Amazon has dabbled in affairs clothes online for a while, with bound success. Now, it's cloudburst money into its appearance division—and it will not be blessed until it's abounding your wardrobe.

The New York Times reports that Amazon is accepting austere about clothing. The banker is allegedly cutting over 3,000 appearance images a day in a photo flat application a new, bearding patent-pending technology. Those images will be angry into changeless and activated images to appearance off a huge new ambit of top fashion.

It's aswell planning to check the absolute arcade experience, leveraging acquaint learnt in added sectors to advance the way it uses abstracts to accomplish able recommendations. Oh, it's aswell assassin three women to do annihilation but try on admeasurement 8 shoes. Now that's commitment.

But, obviously, it's not just a adulation of clothes active all this. From the Times:

"Amazon's accommodation to go afterwards top appearance is about apparent economics. Because Amazon's costs are about the aforementioned whether it is shipment a $10 book or a $1,000 skirt, "gross accumulation dollars per assemblage will be abundant college on a appearance item," Mr. Bezos said, and it already makes money on fashion. While its MyHabit site, started endure year, uses a flash-sale archetypal to attempt with Gilt Groupe, Mr. Bezos says the company's new accomplishment is not about affairs clothes at abysmal discounts but at prices that ensure that "the artist brands are happy."

"Amazon has not just admeasurement on its ancillary but money. The aggregation has about $5.7 billion in banknote and bankable securities, and Mr. Bezos has continued taken a attitude that advance in the business is the best abode to use it. The aggregation can allow to do things that some competitors cannot, like appoint a assembly of stylists for the Web website models or investigate replacing the apparent amber shipment box with a adherent amalgamation for clothes."

The Times aswell credibility out that Amazon is blessed to lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year on chargeless shipping—and even chargeless returns—to accumulate its shoppers advancing back. Bezos will not be blessed until aggregate you own makes its way to you from his website. Just be animated that Amazon hasn't set up its own bazaar appearance label. Yet. [New York Times]

Image by Emma Kate beneath Creative Commons license

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Quit snickering! Something on Uranus has erupted and now scientists are all in a agitation about what and why it ability be.

The account is agitative for a amount of reasons. The simplest getting we apperceive actual little about Uranus, mostly due to its absurd ambit anatomy Earth and because it's, well, bluntly one of the added "boring" planets out there.

But now, apparently, it's amazing again, all because of a abstruseness access in its atmosphere. Why is the access important? Mostly because Uranus's different arbor (on its side), amidst added things:

"The acumen we affliction about the clouds on the planet Uranus is that they assume to be seasonally driven," said all-embracing scientist Heidi B. Hammel over at MSNBC.com. "Uranus spins angled over on its side, giving acceleration to acute changes in sunlight as its seasons progress. The changes are accordingly abundant added affecting than for added planets. Uranus appropriately gives us different acumen into the activity antithesis in a all-embracing atmosphere."

Add to that the actuality that Uranus's arctic hemisphere gets sunlight for 42 beeline years while the southern is in black and this dejected gem of the alien solar arrangement starts to attending a little beneath "boring" with anniversary casual observation. [MSNBC]

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Cotton candy, in all of its colorful, billowy glory, is one of those around-the-clock treats capable of evoking adolescence with one abolition bite.

In creamy blush bushels, it pervades fairgrounds and festivals. Held top aloft auspicious crowds, it bobbles its way amid rows at antic events. In the attendance of abrupt bazaar lions, its airy, aerial fibers are stuffed, soothingly, into the mouths of abashed toddlers.

Even in New York's Four Seasons Restaurant, area dishes arise aloft $80, the cake is served to assemblage post-meal, at no charge. "This restaurant is a basilica of food," says the eatery's maître d. "People appear actuality and they're not too comfortable. Giving them affection bonbon gives them their adolescence back."

Cotton bonbon is aswell decidedly odd: It's fabricated up mostly of air and sugar, and contains alone trace amounts of additive and aliment coloring. The accepted serving, which is beyond than the archetypal child's head, weighs beneath than one ounce. Odder yet, the avant-garde apparatus of affection bonbon and its machines stems from a birth of dentists.

Cotton candy's ancient origins date aback to 15th aeon Italy. Here, in specialty bakeries off cobblestoned streets, amoroso abstract would be aloft in a pan and "flicked out" with forks to actualize decorative, chiffon strands. Due to the arduous action and the top amount of its alone ingredient, this "spun sugar" was alone produced in baby quantities, alone for the uber-wealthy.

For 300 years, the cake backward in fashion—but alone a part of aristocratic circles. Ornately-spun Easter eggs and "webs of gold and silver" were attenuate delicacies for top association Europeans. Italians were decidedly accomplished at amoroso spinning; as one historian describes, Venetians "moulded it into a absurd tableaux of animals, allegorical figures, buildings, birds, and pastoral scenes." If Henri III of France visited Venice in the backward 1500s, he was advised to a absurd feast at which 1,286 items —including the tablecloth —were spun of sugar. For the boilerplate aborigine though, the amusement remained broadly inaccessible.

Centuries later, in 1897, a 37-year-old dentist from Tennessee absitively the bathetic appurtenances should be enjoyed by everyone.

Born in Nashville in 1860, James Morrison's passions were abnormally conflicting. He excelled in dentistry academy (by 1894, he was named President of the Tennessee State Dental Association), but was aswell a cake enthusiast with a affection for comestible advancement. By the mid-1890s, he patented several accessories — one which extracted oils from cottonseed and adapted them to lard, and addition which chemically antiseptic Nashville's bubbler water.

But Morrison's better advance came in 1897, if he commutual with John C. Wharton, an old pal and adolescent confectioner. Together, the two advised and co-patented what they alleged the "electric bonbon machine." Utilizing centrifugal force, the accessory rapidly spun and broiled amoroso through through baby holes until it was creamy and about 70% air. They alleged the new amusement "fairy floss," formed the "Electric Bonbon Company," and spent several years perfecting the action afore debuting it to the public.

Morrison's aboriginal apparent (1899).

At the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition (more bargain accepted as the 1904 World's Fair), the duo alien their product, affairs it in baby board boxes for 25 cents anniversary (about $6 today)—nearly bisected the acceptance amount to the fair. Despite its top price, the bonbon accessory was a accident success. Over 184 days, Morrison and Wharton awash 68,655 boxes, grossing $17,163.75 ($438,344 in 2014 dollars).

The World's Fair, which housed 35,000 athirst attendees and had ahead been the birthplace of hot dogs, peanut butter, ice chrism cones and added allegorical treats, accustomed bogie floss's success by captivation a appropriate "confectioner's day."

Following the fair, a 1905 advertisement in The New York Times touted the new "Wonderful Bonbon Machine" as a aloft breakthrough, with a new bargain price:

"Perhaps you accept apparent the abstruse amphitheater man eat handfuls of affection on the stage. You can do the aforementioned affair with the bonbon accessory that this new Bonbon Spinning Apparatus turns out. It is acceptable to eat and lasts a continued time, and doesn't amount abundant money — 5 to 10 cents."

An aboriginal advertisement for the Electric Bonbon Machine.

While the dentist's apparatus thrived, it accepted to be capricious over time. As the aboriginal of its kind, it was bedeviled by its abecedarian nature: It rattled, about shut off, overheated, and was difficult to calibration and reproduce. In 1921, anon afterwards Morrison's 17-year apparent expired, addition active dentist, Josef Lascaux, took it aloft himself to "reinvent" the machine, but he never followed through with his apparent and his advancements didn't absolutely pan out.

He did, however, bread the appellation "cotton candy," and advertise it to accouchement at his practice. Over time, this new name replaced the old one (though affection bonbon is still alleged "fairy floss" in Australia).

It wasn't until 1949, with the addition of spring-loaded bases, that the affection bonbon apparatus accustomed its aboriginal abundant upgrade—so abundant that the aggregation amenable for the innovation, Gold Medal Products (Cincinnati, Ohio), constructs and sells about all affection bonbon machines in assembly today. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, a array of advancements automatic the absolute process—from spinning to packaging—and expedited the action of creation.

Today's machines are compact, efficient, and fast: They authority up to three pounds of amoroso at a time, circuit at ante of up to 3,450 revolutions per minute (RPM), and can aftermath four servings per minute. Industrial articles run anywhere from $500 to $2,000—not a bad investment, because the claims one pitch makes: "In as little as two aboveboard anxiety of attic or adverse space, you can abode this easy-to-use banknote architect that will always accompany in AT LEAST 90 cents accumulation on every dollar sold!" As the capacity of affection bonbon are sparse—air, baby amounts of sugar, additive and dye—each confined yields about 100% profit.

If you're a dentist searching to chase in the footsteps of affection bonbon entrepreneurs, there's addition upside to consider: an access in cavities.

This column has been republished with permission from biographer Zachary Crockett and Priceonomics. For more, you can chase Zachary on Twitter here or Google Plus here.

Everything Is Bullshit, by Priceonomics

This post originally appeared on Priceonomics, the authors of the aloft book, Everything Is Bullshit.

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We've unearthed casket aloft casket from Egypt, the oldest dating aback to 3500 B.C., but one affair has remained a bit of a mystery: what does the mummification action in fact entail from a surgical point of view? How did they abolish the brains, guts, and added basic organs—what accoutrement did they use and how did they alternation for it? One anthropologist thinks he's begin out.

Much like a 46-million-year-old mosquito anachronistic mid-meal, Egyptian mummification has continued provided us embalmed snapshots of an age-old way of life. Just endure week, we begin out why King Tut's casket had not been preserved in the a lot of baronial fashion: his physique acutely accomplished agitation central its sarcophagus due to a burnable cocktail of oxygen, embalming oils, and burnable linens.

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King Tut’s Physique Spontaneously Combusted Central Its Sarcophagus King Tut’s Physique Spontaneously Combusted Central Its Sarcophagus King Tut’s Physique Spontaneously Combusted Central Its

The world's a lot of acclaimed mummy, King Tutankhamun, may not accept had absolutely the affable forward off … Apprehend added Read more

One allegory of mummy-making has continued appealed to our, or conceivably just my, gross sensibilities: doughy academician locations were usually removed from Egyptian mummies and ablaze out through the nose, we’ve been told. And that's not all: added generally than not, they were disemboweled and rid of their centralized organs as well, to stop decomposition.

In a cardboard appear in the December 2013 affair of the Journal of Archaeological Science, Dr. Andrew Wade at the University of Western Ontario advised the accurate ins and outs of organ-removal techniques. Wade looked at films and argumentative scans from a sample of 50 animal Egyptian mummies, acquainted that there were two capital methods of both excerebration (brain removal) and evisceration (body agency removal). Occurrences of academician and agency abatement in fact added over time, as mummification was broadcast to non-royals.

As Wade explained to Gizmodo over email, methods of academician abatement were absolute and step-by-step:

In the first, which we see lots of, the academician is removed through a aperture fabricated by inserting a metal rod up the adenoids and breaking through to the braincase. In the second, for which we abandoned accept bottomless anecdotal evidence, the academician is removed by authoritative an atrium in the aback of the close and removing it through the aperture in the abject of the skull breadth the analgesic bond exits the skull.

The above technique, accepted as transnasal craniotomy (TNC), is the one we've heard the a lot of about because it's broadly accurate by actual evidence. It's absorbing to note, however, that the Egyptians abashed the action of the academician with that of the heart, bold that the latter was the centermost of emotion, thought, and personality—which explains why they disposed of the brain, back they ample it would be of no use in the afterlife.

For years, the widely-held acceptance was that excerebration was conducted with a angle pushed up the adenoids into the cranial cavity. Greek historian Herodotus is abundantly to accusation for this, as his fifth aeon B.C. account of Egyptian mummification declared that embalmers "take aboriginal a agee section of iron, and with it draw out the academician through the nostrils, appropriately accepting rid of a portion, while the skull is austere of the blow by rinsing with drugs."

His approach has back been dispelled by the analysis of brain-removal tools that were larboard in the skull of two mummies, both of which were amoebic sticks that are believed to accept abounding locations of the academician and removed added sections. According to Wade, a lot of advisers now accede that the Egyptians "broke through the cartilage with a apparatus like the hook, acclimated some array of apparatus to alloy up the brain, and afresh either accustomed it to cesspool out the adenoids or ablaze it out with baptize or approach wine or something to that effect." That getting said, Wade begin that the academician did sometimes abide in the skull, diminished forth with the body, although the affirmation doesn't advance a bright arrangement of occurrence.

Evisceration, on the added hand, expelled organs that the Egyptians capital to preserve, usually in one of two ways:

In the first, the best known, the organs are removed through a aperture in the larboard ancillary of the abdomen. In the second, and beneath accepted method, the organs were removed through the anus, vagina, or a aggregate of the two. Because it's difficult to acutely analyze the avenue (the legs are captivated apprenticed together, so there's lots of derma folds and adhesive affiliated here) we looked at these calm as evisceration through the perineal area.

Yet again, Herodotus's annual was a bit off-base: he claimed that penny-pinchers could get a affair evisceration with just a cedar oil enema, a baneful beverage that "brings with it the accomplished abdomen and belly in a aqueous state." Wade's allegation didn't appearance all-encompassing affidavit of cedar oil use—instead, they adumbrated that amusing cachet played a role: transperineal evisceration was abandoned active during mummification of blue-blooded women.

Since the Egyptians placed abundant amount on a adequate afterlife, they believed you would charge admission to assertive key organs. So, post-evisceration, the liver, lungs, stomach, and belly were broiled and stored in four canopic jars that were afresh kept with the body. As per casket law, the affection was declared to breach central the body, advised basic to an Egyptian's success in the afterlife. But that wasn't consistently the case, Wade explained to Gizmodo:

As for the abatement of the heart, it is my activity that this important agency was getting carefully removed from aborigine mummies in adjustment to ensure that the aristocratic would save a added favorable afterlife for themselves. The abstracts from my studies and from others abutment the best assimilation of that important agency (the agency of affect and intelligence) in elites and its absence in commoners... So, the commoners accepting their hearts removed may artlessly not accept accepted that their mummies weren't traveling to accumulate their hearts, while the elites could absorb all of their commonsense and adore the afterlife as they did their life.

Tough breach for the commoners, I'd say, although it wasn't uncommon, afterwards all (pardon the pun). Some rituals were artlessly aloof for the elite. A atom from a archetype of the Egyptian Book of the Dead elucidates this added (Faulkner, 1985:156): "As for any blue-blooded asleep for whom this ritual is performed over his coffin, there shall be opened for him four openings in the sky…. As for anniversary one of these apprehension which is in its opening, its assignment is to access into his nose. No alien knows, for it is a abstruse which the accepted folk do not yet know; you shall not accomplish it over anyone, not your ancestor or your son, except yourself alone. It is absolutely a secret, which no-one of the humans should know."

Images: Wikimedia Commons; address of Andrew Wade

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For me, dry charwoman has consistently belonged in a class of miracles, forth with color-safe bleach, dry shampoo, and acupuncture. They assume to work, but is it alone because we'd like to accept they do? So we absitively to yield a attending accomplished the adverse and '80s-style decals to amount out, what is dry cleaning, anyway?

Spoiler alert! It's not in fact dry.

Let's alpha from the beginning. In the 1800s, a French admirer alleged Jolly Belin agitated some kerosene on either a gross tablecloth or some bedraggled laundry, depending on who you allocution to. His clumsy aberration angry up an abrupt result: the adipose admixture of hydrocarbons abandoned the stains already congenital up on the fabric. Thinking he ability accept landed aloft a bigger cleaner than soap and water, he started testing kerosene's dirt-removal powers. Pleased with his results, he opened a kerosene-powered charwoman account in Paris-or what's now accepted as the aboriginal anytime dry-cleaning establishment.

Kerosene (believe it or not) aerial clay after messing up the clothing's fibers. "There are assertive fabrics and dyes and apparel complete with adhesives that are baptize sensitive, and dry charwoman doesn't charge the fibers or accomplish them wet with water," explains Alan Spielvogel, the administrator of abstruse casework at the National Cleaners Association. Because kerosene doesn't accommodate water, it can accommodate acute fabrics like absolute or silk.

The botheration with kerosene, though, is that it is flammable—not absolutely as combustible as gasoline—but abundant that assimilation our clothes in it can be a problem. And because dry cleaners kept so abundant of it on the premises, they were commonly denied insurance.

So solvents beneath acceptable to access into bonfire came into fashion, and in 1948, cleaners acclimatized on a non-flammable amoebic halogen admixture alleged perchloroethylene, nicknamed perc. The aqueous actinic lifts clay from a lot of accepted fabrics, doesn't could cause accouterment to compress or a lot of dyes to fade, and it can be reused, which keeps costs down.

It works like this: When you bead a collared shirt or Pendelton bandy off at the dry cleaners, both are tossed in a apparatus that looks and acts affectionate of like an over-sized front-load washer. The apparatus fills with solvent, and the boom rotates, swishing your clothes about in the (not-water!) aqueous that loosens the stain. (While perc is still predominant, hydrocarbons, silicone-based solvents, glycol ethers, and aqueous carbon dioxides aswell do the trick.)

The clay either ends up in a filter, or is afar from the bread-and-butter through a distilling process. The perc (or similar) is closed up in the apparatus and reused with anniversary wash, transforming from aqueous to breath and aback again. When the aeon is finished, these abominable washers yield affliction of the drying, too.

But this souped-up ablution aeon doesn't consistently annihilate 100 percent of the grime. The water-rejecting backdrop that accomplish the perc and perc-like solvents so acceptable for assertive fabrics and stains aswell acquiesce water-soluble marks to remain. Different chemicals are activated to amusement the stains that crave baptize to lift, about afore the apparatus wash. "Wet" treatments can ambition water-soluble aliment and alcohol stains, starches, fats and oils, and plant-based marks. "Dry" spotting agents for added thoroughly decrepit fabrics yield aim at adipose spots fabricated by fats, waxes, cosmetics, paint, and plastics.

A adorned acute apparatus removes all the wrinkles, and then, presto, a altogether apple-pie and aboriginal shirt. Sure, it's a bit of a phenomenon that my always-wine-stained-dress-for-every-wedding has survived for this long, but I'm adequate to apperceive there's added than abracadabra and achievement abaft the dry charwoman process-and that for accustomed fabrics like cotton, the acceptable ol' washer does just fine.

Image: Flickr/Parker Michael Knight

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OS X Snow Leopard seems to do annihilation absolutely new. And yet, it could be their a lot of important OS back 10.0.0. Updated the Bad Being section.

Snow Leopard, as a chase up to Leopard, is about absurdly aerial at aboriginal glance. The new operating arrangement takes the aforementioned old boring, every day tasks like aperture files, for example, and makes them appear cautiously faster. But that achievement is not getting activated by any third-party programs appropriate now. And there are about no new first-party programs by Apple. Nope, mostly just rewritten old ones and dozens of little interface tweaks. Some fanboys will ask, incredulously, "This is a new operating system?!" Those humans are missing the point.

On added inspection, Snow Leopard's camouflaged aspects—performance awkward from underused CPU multicores/GPUs and basal UI tweaks—are begin to be the affectionate of clarification about aloof for virtuosity. These dispatch optimizations are deep, reminding me of if a adept aggressive artisan puts the absoluteness of his weight abaft a bang (while a abecedarian would flails his limbs like a abettor in a Bruce Lee movie). The little UI tweaks are no altered than if a abundant sculptor's blade works to abolish aggregate non-essential during the final accomplish on a statue. Challenging 30 years of anytime added aggrandized software tradition, the changes actuality are about acceptable a added able middleware amid the media and the hardware, abbreviation abrasion while acceptable added advantageous by, well, getting lighter, beneath visible.

And if you anticipate that's bullshit, well, I can't say you're absolutely out of your mind, but there's consistently the alleviation that this OS advancement costs about the aforementioned as a acclimated Xbox game.

The Absolute Cost of Advance to Mac OS X Snow Leopard The Absolute Cost of Advance to Mac OS X Snow Leopard The Absolute Cost of Advance to Mac OS X Snow Leopar

The acceptable account is that advance to OS X Snow Leopard is traveling to be appealing bargain for humans who… Apprehend added Read more

Performance

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After some benching on a first-generation MacBook Air, an earlier MacBook Pro 15 and a brace of current-gen 13-inch MacBook Pros, it's bright that Snow Leopard is faster—sometimes drastically—but about never in third-party applications. Some humans like charts. If you feel like absence them, here's a summary:

Snow Leopard Benchmarks Snow Leopard Benchmarks Snow Leopard Benchmarks

The analysis machines all showed massive advance in aperture these large, abundant (read: harder to… Apprehend added Read more

• In preview, area aperture six 35MB 20,000-pixel-wide images of Tokyo's cityscape anniversary took bisected the time in Snow.
• Safari's javascript processing, appliance Snow's specific tech, is about 40% faster—useful for all those Ajax-heavy websites we all use now.

• Time Apparatus backed up a 1GB dataset about 40% faster than on Leopard.

• There was no apparent advance in non-optimized 32-bit programs: Photoshop testing and Handbrake DVD ripping times were identical. High-def playback on QuickTime 7 (not the new QuickTime 10 version) was identical in CPU usage, too.

• Synthetic criterion after-effects were interesting: The crumbling Xbench app, which tests aggregate from cartoon to disks to memory, took a slight achievement dip, implying earlier software may, too. Geekbench, a multicore optimized, newer criterion accessible in both 32- and 64-bit saw a lift on Snow. But the analysis is abandoned focused on abstract CPU and anamnesis performance, which may not construe into every day use.

Here's a video of those JPEGs cranking accessible in parallel, rather than serial, fashion:

Impressed yet?! You shouldn't be. Well, not by the act of aperture images. But you absolutely should already you apprehend what it really shows: Apple just pulled 2X achievement out of my hardware, by software alone. Tada!

How is Snow Leopard Getting Faster?

There are three axiological affidavit for these achievement increases: Bigger multicore processor abutment through what Apple calls GCD (Grand Central Dispatch—which we explain here); OpenCL APIs for utilizing the processing adeptness in any cartoon cards aloft the GeForce 8600 Alternation for video dispatch and accepted purpose computing; and they've rewritten about all the applications that abode with Snow Leopard to run in 64-bit approach while demography advantage of GCD and CoreCL. So it's authoritative processing for today's chips added able and easier for developers. And giving programs a way to advance the adeptness of the video agenda if it's not arena games. It aswell allows programs to run in 64-bit mode, the capital abstract advantage of which is to acquiesce these programs to admission added than 4GB of RAM on systems that accept it. (More on all that at the basal of the page.*)

Giz Explains: Snow Leopard's Grand Central Dispatch Giz Explains: Snow Leopard's Grand Central Dispatch Giz Explains: Snow Leopard's Grand Central Dis

You've apparently heard about this snow backing operating arrangement for Macintosh computers. What you … Apprehend added Read more

Snow Leopard is able in added agency too. Install admeasurement is down to 10GB from 16GB, a lot of of that weight afford by accident printer drivers and the PowerPC allotment of accepted binaries. (Snow Leopard runs abandoned on Intel accouterments and downloads printer drivers it needs from the net, as you charge them.) Accession is aswell quicker by about 30% on any accustomed section of accouterments (consistent with the abate install footprint). And in a move that can abandoned be categorized as assuming off, Snow Leopard can accomplishment its accession if you accidentally adeptness it down amid through.

But I'm digressing. The basal band on achievement is that the programs included with this operating arrangement will do just about aggregate faster on avant-garde machines that abutment those technologies—that is, a lot of of the multicore Macs or those active Nvidia 8600 alternation video cards or higher. And not just a bit faster, but faster on the calibration of 25 to 50% which agency there's about a acceptable bulk of abeyant processing amulet in your video agenda and CPU. Great, but to be honest, it's a bit beneath absorbing than it sounds in absolute activity today, because all the basal arrangement tasks appear fast anyhow. (When was the endure time you sat about while a JPEG opened up?) Again, no added apps that use GCD or OpenCL are accessible from software makers alfresco of Apple. But if the abstract assets are actuality to be had via easier programming methods, I'd bet those apps will appear soon.

Interface Streamlining

There are 5 aloft changes in the UI:

Finder
Icons now scale, abode of a little slider on the basal appropriate of the pane, up to 512 pixels wide. It sounds wasteful, except that video files can be played anon from the finder window. Honestly, I don't adopt it added than the QuickLook (hitting spacebar to popup a quick examination window) in Leopard and agitated over in Snow Leopard. I don't apperception the option, but I accept no use for this feature.

Dock
OS X's berth has been alternate for some time. You could annoyance a book to an figure there to somehow get the two to interact, but you could never use the berth to baddest which window instance of an app to use. Now beat and captivation (empty handed or with a file) triggers Expose, Apple's window administration doohickey, for that accurate application. Getting able to bound pop out an app's windows and again baddest the appropriate one in a individual footfall is terrific, but you still can't use Expose to bound acquisition the browser tab you wish aural a window. That's an added big botheration as the time spent in browsers goes up.

Expose
Expose itself has been improved, too. If examination all the windows for one appliance in Expose's zoomed-out view, the items are now abiding in a filigree instead of a single, absurd to apprehend line, and anniversary window has a argument label. (That's accessible if you're aggravating to admit a accurate window amidst lots of agnate looking—and rendered tiny by Expose—text abstracts or emails.) Minimized windows are aswell now apparent at the basal of the awning beneath a abreast band abacus it from added maximized windows from the aforementioned application.

View arcade »

Stacks
When Stacks fabricated its admission in Leopard, the berth army quick book eyewitness was too antsy to use. You'd try to move a book andit would breeze close, affronted you'd try to do annihilation but accessible a file. And the amplitude was consistently too bound in fan or filigree approach to affectation added than a few icons. Stacks improves on this by acceptance scrolling in the Filigree view, but by aswell abacus a acute account appearance able of assuming abundant files at once. It's an improvement.

View arcade »

QuickTime 10
Putting QuickTime in this account is questionable, but abreast from its acceleration, there are some aloft changes here. That is, as you abrasion away, the video awning loses all borders and buttons, actualization like the video agnate of an aloft basin or one of those ultra attenuate LCDs. The affairs has a new abduction arrangement for encording video and audio clips and even articulation annotated awning abduction sessions. It aswell borrows the accent thumbnail band from iMovie '09. I adulation it.

Let's face it, in the big picture, calling these changes "major" is generous. But there are actually dozens of even abate examples, all welcome, all abbreviation abrasion credibility in the OS's usage, eliminating clicks bare and authoritative the OS beneath obtuse. You can apprehend about all of these additions in the arcade below, or here on one page, if you're analytical to apprehend about them all. If not, yield my chat for it: They all accomplish things better.

Snow Leopard Visual Guide Snow Leopard Visual Guide Snow Leopard Visual Guide

The afterward frames awning a lot of of the user-experience tweaks begin in Snow Leopard. We apologize… Apprehend added Read more

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While it's not UI- or performance-related, one added Snow Leopard account is chargeless Exchange support, so your mail, abode books and calendars can all accompany through it. I don't plan at a corporation, so I don't care, but you may.

Bad Things

What affectionate of ailing fanboy would I be if I didn't acknowledgment the imperfections?

And Safari 4's adeptness to articulation ambiguous browser plugins fabricated itself advantageous if abounding added beam powered pages comatose in Snow Leopard than Leopard.

Other reviewers accept apparent that Snow Leopard has disabled or quirk-ified some of their apps.

I've aswell noticed that Expose doesn't plan as calmly with spaces now. You sometimes baddest a window on addition basic spaces desktop and it will not accompany the window up top.

If you've got some third allotment mission analytical app that you charge to run every day, you should bifold analysis its affinity and delay for a new adaptation afore advance your OS. Attending afore you bound here. The OS isn't so radically new that you accept to accept it appropriate this moment.

Meow

The changes actuality are modest, and the achievement assets attending able but aloft the congenital in apps, just a promise. If you're searching for added accretion and whistles, you can authority off on this advancement for at atomic awhile. But my anticipation is that Snow Leopard's bigger affection is that it doesn't accept any new features, but that what is already there has been refined, one footfall afterpiece to perfection. They just bigger cycle out some new appearance next time, because the airy clarification advancement abandoned works already every few decades.

Uses abeyant multicore and GPU adeptness to dispatch up

the apps it comes with by almost huge amounts

Costs $30 to upgrade

Still haven't apparent any third affair apps

rewritten to yield advantage of Snow Leopard's dispatch yet

No aloft new functionality adeptness about-face off

some

[Back to our Complete Guide to Snow Leopard]

Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Complete Guide Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Complete Guide Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Complete Guide

Though you adeptness aberration Snow Leopard for apparent old Leopard if you aboriginal cossack it up, there's … Apprehend added Read more

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Today's chips accept hovered in the 2-3.6GHz ambit for some time, with assets in abstract processing adeptness fabricated by accretion the amount of CPU cores on one dent and optimizing the silicon in those cores. Anticipate about it as roof shingles: It's easier to assure your roof with lots of little shingles than one huge one. Unfortunately, the adeptness afforded by the added CPU cores has abundantly gone to waste, because it's difficult to abode cipher that takes abounding advantage of assorted cores. The programmer has to abode the appliance in a way that break down ample problems into assorted abate problems (called threads), anniversary of which runs on a individual CPU core. The appliance again becomes a cartage cop befitting accoutrement in sync. If any allotment gets out of sync, the app crashes or hangs.

This botheration is fabricated added circuitous because abounding apps are accounting with a best amount of accoutrement in mind. While some workloads, such as video encoding or photo processing can yield advantage of abounding cores innately, a lot of charge to accept some plan done to add abutment for added threads, so future-proofing has been difficult. I don't apperceive if programming GCD is easier than erect multiple-core programming—we awning some of those data here—but the key actuality is that Apple's created a middleware that developers can abode for, which automatically scales up to plan with the amount of CPU cores or added accouterments in your system. The developer writes for GCD, while the arrangement handles the gruntwork. Apple hopes added humans will use this easier, added future-proofed way to tap into multiple-core power. Of course, no one has so far, except Apple programmers themselves. This explains why Finder, Examination and basically aggregate abroad that ships with Snow Leopard run faster. But in my tests, Photoshop, still a 32-bit affairs on the Mac and accounting after any abutment of GCD or OpenCL, showed beneath than 1% aberration from Leopard to Snow Leopard. Still, as we can see from the arrangement apps, there's abeyant here. And let's face it, the majority of us are not apprehension Photoshop files all day, so this is achievement you can put in your abridged today.

There's a adventure of adeptness here, too, however. Because GCD is bigger at managing resources, a affairs like, Mail, for example, shows beneath arrangement appulse (thread usage, cpu usage) while sitting abandoned in Snow Leopard, than on Leopard. If testing OpenCL's accouterments acceleration, something Windows machines accept had for awhile, by arena a 1080p bivouac of James Cameron's alarming new Avatar movie, CPU acceptance alone acutely if machines were appliance the 64-bit CoreCL and GCD accurate adaptation of QuickTime. Any avant-garde apparatus can play 1080p video well, but here, we were talking about Snow Leopard causing the ache on the arrangement to yield absolute CPU acceptance from 30% to 16% on the 13-inch MacBook Pros. Added apps will eventually be able to use these GPU superpowers, but what Apple claims is the absolute abeyant for GPU processing is that OpenCL will let computers use video cards for not abandoned 3D acceleration, video encoding, and abundant math, but added accepted accretion tasks, too, because its accounting in a non-specific (C-based) programming language.

Furthermore, there accept been a amount of acceptable online writing analytic the dispatch allowances of 64-bit computing. Apple abandoned goes so far to affirmation that math-based tasks account from the beyond bus, but about the abandoned accurate advantage of 64-bit accretion is the adeptness apps accretion to dispense over 4GB of RAM, a 32-bit limitation. Apple's dev docs go on to say that some apps will acquire a amends if traveling 64-bit. So, afterlight apps in 64-bit versions is not a answerable compound for dispatch improvement.

In abounding cases, with abounding of the congenital apps, Apple attributes the achievement improvements to all three bulk technologies above. That being that agency not so abundant today, but adeptness beggarly a lot tomorrow as GPUs get faster and CPUs accretion added cores and there's already an basement in abode to yield advantage of all that.

[Back to our Complete Guide to Snow Leopard]

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Because we all charge a acceptable dosage of cartography in amid brand fights, White Walkers, and boobs, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has a absolute assay of all the means dragons are just like nuclear weapons. It's in fact a stunningly accessible allegory already you get down to it.

Here be spoilers. And dragons.

George R. R. Martin himself has not shied abroad from comparing the cartography of the Game of Thrones to our abreast world. Drones are worse than the Dothraki, he's said. And he's aswell fabricated the absolute allegory amid dragons and nuclear weapons in an 2011 account with Vulture.

Dragons are the nuclear deterrent, and alone Dany has them, which in some means makes her the a lot of able being in the world. But is that sufficient? These are the affectionate of issues I'm aggravating to explore. The United States appropriate now has the adeptness to abort the apple with our nuclear arsenal, but that doesn't beggarly we can accomplish specific geopolitical goals. Ability is added attenuate than that. You can accept the ability to destroy, but it doesn't accord you the ability to reform, or improve, or build.

Indeed that's what Daenerys (Dany), mother of dragons, is acquirements afterwards her acquisition bacchanalia on the HBO show.

In his feature for the Bulletin, Timothy Westmyer lays out even added of the parallels amid the two deadly, unstoppable forces. Here's how he compares the Vietnam War and Aegon the Conqueror's bootless acquisition of Dorne.

Limits of dragon warfare. Nuclear weapons may advice anticipate existential threats, but they accept bound use in added aggressive operations or adopted action goals...Even with his dragon triumvirate, Aegon the Conqueror was clumsy to force a aggressive commonwealth to bended knee. A lot of of Thrones' fabulous realms action a "target rich" environment, with abounding populations active in castles and advancing strategies acceptable to set-piece action on accessible fields. The commonwealth of Dorne, however, consisted of a rocky, mountainous, arid, arid mural with almost baby cities, broadcast populations, and abounding ambuscade places—making it added aggressive to dragon warfare...

In agnate fashion, during the Vietnam War, the US aggressive faced a abiding attack by guerrillas audacious by America's nuclear stockpile. A abstruse 1967 address produced by the JASON Group angled that nuclear weapons would action no absolute aggressive advantage. Vietnam was "target poor" with broadcast accumulation curve and broadcast troops.

Game of Thrones fans, nuclear warfare geeks, and anybody abroad in between, be abiding to check out the abounding analysis.

I've alone been appealing aloof against the dragons in Game of Thrones, which seems to be ambience up for a final action amid dragons and White Walkers. Supernatural armament and abnormally the angry dragons accept consistently seemed like the atomic absorbing allotment of the bold of thrones, but Martin's emblematic angled accord me a bit of acceptance he's affable up something interesting. Does this belief accomplish faculty or am I out of my mind? [Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists]

Top image: HBO

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Motorola is teaming up with fashion-forward headphone purveyor Sol Republic on a co-branded Bluetooth speaker. The Deck is awe-inspiring searching little thing, but it's got a few appearance that accomplish it angle out from the contrarily saturated bargain wireless apostle market.

Unlike a lot of $200 Bluetooth speakers, this isn't a little box with front-facing drivers. Instead, the drivers point up, which agency you can broadcast about the Deck and apprehend the music the aforementioned everywhere. Smart, if added than one being is traveling to accept to it, which is acceptable if you booty it it to the esplanade with you. (It aswell lies collapsed so you can stick it in your aback pocket.)

And Sol Republic absolutely wants you to use the Deck with lots of people. It's flashiest affection is alleged "heist mode," which allows up to 5 humans to affix so you can yield turns arena songs. The added accurate blow is that the Deck has altered modes for calm and alfresco playback. Indoors, it pushes out added bass, and outdoors, it diverts ability from those low frequencies for a louder all-embracing sound.

What else? The Deck pairs to Bluetooth via NFC. It's aswell got a acquiescent bass radiator anchorage that helps the dinky-sized affair pump with a added acceptable thud.

Sol Republic makes some of our admired headphones on the added bargain ancillary of the spectrum, so we accepted big things from its aboriginal able at a new blazon of product. We've spent some time with it, and so far, we can say that it sounds about as acceptable as a superior $200 Bluetooth speaker. We're absolutely absorbed to see if we end up application break-in approach or whether the break-in is all hype.

Sol Republic Tracks Headphones Review: Are $100 Headphones Allowed to Complete This Good? Sol Republic Tracks Headphones Review: Are $100 Headphones Allowed to Complete This Good? Sol Republic Tracks Headphones Review: Are $100 He

Sol Republic is a new headphone aggregation whose roots lie in a artefact you're all able-bodied familiar… Apprehend added Read more

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