The dick measuring contest space race between tech titans Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk has been brewing for years, but recently, things have intensified to comic book levels of absurdity. Almost immediately after SpaceX announced it’d be sending two private citizens around the moon next year, Jeff Bezos fired back by…
Source: Gizmodo – Is Blue Origin’s Tourist Capsule Sexier Than SpaceX’s?
Donald Trump is not the kind of man who is willing to go along with accepted facts. From his subjective valuation of his business portfolio, through his bird-dogging of Barack Obama’s birth certificate to his tantrums about the deceptive sparseness of his inaugural crowds, Trump has pursued his own rages and fixations…
Source: Gizmodo – The Conspiracy Theories of Trumpland: A Compleat and Comprehensive Bestiary
Earlier this year, Marvel made the sudden decision to stop including free downloads of digital copies of single issues with physical issues of its books. Thankfully, the publisher has since had a (correct) change of heart.
Source: io9 – Sweet Christmas, Marvel’s Bringing Back Digital Redeem Codes
Amazon is taking a tough stance against vendors who sell fully-loaded Kodi boxes and other “pirate” media players through its platform. From a report: The store now explicitly bans media players that “promote” or “suggest” the facilitation of piracy. Sellers who violate this policy, of which there are still a few around, risk having their inventory destroyed. […] While Kodi itself is a neutral platform, millions of people use third-party add-ons to turn it into the ultimate pirate machine. In some cases, the pirate add-ons are put onto the devices by vendors, who sell these “fully-loaded” boxes through their own stores or marketplaces such as Amazon. The ecommerce giant appears to be well aware of the controversy, as it recently published an updated policy clarifying that pirate media players are not permitted on the platform. Merely ‘suggesting’ that devices can be used for infringing purposes is enough to have them delisted.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Amazon Bans Sales of Media Player Boxes That Promote Piracy
Now that your ISP will soon be able to sell your browsing history to advertisers, it’s good to know which companies have your back, privacy-wise. Around the web, the recent switch to HTTPS encryption has been a step in the right direction, but adult…
Source: Engadget – Pornhub adds HTTPS to keep your kinks hidden
As probably the only decent April Fool’s Day thing that will happen this year (I’m just thankful it falls on a Saturday so I don’t have to be around to see the rest of the disasters), you can now play Ms. Pac-Man in Google Maps on any portion of a map that has enough streets to make a decent playfield, by clicking the ‘Insert Coin’ button in the lower left of the screen. And I’m not afraid to admit I just spent 30 minutes ridding my neighborhood of ghosts, which, at least in my opinion, should secure me the Neighbor Of The Month award from the homeowner’s association. “Get out of the kiddy pool and mow your yard.” Oh f*** off, Tom!
Thanks to everyone who sent this, for contributing to the overwhelming lack of productivity today.
Source: Geekologie – Stop Working And Go Play Ms. Pac-Man In Google Maps
Just when you think you’ve really gotten the hang of Horizon Zero Dawn, creeping around and hunting robot dinosaurs in the colorful open world, along comes a Cauldron to blow your damn mind.
Source: Kotaku – Horizon Zero Dawn’s Cauldron Dungeons Are Incredibly Cool
On Friday, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that US energy production in 2016 fell by 4 percent, with fossil fuel production contributing to most of that decline.
The numbers are not terribly surprising. Global carbon emissions have been stalled for years even as economic activity has increased (although that doesn’t mean we’re not still emitting massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere). We’ve also seen big shifts in the market for fossil fuels—cheap natural gas is beating coal dramatically and renewables like wind and solar are starting to be cheap enough to compete with more traditional energy sources. And the EIA found recently that energy intensity, which is defined as units of energy per unit of GDP, has fallen by a third in the last 25 years. That means economic output needs less energy than it did before.
According to the EIA’s numbers, the US produced 84.1 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) of energy in 2016, down 4 percent from 2015. That’s the first time energy production has been down year-over-year since 2009. Fossil fuel-related energy production, which includes coal, natural gas, and petroleum, was responsible for most of that, dropping from 7 percent from the previous year. Even natural gas-related energy production dropped two percent from the previous year, and petroleum dropped 5 percent. Coal-related energy production dropped a dramatic 18 percent.
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Source: Ars Technica – US energy production dropped in 2016 for the first time in 6 years
After a couple of trailers and teasers, a behind-the-scenes video that revealed Will Turner’s son, and news that Orlando Bloom would be back as Will in the fifth pirates movie, we finally have a good look at him. And things have gone wrong.
Source: io9 – Orlando Bloom Is Looking Very Crusty in New Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales Footage
You’ll probably have to get used to the idea of Twitch streaming a bunch of Amazon Prime Video shows. Starting at 4PM Eastern on April 5th, three of Prime Video’s spring pilots will air on repeat for 24 hours on the Twitch Presents page, which just f…
Source: Engadget – Amazon is making Twitch a destination for original shows
Those of you out there running Ryzen systems concerned about the FMA3 bug which can result in a hard locked system should start keeping your eyes open for new BIOS updates. According to AMD’s blog, BIOS updates containing the new AGESA code, v. 1.0.0.4, will start hitting the public in early April.
See below for a list of fixes/improvements.
We have reduced DRAM latency by approximately 6ns. This can result in higher performance for latency-sensitive applications. We resolved a condition where an unusual FMA3 code sequence could cause a system hang.
We resolved the “overclock sleep bug” where an incorrect CPU frequency could be reported after resuming from S3 sleep. AMD Ryzen™ Master no longer requires the High-Precision Event Timer (HPET).
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Ryzen FMA3 Code Sequence Bug to be Fixed in AGESA in BIOS Updates
Germany’s Federal Court of Justice this week ruled that if parents are aware that their children have committed copyright infringement they must identify them to the court, or pay their fines. This was a ruling in a case stemming from a 2011 distribution of an album by Rihanna by a minor.
This may not seem entirely strange to many here in the U.S, as we are used to parents taking responsibility for the actions of their underage children by, for instance, paying for any damage their kids cause. In Germany, however, this was slightly more controversial legally, as local law protects family members from having to testify against each other.
I’d imagine this ruling may result in families in future cases “having no idea” who might have illegally downloaded something on their connections.
The Court did throw potential future defendants a lifeline, however. If the Internet account holder does not know the name of the infringer, he or she is not obliged to monitor the Internet usage of other family members or to examine computers for the existence of file-sharing software.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Parents Must Identify Pirate Kids or Pay Their Fines, Court Rules
We’ve got about a year before the second season of Legion, which will likely have 10 episodes and debut in spring 2018. Legion positioned itself as one of the most artful and unique superhero shows on television, where our hero discovered his abilities and faced the monster inside him. There are plenty of ways the…
Source: io9 – What Legion Should Do in Season Two
Comcast, Verizon, AT&T Inc said Friday they would not sell customers’ individual internet browsing information, days after the U.S. Congress approved legislation reversing Obama administration era internet privacy rules. From a report on Reuters: The bill would repeal regulations adopted in October by the Federal Communications Commission under former President Barack Obama requiring internet service providers to do more to protect customers’ privacy than websites like Alphabet’s Google or Facebook. The easing of restrictions has sparked growing anger on social media sites. “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,” said Gerard Lewis, Comcast’s chief privacy officer. He added Comcast is revising its privacy policy to make more clear that “we do not sell our customers’ individual web browsing information to third parties.” Verizon does not sell personal web browsing histories and has no plans to do so in the future, said spokesman Richard Young.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Verizon, AT&T, Comcast Say They Will Not Sell Customer Browsing Histories
Over the last two and a half years, I’ve played more than 1,000 hours of Destiny. Over the last five months, I’ve barely played any. This week I returned to the game, and let me tell you, it is no small feat to climb back into a game you used to play obsessively.
Source: Kotaku – Five Thoughts After Playing Destiny For The First Time In Months
Yesterday game porter firm Feral Interactive released a public beta of Mad Max that features a Vulkan renderer in place of its OpenGL API for graphics rendering on Linux. In addition to Radeon Vulkan numbers, I posted some NVIDIA Mad Max Linux benchmarks with both renderers. Those results were exciting on the few Pascal cards tested so I have now extended that comparison to feature a line-up of 14 NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards from Kepler, Maxwell, and Pascal families while looking at this game’s OpenGL vs. Vulkan performance.
Source: Phoronix – 14-Way NVIDIA Kepler/Maxwell/Pascal OpenGL vs. Vulkan With Mad Max On Linux
Just when we learned the importance of HTTPS in address bars, spammers and malicious hackers have figured out how to game the system.
Let’s Encrypt is an automated service that lets people turn their old unencrypted URLs into safely encrypted HTTPS…
Source: Engadget – When the ‘S’ in HTTPS also stands for shady
Wine 2.5 is now available as the newest bi-weekly development release of Wine…
Source: Phoronix – Wine 2.5 Released, Supports D3D Transform Feedback
This is a video of wingsuiter Brandon Mikesell flying between some skyscrapers (not to be confused with flying into some skyscrapers, which would be a different video entirely and presumably link to a GoFundMe page for cremation services) in Panama City, Panama (not to be confused with Panama City Beach, Florida, which is where I got this bitchin’ lower back tattoo).
Keep going for the video, which I watched from the safety and comfort of a bathroom stall.
Source: Geekologie – I Believe I Can Fly: Wingsuiting Between Skyscrapers
