CODEX

The Kepler space telescope, which launched in 2009, has produced more than 30,000 signals measuring light from stars to search for possible planets in distant parts of the galaxy. Sifting through that and other telescope data, astronomers have found more than 3,500 planets, up from 329 known before the Kepler mission. Now artificial intelligence is helping to find even more. On Thursday, researchers from Google and University of Texas at Austin announced that a machine-learning algorithm had discovered two new planets, Kepler 80g and Kepler 90i. Kepler 90i is a particularly special discovery—it’s the eighth planet orbiting its star, marking the first system outside our own known to have eight planets. To find the planets, the researchers trained an algorithm on 15,000 labeled signals from Kepler data, provided by NASA, to recognize what is and isn’t a planet. In tests, the algorithm could correctly identify which signals reflected planets and which did not 96 percent of the time. A...

The Oreo beta for the Nokia 5 brought a new version of Nokia’s camera app – with surprising (and hidden) new features. The camera now supports dual cameras of both the telephoto and wide-angle kind. The app specifically shows 2x telephoto zoom, which is the standard for phones right now. The Nokia 5 can’t make use of it of course, even HMD’s only dual camera phone – the Nokia 8 – has a identical field of view on its two cameras. But this app shows what could come in the future. So far no phone on the market does both telephoto and wide-angle. We’ve already heard the first murmurs of phones with three cameras but chances are that HMD is just considering two separate models. All Nokia 9 rumors so far point to a two-camera solution. There’s another less exciting change to the camera app – you can now manually select Shutter speed and ISO on the Nokia 5. Values go between 1/500s and 1s for the shutter and 100 to 2,000 for ISO

There are a lot of people in the world who ride motorcycles, especially in more crowded areas where cars don't fit especially well. India is one of those places, and many users there are now noticing a 'motorcycle mode' showing up in their Maps alongside car, train, and walking options.   We've known something like this was coming for some time now thanks to our teardowns.  v9.61 ,  v9.62 , and  v9.66  all contained strings relating to some sort of two-wheeler or motorcycle mode, and this seems to be the final culmination of that. One reader let us know that this showed up for him in  v9.67.1, which is the most recent version out . As you can tell from the screenshots, motorcycle mode has the same goal as any other mode: to find the best, most efficient route possible given the type of transportation. Since motorcycles can fit in places that cars must go around, you'll note that estimated travel times are quicker, sometimes significantly so. ...

Every year there are more than 82 millions phones are damaged after being dropped down the toilet, swimming pools or lost it anywhere. Many waterproof handsets have been released every year to solve this problem. But Comet releases its new handset with IPx7 water-resistant which is designed to float on the water. Comet was designed by California-based Prashanth Raj Urs who has launched an Indiegogo campaign to fund production of the device. Comet has a 4.7-inch screen, 16MP camera and runs Android. It additionally has LED notification lights, similar to those on the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. It comes with 4GB of RAM, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810, 2GHZ octa-core Processor and a 2800 mAh battery said to last a 'full day of work, party and excitement. It also uses biometric sensors to detect a person's body temperature to gauge how happy they are. The LED lights will display different colours to suit these different moods. As per the reports Comet smartphone floats ...

Facebook today launched its digital assistant named “M” for US users of its Messenger application, ramping up the social network’s efforts in artificial intelligence. For users of the messaging platform, M will pop up and suggest “helpful actions” in the chat window. The move is seen as the first step in a broader launch of the digital assistant to compete against services from google,Amazon, microsoft,samsung,which is launching its new assistant with its newest smartphone. M uses artificial intelligence and “suggests relevant actions to help manage conversations or help get things done,” Facebook product managers Laurent Landowski and Kemal El Moujahid said in a blog post. “We are bringing the power of M’s AI technology to support and enhance the Messenger experience and make it more useful, personal and seamless.” With M, Facebook Messenger users can simplify tasks such as sending money to friends, sharing location or obtaining a ride-share. Facebook, which has i...

Sugarcane can be genetically engineered to produce oil in its leaves and stems for biodiesel production, scientists, including one of Indian origin, have found. The modified sugarcane plants also produce more sugar, which could be used for ethanol production, researchers said.The dual-purpose bioenergy crops are predicted to be more than five times more profitable per acre than soybeans and two times more profitable than corn, they said. Using a juicer, researchers led by the University of Illinois in the US extracted about 90 per cent of the sugar and 60 per cent of the oil from the plant. The juice was fermented to produce ethanol and later treated with organic solvents to recover the oil. The team has patented the method used to separate the oil and sugar. They recovered 0.5 and 0.8 per cent oil from two of the modified sugarcane lines, which is 67 per cent and 167 per cent more oil than unmodified sugarcane, respectively. “The oil composition is comparable to that obtained fr...

GooglePixel 2’s code names have been spotted online, this time by andriod p olice, which reports that ‘muskie’ and ‘walleye’ is what the search giant has picked for 2017’s Pixel smartphones. According to the report on Android Police, the code names were spotted in the Android Open Source Project. The report adds the names were seen thanks to Google’s Tree Hugger, which is the automated update bot. The reports for target changes by Tree Hugger have mention of ‘muskie’ and ‘walleye.’ The two phones are likely the normal-sized version of the Pixel 2 series, and will maintain the 5-inch and 5.5-inch display. Other leaks have also indicated a Google Pixel, which is code named Taimen and will be much, much bigger in size. An earlier report on Droid-Life also spoke about how ‘muskie’ and ‘walleye’ are the code names for the two phones, but ‘Taimen’ appears to be a much bigger version of the phone. Google has already confirmed it will be working on a Pixel 2, which was given of ...