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Comment Re:i don't even care about this game (Score 2) 99

by GrpA (#53089317) Attached to: Shadow Warrior 2 Developers Say DRM Is a Waste of Time

The original game was nothing special IMO. Sure, it was fun, but it lacked behind others of it's era. The Remake, however, was on another level. Some brilliant script writing, an engaging story and more humour than the original. It truly was something spectacular. I vividly recall the bitterly sad ending and hoping there would be a cutscene to save me from the misery of the constant loop around the finale. I mean, how often do you sit there, through 20 minutes of scrolling credits, just hoping something will change?

SW2, on the other hand, not so great. Script writing was so-so and poorly written. It's not quite a turd, and is still a lot of fun, but lacked in the storytelling that made Shadow Warrior a classic.I was disappointed but would still give the game my support even if I knew that before I purchased it - for a start, it's half the price of most other games and can easily run for a lot longer.

So while I recommended the first quite vocally, I'm a little more reserved on SW2. However, in light of the announcements that they are doing the right thing by their fans and removing DRM, it does push me more towards looking at the better aspects of the game rather than the ones I didn't enjoy so much.

Comment What the 15 points actually are - (Score 1) 230

https://www.transportation.gov...

The Safety Assessment would cover the following areas:
  Data Recording and Sharing
  Privacy
  System Safety
  Vehicle Cybersecurity
  Human Machine Interface
  Crashworthiness
  Consumer Education and Training
  Registration and Certification
  Post-Crash Behavior
  Federal, State and Local Laws
  Ethical Considerations
  Operational Design Domain
  Object and Event Detection and Response
  Fall Back (Minimal Risk Condition)
  Validation Methods

GrpA

Comment Because science prides itself on lying. (Score 1) 609

by GrpA (#52486517) Attached to: Is A Rational Nation Ruled By Science A Terrible Idea?

Facts only exist while they fit the required frameworks of rich and powerful people in science - Just look at how universities have warped science over the past years. Science should only exist as a means to identify the truth, not to become the truth itself. Decisions about how people should live and be governed are something that should have no basis in science. If leaders keep making stupid decisions because of that, well, that's the privilege of the people who put them there. If they don't understand science, then that's the fault of the educational system isn't it? Education should also be expanded to include matters of law and medicine prior to high school graduation, but that's another matter still.

GrpA

Submission + - Source of human exposure to pharmaceutical contaminants (acs.org)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Consuming vegetables grown with treated and reclaimed waste water can increase detectable levels of the drug carbamazepine in people’s urine

With water shortages rising worldwide, the practice of treating and reusing wastewater for agricultural and household use is growing. In Israel, for example, some 60% of water used in agriculture is reclaimed

But there is a dark side — new study shows that eating vegetables grown using reclaimed water boosts urine levels of carbamazepine, an anti-epileptic drug commonly detected in wastewater

The randomized, controlled study is the first to directly address exposure to such pharmaceutical contaminants in humans, says coauthor Ora Paltiel, a professor of hematology and epidemiology at the Hadassah-Hebrew University. “We were very surprised that the effect was so clear”

Drugs can enter the water supply by excretion—through the urine of people who take them—or by disposal of unused medicines down the toilet or in the garbage, at home or in healthcare institutions like hospitals and nursing homes. Water disposed of by drug manufacturers can also contain residues of pharmaceutical compounds

Treatment for wastewater used in agriculture generally does not remove these trace chemicals because purifying such a large quantity of water to drinking water standards would be prohibitively expensive. Therefore drugs can contaminate treated wastewater and find their way into agricultural use

“Empirically, it’s obvious that everyone who is exposed to a seven-day diet of reclaimed water is going to have a quantifiable level of this drug in their urine,” Paltiel says, though the urine levels were very low. “These are nanogram per liter levels—they are four orders of magnitude away from levels of if you were taking the drug.” Still, she says, all the produce they tested was commercially available, and even small exposures—to this drug and others—must be assessed

Levels detected in urine may be low, but people who eat a lot of produce will be exposed to such contaminants throughout their lifetimes, he adds. “We don’t really know much yet about the effects of low-level but very long-term exposure”

India, he notes, has a lot of pharmaceutical manufacturing. “There will be lots of areas where the water is really packed with drugs”

Paltiel’s group will next test whether children, elderly people, pregnant women, and vegetarians are more exposed, and whether the exposure might carry any health effects. “Reclaimed wastewater can be a partial solution to agricultural problems in semi-arid regions, but we have to be cognizant that there are potential exposures from this” she says

Submission + - Launch companies lobby to maintain ban on use of Indian rockets (spacenews.com)

Submitted by vasanth
vasanth writes: In September 2015, for the first time India launched a U.S. satellite, the satellites belonged to a U.S. company, and India launched them from its trusted workhorse – the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, which has launched satellites for 20 different countries. Other U.S. companies have sought launches on India’s PSLV, including a Google satellite scheduled for launch in April.

Later the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) endorsed an advisory committee’s recommendation that commercial U.S. satellites continue to be barred from using the PSLV. In its Feb. 26 decision, the FAA said it agreed with its Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) that Indian launch services, owned and controlled by the Indian government, threaten to “distort the conditions of competition” in the launch-services market.

Submission + - Over 80 Percent of China's Well Water Is Polluted (voanews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: 32.9 percent of the 2,103 underground wells in China received grade 4 for water quality — meaning they're only fit for industrial use and are not safe for drinking water. Another 47.3 percent received a grade 5 for water quality. "These latest statistics are an indicator of how bad the underground water quality is. The sources of pollution are widespread and include a lot of agricultures. I think that would be the main source of pollution," Dabo Guan, professor at the University of East Anglia in Britain, told the New York Times. "From my point of view, this shows how water is the biggest environmental issue in China. People in the cities, they see air pollution every day, so it creates huge pressure from the public. But in the cities, people don't see how bad the water pollution is," said Guan. According to statistics from the country's Ministry of Water Resources, 70 percent of lakes used as a water source, 60 percent of underground water, and 11 percent of water in reservoirs did not meet the country's safety standards. Even though the study measured water sources close to the surface, the results are shocking and depict the adverse effects pollution has in China currently and in years to come.

Submission + - NASA Helping Create a 'Skyrim'-sized Section of Mars That You Can Explore in VR (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: 'Mars 2030' is a collaborative project between developer FUSION Media and NASA which is recreating a real 20 km sq section of the planet. “We want you to feel like you’re standing on mars,” said Justin Sonnekalb, a game designer working on the Mars 2030 project. “We want you to feel like you’re actually there.” To do that the developer is not only pulling in all available data from NASA, they're also pushing the limits of graphical fidelity, currently aiming the experience's top-end visuals at dual GTX 980 Ti GPUs pushing some 50 million polygons per frame. According to the developers, Mars 2030 will be released for free on Steam this Fall with support for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift VR headsets.

Comment Re:3.5mm? (Score 0) 412

by GrpA (#51021429) Attached to: Pursuit of Slenderness May Mean No More Headphone Jack In iPhone 7

If Apple could make a phone just 3.5mm thick, then I could understand having problems putting a headphone jack in place... But if it's even 4mm thick, them this reflects that they just aren't capable of designing something this thin...I guess the lack of Steve Jobs is starting to become apparent.

After all, why can't they just redesign the audio socket so it's a couple of millimeters thinner?

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