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Google

Google Releases Street View Images From Fukushima Ghost Town 63

Posted by samzenpus from the new-fallout-map dept.
mdsolar writes in with news that Goolge has released Street View pictures from inside the zone that was evacuated after the Fukushima disaster. "Google Inc. (GOOG) today released images taken by its Street View service from the town of Namie, Japan, inside the zone that was evacuated after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011. Google, operator of the world's biggest Web search engine, entered Namie this month at the invitation of the town's mayor, Tamotsu Baba, and produced the 360-degree imagery for the Google Maps and Google Earth services, it said in an e-mailed statement. All of Namie's 21,000 residents were forced to flee after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, about 8 kilometers (5 miles) from the town, causing the world's worst nuclear accident after Chernobyl. Baba asked Mountain View, California-based Google to map the town to create a permanent record of its state two years after the evacuation, he said in a Google blog post."
The Internet

Ship Anchor, Not Sabotaging Divers, Possibly Responsible For Outage 43

Posted by samzenpus from the who's-to-blame dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "This week, Egypt caught three men in the process of severing an undersea fiber-optic cable. But Telecom Egypt executive manager Mohammed el-Nawawi told the private TV network CBC that the reason for the region's slowdowns was not the alleged saboteurs — it was damage previously caused by a ship. On March 22, cable provider Seacom reported a cut in its Mediterranean cable connecting Southern and Eastern Africa, the Middle East and Asia to Europe; it later suggested that the most likely cause of the incident was a ship anchor, and that traffic was being routed around the cut, through other providers. But repairs to the cable took longer than expected, with the Seacom CEO announcing March 23 that the physical capability to connect additional capacity to services in Europe was "neither adequate nor stable enough," and that it was competing with other providers. The repairs continued through March 27, after faults were found on the restoration system; that same day, Seacom denied that the outage could have been the work of the Egyptian divers, but said that the true cause won't be known for weeks. 'We think it is unlikely that the damage to our system was caused by sabotage,' the CEO wrote in a statement. 'The reasons for this are the specific location, distance from shore, much greater depth, the presence of a large anchored vessel on the fault site which appears to be the cause of the damage and other characteristics of the event.'"
Mars

4-Billion-Pixel Panorama View From Curiosity Rover 101

Posted by samzenpus from the take-a-look dept.
A reader points out that there is a great new panorama made from shots from the Curiosity Rover. "Sweep your gaze around Gale Crater on Mars, where NASA's Curiosity rover is currently exploring, with this 4-billion-pixel panorama stitched together from 295 images. ...The entire image stretches 90,000 by 45,000 pixels and uses pictures taken by the rover's two MastCams. The best way to enjoy it is to go into fullscreen mode and slowly soak up the scenery — from the distant high edges of the crater to the enormous and looming Mount Sharp, the rover's eventual destination."
Firefox

Emscripten and New Javascript Engine Bring Unreal Engine To Firefox 124

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the cycle-is-nearly-complete dept.
MojoKid writes "There's no doubt that gaming on the Web has improved dramatically in recent years, but Mozilla believes it has developed new technology that will deliver a big leap in what browser-based gaming can become. The company developed a highly-optimized version of Javascript that's designed to 'supercharge' a game's code to deliver near-native performance. And now that innovation has enabled Mozilla to bring Epic's Unreal Engine 3 to the browser. As a sort of proof of concept, Mozilla debuted this BananaBread game demo that was built using WebGL, Emscripten, and the new JavaScript version called 'asm.js.' Mozilla says that it's working with the likes of EA, Disney, and ZeptoLab to optimize games for the mobile Web, as well." Emscripten was previously used to port Doom to the browser.

Comment Format not the problem, content is (Score 2) 166

by kraln (#43156903) Attached to: Live Tweeting the Symphony?
I've been to Video Games Live several times, often at Wolftrap in VA. The house is constantly full to capacity, everyone has a great time, and the volunteers all say the same thing: "This is such a bigger turnout than _insert_classical_music_here_". Classical music is great and wonderful to listen to, but you shouldn't be surprised it doesn't draw the under-40 crowd.

Comment Disagree (Score 2) 5

by kraln (#41775333) Attached to: Wikipedia Is Nearing Completion
I would disagree that Wikipedia is mature, and that editors are losing interest due to the 'maure' nature of the encyclopedia. Let me tell you why I stopped contributing: The wikipedia community is a complete and utter power trip. If someone decides that an article, or a whole series of articles, isn't noteworthy, or encylopedic, they're removed. It's not like the articles were hurting anything, being there... they've just been erased from the internet. It's this and other ridiculous policies and cultural norms that have completely turned me off from wikipedia.
Idle

Submission + - Injured bald eagle gets new 3-D printed beak (grist.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A bald eagle that lost its beak to a poacher's gun receives a 3-D printed beak prosthetic like a dental implant.
Windows

Submission + - School regrets swapping laptops for iPads (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "PC Pro has a story of a school that swapped all its staff laptops for iPads — and now wants to switch them back. "Most staff are IT illiterate and jumped at the chance of exchanging their laptop for an iPad," a teacher from the school told PC Pro. Now, however: "the staff room is full of regret."

Difficulties editing old Word and PowerPoint documents, transferring work to and from the device without USB sticks, and problems with projecting the iPad's display to the classroom — bizarrely, using an Apple TV — have led to staff once again reaching for their Windows laptops."

Submission + - FAA Permits American Airlines to Use iPads in Cockpit "in all phases of flight" (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: American Airlines has announced that it has received the permission from FAA to allow its pilots to use iPads in the cockpit during “all phases of flight.” According to the airlines, the tablet will enable pilots to store documentation in electronic form on the iPad which otherwise weighs 15.875 kg (35 pounds) when in printed form. Use of the digital documentation will enable the airlines to save as much as US $1.2 million of fuel each year.

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