Given that Star-Lord spent the entire first Guardians of the Galaxy searching for his father, it seems appropriate that, for the sequel, he would pick his own daddy out of a line-up.
Source: io9 – Director Says It Was Chris Pratt’s Idea to Put Kurt Russell in Guardians 2
Can you remember a time when Corsair didn’t make gaming keyboards? In recent years, it’s almost hard to, as the company has released a countless number of models and has become a vendor known for quality design. That’s important, as when these peripherals cost $100 or more, it’s nice to know that they’ll last.
Building on its reputation
Source: Hot Hardware – Corsair Announces New LUX Mechanical Keyboard Family With Cherry MX Switches
I was wondering why Facebook was no longer showing those small story snippets. The company is now using an algorithm to select trending topics and articles, so they can now blame a program instead of people when something goes wrong.
Quartz confirmed from multiple sources that Facebook has laid off the entire editorial staff on the Trending team—15-18 workers contracted through a third party. The Trending team will now be staffed entirely by engineers, who will work to check that topics and articles surfaced by the algorithms are newsworthy. Facebook maintains that trending items have always been selected by algorithms; the former editorial staff was only responsible for writing the story descriptions seen in the Trending section, according to the company. This was disputed by former contractors hired by the tech giant who told Gizmodo in May that they were instructed to manually add some stories by hand.
Comments
Source: [H]ardOCP – Facebook Fires Entire Trending Stories Editorial Staff
One of the exciting innovations within the Linux kernel in the past few years has been extending the Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) to become a more generalized in-kernel virtual machine. The eBPF work with recent versions of the Linux kernel allow it to be used by more than just networking so that these programs can be used for tracing, security, and more…
Source: Phoronix – Making Use Of eBPF In The Mainline Linux Kernel
Enlarge / Yup, this is a thing that’s happening in the year 2016… (credit: guacasaurs_mex / Instagram)
I know a surprising number of people who desperately want to play Pokémon Go, but their phones are too old to run the game reliably. For those people, a cheap, used Dreamcast with a portable Visual Memory Unit might be the cheapest way to simulate the Pokémon Go experience until their next upgrade cycle. That’s because of Pokémon Go VMU, a cheeky homebrew project from a VMU coder going by the handle guacasaurus_mex.
True, the Dreamcast’s underpowered memory-card-with-a-screen-and-buttons doesn’t feature the GPS antenna and augmented reality camera that help make Pokémon Go possible on smartphones. Still, guacasaurus_rex promises a randomly generated map grid to navigate on the 48×32 pixel monochrome LCD screen. There will even be a little timing-based mini-game for catching the little monsters in Pokéballs to fill in for those little touchscreen swipes.
The VMU “port” isn’t planned for release until next year, though, because “it’s going to take forever to draw all those damn Pokémon.” Hopefully Pokémon Go will still be a relevant gaming phenomenon by then, eh?
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Source: Ars Technica – Pokémon Go coming to Dreamcast’s VMU via homebrew “port”
QUOTE | “What’s changed is that there is proof in the market that people want it…” – EA Studios executive VP Patrick Soderlund on the company’s reversal when it comes to remastered re-releases of games. Less than a year ago, EA’s Peter Moore decried the practice as a sign companies had run out of ideas.
Source: Kotaku – This Week In The Business: Backtracking, Flip-Flopping, And Other Changing Plans
Not looking forward to your shower giving an operatic performance every time you bathe? It’s a pretty common problem—showers that make an annoying high-pitched squeal when you run the water—but you can probably fix it yourself.
Source: LifeHacker – What Causes a Squealing Shower and How to Fix It
TriggerPoint’s foot massager, Kwikset keypad locks, and the Original Grill Gauge lead off Saturday’s best deals.
Source: LifeHacker – Saturday’s Best Deals: TriggerPoint Foot Massager, Grill Gauge, Keypad Deadbolt
The open, upgradeable ARM development board that traces back to the failed KDE Vivaldi project managed to pass its funding goal just in time. This open-source hardware project currently powered by some older Allwinner hardware managed to raise more than $170k…
Source: Phoronix – The EOMA68 Upgradeable ARM Board/Computer Passed Its Funding Goal
There was another long-time Intel open-source Linux graphics driver developer that left the company earlier this summer and is now working at Google on the Chrome/Chromium OS graphics stack…
Source: Phoronix – Intel Lost Another Open-Source Driver Developer To Google Earlier This Summer
Peter Hudson writes from a report via Recode: “After failing to get Congress to pass a ‘startup visa’ as part of broad immigration reform, the Obama administration is moving ahead with an alternative that would allow overseas entrepreneurs to live in the U.S. for up to five years to help build a company,” reports Recode. “Already speaking out in favor of the new rules is PayPal co-founder Max Levchin: ‘I believe that the most promising entrepreneurs from around the world should have the same opportunity I had — the chance to deliver on their potential, here in America.’ Levchin moved to the U.S. from the Soviet Union in 1991.” There are three conditions that need to be met in order to be eligible to work in the U.S. under the new rule: the foreigner would have to own at least 15 percent of a U.S.-based startup, the foreigner would need to have a central role in the startup’s operations, and the startup would need to have “potential for rapid business growth and job creation.” The third requirement could be met by having at least $100,000 in government grants or $345,000 invested from U.S. venture investors. “Under [the International Entrepreneur Rule (PDF)] being formally proposed on Friday, the Department of Homeland Security would be empowered to use its existing authority to allow entrepreneurs to legally work in the country for two years, possibly followed by a one-time three-year extension,” reports Recode. “While the public will have 45 days to comment, the rules aren’t subject to congressional approval.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – White House Is Planning To Let More Foreign Entrepreneurs Work In the US
Today on In Case You Missed It: Harvard Researchers created the world’s first fully-autonomous octo-robot, something that runs on hydrogen peroxide and moves by pumping oxygen into its tentacles. We’d be afraid, except it looks so similar to what r…
Source: Engadget – ICYMI: The first autonomous robotic octopus has arrived
LLVM 3.9 isn’t being released as it was hoped for, but it appears the final release is still just days away…
Source: Phoronix – LLVM 3.9 RC3 Released, Final Coming Out Soon
Climb aboard kids—it’s time to tune in, drop out, and have your mind expanded.
Source: Gizmodo – Take a Trippy Ride Down Minecraft’s Acid Interstate
(credit: Cyrus Farivar)
Attorneys representing Matthew Keys have filed their formal appeal to the 9th Circuit. Keys is the California journalist who was convicted of hacking-related crimes in 2015.
As Keys told Ars before he was sentenced, the appeal largely focuses on the argument that the government “constructively amended” the second count that he was charged with: 18 U.S. Code § 1030 (a) (5) (A). That law declares a crime has been committed if someone “knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and, as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer.”
During closing arguments at trial, one of Keys’ lawyers, Jay Leiderman, said that Keys’ December 2010 defacement of one Los Angeles Times article lasted only 40 minutes and therefore caused no damage.
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Source: Ars Technica – On appeal in LA Times defacement case, lawyers say there was no “damage”
A team of smartypants from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Labl (CSAIL) have developed a new Wi-Fi system purportedly capable of transmitting wireless data more than three times faster than the Wi-Fi we use today. And on top of being significantly faster, it doubles the range of modern day Wi-Fi transmissions.
The new
Source: Hot Hardware – MIT Researchers Develop MegaMIMO 2.0 Wi-Fi That Triples Speed, Doubles Range
Earlier this week, WhatsApp made the surprising move to begin sharing user information with its parent company, Facebook. WhatsApp’s original stated goal was to know “as little about you as possible”, but that mantra seems to have been thrown out the window in an effort to further increases Facebook’s booming mobile ad revenue.
WhatsApp
Source: Hot Hardware – Privacy Groups Lash Out At WhatsApp’s Data Sharing Pact With Facebook
Facebook has been catching heat over allegations that its news team frequently buries conservative news topics, allegations it denies. Nevertheless, the world’s top social network is making some changes to its Trending topics feature that promotes certain news stories over others in an effort to make the process more automated and presumably
Source: Hot Hardware – Facebook Takes Human Bias Out Of Trending Topics Selection Process By Going Algorithmic
Source: Engadget – Privacy groups call foul on WhatsApp sharing data with Facebook
NASA’s Juno spacecraft will get its first up-close view at Jupiter this Saturday. Space.com reports: “At 8:51 a.m. EDT (1251 GMT) on Saturday (Aug. 27), Juno will zoom within 2,600 miles (4,000 kilometers) of Jupiter’s cloud tops — closer than the probe is scheduled to come during its entire mission, NASA officials said. And Juno will have all of its science instruments during Saturday’s flyby. This was not the case during the spacecraft’s only previous close approach to Jupiter, which occurred July 4 when Juno arrived in orbit around the giant planet. During Saturday’s close pass, all eight of Juno’s science instruments will be collecting data, and the probe’s visible-light imager, known as JunoCam, will take close-up photos.” You can also look forward to Venus-Jupiter Conjunction 2016, an event happening on August 27 where Venus and Jupiter’s respective orbits will bring the two planets the closest that they’ll be to each other until 2065. The two planets will be positioned roughly five degrees above the Western horizon on August 27.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Juno Probe To Get First Up-Close Look At Jupiter On Saturday
