Earphone cameras watch your facial expressions and read your lips

Cameras mounted on earphones can monitor your facial expressions by the contours of your cheeks alone, which could be useful for importing facial expressions into virtual reality or lip reading Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2256925-earphone-cameras-watch-your-facial-expressions-and-read-your-lips/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Are the Best Star Wars Stories Now in Games Like ‘Star Wars: Squadrons’?

A game critic for the Los Angeles Times remembers his reaction to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. “What a disappointment — if only it had been built for video game consoles.” This leads to this epiphany:
For all the deserved attention “The Mandalorian” series on Disney+ has received, the just-released game “Star Wars: Squadrons” reminds us that some of the best…

Comcast Working Toward 10Gbps To Your Home Using Cable

Comcast has achieved a 10Gbps “technical milestone” that can deliver gigabit-plus download and upload speeds over existing cable wires, not fiber. ZDNet reports: Comcast has achieved a 10Gbps technical milestone by delivering 1.25Gbps upload and download speeds over a live production network using Network Function Virtualization (NFV) combined with the latest Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) hardware. This is…

Facebook Begins Ghosting the ‘Oculus’ Moniker In Its VR Division

Sam Machkovech writes via Ars Technica: Our “Facebookening of Oculus” series continues today with the announcement of the Facebook Connect conference as a free, live-streamed event on September 16. You may remember years of “Oculus Connect” conferences, which focused on the company’s efforts in virtual reality and other “mixed reality” mediums. That conference is dead. It’s Facebook Connect now. In a…

Scientists Slow Down and Steer Light With Resonant Nanoantennas

New submitter HotSyncer shares a report from Phys.Org: [I]n a paper published on Aug. 17, in Nature Nanotechnology, Stanford scientists demonstrate a new approach to slow light significantly, much like an echo chamber holds onto sound, and to direct it at will. Researchers in the lab of Jennifer Dionne, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford, structured ultrathin silicon…

‘5G Just Got Weird’

SuperKendall (Slashdot reader #25,149) shared this review of the recent 5G standards codified by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) in Release 16 (finalized on July 3). “5G just got weird,” writes IEEE Spectrum: 4G and other earlier generations of cellular focused on just that: cellular. But when 3GPP members started gathering to hammer out what 5G could be, there was…

Firefox Gets Fix For Evil Cursor Attack

Firefox has fixed a bug that was being exploited in the wild by tech support scammers to create artificial mouse cursors and prevent users from easily leaving malicious sites. From a report: The bug was discovered being abused online by UK cyber-security firm Sophos and reported to Mozilla earlier this year. A bugfix was provided and has been live in Firefox…

Virtual House Hunting Gets a Pandemic Boost

Padraig Belton from the BBC writes about how house hunters are using virtual-reality headsets to tour homes in the age of coronavirus. From the report: It’s not for everyone as, at the moment, house hunters have to use their own headsets. But Giles Milner, marketing director at estate agent Chestertons, says he will sometimes send buyers headsets for new-build properties, if…

Google is Quietly Experimenting With Holographic Glasses and Smart Tattoos

A simple pair of sunglasses that projects holographic icons. A smartwatch that has a digital screen but analog hands. A temporary tattoo that, when applied to your skin, transforms your body into a living touchpad. A virtual reality controller that lets you pick up objects in digital worlds and feel their weight as you swing them around. Those are some of…