Author: kenmay

Is the Tablet Market In Outright Collapse? Data Suggests Yes

Nerval’s Lobster writes Is the tablet market rapidly collapsing? Mobile-analytics firm Flurry doesn’t come to quite that stark a conclusion, but things aren’t looking too good for touch-screens that don’t qualify as “phablets.” According to Flurry’s numbers, full-sized tablets accounted for only 11 percent of new devices in 2014, a decline from 2013, when that form-factor totaled 17 percent of the new-device market; small tablets experienced a smaller decline, falling from 12 percent to 11 percent of new devices between 2013 and 2014. (Meanwhile, phablets expanded from 4 percent of new devices in 2013 to 13 percent this year.) Boy Genius Report, for its part, looked at those numbers and decided that the tablet market is doomed: “Consumers happy with compact smartphones are not switching to larger iPhones for now, but former tablet buyers are.” That’s not to say people will stop using tablets, but the onetime theory that they would one day cannibalize all PCs looks increasingly nebulous. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Is the Tablet Market In Outright Collapse? Data Suggests Yes

NVIDIA Breached

jones_supa writes: Another day, another corporate network intrusion. NVIDIA has reportedly been breached in the first week of December, with the attack compromising personal information of the employees. There is no indication that other data has been compromised. This is according to an email sent out by the company’s privacy office and Nvidia’s SVP and CIO Bob Worwall on December 17th. It took NVIDIA a couple of weeks to pick up all the pieces and assess the incident. It appears that the issue was pinned down by an employee or several employees getting their personal data compromised outside of the company network. After that, the information was used to gain unauthorized access to the internal corporate network. NVIDIA’s IT team has taken extensive measures since then to enhance the security of the network against similar attacks in the future. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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NVIDIA Breached

BioLite’s New Lanterns Are a Tiny Powergrid For Your Campsite 

The ingenious twig-burning folks at BioLite have done it again. Their latest, the NanoGrid, is a combo battery pack and lighting system for the outdoors. Now you can charge your gadgets and light up your campsite with the power of a single wood stove. Read more…

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BioLite’s New Lanterns Are a Tiny Powergrid For Your Campsite 

Hackers Uploaded a Worm to South Korean Nuclear Plants

Here’s a scary thing that happened: South Korean authorities found evidence that a worm was recently removed from devices connected to nuclear power facilities. The news comes a little over a week after the country’s nuclear plant operator received warnings on Twitter that its network had been compromised . Thankfully, the reactor controls were not infected. Read more…

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Hackers Uploaded a Worm to South Korean Nuclear Plants

The Making of a 1980s Dungeons & Dragons Module

An anonymous reader writes: Over at Medium, Jon Peterson (author of Playing at the World) has put up a new in-depth article covering the internal process at TSR that created Dungeons & Dragons modules in the 1980s. The adventures created at that time (by the likes of Tracy Hickman, then a staff designer) paved the way for many later computer role-playing games, and this piece shows how TSR work was pitched, storyboarded, proofed, edited and organized. With the positive reception of the new 5th edition of D&D and the attention paid to the fortieth anniversary of the game, the historical record behind modern gaming gets ever more important. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The Making of a 1980s Dungeons & Dragons Module

Sticky sensors will monitor your body’s organs

Health sensors that attach directly to your organs to are potentially very useful, since they can measure miniscule electrical signals and other details that might otherwise fly under the radar. There’s just one problem: actually sticking those devices on to something that soft and squishy is tough. However, a team of Japanese researchers may have a solution. They’ve developed gel-based sensors that monitor electrical activity and strain while adhering to just about anything, including the gooey wet insides of your body. The key is the gel itself, which is made of the polyvinyl alcohol you might find in protective gloves or eye drops; it allows a grid of sensors to make contact without peeling or slipping off. Don’t expect to carry one of these sensors on your body any time in the near future. The scientists are only just experimenting on living creates, and it’ll be a while before it’s ready for human tests. However, there’s a lot of potential. You could have advanced pacemakers that know the smallest details about your heart’s palpitations, or plaster casts that make sure your limbs aren’t under too much pressure. You might not love the idea of having electronics that are virtually inseparable from your body, but it would be considerably more elegant than the implants you’d otherwise have to use. [Image credit: Sunwon Lee et. al.] Filed under: Science Comments Via: Popular Science Source: JST , Nature

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Sticky sensors will monitor your body’s organs

How ILM made you believe this painting was a real hangar in Star Wars

When I saw Return of the Jedi in the movie theater back in 1983 I and everyone else thought this matte painting of a Rebel hangar was a real thing—that, somehow, they managed to build a full size set with giant models. It was all a magic trick that used distraction to fool your brain. This BBC documentary explains how. Read more…

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How ILM made you believe this painting was a real hangar in Star Wars

SyFy’s ’12 Monkeys’ will sync with your Philips Hue bulbs

Sure, Philips’ color-changing Hue light bulbs can give you calendar or weather reminders, but if you buy them for practical reasons, you’re doing it wrong. To bust out their fun side, SyFy has just announced that its 12 Monkeys series , based on the cult Terry Gilliam film, will sync in time with the home WiFi lighting. The cable channel first did the Hue trick with Sharknado , an experience we found to be hit-and-miss . You’ll need to install SyFy’s iOS or Android app , then set it up to work with your Hue Bridge and bulbs. From there, it’ll provide special effects that “enhance” the show in a way you’ll either find cool or cheesy, depending on your state of mind . Filed under: Cellphones , Home Entertainment , HD Comments

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SyFy’s ’12 Monkeys’ will sync with your Philips Hue bulbs

10 Years In, Mars Rover Opportunity Suffers From Flash Memory Degradation

astroengine writes Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has been exploring the Martian surface for over a decade — that’s an amazing ten years longer than the 3-month primary mission it began in January 2004. But with its great successes, inevitable age-related issues have surfaced and mission engineers are being challenged by an increasingly troubling bout of “amnesia” triggered by the rover’s flash memory. “The problems started off fairly benign, but now they’ve become more serious — much like an illness, the symptoms were mild, but now with the progression of time things have become more serious, ” Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager John Callas, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told Discovery News. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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10 Years In, Mars Rover Opportunity Suffers From Flash Memory Degradation