With the help of a recurrent neural network, the cartoonist has generated a series of brand new Friends screenplays sure to delight fans of the classic sitcom. 

On Twitter, Pandy explained: “I fed a recurrent neural network with the scripts for every episode of Friends and it learned to generate new scenes.” 

With … Read More → "Read what happens when a robot writes an episode of ‘Friends’"

Visual calorie-counting apps have appeared on smartphones before, but typically involved object identification through the camera (or barcode scanning, which isn’t quite the same). Other apps, with more expensive subscription costs, would direct your photos to people hired to work out what you were putting in your mouth.While this route would probably offer the most precise answers, it’s also not an instant one, and learning that delicious meat pie you ate for dinner goes over your calorie … Read More → "Smartphone accessory 3D-scans your food to count calories"

The largest known prime number has been discovered by a computer at a university in Missouri in the US.

Prime numbers – such as two, three, five and seven – are divisible only by themselves and one, and play an important role in computer encryption.

The new prime is more than 22 million digits long, five million longer than the previous largest known prime.

Primes this large could prove useful to computing in the future.
via < … Read More → "Largest known prime number discovered in Missouri"

The demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet didn’t come about because of any discovery about Pluto itself. Rather, it was triggered by the discovery that Pluto was one of what’s likely to be a large number of bodies that orbit well beyond Neptune. These Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), some of which are larger than Pluto, tend to have unusual orbits, passing outside of the plane of the Solar … Read More → "Scientist who killed Pluto now concludes there is a ninth major planet"

As much as some people fear getting dental fillings or root canals, what many of them are really afraid of is the needle that delivers the anesthetic into the mouth tissue. Even though the skin in the “jabbing area” is usually pretreated with a topical anesthetic, it can still hurt. Before long, however, a shot of electricity could make that topical treatment deep-acting enough that the needle isn’t even needed.
… Read More → "Painless electrical zaps may replace dental anesthesia needles"

Transport for London is seeing record-high numbers of passengers, which leads to some stations (namely the older, more antiquated ones) becoming overwhelmed with bodies during rush hour. Escalators naturally create bottlenecks when all those people are squeezed into narrower paths, so you’d think that it would improve congestion for the faster-moving people to go ahead and slip past the slower-moving people. 

But no no no! It actually all comes down … Read More → "The weird way that standing (not walking) on escalators helps move people more quickly"

You know the saying: Don’t eat yellow snow. Unfortunately, a new study published in the journal Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts, suggests that you shouldn’t actually eat any snow at all, if you can avoid it. Snow has been found to act as a rather effective sink for tiny particles that are found primarily in car exhaust fumes, so any consumption of it is effectively like eating a pollution-flavored Popsicle.

Air … Read More → "Why you shouldn’t eat snow"

Tesla Motors has just uploaded to its customers “Summon,” a feature that lets you order your car to pick you up or park itself—right down to opening and closing the garage door. 

The company says it “would like” owners to use of Summon only on private property, which means it will come or go a few hundred meters at the most.  … Read More → "Tesla feature lets cars come when called"

In the Animal Olympics event of Surviving Horrible Things, tardigrades would take home the gold, silver, and the bronze. These eight-legged, microscopic creatures — also known as “water bears” — are probably the hardiest animals in existence, able to live through extreme heat, cold, pressure, radiation, and even the vacuum of space. Now, these water-dwelling critters have set a new personal best, with cryobiologists from Japan successfully … Read More → "Scientists revive microscopic water bears after 30 years of deep freeze"