All posts tagged: light

Best red light masks tested: 6 winners, 2 to avoid in 2026

Best red light masks tested: 6 winners, 2 to avoid in 2026

Published by skeptic

How to choose a red light face mask: Look at wavelength first There are some ways to tell that a red light face mask won’t be effective before you buy it and use it for a few months. Wavelength is the first factor anyone will tell you to consider. You want to find products that emit light within the therapeutic window, or the range of wavelengths that can be effective when treating common skin conditions. There is now an abundance of evidence that specific wavelengths of red light can be effective for: Reduction of fine lines, dark circles, and crow’s feet Improving skin texture Fighting wrinkles Boosting collagen production Reducing inflammation and redness To be effective, the light coming from the mask must penetrate different layers of your skin. There are optimal wavelengths for each type of light a face mask emits, and any reputable brand will put their mask’s wavelengths front and center in the listing. These carefully chosen ranges are strong enough to penetrate your skin, but gentle enough to avoid over-activating delicate …

John Cusack sheds light on his shift away from studio movie stardom

John Cusack sheds light on his shift away from studio movie stardom

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter John Cusack has offered some insight into why he has mostly moved away from major studio films in recent years. The actor rose to fame in the 1980s with roles in films such as John Hughes’s Sixteen Candles (1984) and Better Off Dead (1985). He went on to enjoy a successful film career with credits including High Fidelity, Being John Malkovich, Serendipity, Con Air, 1408, Say Anything, and Grosse Pointe Blank. More recently, however, Cusack has largely turned away from Hollywood films in favour of smaller projects. He has also focused on his interests beyond acting, such as writing. Promoting his forthcoming graphic novel Momo at Comic-Con this week, Cusack suggested that an increase in film studio intervention was a key reason behind his pivot. “[This graphic novel] was just like I wrote it. And I said, ‘I like this story,’” …

The Guiding Light of Story

The Guiding Light of Story

Published by Sam Flores

Humanists love reason. We trust science to tell us what is true about the world. This works beautifully to understand the objective world around us, but science can’t answer moral questions or weigh competing values. Stories offer us pathways to understand those moral questions and the art of telling stories shapes the world’s values. Stories capture pieces of who we are; they need to be woven together into narratives to take on their full power. I imagine most humanists would agree with this statement: “People have inherent worth, the world has inherent beauty, and we have the power in ourselves to heal the hurt and pain.” How do we share that message? First, we need to believe it ourselves—we need sincerity. We need to know our own worth. We need to know the beauty in the world. We need to believe in our own agency and capacity for good. We build those beliefs through storytelling, starting by telling stories of loving one another. We tell our friends how much we love them, and they return …

New artificial eyes could bring human-level vision to robotics and self-driving cars

New artificial eyes could bring human-level vision to robotics and self-driving cars

Published by Jenni Sidey

Machines can now recognize faces, read signs, and guide cars through busy streets. Yet even the most advanced systems still struggle with a simple challenge. Changing light can confuse them. A bright headlight or a deep shadow can blur details that humans see with ease. A new study led by researchers at Penn State offers a promising solution. The team has developed a tiny device that adjusts to light much like the human eye. Their findings suggest that future cameras and robots could see more clearly in complex environments. The breakthrough centers on a component called a photomemristor. This small device can sense light and store information at the same time. More importantly, it can change how it responds based on its surroundings. Why Machines Struggle With Light Artificial vision systems rely on sensors and algorithms to interpret the world. These systems often perform well under stable lighting. However, real environments rarely stay consistent. The bioinspired vision-adaptive optoelectronic synapse designed for image recognition in mixed-light environments. (CREDIT: Nature Communications) A nighttime road offers a clear …

This Former Intel CEO Wants to Jumpstart Moore’s Law With Light

This Former Intel CEO Wants to Jumpstart Moore’s Law With Light

Published by skeptic

After Pat Gelsinger departed Intel as CEO in late 2024, he held 100 meetings in 100 days. The idea, he told WIRED recently, was to whittle down his options until he figured out what to do next. The following March, Gelsinger announced that he had taken a position as general partner at Playground Capital, a venture capital firm specializing in deep tech, taking bets on fledgling technologies built on new science. Gelsinger took the role with the aim of helping a new generation of semiconductor startups reawaken Moore’s law. Decades ago, Intel cofounder Gordon Moore predicted that the number of transistors on a chip would double roughly every two years, with a corresponding leap in performance. That held true for a long time, but as semiconductor firms press the limits of physics, further shrinking atomic-scale transistors has become prohibitively difficult and expensive. Gelsinger believes the best way to break that impasse is through advances in lithography—etching chips using nanometer-scale beams of light. The leading lithography technology, developed by the Dutch company ASML, lets chip manufacturers …

The Light Flip Is the Stylish Dumb Flip Phone of Your Dreams

The Light Flip Is the Stylish Dumb Flip Phone of Your Dreams

Published by skeptic

The Light Flip doesn’t have a touchscreen; instead, users have to rely on a D-pad, three function keys, a confirm and cancel button, and old-school T9 typing with predictive text. All the “tools” from the Light Phone III—what Light Phone calls its apps on its LightOS platform—will work when the Light Flip launches next year. It’s a pretty limited set, with tools like Phone, Alarm, Calculator, Calendar, and Directions. However, in May, the company announced a software development kit that enables third-party developers to create new tools for the platform, expanding the possibilities. These may need tweaks to perform just as well on the Light Flip. Photograph: Courtesy of Light Phone There’s USB-C, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 5G connectivity, Nano SIM and eSIM support, even a headphone jack, a perk missing on the pricier Light Phone III. (There is no NFC.) On the front, the lack of a screen keeps up with the distraction-free ethos—it’s just a notification LED that flashes when new alerts come through. There’s a 12-MP camera on the back, and a replaceable 1,800-mAh …

The 5 best red light masks of 2026 tested (and 2 to avoid)

The 5 best red light masks of 2026 tested (and 2 to avoid)

Published by skeptic

How to choose an LED face mask: Look at wavelength first There are some ways to tell that a red light face mask won’t be effective before you buy it and use it for a few months. Wavelength is the first factor anyone will tell you to consider. You want to find products that emit light within the therapeutic window, or the range of wavelengths that can be effective when treating common skin conditions. There is now an abundance of evidence that specific wavelengths of red light can be effective for: Reduction of fine lines, dark circles, and crow’s feet Improving skin texture Fighting wrinkles Boosting collagen production Reducing inflammation and redness To be effective, the light coming from the mask must penetrate different layers of your skin. There are optimal wavelengths for each type of light a face mask emits, and any reputable brand will put their mask’s wavelengths front and center in the listing. These carefully chosen ranges are strong enough to penetrate your skin, but gentle enough to avoid over-activating delicate face …

Sam Neill’s ex-partner sheds light on Jurassic Park star’s cause of death

Sam Neill’s ex-partner sheds light on Jurassic Park star’s cause of death

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Sam Neill’s ex-partner has shed light on his cause of death, revealing that the Jurassic Park star had been “pretty sick” for the past fortnight. The Australian journalist Laura Tingle, who was in a relationship with Neill from 2018 to 2021, spoke about the 78-year-old actor’s final days before his “sudden and unexpected” death on Monday (13 July). Neill was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer in 2022, and while the actor was cancer-free at the time of his death, Tingle told radio show Sydney Mornings that the cancer had “taken a toll” on his body and left his immune system “pretty compromised”. “He’d been fighting various forms of cancer for at least the last five years intensively. And that takes a toll on anybody’s body,” Tingle told radio host Hamish Macdonald. “He’d had a lot of chemo and …

A moment that changed me: I started yoga – and saw my scoliosis in a surprising new light | Yoga

A moment that changed me: I started yoga – and saw my scoliosis in a surprising new light | Yoga

Published by Sam Flores

I was 13 when a spinal surgeon gave me unsolicited career advice. “Scoliosis won’t ruin your life,” he said, peering over his spectacles, “unless you want to do bikini modelling.” As a young teenager, I hadn’t thought much about job prospects, let alone modelling, but his words stung. It also curdled my situation into a lose-lose scenario: either have a painful operation to fuse metal rods with my spine, or endure a lifetime with an abnormally twisted back. Until this point, I’d perceived my spinal curvature in terms of the inward experience: pain. Now, I became aware of an external dimension: a disfigurement. Something to be hidden. This did me no favours as a teenager in the age of Instagram. While I declined the operation due to the risks and the extended leave from school, the surgeon’s blithe remark burdened me with shame. His approach differed enormously from that of my childhood dance teacher, who had identified my scoliosis. After a lesson, she asked kindly if I experienced discomfort in my hips, which were visibly uneven …

PsiQuantum has a plan to make a massive quantum computer out of light

PsiQuantum has a plan to make a massive quantum computer out of light

Published by skeptic

Into the unknown The outsider with perhaps the best guess of whether PsiQuantum will succeed is the Pentagon. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—the Pentagon’s research and development arm—has been running an initiative to determine which of the boastful quantum companies might actually deliver. In the last year and a half, the heads of the program have been sounding more confident. Joe Altepeter, who ran the program until last year and proudly described himself as a “quantum skeptic,” told me in March 2025: “I am more optimistic now than I have been at any point in the past 10 years.” And in a statement earlier this year, his successor, Micah Stoutimore, said “it now seems likely that someone will build a utility-scale quantum computer by 2033,” referring to a machine that generates more value from its calculations than it costs to build and operate.  The program has been scrutinizing PsiQuantum’s systems for over a year and putting them through the third stage of a benchmarking initiative meant to determine whether the technology will actually …