wintersynth - Slashdot User

Comment Re:What an interesting question... (Score 1) 3

by wintersynth on Thursday February 14, 2013 @05:24PM (#42901367) Attached to: What is the best programming language for a 12-year-old to learn?

Hahahahh, I did that already, and was hoping for a more nuanced answer from Slashdot than the medley of unattributed opinions I found. People were still suggesting C++. That site is the apex of hilarious condescension though.

Comment Re:I feel like we should be on that list (Score 2) 97

by wintersynth on Wednesday November 28, 2012 @08:32PM (#42124933) Attached to: Kickstarter Games: Where They Are Now

Thanks! Yeah, it's a bit of a commitment for people to try the game, seeing as they can't see and monsters are attacking them. It's a little easier on iOS. We finished it and are proud to have been nominated for an IndieCade award and two Brazilian International Game Festival awards :-). And we did have a lot of fun making it!

Comment I feel like we should be on that list (Score 5, Informative) 97

by wintersynth on Wednesday November 28, 2012 @07:26PM (#42124275) Attached to: Kickstarter Games: Where They Are Now

BlindSide was an early Kickstarter success, raising only 200% of our goal, about $14,000, but we released our beta on time, as promised.

Granted, it was the last day of the month and we stayed up 36 hours straight doing it, but we did it.

Maybe it's time for a little "how to manage slipped release dates" guide. I think it would look like this:
1) Communicate
2) Communicate
3) Communicate
:-)

Comment Hugh Howey's Wool (Score 2) 1365

by wintersynth on Tuesday August 07, 2012 @08:14PM (#40912043) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What's the Most Depressing Sci-fi You've Ever Read?

I was having a pretty low day when I started it, and it made it a lot worse. Howey is a master at creating personable characters that you fall in love with in only a few short pages. Then he teaches you brutally why you shouldn't become emotionally involved with his characters. I highly recommend reading it, and overall it's not too depressing, but those first few chapters are some of the roughest in sci-fi I've read.

Submission + - The Impending Hard Drive Shortage (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

snydeq

on Tuesday October 18, 2011 @01:19PM

snydeq writes: "Flooding near Bangkok has taken about 25 percent of the world's hard disk manufacturing capacity offline, InfoWorld reports. 'Disk manufacturing sites in Thailand — notably including the largest Western Digital plant — were shut down due to floods around Bangkok last week and are expected to remain shut for at least several more days. The end to flooding is not in sight, and Western Digital now says it could take five to eight months to bring its plants back online.' Toshiba's Thailand plants have also been affected, as have key disk component suppliers, including Nidec and Hutchinson Technologies."

Submission + - Cloth Successfully Separates Oil from Gulf Water (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by Chinobi on Tuesday June 08, 2010 @09:39AM

Chinobi writes: Di Gao, an assistant professor at the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering in the Swanson School of Engineering has developed a method of separating oil from water within just seconds using a cotton cloth coated in a chemical polymer that makes it both hydrophilic (it bonds with the hydrogen molecules in water) and oleophobic (oil repellant), making it absolutely perfect for blocking oil and letting water pass through. Gao tested his filter successfully on Gulf Oil water and has an impressive video to show it. Check it out here.

Rogue Brown Dwarf Lurks In Our Cosmic Neighborhood 188

Posted by Soulskill on Friday April 09, 2010 @04:20PM from the brown-dwarf-rogue-lurks-in-ironforge dept.

astroengine writes "The UK Infrared Telescope in Hawaii has discovered a lone, cool brown dwarf called UGPSJ0722-05. As far as sub-stellar objects go, this is a strange one. For starters, it's the coolest brown dwarf ever discovered (and astronomers using the UKIRT should know; they are making a habit of finding cool brown dwarfs). Secondly, it's close. In fact, it's the closest brown dwarf to Earth, at a distance of only 10 light years. And thirdly, it has an odd spectroscopic signature, leading astronomers to think that this might be the discovery of a whole new class of brown dwarf."

Solar-Powered Plane Makes First Successful Flight 118

Posted by timothy on Wednesday April 07, 2010 @01:25PM from the finally-a-daytime-launch dept.

lilbridge writes "The Solar Impulse, a solar-powered plane covered in 12,000 solar cells, took its maiden flight today in Switzerland. The plane stayed aloft for 87 minutes, performing test maneuvers as well as completing a successful takeoff and landing. With the first test flight behind them, the developers can focus on gearing up for their around-the-world solar powered flight set for 2012."

Submission + - The Most Painful Biofeedback Machine Ever (harcoslabs.com) 1

Submitted by wintersynth on Thursday March 04, 2010 @01:46PM

wintersynth writes: We hacked a Mindflex toy brainwave reader to electrocute people if their brainwave frequency got too high (by concentrating). We took outputs off of the 5 level LED indicator, put the outputs through a transistor/resistor/relay circuit to give 2 levels of high voltage through an electric shock circuit right into the user's arm. I thought the Slashdot audience would appreciate the how to and video and this concern: if we used this device frequently, would we condition our brains to always stay in idle (alpha) state and would lose our ability to concentrate?

The Computer That Can Read Your Mind 145

Posted by timothy on Wednesday March 03, 2010 @04:09PM from the what-am-I-thinking-and-where-does-she-live dept.

magacious writes "Gtec has showcased a computer that can read your mind over at the CeBIT trade show in Germany. Designed primarily to help those who can't write or speak, the system makes use of a skull cap and wireless technology to transform brain waves into letters. It's the first patient-ready computer-brain interface, according to its Austrian makers. It takes around 30 seconds per letter for the computer to recognise what you're saying the first time you use it, according to Gtec, but this improves vastly with practice. '"One second per letter is very tough," Gtec's Engelbert Grunbacher said, adding users can usually easily get to five or 10 letters per minute. "You learn to be relaxed, focused. You improve."' It might look quite wacky (pictures here) and at €9,000 the system is not cheap, but it could help enhance the lives of many people who have a great deal to say but no real way of saying it."

Submission + - Using a treadmill, wiimotes, and the natural inter (manapotions.com)

Submitted by

wintersynth

on Tuesday September 22, 2009 @09:05PM

wintersynth writes: "We hooked a treadmill and wiimotes through BlueTooth and GlovePIE to AION so we could take advantage of the run/fly sequences in Aion and get fit while we play the game. Interval training is supposed to burn more fat and be better for cardio. It's too tough to play this way all the time, but for a quest a day, it might be perfect. Check out the how to with video"

Submission + - The Soviet Union built a Doomsday Machine. Here's (wired.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22, 2009 @02:12PM

An anonymous reader writes: Wired Magazine has a new story posted about the Doomsday Machine built by the Soviet Union in the 1980s---and that remains active today. It explains why the device was built, and why the Soviets considered it to be something that kept the peace, event though they never told the U.S. about it.

Submission + - SGI rolls out 'personal supercomputers' (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

CWmike

on Tuesday September 22, 2009 @01:48PM

CWmike writes: "They aren't selling personal supercomputers at Best Buy just yet. But that day probably isn't too far off, as the costs continue to fall and supercomputers become easier to use. Silicon Graphics International on Monday released its first so-called personal supercomputer. The new Octane III system is priced from $7,995 with one Xeon 5500 processor. The system can be expanded to an 80 core system with a capacity of up to 960GB of memory. This new supercomputer's peak performance of about 726 GFLOPS won't put it on the Top 500 supercomputer list, but that's not the point of the machine, SGI says. A key feature instead is the system's ease of use."

Submission + - Virgin American in-flight Internet Review (manapotions.com)

Submitted by

wintersynth

on Thursday May 07, 2009 @02:26PM

wintersynth writes: "I've posted a review of Virgin America's in-flight internet provided by Gogo. Here's the scoop: Avg. .90 megabits/sec DL, .283 megabits/sec UL, ping: 130.6 msecs, $12.95 for the duration of the flight. Verdict: AWESOME, in fact, I'm posting this from 36,000 feet right now. Skype did NOT work for voice even though I'm pretty sure those stats are over the minimums. Any ideas from the slashdotters on what might be going on? click here for the full review."

Comment Re:HD Camera (Score 5, Interesting) 149

by wintersynth on Friday January 18, 2008 @01:05AM (#22089950) Attached to: Industrial Robot Arm Becomes Giant Catapult

Okay, I have to admit, we felt pretty bad about this "renting" tactic until we actually tried the camera. It was hands-down the worst HD camera I have ever used. I mean seriously, it had all sorts of proprietary software with weird codecs so that the footage was extremely difficult to transcode at high resolution.

I felt absolutely no remorse returning that thing. I know, that still doesn't make it right, because we didn't know that going into it. But I hope it is at least a mitigating factor. Plus, I give Fry's tons of (non-"rented") business, and their awesome return policy is a big part of the reason.

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