Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Set Jeep free (Score 1) 87

I only wish they could sell a street-legal version of that here in the USA.

I wish that too. The Roxor is a lot like the old CJ7 but without the bigger gasoline engines. Nowadays, FCA's traditional Jeep (a.k.a. Wrangler) has just gotten bigger, thirstier, and daintier with every new version since the YJ. FCA keeps nuiscance-sueing (and losing) to Mahindra over the look of the Roxor's grille, so I don't imagine FCA would go easy on Mahindra entering a street legal version to western economies out of terror of lost market share.

Anyways, FCA & Peugeot PSA would never offload the Jeep $$$ market. They'll likely rationalize their small car and cargo van fleets with badge engineering, but it seems to me the Jeep brand and its evolving products would be sacrosanct.

Submission + - Helvetica's evil twin, Hellvetica, will haunt your nightmares (fastcompany.com)

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: Hold your favorite graphic design tome close. We now know what the classic typeface Helvetica would look like if it came from the underworld. Yes, it will keep type enthusiasts up at night. The design darling Helvetica—that ubiquitous sans-serif typeface developed by Max Miedinger in 1957, representative of the crisp Swiss design aesthetic of that period, and star of its own documentary by the same name—has made a deal with the kerning devil. The results aren’t pretty. They’re not meant to be.

Submission + - Twitter will ban political ads, Jack Dorsey announces (cnn.com)

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: Twitter will stop accepting political ads, the company's CEO, Jack Dorsey, announced Wednesday. "We've made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought," Dorsey tweeted. "A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money," he added. The announcement comes amid intense scrutiny of Silicon Valley's handling of political ads. Social media companies, particularly Facebook, have been criticized for allowing politicians to run false ads.

Submission + - "Hyperstealth" Invisibility Cloak Developed For Military Use (futurism.com)

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: Canada’s Hyperstealth Biotechnology already manufactures camouflage uniforms for militaries across the globe.
But now, the company has patented a new “Quantum Stealth” material that disguises a military’s soldiers — or even its tanks, aircraft, and ships — by making anything behind it seem invisible. Earlier in October, Hyperstealth filed a patent for the material, which doesn’t require a power source and is both paper-thin and inexpensive — all traits that could make it appealing for use on the battlefield. Alongside the news of the patent application, Hyperstealth released more than 100-minutes worth of footage describing and demonstrating the material, as summarized in this YouTube video.

Submission + - UK Man Invents Aluminum-Air Battery In His Garage (cleantechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: UK engineer and former Royal Navy officer Trevor Jackson began experimenting with aluminum air batteries at his workshop in the Cornish town of Callington in 2001. At that time, the electrolyte used was extremely caustic and poisonous. After years of experimentation, Jackson devised a new electrolyte — whose composition is a closely guarded secret — he says make it possible for his invention to power an electric car for up to 1,500 miles. What happens when it runs out of juice? You replace it with a new one while the old one gets recycled. At the beginning of the electric car era when charging infrastructure was nonexistent, the idea of swapping spent batteries for fully charged new ones was considered feasible. Jackson says such a thing could be the future, with his batteries/fuel cells sold at grocery stores and retail outlets. He says the process of disconnecting the old one and connecting the new one will take about 90 seconds.

[A]n independent evaluation by the UK Trade and Investment agency in 2017 said Jackson’s invention was a “very attractive battery” based on “well established’” technology, and that it produced much more energy per kilogram than standard electric vehicle types, according to a report in the Daily Mail. A Tesla Model S can drive up to 370 miles on a single charge. Jackson says if you drove the same car with an aluminum-air cell that weighed the same as the Tesla’s lithium-ion battery, it would have a range of 2,700 miles. Aluminum-air cells also take up less space. If that same Tesla were fitted with an aluminum-air fuel cell the same size as its current battery, it could run non-stop for 1,500 miles.

Comment Mighty Leaf a possible culprit? (Score 1) 140

Hey... what is a plastic teabag? That would have been good information to include.

Which brands of tea use these bags? How can I tell if the tea I'm using is of that kind?

From Canada's CBC news report of this study: "You may be swallowing billions of tiny plastic particles while sipping a cup of freshly brewed gourmet tea, a new study from McGill University in Montreal suggests. Many fancier teas now come in "silken" bags instead of paper." https://www.cbc.ca/news/techno...

From Mightyleaf.com: "Each of our proprietary tea bags is hand-stitched with silken material, showcasing the distinctive beauty of the tea leaves as they unfurl and steep a full infusion for an ideal, multi-sensory tea experience." https://www.peets.com/learn/ab...

O'kay, TFA mentions "silken" bags while Mighty Leaf mentions "silken material", so I wonder if Mighty Leaf is one of the culprits? I like their product, but it would be a shame if their manufacturing standards were found to be unhealthy and/or ecologically irresponsible.

Submission + - What 'Ad Astra' and Brad Pitt get wrong about space travel and science (nbcnews.com)

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: Adam Frank, professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester and consultant on numerous movie scripts, was excited to watch “Ad Astra,” the new Brad Pitt space thriller. The film was promoted with the promise of scientific realism in depicting a solar system well on its way to being settled by humanity. Unfortunately, Professor Frank finds that despite very good intentions, “Ad Astra” strikes the wrong balance between story and fact, art and artifice. While the plot ventures out to the farthest planet Neptune, the demands of the film’s theme cramp its science fiction imagination. Instead of letting us explore a vision of our common future in space, “Ad Astra” delivers a solar system stripped down to fit a very particular story.

Submission + - Brain Research On Boys' Preference For Video Games and Girls' For Social Media (wsj.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Many parents of both boys and girls have witnessed striking differences in the way their kids use technology, with their sons generally gravitating to video games and their daughters often spending more of their screen time scrolling through social media. Emerging research indicates that brain differences between males and females help account for the split. According to a 2017 survey conducted by Pew Research Center, 41% of teenage boys said they spend too much time playing videogames while only 11% of girls said they do. Marc Potenza, a psychiatry professor at Yale University, teamed up with researchers at universities in China to find out why. Using functional MRIs, which measure brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow, the team studied neural responses in young male and female gamers, particularly in the parts of the brain associated with reward processing and craving — a motivating factor in addiction. When the men and women were shown photos of people playing videogames, those parts of the men’s brains showed higher levels of activation than those parts of the women’s brains. Brain regions that have been implicated in drug-addiction studies also were shown to be more highly activated in the men after gaming. The researchers said the results suggest men could be more biologically prone than women to developing internet gaming disorder.

But girls and women aren’t free from problems when it comes to digital media. Data from Pew shows that, in general, women use social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest far more than men. Many girls and women are drawn to those photo-sharing sites because they like to form bonds and find similarities, says Rosanna Guadagno, a social psychologist at Stanford University. Even if women only use those sites more than men because that is where their friends are, many experts and parents say they have found that girls appear to have a greater fear of missing out, which compels them to keep up with what their friends are posting. Some recent studies show that girls feel the ill effects of too much social media use, such as depression and anxiety, more than boys do.

Submission + - Systemd-homed: Systemd Now Working To Improve Home Directory Handling (phoronix.com) 2

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: phoronix reports that Lennart Poettering has presented a new set of systemd capabilities: 'Improving the Linux handling of user home directories is the next ambition for systemd. Among the goals are allowing more easily migratable home directories, ensuring all data for users is self-contained to the home directories, UID assignments being handled to the local system, unified user password and encryption key handling, better data encryption handling in general, and other modernization efforts. Among the items being explored by systemd-homed are JSON-based user records, encrypted LUKS home directories in loop-back files, and other next-gen features to offering secure yet portable home directories.'

Slashdot Top Deals

The use of money is all the advantage there is to having money. -- B. Franklin

Close