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Submission + - China Produces Nano Fibre That Can Lift 160 Elephants (nzherald.co.nz) 1

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: A research team from Tsinghua University in Beijing has developed a fibre they say is so strong it could even be used to build an elevator to space. They say just 1 cubic centimeter of the fibre — made from carbon nanotube — would not break under the weight of 160 elephants, or more than 800 tonnes. And that tiny piece of cable would weigh just 1.6 grams. The Chinese team has developed a new "ultralong" fibre from carbon nanotube that they say is stronger than anything seen before, patenting the technology and publishing part of their research in the journal Nature Nanotechnology earlier this year. The space elevator idea has remained in the realm of sci-fi, physical and mathematical models because there has been no material strong enough to make the super-light, ultra-strong cables needed. Tsinghua's carbon nanotube fibre has tensile strength of 80 gigapascals, over ten times more than the 7 gigapascals strenth NASA estimated to be required for a space elevator. Chinese and Russian space scientists, for instance, are working together to find a safe, effective way to lower a fine, feather-light cable from a high-altitude orbit to the ground. While a lift to space could still be many years away, Wei said his team was trying to get the carbon nanotube fibre into mass production for use in defence or other areas such as super fast carbon nanotube flywheels, the mechanical battery would have 40 times the energy density of a lithium battery.

Comment Destiny 2. (Score 1) 128

by Xenex (#56545158) Attached to: Fortnite or PUBG?

Destiny 2, despite its problems.

I played the original for a few hundred hours over its three years. Previously I'd play games like Halo through the campaign, maybe a little PvP, then stop. The simple layer of MMO that Destiny added to the genre - while simple compared to something like WoW - was enough to keep me coming back.

The feel of Bungie shooters is second-to-none, the campaigns are engaging enough, the variety of weapons means there's always something new to experiment with, weekly milestones are something to do but easily ignored if I'm not feeling it, casual PvP (and events like Iron Banner) are exciting, and... I even like the UI.

Its future sci-fi world is interesting (FWC are the best faction, clearly!) even though it's not focused on enough in-game and requires far too much reading online sources. I'm looking forward to Warmind and the spotlight on Rasputin (a centuries-old human-made AI that went rogue) next week.

Basically it's flawed, it's not objectively the greatest game ever, but it's definitely my favourite.

Comment Re:Not Apple anymore.... (Score 1) 145

by Xenex (#56040147) Attached to: Apple Deprecates More Services In OS X Server

It would be nice if they milked the mac, won't happen soon enough.

It started 22 years ago. The quote is from February 1996, before Steve Jobs was back at Apple. He returned in December 1996, became (interim) CEO in July 1997, then Apple started milking.

With iMac in 1998 -- still running Classic Mac OS -- the Mac platform started making money again. This kept the company solvent and afloat until Mac OS X launched in 2001 and finally Apple had a modern software foundation. In the meantime they launched iPod, which made more money and -- in hindsight, more importantly -- gave the Apple brand mainstream positive reputation for portable technology. Milking the Mac (well, and the iPod's reputation) for all it was worth, Apple took Mac OS X and developed their next great thing: iPhone. Thanks to that milk, Apple is now worth more than any other company in the world.

Apple have milked more value out of the Mac than anyone could have imagined possible in 1996. Here we are in 2018. Apple's still milking, but they've clearly moved focus to their next great thing.
Mozilla

Firefox 55 Arrives With WebVR on Windows, Performance Panel, and Click-to-Play Flash (venturebeat.com) 129

Posted by msmash from the browser-updates dept.
Mozilla today made available a new update to Firefox for Windows to introduce support for WebVR, that the company says, will enable desktop VR users to dive into web-based experiences with ease. Firefox 55 also includes performance panel, faster startup when restoring multiple tabs, a quicker way to search across various search engines, and click-to-play Flash by default. From a report: WebVR is an experimental JavaScript API that provides support for virtual reality devices, such as the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Google Cardboard. As its name implies, the technology is meant for browsers. If you find a web game or app that supports VR, just click the VR goggles icon visible on the web page to experience it using your VR headset. WebVR supports navigating and controlling VR experiences with handset controllers or your movements in physical space. [...] Firefox 55 also allows users to adjust the number of processes and how much resources they want to allocate to any of them. This setting is at the bottom of the General section in Options. In fact, if your computer has more than 8GB of RAM, Mozilla recommends "bumping up the number of content processes that Firefox uses" because it will make Firefox faster, though at the expense of using more memory. In its own tests on Windows 10, the company found that Firefox uses less memory than Chrome, even with eight content processes running.

Comment CloudReady's lack of powerwash as a benefit. (Score 1) 11

by Xenex (#54388751) Attached to: Chromebook Developer Mode Warning

I never did reply to your good point pointing this problem out...

This isn't a solution, but I've mostly played with Chrome OS on non-Chromebook hardware with CloudReady. It doesn't support powerwash... which means it doesn't show this wiping stuff. Not a solution on real Chromebook hardware though, but my 13" Retina MacBook Pro is nicer than any Chromebook anyway!

Submission + - Doing Math Without A License

Submitted by Rick Zeman
Rick Zeman writes: Mats Jarlstrom, a Beaverton, Oregon traffic light gadfly crusading against red light cameras and their timings was accused of the “'practice of engineering;” without a license while pressing his cause by doing simple math. So last week, Mr. Jarlstrom filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court against the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying, charging the state’s licensing panel with violating his First Amendment rights.
“I was working with simple mathematics and applying it to the motion of a vehicle and explaining my research...By doing so, they declared I was illegal.”

Submission + - Australian Farmers Switch To Diesel Power As Electricity Prices Soar (abc.net.au)

Submitted by connect4
connect4 writes: Local irrigators council representative, Dale Hollis, says right now, irrigators have two options. "They have to switch off the pumps and go back to dryland [cropping], and that impacts upon the productivity of the region and impacts on jobs" he said. "The second option is to go off the grid and look at alternatives."There are plenty of farmers installing panels, but many growers irrigate at night and can't afford the millions of dollars it could take to buy battery storage."

That's pushing many of them back to a dirtier option. "Right now, diesel stacks up" Mr Hollis said.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister claims the country faces an energy crisis, while Tesla claims they could solve the entire problem in less than 100 days, and they have form.

Submission + - What are the FLOSS community's answers to Siri and AI? (upon2020.com)

Submitted by jernst
jernst writes: A decade ago, we in the free and open-source community could build our own versions of pretty much any proprietary software system out there, and we did. Publishing, collaboration, commerce, you name it. Some apps were worse, some were better than closed alternatives, but much of it was clearly good enough to use every day.

But is this still true? For example, voice control is clearly going to be a primary way we interact with our gadgets in the future. Speaking to an Amazon Echo-like device while sitting on my couch makes a lot more sense than using a web browser. Will we ever be able to do that without going through somebody’s proprietary silo like Amazon’s or Apple’s? Where are the free and/or open-source versions of Siri, Alexa and so forth?

The trouble, of course, is not so much the code, but in the training. The best speech recognition code isn’t going to be competitive unless it has been trained with about as many millions of hours of example speech as the closed engines from Apple, Google and so forth have been. How can we do that?

The same problem exists with AI. There’s plenty of open-source AI code, but how good is it unless it gets training and retraining with gigantic data sets? We don’t have those in the FLOSS world, and even if we did, would we have the money to run gigantic graphics card farms 24×7? Will we ever see truly open AI that is not black-box machinery guarded closely by some overlord company, but something that “we can study how it works, change it so it does our computing as we wish” and all the other values embodied in the Free Software Definition?

Who has a plan, and where can I sign up to it?

Submission + - Dissecting a frame of DOOM

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An article takes us through the process of rendering one frame of DOOM (2016). The game released earlier this year uses the Vulkan API to push graphics quality and performance at new levels.
The article shades light on rendering techniques, mega-textures, reflection computation... all the aspects of a modern game engine.
United States

Hillary Clinton Declares 2016 Democratic Presidential Bid 676

Posted by samzenpus from the throwing-her-hat-in-the-ring dept.
An anonymous reader writes In a move that surprised no one, Hillary Clinton has officially announced she is entering the 2016 race for the White House. According to the Times: "Ending two years of speculation and coy denials, Hillary Rodham Clinton announced on Sunday that she would seek the presidency for a second time, immediately establishing herself as the likely 2016 Democratic nominee. 'I'm running for president,' she said with a smile near the end of a two-minute video released just after 3 p.m. 'Everyday Americans need a champion. And I want to be that champion,' Mrs. Clinton said. 'So I'm hitting the road to earn your vote — because it's your time. And I hope you'll join me on this journey.'"

Submission + - Germanwings plane crash was no accident

Submitted by hcs_$reboot
hcs_$reboot writes: The Germanwings plane crash takes a scary turn. After a couple of days investigation, it appears that the co-pilot requested control of the aircraft about 20 minutes into the flight. The pilot then left the cockpit, leaving the co-pilot in full control of the plane. Then, the co-pilot manually and "intentionally" set the plane on the descent that drove it into the mountainside in the southern French Alps. Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, a 28-year-old German national, could be heard breathing throughout the plane’s descent and was alive at the point of impact, according to the prosecutor.

Comment Re:OLD? Stupid crap still on 10.7 (Score 5, Informative) 255

by Xenex (#46301833) Attached to: Ubuntu 14.04 Brings Back Menus In Application Windows

Global menus

Mac OS has been like this since System 1. And it makes sense; whatever you're doing, its menu is going to be in the same place. Fitts' law indicates that the most quickly accessed targets on any computer display are the four corners of the screen.

Single mouse click

Mac OS has supported multiple mouse buttons for at least 16 years. Even when using a now-extinct one button mouse, control-click presented a dialogue box.

Left window controls (yay for all the left handed and left eye dominant people, boo for the other 95% of the world)

Because it's easier to move a mouse up/left with your right hand, and was developed in a country that reads left-to-right.

Launchpad (how is the start menu missing causing a revolt and launchpad even exist? Launchpad is the initial SIN!)

The start menu missing is causing a revolt because Microsoft removed something and replaced it with an abomination. Launchpad - and other questionable features like Dashboard - can be completely ignored.

Finder layout straight out of system commander circa 1988.

Column view in Finder is optional, with icon and list view still available. Also, Finder has had its sorting options greatly improved throughout OS X's history.

Crap loads of docked icons you never use be default.

If you go and buy a Mac today, this is in the Dock:
- Finder: File management
- Launchpad: Access to all apps not in the Dock (And easily ignored, as previously discussed)
- Safari: A web browser
- Mail: Email client
- Contacts: An address book
- Calendar: A calendar
- Notes: Short notes
- Maps: A map of the entire planet
- Messages: Text messaging and IM
- FaceTime: Video chat
- Photo Booth: Something fun to play with on your new computer
- iPhoto: Something to talk to your camera
- Pages: Word processing
- Numbers: Spreadsheets
- Keynote: Presentations
- iTunes: Play and purchase music and TV/movies
- iBooks: Read and purchase books
- App Store: Install and purchase software
- System Preferences: Change settings on your computer

The default Dock icons cover managing your computer, using the big two features of the Internet, syncing 'organisational' information with your phone, finding locations, messaging and video chatting with other people, photography, writing, processing numbers, creating presentations, watching media, reading, and installing an app to do anything else you want your computer to do. The default Dock is a slam-dunk for covering what the majority of people use computers for, points users in the right direction to add new capabilities to the computer, and is easily customised to remove the things you don't want. (Launchpad, again...)

The Dock is setup perfectly for you to get started with your computer. Anything else you need to get to can either be accessed through Spotlight (power users) or Launchpad (for people with more experience with iOS).

A separate contact and calendar app....

Just like iOS... but also NeXTSTEP; they have always been separate apps, which makes finding what are ultimately different tasks easier *and* they also seamlessly share the same databases behind the scenes.

General iOS crap

Integration with touchpads is great. Removing always-visible scrollbars removes needless clutter. Things like Launchpad - and pretty much anything else you don't like that reminds you of iOS - are easily disabled or ignored.

Hardwired application dependency locations (the whole point of application folders is to stop that!)

Wait, what? Apps install into /Applications by default, but the system works just fine with app in ~/Applications. Beyond that, moving apps around is making things needlessly complicated for yourself. Even then, the vast majority of apps are self-contained bundles and can be run from anywhere.

Scroll bars that disappear even if your mouse is near them and appear at the bottoms of pages OVERTOP content.

Touched on this in iOS; the scroll bars appear when moving the cursor or scrolling content. If you find this to be an issue, it can be disabled in System Preferences. Yes, Apple provided sensible options!

I could go on and complain about the apps, but lets say OSX is great for people who use a computer like they use iOS and leave it at that....

It's a mature system with 13 years of refinement, and is built for use on 'real' computers. iOS features have only gone "back to the Mac" since 10.7, and even then - as previously discussed - are all avoidable if found that unpalatable. OS X is also bundled with apps that over most use cases for a personal computer, and installing developer tools is simply a matter of typing 'Xcode' into the App Store.

OS X is the current gold standard in desktop operating systems. It's incredibly well thought out, and that's why Canonical, GNOME, and others keep looking to it for guidance. However, it was foolish for Ubuntu to unexpectedly drop application menus for global menus after nine years without presenting an option to switch back. And that's the difference between OS X and Ubuntu; Apple wouldn't make such a ridiculous and far-reaching change to the system without either an option to disable it or an incredibly good rationalisation.

Submission + - Former Dev Gives Gloomy Outlook on Linux Support for the Opera Browser (ycombinator.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It doesn't take a Columbo to figure out that the "previous employer, a small browser vendor that decided to abandon its own rendering engine and browser stack" is referring to Opera in this comment answering the question "Do you actually use the product you are working on?". It appears to originate from Andreas Tolfsen, former Opera developer and now part of the Mozilla project.

From releasing a unified architecture browser including Linux support since 2001, Opera decided to put Linux development on indefinite hold, communicated through blog comments, and focus on Windows and Mac for their browser rewrite centered around the Blink engine that had its first beta release last spring. The promise to bring back the Linux version in due time was met with growing skepsis as the months went by, and clear answers have been avoided in the developer blog. The uncertainty has spawned user projects such as Otter browser in an attempt to recreate the Opera UI in a free application.

Tolfsen's statement seem to be in line with what users have suspected all along: Opera for Linux is not something for the near future.

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