Using LED lighting has resulted in more light, no energy savings

Using satellite-based sensors, an international team of scientists sought to understand if our planet’s surface is getting brighter or darker at night, and to determine if LEDs are saving energy at the global scale. With the introduction of solid-state lighting—such as LEDs, OLEDs, and PLEDs—it was thought (and hoped) that the transition to it from conventional lighting—like electrical filaments, gas, and plasma—would result in big energy savings. According to the latest research, however, the use of LEDs has resulted in a “rebound” effect whereby many jurisdictions have opted to use even more light owing to the associated energy savings.

Gizmodo

Using Generative Adverserial Networks to create terrain maps

A team of researchers from the University of Lyon, Purdue and Ubisoft have published a paper showing what may well be the future of creating video game worlds: an AI that is able to construct most of its own 3D landscapes.

Similar to Nvidia’s work that is able to conjure its own celebrity mugshots, the tech would require only minimal input from a human, who would just have to contribute some basic requirements, draw some lines then let the AI do all the hard work: namely, filling in all the gaps with elevation, ridges and natural-looking rock formations.

Kotaku

Canon TS6050 – the printer to not get

Having been very happy about my old Canon printer, I decided to get another one when it died after four years of trusted service. This one is absolutely horrific. It started off with difficulties connecting via WiFi. The amount of paper jams I have is around 1 page printed to 1 page jammed. The scanner can’t remember if you want to scan a PDF or a PNG and defaults to PNG. Scans are unceremoniously dumped into the Documents folder. When you open the lid to change pages to scan, you are as likely to open the ink drawer. Occassionaly the printer decides to forget what type of paper is in the drawer and asks you to register the paper type (it has never been anything BUT A4!). Sometimes it just randomly prints off blank pages. Because it feels like it. A true frustration, getting behind this damn thing.