Michael Duggan - Slashdot User

Caps of Glass Bottles Contaminate Beverages With Microplastics 30

Posted by msmash on Monday June 23, 2025 @03:21PM from the closer-look dept.

Microplastics are present in all beverages, but those packaged in glass bottles contain more microplastic particles than those in plastic bottles, cartons or cans. This was the surprising finding of a study conducted by the Boulogne-sur-Mer unit of the ANSES Laboratory for Food Safety. The scientists hypothesised that these plastic particles could come from the paint used on bottle caps. Water and wine are less affected than other beverages. These findings have highlighted a source of microplastics in drinks that manufacturers can easily take measures to address.

10 Years After It Was Pulled Offline, Viral Mobile Game Flappy Bird Is Coming Back (ign.com) 27

Posted by msmash on Thursday September 12, 2024 @11:29AM from the how-about-that dept.

Mobile video game phenomenon Flappy Bird is set to return 10 years after its creator pulled it offline. From a report: In 2014, Vietnam-based developer Dong Nguyen shocked the gaming world when he pulled viral hit Flappy Bird from the App Store and the Google Play Store at a time when it was making tens of thousands of dollars a day. He went on to say: "I can call Flappy Bird a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it."

Now, Flappy Bird is set to return, with an expanded version aiming for launch by the end of October across multiple platforms including web browsers, and an iOS and Android version planned for release in 2025. But this new Flappy Bird isn't from Nguyen, it's from 'The Flappy Bird Foundation,' which is described as "a new team of passionate fans committed to sharing the game with the world."
UPDATE (9/15/2024): The original creator of Flappy Bird returned to social media after a seven-year silence just to disavow the resurrected game -- and its possible ties to cryptocurrency. PC Gamer also digs into exactly how the Flappy Bird trademark was acquired.

Comment Text of the Bill (Score 3, Informative) 161

by Michael Duggan on Wednesday May 20, 2020 @05:37PM (#60084038) Attached to: Senate Passes Bill That Could Delist Chinese Companies From U.S. Stock Exchanges

Here's the text of the bill in question, S. 945:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/...

Comment Re:Who Passed the Law allowing this? (Score 5, Informative) 161

by Michael Duggan on Wednesday May 20, 2020 @04:26PM (#60083728) Attached to: Senate Passes Bill That Could Delist Chinese Companies From U.S. Stock Exchanges

The text of the bill is straightforward enough, and it does not reference any country by name. Just "is located in a foreign jurisdiction." Text of the bill is very short and can be found here:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/...

Comment I'll miss XMarks's "Open remote tabs" feature (Score 1) 51

by Michael Duggan on Saturday April 28, 2018 @01:43PM (#56519847) Attached to: Bookmark Syncing Service Xmarks Closes For Good On May 1

The killer feature for me from XMarks was the ability to browse the list of open tabs on my various browsers, especially from my phone. That made it easy for me to be reading something, then later continue reading it from my phone.

If anyone knows of another service that does this, please let me know. I use Chrome at home and am forced to use Firefox at work, so I do need a cross-platform solution.

Comment Re:Anyone else picture (Score 1) 40

by Michael Duggan on Wednesday April 12, 2017 @06:33PM (#54225265) Attached to: Japan Automakers Look To Robots To Keep Elderly On the Move

Actually, I envisioned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roujin_Z.

Comment Re:Is that you Lewis Caroll? (Score 1) 44

by Michael Duggan on Thursday March 05, 2015 @05:15PM (#49191593) Attached to: Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things

Also The Phantom Tollbooth. That's the book I immediately thought about when reading the description. I wore that book out as a kid.

Comment Re:BSD is more threatening than proprietary (Score 1) 551

by Michael Duggan on Sunday February 08, 2015 @06:47PM (#49012951) Attached to: RMS Objects To Support For LLVM's Debugger In GNU Emacs's Gud.el

Some of us prefer others to voluntarily give back rather than be forced to.

This statement has always confused me. Nothing in the GPL requires anyone to "give back" anything. What it requires is that if you give a GPL-ed program to somebody, you must give them (and only them) the source code to that program. Modifications to the source code must be distributed with the original code under the same license. So if you modify a GPL program and give it to a somebody, they get that code and all the rights to it that are protected by the GPL. You need not give it to the entity that originally wrote the GPL-ed code.

Comment Re:Has anyone embedded Guile? (Score 3, Informative) 46

by Michael Duggan on Monday April 02, 2012 @05:43PM (#39553833) Attached to: Guile Scheme Emacs-Lisp Compatibility Matures

Lilypond uses Guile extensively, and as time goes on, more and more of its code has been moving from C++ to Guile. For those not in the know, Lilypond is a typesetting program for music.

Australian Gov't May Employ a Homegrown Quantum Key System 141

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 05, 2009 @09:04PM from the lasers-spin-counterclockwise-there dept.

mask.of.sanity writes "The Australian government is trialling a new Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) system built by Aussie scientists. QKD is considered the world's toughest security because the slightest attempt to intercept the one time keys, coded into lasers at the quantum level, will disrupt the beam. The technology differs from current cryptography tech primarily because it's cheap. Well, less than the $US100k price tag of rival systems. It uses off-the-shelf networking gear instead of proprietary technology, and is built on open standards, so it's easier to install. The random key is encoded at the quantum level in the sidebeam in the phase and amplitude, or brightness and colour, of a highly tuned laser beam. The creators, who built the system in part for their Ph.Ds, said it can be used to transport the most sensitive data like critical infrastructure and secret commercial IP. The days of hand-delivered security keys are numbered."

Comment Re:Well (Score 1) 500

by Michael Duggan on Monday June 04, 2007 @10:30PM (#19390989) Attached to: GNU Coughs Up Emacs 22 After Six Year Wait

I will only use emacs when it supports eperanto.

It's funny you should mention that. Not only does emacs have three separate Esperanto input methods (esperanto-postfix, esperanto-alt-postfix, esperanto-prefix), it also has an Esperanto tutorial built in. If you don't believe me, try typing `M-x set-language-environment RET Esperanto RET' in Emacs 22, and then running the tutorial `C-h t'.

Slashdot Top Deals