Day: November 26, 2013

Sex Offender Gets New Hearing After Hearing Officer Rants Against Arial Font

ericgoldman writes “People often feel passionately about fonts, but government decisions shouldn’t depend on what font people choose for their written submissions. In Massachusetts, a sex offender overturned the decision of a hearing officer after it was determined that (among other possible biases) the hearing officer posted to Facebook that he ‘can’t trust someone who drafts a letter in arial font!’ and ‘I might be biased. I think arial is inappropriate for most things.’ This is just the latest example of how social media rants by government workers are causing problems for the workers — and the people they deal with.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Sex Offender Gets New Hearing After Hearing Officer Rants Against Arial Font

This is a space shockwave traveling 1000 times faster than sound

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reports on the discovery of a “reverse shock wave racing inward at Mach 1000” in the Tycho’s supernova remnant, making its particles glow as you can see in the photograph above. If you think the idea of a shockwave traveling inward is counterintuitive, you aren’t alone. This is what’s happening: Read more…        

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This is a space shockwave traveling 1000 times faster than sound

Google turns in child porn owner who used its cloud services

Google turned in a man who copied child pornography to his cellphone using Picasa. Raul Gonzales, 40, was charged with possessing more than 3,000 pornographic pictures of children on the phone. The FBI says the investigation began in March when Google’s hashing technology found two child porn pictures in his Picasa library. Picasa is a cloud-sharing platform for images owned by Google. From there, the company notified the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which says it found more images on a Tumblr account owned by Gonzalez. That’s when the feds took over. Agents say they also found pictures of a 9-year-old who is close to the family, and that Gonzales admitted to sexually assaulting the child. “When an image is found,” Google assured CBS, “an employee will inspect it to make sure it’s actual abuse and not just a picture of a child at bathtime.” It’s good to know that an alleged sexual predator was identified and dealt with, and it’s good to know that Google assigns individual humans to inspect our naked children for the authorities’ consideration.        

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Google turns in child porn owner who used its cloud services

Volkswagen’s New App Creates Music Based On Your Driving Style

Have you ever noticed that how you drive is often based on what you’re listening to? Softer music can make you a more cautious driver, while loud upbeat tunes make you more aggressive. But with this new app from VW it’s the other way around. It generates music in real-time based on how you already drive, so your habits behind the wheel affect what’s being played on your sound system. Read more…        

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Volkswagen’s New App Creates Music Based On Your Driving Style

You Can Own an Unopened Beer From the Hindenburg

An unopened bottle of beer recovered from the wreckage of the Hindenburg is up for auction . Again. The 1937 bottle of Lowenbrau sold for over $18, 000 back in 2009 . The bottle has fire damage, but since the airship had a smoking room , I suppose that could’ve happened before it crashed. Read more…        

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You Can Own an Unopened Beer From the Hindenburg

Incredible Archaeological Discovery May Reset the Buddha’s Birth Date

A dig at the suspected birthplace of the Buddha has led to the discovery of an unknown timber structure beneath a series of brick temples. Remarkably, it’s the first known archaeological evidence linking the life of the Buddha to a specific century. Read more…        

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Incredible Archaeological Discovery May Reset the Buddha’s Birth Date

Here’s the first non-Valve Steam Machine prototype, care of iBuyPower

That game console headlining this text? It isn’t a white PS4 : it’s a commercial Steam Machines box, or at least a prototype of one. iBuyPower tells us that it’s building the box for a 2014 launch, but says it’s still early. The company says the prototypes are running an early build of Steam OS , but it’s not quite a finished product. That rings true of our impressions of Valve’s own reference model , which hosted a version of that same OS devoid of media playback and streaming options and had a very limited selection of games. iBuyPower tells us that it actually has two models, codenamed Gordon and Freeman, in the works. The two consoles are identical, save for the light bar round the middle — one model’s is clear, while the other’s is black when not illuminated. And, while the company wouldn’t tell us about the boxes’ internals, it did confirm that the hardware will run all Steam titles in 1080p resolution at 60fps. Not as much info as we’d like to know, but s till, it’s good to see hints of what we’ll see from Steam Machines when they hit the market — though we’ll likely have to wait until CES to see them in action. Filed under: Gaming Comments

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Here’s the first non-Valve Steam Machine prototype, care of iBuyPower

Futuremark Delists Samsung and HTC Android Devices for Cheating 3DMark

MojoKid writes “Benchmarks are serious business. Buying decisions are often made based on how well a product scores, which is why the press and analysts spend so much time putting new gadgets through their paces. However, benchmarks are only meaningful when there’s a level playing field, and when companies try to ‘game’ the business of benchmarking, it’s not only a form of cheating, it also bamboozles potential buyers who (rightfully) assume the numbers are supposed mean something. 3D graphics benchmark software developer Futuremark just ‘delisted’ a bunch of devices from its 3DMark benchmark results database because it suspects foul play is at hand. Of the devices listed, it appears Samsung and HTC in particular are indirectly being accused of cheating 3DMark for mobile devices. Delisted devices are stripped of their rank and scores. Futuremark didn’t elaborate on which specific rule(s) these devices broke, but a look at the company’s benchmarking policies reveals that hardware makers aren’t allowed to make optimizations specific to 3DMark, nor are platforms allowed to detect the launch of the benchmark executable unless it’s needed to enable multi-GPU and/or there’s a known conflict that would prevent it from running.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Futuremark Delists Samsung and HTC Android Devices for Cheating 3DMark

A Co-processor No More, Intel’s Xeon Phi Will Be Its Own CPU As Well

An anonymous reader writes “The Xeon Phi co-processor requires a Xeon CPU to operate… for now. The next generation of Xeon Phi, codenamed Knights Landing and due in 2015, will be its own CPU and accelerator. This will free up a lot of space in the server but more important, it eliminates the buses between CPU memory and co-processor memory, which will translate to much faster performance even before we get to chip improvements. ITworld has a look.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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A Co-processor No More, Intel’s Xeon Phi Will Be Its Own CPU As Well

This Infographic Shows Which Sites Properly Encypt Your Data

No company out there wants to admit it, but the fact is, there’s always a reasonable chance they’ll get hacked. If they don’t encrypt your data, those hacks reveal all kinds of information about you very easily. So, to see who’s doing encryption well, the Electronic Frontier Foundation decided to come up with a chart that looks at a number of the big companies. Read more…        

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This Infographic Shows Which Sites Properly Encypt Your Data