote: »

There are ten black dots in this picture but your eyes won't let you see them all at the same time:

I think i counted twelve, four per row for three rows? Unless its playing a trick on me.

clappyhappy

VW 1 wrote: »

I think i counted twelve, four per row for three rows? Unless its playing a trick on me.

I got 12 also, but it's amazing you can only see one at a time.

sbsquarepants

clappyhappy wrote: »

I got 12 also, but it's amazing you can only see one at a time.

I count twelve - but I see 6 at a time.

sbsquarepants

We're all familiar with what an iceberg looks like - big towering mountains of jagged ice, eventually eroding / melting into big towering mountains of smooth curved ice.

Well not always

This rectangular block is approx. a mile wide and broke off from the Larsen C ice shelf very recently, as evidenced by it's alarmingly clean geometry, it hasn't had the time to erode - photo is 3 days old.
It's known as a tabular iceberg for fairly obvious reasons and is apparently perfectly natural.

lan

Alanna Thousands Valley wrote: »

In terms of sight and perception, artificial reality (VR) is quickly catching up with reality itself, and all just within the last decade of human history.

[…]

Essentially VR will soon reach a point wherby it's sensory load (inc. touch, smell, taste) will make it difficult to distinguish, from actual reality.

That’s a bit wishful thinking. Even the very best real-time graphics we can produce now on the fastest graphics cards are easily distinguishable from reality, and that’s just for a normal monitor, never mind VR.

If we can’t produce reality level graphics on a full sized PC with a large power budget, then mobile computing (such as built you’d into a stand-alone headset) has no chance. It’s even worse though, reality level VR has much much higher requirements again (would need ridiculously high resolution per eye, 120+ Hz refresh rate, no latency spikes, etc). The rate of improvements in GFX processing has slowed significantly in recent years too.

I’m not saying it’ll never happen, but it certainly won’t be soon.

As for the other senses, I don’t know as much on the topic, but I’d be surprised if we were anywhere close to full immersion levels. How would touch work? What stops you putting your hand through a virtual wall? Some kind of very expensive exoskeleton that can restrict all bodily movement? I’ve heard nothing about any artificial smell / taste products in the works either (though that doesn’t mean they’re not there, of course).

mikhail

thesandeman wrote: »

There are ten black dots in this picture but your eyes won't let you see them all at the same time:

Pick a post, any post. Pick a word in the middle of the post. Fix your eyes on that word. Don't let them wander. Now, try to read some other words on the screen. The fovea, the really high resolution bit of your eye, is bloody tiny.

4068ac1elhodqr

lan wrote: »

That’s a bit wishful thinking. Even the very best real-time graphics we can produce now on the fastest graphics cards are easily distinguishable from reality, and that’s just for a normal monitor, never mind VR.....

I’m not saying it’ll never happen, but it certainly won’t be soon.

As for the other senses, I don’t know as much on the topic, but I’d be surprised if we were anywhere close to full immersion levels. How would touch work? What stops you putting your hand through a virtual wall? Some kind of very expensive exoskeleton that can restrict all bodily movement? I’ve heard nothing about any artificial smell / taste products in the works either (though that doesn’t mean they’re not there, of course).

Haptic (sensation of touch) feedback prototypes do already exist:
https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/20/lightweight-vr-gloves/

The tip of their tongue on thermoelectric elements, that are rapidly heated or cooled, can hijacking thermally sensitive neurons giving the impression of ‘sweet and spicy’ taste
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2111371-face-electrodes-let-you-taste-and-chew-in-virtual-reality/

Electrodes placed on the masseter muscle can give virtual food a harder ‘texture’, they stimulated the muscle at a higher frequency, whereas a longer electric pulse simulated a more elastic texture.

Virtual (meta) cookies in Japan already exist, and combine AR with VR along with artificial scents/smell to offer folks with the munchies a choice of six flaours.
https://vrscout.com/news/bizarre-vr-headset-taste-food/

Vision - Yes it might take dual 576mpx cameras to compete with the human eye's FOV. But as mentioned above - you only see high resolution in a very small area in the center of your vision (the fovea), and there are plenty of other flaws. So actual FOV uses memory recall to build a bigger picture (something processors are ideally suited for).
https://curiosity.com/topics/how-many-megapixels-is-the-human-eye-the-answer-is-complicated-curiosity/

As with all things, they will become smaller, faster and better. Apple's new chip is just 7nm in size. Parallel (IPU) processing (and later quantum level) is replacing current CPU/GPUs. These will handle advanced algorithms at up to x10 current speeds.

A VR world isn't really that far away, suspect it will be more 'significant' than the 'internet itself', as we know it currently.

thesandeman

sbsquarepants wrote: »

I count twelve - but I see 6 at a time.

I'm getting twelve now alright, but only in batches of two and three.

SuperS54

Alanna Thousands Valley wrote: »

Apple's new chip is just 7nm in size.

Nice summary, just a small point, Apples chip is manufactured using a 7-nanometer manufacturing process rather than being 7nm in size.

mikhail

Alanna Thousands Valley wrote: »

Apple's new chip is just 7nm in size. Parallel (IPU) processing (and later quantum level) is replacing current CPU/GPUs. These will handle advanced algorithms at up to x10 current speeds.

The gate of one transistor in the chip is 7 nm in width. The chip is probably a square centimetre or more. Quantum computing is currently at approximately the level regular computing was in the 1850s (though progressing faster) and will probably only ever be a niche solution for the subset of problems it solves faster than regular computers, and current CPUs are already quite parallelised. Are you just making this **** up, or did you read something in Newsweek?

Fourier

I know that a few research groups in Romania, Spain and the USA have looked into how quantum computers will speed up graphics.

I think they estimate a decent speed up for z-buffering and global illumination.

For those who don't know, z-buffering is deciding which shape is behind another in an image so that you don't display the parts of an object that are blocked from the camera's view. Global illumination is deciding on the intensity and colour of light overall in a scene. So like in a "city at night" scene it would be the general light of the moon, but not local effects like light from a street lamp.

For other graphical problems I believe it is not expected they will offer a speed up.

Though I think it's a pretty good illustration of how weird quantum computers are. Load a description of all your graphical shapes into a grid of atoms and quantum mechanics tells you that the atoms in a nearby grid will just coincidentally happen to have their electrons spinning in such a way that when you read their spins off as 0s (up spin) and 1s (down spin) they encode in binary which shapes are behind the others. However nothing in the computer "did" anything to work this out. The answer just happens to be in a nearby grid.

Professor Moriarty

Alanna Thousands Valley wrote: »

Haptic (sensation of touch) feedback prototypes do already exist:
https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/20/lightweight-vr-gloves/

The tip of their tongue on thermoelectric elements, that are rapidly heated or cooled, can hijacking thermally sensitive neurons giving the impression of ‘sweet and spicy’ taste
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2111371-face-electrodes-let-you-taste-and-chew-in-virtual-reality/

Electrodes placed on the masseter muscle can give virtual food a harder ‘texture’, they stimulated the muscle at a higher frequency, whereas a longer electric pulse simulated a more elastic texture.

Virtual (meta) cookies in Japan already exist, and combine AR with VR along with artificial scents/smell to offer folks with the munchies a choice of six flaours.
https://vrscout.com/news/bizarre-vr-headset-taste-food/

Vision - Yes it might take dual 576mpx cameras to compete with the human eye's FOV. But as mentioned above - you only see high resolution in a very small area in the center of your vision (the fovea), and there are plenty of other flaws. So actual FOV uses memory recall to build a bigger picture (something processors are ideally suited for).
https://curiosity.com/topics/how-many-megapixels-is-the-human-eye-the-answer-is-complicated-curiosity/

As with all things, they will become smaller, faster and better. Apple's new chip is just 7nm in size. Parallel (IPU) processing (and later quantum level) is replacing current CPU/GPUs. These will handle advanced algorithms at up to x10 current speeds.

A VR world isn't really that far away, suspect it will be more 'significant' than the 'internet itself', as we know it currently.

Yup, I didn't know that. I still don't know that. I bet I'll never know that.

lan

Alanna Thousands Valley wrote: »

Haptic (sensation of touch) feedback prototypes do already exist:
https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/20/lightweight-vr-gloves/

I didn't say that people weren't researching touch technologies for VR, just that they're not coming any time soon, at least not without serious limitations.

That glove, for example, only lets you "feel" objects by restricting your hand movement. That can only simulate a tiny portion of our sensation of touch though. It pretty much limits you to picking up (weightless) objects. It can't simulate a wall, a table, etc. They say they want to scale it up to a full suit, but I'd be surprised if that technology scales to more flexible parts of our bodies like our arms. Fingers have limited movement that's primarily in one axis, so are comparatively easily restricted. Even if it worked though, you still have the weightless issue, all they can do is restrict, never push (though even the concept of wearing a suit that could fully restrict your movement is mildly terrifying). Finally, you've no texture simulation on your finger tips, it's just glove.

Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting and potentially promising technology, but it's also just a limited proof of concept. Far, far away from "difficult to distinguish from actual reality".

Alanna Thousands Valley wrote: »

The tip of their tongue on thermoelectric elements, that are rapidly heated or cooled, can hijacking thermally sensitive neurons giving the impression of ‘sweet and spicy’ taste
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2111371-face-electrodes-let-you-taste-and-chew-in-virtual-reality/

Electrodes placed on the masseter muscle can give virtual food a harder ‘texture’, they stimulated the muscle at a higher frequency, whereas a longer electric pulse simulated a more elastic texture.

Virtual (meta) cookies in Japan already exist, and combine AR with VR along with artificial scents/smell to offer folks with the munchies a choice of six flaours.
https://vrscout.com/news/bizarre-vr-headset-taste-food/

Those are interesting experiments, but they're just beginning to scratch the surface. It's one thing to simulate base flavours like bitterness or sweetness, it's another thing entirely to actually simulate the taste of a real food. Besides, it'll likely be decades before there's any true commercial applications resulting from that research (if ever).

As for the 'smell display' in the cookie video, that was piped in to the headset from existing fragrance reservoirs. It didn't sound like it could produce smells that weren't already bottled (though admittedly that could cool if you had enough different smells).

Alanna Thousands Valley wrote: »

Vision - Yes it might take dual 576mpx cameras to compete with the human eye's FOV. But as mentioned above - you only see high resolution in a very small area in the center of your vision (the fovea), and there are plenty of other flaws. So actual FOV uses memory recall to build a bigger picture (something processors are ideally suited for).
https://curiosity.com/topics/how-many-megapixels-is-the-human-eye-the-answer-is-complicated-curiosity/

True, focusing (heh) only on the fovea would drastically reduce the complexity needed to simulate reality level graphics, but that in itself comes with some serious practical problems.

Firstly, you need to build high speed, high accuracy eye tracking into your headset (not insurmountable, but not exactly simple either). You then need a way of displaying high enough resolution where the fovea is pointed though. You either need a display with a high enough resolution everywhere (very very expensive and impractical in the short to medium term) or motors to move the display to follow your eye (even less practical).

Even then, there's more to simulating reality than just graphical quality, you need realistic art, models that move in a believable fashion, accurate physics engines, etc etc.

Another (albeit less important) factor in 3D vision is focal length. VR headsets have a fixed focal length (typically infinity), whereas your eyes / brain expect near things to require near focus. It's a small problem, but just further illustrates the challenges with truly replicating reality in VR.

Alanna Thousands Valley wrote: »

Apple's new chip is just 7nm in size. Parallel (IPU) processing (and later quantum level) is replacing current CPU/GPUs. These will handle advanced algorithms at up to x10 current speeds.

Others have already pointed out that 7nm is the node size, not the processor size, but yes, processors continue to get smaller at about the same rate year on year. Interestingly though, it seems Apple have focused more on power savings than speed. They are only claiming a 15% performance improvement over the A11 despite a 60% increase in transistor count.

As for parallel computing, GPUs are already massively parallel. The latest Nvidia chip has over 4,000 'cores' that run in parallel, for example. GPUs are specifically designed to be as good as they can be at graphical workloads, I'd be very skeptical of any claim that a new architecture will provide a x10 boost in performance within the same transistor budget.

Quantum computers are a different beast altogether (of which admittedly I know very little), but I can safely say we're decades away from them being available at a consumer level.

Alanna Thousands Valley wrote: »

As with all things, they will become smaller, faster and better.

Well, yes, chips will continue to get smaller and faster, but that doesn't mean that portable VR headsets with petaflops of power will be practical, let alone even possible, any time soon.

Alanna Thousands Valley wrote: »

A VR world isn't really that far away, suspect it will be more 'significant' than the 'internet itself', as we know it currently.

That's some hyperbole. You've offered links to early trials and experiments as evidence that VR will soon be comparable to reality. Nonsense. While VR is almost certainly going to huge in future, it will take far longer than our lifetime to reach the fidelity you're talking about.

Fourier

lan wrote: »

Quantum computers are a different beast altogether (of which admittedly I know very little), but I can safely say we're decades away from them being available at a consumer level.

Your post just made me think of something, in a sense they aren't computers as they don't compute anything. They should really be called something like "Coincidence harvesters".

I emailed a colleague I used to work with about them (they're his area, one of the Spanish groups I mentioned above) to see if he had a better way to describe them and he sent back this:

...I guess imagine if it was a fact that sometimes if you wrote down a question and threw it into the trash an ink can nearby would be hit and spill onto some paper in just the right way to spell out your answer.

mzungu

Dominos reported record sales on June 17th 1994 and this is attributed to OJ Simpson's attempt to evade police in his white bronco (95 million viewers). It was dinner time on the west coast and evening time on the east coast so people decided to order in instead of going out so they could see it all unfolding.

The record has been broken since as Dominos have loads more outlets now than they did back then.

New Home

Apparently, Christopher Lloyd is 80 this year. This means that when he played Doc Brown in "Back to the Future" in 1985 he was only 47. :eek: Back then I thought he must've been in his mid 60s!

IvyTheTerrific

Speaking of record TV events, record numbers (19 million in the UK) of people tuned in to Coronation Street in March 2003 to watch the comeuppance of Richard Hillman. So many, in fact, that there was a major power surge in the national grid as people went to turn on appliances as the programme ended.

cdeb

The equivalent in Ireland?

The end of extra time in Genoa, 1990.

sbsquarepants

mzungu wrote: »

Dominos reported record sales on June 17th 1994 and this is attributed to OJ Simpson's attempt to evade police in his white bronco (95 million viewers). It was dinner time on the west coast and evening time on the east coast so people decided to order in instead of going out so they could see it all unfolding.

The record has been broken since as Dominos have loads more outlets now than they did back then.

Not sure if the record still stands - but a couple of years ago anyway the dominos in the Square in Tallaght, was the busiest in the entire world, shifting 1 pizza every 20 seconds.

It also forced me to change my regular parking spot when I lived in Tallaght, as I can't stand pizza and the kip stinks out the whole ground floor of the multi story carpark! - I bet you didn't know that:D

brainfreeze

New Home wrote: »

Apparently, Christopher Lloyd is 80 this year. This means that when he played Doc Brown in "Back to the Future" in 1985 he was only 47. :eek: Back then I thought he must've been in his mid 60s!

You were supposed to though, because there was two doc Browns. 1985 and 1955.

The 1955 one looked young, and 1985 version was done up to look 60 plus.

1985:
Christopher+Lloyd+Back+To+The+Future.PNG

Christopher+Lloyd+Back+To+The+Future.PNG

1955:

The second picture is what he really looked like.

New Home

Maybe it's the grey hair, but he still looked older than 47. His skin wasn't as wrinkled, though, I must admit.

pekitivey

Sellotape is a brand name, as is Hoover and Perspex, Tippex and loads more.

ohnonotgmail

pekitivey wrote: »

Sellotape is a brand name, as is Hoover and Perspex, Tippex and loads more.

There are a whole load of these. The most surprising to me are:

Fiberglass
Dumpster
Jet Ski
Vaseline
Bubble Wrap
Chapstick.