In PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ default mode, it’s every person for themselves. That does not mean, however, that people don’t form alliances. It just means that they tend to end poorly, sometimes with tears.
Source: Kotaku – Spontaneous Battlegrounds Friendship Ends In Tragedy, Revenge
Microsoft corporate vice president Brian Harry announced in a blog post today that they are shutting down CodePlex, its service for hosting repositories of open source software. “As of this post, we’ve disabled the ability to create new CodePlex projects,” Harry wrote. “In October, we’ll set CodePlex to read-only, before shutting it down completely on December 15th, 2017.” VentureBeat reports: While people will be able to download an archive of their data, Microsoft is teaming up with GitHub, which provides similar functionality for hosting code that people can collaborate on, to give users “a streamlined import experience” to migrate code and related content there. “Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of amazing options come and go but at this point, GitHub is the de facto place for open source sharing and most open source projects have migrated there,” Harry wrote. Microsoft has been leaning in more and more to GitHub in the past few years. It moved the CNTK deep learning toolkit from CodePlex to GitHub last year. Today Microsoft’s GitHub organization has more than 16,000 open source contributors, Harry wrote. And last year GitHub itself made a big deal about Microsoft’s adoption of GitHub. At the same time, CodePlex has rotted. In the past month people have made commits to fewer than 350 projects, Harry wrote. GitHub is based on the Git open source version control software, which keeps track of changes by multiple people. People can move code to alternative systems like Atlassian’s Bitbucket and Microsoft’s Visual Studio Team Services, Harry wrote. The startup GitLab also offers hosting for open and closed source projects.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Microsoft Is Shutting Down CodePlex
We all hoped EPA head, Scott Pruitt, would eventually face consequences when he falsely claimed that there was “tremendous disagreement” about whether human activity cause global warming.
Source: Gizmodo – Report: EPA Investigates EPA Head Scott Pruitt For His Climate-Denying Bullshit
Ghost in the Shell is finally in theaters, after months of backlash and even more backtracking from the movie’s cast and crew. The film has been accused of whitewashing the Major so they could cast a Caucasian actress, perpetuating decades of erasure for Asian Americans in film.
Source: io9 – io9 Roundtable: How Ghost in the Shell Fumbles Race and Identity
Call it a curse. Call it a jinx. Something is currently afflicting a series of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U tournaments. The Saga events are run by a group called 2GGaming in Southern California and are typically named after a player or players who have been flown in to compete. The problem is that, but over the course…
Source: Kotaku – A Southern California Tournament Curse Plagues Top Smash Bros. Players
Enlarge / See that vortex on the back edge of the wing? That means lift. (credit: Bomphrey/Nakata/Phillips/Walker)
It’s unmistakable. A high-pitched whine tells you you’re sharing a room with a mosquito, and you are unlikely to end the evening without some itchy welts. The sound alone is enough to make you shudder.
You’re not imagining things. Within the insect world, mosquitoes have a distinctive flight, with a short wing stroke and a very high frequency of wing beats. And now, researchers have figured out the physics behind their flight. They have identified two mechanisms for generating lift that had not previously been seen in any animal. “Much of the aerodynamic force that supports [the mosquito’s] weight,” the authors conclude, “is generated in a manner unlike any previously described for a flying animal.”
The work, done by a small team of Japanese and UK researchers, involved setting up a series of eight high-speed cameras to capture every instant of a mosquito’s wing flap from multiple angles. The resulting data allowed them to create a digital model of the wings as they went through a full stroke. This was then used to solve fluid dynamics equations for the air around the wings, letting the researchers track the movement of the air as the wing beat through it.
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Source: Ars Technica – Filming mosquitoes reveals a completely new approach to flight
The paradigm for toys-to-life games is well-established: one part kid-friendly video game, one part expensive, collectible figurines — and a tethered NFC “portal” that ties them together. When Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure introduced this model in 2…
Source: Engadget – ‘Skylanders’ learns what Amiibo knew all along: Drop the portal
With warm weather comes pollen, and that means seasonal allergies for a lot of people. Nasal sprays are an effective way to treat the symptoms, but over reliance can actually make you feel worse in the long run.
Source: LifeHacker – Nasal Sprays Could Be Making Your Allergies Worse
Thanks to the success of Guardians of the Galaxy, blockbuster sci-fi adventures can be trippy again. Bulbous monsters, sparkly outfits, zero-G hairstyles, starscapes that look like 1970s prog rock album covers—it’s all cool now. And that means, strangely, that the world is finally ready for a movie based on the 1960s comic book that started the psychedelic sci-fi craze in the first place.
That’s what you’ll see in this first full-length trailer for Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, the tale of Valerian and Laureline, two spacio-temporal agents hired to guard the universe’s only intergalactic library in the insanely colorful cosmopolis Alpha. The film is directed by The Fifth Element mastermind Luc Besson, whose most recent movie was the transhumanist hit Lucy, starring Scarlett Johansson. As for Valerian‘s plot, there’s some kind of vague menace threatening not just the future of knowledge, but all of space-time.
The story looks fun, but the backstory is downright fascinating. Director Besson has been obsessed with the original French comic Valérian et Laureline for almost his entire career. Created in 1967 by French literature professor Pierre Christin and illustrated by Jean-Claude Mézières, the comic tackled social and philosophical issues with a strong dose of mid-century radicalism. What made it unique was the combination of political commentary with Mézières’ crazy, colorful art. Mézières was a close friend of Jean Giraud, creator of influential sci-fi comic Mobius. Both Mézières and Giraud’s work were the immediate forerunners of the sexy/otherworldly style found in Métal Hurlant (Heavy Metal) magazine.
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Source: Ars Technica – If you loved The Fifth Element, there’s a new movie to make you rejoice
Kotaku Ghost In The Shell Really Bummed Us Out | Jalopnik This Is What It Looks Like When You Don’t Change Your Oil | io9 Orlando Bloom Is Looking Very Crusty in New Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales Footage | Vitals You’re Probably Going to Get a Tick This Summer. Good Luck. |
Source: Gizmodo – Kotaku Ghost In The Shell Really Bummed Us Out | Jalopnik This Is What It Looks Like When You Don’t
PC gamers and video professionals alike (among many others) live and die on fast performance. For the speed demons out there, we have some good news. JEDEC, the organization that sets standards for the microelectronics industry, says it’s currently…
Source: Engadget – Next-gen RAM will be twice as fast … whenever it arrives
Gizmodo Watch This Industrious Badger Bury an Entire Cow by Itself | Deadspin Coastal Carolina Suspended Their Entire Cheerleading Squad And Won’t Say Why | Jezebel Fellow Dirt Bags: Turns Out It’s Okay If You Don’t Wash Your Legs | The Root Sean Hannity Is Garbage, but Not All Opinion Shows Are Trash |
Source: LifeHacker – Gizmodo Watch This Industrious Badger Bury an Entire Cow by Itself | Deadspin Coastal Carolina Suspe
This is a video of inventor Richard Browning demonstrating the Daedalus flying suit he built with his team at Gravity Industries. The suit uses a pair of small jet engines mounted on the user’s back, as well as one or two on each arm, to lift a would-be Iron Man off the ground. The future! (Why’s the future always have to be so loud?)
According to Wired UK, Richard’s suit “can travel at a speed of up to 279 miles an hour, although Browning hasn’t tested it to anywhere near full capacity.”
To hover, Browning starts his engines before directing his movement with small, precise shifts of his body. The two turbines on his back are splayed out to provide balance; the two on each arm angle forward. Pointing down creates what Browning calls “a teepee of thrust vectors,” pushing him away from the ground. Shifting his arms back sends him forward; flaring his arms out pushes him down. If he wants more speed, he pulls his arms in and pushes his chest out.
Admittedly, this does look like a step in the right direction. But what I’m looking for is a giant leap in the right direction. You know, like that famous spaceman once said. What was his name again? “Buzz Lightyear.” Yes, Buzz Lightyear, thank you.
Keep going for three videos of the system being tested.
Source: Geekologie – Man Builds His Own Iron-Man Hoversuit With Jet Engines Attached To His Arms
When Orisa first launched onto the Overwatch PTR, she felt like a formidable, deadly tank who could lead charges or back up her teammates in the worst of situations. Weeks later, after she’s landed on both console and in Competitive Mode, there’s been a consensus: Orisa isn’t going as planned.
Source: Kotaku – Overwatch’s Orisa Isn’t Living Up To Expectations
(credit: Microsoft)
Microsoft announced today that CodePlex, the company’s open source project-hosting service, will be closed down.
Started in 2006, the service offered an alternative to SourceForge. It was based initially on Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server source control and later added options to use Subversion, Mercurial, and git.
At the time, there weren’t a tremendous number of good options for hosting projects. SourceForge was the big one, but it always seemed light on feature development and heavy on advertising. CodePlex on the Web was much more attractive and less cluttered. The use of TFS for source control meant it also had strong integration in Visual Studio.
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Source: Ars Technica – Microsoft closing down CodePlex, tells devs to move to GitHub
Australia is close to seizing the global crown for the longest streak of economic growth thanks to a mixture of policy guile and outrageous fortune. From a report: While growth is being underpinned by population gains and resource exports to China, failure to spur productivity has meant stagnant living standards and electoral discontent; a property bubble fueled by record-low interest rates has driven household debt to levels that threaten financial stability; and a timid government facing political gridlock could lose the nation’s prized AAA rating as early as May because of spiraling budget deficits. Australia’s last recession — defined locally as two straight quarters of contraction — occurred in 1991 and was a devastating conclusion to eight years of reform designed to create an open, flexible and competitive economy. But it also proved cathartic, paving the way for a low-inflation, productivity-driven expansion. As momentum started waning, China’s re-emergence as a pre-eminent global economic power sent demand for Australian resources skyrocketing, helping shield the nation from the worst of the global financial crisis. But the post-crisis return of the boom proved ephemeral, failing to boost government coffers and pushing the local currency higher, eroding competitiveness and driving another nail into the coffin of a fading manufacturing sector.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – This is Why Australia Hasn’t Had a Recession in Over 25 Years
Enlarge / A screen shot showing the exploit taking control of a Samsung TV.
A new attack that uses terrestrial radio signals to hack a wide range of Smart TVs raises an unsettling prospect—the ability of hackers to take complete control of a large number of sets at once without having physical access to any of them.
The proof-of-concept exploit uses a low-cost transmitter to embed malicious commands into a rogue TV signal. That signal is then broadcast to nearby devices. It worked against two fully updated TV models made by Samsung. By exploiting two known security flaws in the Web browsers running in the background, the attack was able to gain highly privileged root access to the TVs. By revising the attack to target similar browser bugs found in other sets, the technique would likely work on a much wider range of TVs.
“Once a hacker has control over the TV of an end user, he can harm the user in a variety of ways,” Rafael Scheel, the security consultant who publicly demonstrated the attack, told Ars. “Among many others, the TV could be used to attack further devices in the home network or to spy on the user with the TV’s camera and microphone.”
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Source: Ars Technica – Smart TV hack embeds attack code into broadcast signal—no access required
Source: Engadget – German law urges parents to rat out kids’ illegal downloads
In a post to the company’s corporate privacy blog today, Comcast CEO Gerard Lewis promised to not sell their customers personal data. He went on to state “We do not sell our broadband customers’ individual web browsing history. We did not do it before the FCC’s rules were adopted, and we have no plans to do so.”
Note the oddly specific use of language referring to “individual web browsing history”. This does suggest that some data, presumably aggregated user data, is used for marketing purposes. As some were disappointed to find out after an attempt to counter this legislation by crowdfunding and buying the browsing data of members of congress, that’s not quite how it works.
In other words, it seems there is nothing new to report here. Comcast won’t be selling your individual browsing data, just like they weren’t selling it before, but we still don’t have a clear view of exactly what data they collect, how they aggregate it, what they do sell, and what security they have in place to protect that data.
Comcast says its customers shouldn’t worry about having their browsing histories or personal information sold off by Comcast, because the cable giant doesn’t have any immediate plans to do so. And if they do decide to change that policy, customers should rely on the state governments to stand up to a company that writes its own laws in many places.
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Source: [H]ardOCP – Comcast Vows to Not Sell Customers Individual Web Browsing Data
