Comment Re:Big Deal (Score 1) 128
I love this joke!
Some people don't know that the light gun needs a CRT (and the CRT blanking) for the light gun (Zapper) to work.
Bravo! I actually laughed!
Submission + - SPAM: Apple Planning Switch To Randomized Serial Numbers Starting This Year
An anonymous reader writes: Apple will soon be making a significant change to its serial number format for future products that will see some key information stripped out. In an internal AppleCare email this week, obtained by MacRumors, Apple said the new serial number format will consist of a randomized alphanumeric string of 8-14 characters that will no longer include manufacturing information or a configuration code. Apple said the serial number format transition is scheduled for "early 2021," and confirmed that IMEI numbers will not be affected by this change.
Any currently shipping Apple products will continue to use the current serial number format, while future products will use the new format, according to Apple. The new serial numbers will initially be 10 characters, the company indicated. Apple's current serial number format has long allowed both customers and service providers to determine the date and location that a product was manufactured, with the first three characters representing the manufacturing location and the following two indicating the year and week of manufacture. The last four characters currently serve as a "configuration code," revealing a device's model, color, and storage capacity. Apple initially planned to transition to the new serial number format in late 2020, but delayed.
Link to Original Source
Any currently shipping Apple products will continue to use the current serial number format, while future products will use the new format, according to Apple. The new serial numbers will initially be 10 characters, the company indicated. Apple's current serial number format has long allowed both customers and service providers to determine the date and location that a product was manufactured, with the first three characters representing the manufacturing location and the following two indicating the year and week of manufacture. The last four characters currently serve as a "configuration code," revealing a device's model, color, and storage capacity. Apple initially planned to transition to the new serial number format in late 2020, but delayed.
Link to Original Source
Comment Call me when there is 5.1 (or better) surround mix (Score 1) 71
At this point higher bitrates don't interest me as much as truly immersive sound. Dolby digital or DTS would be a nice addition I might consider paying more for. Pushing more ones and zeros for simple stereo sound and expecting people to pay more doesn't make sense to me when bandwidth is very cheap. If you can get your hands on some 5.1 mixes of Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd or Queen for example, the experience is mind blowing. It seems like these 5.1 mixes had great promise and died out when SACD format fizzled. Bring it back, Spotify!
Comment Re:Here's a simple solution (Score 1) 39
iOS 14.5 should remind you every day to go get vaccinated and when you upload your vaccination record card to your wallet, it stops reminding you and tells you that you can now stop wearing a mask.
Except getting vaccinated just helps your body avoid getting sick if you get infected, not from getting infected at all. Vaccinated people can still be carriers and infect other people, especially if they haven't had their second dose yet, or waited for the second dose to become fully activated (which could take a number of weeks).
Comment Good. (Score 1, Troll) 403
Good.
Submission + - New Evidence Sexuality Is Innate: Study Finds Gay Men Respond to Male Pheromones (vice.com)
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Here’s some more evidence that sexuality is an innate characteristic: Gay men are more likely to respond to male sex pheromones than they are to female ones. Chinese researchers studied the pheromones naturally given off by men and women in things such as semen, sweat, and urine. Scientists have been aware of the existence of two distinct pheromones—androstadienone (found in male semen and sweat) and estratetraenol (present in female urine)—for some time, but it’s been unclear whether they’ve had much of an effect on the opposite gender. It turns out that they do, and how they do depends on a person’s sexuality. To test their hypothesis, Wen Zhou of the Chinese Academy of Sciences set up an experiment in which participants looked at a video in which human figures rendered in a connect-the-dots style (shown above) were shown walking. Participants were then asked to guess whether the figures were masculine or feminine. When exposed to androstadienone, heterosexual women were more likely to suggest that the wire figure was a man—but the pheromone had no effect on heterosexual men.
Comment Not on iPhone 4? (Score 2) 197
I guess now I have a reason to buy a newer iPhone if this only works on the 4S and not the 4 I have. Thanks, Google!
Comment Waiting for ad.doubleclick.net ...zzz... (Score 1) 275
Great! But will it do anything to speed up pages that refuse to display until the advertisements do? Even Slashdot takes longer to display because of some third-party ad server.
Submission + - Global Warming is Already Melting the Next Ice Age (vice.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Earth has natural cycles of glaciation that we can pin down by looking at the planet's orbital patterns around the sun. The ice goes in, the ice goes out, as the Earth heats and cools naturally. When it comes in, we have an ice age. We've been in a warm period for about 11,000 years now and we should've been due for an ice age in about 1,500 years. We're not because we've trapped too much heat already in our atmosphere for things to cool properly. According to a just-out paper in Nature Geoscience, that next ice age is going to be delayed by tens of thousands of years. This is not actually good news.
Submission + - Apple becoming serious player in enterprise (itworld.com)
bdking writes: Forrester Research forecasts that Apple's iPad and Mac could account for nearly 30% of enterprise personal computing expenditures by 2013. That's compared to only 8% in 2010. Credit the "Bring Your Own Devices" workplace revolution started by the iPhone and extended by the iPad.
Comment First Post (Score -1) 379
First OWWWW MY EYES!
Comment Yeah, um, they MEANT to do that... (Score 1) 99
Sounds like a lame excuse for incompetence to me.
Submission + - Why Occupy Wall Street Chose Tumblr (discovery.com)
RedEaredSlider writes: Earlier this year, Facebook and Twitter played a crucial role in mobilizing protestors in Iran, Cairo and Tunisia. Now Tumblr has been uniquely appropriated for a U.S.-based protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street, which has been coalescing in New York, Boston and Chicago to challenge the influence of corporate money on government and the growth of social and economic inequality.
A hybrid of ordinary blogging platforms, such as Typepad or Wordpress, and of the microblogging site Twitter, Tumblr gives users the ability to post photos, videos and messages and share with people they don’t know.
The site has been a force behind the Occupy Wall Street protests, growing the number of demonstrations from just dozens of people in late September to thousands on Wednesday, as several local unions joined in on a march down Broadway.
A hybrid of ordinary blogging platforms, such as Typepad or Wordpress, and of the microblogging site Twitter, Tumblr gives users the ability to post photos, videos and messages and share with people they don’t know.
The site has been a force behind the Occupy Wall Street protests, growing the number of demonstrations from just dozens of people in late September to thousands on Wednesday, as several local unions joined in on a march down Broadway.
Submission + - Diagnosing Disease with iPhone Microscope (smartertechnology.com)
An anonymous reader writes: For under-$50, you can diagnose disease with your iPhone with this add-on project. Instead of paying for a doctors' office visit, just snap-on a microscope accessory, and send them a photo of your blood sample!
Submission + - Who's Bankrolling the Climate-Change Deniers? 1
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Bryan Walsh writes in Time Magazine that climate denialism exists in part because there has been a long-term, well-financed effort on the part of conservative groups and corporations to distort global-warming science. "The blows have been struck by a well-funded, highly complex and relatively coordinated denial machine," say sociologists Riley Dunlap and Aaron McCright. Fossil-fuel companies like Exxon and Peabody Energy — which obviously have a business interest in slowing any attempt to reduce carbon emissions — have combined with traditionally conservative corporate groups like the US Chamber of Commerce and conservative foundations like the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity, to raise doubts about the basic validity of what is, essentially, a settled scientific truth. The naysayers seem to be following the playbook written by the tobacco industry in its long, ongoing war against medical findings about the dangers of smoking. For both Big Oil and Big Smoke, that playbook is lethally simple: don't straight-up refute the science, just raise skepticism and insist that the findings are "unsettled" and that "more research" is necessary."
