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Comment Meh -- Summary of pros/cons (Score 4, Informative) 108

by UnknownSoldier (#49818815) Attached to: LEGO Launches a Minecraft Competitor On Steam

Pros:
+ Players and creatures (such as horses) don't look like blocky
+ Have sloped roofs -- 45 degree #3039, 25 degree #3298 and 73 degree #98560
+ Have "smooth" flat tiles #3068
+ Initial support for airplanes, and mining vehicles
* Misc. decorations

Cons:
- Single player only
- Windows only (MineCraft runs on OSX, Linux, Android, consoles)
- Cost $15 while MineTest, Terasology, etc. are free.

Anyone have an idea of what the world height and size is limited to?

Submission + - GlowBowl Lighting Makes Your Tinkle Twinkle At Night (hothardware.com) 1

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: It's definitely not as creepy as Tony The Toilet Buddy from Better Call Saul, this latest Kickstarter project is definitely puts the "whiz" in gee-whiz. GlowBowl is an LED-light for your toilet that is seems to be aimed at males, because females probably won't have a use for such a product (and probably think it's too childish to boot), that bathes your toilet water in seven selectable colors. The GlowBowl simply attaches to your toilet bowl like any garden variety toilet fresher and serves as a night light so you don't have to sear your retinas with the fancy pants LED lighting in your overhead bathroom fixtures during late night pee runs. And if you simply can't settle on one single color for your last night "exit stream," there is a carousel mode that will cycle through all seven colors every four seconds.

Submission + - New Wind Turbine Has No Blades

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The Guardian reports that Vortex Bladeless has developed a new bladeless wind turbine that promises to be more efficient, less visually intrusive, and safer for birdlife than conventional turbines. Using the principle of natural frequency and vorticity, the turbine oscillates in swirling air caused by the wind bypassing the mast, and then builds exponentially as it reaches the structure’s natural resonance. It’s a powerful effect that famously caused the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940, footage of which inspired David Yáñez to try to build a structure to harness this energy rather than prevent it. The turbine “floats” on magnets, which as well as significantly amplifying the oscillation, also eliminates any friction and the need for expensive lubricating oils or mechanical parts. “Wind turbines now are too noisy for people’s backyard,” says David Suriol. “We want to bring wind power generation to people’s houses like solar power.”

On the minus side the oscillating turbine design will sweep a smaller area and have a lower conversion efficiency. “The best wind turbine will collect around 50% of energy from the wind,” says Suriol. “We are close to 40% with bladeless turbines in our wind tunnel laboratory.” To offset this disadvantage, "you can put four, five or six 4kW turbines in the space of one conventional turbine, which need 5 meter diameter space around them,” he says. In fact, wind tunnel tests have shown they perform even better placed closer together as they benefit from the vortices each of them creates.

Submission + - Ransomware creator apologizes for 'sleeper' attack, releases decryption keys (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: Last week, a new strain of ransomware called Locker was activated after having been sitting silently on infected PCs. Security firm KnowBe4 called Locker a "sleeper" campaign that, when the malware's creator "woke it up," encrypted the infected devices' files and charged roughly $24 in exchange for the decryption keys. This week, an internet user claiming to be the creator of Locker publicly apologized for the campaign and appears to have released the decryption keys for all the devices that fell victim to it, KnowBe4 reported in an alert issued today. Locker's creator released this message in a PasteBin post, along with a link to a file hosted on Mega.co containing the decryption keys. The malware creator also said that an automatic decryption process for all devices that were affected by Locker will begin June 2nd.

However, the post did not mention anything about providing a refund to victims who paid the 0.1 bitcoin (equal to $22.88 at the time this was posted and about $24 last week) required for the decryption keys since last week.

KnowBe4 CEO Stu Sjouwerman says the files released do not appear to be malicious after brief analysis, and that "it does contain a large quantity of RSA keys and Bitcoin addresses." But he warned those interested to only open these files "at your own risk until further analyses are performed." Sjouwerman speculated that the malware creator may have been spooked by attention from law enforcement or Eastern European organized crime syndicates that are behind most ransomware campaigns.

Submission + - Fuel Free Spacecrafts Using Graphene

Submitted by William Robinson
William Robinson writes: While using a laser to cut a sponge made of crumpled sheets of Graphene oxide, Researchers accidentally discovered that it can turn light into motion. As the laser cut into the material, it mysteriously propelled forward. Baffled, researchers investigated further. The Graphene material was put in a vacuum and again shot with a laser. Incredibly, the laser still pushed the sponge forward, and by as much as 40 centimeters. Researchers even got the Graphene to move by focusing ordinary sunlight on it with a lens.Though scientists are not sure why this happens, they are excited with new possibilities such as light propelled spacecraft that does not need fuel.

Comment Re:Correct, but silly (Score 3, Interesting) 172

by UnknownSoldier (#49806665) Attached to: Can You Commit Copyright Infringement By Using Your Own Work?

> It's simple, if it's copyrighted, it's copyrighted. It doesn't matter that it's a derivative of your own earlier works.

It's not that simple.

It didn't stop that idiot Zaentz from suing John Fogerty over John Fogerty. i.e. He believed John Fogerty had plagiarized John Fogerty via his earlier work "The Old Man Down the Road" which sounded too much like "Run Through the Jungle."

How the hell can you be sued for creating a later work when you wrote earlier work?? How can the later work NOT be derivative when it is _your_ *style* ?? This is completely retarded.

When you have the same bloody 4 chords repeated over and over as Axis of Awesome points out, copyright gets ridiculous. What's next? Suing people because they used the same 3 notes? 2 notes? 1 note?

Submission + - Qatar 2022: Not so clean 2

Submitted by dkatana
dkatana writes: This week six senior FIFA officials were arrested in Zurich on corruption charges and suspicion of receiving more than $150 million in bribes over two decades. The arrests call into question the legitimacy of Russia’s and Qatar’s bids to host the World Cup in 2018 and 2022 respectively, which have been mired in controversy since the awards were announced in 2010. No country has ever been stripped of the title before and both Russia and Qatar have already spend millions in preparation.

Susan Llewelyn Leach writes "In preparation for the tournament, the tiny gulf state will be building around eight new stadiums, with the jewel in the crown being the Lusail Iconic Stadium where the opening ceremonies and final matches will be held. Designed to have a zero carbon footprint, the stadium will also generate renewable energy for the surrounding neighborhood"

But is is not so green as the carbon footprint of the construction involves. Adnan Mian, chief executive officer at engineering company Mercury MENA, made this point at a recent construction conference in Qatar: “I think we need to be looking at two elements here: one is achieving sustainability during the construction stage and the other is post-construction after the stadiums are built.”

Earlier this month it emerged that four BBC journalists had been detained on an official visit in early May to inspect conditions in migrant labor camps after being accused of trespassing.

Submission + - NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV Reviewed: Gaming And Possibly The Ultimate 4K Streamer (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: NVIDIA officially launched its SHIELD Android TV set-top device today and it's sort of a "tweener" product, with far more horsepower than something like Roku or Apple TV, but on par with an average game console, and at a more affordable price tag of $199. What's interesting, however, is that it's powered by NVIDIA's Tegra X1 SoC which features a Maxwell-derived GPU and eight CPU cores; four ARM A57 cores and four A53s. The A57 cores are 64-bit, out-of-order designs, with multi-issue pipelines, while the A53s are simpler, in-order, highly-efficient designs. Which cores are used will depend on the particular workload being executed at the time. Tegra X1 also packs a 256-core Maxwell-derived GPU with the same programming capabilities and API support as NVIDIA's latest desktop GPUs. In standard Android benchmarks, the SHIELD pretty much slays any current high-end tablet or smartphone processor in graphics, but is about on par with the octal-core Samsung Exynos in terms of standard compute workloads but handily beating and octal-core Qualcomm Snapdragon. What's also interesting about the SHIELD Android TV is that it's not only an Android TV-capable device with movie and music streaming services like Netflix etc., but it also plays any game on Google Play and with serious horsepower behind it. The SHIELD Android TV is also the first device certified for Netflix's Ultra HD 4K streaming service.

Comment Re:faster than light never violates Relativity (Score 1) 226

by UnknownSoldier (#49791937) Attached to: Ways To Travel Faster Than Light Without Violating Relativity

> Relativity requres (sic) that nothing can move through space as fast as light (c)

That is not entirely accurate.

Worm holes allow you to travel between points A and B; the Euclidian distance which means your effective velocity was/is significantly faster then 'c'.

--
First Contact is coming 2024. Are you ready for a new paradigm?

Submission + - SF Says AdWare Bundled with Gimp Is Intentional (google.com) 5

Submitted by tresf
tresf writes: In response to a Google+ post from the Gimp project claiming that "[Sourceforge] is now distributing an ads-enabled installer of GIMP", Sourceforge had this response:

In cases where a project is no longer actively being maintained, SourceForge has in some cases established a mirror of releases that are hosted elsewhere. This was done for GIMP-Win.

Editor's note: Gimp is actively being maintained and the definition of "mirror" is quite misleading here as a modified binary is no longer a verbatim copy. Download statistics for Gimp on Windows show SourceForge as offering over 1,000 downloads per day of the Gimp software. In an official response to this incident, the official Gimp project team reminds users to use official download methods. Slashdotters may remember the last time news like this surfaced (2013) when the Gimp team decided to move downloads from SourceForge to their own FTP service.

Therefore, we remind you again that GIMP only provides builds for Windows via its official Downloads page.

Note: SourceForge and Slashdot share a corporate parent.

Submission + - Population Control is a Taboo Subject - Should it Be?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "In the world of solutions to environmental problems," writes Adele Peters, "one topic rarely gets any discussion: Birth control. By 2050, the U.N. estimates that the human population will hit 9.6 billion, putting unprecedented pressure on the planet's energy and agriculture systems. But that estimate tends to be accepted as inevitable, rather than as a number that could (or should) change." Peters continues, "The subject of population control wasn't always taboo. "The bestselling environment-related book of the '60s and '70s was not Silent Spring, it was Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb," says [Foundation for Deep Ecology's Tom] Butler. "So this was a huge and integrated topic of conversation decades ago, and then it fell off the radar screen." Part of the challenge is that the topic is now politically fraught both for the right and left. "On the right, if we're talking about the demographic trajectory of the human family, inevitably, this brings up questions of sexuality, abortion, immigration, women's rights, gender equity—all kinds of hot button issues," he says. "And then on the far ends of the left spectrum, there's a radical fringe that has tried to portray family planning as equal to coercion."" So, should we continue to ignore the 9.6 billion elephants in the room?

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