Not 2^16 (Unicode already has way over 2^16 codepoints assigned). The maximum Unicode codepoint value is 1114111, which is somewhat over 2^20 (and happens to be the highest codepoint encodable in UTF-16).

And if you don't want to spend your money on a gadget, you can get localized pass predictions from heavens-above.com .

1. Yes, Sony has a bad track record when it comes to marketing VR glasses. (Did you even know that VR glasses for the PS2 exist?) However, with all the press Oculus has generated and the competition getting ready, Sony may be willing to make a bigger bet on VR.

2. FB seems to be going for a hands off approach that won't hinder the adoption of the Oculus Rift. I'm at least willing to take a wait and see approach before condemning the buyout. Apart from that, core members of Oculus like John Carmack and Michael Abrash as well as Mark Zuckerberg seem to be inspired to implement the Metaverse as described in Snow Crash. This is likely a medium term goal that comes on top of the general Oculus platform.

3. Valve has clearly stated that they are not interested in producing their own VR hardware. And the former core members of Valves VR team are now employed by Oculus. Valve will likely promote good VR hardware solutions and software and provide a uniform VR API. It's also probable that we'll see recommended bundles of VR hardware, Steam boxes and the Steam controller.

Valve has no plans to produce their own hardware. And Michael Abrash, who was at the core of Valves VR research, is now working for Oculus.

Russia will probably be willing to lift the ban if the US lifts its own ITAR restrictions. They disallow the export defense-related technology, including rocketry, to Russia.

It's 2Ah, so 240A.

Now, it could be that their battery runs at a higher voltage (and thus not really 2Ah, but they're using that figure as a 3.7V li-ion equivalent capabity), or that there is a power converter built into the battery pack (unlikely for a prototype, though). Still, even for a 37V battery (vs. 3.7V for a normal Li-Ion cell), we're talking 24A. That cord didn't look like 24A cord, and I highly doubt they were using a voltage higher than 37V to charge (especially not with exposed banana jacks like that).

I call the demo highly dubious if not an outright fake/mock.

Mozilla is not a public company. It is a 501C3 tax exempt non profit and its wholly owned taxable subsidiary. Our stockholders are the people of the world. Our decisions are based on maximizing the value of the Internet for the benefit of everyone everywhere, especially those who lack representation from the giant institutional multinational publicly traded corporations like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft.

But a low framerate contributes to simulator sickness. It's no wonder the engineers in the video are careful to move their heads slowly.

Sorry for the threadjack, but this is yet another case of horrible security reporting.

From watching the video, what it seems happened here was that eBay chose phpBB for their community forum, but did not integrate its authentication system directly with eBay's on the server side. Instead, the site was set-up as a standalone system, and whoever implemented the integration had the bright idea of hardcoding the forum password for everyone as username+123456, and then just having the eBay login page issue a hidden POST request behind the scenes to authenticate users to the community forum section.

Thus, this allows anyone to trivially impersonate anyone else on the forum. It shouldn't have anything to do with the rest of the site, though. Nor does this have anything to do with initial passwords, salts, or any of the other terms that have been thrown around.

A case of absolutely retarded login integration for the community site, but not something that would allow people to take over others' main eBay account. What this says about the people running eBay is another matter entirely...

Did you actually read that article? It clearly describes exactly what I said: they use resistors on the data pins to signal the available current. There is no bidirectional negotiation going on. There are no extra pins or wires. The charger just has 4 resistors to create two voltage dividers for the D- and D+ pins.

This is incorrect. There is no bidirectional negotiation between chargers and devices, nor are there any magic extra pins (at least for pretty much all Android and Apple products - dunno about Zune).

What there is is one USB charging standard, that basically says one thing and one thing only (that matters): if the data pins are shorted together (but otherwise not connected to anything), then the port is a Dedicated Charging Port. A DCP must meet certain voltage/current curve ranges and may be engineered to supply anywhere from 500mA to 1.5A (or more), with the voltage dropping as the device exceeds the charger's maximum. Devices are simply supposed to regulate current draw upwards until the voltage drops below a threshold, indicating the charger's capability. No digital negotiation takes place. Devices are limited to 1.5A charging current, which is quite typical for modern devices (and significantly better than the 500mA of a non-charging port).

There is a newer USB Power Delivery specification that is much more recent, supports higher powers, probably uses more complex negotiation (I haven't read it), and nothing implements it yet.

Then there's what Apple does - they have an incompatible implementation that uses resistors on the data pins in the charger to signal its current capability. Different resulting voltages mean different current levels. This is completely incompatible with the USB charging standard. Recent Apple devices (since the iPhone 3G or so) do support DCP chargers (to some extent - some charge more slowly, and I don't know about larger iPads?), but non-Apple devices will only charge at 500mA or worse from Apple chargers.

Which phones with 128MB or 256MB of RAM run a modern version of Android?

Not quite. The GEMA only collects fees for its members. The problem is the GEMA assumption. If you play a song, you either have to pay the GEMA or document that the relevant artists do not have GEMA contracts (which is either a pain or plain impossible).

Do you have a source for this? To my knowledge, the GEMA demands 0.375 Euro cents [PDF] per view.

Firefox OS is trying to fix much of this.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firef...
https://developer.mozilla.org/...
The Web is the most successful platform of all time and we're leading the pack on bringing a the Web platform to mobile in a way that's integrated rather than fractured like the existing app store models.