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Wednesday, April 22, 2026
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Scott Kelly Returned to Earth Smiling After a Year in Space

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Scott Kelly Returned to Earth

Today marks the day when Scott Kelly returned to Earth along his two crewmates after a year spent atop the International Space Station. One of the three is none other than astronaut Scott Kelly, the one who is currently holding the world record for the longest time spent in outer space (summing up about 530 days), after a nearly year-long experiment.

340 days devoted to living on the ISS with the sole purpose of research, discovery and the betterment of humanity. Scott Kelly represents a key in all of the above as his personal experience will serve our species advance and understand how our kind can survive the harsh conditions of space. Because Kelly has a biologically identical twin brother back on Earth, scientists can thoroughly study the way exposure to prolonged time spent away from the conditions of our planet can physically and psychologically alter humans.

Scott Kelly has been a vital key to raising awareness regarding the prospect of humanity in space. He became more than just a symbol or a mere name in a hall of fame thanks to his courageous mission. He became a symbol to hundreds of thousands because all along his journey, he never ceased staying in contact with planet Earth. His Twitter account is filled with daily photos taken from the ISS of our planet, our moon and the great black void that surrounds us. Kelly even did an entire Reddit AMA as well as a Tumblr series of Q&As for his fans back on Earth.

After loading into the Soyuz TMA-18M descent module, Scott Kelly and his two crewmates departed from the ISS and began their journey back home. The space capsule descended through the stratosphere and landed in Kazakhstan on Tuesday night. His reaction to coming back on Earth after so long, as he was being pulled up by medical staff in order to make sure he is alright was priceless. “The air feels great out here, I have no idea why you guys are all bundled up”, followed by pumping his fist victoriously.

While a year in space has undoubtedly been harsh and challenging, his next few months will hardly be a breeze. After 340 days spent in a no-gravity environment, away from all the things that a human being is used to and needs to thrive from a biological perspective, Scott Kelly will have to undergo intensive recovery treatments. Right after researchers perform the study on him and his twin brother who has remained on Earth this entire time.

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Hound Is a Voice Assistant That Can Actually Help You

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Hound Voice Assistant

An application coming from a company called SoundHound that aims to do better than its counterparts is here: the Hound voice assistant can understand and help you better. SoundHound is a name that tried its luck first in music recognition services (think Shazam) but couldn’t keep up with the already rather monopolized market.

So what better way to use the technology you already own than to put it to work in a market segment that really needs some help? While on paper and in ads, smart voice assistants are simply the best tech buddies you can have, in reality, things are hardly that way. Even as a native English speaker, more than just a few individuals have complained that the likes of Siri, Google Now, Cortana or Alexa misunderstand them or start refusing to cooperate from one point of the query and onwards.

The issue that most voice assistants face is the lack of ability to continue elaborating on the same topic. Asking Siri one question such as the movie times is fine, for example, but if you also want to ask something else about the topic afterwards, you need to watch your phrasing and make sure she knows you’re talking about the same thing.

SoundHound’s Hound app tries to work on these areas where other developers have not and provide the public with an assistant that will find it easier to understand you and provide the type of information you need with the least amount of hassle. With the attention that the developers of the app paid to speech recognition and natural language processing, the assistant has a different algorithm that it uses in order to process the information that you give it.

In that sense, Hound is an assistant that you don’t have to think really hard how to ask questions to before doing so. Instead, its capabilities will allow you to ask questions the way you normally do without problems. Not only that but follow-up questions don’t seem to be as big of an issue as they are in the case of other voice assistants either, this being a feature that will actually allow you to refine your search.

Another nifty addition that the developing company has busied itself with in regards to the assistant is partnering up with Yelp and Uber, and the integration of said services into Hound afterwards. That gives you open access to the two applications, directly from Hound, without having to type a thing.

The app is available on both Android and iOS, but currently limited to the United States.

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New Theory Regarding How to Find Intelligent Aliens

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Search for extraterrestrial intelligence

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a heavily treaded but equally unsatisfying road. Mankind has been attempting to find signs of other life forms in the universe as we know it for as long as it realized planet Earth is neither the center of the universe nor a plane surface floating somewhere in space. But not many worlds that could nurture any life whatsoever have been found so far, never mind ones that could allow species to develop to the point of becoming highly intelligent extraterrestrials.

But mankind continues to hope nonetheless, much too disheartened by the idea that our species may have just been that one happy accident that brought us into existence. And come to think about it, it a very difficult to grasp idea – the enormity of the universe only allowing the ‘flaw’ that created humans to only form in one single place. While scientists are very much aware that planet Earth and its inhabitants were the result of an abysmally low chance and mix of factors, it’s near impossible to consider it was the one and only.

So scientists now attempt to apply a different kind of thinking in their search for intelligent aliens. To be more precise, they start off with the belief that we should ‘put ourselves in the shoes of the aliens’ if we are to find them. By interpolating the very methods we employ to look for other intelligent species, so could other species.

Thus, by making use of the concept of the ‘transit method’, we may end up more successful than before. While there have been a number of ‘habitable’ planets detect via the Hubble Space Telescope or the Kepler Telescope, it’s certain many other have been missed. The transit method is a way scientists can detect previously unobserved planets by studying a star’s small drop in brightness that would normally occur when one of the orbiting planets passes in front of the star.

Scientists believe that as long as aliens exist in a form that is at least as intelligent as mankind, chances are they would employ the same methods of detecting other life forms such as us. In other words, even if they do not use the exact same ways of detecting planets as we do, they are still limited by the same physical principles. That way, by detecting what zones of the universe our planet can be detected that way, we could narrow down our search.

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Humanity Proves That It Trusts Its Creations Too Much

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Human beings are amazingly trusting of robots

A recent study performed by engineers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute resulted in shocking conclusions that proves that human beings are amazingly trusting of robots and other man-made contraptions that are supposedly made to exceed human capability. What was even more shocking than that was the fact that the subjects that were part of the experiment seemed to be even more prone to heeding the advice of the robot when put in an emergency situation.

The researchers at Georgia Tech Research Institute decided on this experiment to see if humans would trust the robot at all and they were proven the polar opposite, when the subject followed the intentionally faulty robot despite their better judgement and the obvious signs that it was wrong. The experiment involved a number of 42 volunteers, most of which were college students or other young individuals.

The way the experiment unfolded was that the group was asked to follow a robot that was supposed to be in charge of them and led them around the premises. The robot led the group to a conference room and asked them to complete a survey about robots and read a magazine article as the introduction of the experiment. What the subjects didn’t know was part of the experiment however, was the second series of events. A mock building fire was simulated, including artificial smoke, alarms and so on, making the subjects believe they were actually in danger.

Possibly because they were told that the robot was an Emergency Guide Robot, the group seemed to feel the need to follow it, even when it showed erratic behavior or its actions became illogical. Strangely enough, even when the subjects were told that the robot broke down, they still felt like following it or fits instructions, a fact that baffled the researchers.

The subjects followed the robot when it pointed to a door in the back of the building instead of the doorway marked with an ‘Exit’ sign when it told them to, and even followed it when it tried to shelter them from the fire in a room that had furniture piled in the center of it.

The conclusion of the study was of a different nature than technological. Scientists theorized that the subjects chose to follow the robot to no end because it had been established as an authority figure, opposed to how things had been in a previous, realistic emergency scenario.

This is only one of many experiments that will be undergone regarding human-robot interaction.

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McDonalds Introduces Happy Goggles VR Headset

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McDonalds VR

McDonalds is introducing – for a limited time only – its very own take on virtual reality headsets and introducing them in the famous Happy Meals menus for kids: the McDonalds VR. However, not all McDonalds restaurants are doing this as so far only the ones in Sweden have adopting bundling these Google Cardboard-like devices into their menu. It’s actually pretty bright as the VR headsets don’t even come separately, but instead can be assembled from the packaging that the meal’s contents come in.

The offer is a one-time thing that only 14 restaurants from Sweden will be offering over the next two weekends, and they also come in a limited number: only 3,500 Happy meal boxes will be made available. This will be done on the occasion of the Swedish recreational holiday known as ‘Sportlov’ when families usually go skiing to celebrate it.

Naturally, along the VR headsets that you can make from the Happy Meal packaging, McDonalds created a skiing VR game named ‘Slope Stars’ that you can start putting the virtual reality gear to use with. The game needs to be downloaded off of the respective application online stores (App Store or Google Play) and can be played without the VR headset too, but naturally, the experience will be enhanced that way.

On the other hand, you can use the McDonalds Happy Goggles with any VR-capable mobile game that you can find in the app stores as it contains everything you would ever need to make it work. The way kids are supposed to transform their Happy Meals into VR devices is by simply tearing and cutting along some marked lines and folding the box in a particular way (instructions included, of course), then inserting in the VR lenses that you can find included in the package as well.

The smartphone that you have to put in the VR headset is your responsibility, however.

The new McDonalds VR package is made in collaboration with the Swedish alpine ski team that officially endorsed the ‘Slope Stars’ VR game. It is not known if Google had anything to do with the headset in question, given the uncanny resemblance, but the McDonalds VR set employs the same kind of construction as the Google Cardboard.

And all you have to do in order to get it – as long as you’re in Sweden the next 2 weeks – is to make sure you get there fast enough to catch one of the 3,500 limited edition packages and be prepared to whip out an extra $4.10 for it.

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The Energy Efficient Biological Super Computer

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The Energy Efficient Biological Super Computer

While it’s a very long title to be presented by, the energy efficient biological super computer doesn’t even quite cut what it can really do or what it is truly capable of. The super computer in question was engineered at the McGill University by Senior computer scientists Dan Nicolau, together with his son, Dan Jr., after more than 10 years of efforts and hard work. At one point throughout their development, they were joined by an entire team of researchers from the United States, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Canada.

The concept that was used in its construction is something that has been studied for decades: by making use of a biochemical known as Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), internal energy can be transferred among cells. By applying the same concept in the case of a computer, it results in a machine that is capable of solving problems of high complexity with a lot less energy.

The way that is achieved? The earlier synthetic semiconducting circuitry that is usual to be used in supercomputers has been given up in favor of ATP-powered protein strings. They are not limited by the threat of overheating because it doesn’t rely on circuitry as we know it, and also manages to mix in a much lower energy consumption than regular type of construction. Add to that the fact that this super computer has the same size as a hardcover book and the invention becomes even more impressive.

Supercomputers as they are known nowadays are gigantic constructions that take up entire rooms the size of basketball courts. They are limited in ability proportionately to their size, and they require amazing amounts of power to both keep going as well as cooling.

Alternatively, the biological computer would use up less than 1 percent of the power a current supercomputer does. Both Dan Nicolau and his son believe that their concept of a biological supercomputer could become reality and be put to practical use in nearly 10 years. The molecules that are needed to get such systems going are known to be cheap and the progress they have made so far with the concept promises applicability in a matter of years, even if at this point the idea has only been tested in terms of calculations work.

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The Solar Panels That Can Rest On a Soap Bubble

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The Solar Panels That Can Rest On a Soap Bubble

A number of scientists from MIT are behind the solar panels that can rest on a soap bubble that have been announced for the first time several days ago. While the whole ‘resting on a soap bubble’ technology catchphrase may feel like it’s been overused, it is merely because the new solar panels are so small, thin, light and flexible that they were literally shown as they were set down on a huge soap bubble that didn’t burst when that happened.

The very way it’s constructed provides for more than just being extremely light; because it was made with the idea of building it as a whole piece, with both the substrate and the overcoating being produced under the motions of the same process and using the same type of materials, the new tiny solar panel manages to achieve many. Both parts are made from a flexible polymer known as parylene – something that is also used as a protective material in biomedical devices and circuit boards – and the final, light-absorbing outer layer is made of DBP.

Because of that, the substrate will never require cleaning or tampering with, without losing any performance potential, while the light-absorbing surface has demonstrated an amazing amount of light-capture, at least when compared to the sheer size that it comes in. Naturally, the concept behind this new type of solar panels has just been presented by researchers at MIT in a paper published in the gournal Organic Electronics by Vladimir Bulović, Annie Wang and Joel Jean.

The team that worked on these solar panels insists that the materials used were mere examples of how the application of the concept should be used, and that the process of building the panels as part of the same whole is the concept that should be used in order to apply the construction at a larger scale.

The researchers also mentioned that the example they provided is much too thin and small for practical use, but a good demonstration of how it can be achieved even at extremely small scales when an 80 micron thick parylene film is used in the construction. However, if the same type of process is used with different materials, such constructed solar panels could easily be the next method of powering up space crafts or other, much heavier types of machinery, without ever needing to tend to it or the risk of environmental factors diminishing its power of capturing solar light.

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Dark Souls Spin-Off Is Hitting App Store and Google Play

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Dark Souls Spin-Off Is Hitting App Store and Google Play

In preparation for the soon and last to be released Dark Souls release – Dark Souls III – Namco Bandai made Dark Souls spin-off is hitting App Store and Google Play. They were made available for both iOS and Android just yesterday, a production made in partnership with GameStop. Anyone who has played the original PC and/or console version of the Dark Souls series (any of them really) and is in tune with what is about to go down in the next Dark Souls game will recognize a lot of familiar and classic aspects of the series.

Slashy Souls is a free to play endless runner kind of game that so far hasn’t attempted to trick any one of us or lure us into the trap of microtransactions. The point of the game is to wade your way through levels filled with Hollows and other casual Dark Souls cameos (I swear that was Nito at one point) while making use of the seemingly simple yet rather difficult to perform controls. You tap to slay and you swipe to roll, jump or backstep out of sticky situations, trying to get as far as you can. Similar to how many other platformer games out there work, you collect coins in the form of points, trying to beat your and others’ personal bests.

While, in all fairness, the game isn’t exactly something you will download for its amazing gameplay, Dark Souls fan will most likely still get it because it’s just… more Dark Souls. Even if we’re talking about a 16-bit adaptation of the much acclaimed series. There is no direct connection to the original series than the seemingly similar looking elements that you hack and slash at or the vaguely familiar, yet pixelated skybox. Or what do you call it in mobile games, background? One of them is the very same place that is depicted in the Dark Souls 3 cinematic, showing the ashen desert place with the Drangleic-like looking castle in the background.

Nevertheless, you play as a knight that can equip a few of the very classic and iconic weapons and armor from the series such as the Greatsword or the Battle Axe, picking up Souls of a Lost Undead and Divine Blessings (although they’re just there to give off a nod to the original series and just count as points here) and doing battle against dragons and hollows. The game doesn’t bother to explain to you how to play and what is worth what, but then again, when has any game of the Souls series ever done that?

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Windows Phone and BlackBerry Are Saying Goodbye to WhatsApp

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Windows Phone and BlackBerry Are Saying Goodbye to WhatsApp

It has been recently announced by the developer that Windows Phone and BlackBerry are saying goodbye to WhatsApp, the popular instant messaging service that has been released nearly 9 years ago. And it’s not even just that as older Android versions such as 2.2 and beyond as well as Nokia S40 and Nokia Symbian S60 operating systems will also be affected by the change.

This was a decision made by the company when they stated that although back when the app first came out, more than 70 percent of the devices that it ran on were either Nokia or BlackBerry, the current state of affairs does not allow the instant messaging application to expand their list of features on said platforms.

Naturally this only means that the support offered for the application will be discontinued starting with the end of the year 2016. The application will still exist on said mobile operating systems, but will not be receiving any new updates any longer. While it’s not unusual for apps to stop development for older platforms, it came as a surprise when BlackBerry OS 10 was part of the latest announcement.

Hardly an old platform, the decision to stop support for WhatsApp on BlackBerry 10 comes as what is probably the most questionable of all. The reason behind it may be unrelated to the instant messaging app, and instead have something to do with the fact that BlackBerry seems to have been putting a focus on Android as an operating system. Chances are that BlackBerry will no longer be using their native operating system in the phones that they make any longer.

This is bound to create some further problems for BlackBerry as a company, as their decline may continue. Seven years ago, BlackBerry phones represented roughly 70% of the market. Once smartphones started taking over the scene, BlackBerry alternatives lost ground to the point at which now it only holds 1% of the market.

The announcement is a little more problematic for areas of the globe where BlackBerry and other older phone models of the likes are the regular and once support ends for them, it will draw a decrease in WhatsApp users upon itself. South Africa is the best example of the situation: in South Africa, there are 4 million BlackBerry users and the instant messaging application has about 10 million users – most of which are using older phones. And considering that WhatsApp is the most popular application of its kind, the repercussions may be notable to say the least.

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