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    Posts made by mlnews

    • RE: Non-IT News Thread

      Why is this copy of Super Mario Bros. worth $100,000? We asked a buyer

      Collectors say still-sealed test-market game is gaming's Action Comics No. 1.

      Before you go searching to see if that old cartridge in your attic might be your gateway to riches, note that this copy of the game is so valuable primarily because it’s one of the earliest known copies of the game, and in near-perfect condition. The box in question comes from Nintendo's extremely limited "test market launch" for the NES in New York City and Los Angeles starting in late 1985 (no one actually knows the exact date). These copies didn't come in the usual shrink wrap but were instead sealed with a small matte or glossy sticker (this handy guide outlines the many different Super Mario Bros. box variants released between 1985 and 1994).

      posted in Water Closet
      mlnews
    • RE: Miscellaneous Tech News

      Microsoft shaking up how Windows feature updates are rolled out—again

      Each feature update now has one release date rather than two.

      When Microsoft first started delivering Windows 10 "as a Service" with a regular flow of feature updates, the company planned to have two release tracks: a "Current Branch" (CB) that was consumer-oriented and "Current Branch for Business" (CBB) aimed at enterprises. The CBB track would trail the CB one by a few months, with consumers acting as guinea pigs to iron out bugs before the quality of each release was deemed good enough for corporate customers.

      posted in News
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    • RE: Non-IT News Thread

      Rocket Report: Russia’s new spacecraft; is the US sabotaging Iranian rockets?

      “NASA has issued a stop work order on the agency’s Lucy mission."

      US may be sabotaging Iranian launch efforts. As noted previously in this newsletter, Iran's two recent rocket launch attempts (on January 15 and February 5) both failed. That is part of a pattern where 67 percent of the country's launch attempts have failed during the last 11 years. The New York Times reports that the Trump White House has accelerated a secret American program to sabotage Iran's missiles and rockets, which is part of an expanding campaign by the United States to undercut Tehran's military and isolate its economy.

      posted in Water Closet
      mlnews
    • RE: Miscellaneous Tech News

      Samsung’s new Tab S5e is super thin, supports Bixby, and costs just $399

      The more affordable tablet takes some notes from the premium Tab S4.

      The high-end nature of the Tab S5e comes in its design. The all-metal unibody is the thinnest and lightest of any Samsung tablet, weighing about 14 ounces and measuring 5.5mm thick. Samsung didn't skimp too much on the display, either, sticking a 10.5-inch, 2560×1600 AMOLED panel with a 16:10 aspect ratio on the tablet. It's also the first Samsung tablet with Bixby built in, allowing users to call on the voice assistant to answer questions, control connected SmartThings devices, and more.

      posted in News
      mlnews
    • RE: Non-IT News Thread

      Military to investigate decision to certify the Falcon Heavy rocket

      "We plan to begin the subject evaluation in February 2019."

      In a memorandum released Monday night, the US Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General informed Air Force leadership that it will evaluate the military's certification of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy for national security missions.
      "We plan to begin the subject evaluation in February 2019," the memorandum states. "Our objective is to determine whether the US Air Force complied with the Launch Services New Entrant Certification Guide when certifying the launch system design for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle-class SpaceX Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles."

      posted in Water Closet
      mlnews
    • RE: Miscellaneous Tech News

      Amazon acquires Eero, maker of mesh Wi-Fi routers

      Eero's routers could help Amazon connect its various Echo and Alexa devices.

      Bay Area-based Eero, named after Finnish industrial designer Eero Saarinen, has been in operation since early 2015. It has already shipped several products. Neither Amazon nor Eero revealed how much money the tech giant paid in the acquisition, but Eero had raised $90 million in venture capital since its founding.

      posted in News
      mlnews
    • RE: Miscellaneous Tech News

      Bay Area: Join us 2/13 to discuss a new hope for tech activism

      Leigh Honeywell will talk about tech workers challenging companies to be more ethical.

      Over the past couple of years, we've seen a huge upsurge in activism within the technology community. From the walkouts at Google to labor organizing at Amazon, tech workers are starting to see a connection between their work and social issues. Engineer and entrepreneur Leigh Honeywell has been at the forefront of tech activism for many years, and at this month's Ars Technica Live on Wednesday, February 13, we'll be talking to her about activism in today's world and the politics of a life lived online.

      posted in News
      mlnews
    • RE: Non-IT News Thread

      Vaccinations jump 500% in antivax hotspot amid measles outbreak

      “I would rather it not take an outbreak for this to happen.”

      As of February 6, the county—which sits just north of the border from Portland, Oregon—has tallied 50 confirmed cases and 11 suspected cases of measles since January 1. The case count is rising swiftly, with figures more than doubling in just the last two weeks. On January 18, the county declared a public health emergency due to the outbreak.

      posted in Water Closet
      mlnews
    • RE: Miscellaneous Tech News

      Messy office owners, rejoice: Skype now blurs the background to your video

      No need to frantically tidy things up before making a call.

      The background-blurring feature has already been rolled out to Microsoft's corporate communication client, Teams, and now it's in the consumer-oriented app. While bulletproof detection of the background requires a depth-sensing camera, the approach used in Skype (and Teams) uses machine learning-derived algorithms in order to work with any camera. The algorithms have been trained to detect human outlines, including the voluminous hair that some lucky people are blessed with as well as arms and hands. Presumably this means that it will properly detect even those arms and hands that appear dismembered, appearing from off the edge of the screen. Using blur is optional, and it can be enabled on a call-by-call basis.

      posted in News
      mlnews
    • RE: Miscellaneous Tech News

      Motorola’s 2019 cheap smartphone lineup includes a 5000mAh battery option

      Motorola shows off the Moto G7, G7 Power, and G7 Play.

      Today, Motorola is announcing the new Moto G series for 2019: the Moto G7 family. There are three devices to take a look at: the Moto G7, the Moto G7 Power, and the Moto G7 Play. Along with the phones from Nokia, members of the G series are among those rare smartphones that can be had for under $400, and that makes them pretty interesting.

      posted in News
      mlnews
    • RE: Non-IT News Thread

      Indecent disclosure: Gay dating app left “private” images, data exposed to Web

      Online-Buddies was exposing its Jack'd users' private images and location; disclosing posed a risk.

      Amazon Web Services' Simple Storage Service powers countless numbers of Web and mobile applications. Unfortunately, many of the developers who build those applications do not adequately secure their S3 data stores, leaving user data exposed—sometimes directly to Web browsers. And while that may not be a privacy concern for some sorts of applications, it's potentially dangerous when the data in question is "private" photos shared via a dating application.

      posted in Water Closet
      mlnews
    • RE: Non-IT News Thread

      Disney+ will be a true Netflix competitor, with non-Disney shows streaming, too

      Every Disney brand is making shows, but the service won't just have Disney stuff.

      The more we learn about Disney's new streaming TV and movie service, the more ambitious it sounds. Disney CEO Bob Iger told investors on the company's quarterly earnings call that the service (called Disney+) will host TV shows and movies licensed from other parties in addition to content being made in-house by Disney properties like Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios.

      posted in Water Closet
      mlnews
    • RE: Non-IT News Thread

      2018 ranks as fourth-warmest year for globe

      With US government shutdown over, the data finally gets released.

      It’s that time of year again… or at least it was. NASA and NOAA normally release the final global temperature data for the previous year around January 18, but the government shutdown delayed that release. It finally happened on Wednesday, with both agencies finding that 2018 ranks at number four on the ever-changing list of the warmest years on record.

      posted in Water Closet
      mlnews
    • RE: Miscellaneous Tech News

      Alexa, give me nostalgia: Choose Your Own Adventure skill debuts from Audible

      Two titles are available so far, but more will come.

      Founded in 2003 by R.A. Montgomery and Shannon Gilligan, ChooseCo has printed new editions of Choose Your Own Adventure books over the years. In the new Alexa skill, the story will be read to you, and then Alexa will beep whenever a choice that branches the narrative comes up. You just speak the choice to proceed.

      posted in News
      mlnews
    • RE: Non-IT News Thread

      YouTube is trying to prevent angry mobs from abusing “dislike” button

      Could the thumbs-down button disappear from YouTube entirely?

      YouTube's dislike button can be a source of anxiety for many creators, and now YouTube is considering a number of options to prevent viewers from abusing that tool. Tom Leung, director of project management at YouTube, posted an update to the Creator Insider channel recently in which he detailed some "lightly discussed" options for combatting "dislike mobs," or large groups of users who slam the dislike button on a video before watching the whole thing, or even watching the video at all.

      posted in Water Closet
      mlnews
    • RE: Miscellaneous Tech News

      Bless the overclockers: In the data center world, liquid cooling is becoming king

      "For high performance computing, you just can’t do it with air.”

      In Iron Man 2, there is a moment when Tony Stark is watching a decades-old film of his deceased father, who tells him “I'm limited by the technology of my time, but one day you'll figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world.” It’s a work of fiction but the notion expressed is legitimate. The visions and ideas of technologists are frequently well ahead of the technology of their times. Star Trek may have always had it, but it took the rest of us decades to get tablets and e-readers right.

      posted in News
      mlnews
    • RE: Non-IT News Thread

      Scientists solve the mystery of Rembrandt’s “impasto” paint recipe

      A lead mineral called plumbonacrite was used to create a thick, paste-like paint.

      The 17th century Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn is justly considered one of the greatest artists of all time. He's particularly praised for his masterful depiction of light and shadow in his oil paintings, an almost three-dimensional effect achieved with his signature "impasto" technique. The recipes he used to mix his paints were believed to be lost to history. But now a team of Dutch and French scientists has used high-energy X-rays to unlock Rembrandt's secret recipe, according to a new paper in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

      posted in Water Closet
      mlnews
    • RE: Miscellaneous Tech News

      Itanium’s demise approaches: Intel to stop shipments in mid-2021

      Intel's grand adventure with smart compilers and dumb processors comes to an end.

      The Itanium 9700 line of four- and eight-core processors represents the last vestiges of Intel's attempt to switch the world to an entirely new processor architecture: IA-64. Instead of being a 64-bit extension to IA-32 ("Intel Architecture-32," Intel's preferred name for x86-compatible designs), IA-64 was an entirely new design built around what Intel and HP called "Explicitly parallel instruction computing."

      posted in News
      mlnews
    • RE: Non-IT News Thread

      Watching brains on acid using an MRI

      Acid may limit the brain's ability to tell internal ideas from external events.

      What exactly happens in a brain when it is hit by a hallucinogen? Lots of drugs have effects that are obvious extensions of our normal body processes; they raise moods, dull pain, or boost our energy. But hallucinogens are notable for giving their users experiences that are anything but normal.

      posted in Water Closet
      mlnews
    • RE: Miscellaneous Tech News

      Apple revokes Google’s enterprise iOS certificate, shuts down internal apps

      Google and Facebook were both caught violating Apple's TOS, and now both are banned.

      Apple's Developer Enterprise Program allows developers to distribute iOS apps outside of the walled garden of the App Store but only under the condition that they limit this distribution to employees only. Yesterday, news broke that both Google and Facebook had built data-sucking "research" apps on Apple's enterprise app program and that both companies were caught distributing these apps to research participants outside the company. Facebook's app program was public first and was banned by Apple, with the company reiterating that "Any developer using their enterprise certificates to distribute apps to consumers will have their certificates revoked."

      posted in News
      mlnews
    • RE: Non-IT News Thread

      Nintendo’s next Switch model will reportedly shrink the size, cost, features

      Brief hint of more services to come to Nintendo Switch Online as well.

      Nintendo's rumored plans to produce a revised Nintendo Switch model picked up steam on Thursday with a tantalizing bit of new information. Last year's rumor mill simply predicted a new model could arrive in 2019, but a Japanese report has narrowed fans' expectations based on its sources' intel: Nintendo may have a new SKU with portability and price, not power, in mind. (And the news outlet uncovered one other possible "service" to come as well.)

      posted in Water Closet
      mlnews
    • RE: Non-IT News Thread

      More mysterious brain injuries in Cuba; Canada halves staff after new case

      Cuba fumes that Canada's actions "do not help find answers."

      The Canadian government announced Wednesday that it will halve the number of diplomats at its embassy in Cuba after a 14th Canadian has mysteriously fallen ill with brain injuries there.

      The latest case from December suggests that the enigmatic incidents—which began in late 2016 and have been considered by the US government to be attacks—are still ongoing, straining relations between Cuba and the US, and now Cuba and Canada.

      posted in Water Closet
      mlnews
    • RE: Miscellaneous Tech News

      Google+ shuts down April 2, all data will be deleted

      Google's failed Facebook clone will be scrubbed from the Internet.

      Google's support page details exactly how the G+ shutdown will go down, and it's not just freezing posts on the site. The whole site will be taken down, and everything will be deleted. "On April 2nd, your Google+ account and any Google+ pages you created will be shut down and we will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts," the page reads.

      posted in News
      mlnews
    • RE: Non-IT News Thread

      Earth’s magnetic field nearly died during critical transition

      Late formation of the inner core might have revived magnetic field.

      Although you’ll never visit the core, it does affect your life quite profoundly. Earth’s magnetic field is produced by the convection of the liquid outer core, and that directs compasses and shields us from the effects of the solar wind. The history of Earth’s magnetic field is a big question—not least because we’re actually not sure when the inner core solidified.

      posted in Water Closet
      mlnews
    • RE: Miscellaneous Tech News

      Microsoft blames chip supply issues for drop in Windows revenue

      Surface nearing $2B in revenue, cloud continues to be strong.

      Microsoft has posted the results of the second quarter of its 2019 financial year, which runs up to December 31, 2018. Revenue was $32.5 billion, up 12 percent year-on-year; operating income was $10.3 billion, up 18 percent; and net income was $8.6 billion, as compared to a $6.3 billion loss due to the impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act one year ago. Earnings per share were $1.08, as compared to a loss of $0.82.

      posted in News
      mlnews
    • RE: Miscellaneous Tech News

      The Roomba lawnmower is finally happening

      17 years after the Roomba, iRobot tackles the great outdoors.

      A Roomba lawnmower has been rumored for years. The company has robomower patents going all the way back to 2008, and as recently as 2015 the company was petitioning the FCC to allow it to make its outdoor beacon navigation system legal. The original Roomba was introduced in 2002, when iRobot mostly had the home-robotics market to itself. Waiting 17 years to tackle the great outdoors means iRobot is now jumping into a crowded field of competitors, and it will have to do battle with Robomow, Husqvarna's Automower line, Honda's Miimo, and a line of mowers from Worx, among others.

      posted in News
      mlnews
    • RE: Miscellaneous Tech News

      Huawei Matebook 13 review: A cheaper Matebook X Pro with killer performance

      This $1,299 laptop is stiff competition for Huawei's own $1,499 Matebook X Pro.

      Despite company turmoil, Huawei continues to go after a slice of the US laptop market. Following the release of the Matebook X Pro last year, the Chinese company debuted the Matebook 13 today. The thin-and-light notebook promises to be lighter on customers' wallets than last year's more premium model but still strong in design and specs.

      posted in News
      mlnews
    • RE: Non-IT News Thread

      Apple hopes to offer a Netflix-like subscription service for games, report claims

      The report also claims Apple is considering acting as a games publisher.

      The sources said that Apple was talking with developers about its plans in the second half of 2018. No details were provided about the nature of the service or what kinds of games would be included. It's difficult to imagine an elegant way of including free-to-play games, which make money through in-app-purchases for game-related services and add-on content, in a paid subscription package.

      posted in Water Closet
      mlnews
    • RE: Miscellaneous Tech News

      Apple may be gearing up to release new iPads, 7th-gen iPod Touch soon

      The iOS 12.2 beta references four new iPads and one mysterious iPod.

      All the new iPads are listed as variants of "iPad11," showing both Wi-Fi and cellular models of the same device. The new iPod in question is dubbed "iPod9," a designation that hasn't been assigned to any existing iPods.

      posted in News
      mlnews
    • RE: Non-IT News Thread

      Electric scooter users aren’t wearing helmets—the head injury rate proves it

      Health experts raise concern about electric scooter use and head injury rate.

      Forty-percent of the injuries linked to electric scooter use involve knocks to the noggin while nearly 95 percent of riders don’t wear helmets, according to a first-of-its kind study published Friday, January 25.

      As electric scooters and bike shares zoom into cities across the country, health experts are chasing after the potential public health and safety issues circling the micromobility market. The new study, published in JAMA Network Open, is the first to try to track the pattern of injuries linked to electric scooters.

      posted in Water Closet
      mlnews