richardablitt - Slashdot User

Submission + - Hyperloop Technology Tested Successfully In Nevada Desert

Submitted by Dave Knott on Wednesday May 11, 2016 @07:53PM

Dave Knott writes: Hyperloop One (formerly known as Hyperloop Technologies) conducted a successful test of its high speed transportation technology Wednesday in the desert outside Las Vegas. The seconds-long, outdoor demonstration featured what appeared to be a blip of metal gliding across a small track before disappearing into a cloud against the desert landscape. A fully operational hyperloop would whisk passengers and cargo in pods through a low pressure tube at speeds of up to 1,207 kph (750 mph). Maglev technology would levitate the pods to reduce friction in the city-to-city system, which would be fully autonomous and electric powered. A day earlier, the company had announced the closing of $80 million in financing and said it plans to conduct a full system test before the end of the year.

Comment unmod (Score 1) 270

by richardablitt on Saturday April 12, 2014 @03:50AM (#46732273) Attached to: The New 'One Microsoft' Is Finally Poised For the Future

Posting to undo accidental mod.

Submission + - Own every SNES game ever made - for $24,999 (polygon.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10, 2012 @06:00PM

An anonymous reader writes: A game collector has decided to put his entire collection of SNES games up for sale — at the low price of $24,999USD. The collection covers *every* game ever made for SNES, all in the original covers.

Submission + - Intel unveils 22nm SoC transistors, while TSMC and GloFo plan risky process jump (extremetech.com)

Submitted by

MrSeb

on Monday December 10, 2012 @05:40PM

MrSeb writes: "Transistor announcements aren’t the sexiest occasions on the block, but Intel’s 22nm SoC unveil is important for a host of reasons. As process nodes shrink and more components move on-die, the characteristics of each new node have become particularly important. 22nm isn’t a new node for Intel; it debuted the technology last year with Ivy Bridge, but SoCs are more complex than CPU designs and create their own set of challenges. Like its 22nm Ivy Bridge CPUs, the upcoming 22nm SoCs rely on Intel’s Tri-Gate implementation of FinFET technology. According to Intel engineer Mark Bohr, the 3D transistor structure is the principle reason why the company’s 22nm technology is as strong as it is. Other evidence backs up this point. Earlier this year, we brought you news that Nvidia was deeply concerned about manufacturing economics and the relative strength of TSMC’s sub-28nm planar roadmap. Morris Chang, TSMC’s CEO, has since admitted that such concerns are valid, given that performance and power are only expected to increase by 20-25% as compared to 28nm. The challenge for both TSMC and GlobalFoundries is going to be how to match the performance of Intel’s 22nm technology with their own 28nm products. 20nm looks like it won’t be able to do so, which is why both companies are emphasizing their plans to move to 16nm/14nm ahead of schedule. There’s some variation on which node comes next; both GlobalFoundries and Intel are talking up 14nm; TSMC is implying a quick jump to 16nm. Will it work? Unknown. TSMC and GlobalFoundries both have excellent engineers, but FinFET is a difficult technology to deploy. Ramping it up more quickly than expected while simultaneously bringing up a new process may be more difficult than either company anticipates."

Submission + - Outrage at Microsoft offshoring tax in the UK (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by Master Of Ninja on Monday December 10, 2012 @08:49AM

Master Of Ninja writes: After the ongoing row about companies not paying a fair share of tax in the United Kingdom, and with companies such as Starbucks, Amazon and Google being in the headlines, focus has now turned to Microsoft. Whilst the tax arrangements are strictly legal, there has been outrage on how companies are avoiding paying their fair share of tax generated in the country.

Submission + - Jolla Confirms MeeGo App Store is Coming (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by

DavidGilbert99

on Wednesday July 18, 2012 @09:08AM

DavidGilbert99 writes: "Jolla Mobile's MD, Jussi Hurmola has confirmed that it's first smartphone will be backed up by an app store at launch later this year — pointing out that a version of Angry Birds is already available on MeeGo.

And really, all you need to make an app store successful is Angry birds right?"

Submission + - Small, big-brained animals dodge extinction (nature.com)

Submitted by

ananyo

on Wednesday July 18, 2012 @06:08AM

ananyo writes: "Large-brained animals may be less likely to go extinct in a changing world, perhaps because they can use their greater intelligence to adapt their behavior to new conditions, according to an analysis presented to a meeting of conservation biologists this week.
Plotting brain size against body size creates a tidy curve. But some species have bigger or smaller brains than the curve would predict for their body size. And a bigger brain-to-body-size ratio usually means a smarter animal.
The researchers looked at the sizes of such deviations from the curve and their relationships to the fates of two groups of mammalian species — ‘palaeo’ and ‘modern’. Analysis of each group produced similar results: species that weighed less than 10 kilograms and had big brains for their body size were less likely to have gone extinct or be placed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list for endangered species. For species larger than about 10 kilograms, the advantage of having a large brain seems to be swamped by the disadvantage of being big — such as attracting the unwelcome attention of humans."

Comment Re:Bet I can guess some of the top ten (Score 2) 95

by richardablitt on Tuesday January 03, 2012 @05:18PM (#38577186) Attached to: EU Proposal Would Encourage Web Users To Flag Suspicious Web Pages

Probably referring to the IWF.

Almost all of the UK ISPs use their block list, although when I last checked the UK Free Software Network don't.

Submission + - Orangutans to Skype between zoos with iPads (extremetech.com)

Submitted by

MrSeb

on Friday December 30, 2011 @08:39AM

MrSeb writes: "For the last six months, orangutans — those great, hairy, orange apes that go “ook” a lot — at Milwaukee zoo have been playing games and watching videos on Apple’s (seemingly ubiquitous) iPad, but now their keepers and the charity Orangutan Outreach want to go one step further and enable ape-to-ape video chat via Skype or FaceTime. "The orangutans loved seeing videos of themselves — so there is a little vanity going on — and they like seeing videos of the orangutans who are in the other end of the enclosure," Richard Zimmerman of Orangutan Outreach said. "So if we incorporate cameras, they can watch each other." And thus the idea of WiFi video chat between orangutans — and eventually between zoos — was born. It might seem like folly, but putting (ruggedized!) iPads into the hands of apes could really revolutionize our understanding of great ape behavior — and thus our own behavior, too."

Submission + - Ideally Bare Numeric Impression giZmo (blogspot.com)

Submitted by jones_supa on Friday December 30, 2011 @06:50AM

jones_supa writes: Ville 'viznut' Heikkilä presents us with an interesting project. As demonstrated by the video, IBNIZ (Ideally Bare Numeric Impression giZmo) is a virtual machine and a programming language that generates video and audio from very short strings of code. Technically, it is a two-stack machine somewhat similar to Forth, but with the major execption that the stack is cyclical and also used at an output buffer. The main goal of IBNIZ is to provide a new platform for the demoscene. Something that would have the potential to displace MS-DOS as the primary platform for sub-256-byte productions.

Submission + - Open Source Increasingly Replaced by Open APIs (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by SharkLaser on Friday December 30, 2011 @06:34AM

SharkLaser writes: Open APIs might be the way to get rich in 2012. At the same time it can also be what ultimately hinders open source development. Wide range of companies, including Google, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter, are building open APIs for other developers to use and build upon. Open APIs can be used by companies to grow their user base and introduce new interesting features on top of their platform. At the same time independant developers can utilize established services and their users to grow their own business. Perfect example of open APIs is Facebook Apps, which lets individuals and companies develop applications and games on top of Facebook platform. Developers gain access to Facebook's established user base and Facebook gains new features and fun stuff to do on their site. Instead of open sourcing their platforms, companies like Google and Facebook are providing Open APIs and data access to outside developers. The actual source code for the services sits safely inside the company's network and never needs to be disclosed to outside parties, thus hindering open source development.

Submission + - Running Great Britain? There's An App For That! (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by

judgecorp

on Friday December 30, 2011 @02:49AM

judgecorp writes: "Britain's Prime Minister, David Cameron will get a personalised iPad app to help him run the country. The "government dashboard" will include health waiting list figures, crime statistics, economic statistics and a real-time news feed. Cameron is a committed Apple user — but British members of Parliament have only been allowed iPads in the House of Commons since March 2011."

Submission + - Tech solution developed for disabled parking abuse (gizmag.com) 1

Submitted by cylonlover on Friday December 30, 2011 @01:39AM

cylonlover writes: What does it mean when a parking spot is marked with a wheelchair symbol? If you answered, "It means I can park there as long as I'm going to be quick," you're wrong — yet you're also far from alone. Every day in parking lots all over the world, non-disabled drivers regularly use spaces clearly reserved for the handicapped. They often get away with it, too, unless an attendant happens to check while their vehicle is parked there. Thanks to technology recently developed by New Zealand's Car Parking Technologies (CPT), however, those attendants could soon be notified the instant that a handicapped spot is improperly occupied.

Submission + - Best software for putting lectures online? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 30, 2011 @12:27AM

An anonymous reader writes: I'm trying to help a school put their classes online in the most minimally invasive way as possible to the teachers. A few environmental considerations:
They don't always have live internet in the classroom, or I'd just run to Skype.
I'm hoping to make it as much one touch start/stop as possible to start recording, stop recording, and upload to a server. I'd like to believe others here have already done something similar, so if a package or process worked for you that would be great to hear.
Not sure what if it's all ppt lectures or if they actually use a whiteboard, and if so what the best camera would be to use (on a school budget!)..

Submission + - What War in the Hormuz Strait Would Look Like

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Thursday December 29, 2011 @09:47PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The high stakes standoff between Iran and the US over the Strait of Hormuz, the passageway for one-fifth of the world's oil, escalated this week as Iran's navy claimed to have recorded video of a US aircraft carrier entering the Port of Oman and the deputy chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Hossein Salami rejected US claims that it could prevent Iran from closing the strait. To drive the point home, Iran has started a 10-day naval exercise in the Persian Gulf to show off how it could use small speedboats and a barrage of missiles to combat America's naval armada while in a report for the Naval War College, US Navy Commander Daniel Dolan wrote that Iran has acquired “thousands of sea mines, wake homing torpedoes, hundreds of advanced cruise missiles (PDF) and possibly more than one thousand small Fast Attack Craft and Fast Inshore Attack Craft. The heart of the Iran's arsenal is its 200 small potential-suicide boats — fiberglass motorboats with a heavy machine gun, a multiple rocket-launcher, or a mine — and may also carry heavy explosives, rigged to ram and blow a hole in the hull of a larger ship. These boats will likely employ a strategy of “swarming”—coming out of nowhere to ambush merchant convoys and American warships in narrow shipping lanes. But the US Navy is not defenseless against kamikaze warfare. The US has put more machine guns and 25-millimeter gyro-stabilized guns on the decks of warships, modified the 5-inch gun to make it more capable of dealing with high-speed boats, and improved the sensor suit of the Aegis computer-integrated combat system aboard destroyers and cruisers. “We have been preparing for it for a number of years with changes in training and equipment,” says Vice Admiral (ret.) Kevin Cosgriff, former commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command."

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