If you’re a big fan of Amazon’s Dash buttons, prepare to be floored: the company has just added 50 new buttons to its portfolio. For some, most of their shopping list could be ordered through these buttons – unless of course those orders include Mrs. Dash spices, which ironically don’t have their own button.
It’s impossible to say that
Source: Hot Hardware – Amazon Bolsters Its Dash Button Collection With 50 New Supported Products
Reader He Who Has No Name writes: We’ve seen brain-dead, overzealous, and entirely over-automated DMCA takedown requests bring down music and videos, but this may be the first case of an entire video game being knocked out. Earlier today David Prassel, creator of Trek Industries and developer of the not-without-controversy ORION: Dino Horde / Prelude and the early-access Guardians of ORION, posted that his current project had been entirely removed from Steam after a questionable DMCA allegation from Activision. Prassel explains further, “We’ve made Steam our primary platform, but this has put a definite scare into us going forward considering our entire livelihood can be pulled without a moment’s notice, without any warning or proper verification. I cannot even confirm that the representative from Activision is a real person as absolutely no results pop up in any of my searches.” Image comparisons against at least two of the weapon models claimed to be infringing were posted by Prassel and in at least one thread on a forum. What’s more, it appears Activision is alleging not a vertex-for-vertex and texel-for-texel theft and duplication of the Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3 2D — 3D art assets, but in fact an infringing artistic similarity and design of separately created art content — something that the DMCA does not cover (and which more would likely fall under copyright or possibly trade dress). Since this takedown falls directly in the middle of the Steam Summer Sale — which probably is not a coincidence — it will profoundly impact Trek Industry’s potential sales.Polygon has more details.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Activision Abuses DMCA To Take Knock Indie Game Entirely Off Steam
The fifth Star Ocean comes out today, and if you get motion sickness easily, you probably shouldn’t play it.
Source: Kotaku – Star Ocean V’s Camera Is So Bad, I Can’t Play It Without Getting Sick
A research team from the Mayo Clinic has shown that text messaging changes the rhythm of brain wave patterns in a way that’s never seen before. The discovery shows that smartphones are literally altering the way our minds work.
Source: Gizmodo – Texting Produces an Entirely New Kind of Brain Wave Pattern
Spray paint is easy and relatively inexpensive, but if you don’t have the space to lay out tarp or paper to spray paint small items like drawer pulls, picture frames, and door handles, use a cardboard box to keep the mess in check.
Source: LifeHacker – Use a Box to Spray Paint Small Items with No Mess
After news of a settlement broke yesterday, Volkswagen’s diesel emissions scandal settlement will indeed hit $15 billion in the US. The official paperwork was filed with the Justice Department today, the automaker will shell out $14.7 billion in two…
Source: Engadget – VW agrees to .7 billion settlement over US diesel claims
Growing up on Earth you learn from a very young age that liquids will remain in a cup as long as it stays upright. But Steve Mould has discovered a liquid that laughs at gravity and other forces that govern our universe: polyethylene oxide. It’s a polymer made from long chains of molecules that allow it to pour itself out of a container—even if it’s not tipped over.
Source: Gizmodo – Self-Pouring Liquid Behaves Like It’s From Another Universe
The next Xbox One S console doesn’t even have a Kinect port, showing that even Microsoft doesn’t care about the depth sensor for gaming. However, it may yet make a comeback in VR. Microsoft researchers have made hand- and finger-tracking much more ac…
Source: Engadget – Microsoft’s hand-tracking magic may lead to gamepad-free VR
Volkswagen has been ordered to buy back any diesel 2.0-liter four-cylinder car in the United States as part of its unprecedented $14.7 billion settlement with federal regulators, U.S. Justice Department officials said this morning.
Source: Gizmodo – Volkswagen Must Offer To Buy Back Any Diesel Four Cylinder Car In Massive .7 Billion Settlement
Warning: If you already have a fear of flying, just sit this one out. At 2:25am Monday local time, Singapore Airlines flight SQ368 took off for Milan, only to turn around hours later due to engine oil warning, according to the airline. But as soon as the plane touched down at Changi Airport in Singapore, passengers were greeted with this hellish scenario:
Source: Gizmodo – This Is What It Looks Like When Your Plane Catches on Fire
The ultimate power in the Star Wars universe can also be the ultimate power on your kitchen counter now that the Death Star has been turned into a two-slice toaster with settings for light, dark, burnt, and Alderaan’d.
Source: Gizmodo – Innocent Slices of Bread Will Cower in Fear at This Death Star Toaster
There’s a good chance your Facebook posts from the mid-aughts are a total disaster: blurry, low-res pics of your college dorm room and status updates about what you ate for dinner. It was a time before anyone truly understood the importance and longevity of social media. Still, if anyone could have anticipated exactly how bad those posts would look in a few years, you’d assume it’d be the guy who created the website. Well, you’d be wrong.
Source: Gizmodo – You Should Creep on Mark Zuckerberg’s Old Facebook Photos Right Now
Usually, I tend to favor a dry brine over a wet one, but I might switch sides for a bit to try the Kitchn’s feta cheese brine, which requires only two ingredients: feta (duh) and water.
Source: LifeHacker – Add Feta Cheese to Your Brine for Delicious, Juicy Chicken
Irina Yarovaya, the driving force behind Russia’s tough new anti-terrorism law. (credit: Official photographer of the Federation Council of Russia)
Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, has approved a series of new online surveillance measures as part of a wide-ranging anti-terrorism law. In a tweet, Edward Snowden, currently living in Russia, wrote: “Russia’s new Big Brother law is an unworkable, unjustifiable violation of rights that should never be signed.”
As well as being able to demand access to encrypted services, the authorities will require Russia’s telecom companies to store not just metadata, but the actual content of messages too, for a period of six months. Metadata alone must then be held for a total of three years, according to a summary of the new law on the Meduza site. Authorities will be able to access the stored content and metadata information on demand.
Snowden pointed out the difficulties of implementing the new law: “‘Store 6 months of content’ is not just dangerous, it’s impractical. What is that, ~100PB of storage for even a tiny 50Gbps ISP?” He added: “This bill will take money and liberty from every Russian without improving safety.”
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Source: Ars Technica – Russian ISPs will need to store content and metadata, open backdoors
Seventeen years ago, extreme sports ambassador and titular Pro Skater Tony Hawk pulled off the 900 revolution at the 1999 X-Games. The trick involves rotating the board two and a half times while midair (and in normal gravity
), and Hawk struggled with it back in his spry days. Now 48, he gives it the old college try.
Source: Gizmodo – Tony Hawk (Old) Can Still Pull Off His Famous 900
(credit: YouTube/France TV)
They call it “mechanical doping,” but the name simply doesn’t do it justice. Cycling is not a sport celebrated for honesty amongst even its top riders, but following several very high-profile doping cases in recent years, it seems as though the cheats have been trying a different route: hiding motors in their seat posts that help push them to superhuman feats of endurance.
The technique has been known since at least 2010; commercial versions of the motors can put out 200 steady watts of power, nearly doubling a typical pro-cyclist’s output. An onboard motor can help riders go faster, and can keep their pedalling cadence—the number of revolutions through the crank per minute—up while energy dips in endurance stages.
With the biggest cycling event in the world, the Tour de France, set to begin on July 2, mechanical doping is a serious concern—one that has moved France’s sports minister Thierry Braillard to tell the French press: “This problem is worse than doping; this is the future of cycling that’s at stake.”
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Source: Ars Technica – Tour de France to use thermal imaging to fight mechanical doping
2016 SFI Progress Report tells the story of how responsible forestry is helping improve our shared quality of life. The 400 different conservation and research projects reported by SFI Program Participants in 2015
Source: TreeHugger – SFI Progress Report Shows 500 Partner Organizations Coming Together for Future Forests
Today on In Case You Missed It: The Mill Blackbird is a vehicle chassis that car commercials can use as a stand-in, rather than getting to film with an actual new car. The Pillo is a smart medication dispenser that can recognize family members and…
Source: Engadget – ICYMI: The CGI car stand-in and smart pill dispenser
The Long March 7 rocket lifts off on Saturday from the from Wenchang Satellite Launch Center. (credit: XInhua)
Until recently it was fairly easy to dismiss China’s space program. Yes, China is one of just three nations to launch humans into space, but its technology has always seemed highly derivative of Russian spaceflight architecture. And when a recent article raised the question of whether China might develop reusable rocket technology, one Ars reader offered an amusing yet perhaps not entirely untruthful response: “That depends on how good SpaceX’s IT security is.”
After Saturday’s launch of the Long March 7 rocket from the new Wenchang Satellite Launch Center, however, such skepticism appears to be increasingly unwarranted. Although largely ignored by the western world, the Chinese launch marks something of a defining moment for the giant of Asia, a moment when China firmly staked its position as one of the world’s great space-faring nations. More than that, it took a step toward equaling, or perhaps even surpassing, NASA one day.
The Long March 7 rocket does not immediately threaten NASA or the US launch industry, of course. With the capability to heft 13.5 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, it is roughly on par with the Falcon 9 and the Atlas V launch vehicles. And the Tiangong-2 space laboratory China intends to launch later this year is but a shadow of the International Space Station.
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Source: Ars Technica – China enters modern era of rocket technology—may one day challenge NASA
Jalopnik Owner Dumps Tesla Model X Over Quality Problems
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Source: Gizmodo – Jalopnik Owner Dumps Tesla Model X Over Quality Problems | io9 This Zootopia Deleted Scene Took Thin
