Next month sees the premiere of the Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s classic speculative fiction novel The Handmaid’s Tale. A just-announced radio drama will also revisit the dystopian reality, as well, but did you know that a graphic novel has been in the works, too?
Source: io9 – Report: The Handmaid’s Tale Graphic Novel Is Coming
Legendary Pokémon get a bum rap in competitive play. Many casual observers and players constantly ask why legendaries are allowed in the first place. Aren’t legendaries overpowered? Don’t legendaries make battles boring?
Source: Kotaku – Legendaries Do Not Ruin Competitive Pokémon
Snapchat is in a tough spot right now and we’re not just talking about all of those insensitive filters. Users love Stories, but because of that, everybody from Medium to Bumble to Facebook is adding its own version of the feature to its platforms. A…
Source: Engadget – Snapchat adds another feature Facebook will copy
Most of the major smartphones of spring have been announced, and we noticed something curious. The LG G6 and Samsung Galaxy S8 are both rocking big displays with an aspect ratio larger than the 16:9 you’re used to on your phones, television and desktop displays. These phones have some of the widest aspect ratios ever…
Source: Gizmodo – Here’s Why the Displays in New Phones Are So Weird and Wide
An anonymous reader shares a report: “I think before we go to the phase where it’s only robots at every bench, we are going to go through a phase of smarter workers,” General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt told reporters on March 30. GE has been investing heavily in futuristic manufacturing techniques. Immelt said that in Lafayette, Indiana — where GE Aviation is ramping up production for portions of its new fuel-efficient LEAP aircraft engine — “we’re going to add workers, but probably not as many as we would have twenty years ago” and each worker will be “higher value, smarter, more productive.” […] So if phase one is smart workers, what’s the next? “I’m not that smart,” Immelt said. “I don’t know exactly how many phases that we’re going to go through. But I think we’re going to be in phase ‘smart worker’ for a fair amount of time. I really do. I think we’re better off as a country focusing on the smart-worker phase than going right to ‘robots are evil.'”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Fear of Robots Taking Jobs in the Short Term is Overblown, Says General Electric CEO
Splatoon 2 is a great time. Fighting as a squid-kid is fun and the game takes steps to make sure many people can enjoy. From new players to those with disabilities, games can take actions to help everyone join in the action. We take a look how in this critical video.
Source: Kotaku – Splatoon 2 Makes Sure That Almost Anybody Can Jump In And Play
Troubled accessory company MadCatz which was recently delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, yesterday made a voluntary assignment in bankruptcy. Yesterday also marked the effective resignation date of all off the company’s directors and officers. PriceWaterhouseCoopers has been appointed to handle the liquidation of the company’s assets.
If everything proceeds as usual, by Monday PriceWaterhouseCoopers should be announcing that La La land is the winner.
The Board of Directors made the decision to have the Company make a voluntary assignment in bankruptcy after considering various strategic alternatives, the interest of various stakeholders of the Company as well as a number of other factors. The Board of Directors has been advised by the Company’s financial advisor and management that no viable strategic alternative in respect of a sale of the Company or other corporate sale transaction is being made available to the Company by any third party. In addition, the Board of Directors has also been advised that the Company’s lenders will not increase the amount of its credit facilities beyond the current levels.
Ongoing Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Gaming Accessory Maker MadCatz Files for Bankruptcy
If you plan on getting one of those sharp looking new Samsung Galaxy S8 phones, you might want to think twice before utilizing the face unlock feature. iDeviceHelp has posted a video on YouTube showing that the face unlock feature can me fooled with a picture.
I had thought that this shortage in phones and face unlocks had already been overcome through the use of movement, and the requirement to capture the face from multiple angles. The video does state that maybe they were dealing with a problem with pre-release software. Let’s hope that is the case. With the awkward position of the fingerprint sensor on the S8, chances are good that a lot of people might want to use face unlock.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Galaxy S8 Facial Recognition can be Bypassed With a Photo
Amariyanna “Mari” Copeny is Little Miss Flint. She is 9 years old and lives in Flint, MI. She told me that in her free time she likes to “go on Twitter or just play with my toys or just lay down in bed, read, and play with my dollhouse, and color and draw and cheer.” She hasn’t been able to drink the water from the…
Source: Gizmodo – ‘They Don’t Care About Any Poor People’: Little Miss Flint Talks About Her City’s Water Crisis
The Federal Trade Commission is going back to an old well, and possibly will actually exercise some of its authority. We’re talking about the FTC’s stance on sponsored editorial posts that aren’t clearly labeled as such. “The FTC will soon begin hold…
Source: Engadget – The government plans to crack down on sketchy advertorial
If lawmakers have their way, police in one US state could soon be using drones as lethal weapons against the citizens they’re supposed to protect. On Thursday, Connecticut’s judiciary committee approved a new drone regulation bill that, if passed, would make it the first state in the union to let cops use deadly…
Source: Gizmodo – Cops Just Got One Step Closer to Killing Americans by Drone
Musician Jonathan Coulton has debuted the first video for his upcoming album, Solid State. It’s a glorious send-up of classic text adventure video games, as well as a cautionary tale against the encroaching surveillance state. As a bonus, the album has its own graphic novel.
Source: io9 – Jonathan Coulton Fights ‘Nicey-Nice Fascism’ with Text Adventure Music Video and Graphic Novel
Earlier this week I posted some Ryzen 7 1800X DDR4 memory scaling Linux tests now that MSI pushed out an updated BIOS for that X370 motherboard that allows running the system at higher — but still rather limited — DDR4 memory frequencies. Here are some similar tests with my Ryzen 7 1700 and a B350 motherboard…
Source: Phoronix – AMD Ryzen 7 1700 + B350 DDR4 Memory Speed Tests
Ever wonder why your photos never turn out as amazing those posted by your favorite Instagrammer? There’s probably a lot of post-processing happening in Photoshop you don’t see. But instead of poking at sliders for an hour, computer scientists want to make it incredibly easy for even amateur photographers to achieve…
Source: Gizmodo – One Day Photoshop Might Let You Instantly Copy Another Photo’s Style
Reader Mark Wilson writes: Today, WikiLeaks published the third installment of its Vault 7 CIA leaks. We’ve already had the Year Zero files which revealed a number of exploits for popular hardware and software, and the Dark Matter batch which focused on Mac and iPhone exploits. Now we have Marble to look at. A collection of 676 source code files, the Marble cache reveals details of the CIA’s Marble Framework tool, used to hide the true source of CIA malware, and sometimes going as far as appearing to originate from countries other than the US. The source code for Marble Framework is tiny — WikiLeaks has provided it in a zip file that’s only around 0.5MB. WikiLeaks explains that the tool is used by the CIA to hide the fact that it is behind malware attacks that are unleashed on targets: “Marble is used to hamper forensic investigators and anti-virus companies from attributing viruses, trojans and hacking attacks to the CIA. Marble does this by hiding (“obfuscating”) text fragments used in CIA malware from visual inspection. This is the digital equivalent of a specialized CIA tool to place covers over the english language text on U.S. produced weapons systems before giving them to insurgents secretly backed by the CIA. Marble forms part of the CIA’s anti-forensics approach and the CIA’s Core Library of malware code.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – CIA Tricked Antivirus Programs, Claims WikiLeaks
Enlarge / Anthony Levandowski, VP of Engineering at Uber, speaking to reporters at the Uber Advanced Technologies Center on September 13, 2016 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (credit: ANGELO MERENDINO/AFP/Getty Images)
A former Google engineer, now working for Uber, used his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination this week. He did so to avoid turning over documents in the Waymo v. Uber trade-secret litigation.
Anthony Levandowski, the head of Uber’s self-driving car project, took the extraordinary step during a closed court hearing on Wednesday. Levandowski’s lawyer said his client won’t be turning over any documents because there’s a “potential for criminal action.” The reports emerged because transcripts of the hearing were acquired by news organizations, including The New York Times, Reuters, and USA Today.
Google has accused Levandowski of downloading 14,000 “highly confidential” files from Google while he worked there, 9.7 gigabytes in total. Six weeks after the alleged downloads, Levandowski resigned and later started his own self-driving truck startup. That company, Otto, was acquired by Uber for $680 million.
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Source: Ars Technica – Judge steams as Uber exec withholds documents and pleads the 5th
Guppy Friend traps plastic fibers from synthetic clothes that would otherwise get released into the environment.
Source: TreeHugger – Stop plastic microfiber pollution with this ingenious laundry bag
This is a video of a performance by Japanese dance duo AyaBambi using a 1,000-frame per second projector to add masks and crying black tear effects to their faces thanks to a very precise face-tracking system (previously: a similar system). An explanation while I paint my face like a clown because my roommate just watched the new It trailer and deserves to have a heart attack today:
The tiny glowing dots attached to the dancer’s faces allow them to be tracked in real time so that the overlays created by the projector perfectly match their movements and facial expressions. The sensors require just milliseconds to process those movements, and then warp and distort the projected images to perfectly match them, which is fast enough to hide any delays from the human eye. So how long before we’re all wearing projected clothing?
‘How long until we’re all wearing projected clothing?’ I’m already wearing projected clothing! “You’re naked.” No, I’m actually fully clothed and just have a naked body projected onto me. “I stand corrected.” Just kidding, I’m totally balls-naked, get a good look.
Keep going for the video.
Source: Geekologie – Freaky Deaky: Virtual Masks Projected Onto Faces In Real Time With Face-Tracking Projector
Designers who say they are able to make a living selling outfits and skins for Dota 2 say they may need to get new gigs now that they’ve noticed an unannounced change to the game’s economy affecting their bank accounts.
Source: Kotaku – Dota 2 Skin Creators Say Valve Is Ripping Them Off
Take a sneak peak at the world’s longest underground art gallery.
Source: TreeHugger – Stockholm’s metro stations are a glorious riot of art and color
