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Comment Re: Reigntion risk (Score 4, Informative) 137

The reignition risk is there even you cool down the battery sufficiently: https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-... The main point is that risk should be put in context: the firefighters have to be trained to handle these vehicles, and the wreck shall be stored so that reignition will not cause danger.

Comment I'm lecturing a summer course on electronics (Score 1) 251

by linjaaho (#59968340) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Are You Doing To Help?
In addition to following authorities' orders: I work as senior lecturer in automotive electronics in local polytechnic institute. I postponed my summer vacation and will be lecturing an online summer course in electronics, so that students can get the credits needed. This is especially important here in Finland, where students fund their studies by working at summer. Coronavirus has caused that many summer jobs (in restaurants etc) are cancelled, and they need something useful to do.

Submission + - Teaching Wind Turbines How to Share (ieee.org)

Submitted by carbonnation
carbonnation writes: As Spock so elegantly opined, “Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Today Stanford U researchers presented the clearest proof to date that self-sacrifice can also benefit wind farms. In their demonstration at an Alberta wind farm, one turbine sacrifices a fifth of its generating potential to enable better performance by neighboring turbines, boosting the group's collective output. And all it takes to harness this altruistic behavior is a small (but intelligent) tweak to their control systems.

Submission + - Finnish Police Board Takes Issue With Wikipedia's Fundraising (blogspot.fi) 3

Submitted by linjaaho
linjaaho writes: Yesterday, the admin list of Finnish language Wikipedia received a request for comment from National Police Board of Finland. The Police board claims that the fundraising message appearing on the top of the Wikipedia pages is illegal fundraising and is punishable by criminal law. The Police Board asks how much money have they raised and ask for justification for the campaign.

This is not the first time the Police Board attacks fundraising. In 2012, a crowdfunded textbook Kickstarter project was delayed because a similar request of comment.

Submission + - CERN Wants a New Particle Collider Three Times Larger Than the LHC (vice.com) 1

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Not content with the 27-kilometre-round Large Hadron Collider, researchers at CERN have their sights set on a new beast of a particle collider that could have a circumference of 80 to 100 kilometres.

The nuclear research organisation announced that it was hatching plans for an ambitious successor to the LHC with an international study called the Future Circular Colliders (FCC) programme, which will kick off with a meeting next week.

The idea is to consider different hadron collider designs similar to the existing LHC but more powerful—much more powerful. CERN wrote it was looking for a collider “capable of reaching unprecedented energies in the region of 100 TeV.” The existing LHC will reach a maximum of around 14 TeV (tera electron Volts).
The Military

Submission + - Handheld Black Hornet Nano drones issued to U.K. soldiers (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: Drones have become a valuable asset for any military force in recent years for both combat and surveillance. But while scanning a warzone from miles away is great from a tactical standpoint, unmanned aircraft can be just as useful in the hands of troops on the ground. That's why British soldiers in Afghanistan have been issued several Black Hornet Nanos, a palm-sized UAV that can scout around corners and obstacles for hidden dangers. Each UAV measures just 4 x 1 inches (10 x 2.5cm) and weighs a mere 0.6 ounces (16 grams), making it easy for troops to carry along with the rest of their gear. A built-in camera transmits live video and still images to a handheld control unit at a range of up to half a mile (800 meters).
Education

Submission + - Teachers write an open textbook in a weekend hackathon (blogspot.fi)

Submitted by
linjaaho
linjaaho writes: "A group of Finnish mathematics researchers, teachers and students write an upper secondary mathematics textbook in a three-day booksprint. The event started on Friday 28th September at 9:00 (GMT+3) and the book will be (hopefully) ready on Sunday evening. The book is written in Finnish.

The result — LaTeX source code and the pdf — is published with open CC-BY-license.

As far as the authors know, this is the first time a course textbook is written in three-day hackathon. The hackathon approach has been used earlier mainly for coding open source software and writing manuals for open source software.

The progress can be followed by visiting the repository at Github or the project Facebook page."
Games

Submission + - Minecraft Creator Refuses To Certify Game For Windows 8 (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "The backlash against Windows 8 from various developers continues, but this time the game's creator isn't just expressing discontent. Notch, the developer behind smash hit Minecraft, has declared that he won't be working with Microsoft to certify Minecraft for Windows 8. Note that this doesn't mean Mincraft won't run on Windows 8. The certification process in question is Microsoft's mandatory rules for submitting content to the Windows game store. In order to be listed there, an application must be Metro-compatible and conform to a laundry list of other conditions. The real problem with Windows 8 is that it locks ARM users into a second class experience. If you buy an x86 tablet, you can download programs from Sourceforge, Github, or any file mirror. If you're an ARM user, you can download programs from the Microsoft store and that's it. The bifurcated permission structure is the problem, and it makes WinRT tablets categorically impossible to recommend for anyone who values the ability to install whatever software they please."
Piracy

Submission + - How The Pirate Bay can be an asset to game developers (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Underholdning
Underholdning writes: "It's been 5 years since Radiohead brought the pay what you want model to the public with their successful sale of their "In Rainbows" album. Now here's a fresh example of how a game developer is making The Pirate Bay work for him by offering his game for free and letting people pay what they want. Currently TPB has more than 5000 applicants wanting to do the same."

Submission + - Finnish bureaucracy to kill crowdfunded textbook project? (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by
linjaaho
linjaaho writes: "Senja Larsen, a person who runs popular Facebook study group Senja teaches you Swedish, collected $14,161 in Kickstarter crowd funding service. The project caught large media attention in Finland (TV and all major newspapers), since it is the first crowdfunded book project in this country and among the first Finnish crowdfunded projects (the previous ones are Iron Sky movie, Myrskyn Sankarit role playing game and Wishbone headphone wire manager). Now, after successfully collecting the funds for the book (and after the book has been edited and printed), the National Police Board of Finland has asked Senja to submit a statement concerning using Crowdfunding to finance a project and the terminology used. It is possible that all the funding collected must be returned. The main problem is that direct translations of terminology at Kickstarter, such as "bounty" or "support" are interpreted to mean collecting money without giving anything back, and this kind of operation requires a permit which can be only given to associations, not to private persons and it takes long to apply for such permit."

Submission + - Researchers Create First All Optical Nanowire NAND Gate (upenn.edu)

Submitted by mhore
mhore writes: Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have created the first all optical, nanowire-based NAND gate which paves the way towards photonic devices that manipulate light to perform computations. From the release, " The research team began by precisely cutting a gap into a nanowire. They then pumped enough energy into the first nanowire segment that it began to emit laser light from its end and through the gap. Because the researchers started with a single nanowire, the two segment ends were perfectly matched, allowing the second segment to efficiently absorb and transmit the light down its length."

The gate works by shining light on the nanowire structure to turn on and off information transported through the wire. The research appeared this month in Nature Nanotechnology.
Your Rights Online

Submission + - Internet Brands sues people for forking under CC by-sa (davidgerard.co.uk)

Submitted by
David Gerard
David Gerard writes: "Internet Brands bought Wikitravel.org in 2006, plastered it with ads and neglected it. After years, the Wikitravel community finally decided to fork under CC by-sa and move to Wikimedia. Internet Brands is now suing two of the unpaid volunteers for wanting to leave. The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking a declaratory judgement that you can actually fork a free-content project without permission. Internet Brands has a track record of scorched-earth litigation tactics."

Comment Bad education is everywhere (Score 1) 575

by linjaaho (#40757061) Attached to: Khan Academy: the Teachers Strike Back
"when bad teaching happens in the classroom, it's a crisis" Well, in my opinion, about 90 % of teachers and therefore education is "bad". Even here in Finland, where the politicians brag with our PISA-results. Is there a school where bad teacher is fired for bad teaching? The best thing with Khan Academy is that it is public on the internet, and can be criticised, if necessary. When bad teaching happens in classroom, no one is concerned. Vesa Linja-aho Senior Lecturer

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