Ten years ago, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, spilling 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. It was the worst oil spill in history.
Source: Gizmodo – EPA Is Getting Sued Over the Toxic Chemicals Used To Clean Up Oil Spills
A new study out Thursday highlights a disturbing consequence of the much-hated tradition of Daylight Saving Time. It found evidence that the yearly moving-ahead of clocks in the spring leads to more fatal car crashes throughout the U.S. during the following week.
Source: Gizmodo – Daylight Saving Time Linked to More Deadly Car Crashes
Apple was having a pretty good week. The company just reported a record quarter, raking in billions thanks to the iPhone 11 and selling a whole lot of AirPods and Apple Watches. Just a day later, Apple and its wireless chip provider, Broadcom, were slapped with a $1.1 billion judgment. According to Bloomberg, the fine…
Source: Gizmodo – Day After Announcing Record Revenue, Apple Gets Hit With Near Billion-Dollar Judgment
Every smart device you own will die — Sonos was just the start. When the company announced it would retire a slew of 10-year-old devices, like the original Play 5, the consumer backlash was swift. You could see why people were angry: Hardcore So…
Source: Engadget – Every smart device you love will die — starting with Sonos
Every day, I try to do at least one activity that is both engaging and smartphone-free—and if it’s social, that’s a bonus. Sometimes it’s group exercise class at the YMCA. Sometimes it’s choir rehearsal. Sometimes it’s as simple as spending an hour reading a physical book.
Source: LifeHacker – Find a Hobby That Gets You Off Your Smartphone
The F-35, the next-generation fighter plane that the U.S. government is planning on dropping $1.5 trillion on at the same time it’s planning on slashing health care and kicking the disabled off Social Security, still sucks shit and can’t even shoot straight, according to a report in Bloomberg.
Source: Gizmodo – Report: Suckplane Still Sucks, Can’t Even Shoot Straight
Google has released a neural-network-powered chatbot called Meena that it claims is better than any other chatbot out there. From a report: Meena was trained on a whopping 341 gigabytes of public social-media chatter — 8.5 times as much data as OpenAI’s GPT-2. Google says Meena can talk about pretty much anything, and can even make up (bad) jokes. Open-ended conversation that covers a wide range of topics is hard, and most chatbots can’t keep up. At some point most say things that make no sense or reveal a lack of basic knowledge about the world. A chatbot that avoids such mistakes will go a long way toward making AIs feel more human, and make characters in video games more lifelike. To put Meena to the test, Google has developed a new metric it calls the Sensibleness and Specificity Average (SSA), which captures important attributes for natural conversations, such as whether each utterance makes sense in context — which many chatbots can do — and is specific to what has just been said, which is harder.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Google Says Its New Chatbot Meena is the Best in the World
Our time in the Good Place is almost at an end, having spent four forking fantasic seasons with Eleanor, Chidi, Jason, Tahani, Michael, and Janet. As we get ready for the series finale of The Good Place, we thought we’d look back at its most pivotal episodes: the ones that made us cry, the ones that made us think, and…
Source: io9 – 5 Essential Good Place Episodes to Watch Before the Series Finale Breaks Our Forking Hearts
When the weather’s a storm away from apocalyptic-conditions, a lump might form in your throat as soon as you realize it might affect your immediate travel plans. Instead of boarding your flight at its scheduled time, you can only envision delay after delay and more time spent waiting at your airport’s Starbucks or…
Source: LifeHacker – Why Only Some Flights Get Canceled for Bad Weather
If you purchased anything at the East Coast gas station and convenience store chain Wawa between March and December last year, there’s a chance your credit and debit card info is being sold on the dark web. Earlier this week, fraud intelligence compa…
Source: Engadget – Hackers are selling card info stolen in last year’s Wawa breach
At this point, there’s no denying the Apple Watch is the smartwatch to beat. It’s feature-rich, massively popular, and when you wear one, it confers a certain sensibility about you, the tech-savvy consumer. But for the love of everything holy, can other smartwatch makers please stop trying to shamelessly ape the…
Source: Gizmodo – Stop Trying to Clone the Apple Watch
This is a courtroom video from Lebanon, Tennessee of 20-year old Spencer Alan Boston sparking a joint in front of the judge “in an attempt to advocate for marijuana legalization” after getting cited for possession. Did he use matches because you can’t bring a lighter into the courtroom? I like how he keeps the joint at arms length so the bailiff can’t reach it when he’s being re-arrested — that was a nice touch. Still, based on Spencer’s strong belief and act of heroism, I’m shocked to discover marijuana isn’t legal in Tennessee now. I mean how could this not have worked? Maybe if Tennessee legislators just rewatch the video.
Keep going for the full clip.
Source: Geekologie – Ballsy: Guy Arrested For Marijuana Possession Sparks A Joint In Front Of The Judge
TechRepublic: Is a Linux SSH GUI in your future?
Source: Linux Today – Snowflake is the Linux SSH GUI you didn’t know you needed
EnGenius has unveiled a new series multi-gigabit PoE++ L2+ networking switches with multiple NBASE-T ports. The EnGenius ECS2512FP and ECS2512 switches are designed for small and medium businesses as well as large living environments, and along with their fast switching capabiltiies, one of the models is also capable of Power over Ethernet to deliver power to remote, high-performance devices like Wi-Fi 6 access points. Both models can be managed remotely using EnGenius cloud-based software. The manufacturer is calling its new switches ‘affordable’, though without listing official prices.
Both new switches from EnGenius — the ECS2512FP and the ECS2512 — support 120 Gbps of switching capacity and are fed via eight 2.5GBASE-T ports along with four 10GbE SFP+ slots for fiber uplinks. Meanwhile, the more advanced ECS2512FP model supports the IEEE 802.3bt Power-over-Ethernet, allowing it to transfer up to 240 W of power to such power-hungry devices as Wi-Fi 6 access points, PTZ cameras, or AV controllers.
One of the key features of the latest EnGenius switches is their support for the company’s subscription-free EnGenius Cloud that allows to monitor system metrics in real time, display network topology, troubleshoot, problems, and analyze network’s behavior. According to the company, its switches and cloud services provide ‘enterprise-class features’ and essentially simplify monitoring of networks. While such capabilities bring a lot of value for companies, they come at a cost that typically makes these kinds of multi-gig switches prohibitively expensive for consumers.
EnGenius says that its ECS2512FP and ECS2512 switches will hit the market next month and that they will be ‘affordable’. Unfortunately, without an actual price it is impossible to say whether the switches will be reasonably priced for an average person, or for a business that wants to save on multi-gig network management.
Related Reading:
Source: EnGenius
Source: AnandTech – EnGenius Reveals ‘Affordable’ Multi-Gig Switches with PoE: 8 2.5GBASE-T and 4 10GbE SFP+ Ports
To say Apple Maps stumbled out of the gate is putting it mildly; it quickly became an internet punchline when it launched in 2012, and left the company with the unenviable job of fixing it. Since then, Apple has been rebuilding the most fundamental p…
Source: Engadget – Apple is officially done rebuilding its maps in the US
Let’s face it: chats for gaming streams can get downright nasty. That’s probably why Facebook is giving Gaming streamers access to helpful tools that can help them create and maintain a friendly environment for their fans. Sounds useful, especially s…
Source: Engadget – Facebook lets Gaming streamers pick and choose their community guidelines
Do you remember that time we told you not to sign up for a store credit card at the register? A lot of you didn’t listen, according to data released by CompareCards last week. Thirty-seven percent of Americans applied for a store credit card this past holiday season, according to a survey conducted in late December.
Source: LifeHacker – Make a Plan to Pay Off Your Store Credit Card
So I’m listing out my new build and I’m seeing tons of lighting options, and I’m confused about how to go about it.
Even back before lighting was where it is today, I invested in a couple of…
Bling, Blink, RGB, Blame, Bam, Shakka Flashing, Walkkaa–I’m Old School–WTF? LOL
Source: [H]ardOCP – Bling, Blink, RGB, Blame, Bam, Shakka Flashing, Walkkaa–I’m Old School–WTF? LOL
The Trump regime is lifting an Obama-era ban on America’s deployment of most landmines in warzones, according to a new report from CNN as well as a cable from the U.S. State Department that was leaked to Vox.
Source: Gizmodo – Trump Regime Wants to Lift a Ban on Most U.S. Landmines
When the Colombian National Police killed cocaine kingpin and narcoterrorist Pablo Escobar in 1993, they seized his enormous estate, including his sculpture garden, car collection, small airports, and personal zoo. They shipped most of the zoo animals off to other zoos, but they left dude’s four hippos to fend for…
Source: Gizmodo – Pablo Escobar’s Horny Hippos Won’t Stop Shitting All Over Colombia