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The Military

Radical Dual Tilting Blade Helicopter Design Targets Speeds of Over 270mph 103

Posted by Soulskill from the for-all-your-helicopter-racing-needs dept.
Zothecula writes: As one of the contenders in the race to win a $100 billion contract from the U.S. government for the next generation of attack helicopter in the Army's Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator (JMR-TD) program, AVX Aircraft Company has conceived a futuristic machine kitted out with coaxial rotors, ducted fans and a retractable undercarriage that could hit speeds of over 270 mph (435 km/h).

Comment My sense (Score 1) 536

My sense is that the MEAN Stack (Mongo, Express, AngularJS, Node) is sort of winning. There's some packaging of it over at mean.io.

Personally, I'm really getting interested in Meteor (www.meteor.com). Watch the videos, and realize I saw a smart non-coder go from zero to *ridiculously* interactive site design in three months.
Classic Games (Games)

Grandmother Buys Old Building In Japan And Finds 55 Classic Arcade Cabinets 133

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the treasure-trove dept.
An anonymous reader writes A grandmother agreed to purchase an old building in Chiba, which is just outside of Tokyo. When her family arrived to check out the contents of the building it was discovered that the first two floors used to be a game center in the 1980s. Whoever ran it left all the cabinets behind when it closed, and it is full of classic and now highly desirable games. In total there are 55 arcade cabinets, most of which are the upright Aero Cities cabinets, but it's the game boards that they contain that's the most exciting discovery. Boards include Donkey Kong, Street Fighter Alpha 2 (working despite the CPS2 lockout chip's tendency to kill old boards), and Metal Slug X.

Comment Long-Term vs. Short-Term (Score 1) 273

by mreed911 (#46578123) Attached to: IRS: Bitcoin Is Property, Not Currency
How does one determine which specific Bitcoin (or fraction) was spent from one's owned pool to determine whether any appreciation is long-term or short-term? Is it a record-keeping thing only, much like tossing pennies in a jar every day and recording it in a ledger, then taking random pennies back out to pay and noting that they're the oldest, whether or not they are (or can be proven to be)? I foresee IRS challenges around long-term vs. short-term in audits, especially for folks with lots of transactions.

Comment Re:Why single out Whole Foods? (Score 1) 794

by mreed911 (#46372049) Attached to: Whole Foods: America's Temple of Pseudoscience
And here's why we'll spend some of our money at whole foods: freshness. The produce and meet at the local supermarket (HEB) is safe, (often) locally sourced and tasty, but there's a marked degree of improvement for SOME THINGS at Whole Foods. For the parent post, it's the meat. For me, it's vegetables, particularly root vegetables. It's muck akin to grades of meat - the vegetables are a "grade higher" in freshness, presentation and taste. If I'm making sauce? HEB tomatoes and mozzarella are fine. If I'm making a Caprese salad? Whole Foods FTW. I also really enjoy their salad bar variety for lunch - it trumps almost every other available option near me, is reasonably priced and offers me a place to sit and eat nearby. Again, easy win. Bulk and/or standard items? HEB is the place... unless we're headed to Costco for the 55 gallon drum of something.
Android

Wozniak To Apple: Consider Building an Android Phone 249

Posted by samzenpus from the building-with-the-enemy dept.
snydeq writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has some advice for Apple CEO Tim Cook: consider offering a phone based on the rival Google Android platform. Speaking at the Apps World conference in San Francisco, Wozniak made the suggestion of an Apple Android device when responding to a question about the fate of the faltering BlackBerry platform, saying that BlackBerry should have built an Android phone, and that Apple could do so, too. 'BlackBerry's very sad for me,' Wozniak lamented. 'I think it's probably too late now' for an Android-based BlackBerry phone. Apple, Woz said, has had some lucky victories in the marketplace in the past decade, and BlackBerry's demise may provide a cautionary tale: 'There's nothing to keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market.'"

Comment It's because Python 3 is broken. (Score 2) 432

by Effugas (#45911963) Attached to: Why Do Projects Continue To Support Old Python Releases?
No really.

I took a pass at Python 3 a while back. The amount of hoops I needed to jump through, to deal with compilation errors around Unicode handling, was terrifying. It was simply a poor user experience.

Python 2.7 just works. Sure, it's a nightmare past a certain scale point. But until you get into the dregs of OO it really is executable pseudocode.

Python 3 is some other language that lost that property.

The big problem is that we don't ship languages with telemetry that reports when they fail to work. So things that are completely obvious to outsiders never make it to inner circles. Not that I can really see any way for Python 3 to mend its errors.

Submission + - Spy Cam Found in American Airlines Lavatory (nbcnews.com)

Submitted by mreed911
mreed911 writes: Someone staring at the ceiling while "doing their business" in a lavatory on an American Airlines 767 from New York to San Francisco noticed something that didn't belong — a spy cam. Apparently some flash-drive/cam combo, the object was simply taped to the ceiling. No reports as to whether anyone on the plane claimed ownership, but the plane was diverted to Kansas City, evacuated and searched. So far, NBC News is the only one reporting the story.

Comment Re:Gates was on the right track.. (Score 1) 304

That $2bn/yr is coming from lots of different sources, or is at least being funded by many different players in the Android market in some form or fashion. Besides, Samsung is make 95% of the profits on Android, not Google: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-16/google-makes-android-but-samsung-makes-all-the-money

Submission + - Protesters Dodge the Sudanese Internet Shutdown with a Phone-Powered Crowdmap (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Called the Abena crowd map, the map is the product of Mohammed Hashim Saleh and Abeer Khairy, engineers both, and Ahmed Hassan, the co-founder of Khartoum Geeks. In the short amount of time the internet was on yesterday, they deployed the map, which follows events on the ground in Sudan with direct reports.

SMS messages are connected automatically with the Ushahidi-based crowdmapping platform, Saleh told me. Activists, some in-country (who work when possible) and the rest outside, login and check the messages. They are then doubled checked with news sources and social media before being finally confirmed and mapped. The crew has also been manually updating the platform.

Submission + - Ford's Mulally emerging as frontrunner for Microsoft CEO job (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: Speculation is growing that Ford CEO Alan Mulally is not just in the running for the CEO position at Microsoft, but has become the frontrunner among all candidates, both internal and external. One reason, which I did note in my recent blog post on him, is that Mulally was a top executive at Boeing for years and has connections to the Seattle area. Earlier this month, Reuters reported earlier this month that the Ford board had given Mulally the option to step down earlier from his position than is specified in his contract (there was speculation that he might take a position in the Obama administration). Nokia CEO and former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop has remained a top candidate, but interest has shifted toward Mulally because of his experience turning around a faltering company. No one can say Elop turned around Nokia.

Submission + - Indian Supreme Court gives voters right to reject all candidates (indiatimes.com)

Submitted by btb1
btb1 writes: In a landmark judgement on Friday, the (Indian) Supreme Court for the first time allowed voters to cast negative vote by pressing a button saying none of the candidates is worthy of his vote. (Highlights)

The SC asked the Election Commission to provide None Of The Above (NOTA) button on EVMs and ballot papers.

The apex court said the right to vote and the right to say NOTA are both part of basic right of voters.

"When a large number of voters will press NOTA button, it will force political parties to choose better candidates. Negative voting would lead to systemic change in polls," the apex bench observed.

Submission + - NSA Trying to Shift Surveillance Narrative

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: When things go badly in Washington, D.C., when a scandal breaks or damaging leaks begin to surface, there is an established and well-worn playbook that politicians and executives can turn to for solace. There’s a page for every conceivable situation, and it’s that playbook that the National Security Agency and its director, Gen. Keith Alexander, are relying on now as they struggle to win back a bit of the public and political support they’ve lost and keep their tenuous grasp on the collection tools they’ve been employing for more than a decade.

“What we were blamed for as an intelligence community is not connecting the dots. So we came up with a couple of programs. FISA is the key to connecting the dots,” Alexander said.

By shifting the focus away from the NSA’s potential abuses of the surveillance programs the question of whether the bulk collection of phone and Internet data is even necessary, Alexander is employing the time-honored strategy of answering the question he wanted to be asked rather than the one that was posed. He is changing the narrative.

No one disputes that the NSA, CIA, FBI and other agencies are working hard to defend the country and disrupt terrorism. That’s their job, and they’re good at it. Those agencies need tools to do the job, but the thing about tools is that each one is designed for a specific purpose. Start using one for a different job, and it’s not as effective, or worse, someone gets hurt. The old saying is that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. That bit of wisdom isn’t limited to hand tools.

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