What Do Luxury Sleeper Cabs for Long-Haul Truck Drivers Look Like?

The life of a long-haul trucker can be tough, even when they’re not behind the wheel. When it’s time to get some shuteye in the truck’s cab, some of them have a scant 36″ behind the seats in which to stuff a twin mattress, and there’s barely enough room to turn around back there, let alone get dressed and undressed. And for the trucker who brings their spouse on the road—yes, husband-and-wife trucker teams exist—it’s simply not enough space for two people to live out of. For those that can pony up for a larger cab, an Indiana-based company called ARI Legacy Sleepers specializes in tricking them out with custom packages suited to the customer’s tastes. Let’s take a look at some of their work. First off, if you see a cab that’s this size, you can bet there’s more behind the rear seats than just a twin mattress. And you’d be right. When you look back between the seats, here’s what you see: And here’s the view looking fore: Overhead is a small, subtle lighting trick that provides the illusion of more space: Using a mirror and one-way mirror to provide “infinity lighting, ” making the LEDS look like they stretch off forever overhead. Close the curtains to the “cockpit” and enjoy your flatscreen in peace. There’s plenty of storage both above and below the kitchen counter, which features an electric stovetop and a sink. When not in use, both have covers that conceal them, providing uninterrupted counter space. This photo below is not the exact same interior, but you get the idea. Also note the mirror above the sink, so the driver can shave. Opposite the counter is a sofa and a little nook to the right of it. You’ll notice a cable management port at back right; one can place a computer, laptop or gaming system here. To the right of that is a door, and the toilet paper holder on the inside of it has probably clued you in… …yep, they’ve got a bathroom in here. A wall-mounted dispenser obviates the need for shelving. Moving back inside the cabin, we see the sofa, which of course has storage beneath it. You might think, “Is that where the driver sleeps?” Not exactly; note the dual tracks in the wall. An elevator bed motors down at the touch of a button. For cabs where there is no rear door, the sofa and bed arrangement can be placed across the rear wall. And as you can see here, the choice of lighting strongly impacts your perception of the space. The lighting scheme in this one here reminds me of The Peach Pit from the original Beverly Hills 90210. And this one below is like The Peach Pit but with hardwood floors. With spaces this small, the materials choice also makes a profound visual impact. This one here is owned by a married couple who both go on the road together, and I imagine it must recall what their actual home looks like, aesthetically: Another customer has opted to have his look like more of a bachelor pad: And for drivers who plan to do some open-air sightseeing during downtime, there’s an option to haul your Harley. Yep, if you’ve got the space you can have a motorcycle “garage” with side-loading ramp installed: You can check out more of ARI’s custom designs here , and they also have a good amount of photos on their Facebook page .

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What Do Luxury Sleeper Cabs for Long-Haul Truck Drivers Look Like?

Russians Used Malware On Android Devices To Track and Target Ukraine Artillery, Says Report

schwit1 quotes a report from Reuters: A hacking group linked to the Russian government and high-profile cyber attacks against Democrats during the U.S. presidential election likely used a malware implant on Android devices to track and target Ukrainian artillery units from late 2014 through 2016, according to a new report released Thursday. The malware was able to retrieve communications and some locational data from infected devices, intelligence that would have likely been used to strike against the artillery in support of pro-Russian separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine, the report from cyber security firm CrowdStrike found. The hacking group, known commonly as Fancy Bear or APT 28, is believed by U.S. intelligence officials to work primarily on behalf of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. The implant leveraged a legitimate Android application developed by a Ukrainian artillery officer to process targeting data more quickly, CrowdStrike said. Its deployment “extends Russian cyber capabilities to the front lines of the battlefield, ” the report said, and “could have facilitated anticipatory awareness of Ukrainian artillery force troop movement, thus providing Russian forces with useful strategic planning information.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Russians Used Malware On Android Devices To Track and Target Ukraine Artillery, Says Report

2016 MacBook Pro Fails To Receive a Recommendation From Consumer Reports

Consumer Reports has released its evaluation of the new MacBook Pro laptops, and it’s not good. The 2016 MacBook Pro is the first MacBook to fail to receive a recommendation from the nonprofit organization dedicated to unbiased product testing. 9to5Mac reports: In a post breaking down the decision not to recommend the new MacBook Pros, Consumer Reports explains that while the new models held up well in terms of display quality and performance, the battery life issues were too big of an issue to overlook. The organization tested three MacBook Pro variants: a 13-inch Touch Bar model, a 15-inch Touch Bar model, and a 13-inch model without the Touch Bar. The general consensus was that “MacBook Pro battery life results were highly inconsistent from one trial to the next.” Consumer Reports explains that the 13-inch Touch Bar model saw battery life of 16 hours in one test and 3.75 hours in another, while the non-Touch Bar model maxed out at 19.5 hours, but also lasted just 4.5 hours in another test. The 15-inch model ranged from 18.5 hours to 8 hours. Generally, according to the report, it’s expected for battery life to vary from one trial to another by less than 5 percent, meaning that the battery life variances with the new MacBook Pro are very abnormal. Once that was completed, Consumer Reports experimented by conducting the same test using Chrome and “found battery life to be consistently high on all six runs.” While the organization can’t let that affect its final decision due to its protocol to only use the first-party browser, it’s something users may want to try. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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2016 MacBook Pro Fails To Receive a Recommendation From Consumer Reports

World’s First ‘Solar Panel Road’ Opens In France

The world’s first solar road has officially opened in the small village of Tourouvre-au-Perche in Normandy, France. The road is 1 kilometer long and can generate enough electricity to power the street lights. The Verge reports: That might not sound very impressive for 30, 000 square feet of solar panels — and it kind of isn’t, especially for its $5.2 million price tag. The panels have been covered in a silicon-based resin that allows them to withstand the weight of passing big rigs, and if the road performs as expected, Royal wants to see solar panels installed across 1, 000 kilometers of French highway. There are numerous issues, however. For one, flat solar panels are less effective than the angled panels that are installed on roofs, and they’re also massively more expensive than traditional panels. Colas, the company that installed the road, hopes to reduce the cost of the panels going forward and it has around 100 solar panel road projects in progress around the world. Earlier this year, Solar Roadways partnered with the Missouri Department of Transportation to upgrade a small stretch of the historic Route 66 roadway with solar-powered panels. They too are facing the same seemingly insurmountable cost problems as Colas and the French. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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World’s First ‘Solar Panel Road’ Opens In France

Huge Fire Torches 140 Buildings in Japanese City

A large fire has engulfed scores of houses, shops, and other buildings in the Japanese coastal city of Itoigawa. The blaze, which started mid-morning local time, shows no sign of slowing, and fire crews are frantically working to put out the flames. Read more…

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Huge Fire Torches 140 Buildings in Japanese City

Raspberry Pi releases an OS to breathe new life into old PCs

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has released an experimental version of its Linux-based Pixel OS for Windows and Mac PCs. The OS, originally designed to run only on the Raspberry Pi hobby board, comes with the Chromium web browser and a suite of productivity and coding tools. “We asked ourselves one simple question: If we like Pixel so much, why ask people to buy Raspberry Pi hardware in order to run it?” founder Eben Upton wrote in a blog post . Built on top of Debian, the OS is light enough to run most old machines, provided you have at least 512MB of RAM. “Because we’re using the venerable i386 architecture variant it should run even on vintage machines like my ThinkPad X40 (above), ” Upton said. It’s easy to try out, but Upton urges you back up machines that may have valuable data. After downloading the image, you burn it either to a DVD or USB stick, then enable booting of those devices. You can normally do that by tweaking your PC’s BIOS or by holding the “C” key down when you boot up a Mac. From there, it’ll run the OS with no need to install anything. If you booted on a USB stick, you’ll get the option to run “with persistence, ” meaning any changes or files will stick for the next session. If you’d rather just play around and start fresh next time, you can run without persistence or reset it. As mentioned, you get a full suite of apps and a browser, but unlike with the Pi version, there’s no Minecraft or Wolfram Mathematica because of licensing issues. There are plenty of lightweight Linux distros for older PCs (including Debian itself), or you could use Neverware , which turns your old laptop into a Chromebook. However, the Pi Foundation supplies a lot of useful Linux apps with Pixel, and aims to make it as easy to use as possible. By porting it to desktop machines, Upton also feels “we can more easily see where [the operating system’s] weak points are and work to fix them [on the Pi].” The group thinks it could be a perfect for schools (where the Raspberry Pi already has a big foothold ) to help students learn programming and various apps. The idea is that they can learn at school, then using the persistent boot option, continue working at home with exactly the same setup. As mentioned, the Pixel OS is still in the experimental stages, and doesn’t run on all machines. On his own modern Mac, Upton said, “the machine fails to identify the image as bootable.” They’ll be releasing more updates going forward, but if you’re interested in giving it a try, you can hit announce post to find it. Source: Raspberry Pi

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China Claims Tests of ‘Reactionless’ EM Drive Were Successful

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Science: The “reactionless” Electromagnetic Drive, or EmDrive for short, is an engine propelled solely by electromagnetic radiation confined in a microwave cavity. Such an engine would violate the law of conservation of momentum by generating mechanical action without exchanging matter. But since 2010, both the United States and China have been pouring serious resources into these seemingly impossible engines. And now China claims its made a key breakthrough. Dr. Chen Yue, Director of Commercial Satellite Technology for the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) announced on December 10, 2016 that not only has China successfully tested EmDrives technology in its laboratories, but that a proof-of-concept is currently undergoing zero-g testing in orbit (according to the International Business Times, this test is taking place on the Tiangong 2 space station). If China is able to install EmDrives on its satellites for orbital maneuvering and altitude control, they would become cheaper and longer lasting. Li Feng, lead CAST designer for commercial satellites, states that the current EmDrive has only a thrust of single digit millinewtons, for orbital adjustment; a medium sized satellite needs 0.1-1 Newtons. A functional EmDrive would also open up new possibilities for long range Chinese interplanetary probes beyond the Asteroid belt, as well freeing up the mass taken up by fuel in manned spacecraft for other supplies and equipment to build lunar and Martian bases. On the military side of things, EmDrives could also be used to create stealthier, longer lasting Chinese surveillance satellites. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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China Claims Tests of ‘Reactionless’ EM Drive Were Successful

Dutch scientists’ artificial leaf can create medicine anywhere

Wouldn’t it be great to have the ability to concoct medicine anywhere the sun shines, even if it’s on another planet? A team of Dutch scientists from Eindhoven University of Technology have developed an artificial leaf-like device that could make that happen. The researchers, inspired by plants that can make their own food through photosynthesis , used materials that can match leaves’ capability to capture and store sunlight for later use. These materials are called luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs), which have special light-sensitive molecules that can capture huge amounts of incoming light. The team designed a device that looks like a leaf by incorporating thin, microchannels mimicking veins in a silicon rubber LSC. By pumping liquids into those channels, their molecules can get into contact with the sunlight absorbed by the LSC. The energy is intense enough to trigger chemical reactions. According to the researchers, the device’s chemical production was 40 percent higher than the rate demonstrated by similar experiments without LSC. “Using a reactor like this means you can make drugs anywhere, in principle, whether malaria drugs in the jungle or paracetamol on Mars, ” lead researcher Dr. Timothy Noël explained. “All you need is sunlight and this mini-factory.” Source: Eindhoven University of Technology

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Dutch scientists’ artificial leaf can create medicine anywhere

Online RPG ‘Asheron’s Call’ to shut down after 17 years

Well-done online role-playing games tend to have a long shelf life , but the Asheron’s Call series has lasted longer than most. It got started way back in 1999, and has lasted through three publisher changes, a shift to a buy-once model and even a full-on resurrection , among other tribulations. However, even classics have to call it quits at some point. Turbine has announced that it’s ending support for both the original Asheron’s Call and Asheron’s Call 2 on January 31st, 2017. The series will be completely free to play for any account holder until then, but you won’t get to create a new account to see what the fuss is about. The shutdown wasn’t exactly unexpected. Asheron’s Call support has been limited to maintenance for over two years, so it wasn’t about to experience a revival. And just a day before the closure announcement, Turbine revealed that it was spinning off the Dungeons & Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online teams into a separate company, Standing Stone Games. Given that those are Turbine’s only active projects, it’s not hard to see what’s likely happening — Turbine may still own Asheron’s Call , but it doesn’t have the staff needed to keep the lights on. Don’t expect a revival like the series saw in 2012. There is a crowdfunding effort from fans hoping to buy the franchise and keep it alive, but that’s contingent on both sufficient support and Turbine being willing to sell. Turbine had talked about shifting to privately-run servers, but that didn’t happen. As it stands, massively multiplayer online games aren’t as red hot as they used to be. Even World of Warcraft is nowhere near the subscriber count of its heyday. It’s sad to see Asheron’s Call go, but the MMO world has changed a lot since it arrived 17 years ago. Source: Asheron’s Call (Facebook)

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Online RPG ‘Asheron’s Call’ to shut down after 17 years

LibreOffice Will Have New ‘MUFFIN’ UI

New submitter iampiti writes: The Document Foundation has announced a new user interface concept for LibreOffice. Users will be able to choose from several toolbar configurations including the “Notebook bar” which is similar to Microsoft Office’s ribbon. According to TDF, “The MUFFIN (My User Friendly — Flexible Interface) represents a new approach to UI design, based on the respect of user needs rather than on the imposition of a single UI to all users” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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LibreOffice Will Have New ‘MUFFIN’ UI