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Submission + - Intel Updates NUC Mini PC Line With Broadwell-U, Tested And Benchmarked (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid on Wednesday February 25, 2015 @03:17PM

MojoKid writes: Intel recently released its latest generation of NUC small form factor systems, based on the company's new low-power Broadwell-U series processors. The primary advantages of Intel's 5th Generation Core Series Broadwell-U-based processors are better performance-per-watt, stronger integrated graphics, and a smaller footprint, all things that are perfectly suited to the company's NUC (Next Unit of Computing) products. The Intel NUC5i5RYK packs a Core i5-5250U processor with on-die Intel HD 6000 series graphics. The system also sports built-in 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0 and USB 2.0, M.2 SSD support, and a host of other features, all in a 115mm x 111mm x 32.7mm enclosure. Performance-wise the new 5th Gen Core Series-powered NUC benchmarks like a midrange notebook and is actually up for a bit of light-duty gaming, though it's probably more at home as a Home Theater PC, media streamer or kiosk desktop machine.

Interviews: Ask Senior Director Matt Keller About the Global Learning XPRIZE 31

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday February 25, 2015 @02:51PM from the go-ahead-and-ask dept.

The former Vice President of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) Matt Keller is currently the Senior Director of the $15 million Global Learning XPRIZE. The competition challenges teams from around the world to develop open source software solutions that will allow children in developing countries to teach themselves basic reading, writing and arithmetic within a 18 month competition period. After 18 months a panel of judges will evaluate the projects and announce semi-finalists. Semi-finalists will have a month to tweak their projects and/or reconfigure their teams before the judges elect the top five finalist to proceed. Each of the five teams selected will receive $1 million to field test their ideas with the eventual winners receiving the Grand Prize of $10 million. The Global Learning XPRIZE is recruiting teams now through April 30, 2015. Matt has agreed to answer any questions you might have about the competition and the future of education in general. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.

Comment Re:Nothing important. (Score 1, Offtopic) 203

by CrimsonAvenger on Wednesday February 25, 2015 @09:18AM (#49126219) Attached to: What Happens When Betelgeuse Explodes?

Says the anonymous coward while an Ebola pandemic ravages Africa.

Pandemic???

Africa has 1.1 billion people. With an average life expectancy of 71 years. Which means about 15 million deaths per year.

Ebola has killed about 8000 people in the last 15 months.

Which means that ebola has accounted for ~0.04% of African deaths since the end of 2013.

Sorry, 0.04% of your deathrate does not a pandemic make....

Note, by the by, that there were more traffic deaths in each of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda, and the United Republic of Tanzania then there were ebola deaths in all of Africa over the last 15 months.

Submission + - Net Neutrality Activists Take Fight to Telecom Giants (commondreams.org)

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed on Wednesday February 25, 2015 @05:43AM

Freshly Exhumed writes: In the lead-up to the FCC's pivotal net neutrality vote on Thursday, civil rights and media justice organizations across the United States are taking their demands for an open internet to the store-fronts of the telecommunications giants that continue to aggressively fight the protections. In partnership with the Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-net), local organizations began rallying last week to bring the call "Don't Block My Internet" to AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner. Notable actions have already taken place in numerous cities—including Berkeley, California; Urbana-Champaign, Illinois; and San Antonio, Texas—with more slated for the coming days.

Comment Re:600 light years from us (Score 4, Informative) 203

by CrimsonAvenger on Wednesday February 25, 2015 @05:27AM (#49125591) Attached to: What Happens When Betelgeuse Explodes?

So, if Betelgeuse is going to explode in about 100,000 years, won't its distance to Sol have changed by then?

Yes.

But not by much. It's nearly 200 parsecs away now, and it's moving at about 30 parsecs per million years. So it'll be less than 2% farther away when it booms. Much less, since its relative motion is such that most of those three parsecs will be lateral motion instead of motion away from us.

Comment Re:Actually, ADM Rogers doesn't "want" that at all (Score 1) 406

by CrimsonAvenger on Tuesday February 24, 2015 @06:11PM (#49122397) Attached to: NSA Director Wants Legal Right To Snoop On Encrypted Data

nope. The constitution doesn't apply to citizens of other countries.

This is incorrect. More properly, the Constitution doesn't apply to people IN other countries.

That is to say, if a German comes to the USA, the Constitutional protections apply to him while he is here. But they don't apply while he's in Germany.

Comment Re:but I'll defend to the death your right to say (Score 1) 285

by CrimsonAvenger on Tuesday February 24, 2015 @11:45AM (#49119271) Attached to: Google Knocks Explicit Adult Content On Blogger From Public View

The full quote is Voltaire's, "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

Hmm, that sounds familiar....

Comment Re:More of this ridiculous (Score 1) 134

by CrimsonAvenger on Tuesday February 24, 2015 @10:50AM (#49118767) Attached to: Pakistanis Must Provide Fingerprints Or Give Up Cellphone

The counter to that is to steal registered cards. The counter to that is to report the cards as stolen. Counter: kill the card-owners, so they can't report the cards. Counter: police de-registers cards belonging to dead people. Counter: kidnap/disappear the card-owners. Only works until the authorities catch on in each individual case. Mitigation: keep kill/stealing. That's what terrorists do anyway, so no problem there. Problem: you're now switching numbers often. Gonna be difficult to keep your address book up-to-date.

Nah, you (the terrorist) get a perfectly normal cellphone for most business (chatting up girls, planning things, that sort).

Then, when you're ready to do an operation, you (as you point out above) kill a few people & take their phones. Then you IMMEDIATELY use them on your op. And toss them into a dumpster as you leave the op (assuming, of course, that this op is of the subset of terrorist ops that is "survivable") and go back home and get your regular phone....

Google Teams Up With 3 Wireless Carriers To Combat Apple Pay 186

Posted by samzenpus on Monday February 23, 2015 @07:20PM from the working-together dept.

HughPickens.com writes AP reports that in an effort to undercut Apple's hit service Apple Pay, Google is teaming up with three wireless carriers by building its payment service into Android smartphones sold by AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA. Besides trying to make it more convenient to use Wallet, Google also is hoping to improve the nearly 4-year-old service. Toward that end, Google is buying some mobile payment technology and patents from Softcard, a 5-year-old venture owned by the wireless carriers. Financial terms weren't disclosed but Apple Pay's popularity probably helped forge the unlikely alliance between Google and the wireless carriers. Google traditionally has had a prickly relationship with the carriers, largely because it doesn't believe enough has been done to upgrade wireless networks and make them cheaper so more people can spend more time online.

The biggest challenge however is one that both Apple and Google face: Only a small fraction of the 10 million or so retail outlets in the U.S.–220,000 at last count–have checkout readers that can accept payments from either system. Both wallets use a radio technology called Near Field Communication to send payment, and it's expected to take years for most stores to be upgraded. What's at play? The big tech companies and carriers seem convinced that our phones will eventually replace our wallets. For carriers, that could make mobile wallet technology table stakes over the next few years as they compete for consumers.

Mummified Monk Found Inside 1,000-Year-Old Buddha Statue 108

Posted by samzenpus on Monday February 23, 2015 @06:37PM from the surprise-center dept.

An anonymous reader writes Using a CT scanner, scientists and hospital staff at the Meander Medical Center in the Netherlands have discovered the mummified body of a Chinese monk inside a statue of Buddha. The monk is believed to have lived around the year 1100. From the article: "Glowing through the statue's golden cast, the human skeleton is believed to belong to Buddhist master Liu Quan, a member of the Chinese Meditation School. To further investigate the mummy, the researchers took the statue to the Meander Medical Center in Amersfoort and carried out an endoscopy and additional CT scans. They found out that Liu Quan's internal organs had been removed and replaced with scripts covered in Chinese writing. The museum speculates Liu Quan may have 'self-mummified' in order to become a 'living Buddha.'

Researchers: Alcohol Health Risks Underestimated, Marijuana Relatively Safe 398

Posted by samzenpus on Monday February 23, 2015 @05:53PM from the not-so-bad-after-all dept.

schwit1 writes Compared to other recreational drugs — including alcohol — marijuana may be even safer than previously thought. And researchers may be systematically underestimating risks associated with alcohol use. They found that at the level of individual use, alcohol was the deadliest substance (abstract), followed by heroin and cocaine.

Looking Up Symptoms Online? These Companies Are Tracking You 147

Posted by samzenpus on Monday February 23, 2015 @05:10PM from the that's-sick dept.

merbs writes When we feel sick, fear disease, or have questions about our health, we turn first to the internet. According to the Pew Internet Project, 72 percent of US internet users look up health-related information online. But an astonishing number of the pages we visit to learn about private health concerns—confidentially, we assume—are tracking our queries, sending the sensitive data to third party corporations, even shipping the information directly to the same brokers who monitor our credit scores.

Google Lunar XPrize Teams Partner For a 2016 SpaceX Moonshot 18

Posted by samzenpus on Monday February 23, 2015 @04:27PM from the working-together dept.

An anonymous reader writes Two competing teams for the Google Lunar XPrize have announced that they are partnering for a mission to the moon in the second half of 2016. From the article: "The Google Lunar XPrize , a $30 million purse of prizes encouraging private teams to put lunar rovers on the moon, this morning took if not quite a giant leap, then at least a big step. Two of those teams, Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic and Japan-based Hakuto, signed on to share a rocket ride to the moon in late 2016. Hakuto, which developed a pair of rovers to explore the lunar surface, will hitch a ride on Astrobotic's lander, which plans to set down in Lacus Mortis, located in the northeastern portion of the moon. Once on the surface, both teams will deploy their rovers and go exploring. The first to cover 500 meters (around 550 yards) while broadcasting high-definition footage will take home the $20 million grand prize."

Is Sega the Next Atari? 153

Posted by samzenpus on Monday February 23, 2015 @03:42PM from the once-false-step dept.

donniebaseball23 writes As CEO of Sega of America in the early 1990s, Tom Kalinske oversaw the company during its glory days, when all eyes in the industry were glued to the titanic struggle for console superiority between the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. Times have changed, to put it mildly, and Sega is now a shell of its former self. Where did things go wrong? According to Kalinske, Sega's downfall was failing to partner with Sony on a new platform, and the bad decisions kept piling on from there. Sega's exit from hardware "could have been avoided if they had made the right decisions going back literally 20 years ago. But they seem to have made the wrong decisions for 20 years."

Submission + - Google Lunar XPrize teams partner for a 2016 SpaceX moonshot

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23, 2015 @03:14PM

An anonymous reader writes: Two competing teams for the Google Lunar XPrize have announced that they are partnering for a mission to the moon in the second half of 2016. From the article: "The Google Lunar XPrize , a $30 million purse of prizes encouraging private teams to put lunar rovers on the moon, this morning took if not quite a giant leap, then at least a big step. Two of those teams, Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic and Japan-based Hakuto, signed on to share a rocket ride to the moon in late 2016. Hakuto, which developed a pair of rovers to explore the lunar surface, will hitch a ride on Astrobotic's lander, which plans to set down in Lacus Mortis, located in the northeastern portion of the moon. Once on the surface, both teams will deploy their rovers and go exploring. The first to cover 500 meters (around 550 yards) while broadcasting high-definition footage will take home the $20 million grand prize."

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