Intel officially announced yesterday the launch of its 11th-gen mobile processors. Called Tiger Lake, the processor is said to make lighter and thinner laptops possible. The upcoming laptop, the Asus ExpertBook, for example, only weighs 1.9 pounds. The processor will be coming “‘with more than 150 designs’ from major manufacturers over the coming months.”

These new processors also sip on power, so expect up to nine hours of battery life, as well as improved performance across all areas like work productivity, gaming, and image and video processing.

Learn more details about this processor and its capabilities over at Gizmodo.

Cool!

(Image Credit: Intel/ Gizmodo)

Rizwan Mithawala loved taking pictures of moths and butterflies in the many parks and forests in India. As a conservation writer, editor, and photographer for the Indian Wildlife Conservation Trust, he was sent to the national parks of India.

Most weekends, he can be found at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, a sprawling, 40-square-mile forest that boasts as many as 170 species of butterflies in the metropolis of Mumbai.

But then the lockdowns were implemented across the world, including India, and this confined Mithawala inside his home. But…

For Mithawala, there was one bright spot. “I had a 16-foot window,” he says cheerfully. His lockdown project was to tend to a butterfly garden, eight floors up and not far from the busy Mohammed Ali Road in South Mumbai.

The seed of the project was planted more than a year ago, when Mithawala and his mother Naeema were looking for ways to enjoy nature in the concrete jungle. As a photographer, Mithawala hoped to capture the life cycle of butterflies in colorful images. But he had a busy schedule, so the effort took a backseat until the [lockdowns]. Only then did Mithawala find the time to meticulously document the births of dozens of butterflies from his window.

And so he was able to turn his window into a safe haven for a red Pierrot butterfly, whose life cycle he was able to document. And this butterfly garden that he made only cost him 320 rupees — less than $5.

Know more about his project, and see the pictures, over at Atlas Obscura.

(Image Credit: Atlas Obscura)

At first glance, you might think that the product is kid-friendly. After all, it is packed in a food pouch. But when you read the text, then you see the potential danger that it could have on kids. It’s not food, and it’s not a beverage, either. The text says “hand sanitizer.”

While there are no widespread reports of children accidentally drinking hand sanitizer, the problem is serious enough that both Canadian health experts and the FDA have released warnings to consumers.

“The agency has discovered that some hand sanitizers are being packaged in beer cans, children’s food pouches, water bottles, juice bottles and vodka bottles,” the FDA writes. “Additionally, the FDA has found hand sanitizers that contain food flavors, such as chocolate or raspberry.”

[...]

… companies are combining branding with packaging design that looks ready to eat. The most egregious examples we found are being sold under the SmartCare brand, which is owned by Ashtel Studios.

Mark Wilson of Fast Company reached out to the CEO of Ashtel Studios, Anish Patel, to hear what he has to say about this. Check out the interview over at the site.

(Image Credit: Smart Care Canada/ Fast Company)

One of the practices that is frowned upon in the gaming world is rage-quitting, or the event in which the losing player suddenly disconnects from the online match. But why do people disapprove of such practice? The answer is because “it results in difficult team experiences” (just imagine if someone from your squad decides to leave all of you), and the loss of rewards and time (such as in games in which a definite win grants you experience points).

Quitting games mid-match, typically when a player is losing, is a persistent problem in competitive games. In fighting games, developers have tried a variety of solutions to deter players from quitting matches, including putting them in quitter’s jail, shaming them with display badges, and making their heads explode (in game, of course).

An update for Bandai Namco fighting game Dragon Ball FighterZ is threatening players who… rage-quit… with extensive bans. In some cases, players who disconnect from matches may find themselves permanently banned from online play.

More details about this over at Polygon.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Bandai Namco Entertainment/ Wikimedia Commons)

From a man who can’t keep his forklift and boat in the place where he parked them, to a grandpa who is not afraid of fireworks, Ozzy Man compiles clips of men and women who have arrived at Destination F, and lived to tell the tale.

(Video Credit: Ozzy Man Reviews/ YouTube)

It’s not only humans who fear the unknown; animals fear it, too.

When his humans bought a new net to keep bugs from going inside their house, this dog named Sterling Newton thought that he was stuck inside the house. He always stops whenever he comes close to the net.

Can he ever overcome his fear?

Watch the video over at The Dodo to find out.

(Image Credit: Sterling Newton/ The Dodo)

It seems that automobile companies are slowly getting the hang of developing flying cars. Just recently, Japanese company SkyDrive tested their new SD-03 flying car model, and it was a success.

The flight took place at the Toyota test field, one of the largest in Japan boasting 10,000-square-meters and home to the company’s development base.

[...]

The aircraft has been designed to be the world’s smallest electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) model. It measures two meters in height and four meters long, requiring only as much space as two parked cars.

Details over at DesignBoom.

(Image Credit: SkyDrive/ DesignBoom)

And these signatures are what made this book special. These are not just your ordinary signatures, mind you. These are the signatures of many historical figures that we know today.

Between 1596 and 1647, art dealer and diplomat Philipp Hainhofer traveled around Europe amassing an incredibly rich collection of signatures in the “Große Stammbuch,” or “Album Amicorum.” Akin to an autograph book, Hainhofer’s register is replete with the marks of Cosimo II de’ Medici, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, and Christian IV of Denmark and Norway, to name a few. Covered in red velvet, “Album Amicorum” was part of a larger trend to record family, friends, and acquaintances that began in the 16th Century.

Hainhofer compiled the signatures during the course of 50 years, beginning when he was a college student. As he gained religious figures and royalty as clients, he’d ask them to sign his book and commissioned about 100 detailed illustrations to sit alongside. The elaborateness of the illustrations directly corresponds to the signatory’s status and rank in society.

Philipp Hainhofer lived for 69 years here on Earth, which means that, for most of his life, he was creating this book. And if that’s not passion, I don’t know what is.

(Image Credit: Colossal)

Throughout the course of time, countless artists have come and gone on the world, leaving behind them the many sculptures that they have made. Over time, these pieces of art made from wood, marble, and bronze would become well-known and earn their place in history.

Acquaint yourself with some of these sculptures and their respective historical backgrounds over at My Modern Met.

(Image Credit: Xosema/ Wikimedia Commons)

It might look like a silly project, but for Cedrick Tan, it’s worth it. Besides, if you’ve got time to do it, then why not?

“I made a watermelon gameboy! It’s the freshest, most environmentally friendly, fragrant console around! Something fun I worked on before sem started,” wrote Tan on his Instagram post.

“It started off as a joke that I was telling friends and family — it just seemed like something really funny to bring about in public and the icing on the cake would be that its green!” Tan said to AsiaOne.

According to his video, Tan's project original began as a regular RetroPie project. But he soon changed his mind. He wanted something unorthodox and fresh.

And since Singapore is making efforts to become more green, Tan thought "why not use a watermelon?"

And so use a watermelon he did.

Watch how he created MelonBoy on this video.

(Image Credit: Cedishappy/ Mashable)

It really is scary when you see a baseball bat slipping from the batsman’s hands as he swings it, as it will hurt so much if it hits someone. But maybe if you’ve seen this happen hundreds, if not thousands, of times, then you probably can catch it like it’s nothing just like how this baseball player did. He even catches it without looking.

If that’s not amazing, then I don’t know what is.

(Image Credit: u/ handlewithcareme/ Reddit)

“When you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you,” or so the old song goes. That’s how the composer of that song saw the power of a single smile — it is capable of making the whole world smile. Of course, this is just an exaggeration, but, according to this scientific study, a smile is still powerful nonetheless.

The study, published in Experimental Psychology, evaluated the impact of a covert smile on perception of face and body expressions. In both scenarios, a smile was induced by participants holding a pen between their teeth, forcing their facial muscles to replicate the movement of a smile.

The research found that facial muscular activity not only alters the recognition of facial expressions but also body expressions, with both generating more positive emotions.

Lead researcher and human and artificial cognition expert, UniSA's Dr Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos says the finding has important insights for mental health.

"When your muscles say you're happy, you're more likely to see the world around you in a positive way," Dr Marmolejo-Ramos says.

More details about this study over at ScienceDaily.

Cool!

(Image Credit: Pexels/ Pixabay)

Found about 8,000 light years from the Earth, in the constellation Scorpius, is the NGC 6357, which is also known to some as the Lobster Nebula and to others as the War and Peace Nebula. Included in this diffuse nebula is the Pismis 24, an open cluster that is home to massive stars. One of the biggest and brightest stars known to man — Pismis 24-1 — is found here.

This star is the brightest object located just above the gas front in the featured image. Close inspection of images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, however, have shown that Pismis 24-1 derives its brilliant luminosity not from a single star but from three at least. Component stars would still remain near 100 solar masses, making them among the more massive stars currently on record.

Magnificent indeed.

(Image Credit: NASA, ESA and Jesús Maíz Apellániz (IAA, Spain); Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble))

Perhaps the most famous concern that anti-vaxxers raise in discussions is the concern that vaccines could cause autism. Fortunately, for the many people who have been vaccinated, this is not the case, and so nobody should worry about vaccinations.

Two recent studies were unable to rule out that H1N1 (“swine flu”) vaccination (“Pandemrix”) and seasonal influenza vaccination given to pregnant women might be associated with autism-spectrum disorder in the offspring. Now, a large study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, refutes any such association.

While some studies indicate that influenza vaccination during pregnancy protects against morbidity in both the woman and her offspring, the long-term risks of H1N1 vaccination during fetal life have not been examined in detail. However two recent studies were unable to rule out that offspring to women undergoing influenza or H1N1 influenza vaccination during pregnancy, and especially during the first trimester, were at increased risk of autism-spectrum disorder.

Head over at Neuroscience News to know more about the study.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: HeungSoon/ Pixabay)

Websites always remind us to create a strong password, one that has numbers, upper and lowercase letters, as well as symbols. There are even some websites which measure the strength of a password, if it’s very weak or very strong. And then there are sites who would not accept your password if it doesn’t have the elements that make a strong password. But have you ever wondered why the constant reminder?

This infographic from Hive Systems shows how long it takes before a hacker can crack your password.

So how much time will a hacker take before he can crack your password?

Via Facebook

(Image Credit: Hive Systems/ Reddit)