Tomorrow Daily 026: Pure lithium battery tech, 360-degree video holograms, and more

Researchers have found what could be the holy grail of battery tech. And no, those researchers are not affiliated with Monty Python. Hackers figured out a way to run Doom on an old ATM. Doom on an ATM. Reminds me of my bank account in college. And a pair of artists made a machine that can project 360 degree video. Still really terrible cell phone reception on Tatooine though. R2, can you hear me now? It's Tomorrow Daily. [MUSIC] Greetings citizens of the internet and welcome to Tomorrow Daily, the best. Tech talk show in the known universe. I am your host, Ashley Esqueda, joining me as always, my co-host, my consigliere of tech, Rich DeMuro. Good intro. Thank you so much. Yeah. Fun intro. We've got a lot of cool stuff to talk about today. We do have a lot of really cool stuff. I'm glad I went with whiney Luke up, up front, but yeah, no, some really neat technology and some that could change our lives as we know it- Yes, I'm excited for this. Tech-wise, so let's hit the headlines. Time. So our very first story today could change the way you use your cellphone. Charge anxiety, you ever have that? All the time. Where, like, you're just worried about your phone going dead? Did it all week, all day at Comic-Con. Right? Okay. So, we all have these way of kind of keeping our batteries alive, but. We may not need them anymore because researchers at Sanford have figured out kind of the next step to better rechargeable batters. This is huge, okay? Really exciting. So here's the problem, basically we use lithium ion batteries, right? Right, yeah. Well. The batteries you take in and out of your phone. The reason why we use lithium ion is because it's way more stable, but it's not as effective. It can't hold as much, it can't hold a charge for as long, it can't hold as much charge, so these researchers have always, the Holy Grail has always been just pure lithium. Okay? Right, right. And so far they figured out, no one's really figured out a way to do it, but these researchers at Stanford say they have. Okay. In, in a tiny way, I mean, they still have a little ways to go. Well how would this work, how does this work because I, I am familiar with the concept of a battery, where basically we've kind of plateaued with the materials we have now on how much energy can be saved inside the materials. Like we've seen no advancement basically since the cell phone came out. It's a, it's a huge bottleneck. This is a huge problem in all technology because if we can't advance in battery technology, all of tech has to kind of hold back. Until we have better battery packs. And so, here's the problem. When you use pure lithium, apparently it expands at a much higher rate than like, lithium ion. And that, you don't want that in a battery. No. You can't have it sitting there expanding and swelling. It'll explode. Exactly. Unstable. So, what they figured out is they somehow used a a honeycomb design. Of carbon nanospheres around the lithium ok>> and once you do that, now given, these things are so thing, it's 20 nanometers thick ok>>so you'd need to stack 5,000 of these on top of each other to equal a width of a single human hair. So the reality is here, they're not expand or contracting a lot, but it's enough for it makes a difference in the battery ok>> So somehow they figured out. A way to keep this all in check, and get the lithium to work. And they're saying that these batteries could be like four times as effective as what we have right now. Yeah. I, like I remember seeing an article. They were saying at least 50% better. Which is twice as good, up to four times. So. This could have broad ranging implications, obviously. I mean, Elan Musk with Tesla. Yep. Could double the range of an all electric vehicle. But here's the thing, so many people have tried this and so many people also haven't tried, cause a lot of people have sort of given up and said maybe there's gonna be something else beside lithium ion or something else besides lithium or. Mm hm. We just need to rethink the whole battery. There's been a- In general A big push recently has been to create products that are more energy efficient as opposed to remaking the battery. So that's sort of been like, the choice. Right. It's like, do we, do we work on this with new materials, or do we just make things that use less energy? Or, do we wait for like, a battery that's like, somehow just crazy, fuel cell, nano technology you know, that just lasts for a whole day. But this could not come at a better day, because today I ordered two 2,800 milliamp power batteries for my Android phone. Oh, I hope they're not third party. They are. I know. And now I feel really bad. They could explode. Because they are third party. They were $23 on Amazon. And now I'm like wait, am I just setting myself up for like an explosion? Yeah, that poor girl. She's, this girl, if you haven't seen it, left her Galaxy, was it an S5? no, it was an S4. S4, underneath, she had a third party battery in there, left it underneath her pillow to charge and then woke up to the smell of smoke. And her phone had just like fried out. But Samsung said it was like a third party battery, you know. Well, yeah, you've gotta be really careful. Careful with stuff like that. Just when you think this battery technology is pretty good. But, so here's the deal with these people. They are up to 99 percent efficiency. Well that seems pretty good. Which seems really good except you have to get to 99.9 and to get to that point nine for standard commercial success is like. That last one percent. The last one percent. Very difficult. But if they do it, they will be the savior of so many people around the world because what would you do with all your extra time if you were not, I just wonder about when am I going to charge my battery next. That's true. At comicon, you should see, there's just lines of people just waiting to charge stuff. There was a guy. Probably the hero of ComiCon. He had a power strip that he just plugged in to the one plug available on the wall. And everyone Mars. Had their phones plugged in. There's an entire cottage industry around cases that charge. Power. Yeah. I have a key chain charger. The Nomad. The charge key thing. That seems all, Sure. I mean, no matter where you go, people are wondering how you charge. So. Yeah. No, it's very true. . So, that's exciting. It could, I mean, this could come to fruition in the next five to ten years. Hopefully. Hopefully, I hope faster than that. Fingers crossed. Like i just hope, maybe the next one iPhone will have it. I don't think it'll be the next one. No? [INAUDIBLE] I think they're already making that. I think you might have missed, I think we might have missed the window for that. Although I gotta tell ya real quick, the iPhone, for how small the battery is. Last a very long time. That's true. Like real the Android phones batteries But small batteries They're like double the capacity and they last like half of the time so cool is Apple for that so it's really more how the manage it all Yeah how they manage it [INAUDIBLE] manage Yeah. manageable, but I would like to talk about this holographic video because this is like very fascinating to me this artists. Have created a machine that gives you 360 degree, video. That is not quite, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Okay. Or it's not quite Princess Leia. Right. Asking for help. It, actually the name of the art exhibit is help me, Obi, which is very tongue and cheek. You can see this is the Voyager. Wow, that's really cool. It looks amazing, right? And that's, that's in real space, which is unbelievably cool and according to Helson and Jackets, the artists that have created this, they're saying that. See you can see that somebody's walking around it and you're seeing the same picture. So you're not missing what the image is as you walk around it. But its not 360 degrees, it's not a 3D image. And they're not saying how they, how they did this? They're not revealing everything? No, they're working on pat, obviously patenting it. This is a kind of a big deal for projection technology so they would like to keep the how under wraps like magicians [LAUGH] until they figure out a way to get this patented and. Have the rights to it. Okay. So that they can license it out. It's funny how like this, I mean, we talked about the holy grail of batteries, but the holy grail of holograms. By the way, what an odd video that they're showing. Well this is, yeah, it's a newborn baby like, floating in space. It's so bizarre. Yeah, very strange. But but the holy grail of, of entertainment stuff has always been like, the hologram. Yeah! Like, the holographic image. You know we had it at the like Cortell, they had like the Tupak. Kinda of yeah. It's not like 360 like this. Right. But I was at a concert once and they had Carrie Underwood on stage, via hologram. Oh, wow. And everyone in the audience thought it was actually her. Oh weird. And you know, Including me but I like did some research on my phone and said wait is she really a special guest. And it turns out no, they do this at every. You know, Brad Paisley concert where. How random. Don't ask me why I was at that concert. Was it like a duet or something? Like they sing a duet together, okay. They do a duet. But she was in San Diego that night doing like some sort of I forget what show or whatever, but anyway, I thought that was really interesting. It's like here. That's cool. The hologram has like mass implications for like entertainment and so many industries. Yeah, no, absolutely, I mean it's. In Back to the Future 2 when, you know, Jaws comes out. Yeah, Jaws came out of the movie theater, what if you did that? So cool. yeah, no this is really cool technology, and I'm really excited to sort of see how this progresses going forward. And this is another thing they mentioned, and this totally reminded me of like the Death Star Run, the Trench Run. Where they're like, here's what it looks like and here's the model. But, could you imagine this technology being used with something that is you know, gesture based navigation. Yeah. For a map, or, for, you know, like search and rescue, or Well, look at Amazon's phone! Yeah. They have the 3D, the, the perspective display or whatever, I mean it's like, that sort of what it is, except your eyes are perceiving it that way. Right. This is more like in the, in the field of vision. But, you know, they do kind of something like this at the haunted mansion, too, have you seen that? Yes. And, like, a lot of people have tried to figure out how they do that there, and it's like, they don't really reveal how they do that. The, the. Dancing Yeah. Spector's. Like there's no. I know how they do it. But. What? Yeah, there's well if people who are obsessed with the haunted mansion. Like myself. So they do it with mirrors. There's a whole. But it's. But the, but the full technology is not, it's pretty under wraps. Not, yeah. Yeah. But it's, I mean but it's still really cool. And then our last story is pretty great. I kind of love this. Two, a group of hackers got Doom running on an old ATM. They bought this ATM for seven bucks at an auction. Seems like a good price. Well, I was reading and I think somebody had mentioned that a lotta these ATMs are being end-of-lifed because they run on Windows XP, which is no longer supported by Microsoft. On a side note, I'm a huge fan of Annie Fail. You know, like, whenever I'm at like an ATM it has like the windows XP screen, they're like, some sort of like anywhere I am in the public where there's like a fail screen, you know. [uuu] is like yeah. Well, I always take a picture and tweet it cause I just think it's so funny. Unless you need money out of that ATM in which case you're like stupid. Jim you're the worse. Remember that these things are run cause they don't look like they're run by windows. Right, right You know, they just have this cool like, you know, simple interface Your little bank interface, yeah. And you forget until you see something like this and you realize yeah this is just a computer. Yeah, A really slow, old computer A really slow, old computer but a, the neat part about this they were able to actually get it running with the controls on the keypad so instead of typing in your pin, you'd. Walk around and shoot stuff as doom guy. That's cool. Pretty neat. I, I just thought this was really fun and cool. And it was on Hackaday, and the the guys who did this were so excited to be on Hackaday. They were in the comments, they were like, oh yeah. And they were saying that they wanna get a couple more and they wanna set up a, like a multi-player. I could see this at like Southby. Yeah. Like a couple of these set up like around town and you go to the. I think it'd be so fun. You go to get some money out and the next thing you know it's just Doom and you're like, it's even cooler. You're like wait a minute. Wait a minute, but I'll just stay here and play. Yeah, so it's really, really neat. If you wanna check it out you can go to their YouTube channel it's Aussie50. But awesome stuff. And on that note, we are going to take a quick 30 second break. We'll be back with new releases for this week including a giveaway that has to do with Guardians of the Galaxy so you don't want to miss that. And we have your user feedback. And of course, our phone tryer for the day so don't click away. It's Tomorrow Daily. [MUSIC] Welcome back to tomorrow daily. We are going to get right into new releases, because there's a lot of really exciting stuff coming up this. Or that has already dropped. You know, either way, you definitely want to check this stuff out, so, first up, number one on the list, Guardians of the Galaxy is coming out this weekend. You are pumped up for this. I'm pumped. I've got my tickets for 7pm on Thursday. I'm like reserved seating center, dead center of the theatre. I am ready to go. This means we're gonna be out of here Thursday early Early, yes Cuz you have somewhere to be. And you are also predicting this movie is going to make a lot of money. Yeah we were talking about this inside the control room. Producer Logan said around 80, what are you going to say, the same? I'm going to say no. I'm going to say 70, 75. 70 to 80? I think he said 70 to 80 as well so I think you guys are in the same wheel house. I said 95. I said 95. I think it's going to be huge. This, this summer has not had like the large, like the biggest movie openings. I think people are waiting for this. You're such a blockbuster. Everything about it just reads blockbuster. That you know. I think there's a lot of people that want to see this but there's a lot of people that it's not interesting to. It's Marvel. It is Marvel, but it's eh. Also, Vin Diesel is great come on. He's a tree and Brad Cooper is a racoon. Rocky Racoon! I think, I think it could be like a sleeper hit, like it could be one of these things where it build on the buzz I think it's going to be a monster hit, I think it's going to be a monster hit. We will see. I know, we will see. We'll see. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be really sad if it doesn't make 95 million dollars but speaking of Guardians of the Galaxy we have a giveaway for you guys this week. I'm very excited to tell you we have PSN codes, Playstation Network Codes for. Zen Pinball 2's Guardians of the Galaxy table- Nice. which is pretty awesome, and I gotta tell you guys: I have played it, and it's great. If you love Zen Pinball 2, we had a Deadpool giveaway before, and that went really well. Mm-hm. People really enjoyed their. Their codes for that, but like I said, we have only Playstation Network, we have a few, a small handful of codes to give away, I think it's either three or four. And how do you get this? And this is how you are going to get it. You are either going to email us tomorrow@cnet.com, or you're going to tweet at us, and you are going to use the hashtag in the subject line or in your tweet, #TDGOTG. Guardians of the Galaxy. Okay. T-D-G-O-T-G so that's you and your gonna tell me I am grub. you have to use the sentence I am grub. If that's the code work to get in to enter- To enter. And then you pick someone- I'll pick A couple people from those I'll pick a few people out of those- Okay. and we'll notify you at the end of this week so the day guardians of the galaxy, six theaters you might also be playing it on your, On your play station network. For free? For free. And free is. Free is always good. Probably pretty great. Everybody likes free. Also coming out this week. We have the Shield tablet. It's out today. Oh wow. Okay, well Cnet's review looked pretty good on this. They said it's actually a decent tablet but what's the market. Yeah, where's the market for this? But you know, we got a lot of emails about the Shield tablet. People saying I really feel like, I'm a gamer. I like PC gaming, and this is, sort of, I've been looking for a new tablet, and I like Android, and this seems like a really great choice for me. Yeah, I mean, there's no doubt about it. It's a powerful device. Very powerful. That K1 processor is like, Fast. And that's out today. Cool. $300. Yeah, very [UNKNOWN]. It's starting at, starting at $299, yeah. Starting at $300, and then there's also the controller, which is extra. And then lastly we have a very nice. Listen. The app gap is closing on Windows phone and Fitbit. We've got a Fitbit app for Windows phone, which is pretty exciting for anybody using Windows phone, because this is the first syncable wearable- Okay. Syncable wearable? Syncable wearable. Syncing wearable. For Windows that's compatible with Windows phone specifically, so, for Windows phone 8.1, and this is what it looks like, you're able to pin it to your start menu, you can Oh, so you can see your steps all day I bet? Check your stats. Very cool. Yep. Got live tiles going on and everything, but a really, I'm very glad to see that people are finally starting, companies are finally starting to develop for Windows phone, because I do know people with Windows phone, and I know that they'll say, like, well, I really wanna get. A Fitbit, or I really wanna get something, a wearable, or you know, something that's compatible with but they don't make an app. Oh yeah, it must drive Microsoft nuts when the top apps are not there, Yeah. because it's one of those little things where like, Uber for a while was like one of those things, it's like a deal breaker. Right. It's like I like Uber, I like to use it, if it's not on Windows Phone, know I understand you can do other, there's always around it. There's way around it, right. Use the website, yeah. But it's nice to have the app, nice to have the native app. Yeah, it is very nice to have a native app. So, good job, FitBit. High five for developing for Windows phone. Keep up the good work. That being said, it's time for your User Feedback. [MUSIC] Yesterday, we asked you to tweet us or email us with #TDSDCC for San Diego Comic-Con and tell us what you are the most excited about. From the show. Mm-hm. From the convention. So much to choose from. Yeah, we got some really good tweets from you guys. @Perry1238 says, I agree with Rich. Imagine if worlds collide with the Griffins in Springfield and Homer and Peter meet at last. Super Stoked! Hashtag, SDCC. So, he's excited about the, The Simpson's, Family Guy mashup. A little crossover action episode. That going to be fun. A little cross over action. I, I really like that. I'm glad that they're doing stuff like that. You know, some people is very, some people it's polarizing. Some people like when the worlds collide, other people are like no, no, no. Keep it separate. It's like those people who separate their food on a plate. Well, I don't know if it's that. Like I wanted to touch, no, they want their, they want their favorite things separate. Okay. They don't want them mixed together. But then there's other people who are like, mashed potatoes and corn, bring it on, like just put it all in the same tile. Sure. I don't like my food touching necessarily. See, then you're, Although the older I get the less I care. I'm like, eh, whatever. Yeah, the less you care. See now you're you're, you're opening the idea of Master Group. Excited about it. But, I've always been like that. Okay. Fair enough. Before my food touch. Mm-hm. Fair enough. Gridfix Engage also write to us and says, #TDSDCC My favorite news from SDCC was the poster from The Avengers showing Vision in the distance. That was a surprise for a lot people that Paul Bettany would no longer just be a voice as Jarvis. Mm-hm. And would be joining the joining the cast as a physical embodiment, he would be the vision, which is pretty cool. And he said the voice is like spot on. Well he's, I mean, he's Jarvis. Yeah. So he's the voice of Tony Stark's assistant Jarvis, which is amazing and now he actually gets to actually be in the movie instead of just in a VO booth. << Oh he's not, okay got it. He's like, you're going to see him. You're going to see his character, yeah. Oh okay. He's called the vision. Oh. So that's, yeah that's his Well, that's. It's exciting! Yeah, it's pretty cool. Oh, the voice being spot on was, I was talking about, James Spader as Ultron, it was just very chilling. okay. Very, very good. I've got my Comic-Cons mixed up. Got your Avenger, got your Avenger and, villains mixed up. When they cross over it'll all be good. Yeah, exactly. You're like, eh, I'll figure it out. Our hashtag for today, though, Rich came up with this one, and I really like it. Yes. [UNKNOWN] battery, so what we wanna know from you, what are you going to do with all of your new found battery charging time? Cuz for me, I know I'm in the car, charging my battery, I'm charging my phone. True. At home, as soon as I get there I have to like, put my phone on the nightstand and then I gotta like not use it for like an hour. So what would you do with all your extra time? Yeah. What are you, are you going to play a game? Are you gonna, what are you, [INAUDIBLE] read a book? Solve the world's issues. Solve, yeah, [INAUDIBLE], you can crime solve, you can do, I mean, there's so many things, so tell us what you would do, #tdbattery. Let us know via Twitter or email, and now it is time for our phonetographer of the day. [MUSIC] Well, first off we have to say happy birthday to our phone-tographer of the day. Yes. His name is Matt W. and he writes to us and says taken at Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, California, USA. I, I, I figured that one out, but there are international viewers [CROSSTALK]. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Taken with an HTC Inspire. Oh, wow. I am completely aware that this is an old phone. [LAUGH] Now it says Galaxy S3 on screen so I assume that we're, that, that's wrong. Incorrect. Okay, so it's an HTC Inspire that took this. Fantastic picture, what kind of phone is that, I'm not even sure what that is. is that an older like original [CROSSTALK] Android device. He says I'm completely aware this is an old phone. I sent my Galaxy S3 in for repair Ok, that's why it says that story for the second time in a month and went on vacation before it was repaired so this is the phone that went along. For the trip. Considering how old the phone is I am very pleased at how the photo turned out. Lake Tahoe is just a very photogenic spot. And he's right. That is like. Look at that. That is better than some like professional pictures I've seen of, that, that's a postcard. That is a postcard from Lake Tahoe, which you were here. Lake Tahoe commission. Find the post card Yeah. Or find this guy and make this a postcard. Look how beautiful, like come, come visit beautiful Lake Tahoe. I can see the text. Like the little. Yeah. The text. Yeah, totally yeah. The little cursive text in the corner. The old 1950's like, old timey text where it's like come visit beautiful Lake Tahoe. Yeah, this is actually, this is exactly what that is. The you turn around the other way, it's like a nuclear dump. Site? No, okay no. Sorry. No, not in Lake Tahoe. That's like that's like Roswell. That's that new show. The, Manhattan. I'm always like. Oh, yeah. Okay, there you go. I don't know. I guess it's on my mind. You're kind of obsessed with it now. Yeah. Gotcha, gotcha. But if you want to submit your phonetography, you're more than welcome to. You can email a link to your pictures. No attachments please, to tommorrow@cnet.com. You can also email us all of your questions, comments. # of the day, whatever you want. And you can find us on social media. We're just getting a lot in general. Yeah. Like people are just like asking us now for like advice. Yeah. Advice. You can ask for advice. Which is we're happy. That's cool. We're happy to give you. You can also find us on the social medias, the Twitter, the Facebook, the Instagram, Google Plus. We are, at tomorrowdaily on all those things except for Google Plus where we are TomorrowDailyTV. Yeah, you can find us at all three places and if you wanna talk to us individually we're on the internet, too, as, as just us, just us people. Yep. I'm Ashley Skeva pretty much everywhere except for Instragram where it's XOAshelySkeva. I'm, I'm Rich DeMuro. Pretty much everywhere except Facebook, I'm RichOnTech. And that is it for today's Tomorrow Daily. You guys, be good humans and we will see you tomorrow. [MUSIC]