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Weekly Recap: Tesla Model 3, Roborace, Ubuntu Windows, Holoportation and Selfie Mini-Drone

April 1, 2016.

Tesla Unveils Model 3

Tesla Model 3

Elon Musk unveiled yesterday a new electric car Tesla, called Model 3 (after Model S and Model X). This entry-level car will have a range of 345 km and a price of 35,000 USD (45,770 CAD). Its speed can go from 0 to 100 km/h in less than 6 seconds. It should be delivered at the end of 2017 but you can place a reservation today with a deposit of 1,000 USD. 115,000 preorders were garnered in a 24-hour period.… The Model 3 is essentially a pared-down version of the Model S, which debuted in 2012.

Tesla Motors, “Model 3.”

The Verge, “Tesla’s Model 3 is here—with a 215-mile range, to be delivered in 2017.”

Montreal Gazette, “More than 200 line up at Montreal Tesla dealership for dibs on new car.”

Roborace, the Driverless Formula E

Roborace Car

The classic F1 car race is about to look old-fashioned… A new series is to debut with the 2016-2017 Formula E 100% electric championship: Roborace, a race for driverless, electric, fully autonomous cars. The competition will feature ten two-car teams competing in hour-long races. All cars will be identical, as designed by Daniel Simon, former Volkswagen car designer and creator of futuristic cars for Oblivion and Tron: Legacy. The teams will attempt to out-perform one another on the basis of their software.

FIA Formula E Championship, “Roborace car revealed!”

The Verge, “These are the crazy futuristic cars of Roborace, the world's first driverless racing series.”

Ubuntu on Windows

Windows Subsystem for Linux

Microsoft was no fool to announce this on any day but April 1st: the Bourne-Again shell has gone native on Windows. The Redmond giant partnered up with Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, to run Ubuntu (User-mode) on top of Windows, and the most surprising thing is that we’re not talking about an emulation or a VM. Want to code in Ruby in Visual Studio Code and compile it on Linux ? No problemo. You can access the entire tree in Bash; the two universes communicate seamlessly. The secret lies in on-the-fly translation of all Linux system calls in the Windows OS equivalent, through Windows Subsystem for Linux. This feature, still in the beta stage, will be available to all with this summer’s release of the Windows 10 Anniversary update. While it has been thoroughly tested with Bash, Apt-Get, Ruby, Git, and Python, there are still some issues with MySQL and the “top” command, among others. Remember when Steve Ballmer thundered that Linux was an unstoppable cancer? Now, it seems that Microsoft and Linux are hand in glove. Unless Ballmer was a visionary, and what we’re seeing now is Linux metastisizing in Windows.

Channel 9, “Running Bash on Ubuntu on Windows!”

Scott Hanselman, “Developers can run Bash Shell and user-mode Ubuntu Linux binaries on Windows 10.”

Ars Technica, Peter Bright, “Ubuntu’s bash and Linux command line coming to Windows 10.”

Holoportation

Microsoft is testing out new uses for virtual reality headsets in general and its HoloLens more specifically. Holoportation allows high-quality 3D models of remote participants to be reconstructed in your environment (hybrid reality), for a foretaste of the future of Skype communication. Reality is catching up with science fiction.

Microsoft Research, “Holoportation.”

ROAM-e, le mini-drone à selfies

ROAM-e

An Australian company has finally launched the product the whole world was waiting for: ROAM-e, a mini-drone specifically designed to take selfies. The drone can fly for 20 minutes while following the user up to 82 feet to take photos with its 5 megapixel camera with facial recognition technology. Its twin rotors fold back for easy transport.

Mashable, “Here is the inevitable flying selfie stick.”

 

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