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Comment Can I play Duck Hunt on it? (Score 1) 95

by CyberVenom (#64132019) Attached to: LG Develops OLED Monitor That Can Hit 480Hz Refresh Rate

The problem with most modern displays and Duck Hunt is that the display buffers frame data before displaying it, so the NES Zapper mechanism of showing a hitbox-frame and simultaneously checking the Zapper's light-sensor to register a hit does not work correctly since the displayed frame on the LCD is delayed. With a theoretical response time of 0.03ms, I wonder if it will now be possible to attach a high-speed RF-demodulator to this monitor and play Duck Hunt on an original NES...

Of course, it may be necessary to build such a high-speed demodulator if it doesn't exist yet. In fact, it may actually be possible to build a demodulator which can animate the beam-scan of a classic CRT on this display in near-realtime. 480Hz / 60Hz = 8, so each classic CRT full vertical scan could be animated progressively across 8 frames. It wouldn't be a high-enough temporal resolution to make things like a light-pen work correctly, but it might be enough to revive a bit of the dynamic feel of movement in old CRT video games, and to provide visibility of the topmost portion of the frame before the rest of the frame has been output - perhaps giving an edge in games like NES Tetris where a slightly faster render of the top of the frame provides a tiny bit more time to make critical decisions.

Comment Try iTerm2 (Score 1) 286

by CyberVenom (#63142314) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Where Are the Modern Terminal Emulators?

https://iterm2.com/features.ht...

What you are asking for would require some integration between the terminal emulator (the thing that shows text on your screen) and the shell (the thing that knows which directory you are in). As some other commenters have pointed out, a fancy terminal emulator wouldn't do as much good if the shell it is connected to doesn't feed it the necessary additional data to accomplish those tasks. But, all is not lost! Shells are immensely customizable, so it isn't to terribly hard to add some integration shims to your shell config in order to share more data with the terminal. ITerm2 takes this approach, and does allow command-click on file and directory names as a shortcut to open the file or directory in an external app, and it also supports a command called "imgcat" which will display an image file inline in the terminal. Then there's the integration with tmux, etc...

So in short, what you are asking for already exists, it's just not used very often because people tend to use a full GUI application or a fully-text-based application, not so much the in-between hybrids...

Since I primarily use a Mac, I can vouch for iTerm2, but I've heard of similar functionality for Linux via kitty: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitt...
Encryption

What Would Happen If All Encryption Could Be Broken? (wikipedia.org) 316

Posted by EditorDavid from the no-more-secrets dept.
"What would happen, or what should happen, if tomorrow a trivial method was discovered for Prime Factorization?" asks Slashdot reader medv4380: By trivial I mean an algorithm that runs in relatively constant time that could factor a number like 2737631357921793461914298938174501291 relatively instantly on most modern hardware today. And that even increasing the bit length wouldn't slow it down much. How much chaos would result if such a method were revealed tomorrow with little warning?

Keeping it a secret only means that others may have long ago exploited the method at the expense of others. Should proof be presented without revealing the method, to reduce the impact, and who should be told first if at all?
Slashdot reader Shikaku sees a real possibility of this actually happening when quantum computers are developed, adding that quantum-resistant encryption "is an ongoing experiment."

But if development lags -- what would happen if all encryption could be broken?
Emulation (Games)

Ask Slashdot: What Would Happen If All Software Ran On All Platforms? 383

Posted by EditorDavid from the universal-translators dept.
Slashdot reader dryriver writes: We live in a computing world where the OS you use -- Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, others -- often determines what software can and cannot be run on a given electronic device. (Let us pretend for a moment that emulators and other options don't exist). What if -- magically -- such a thing as as Universally Compatible Software Application were possible. Software, in other words, that is magically capable of running on any electronic device equipped with enough CPU, GPU and memory capacity to run the software in a usable way.

Example: 3D CAD software that runs on Windows 14, Playstation 7, an Android Smartphone, Nintendo's latest handheld gaming device and an Ubuntu PC in exactly the same way with no compatibility problems whatsoever occurring. What would and would not change in such a computing world?
He also asks an even more important question: will this ever be possible or feasible from a technical standpoint? So leave your best answers in the comments. Will it ever be possible to run all software on all platforms -- and what would happen if we could?
Power

Nikola Motor Receives Over 7,000 Preorders Worth Over $2.3 Billion For Its Electric Truck (electrek.co) 144

Posted by BeauHD from the change-the-world dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Last month, Nikola Motor unveiled the design of its first product -- an electric truck with a natural gas range extender called 'Nikola One.' The 'Nikola One' comes equipped with a massive 320 kWh battery pack that the company hopes can allow it to travel up to 1,200 miles with the natural gas range extender. Today, the company announced it has received over 7,000 pre-orders with deposits for the electric truck since its unveiling. CEO Trevor Milton says the pre-orders are worth over $2.3 billion. Milton said in a press release this morning: "Our technology is 10-15 years ahead of any other OEM in fuel efficiencies, MPG and emissions. We are the only OEM to have a near zero emission truck and still outperform diesel trucks running at 80,000 pounds. To have over 7,000 reservations totaling more than 2.3 billion dollars, with five months remaining until our unveiling ceremony, is unprecedented." Some other features of the truck include: 6x6 100% electric drive, zero idle, many times cleaner than diesel engines, half the fuel cost per mile compared to diesel, 3,700 FT. LBS Torque, 2,000 horsepower, one million miles fuel free, regenerative braking, and never plug-in feature as the turbine charges the batteries automatically while driving. This may sound familiar as the Tesla Model 3 received over 115,000 preorders worth $115 million in just 24 hours after its unveiling.
Encryption

Stealing Keys From a Laptop In Another Room — and Offline 58

Posted by timothy from the it's-coming-from-inside-the-faraday-cage dept.
Motherboard carries a report that with equipment valued at about $3,000, a group of Israeli researchers have been able to extract cryptographic keys from a laptop that is not only separated by a physical wall, but protected by an air gap. This, they say, "is the first time such an approach has been used specifically against elliptic curve cryptography running on a PC." From the article: The method is a so-called side-channel attack: an attack that doesn't tackle an encryption implementation head on, such as through brute force or by exploiting a weakness in the underlying algorithm, but through some other means. In this case, the attack relies on the electromagnetic outputs of the laptop that are emitted during the decryption process, which can then be used to work out the target's key. Specifically, the researchers obtained the private key from a laptop running GnuPG, a popular implementation of OpenPGP. (The developers of GnuPG have since released countermeasures to the method. Tromer said that the changes make GnuPG âoemore resistant to side-channel attack since the sequence of high-level arithmetic operations does not depend on the secret key.â)
Technology

Steel Treatment Paves the Way For Radically Lighter, Stronger, Cheaper Cars (gizmag.com) 236

Posted by timothy from the nu-perfect-improved dept.
Zothecula writes: Radically cheaper, quicker and less energy-intensive to produce than regular steel, Flash Bainite is stronger than titanium by weight, and ductile enough to be pressed into shape while cold without thinning or cracking. It's now being tested by three of the world's five largest car manufacturers, who are finding they can produce thinner structural car components that are between 30-50 percent lighter and cheaper than the steel they've been using, while maintaining the same performance is crash tests. Grain of salt: the positive claims here are mostly coming from the company responsible for the process.
Google

Lightning Wipes Storage Disks At Google Data Center 141

Posted by samzenpus from the come-on-thunder dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Lightning struck a Google data center in Belgium four times in rapid succession last week, permanently erasing a small amount of users' data from the cloud. The affected disks were part of Google Computer Engine (GCE), a utility that lets people run virtual computers in the cloud on Google's servers. Despite the uncontrollable nature of the incident, Google has accepted full responsibility for the blackout and promises to upgrade its data center storage hardware, increasing its resilience against power outages.
IT

Ask Slashdot: Dealing With Service Providers When You're an IT Pro? 479

Posted by timothy from the have-your-people-call-my-people dept.
New submitter username440 writes: So, a lot of us will have been here: You have a problem with your ISP, cable TV, cellphone whatever technology and you need to call the provider. Ugh. Foreign call centers, inane fault-finding flowcharts (yes, I have turned it off and on again) and all the other cruft that you have to wade through to get to someone with the knowledge to determine that YOU in fact also have a degree of knowledge and have a real problem.

Recently I had a problem with my ISP, where the ISP-provided "modem" — it's a router — would lock up at least 3 times per day. I had router logs, many hundreds of Google results for that model and release of hardware showing this as a common problem, and simply wanted the ISP to provide a new router (it's a managed device). I replaced the router with a spare Airport Extreme and the problems disappeared, to be replaced with a warning from the ISP that they could't access my managed device" and the connection is provided contingent to using THIER router. However my point was to prove that their router is at fault.

How do you fare when trying to get through to a service provider that they actually DO know something in the field? How do you cut through the frontline support bull*hit and talk to someone who knows what they are doing? Should there be a codeword for this scenario?
Mars

Will Living On Mars Drive Us Crazy? 150

Posted by samzenpus from the can't-you-hear-them?-didn't-you-see-the-crowd? dept.
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "When astronauts first began flying in space, NASA worried about 'space madness,' a mental malady they thought might arise from humans experiencing microgravity and claustrophobic isolation inside of a cramped spacecraft high above the Earth. Now Megan Garber writes in The Atlantic that NASA is hoping to find out what life on Mars does to the human emotional state by putting three men and three women in a 1,000-square-foot habitat shaped like a dome for four months. The volunteers in the second HI-SEAS mission — a purposely tiny group selected out of a group of 700 applicants — include, among others, a neuropsychologist, an aerospace engineer, and an Air Force veteran who is studying human factors in aviation. 'We're going to stress them,' says Kim Binsted, the project's principal investigator. 'That's the nature of the study.' That test involves isolating the crew in the same way they'd be isolated on Mars. The only communication they'll be allowed with the outside world—that is to say, with their family and friends—will be conducted through email. (And that will be given an artificial delay of 20 minutes to simulate the lag involved in Mars-to-Earth communications.)

If that doesn't seem too stressful, here's another source of stress: Each mission member will get only eight minutes of shower time ... per week. The stress will be compounded by the fact that the only time the crew will be able to leave their habitat-yurt is when they're wearing puffy, insulated uniforms that simulate space suits. In the Hawaiian heat. Throughout the mission, researchers will be testing the subjects' moods and the changes they exhibit in their relationships with each other. They'll also be examining the crew members' cognitive skills, seeing whether—and how—they change as the experiment wears on. Binsted says the mission has gotten the attention of the TV world but don't expect to see much inside-the-dome footage. 'You wouldn't believe the number of producers who called us,' says Binsted. 'Fortunately, we're not ethically allowed to subject our crew to that kind of thing.'"
United States

US "the Enemy" Says Dotcom Judge 469

Posted by samzenpus from the know-your-enemy dept.
First time accepted submitter Flere Imsaho writes "During the NetHui Internet conference last week, the NZ judge to hear the Dotcom extradition case was speaking on the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement and how the U.S. entertainment industry is pushing to make region code hacking illegal, when he said 'Under TPP and the American Digital Millennium copyright provisions you will not be able to do that, that will be prohibited ... if you do you will be a criminal — that's what will happen. Even before the 2008 amendments it wasn't criminalized. There are all sorts of ways this whole thing is being ramped up and if I could use Russell [Brown's] tweet from earlier on: we have met the enemy and he is [the] U.S.'"

Comment Not a hologram, but not shabby (Score 5, Informative) 98

by CyberVenom (#40634589) Attached to: MIT Develops Holographic, Glasses-Free 3D TV

The article from the first link is a little better explanation than the second link.

This is not quite a hologram, but it is a true multi-viewer solution without the need for headtracking or other dynamic tricks. It is a precomputed video stream displayed on precisely spaced, and slightly higher-than-your-living-room-tv-refresh-rate, but otherwise normal LCD panels.

Basically, the MIT guys have come up with algorithms to compute a set of three overlay transparencies, which selectively occlude or reveal certain pixels when viewed from certain angles due to parallax, such that one of many possible perspective images of a scene is produced depending on the angle from which this stack of overlays is viewed.

The part they seem most proud of is that because these different perspective views are all of the same scene, many of the pixels are the same color from one perspective to another, so they only need to concentrate their parallax trick on making a select few pixels vary by angle, thus reducing the complexity of the problem to the point where it can actually be realized with consumer resolution LCD panels and attainable data rates.

Comment Re:Slicehost? (Score 1) 375

by CyberVenom (#38479024) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Inexpensive VPS Provider?

That's partially true. I am still hosted on RackSpace's "Slicehost" farm and under the "Slicehost" billing plan for the moment, but they will be forcibly converting my VM to their RackSpace farm in January. Of course, since the original question was in regard to creating a new VPS, you're right, Slicehost doesn't exist anymore for new customers.
They sent out a survey a month or so ago asking for thoughts on the RackSpace conversion, and in my response I raised the concern that the newer RackSpace plans would be more expensive (even though they tried to downplay that in the press releases), but I get the feeling the survey was motivated more as a PR stunt than out of any sort of genuine concern for the customers' opinions.

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