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Enlarge (credit: 21st Century Fox ) A recent aerial survey revealed thousands of ancient Maya structures previously hidden beneath the dense Guatemalan jungle, including houses, irrigation canals, fortifications, and even a pyramid. More importantly, though, the survey of 2000 square kilometers of northeastern Guatemala provides a bird’s-eye view of the landscape of ancient Maya cities, farms, and highways. That big picture view of the Maya is letting archaeologists ask bigger questions about this still-enigmatic civilization. A sense of mystery still surrounds the Maya, mostly because so much of their once powerful and sophisticated society now lies hidden beneath thick tropical foliage. In recent years, archaeologists have started using lasers to peer beneath the thick canopy of leaves and map the ancient Maya landscape from above. They’re using a technology called “light detection and ranging,” or LiDAR, which maps the height of features on the ground by measuring how long it takes infrared light beamed down from a plane to bounce off those structures and return to the instrument. Using a plane lets surveyors cover a lot of ground in a short time, and one recent survey covered the largest area so far. The results hint that Maya civilization may have been more extensive and more densely populated than archaeologists realized. The survey, funded by the nonprofit Pacunam foundation, covered 2000 square kilometers of northeastern Guatemala in 2016. Archaeologists have been poring over the data since early 2017, and they say they’ve discovered over 60,000 new structures, from irrigation canals and highways to fortresses and pyramids. Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Microsoft on Thursday provided an update on Office 2019, in which it revealed that the apps will only run on Windows 10. From a report: In a support article for service and support of Windows and Office, Microsoft has revealed you'll need to upgrade to Windows 10 if you want the latest version of Office without subscribing to the company's Office 365 service. It's a move that's clearly designed to push businesses that are holding off on Office 365 into subscriptions, as the standalone Office 2019 software will only be supported on Windows 10 and not Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 machines. Microsoft is also altering the support lifecycle for Office 2019, so it will receive 5 years of mainstream support and then "approximately 2 years of extended support." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From Nintendo president Tatumi Kimishima's corporate management policy briefing today ( PDF ) : We have started development of an animated movie featuring “Super Mario” with Illumination, the movie studio that brought films such as “Despicable Me” and “Minions.” For this project Mr. Chris Meledandri, Founder and CEO of Illumination and Shigeru Miyamoto, Representative Director, Fellow of Nintendo will co-producing the film. The film will be co-financed by Universal Pictures and Nintendo, and distributed theatrically worldwide by Universal Pictures. Further announcements on details such as release dates will be made at a later date. We look forward to providing further information about the release timing for this movie that we hope everyone will enjoy. As a part of our effort to expand Nintendo IP beyond video games, we look forward to bringing smiles to people around the world through this movie. Let's hope it fares better than last time . (via Rolling Stone )

Static shelves with bins holding small parts take up a lot of space. It's interesting to see this case study of how a traditional warehouse was able to use wasted air space to reduce storage area by 94%. (more…)

A year ago, NVIDIA's GeForce Now game-streaming service let me play The Witcher 3 , a notoriously demanding PC-only title, on a MacBook Air. This year, NVIDIA finally unveiled the Windows version of the service, and it was even more impressive. I was able to play Rainbow Six: Siege and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds on underpowered PCs that sell for $200 to $300. If NVIDIA's Mac demo was a revelation, playing high-end PC games on discount hardware felt like a miracle. Now, after testing the GeForce Now beta release on PCs for a week, I'm even more intrigued by the possibilities of game streaming. To put it simply, the service lets you remotely tap into the power of an expensive gaming rig from any computer. It runs on remote servers powered by NVIDIA's GTX 1080Ti GPUs. While the company isn't divulging further specifications, you can bet they're also stuffed with more than enough RAM and CPU horsepower. (NVIDIA claimed they were the equivalent of a $1, 500 gaming PC a year ago.) When you launch GeForce Now, you're actually watching a video streaming to your PC. But since there's very little latency between what you're seeing and your keyboard and mouse inputs, it feels as if the games are running right on your computer. You don't need a very powerful PC to run the GeForce Now client. At the minimum, NVIDIA recommends using a 3.1GHz Core i3 processor and 4GB RAM, along with either Intel HD 2000, GeForce 600 series or Radeon HD 3000 graphics. Those are all specs you'll find in PCs four to six years old. But of course, solid internet access is a must. You'll need speeds of at least 25Mbps, but NVIDIA advises a 50Mbps connection for the best experience. You'll also have to make sure your computer has a reliable link to your router -- which means you'll either need to use an Ethernet cable or a 5GHz Wi-Fi network. At the moment, GeForce Now on Macs and PCs only lets you play games you already own on Steam, Blizzard's Battle.net or Ubisoft's Uplay. Anything you don't own can be purchased through the streaming platform. That's a major difference from GeForce Now on NVIDIA's SHIELD tablet and set-top box , which includes a handful of titles as part of its $7.99 monthly fee as well as games for purchase. Both versions of the service support popular titles like Overwatch, Call of Duty WWII and The Witcher 3 , but you'll probably have to wait a bit for them to work with lesser-known games. NVIDIA isn't specifying what it takes to make a game compatible with the service, but I'd wager it has to test them out to make sure nothing breaks in the streaming process. Setting up GeForce Now is as easy as downloading and installing the client and choosing a title to play. Then you just need to provide your login information for whichever service hosts the game. If you're launching a Steam title, you'll end up seeing the service's familiar Windows interface, where you can either buy the game or download it to your library. One big downside with GeForce Now is that you'll have to install games every time you want to play them, since you're thrown onto a different server whenever you log in. It's not a huge problem, though, since the remote machines are plugged into a fat network pipe and offer unlimited storage. PUBG , which weighs in at 12GB, installed in around four minutes, while The Witcher 3 (31.7GB) took over ten minutes. Devindra Hardawar/AOL On the Surface Laptop -- a great ultrabook marred only by its weak integrated graphics -- running over our office's WiFi, PUBG felt almost as smooth as it does on my dedicated gaming rig. It ran at a steady 60 frames per second, even though I cranked the graphics settings to "Ultra" and the resolution to 2, 560 by 1, 400. After a few minutes of running around the game's apocalyptic European town and taking out other players, I almost forgot I was playing something that was running on a server hundreds of miles away. The game's excellent audio design also survived -- I had no trouble pinpointing people sneaking around a house while wearing headphones, and the bomb strikes in "Red Zones" still rattled my skull. Mostly, though, I was surprised that I didn't feel any lag while I was using the Surface Laptop's keyboard and a Logitech wireless G903 gaming mouse. Moving the camera around and aiming my weapons felt incredibly responsive, and I was surprised that I was able to outgun some players in some heated shootouts. That lack of latency as even more impressive with Overwatch , an even faster-paced game. Characters like Tracer and Genji, both of whom would be tough to play with any noticeable lag, felt as nimble as they do on my desktop. I didn't even have trouble landing shots with snipers like Hanzo and Ana. I was simply able to enjoy playing the game as I normally do. And, even more so than PUBG , I was impressed by how well GeForce Now handled Overwatch's vibrant and colorful graphics. Gorgeous maps like Ilios and Dorado appeared as detailed as ever, and the same goes for the game's imaginative character models and costumes. GeForce Now easily handled graphically intensive titles like Destiny 2 and The Witcher 3 , which felt even more impressive to play on the Surface Laptop. Both games managed to run at 60 FPS at a 2, 560 by 1, 400 resolution (the service supports up to 2, 560 by 1, 600), with all of their graphics settings turned all the way up. Even though Destiny 2 isn't exactly a fast-paced shooter, it still benefited from the service's low latency, which helped me mow down waves of enemies without much trouble. And with the Witcher 3 , I was impressed that its graphically rich world didn't lose any fidelity while being streamed. Perhaps because these games are particularly demanding, I occasionally experienced connection hiccups while playing them. They only lasted a few seconds, but if I were fighting against tough bosses, they could have easily led to my doom. Those disruptions also made it clear that your experience with GeForce Now will depend largely on your internet connection. I had a mostly trouble-free experience in our office and at home, where I have 100 Mbps cable service. But if you don't have a steady 25 Mbps connection, Ethernet access or strong wireless reception, you'll likely see more gameplay-disrupting issues. I wasn't able to run any games at Starbucks locations around NYC, and based on my terrible experiences with hotel WiFi, I'd wager you'd have trouble using GeForce Now while traveling, too. (The service is only supported in the US and Europe, at the moment.) Devindra Hardawar/AOL The big problem with GeForce Now? We don't know what the service will look like once it leaves beta. You can request access now , and if you're lucky enough to get in, you can test the service for free. NVIDIA isn't giving us a timeframe for an official release, or how much it'll eventually cost. Based on what we typically see with streaming services, I'd also expect GeForce Now's smooth performance to take a hit once it's open to the hordes of frag-happy gamers. For now, though, it's a glimpse at the true future of gaming -- a world where we don't have to worry if our video cards are fast enough, or if we have enough hard drive space for a massive open world game. Well, as long as you have an internet connection fast enough to handle all of that gaming goodness.

eBay and PayPal remained tight even after the two headed to splitsville in 2015. That's bound to change in the near future now that the auction site has decided to offer an integrated payment system built by Amsterdam-based company Adyen. The move will give way to a more seamless payment experience -- no need to log into another website to pay -- since Adyen's product (already used by Netflix and Uber) is purely a back-end payment service. You might encounter the new payment system as soon as the second half of 2018, when the e-commerce giant deploys it (on a small scale) in North America. Its availability will expand in 2019 and the year after, until all sellers have been transitioned to the new system by 2021. eBay has an existing contract to continue offering PayPal as a payment option until July 2023, but neither company has announced if they have plans to extend that partnership beyond that point. According to the auction site's announcement, offering its own intermediate payment system will allow it to build a central console where sellers can track all their transactions easily. Plus, it'll lower the payment processing charges sellers have to pay. Even with the lower charges, Recode says the move will boost eBay's revenue by $2 billion, since it can now pocket those payment processing fees. At the moment, PayPal's value is billions more than eBay -- its shares fell after news of eBay's decision was announced, but it remains to be seen if it will have a huge and permanent effect on the payment portal's business. Wenig: We have made the decision to intermediate payments on $eBay . We have already begun building this capability, and will move as quickly as we can under the terms of our operating agreement with PayPal. pic.twitter.com/qDp3mDmBVx — eBay Newsroom (@eBayNewsroom) January 31, 2018 Via: Recode Source: eBay , (Twitter)

Pesticides are bad for humans, and they've been linked to everything from birth defects to cancer. They're not much better for the environment: In "Sustaining the Earth, " textbook author G. Tyler Miller--the man who literally wrote the book on environmental science--points out that over 95% and 98% of sprayed herbicides and pesticides, respectively, land on something other than what they're trying to kill. They then contaminate and pollute the air, water and soil. We need to shift towards a natural and eco-friendly way to protect crops, and the UK's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology may have the solution: Wildflowers. As it turns out, wildflowers are a breeding ground for parasitic wasps and hoverflies--which doesn't sound pleasant, until you consider that those are the natural predators of cereal leaf beetles and aphids, which are both persistent and destructive crop pests. Thus the CEH is running a five-year trial in England on 15 farms, planting strips of wildflowers that run directly through crop fields. (As a side bonus, wildflowers also host bees , which help with pollinating crops.) The wildflower tactic is based on science backed up in a 2015 study published by the Royal Society's Biological Sciences journal. "Our study demonstrates a high effectiveness of annual flower strips in promoting pest control, " reads the report, "reducing CLB (cereal leaf beetle) pest levels below the economic threshold. Hence, the studied flower strip offers a viable alternative to insecticides." Some farmers had previously planted wildflowers on the periphery of a field of crops, but this only protected the crops nearest the periphery. Thus CEH's trial has been planting six-meter-wide wildflower strips 100 meters apart inside the crop fields, allowing the insect predators a convenient commute. Because harvesters are now precisely guided by GPS, the crops can be reaped while the flower strips are left intact. "The flowers planted include oxeye daisy, red clover, common knapweed and wild carrot, " The Guardian reports. "Similar field trials are also underway in Switzerland , using flowers such as cornflowers, coriander, buckwheat, poppy and dill." If the CEH trial turns out to be a success, the next step will be to convince farmers. "The majority of crop protection advice given in the UK, " explains Bill Parker, director of research at the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, "is from agronomists tied to companies who make their money from selling pesticides."

prisoninmate writes: LibreOffice 6.0 comes two and a half years after the LibreOffice 5.x series, and it's the biggest release of the open-source and cross-platform office suite so far. It introduces a revamped design with new table styles, improved Notebookbars, new gradients, new Elementary icons, menu and toolbar improvements, and updated motif/splash screen. LibreOffice 6.0 offers superior interoperability with Microsoft Office documents and compatibility with the EPUB3 format by allowing users to export ODT files to EPUB3. It also lets you import your AbiWord, Microsoft Publisher, PageMaker, and QuarkXPress documents and templates thanks to the implementation of a set of new open-source libraries contributed by the Document Liberation project. Many great improvements were made to the OOXML and ODF filters, as well as in the EMF+, Adobe Freehand, Microsoft Visio, Adobe Pagemaker, FictionBook, Apple Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, as well as Quattro Pro import functionality, and to the XHTML export. LibreOffice Online received numerous improvements as well in this major release of LibreOffice. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Multiplying large numbers before calculators led to a number of ingenious inventions to make things easier, like these Genaille-Lucas rulers demonstrated by the fine folks at DONG. Via manufacturer Creative Crafthouse : In the days before calculators, methods of simplifying calculations were of much interest. In 1617 Napier also published a book describing a method to multiply, divide and extract square roots using a set of bars or rods. These became known as Napier's Bones. (avail on our website) In the late 1800s, Henri Genaille, a French civil engineer, invented an improvement to Napier's Bones that eliminates the need to handle carries from one digit position to the next. The problem was posed by Edouard Lucas and thus the alternate name of Genaille-Lucas Rulers (or Rods). There are also sets for division. You can get your own set online or print your own from these free files. • Genaille-Lucas Rulers (YouTube / DONG )

Libyan desert glass is a material of unknown origin scattered across a large swath of the Sahara. Among it, scientists found Hypatia stones , a strange phosphorous-nickel alloy recently determined to be extra-terrestrial. (more…)