When Stargate: Origins was first announced at Comic-Con this past summer, the news was a little underwhelming. A prequel series? Ten minute episodes? Exclusive to a new proprietary streaming platform? Now we can at least get a look at what’s coming.
Source: Gizmodo – Here’s A First Look at the Upcoming Stargate Web Series
The Puerto Rico Energy Commission has launched a probe into why its efforts to rebuild the commonwealth’s electrical grid after taking a direct hit from Hurricane Maria in September are proceeding so slowly, with less than even a third of the electrical grid back online to date.
Source: Gizmodo – Puerto Rico Is Investigating How It Screwed Up Restoring Power After Maria So Badly
This week, PCI-standards consortium PCI-SIG (Special Interest Group) has ratified and released specifications for PCIe 4.0 Specification Version 1. Doubling PCIe 3.0’s 8 GT/s (~1 GB/s) of bandwidth per lane, PCIe 4.0 offers a transfer rate of 16 GT/s with flexible lane width configurations, providing significant I/O performance benefits useful for storage, networking, and AI applications.
The delivery of the PCIe 4.0 specification to the industry is an important addition to our spec library as it delivers high performance 16GT/s data rates with flexible lane width configurations, while continuing to meet the industry’s requirements for low power. And we’ve seen unprecedented early adoption! Prior to publication, we’ve had numerous vendors confirmed with 16GT/s PHYs in silicon and IP vendors already offering 16GT/s controller.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – PCI-SIG Finalizes and Releases PCIe 4.0
“In open source philosophy, you share source code. Why not share data?” writes Slashdot reader princelobga. Linux Insider reports on the Linux Foundation’s new Community Data License Agreement, “a new framework for sharing large sets of data required for research, collaborative learning and other purposes.”
CDLAs will allow both individuals and groups to share data sets in the same way they share open source software code, the foundation said. “As systems require data to learn and evolve, no one organization can build, maintain and source all data required,” noted Mike Dolan, VP of strategic programs at The Linux Foundation. “Data communities are forming around artificial intelligence and machine learning use cases, autonomous systems, and connected civil infrastructure,” he told LinuxInsider. “The CDLA license agreements enable sharing data openly, embodying best practices learned over decades of sharing source code.”
A principal analyst at Pund-IT told the site that the new data license “reflects the growing importance of information as a resource for big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Open Source Data Sets? Linux Foundation Introduces ‘Community Data License Agreements’
There’s a new release of LibreELEC, the Linux distribution focused on delivering a premiere HTPC/multimedia experience by being built around the Kodi HTPC software…
Source: Phoronix – Kodi-Powered LibreELEC 8.2 Released
Virtual reality experiences aren’t just games and cheap thrills — some creators use the medium to start a dialogue and tell worthwhile stories. Take the VR exhibition Carne y Arena (Virtually Present, Physically Invisible) by Alejandro G. Iñ&…
Source: Engadget – The Academy awards its first Oscar for virtual reality
I’m not saying it’s aliens, but it’s probably aliens: a small asteroid or comet that has been spotted racing through our solar system may have come from elsewhere in the galaxy. The mystery object, so far known only as A/2017 U1, quickly stood out for scientists because of its extreme orbit, coming from the direction of the constellation Lyra, almost directly above the elliptical plane where the planets and other asteroids orbit the sun.
“It is going extremely fast and on such a trajectory that we can say with confidence that this object is on its way out of the solar system and not coming back,” NASA’s Davide Farnocchia said. Astronomers were urgently tracking A/2017 U1 with telescopes as it makes its journey through our solar system, hoping to use that data to confirm the object’s interstellar origins and learn what they can about its composition.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Mystery Space Object May Be First Confirmed Interstellar Visitor
The NYT is experimenting with secure communication by making their website available as a Tor Onion Service. They explain that some readers use Tor because their access is technically blocked, or because they worry about local network monitoring or online privacy, so they are making their website accessible via a special, secure, and hard-to-block VPN-like “tunnel” through the Tor network.
The New York Times’ Onion Service is both experimental and under development. This means that certain features, such as logins and comments, are disabled until the next phase of our implementation. We will be fine-tuning site performance, so there may be occasional outages while we make improvements to the service. Our goal is to match the features currently available on the main New York Times website. Over time, we plan to share the lessons that we have learned — and will learn — about scaling and running an Onion Service.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – The New York Times Is Now Available as a Tor Onion Service
Frugal, cozy people, rejoice—stew weather is here. There’s nothing better than a bowl of stew in cold weather, and there’s nothing more satisfying to a penny-pincher than quarts and quarts of single-bowl meals made with the cheapest cuts of meat. Stew is easy, but to get the best flavors, stew meat needs a little…
Source: LifeHacker – How to Make Cheap Stew Meat Taste Great
An anonymous reader quotes InfoWorld:
The Firebug web development tool, an open source add-on to the Firefox browser, is being discontinued after 12 years, replaced by Firefox Developer Tools. Firebug will be dropped with next month’s release of Firefox Quantum (version 57). The Firebug tool lets developers inspect, edit, and debug code in the Firefox browser as well as monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript in webpages. It still has more than a million people using it, said Jan Honza Odvarko, who has been the leader of the Firebug project. Many extensions were built for Firebug, which is itself is an extension to Firefox… The goal is to make debugging native to Firefox. “Sometimes, it’s better to start from scratch, which is especially true for software development,” Odvarko said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – After 12 Years, Mozilla Kills ‘Firebug’ Dev Tool
Tesla recently confirmed that they had “production bottlenecks” limiting the volume of Model 3 vehicles produced. The exact issue was never disclosed, but Elon Musk is now hinting that at least one of the bottlenecks, a potentially serious one, is coming from Gigafactory 1. It could be anything from the battery cell level to the battery pack level, or even the drive unit production lines, which are also located at the factory.
There are probably more eyes on the Model 3’s production program than any other automotive program ever. As previously mentioned, Tesla is trying over the next few months to produce the Model 3 at a rate of 5,000 units per week, which is unprecedented for an electric car. We need to keep that in mind when Musk adds comments like that or his previous warning to “assume the worst” about potential delays. Tesla is still listing “late October” on its website for first regular customer deliveries.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Elon Musk Hints at “Production Hell” at Battery Gigafactory in Nevada
The rumors that Microsoft could be releasing a modern take on the IntelliMouse have turned out to be true, as a modern version of the Microsoft Classic IntelliMouse is now available at the Microsoft Store online for $40. The mouse keeps the same classic look and feel but adds in modern improvements such as more precise tracking and reliable button action.
It’s a wired mouse, meaning you can quickly and easily connect the mouse to your PC via USB to get into all the clicking action. Please be aware that customization of buttons is only available on Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Home, Windows 8.1, and Windows 8. Customization is not available on Windows 10 S because a software download is required for customization.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – You Can Now Purchase the New Microsoft Classic IntelliMouse for
Is Mark Zuckerberg spying on you? Oh, yes, absolutely. Is he secretly recording your voice like, all the time? Probably not.
Source: Gizmodo – Rumors That Facebook Is Secretly Recording You Refuse to Die
Resogun creator Housemarque has earned a reputation as a specialist in digital-only game releases (its last hard copy release was 2012’s Angry Birds Trilogy), but it’s about to buck that trend. The studio has announced that its well-received, Smash…
Source: Engadget – Arcade shooter ‘Nex Machina’ gets a physical release November 10th
You have a little cash and a desire to go on a weekend trip, but no idea really where you want to go. Now Kayak can help. The app launched a new “Magic 8 Ball” feature this week that allows you to shake your iPhone or Android device to get a recommendation on where to go for a quick getaway.
Source: LifeHacker – Kayak’s Secret ‘Magic 8 Ball’ Will Help You Discover a Cheap Last-Minute Vacation
An anonymous reader writes: Late yesterday afternoon, Google announced plans to deprecate and eventually remove PKP support from the Chromium open-source browser, which indirectly means from Chrome… According to Google engineer Chris Palmer, low adoption and technical difficulties are among the reasons why Google plans to remove the feature from Chrome. “We would like to do this in Chrome 67, which is estimated to be released to Stable on 29 May 2018,” Palmer says. The proposal is up in the air, and users can submit opinions against Google’s intent to deprecate, but seeing how little PKP was adopted, it’s most likely already out the door. A Neustar survey from March 2016 had PKP deployment at only 0.09% of all HTTPS sites. By August 2017, that needle had barely moved to 0.4% of all sites in the Alexa Top 1 Million.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Google To Remove Public Key Pinning (PKP) Support In Chrome
A post-earnings surge in Amazon shares Friday vaulted Jeff Bezos ahead of Bill Gates, who had held the top spot as the richest person on Earth for more than four years. The founder and chief executive officer of the retail juggernaut added $10.4 billion to his net worth as Amazon shares rose 13 percent, the most in 2 1/2 years, a day after the company reported quarterly sales and profit that surpassed analysts’ estimates.
His wealth briefly eclipsed that of Gates, the Microsoft Corp. co-founder, on an intraday basis on July 27, but Amazon shares ended that day lower, leaving Bezos at No. 2. At the close of U.S. markets Friday, Bezos had a net worth of $93.8 billion, $5.1 billion ahead of Gates on the Bloomberg index, a daily ranking of the world’s 500 richest people. Gates, 61, had been the world’s richest person since 2013. Bezos, 53, has added $28.5 billion to his fortune this year.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Jeff Bezos Passes Bill Gates to Become the World’s Richest Person
A fix is in the works for AMD Ryzen users who have encountered Linux issues with virtualization when trying to set up passthrough support for a graphics card to allow the virtual machine direct access to the GPU. When NPT (Nested Page Tables) are enabled, performance can become severely degraded.
Mailing list post by Geoffrey McRae: “I have identified the issue! With NPT enabled, I am now getting near bare-metal performance with PCI passthrough. The issue was with some stubs that have not been properly implemented. I will clean my code up and submit a patch shortly. This is a 10-year-old bug that has only become evident with the recent ability to perform PCI passthrough with dedicated graphics cards. I would expect this to improve performance across most workloads that use AMD NPT.”
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – AMD Ryzen NPT Fix Discovered for Better Passthrough Graphics Performance
Searching eBay requires faith—faith that the seller listed their item with the same keywords you’d use to describe what you want. Sometimes you have different ideas of what constitutes “turquoise.” Sometimes you have a picture of what you want but don’t know the name for a certain style. Well, now that picture is all…
Source: LifeHacker – You Can Now Search eBay by Image
“MakerBot just announced a new Open Source initiative called ‘MakerBot Labs’,” writes Slashdot reader szczys. “It is a small move, centering around some new APIs and a new extruder which is listed as experimental and not covered by their normal warranty. Largely they missed the mark on making a meaningful move toward openness, but with a new CEO at the helm as of January this could be the first change of the rudder in a larger effort to turn the ship around.”
Makerbot’s history is “an example of how you absolutely should not operate an open source company,” argues Hackaday, saying it’s left them skeptical of Makerbot’s latest move:
It reads like a company making a last ditch effort to win back the users they were so sure they didn’t need just a few years ago… The wheels of progress turn slowly in any large organization, and perhaps doubly so in one that has gone through so much turmoil in a relatively short amount of time. It could be that it’s taken Goshen these last nine months to start crafting a plan to get MakerBot back into the community’s good graces.
From MakerBot’s press release:
“After setting high industry standards for what makes a quality and reliable 3D printing experience, we’re introducing this new, more open platform as a direct response to our advanced users calling for greater freedom with materials and software.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – MakerBot Launches New ‘MakerBot Labs’ Platform