Review: Nikon D500

The Nikon D500 – Autofocus System

The Nikon D500, a 21MP APS-C DSLR has the potential of shooting at around 10 frames per second and comprises of an autofocus system which comes from the one in the D5. It means that it is precisely the type of high end DX setup body which seems to become wiped out with the D300S.

Since the launch of the D300S of six and a half years, the camera market has progressed considerably though the D500 seems to have reclaimed the position as one of the distinguished APS-C camera in the market.

Much of the enhanced proficiency of the camera focuses around sports and high speed shooting together with substantial renovations to the shooting rate as well as autofocus system. However, there are some main advancement to the viewfinder, video skills and the connectivity choices that seem to extend its utility further than one particular niche. The following are the key features:

• 20.7 MP APS-C – DX format sensor 
• 153 point AF module with 99 cross type points 
• AF point joystick • 180,000 pixel RGB sensor for metering and subject recognition 
• 10 fps shooting up to 200 shots 
• 4K (UHD) video from 1.5x crop of sensor • 100% coverage viewfinder with 1.0x magnification 
• 2.36M-dot tilting touchscreen display 
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity with NFC for setup 
• Mic and headphone sockets 
• USB 3.0 connector 
• For working under artificial lighting, an anti-flicker option

Capability of Focusing & Shooting Quickly

Most of the competency of D500 is built on the capability of focusing and shooting very quickly and its 153 point AF module provides a near full width coverage which is connected to a 180,000 pixel RGB metering sensor to enhance further its AF tracking skills.

The AF system of D500 like the D5 now provides two parameters for fine tuning the autofocus tracking performance, enabling the user to identifythe kind of subject movement as well as the precise response to another object obstructing the targeted subject.

The D500 has a 3.2 inch 2,359,000 dot screen which is touch sensitive. Prevailing Nikon enables you to only specify duration, directing Nikon is attempting to extend the range of shooting condition for which the AF system could be improved.

Existence of SnapBridge Technology

Another feature which differentiates the D500 from the D5 is the existence of the SnapBridge technology of Nikon that enables the camera to always remain connected to a smart device, over a low-power Bluetooth connection or through Wi-Fi.

This could mean that after the main connection has been done, images can be transmitted automatically to the phone whenever it is shot and they can be ready to be shared through the internet when you tend to pick up your phone.

 As suitable as a camera, it is intended for professionals and serious supporters, wherein the D500 tends to have two card slots, one which accepts SD type media and the other is for the faster XQD cards. Though they have been around for a long time, the XQD cards are not conventional yet with most of the cameras only accepting SD-type media but this could be changed.

Third Party Keyboards Give Mobile Users More Options

Third Party Keyboard App from Apple’s Opponent

Before the arrival of the iPhone in 2007, no one believed that typing on touch-screen keyboards would be a good notion and thereafter users have become proficient at tapping on the glass of phones and tablets. Whereas the built-in keyboards from Apple are concerned, Google together with the other device makers seems to be much better than they used to be and are not the only choices available. One of the third party keyboard apps comes from Apple’s opponent, Google for Apple devices.

 The latest Gboard app functions just like any type of touch-screen keyboard and have a fresh and simple design which does not cause any distraction while you tap away. Moreover it also provides all the normal punctuation and emoji through evident controls and also seems decent appearing lightly identical to Apple’s keyboard. However, Gboard tends to have some good additions.

The space bar tends to double as a track pad enabling the user to scroll the cursor around in the text which has been already typed. Besides this, Google has also incorporated direct search features in the keyboard.

Gboard–Choice of Glide-Type/Swipe between Successive Letters

When you hit the Google button while typing a message, you tend to type in a search box. All the search results of Google then become accessible ready to be copied and pasted in the text which tends to get useful while checking up a word definition, checking street address or locating a GIF or a YouTube video. One could also search for emoji which tends to save the trouble in locating them manually.

Gboard also provides the choice to glide-type, swiping between successive letters rather than tapping on the screen and several of the features of the apps are customizable through settings. If the user tends to get anxious that Google would log what you type, Google states that it will not record the messages, whether a love letter or reveries on the latest news or gossip. Gboard is said to be open to all.While Gboard seems to be good, SwiftKey, a third party keyboard app deals with one of the greatest issue with typing on a touch screen. SwiftKey tends to auto corrects the mistakes.

SwiftKey Utilises Artificial Intelligence – Writing Style

SwiftKey utilises artificial intelligence to learn the writing style over a period of time, building an understanding of the words you seem to use. Hence while typing a long message, the app generally does a good job of correcting errors made since it can guess the word intended to be used. SwiftKey also recommends the words one may prefer to type next so they can be entered with a single keystroke. It could also learn your slang as well as emoji habits.

The app also tends to do a good job in detecting the language used, automatically switching its correction of error even if you have switched languages midway of the message. If SwiftKey does not tend to polish your typing skills, then there is Fleksy a same third-party keyboard app which is free for iOS as well as Androidthat has several of the same features. The keyboard layout of Fleksy is customizable with regards to size and colour and the app is said to be good at auto correcting errors.

Has the LHC discovered a new particle?

Large Haldron Collider – Found New Particle

Cern’s group of Large Haldron Collider – LHC in Switzerland have found a new particle and in its first set of substantial effects since its upgrade last year, LHC researchers have noticed large spikes in energy which could be the consequence of particle impacts among new boson even larger than the Higgs. Physicists had been working hard crunching data gathered by the most powerful particle accelerator of the world which is presently functioning at unprecedented levels of energy as well as intensity.

Their attempts may not be without success since there has been a lot of excitement in the hallways and offices at Cern in Geneva on the so-called `bump’ in the data from the particle smashes of LHC. The LHC tends to crash two beams of proton particles together about 100m below the French Swiss border and scientists thereafter search the debris of these crashes for clues of the earlier undiscovered particles.

Out of trillions of similar collisions last year, scientists had identified more photon– light particles that were produced than estimated, regarding the said bump. More specifically, they perceived an excess of photon pairs with a shared mass of 750 Gigaelectronvolts- GeV.

Facts of LHC

This could be the revealing sign of a new heavy particle which is about six times more enormous than the famed Higgs boson which was discovered in 2012 at Cern. A new particle’s discovery would be very exhilarating as the widely accepted theory of particle physics – the Standard Model could not explain everything observed regarding the world that surrounds us. Facts of LHC are:

• The Large Hadron Collider is a particle accelerator which tends to push two particle beams near the speed of light and crashes them together in order that scientists can check for signs of new physics phenomena in the debris 
• Over 1,200 `dipole’ magnets are arranged end-to-end in a long 27km circular tunnel 100m beneath the French-Swiss border near Geneva 
• The magnets steer the beam of any proton particle or lead ions around the ring of the LHC and allotted points surrounding the tunnel, the beams cross, enabling collisions to occur. 
• The experiments which tend to analyse these collision, generate over 10 million gigabytes of data each year.

Statistical fluctuations Anticipated

Since the LHC first went online back in September 2008, signals have come and gone. Such types of statistical fluctuations are anticipated and the bumps generally get levelled out with the count of extra data. Prof Stefan Soldner-Rembold, head of particle physics at the University of Manchester explained that more data is needed to ensure that the signal does not go away, till then they need to be careful.

The reason people are excited about the bump is that both experiments, Atlas and CMS saw a suggestion in approximately the same place, but this is not completely unlikely. Gold standard for demanding a discovery in particle physics is said to be a statistical threshold call five sigma. This tends to corresponds to a chance of one in 3.5 million that the observed signal is a chance occurrence and unevenly the same chance as tossing a coin and getting 21 or 22 heads in succession.

How to Make Google Forget Your Most Embarrassing Searches

My Activity – A Timeline showing Google’s Stockpile of User

With each search one tends to make or YouTube video watched, Google tends to know you much better while the search giant quietly collects information for a personalized profile it seems to use in serving you targeted ads. However a new tool known as My Activity makes it stress-free than ever to see what information Google seems to be stockpiling regarding the user and delete thing which you would rather forget. Some insight has been provided to bring about an awareness regarding this new tool and how it could be helpful in managing your privacy.

`My Activity’ is basically a timeline which shows what Google has been saving regarding your online activities going back as far as Google has been tracking them which is found at myactivitygoolge.com. When you have arrive here, you will find a big chronological list of things done using Google’s service, the searches done, videos watched on YouTube etc. You could also search through the data trove to check up a specific record or activity which Google has save such as the time you searched for a particular information or filter the timeline by data or type of activity.

Easy to Erase Google’s collected data

If you do not prefer Google recalling your search or when you have indulged in watching video, it is easy to erase. At first you need to find the record intending to delete, which is made simple with the search bar towards the top of the page. Once you have located your online record in the timeline, you could open a little menu by clicking on the three vertical dots towards the right side of the record. Opt for delete choice on the menu and Google will forget it.

You could also delete the things in bulk by clicking on the three dot menu at the top of the timeline and select `delete activity by’ and choose a date range to delete on the next page. If desiring to have a complete blank slate, you could select the `All Time’ option. You could also stop Google’s data collection whenever you desire. In order to lock things down, you could go to myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols wherein you could tell Google to stop saving information regarding things like your searchers, YouTube watching habits and location history.

Google’s Privacy Checkup

If you are looking through your My Activity timeline and you tend to be a little suspicious, it would possibly be worth running through Google’s Privacy Checkup and this feature which can be located at myaccount.google.com/privacycheckup utilises a simple interface to assist in managing not only what data is saved by Google but also the information regarding the user could be public through the services like Google+.

The search giant tends to make its revenue from distributing targeting ads that is made easier by the collection of data which they have regarding the online activity of the user.That would mean limiting the data they save would possibly result in you viewing ads which tend to be less relevant to your choice. Moreover beyond ads, Google also uses the data to help in personalizing their products to the liking of the user. This could provide a more convenient online experience.

Sucking Robot Arm Wins Amazon Picking Challenge

Team Delft’s Machine – Won Latest Warehouse Bot Competition

Team Delft’s machine, has won the latest warehouse bot competition of Amazon, a robotic arm which tends to combine a suction cup, a `two fingered’ gripper together with a 3D depth sensing camera, with its rivals at both the tasks. One comprised of choosing products from a container, picking them up and placing them on a shelf while the other did the action in the reverse. Amazon tends to use robots in moving goods with its buildings though depends on humans to stock the same on shelves.

Chief technologist at Amazon robotics, Tye Brady had commented that `their vision is humans and robots working alongside each other. It was inspiring to see 16 top teams with so many different approaches to the same problem and that they saw the advancements robotic technology had made since last year’. The Dutch winners had been awarded $50,000. They rivalled against two teams from Japan and five from the US countries who were known better for their robotics research, at the contest in Leipzig, Germany. There were various items representing some of the blockbusting products of the retailers that were used in the Amazon Picking Challenge.

Stow Task/Pick Task

A combination of various shapes inclusive of soft clothing, a boxed DVD, a bottle of water and a toothbrush were represented. Twelve various items were put in a red plastic box, in the `stow’ task and the robots were made to pick them out in an orderly manner, placing each one at a predetermined place on a shelf. While in the `pick’ task, a dozen specific products to be lifted, off the shelves, comprised of a combination of goods and packed in boxes.

 In some cases, the other items seemed to have been intentionally placed in the way of the target which seems to be tougher of the two tasks. In both the instances, the teams were given only a computer file defining the range of objects involved and instructions for which it should be moved, five minutes before to the start and once the task had started, the robots had to act independently. There were points deducted for damaging any item, dropping the items from a height of over 30 cm and leaving an object extending more than 0.5 cm beyond where it belonged on the shelf.

Variation in Time – Unable to have Single Picking Strategy

Delfts’ team, Kanter van Deurzen had clarified to BBC that due to the variation in items, one could not have a single picking strategy. Usually in industry, you would have a suction cup or a mechanical gripper intended for one kind of item or part. Here they had to handle dozens ranging from simple boxes to a T-shirt and a dumbbell with each needing a different approach. It had really been a big challenge to do all this with a single arm, to have to recognize how the items were focused on and to avoid collision with the other objects on the shelves.

 The Dutch team had come closer to a flawless score in the stow task but its only error was that when its arm’s suction cup had picked a small pack of glue, it also seemed to pick up a bottle-cleaning brush which then had dropped down on the floor. More errors were done in the pick task and initially secured points with the Japan’s Team PFN. However, Delft had been given the benefit since it had taken 30 seconds less time in making its first pick.