drag2share: Pepsi Just Unveiled A Crazy New Soda Machine

source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/fqvP8kR6bMg/pepsis-new-spire-soda-machine-2014-5

Pepsi has unveiled a new soda machine capable of making more than 1,000 beverages. 

The company revealed new self-service drink equipment at the National Restaurant Association show, Stephanie Strom at The New York Times reported. 

The new machine, Spire, was created to compete with Coca-Cola's Freestyle machine, Strom writes. It has the appearance of a large tablet or iPhone, and lets customers use a touchscreen to select flavors. 

The Spire is considerably smaller than the original Freestyle. Coke has recently released a smaller version after businesses complained, according to Strom.

Sara Eisen at CNBC tweeted a rendering of the new machine.

Not an iPad... Pepsi's new spire fountain machine pic.twitter.com/R4N9p0LXll

— Sara Eisen (@SaraEisen) May 18, 2014

Pepsi's Spire is available in select locations and will continue to roll out this year, the company said in a news release. 

Examples of customizable beverages include Raspberry Lemon Mountain Dew and Vanilla Strawberry Diet Pepsi. 

Pepsi provided this photo showing different versions of the Spire machinery. 

Pepsi has been innovating products to better compete with its chief rival. 

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drag2share: This Tower Of Power Gives You 40 USB Ports For Charging Everything

Source: http://gizmodo.com/this-tower-of-power-gives-you-40-usb-ports-for-charging-1578397573

It started off as a more elegant (and faster) alternative to parallel and SCSI computer ports, but now that USB can even be used to charge everything from phones to cameras, there never seem to be enough of them. It's, admittedly, a first world problem, but one that's now thankfully solved with this plug-in tower that includes 40 powered USB ports.

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drag2share: Chicago's Huge Vertical Farm Glows Under Countless LED Suns

Source: http://gizmodo.com/chicagos-huge-vertical-farm-farm-glows-under-countless-1575275486

Chicago, Illinois, isn't exactly a major player in national food production anymore, but that could soon change if companies like Green Sense Farms continue to sprout up. With the help of next-gen LED grow lights, the country's biggest indoor commercial vertical farm can produce masses of produce regardless of the weather outside.

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drag2share: 'Assassins Creed: Pirates' now available as a free-to-play browser game

source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/19/assassins-creed-pirates-browser-version/?utm_source=Feed_Classic_Full&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Engadget&?ncid=rss_full

Here's the thing about Assassins Creed: Pirates (you know, aside from the obvious swashbuckling theme): It was made specifically for phones and tablets. In fact, Ubisoft warned from the get-go that we probably wouldn't see a PC or console version. Starting today, though, you can play it on your computer after all -- well, sort of. Ubisoft just released a free browser-based version allowing you to play in the browser, using either touch input or a mouse and keyboard. What's nice, too, is that although Ubisoft developed the web game with Microsoft, it actually works with every major browser -- Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari and, of course, IE. As a bonus, it runs at full-screen, something most web-based titles can't.

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drag2share: Your Smartphone's Camera Holds The Secret For Unbreakable Quantum Cryptography

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/smartphone-camera-random-number-generator-2014-5

Mathematicians concerned with cryptography need novel ways of generating random numbers in order to securely transmit data such as a credit card number or especially private email.

But it's hard for computers to generate truly random numbers, as they simply follow whatever instructions you feed it. A computer program is a "deterministic process," and deterministic processes can be repeated to reproduce the same results. Hardly secure, no?

The delightful arXiv (pronounced "archive"), a collection of scientific papers maintained by Cornell University, reports that Swiss scientists at the University Of Geneva have developed a method of generating truly random numbers using nothing more than a smartphone camera. Because cameras interact with light, they have easy access to the weird world of quantum physics and can be hacked into effective quantum random number generators.

Here's the explanation of how it works:

Each pixel senses the number of photons that arrive in a certain period of time. These photons are converted into electrons, which are then amplified by a factor determined by the camera’s sensitivity setting (ISO setting). It’s straightforward to calculate the average number of electrons this process should produce, given the probabilistic nature of photon emission. But the actual number of electrons should differ by a number that is random. That produces a single random digit. And since a light-sensitive array consists of many pixels working in parallel, it is possible to generate a large quantity of random digits from each image.

To simplify this a lot, your smartphone camera can be pointed anywhere to get a light measurement. That data is converted into mathematical language that the phone uses to spit out random digits at the rate of 1 megabit per second, which is sufficient for securing "emails and even phone calls."

The fact that something as basic as the! camera on the smartphone you already have can be harnessed for quantum cryptographic communication will likely have big implications as the technology is further developed. As is written in the arXiv post, "there ought to be significant demand for this kind of service given the wholesale eavesdropping that various states have indulged in recently. So it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that some governments will want to regulate the use of this kind of technology."

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