Solitaire turns 25 years old
Solitaire debuted in Windows 25 years ago. To celebrate, Microsoft is throwing an internal competition to find the best players in the company, Microsoft says. The employees who rank highest in the leaderboards will face off against players from the public during a June 5 tournament hosted within the game, Microsoft says. Solitaire has changed a bunch since it was first released on May 18, 1990. In addition to the classic game, there are now others like Klondike, FreeCell, Spider, TriPeaks, and Pyramid.
These games, along with their cousins, Minesweeper and Hearts, have long been known as productivity wasters. Solitaire was actually removed from Windows 8 — you had to download it from the Windows store. But it’s making a comeback in Windows 10, along with Minesweeper. Plus, Microsoft is also giving Windows 10 one of the most addictive, biggest productivity waster games of all time, Candy Crush.
Mystery behind dress solved
Scientists of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have cracked the science behind why a dress appeared black and blue to some but gold and white to others, differing perceptions that went viral on the Internet.
In a survey of 1,400 individuals, with over 300 who had never seen ‘The Dress’ before, researchers found that people who perceived it as white and gold might have just been exposed to natural daylight, while those who saw a black and blue garment might be spending most of their time in artificial light. Bevil Conway and his team asked people to identify the colours they saw on ‘The Dress’. They found that people fell into one of three camps corresponding to the main groups identified by the social media: blue/black, white/gold and blue/brown.
“It could have been the case that you had a continuum of perceived colours, but if you plot the colours people picked, you see two main clumps falling into the two categories for what words people used to describe the colours of ‘The Dress’,” Conway said. Researchers also found that older people and women were more likely to report seeing ‘The Dress’ as white and gold, while younger people were more likely to say it was black and blue.
Ancient Civilisation Destroyed 13,000 Years Ago
New evidence suggests that an advanced ancient race on Earth fell victim to a comet 13,000 years ago. Graham Hancock, the author of a controversial 1995 book titled Fingerprints of the Gods, has found proof to support his claim, the Mirror reported. The former journalist had pointed to this lost civilisation existence, but despite his book selling around three million copies, he was ridiculed by academics and a BBC Horizon programme had even aimed to demolish his theory.
Now, 20 years later, Hancock is set to publish a 500-page sequel titled Magicians of the Gods, which has the “smoking gun” to prove his critics wrong. It contains a series of geophysics and geological papers containing proof that Earth was indeed hit by a comet about 12,800 years ago. The comet has been masked because it struck ice and did not leave a crater. The new book will be published in September.
Google’s Self-Driving Cars To Hit Roads In Us
Google’s self-driving car prototypes will hit the roads in the US this summer, after being tried on test tracks, the tech giant has said. The cars will self-drive but will have safety drivers aboard who can take over the wheel if needed. Several prototype versions of its self-driving cars are set to hit the streets of Mountain View, California, the search giant’s hometown. The move is still just another round of testing, but it is a significant step toward a pilot programme, it said. The announcement follows the revelation by the company that its self-driving cars have been involved in 11 minor traffic accidents in California. Google has been working on the project of developing self-driving vehicles since 2010.
The new prototype vehicles, assembled by auto supplier Roush Industries in Detroit, use the same software on which its existing self-driving lexus RX450h sport utility vehicles run. Engineers will operate 25 such prototype vehicles. It will, in due course, build between 50 and 100 prototypes and will widen testing to sites that are hillier and rainier. The car has no steering wheel or pedals, so it’s up to the computer to do all the driving. It also said that it will limit the speed of the prototypes to 40kmph to reduce the possibility of severe injury in an accident.
The model comprises everything that is required for fully autonomous driving and also the necessary parts so that engineers can take over driving if need be. It has an autonomous driving system comprising a computer and sensors, to typical car parts like brakes pedals, lights, and removable accelerator pedals and steering wheels, unlike the rudimentary version it released in May last year. That model was a tiny two-seater, which did not have typical features of a car, such as a steering wheel, headlights or brakes and was to be completely operated by the vehicle’s computer.