Shiatsu pillows come around a lot, but it’s not everyday you find one with over 6,000 reviews and a #1 best seller status on Amazon. Today only, pick up this pillow for $32 and enjoy a massage anywhere you want.
Source: LifeHacker – Get a Massage Any Time You Want With This Discounted Shiatsu Pillow
Finally, people are coming to their senses. While it’s cool to have thousands of books on a single device in e-format, nothing beats a printed book to me, as these retain their charm and soul: what I mean is that you don’t get any of the nuances in the digital version, such as font choice, page texture, format size, ink quality, etc. Sales of e-readers have reportedly declined more than 40% between 2011 and 2016. Which do you prefer?
Sales of consumer e-books plunged 17% in the U.K. in 2016, according to the Publishers Association. Sales of physical books and journals went up by 7% over the same period, while children’s books surged 16%. The same trend is on display in the U.S., where e-book sales declined 18.7% over the first nine months of 2016, according to the Association of American Publishers. Paperback sales were up 7.5% over the same period, and hardback sales increased 4.1%. “The print format is appealing to many and publishers are finding that some genres lend themselves more to print than others and are using them to drive sales of print books,” said Phil Stokes, head of PwC’s entertainment and media division in the U.K.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Real Books Are Back: E-Book Sales Plunge Nearly 20%
We have already seen a handful of stories involving drones that managed to injure people, but a new FAA report claims that having one fall on you is probably nothing to worry about. Apparently, it took a “consortium of universities” to figure this out: drones, they reveal, fall more slowly due to their shape, and they also tend to have safety measures (e.g., blade guards) that further reduce painful incidents. The actual point here is that the FAA is making preparations for new rules that should make drones even safer around people.
The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to continue to seek input from the public and industry experts on how drones should be allowed to fly over people, beyond line of sight of the operator and at night. The current threshold for determining if a drone needs to be registered with the FAA — unmanned aircraft weighing more than 250 grams — was decided in part using Cold War-era military projections on the lethality of being hit with debris in a nuclear fallout, as Recode reported last month. The FAA will begin a new phase of research on drone safety in June, the results of which will be used to develop tests for drone manufacturers to certify their aircraft for safe flying over people.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – A Falling Drone Probably Won’t Kill You
When the robot apocalypse happens, blame yourself. As machines become more prevalent, so will their hazing and bullying, which is prompting makers to give them more ways to protect themselves or fight back. Wow, it really is going to play out like the Animatrix, isn’t it?
Last year in Los Angeles, people attempted to spray paint a Knightscope robot. The robot sensed the paint and sounded an alarm, alerting local security and the company’s engineers. “[The bullies] turned pale white and ran away,” Knightscope spokesman Stacy Stephens told CNNTech. The company currently has 17 clients in five states, according to Stephens. The robots operate in shopping centers, hospitals and corporate campuses. A robot’s best defense is to rat out the bullies. Modern robots are covered in cameras and sensors, making it easy to document abuse. With the Los Angeles incident, the robot’s cameras filmed the pranksters’ license plate, making it easy to track them down.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Humans Are Already Harassing Robots
Enlarge (credit: US Fish and Wildlife)
Everybody loves monarch butterflies. Author Anurag Agrawal refers to them as “the Bambi of the insect world.” They are specifically bred to be released at weddings; their image has been pressed into service as the symbol of environmental organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Non-GMO project.
This popularity makes them a great research system for two reasons. First, funding is abundant and easy to drum up. And, unlike other darlings of conservationists—like polar bears, which look like cute, cuddly stuffed animals—monarch butterflies are bugs. So animal rights activists don’t really get worked up when scientists breed them and experiment on them, then sacrifice them and grind up their bodies for analysis.
Regular donations and a lack of harassment from PETA, however convenient though they may be, are hardly the only reasons why Agrawal has devoted his life to studying monarchs or why he has written a book about them called Monarchs and Milkweed: A Migrating Butterfly, a Poisonous Plant, and Their Remarkable Story of Coevolution. Monarches and their sole food source, the toxic milkweed plant, provide a great example of coevolution.
Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – A farewell to kings? New ideas on the vanishing monarch butterflies
As America’s least likeable plutocrat rounds out his first 100 days in office, we’re taking a look at other centennial achievements from the world of technology. Google and Facebook were named as victims in $100 million scam, Instagram now boasts 700…
Source: Engadget – After Math: Keeping it 100
In a surprising move, SK Hynix has announced its first memory chips based on the yet-unpublished GDDR6 standard. The new DRAM devices for video cards have capacity of 8 Gb and run at 16 Gbps per pin data rate, which is significantly higher than both standard GDDR5 and Micron’s unique GDDR5X format. SK Hynix plans to produce its GDDR6 ICs in volume by early 2018.
GDDR5 memory has been used for top-of-the-range video cards for over seven years, since summer 2008 to present. Throughout its active lifespan, GDDR5 increased its data rate by over two times, from 3.6 Gbps to 9 Gbps, whereas its per chip capacities increased by 16 times from 512 Mb to 8 Gb. In fact, numerous high-end graphics cards, such as NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1060 and 1070, still rely on the GDDR5 technology, which is not going anywhere even after the launch of Micron’s GDDR5X with up to 12 Gbps data rate per pin in 2016. As it appears, GDDR6 will be used for high-end graphics cards starting in 2018, just two years after the introduction of GDDR5X.
SK Hynix is not disclosing too many details about its GDDR6 chips, but they have revealed that the chips are 8 Gb devices with 16 Gbps data transfer rate, which in turn are being manufactured on SK Hynix’s 21 nm process technology. The company is also stating that GDDR6 will have a 10% lower operating voltage than GDDR5, though they don’t specify if that’s relative to the low voltage (1.35 V), standard (1.5 V) or high frequency (1.55 V) version of GDDR5.
What is noteworthy is that SK Hynix does disclose some details about the first graphics cards to use its GDDR6 memory. As it appears, that adapter will have a 384-bit memory bus and will thus support memory bandwidth upwards of 768 GB/s. Given the number of chips required for a 384-bit memory sub-system, it is logical to assume that the card will carry 12 GB of memory. SK Hynix is not disclosing the name of its partner among GPU developers, but it is logical to assume that we are talking a high-end product that will replace an existing graphics card.
Unlike GDDR5X, GDDR6 is expected to be manufactured by all three major DRAM makers, and consequently should be available more widely. SK Hynix believes that GDDR6 will supplant both GDDR5 and GDDR5X relatively quickly. Nonetheless, keep in mind that while it took GDDR5 a relatively short amount of time to replace GDDR4 on high-end graphics cards in 2008 – 2009, it then took the memory standard years to replace GDDR3 on mainstream adapters.
Source: AnandTech – SK Hynix to Ship GDDR6 Memory for Graphics Cards by Early 2018
So, you’re interested in secure, encrypted chat apps. You have a few different choices, but as with any chat app, what all your friends are using is important. To that end, Signal and WhatsApp are easily the most popular. Here’s how they compare.
Source: LifeHacker – Secure Messaging App Showdown: WhatsApp vs. Signal
Game of Thrones seasons 1-6 on Blu-ray, deals on nonfiction eBooks, a 40″ refurb Vizio sound system, and more lead Sunday’s best lifestyle deals.
Source: LifeHacker – Sunday’s Best Deals: Fitbit, Game of Thrones, Nonfiction eBooks, and More
boley1 quotes Business Insider:
According to Elon Musk, the main challenges with flying cars are that they’ll be noisy and generate lots of wind because of the downward force required to keep them in the air. Plus, there’s an anxiety factor. “Let’s just say if something is flying over your head…that is not an anxiety-reducing situation,” he said. “You don’t think to yourself ‘Well, I feel better about today. You’re thinking ‘Is it going to come off and guillotine me as it comes flying past?'”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Why Elon Musk Doesn’t Like Flying Cars
Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn will be coming to the Nintendo Switch according to Saber Interactive’s CEO. The game was funded via Indiegogo back in 2014 with a trailer revealed at the 2015 Game Awards but little has been heard since. EA once called the first Shaq Fu an “abomination.”
Source: Kotaku – Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn will be coming to the Nintendo Switch according to Saber Interactive’s CEO.
Ridley Scott is at the helm of a nearly 40-year franchise of films about killer aliens who are smarter and deadlier than us. It’s not a coincidence, since Scott thinks that could happen in real life.
Source: Gizmodo – Ridley Scott Thinks Aliens Are Real and They’ll Probably Kill Us
Revenue for Microsoft’s Surface hardware has done a deep dive: the latest earnings call has revealed that only $831M was produced this period, compared to last year’s 1.1B. The company blames the lack of new Surface models to drive interest, and how there are a lot of cheaper clones out on the market for people to choose from nowadays. I hope this doesn’t mean they will make future devices less of a premium product.
“There is competition that is lower-priced,” said Carolina Milanesi of Creative Strategies in a Friday interview. “There’s not just more of the same, but a lot that are positioned in the same space are cheaper. And there were expectations that we would have seen a [product] refresh that we haven’t seen yet.” Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates, echoed Milanesi on the age angle. The revenue decline “indicates that the aging product needs a refresh badly,” Gold wrote in a note to clients today. “Price cutting and competing vendors’ products will continue to create declines until new product is released, rumored for later this year.”
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Microsoft’s Surface Revenue Drops by 5M
The PlayStation 4 (PS4) first launched globally in November 2013, and has gone on to become a smash hit. Sony recently revealed that it has shipped over 60 million units of the consoles since launch, and it has outsold its rival Xbox One — which launched around the same time — nearly 2:1 to date.
Although Sony’s console got a sort of “mid-cycle
Source: Hot Hardware – Next Gen Sony PlayStation 5 Console May Arrive In Late 2018
When will a VR system finally get an honest-to-goodness adventure? Early adopters and curious onlookers continue to ask this question, wondering when they’ll get their own unique, hours-upon-hours mix of story, puzzles, battles, and thrills.
The closest answer up until now remains the incredible and memorable Resident Evil 7. However, that’s a bit of a cheat, since it launched primarily for normal TV displays with an optional, albeit awesome, VR mode attached. Thus, the hunt’s still on—and the folks at Oculus have been crowing for months about how their upcoming game Wilson’s Heart would do the trick.
I’m not just here to inform you that Oculus’s high-budget, high-production-value attempt missed the mark—especially for those readers who don’t own an Oculus and high-end PC to match. Rather, I’m interested in exploring just how this week’s new game, which once looked quite promising, slammed to Earth with melted wings on its back—and what that says for the current state of VR gaming.
Read 29 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Wilson’s Heart is Oculus’ most interesting VR misfire yet
Welcome to Kotaku’s Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics that usually occurs on Sunday except when it doesn’t. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon.
Source: Kotaku – Sunday Comics: The Boss’s Bandanna
Our latest Windows 10 Creator Update versus Linux benchmarking is taking a quick look at the Intel HD Graphics 630 Kabylake performance with Windows 10 on the latest Intel driver compared to Ubuntu 17.04 and Clear Linux.
Source: Phoronix – Intel HD Graphics 630: Windows 10 Creators vs. Ubuntu 17.04 vs. Clear Linux
“It’s being reported by users from the DSLReports forum that the Puma 6 Intel cable modem variants are highly susceptible to a very low-bandwidth denial-of-service attack,” writes Slashdot reader Idisagree. The Register reports:
Effectively, if there’s someone you don’t like, and they are one of thousands upon thousands of people using a Puma 6-powered home gateway, and you know their public IP address, you can kick them off the internet, we’re told… According to one engineer…the flaw would be “trivial” to exploit in the wild, and would effectively render a targeted box useless for the duration of the attack… “It can be exploited remotely, and there is no way to mitigate the issue.”
This is particularly frustrating for Puma 6 modem owners because the boxes are pitched as gigabit broadband gateways: the devices can be potentially choked and knocked out simply by receiving traffic that’s a fraction of the bandwidth their owners are paying for… The Puma 6 chipset is used in a number of ISP-branded cable modems, including some Xfinity boxes supplied by Comcast in the US and the latest Virgin Media hubs in the UK.
The original submission also notes there’s already a class action lawsuit over the performance of cable modems with Intel’s Puma 6 chipset, and adds “It would appear the Atom chip was never going to live up to the task it was designed for.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Intel-Powered Broadband Modems Highly Vulnerable To DoS Attack
With Karen’s laser cutting design skills and Felix’s soldering, the team has created a prototype of the logic board game using Karen’s magnetic clasp design. Now it’s time to give the concept a test run with help from The Game Craft proprietor JT…
Source: Engadget – Ben Heck’s logic gate board game: Fun with LCD displays
Wild rodents spread more than 35 diseases. Pet mice and rats carry much fewer, luckily, but the diseases they do spread include rat bit fever and Leptospirosis. (credit: ArtBrom)
As every parent knows, newborns and infants are extremely prone to infections. This increased susceptibility is typically attributed to babies’ immature immune systems—since they’re so new to the world, babies haven’t been exposed to many pathogens yet. But there may be more to this phenomenon than previously thought. A recent paper published in Science suggests that infants’ underdeveloped gut microbiomes may be largely responsible for their increased susceptibility to infection.
The microbiome is a diverse community of organisms living in a single environment, including environments like the bodies of larger animals. In humans, the bulk of the microbiome is in the intestines, where these tiny organisms help us digest food and regulate some of our body’s responses to our diet. However, studying the microbiome in humans is challenging for practical and ethical reasons. As a result, mice have the most widely studied mammalian microbiomes.
The recent Science paper provides new insights into how the microbiome interacts with a mouse’s ability to resist infection. For this study, germ-free adult mice were given a transplant of gut contents from either neonatal mice, adolescent mice, or adult mice. The transplant came from the first few inches of the large intestine/colon, so this transplant process was not dissimilar to a stool transplant (more commonly known as a poop transplant). These transplants altered the gut microbiome of the recipient so that it matched the donor mouse’s.
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Source: Ars Technica – Undeveloped microbiomes make infants more prone to illness
