Have you ever found out about something and then realize it was everything you’ve ever needed? Because that’s how I feel knowing there’s footage somewhere of Carrie Fisher slapping Oscar Isaac—as General Leia and Poe Dameron—over and over again.
Source: Gizmodo – Carrie Fisher Slapped Oscar Isaac So Many Times on the Set of The Last Jedi
This week, one little attack on a reporter by a temporarily insane politician has us all fretting over the “Rough Treatment of Journalists in the Trump Era.” The real threat to journalism is much more insidious.
Source: Gizmodo – Snakes and Money Are the Real Threats to Journalism
For those of us who zone out during university lectures, the temptation multiplies when you taking classes from home. Next fall, a business school in France will try to stop online students from getting distracted with an AI app called Nestor. To jud…
Source: Engadget – A Paris school is using AI to monitor distracted students
Enlarge (credit: Pool Olortiga Ramirez)
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions may seem like taking responsibility for the sake of future generations. But the pace of climate change is certainly meaningful within a single lifetime.
One way to think about climate change, as explored in a new study led by Victoria University of Wellington’s Dave Frame, is that temperature patterns eventually move out of the range you’re accustomed to. Weather and climate are naturally variable, but if the climate shifts, unusual conditions can become the new normal. The “unusual” end of the spectrum gets replaced with more extreme conditions than before.
In this case, the researchers focus on the ratio of signal to noise—the warming change versus the normal range of variability. Specifically, starting with a bell curve distribution defined by the mean and the standard deviation, the researchers defined changes based the average annual temperature by a standard deviation.
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Source: Ars Technica – How familiar will your climate be in a few decades?
There are only a few things in this life animals really have to do. They have to eat, they have to shit, and they have to bang. So when conservation biologists transplant a bunch of wild animals in order to save them, but half of them stop banging as a result, it’s cause for concern.
Source: Gizmodo – Why Aren’t These Tortoises Banging Anymore?
Reader BrianFagioli writes: After searching for Opera in the Apple App Store, I noticed something odd — none of the company’s iOS browsers (Opera Mini and Opera Coast) had been updated in 2017. Since we are almost halfway through the year, I decided to ask Opera what was up. Shockingly, the company told me that it no longer has a team working on iOS. An Opera employee by the name of ‘Rosi’ sent me a tweet this morning, making the revelation. While the desktop version of the browser is still in development, the company has chosen to abandon its efforts on iOS. To show just how bad it is, the Opera Mini browser hasn’t been updated in almost a year. Opera Coast was updated in December of 2016, however — almost six months ago.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Opera Abandons iOS Platform
If you’re in the market for a dinky little black box to slide under your living room TV set and pipe through some quality content, you’re in luck: there’s lots of them to pick from. All the major names now have established boxes on the market. While Gizmodo is a big fan of the Roku box and everything it can do, it’s…
Source: Gizmodo – Battle of the TV Boxes: Android vs Apple vs Amazon vs Roku
We have a look at the eco-sheds
Source: TreeHugger – It’s voting time in the Shed of the Year competition
A small charge has helped people move away from plastic shopping bags, so why not the same approach for straws?
Source: TreeHugger – Why plastic straws should be taxed
Sorry about my absence yesterday, folks, I was traveling and didn’t have an internet connection. It was horrible and I almost died, I don’t know how people do it.
Because this is the world we live in now, here’s a video of Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star’, performed with the sampled sound of a whirling fidget spinner. There is nothing you can do to prepare yourself for just how awful this truly is. I’m pretty sure it took years off my life. It’s like that machine that Westley gets hooked up to in The Princess Bride. I need like ten Miracle Max chocolate balls now just to live till tomorrow.
Keep going for the video, as well as the original for reference while I Van Gogh both my ears.
Source: Geekologie – Smash Mouth’s All Star Performed With The Sound Of A Fidget Spinner
Live, die, repeat — the tagline for the 2014 science-fiction film Edge of Tomorrow — describes its protagonist, who “respawned” every time he died in the real world. Critics noted that the conceit resembled the cyclical experience of playing a vide…
Source: Engadget – Truly intelligent enemies could change the face of gaming
The inventor of RSA’s famous SecurID dongle has sued (PDF) Apple and Visa, alleging that both Apple Pay and Visa infringe four patents he owns.
Kenneth Weiss was the founder and CEO of Security Dynamics, the company that created the SecurID token used around the world to access secure computer networks. That company ultimately acquired RSA Security and took its name, then was bought by EMC.
Weiss left the company in 1996. By 2011, he had founded a new company, Universal Secure Registry, where he was working on mobile phone security.
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Source: Ars Technica – Creator of SecurID sues Apple, Visa over digital payment patents
Deadspin Chris Kunitz Made Sure It Isn’t All Over | Jezebel Bella Thorne Dumped Scott Disick Because She Was Shocked By His Heavy Drinking | Fusion A Teacher in Texas Gave a Girl a ‘Most Likely to Become a Terrorist’ Award | The Grapevine 5-Year-Old Asks: ‘Where Did Barack Obama Go?’ |
Source: Gizmodo – Deadspin Chris Kunitz Made Sure It Isn’t All Over | Jezebel Bella Thorne Dumped Scott Disick Because
Far Cry 5 is going to be a little different than you might expect. The new announcement trailer paints a picture of pastoral life that lends itself surprisingly well to the franchise’s familiar trappings: hunting, off-road vehicles, airplanes and gun…
Source: Engadget – ‘Far Cry 5’ brings cult mayhem to Hope County February 27th
It hasn’t exactly been a sterling month with regards to security for Microsoft. First, the world was rocked by WannaCry, and then a Samaba exploit threatened to allow a similar outbreak to spread across the globe. Now we’re learning of a new vulnerability that revolves around a hidden Windows metadata file called $MFT.
$MFT is used by the
Source: Hot Hardware – NTFS Metadata Bug Torpedoes Windows 7 And 8.1 PCs With Four-Character String
A cordless Dremel, a new Clear the Rack sale, and a $24 wake-up light lead off Friday’s best deals from around the web.
Source: LifeHacker – Today’s Best Deals: 256GB Flash Drive, Cordless Dremel, Clear the Rack, and More
Leland Melvin is a unicorn of a human being. He’s been drafted to the NFL, flown in the final frontier (twice), and now, written a book called Chasing Space. On the internet, the former NASA astronaut is best known for this unforgettable photo with his two dogs, Jake and Scout, who grace the cover of his new memoir.…
Source: Gizmodo – We Chatted With the World’s Coolest Astronaut About Inspiring Kids and Sending Dogs to Space
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has become the latest major tech figure to call for universal basic income as a solution for inequality, joining a growing chorus from Silicon Valley. From a report: “Every generation expands its definition of equality. Now it’s time for our generation to define a new social contract,” Zuckerberg said during his commencement speech at Harvard University. “We should have a society that measures progress not by economic metrics like GDP but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things,” he said. Zuckerberg told the class of 2017 that he was able to pursue his passion in Facebook because he knew he had a safety net to fall back on.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Mark Zuckerberg Calls for Universal Basic Income in His Harvard Commencement Speech
At 2:38 PM on May 19th, 2017, my phone buzzed, emitting a high-pitched tone. So did the phone of my colleague Roberto Baldwin, who was standing with me in a Starbucks near our office. Actually, all of the phones in that Starbucks buzzed at the same t…
Source: Engadget – Everything you need to know about mobile Amber Alerts
In yesterday’s GeForce GT 1030 Linux review, a $70 USD graphics card that’s low-profile and passively-cooled, I featured a number of NVIDIA VDPAU video acceleration benchmarks. But a question came up about Radeon VDPAU performance, so here are some benchmarks on that front, but they are far from ideal.
Source: Phoronix – NVIDIA vs. Radeon VDPAU Mesa 17.2 Video Decode Performance
