Blockbusters like the Star Wars trilogy, as well as unregulated TV advertising to kids, helped the ‘80s churn out some of the most memorable toys of all time. Thirty years later, the ‘80s are enjoying a renaissance thanks to shows like Stranger Things, and toymakers are happy to resurrect and hawk classic collectibles…
Source: Gizmodo – The Toys of the 1980s Are Making a Major Comeback This Year
The speedy USB 3.2 format has technically been ready for the better part of two years, but it’s finally ready for a PC near you. The USB-IF standards body has revealed that 3.2-capable controllers will be available later in 2019, hinting that you’ll…
Source: Engadget – Ultra-fast USB 3.2 is coming to desktop PCs in 2019
We’ve seen a lot of weird-ass tropical cyclones in recent years. This week, we can add another one to the list.
Source: Gizmodo – The Northern Hemisphere Just Experienced Its First-Ever Category 5 Cyclone in February
Moms and dads shouldn’t expect their sleep habits to bounce back to the way they were before kids for at least the first six years of their child’s life, according to a new long-term study involving nearly 5,000 parents.
Source: Gizmodo – Parents Can Expect Less Sleep for the First Six Years of Their Child’s Life
Enlarge / The hero of THQ Nordic’s Darksiders series, as seen here fused with the Baghdad Bob meme, seems appropriate after today’s THQ-8chan blow-up. (credit: Aurich Lawson)
Game publisher THQ Nordic concluded a rollercoaster of a promotional Tuesday by apologizing for its use of the controversial imageboard site 8chan as a host for an “Ask Me Anything” Q&A session.
On Tuesday morning, THQ Nordic’s Twitter account announced and linked to the AMA, saying, “We’re doing an 8chan AMA and we have no idea why.” The session had been announced nearly a day prior on 8chan’s “/v/” sub-board by its own moderators, but it was THQ Nordic’s official announcement that garnered wider attention—and drew responses about the site’s reputation for either outright hosting child pornography or skating on the edge of state, federal, and international laws on the matter.
Within three hours of the AMA’s launch, THQ Nordic’s Twitter account had changed its tune and directly called out 8chan’s reputation for illegal and despicable content. As written by PR and Marketing Director Philipp Brock:
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Source: Ars Technica – Three hours after allying with 8chan, THQ Nordic goes into full apology mode
Anyone who’s played a movie-based Lego video game is familiar with the formula. A film’s tale is retold in a series of story missions, packed with bricks to break and characters to collect. At first, I was disappointed that The Lego Movie 2 Video Game did not follow that formula. But eventually, I came around on it.
Source: Kotaku – Not Everything About The Open-World Lego Movie 2 Game Is Awesome
Almost two years ago, we launched The Grown-Up Kitchen, and asked you all for your most fundamental cooking questions. Knowing what readers didn’t know let me fill in those gaps in knowledge, which (hopefully) made for better, happier home cooks.
Source: LifeHacker – Ask Us Your Most Basic Cooking Questions
An anonymous reader shares a report: Last week, cryptocurrency industry giant Coinbase sparked outrage when it announced that it had purchased a small startup called Neutrino. Normally, such an acquisition wouldn’t make many waves, but Neutrino isn’t your average startup. The company was founded by three former employees of Hacking Team, a controversial Italian surveillance vendor that was caught several times selling spyware to governments with dubious human rights records, such as Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan. Neutrino develops technology for law enforcement and financial institutions to investigate and track transactions on the blockchain, the shared public ledger that tracks the movement of tokens in the ecosystem. Coinbase is one of the largest platforms for buying and selling cryptocurrencies in the world, so it sees a lot of transactions on its exchange.
The company claims to be able to monitor and track not just Bitcoin — a relatively straightforward endeavor — but also supposedly privacy-oriented (and harder to track) coins such as Monero. In 2017, the company was able to conclude that the North Korean hackers behind the destructive ransomware WannaCry cashed out their Bitcoin and turned it into Monero. […] In a statement to Motherboard, a Coinbase spokesperson said that the company “does not condone nor will it defend the actions of Hacking Team.” “We are aware that Neutrino’s co-founders previously worked at Hacking Team, which we reviewed as part of our security, technical, and hiring diligence,” the spokesperson said. But Neutrino’s technology was just too important for Coinbase to pass on, the spokesperson explained.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Former Hacking Team Members Are Now Spying on the Blockchain for Coinbase
Jordan Peele’s reboot of the Candyman franchise may have its villain.
Source: io9 – Our New Candyman Is Probably Aquaman’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II
The marketing team at THQ Nordic woke up on Monday morning, made some coffee, powered on their computers and decided to host an AMA on a website blacklisted by Google in 2015 for hosting “suspected child abuse content.”
Source: Engadget – THQ Nordic did an 8chan AMA and it went as well as you’d think
This is the Avengers Infinity War Gauntlet Rings Bracelet available from ThinkGeek ($35). It’s an officially licensed (personally I would have skirted that) piece of jewelry and features adjustable rings, each set with a faux infinity stone (you mean those aren’t the real things?!). Want all the power in the universe but suffer from a nickel allergy? Don’t fret my pet, the piece is made with a nickel-free zinc alloy. So, would you wear one? “No.” Would you wear THIS? “Is that a promise ring?!” It sure is. “For me?!” I never said that. “Oh.” Of course it’s for you, and look — I also carved our initials into the trunk of this tree! “Who’s L.Z.?” Well I didn’t know your initials so I just had to guess. *pops champagne, produces list of baby names* I’m sorry but this is all just happening so quick!
Keep going for one more shot of the not-gauntlet not on a hand.
Source: Geekologie – The Infinity Gauntlet Bracelet And Chained Rings Set
So we’re more than neck deep into Mobile World Congress, and our hands-ons have been coming pretty fast and furious. Though you’ll have to wait a bit to see our full reviews of the latest flagships from companies like Samsung and LG, we can always ta…
Source: Engadget – Comparing the Galaxy S10, Nokia 9 and LG G8: Cameras galore
VW and Ford may be serious about partnering on self-driving cars. Wall Street Journal sources claim VW has tentatively agreed to invest a total of $1.7 billion in Ford’s autonomy-focused Argo subsidiary and turn it into an “equally held joint ventur…
Source: Engadget – VW may pour .7 billion into Ford’s self-driving car venture
The day started with an intense tropical storm consuming San Francisco, but by evening the clouds had parted just in time for a group of grinning and excited venture capitalists, techies, and real estate agents to gather at atop a downtown highrise that overlooks the city all the way to across the Bay to Oakland.
Source: Gizmodo – Upcoming Tech IPOs Will Mint Hundreds of Overnight Millionaires and Silicon Valley Vultures Are Licking Their Chops
Adam Jackson of Red Hat has issued the X.Org Server 1.20.4 point release with the latest stable updates primarily consisting of XWayland enhancements…
Source: Phoronix – X.Org Server 1.20.4 Released With XWayland Fixes
Children’s charity the NSPCC has accused YouTube of failing to tackle dangerous content on its youth channel. From a report:
YouTube Kids, dubbed as a safer, child-friendly version of the video-sharing site, has been criticised by parents for failing to remove cartoons that contain clips depicting suicide methods on its platform. The clips show a YouTuber demonstrating a suicide method. Google told the BBC it works hard to remove such content. “We have strict policies that prohibit videos which promote self-harm. We rely on both user-flagging and smart-detection technology to flag this content for our reviewers,” the firm said in a statement.
“We are always working to improve our systems and to remove violat[ing] content more quickly.” It is unclear how or why the clips depicting suicide methods were embedded in children’s cartoons. The BBC has received no response from the YouTuber. It also asked Google, which owns YouTube, if it had spoken to him directly but did not get a reply.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Self-Harm Clips Hidden in Kids’ Cartoons
Enlarge (credit: Lawrence Berkeley Lab)
For most of the industrial era, a nation’s carbon emissions moved in lock step with its economy. Growth meant higher emissions. But over the past decade or so, that’s changed. Even as the global economy continued to grow, carbon emissions remained flat or dropped a bit.
It would be simple to ascribe this to the explosion in renewable energy, but reality is rarely so simple. Countries like China saw explosive growth in both renewables and fossil-fuel use; Germany and Japan expanded renewables even as they slashed nuclear power; and in the United States, the federal government has been MIA, leading to a chaotic mix of state and local efforts. So it’s worth taking a careful look into what exactly might be causing the drop in emissions.
That’s precisely what an international group of researchers has now done, analyzing what’s gone on in 79 countries, including some that have dropped emissions, and others that have not. The researchers find that renewable energy use is a big factor but so is reduced energy use overall. And, for both of these factors, government policy appears to play a large role.
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Source: Ars Technica – Renewable energy policies actually work
In June, Facebook’s head of news partnerships announced that the social network was going to fund news shows for its Watch video service. “Watch is the destination on Facebook where people come together around video,” said Campbell Brown in a blog post. Flash-forward to today, with Digiday reporting that two-thirds…
Source: Gizmodo – Maybe Facebook’s Seldom-Clicked Watch Tab Isn’t the Future of News
The new HTC 5G Hub harnesses the power of 5G technology to bring cloud-based virtual reality to the home. For example, this will allow HTC Vive owners to stream VR content from the cloud to their headsets. No PC or cables will be required. Other features include 4K video streaming, low-latency gaming, ability to connect up to 20 devices, and faster networks.
Enjoy ultra-low-latency, 60fps, and 4K resolution–gaming at its finest–with the HTC 5G Hub. Combining the processing power of Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Mobile Platform with Android 9 Pie, the HTC 5G Hub allows for unprecedented data speeds and power for native Android and PC games supported on the largest of screens. *PC gaming compatibility available only through third party applications.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – The HTC 5G Hub Will Bring Cloud-Based Virtual Reality to the Home
About a year and a half after discontinuing its Lexar consumer storage business, Micron is making a comeback with a series of microSD cards that it’s demonstrating at Mobile World Congress. The company believes that the market of memory cards is set to grow and since it now has the right type of NAND memory for these applications, it makes a great sense to launch its Micron-branded microSD products.
Micron’s c200-series microSD cards range in capacity from 128 GB to 1 TB and are based on the company’s 96-layer 3D QLC NAND flash as well as in-house-developed controller supporting LDPC-based ECC. The cards are rated for up to 100 MB/s sequential write speed and up to 95 MB/s sequential read speed (the 128 GB version may be a bit slower). The Micron c200 cards also carry the SD Association’s A2 and V30 badges, which means that they offer random performance of at least 4000 read IOPS and 2000 write IOPS; support capabilities like command queuing, caching, and self-maintenance, as well as a minimum write speed of 30 MB/s.
Micron will announce detailed pricing and availability information about the c200-series sometimes in the second quarter. At this point the company is not making any official commitments to return to the reteail channel. However retail is the most natural and straightforward way to sell microSD cards, so it would make a great deal of sense for Micron to partner with large retailers and retail chains.
The manufacturer believes that 3D QLC memory provides the right balance of cost, performance, and reliability (when coupled with an appropriate controller) for consumer storage. In particular, Micron says that its 96-layers 3D QLC memory can bear 1500 program/erase cycles (with a particular controller), which should be plenty sufficient for most consumer workloads.
Meanwhile, the market of high-capacity microSD cards is set to grow. According to IHS data cited by Micron, total available market for memory cards featuring 128 – 1 TB capacities will increase to $3.5 billion in 2021, up from around $2.3 billion in 2019.
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Source: Micron
Source: AnandTech – Micron Returns to the microSD Card Market with the Micron c200 Series: From 128 GB to 1 TB
