Comment One in two thousand. (Score 1) 170
1 out of every 2,000 Americans alive at the start of the pandemic has now died from COVID19
Comment Re:Any tech specs? (Score 1) 186
You can look at their code if you like:
https://github.com/build-aweig...
Tell me what you think, and look closely at the commands for the servo to move the filter...
Comment Re:Which Linux users really care and why? (Score 1) 123
My employer mandates Windows OS for corporate laptops. Not my data, not my call.
Comment Re:Which Linux users really care and why? (Score 1) 123
I use WSL quite a bit on my work laptop. Why?
- It complies with our security policy
- I can use things like linux-based microcontroller tool chains exactly as I would on my Linux boxes at home
- I don't have problems with USB passthrough with serial adapters
- I can awk, grep, cut and sed files in my windows file system without any file sharing hassles
- I can use gcc to build little utilities as needed
- ssh and scp are easier to use from WSL
- it is always there - one click away on the task bar
Sure, it has a few tiny foibles, but is just simpler than using a VM.
Comment Some history here.... (Score 1) 347
Just had to see what this place looked like - "a pharmacy in an a shack" wouldn't be too far from the mark.
Also saw this on the search query:
n the recent case of Tug Valley Pharmacy et al v All Plaintiffs (2015 W.Va. LEXIS 673 [May 13, 2015]), the West Virginia Supreme Court weighed in on public policy concerning the diversion of controlled substances. The ruling allowed substance abusers to sue the prescribers and pharmacists who supplied the medications, even though the patients acknowledged engaging in an array of illegal activities including criminally acquiring narcotics by misleading physicians and pharmacists, doctor shopping, and ingesting the medications in amounts greater than prescribed.
Comment MIT's Scratch is great. (Score 2) 353
I can't recommend scratch highly enough. https://scratch.mit.edu/ is great. You can do some pretty neat things with it. Here are some projects you can work through http://projects.codeclubworld....
I tried to teach some Javascript game programming to a teen, but the lack of geometry skills (e.g. sin(), cos()) and physics ( e.g. d=at^2/2) made it tough going to fire cannonballs around. There is most likely a library that could hide it all, but why would you?
Comment Re:Stopping cheating on programming tests (Score 1) 250
BEST COMMENT EVER
That solves that problem.
Submission + - Own an Open Source RISC-V micro-controller (crowdsupply.com)
hamster_nz writes: By now you have come across Arduino, the popular Open Source micro-controller platform. Did you ever think it would be great if hardware was open to the transistor level, not just the chip level? If so Crowd Supply is running the project for you!
With a completely open ISA and no license fees for the CPU design, the RISC-V architecture is well positioned to take the crown as the 'go to' design for anybody needing a 32-bit in their silicon, and Open-V are crowd-sourcing their funding for an initial manufacturing run of 70,000 chips, offering options from a single chip to a seat in the design review process.
This project is shaping up to be milestone for the coming Open Source Silicon revolution, and they are literally offering a seat at the table. Even if you don't end up backing the project, it makes for very interesting reading.
With a completely open ISA and no license fees for the CPU design, the RISC-V architecture is well positioned to take the crown as the 'go to' design for anybody needing a 32-bit in their silicon, and Open-V are crowd-sourcing their funding for an initial manufacturing run of 70,000 chips, offering options from a single chip to a seat in the design review process.
This project is shaping up to be milestone for the coming Open Source Silicon revolution, and they are literally offering a seat at the table. Even if you don't end up backing the project, it makes for very interesting reading.
Submission + - Engineers Plan the Most Expensive Object Ever Built on Earth
HughPickens.com writes: Ed Davey has an interesting story at BBC about the proposed nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset , UK which at $35 billion will be the most expensive object ever put together on Earth. For that sum you could build a small forest of Burj Khalifas — the world's tallest building, in Dubai, which each cost $1.5bn, you could build almost six Large Hadron Colliders, built under the border between France and Switzerland to unlock the secrets of the universe, and at a cost a mere $5.8bn, or you could build five Oakland Bay Bridges in San Francisco, designed to withstand the strongest earthquake seismologists would expect within the next 1,500 years at a cost of $6.5bn. "Nuclear power plants are the most complicated piece of equipment we make," says Steve Thomas. "Cost of nuclear power plants has tended to go up throughout history as accidents happen and we design measures to deal with the risk."
But what about historical buildings like the the pyramids. Although working out the cost of something built more than 4,500 years ago presents numerous challenges, in 2012 the Turner Construction Company estimated it could build the Great Pyramid of Giza for $5.0bn. That includes about $730m for stone and $58m for 12 cranes. Labor is a minor cost as it is projected that a mere 600 staff would be necessary. In contrast, it took 20,000 people to build the original pyramid with a total of 77.6 million days' labor. Using the current Egyptian minimum wage of $5.73 a day, that gives a labor cost of $445m. But whatever the most expensive object on Earth is, up in the sky is something that eclipses all of these things. The International Space Station. Price tag: $110bn.
But what about historical buildings like the the pyramids. Although working out the cost of something built more than 4,500 years ago presents numerous challenges, in 2012 the Turner Construction Company estimated it could build the Great Pyramid of Giza for $5.0bn. That includes about $730m for stone and $58m for 12 cranes. Labor is a minor cost as it is projected that a mere 600 staff would be necessary. In contrast, it took 20,000 people to build the original pyramid with a total of 77.6 million days' labor. Using the current Egyptian minimum wage of $5.73 a day, that gives a labor cost of $445m. But whatever the most expensive object on Earth is, up in the sky is something that eclipses all of these things. The International Space Station. Price tag: $110bn.
Submission + - Austrian photographer sues hotel chain for â2m for copyright breach (derstandard.at) 2
Unhappy Windows User writes: An Austrian photographer was contracted by the luxury Sofitel in Vienna to photograph the bar with an amazing view over the skyline. He was paid for his time (â4200) and arranged a three year internal usage contract for the photos. After the contract expired, he still found his photos being used — on external sites too. He is now suing for â2million, based on each individual usage.
My question is: Is this the real market value of his work? There is nothing particularly creative or spectacular about his contribution — any competent photographer could have done the same. I know art galleries often charge high amounts for reprints of their work by controlling access to who gets to photograph it under which conditions. It seems like the largest economic contribution to the work was from Sofitel, who allowed access to the property and closed it to customers.
I don't have any issue in a photographer wanting to be paid fairly for his work, and asking for perhaps double or treble the original price for the breach of contract to match what an unlimited license would have costed. After all, with this money they could have employed a professional for a month and automatically obtained full rights to the work.
Any other competent photographer could have done the job just as well (and perhaps have done a better job on correcting the pincushion distortion!), but it seems like this guy is trying to take advantage of an oversight by a large corporation, never to have to work again.
What do you think?
My question is: Is this the real market value of his work? There is nothing particularly creative or spectacular about his contribution — any competent photographer could have done the same. I know art galleries often charge high amounts for reprints of their work by controlling access to who gets to photograph it under which conditions. It seems like the largest economic contribution to the work was from Sofitel, who allowed access to the property and closed it to customers.
I don't have any issue in a photographer wanting to be paid fairly for his work, and asking for perhaps double or treble the original price for the breach of contract to match what an unlimited license would have costed. After all, with this money they could have employed a professional for a month and automatically obtained full rights to the work.
Any other competent photographer could have done the job just as well (and perhaps have done a better job on correcting the pincushion distortion!), but it seems like this guy is trying to take advantage of an oversight by a large corporation, never to have to work again.
What do you think?
Submission + - Building a global network of open source SDR receivers (jks.com)
hamster_nz writes: A fellow Kiwi is attempting to crowdfund a world-wide network of Open Source Software Defined Radio receivers. Once in place this will allow anybody anywhere in the world to scan the 0 to 30MHz RF spectrum from the comfort of their HTML-5 web browser. Built on top of the Beaglebone, the "KiwiSDR" RF board also includes a GPS receiver front-end, which will allow timing between receivers to be correlated, giving a lot of options for projects, like: long baseline interferometry and lightning detection. Prototypes are already deployed, and I've been RXing in Sweden, Australia and New Zealand.
The KiwiSDR design is detailed on http://www.jks.com/KiwiSDR/, as is a link to the project's Kickstarter page.
The KiwiSDR design is detailed on http://www.jks.com/KiwiSDR/, as is a link to the project's Kickstarter page.
Comment Re:Sold Out Already (Score 1) 203
Still plenty here: https://shop.pimoroni.com/prod...
I had no problems ordering my Zero from them on release day too.
Comment Re:adults across the U.S. are strapping on helmets (Score 1) 696
Not so fast... There is research that indicates that people putting helmets on changes driver behaviour.
http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/art...
Cyclists who wear protective helmets are more likely to be struck by passing vehicles, new research suggests.
Drivers pass closer when overtaking cyclists wearing helmets than when overtaking bare-headed cyclists, increasing the risk of a collision, the research has found.
Dr Ian Walker, a traffic psychologist from the University of Bath, used a bicycle fitted with a computer and an ultrasonic distance sensor to record data from over 2,500 overtaking motorists in Salisbury and Bristol.
Dr Walker, who was struck by a bus and a truck in the course of the experiment, spent half the time wearing a cycle helmet and half the time bare-headed. He was wearing the helmet both times he was struck.
He found that drivers were as much as twice as likely to get particularly close to the bicycle when he was wearing the helmet.
Across the board, drivers passed an average of 8.5 cm (3 1/3 inches) closer with the helmet than without
The research has been accepted for publication in the journal Accident Analysis & Prevention.
Submission + - Learn FPGAs with a $25 board and Open Source Tools (hackaday.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Hackaday has a 3 part tutorial with videos of using open source tools with a cheap ($25) FPGA board. The board isn't very powerful, but this could be the "gateway drug" to FPGAs for people who don't want to spend hundreds of dollars and install 100s of megabytes of software and license keys just to get their feet wet. The videos are particularly good--like watching them over their shoulder. As far as I know, this is the only totally open source FPGA toolchain out there.
Comment Use storage level services. (Score 1) 219
If you want to keep your data on-site, unless your already have a lot of the infrastructure that you can leverage the path of least resistance is to use something like a NetApp Filer.
For backups it can create snapshots on a schedule (hourly/daily/weekly), then either replicate them to a second physical storage unit (hopefully at a different site) or present them to your backup solution.
Using the file services on the NetApp will also provide a solution to your "how do I present it to the storage consumers" question - iSCSI, CIFS with domain integration, NFS, Fibre Channel... You also get storage level de-duplication and compression, if that works for your data.
Of course you will pay what seems like a lot for it, but it does solve a lot of your problems in one unit. How much will it save in servers, backup capacity, a multi-drive tape library, daily visits to the server room to reload tapes and so on.
But if your data center isn't up to providing the level of availability you want then any hardware solution is going to be problematic - large storage systems do not like having the power pulled out from under them. Minimum is dual-redundant UPS power and fault tolerant cooling, or you will most likely have problems.
Slashdot Top Deals
Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?
