The Abbey Winery in Pannonhalma , Hungary, has one of the oldest wine making traditions in Europe. In 996, Benedictine monks settled on the Sacred Hill of Pannonia—and they’ve always been closely associated with viticulture and winemaking introduced by the Romans. Read more…
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A Rare Tour Inside a Thousand-Year-Old High-Tech Winery
Before laughing off an electric Harley, read on. BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON—On June 18, 2014, Harley-Davidson shocked the motorcycle community by announcing an electric motorcycle prototype called Project LiveWire. The Project LiveWire teaser video showed a bike screaming down route 66, emitting a sound that vaguely resembled a turbine. I could barely believe what I saw, so I immediately spent time reading comments about LiveWire—naturally, the reaction was mixed. Some gave props to Harley-Davidson for thinking outside the box; others complained “this is no Harley.” The current trend for all-electric and hybrid vehicles is to assume a “quasi-futuristic,” sci-fi-infused look that pretty much leaves convention and tradition at the curb (think Nissan Leaf). Many automotive enthusiasts don’t see a lot of “soul” or “character” in these appliance vehicles. But enter Harley-Davidson, the company known for its shaking, rumbling, chrome-clad motorcycles that go beyond machinery and extend to a lifestyle. These bikes radiate tradition, heritage, and style. A Harley-Davidson is a Harley because it has a thumping, 45-degree, v-twin, air-cooled power plant breathing through pipes that emit a signature sound. Harley power must be transmitted to the rear wheel via a rubber belt, so now the company may also offer an electric bike. Really ? The motorcycle community may need a little time to adjust. And as for my own curiosity about what it would be like to ride LiveWire, I had no idea I would find out just a few weeks later. Next-generation design The Project LiveWire engineering team uses all of the latest design, prototyping, and manufacturing expertise that Harley-Davidson developed over the last century of building v-twin motorcycles. I learned about how the LiveWire team engineered and built their ground-breaking electric bike when I talked with lead project engineer Ben Lund. Lund studied Mechanical Engineering and—as you’d expect—loves riding. He’s got multiple motorcycles spanning dirt to street. Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Harley-Davidson goes electric
countach44 writes that (in the words of the below-linked article) “Chicagoans are costing the city tens of millions of dollars — through good behavior.” The City of Chicago recently installed speed cameras near parks and schools as part of the “Children’s Safety Zone Program, ” claiming a desire to decrease traffic-related incidents in those area. The city originally budgeted (with the help of the company providing the system) to have $90M worth of income from the cameras — of which only $40M is now expected. Furthermore, the city has not presented data on whether or not those areas have become safer. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Speed Cameras In Chicago Earn $50M Less Than Expected
Google has already been pretty great about supporting two-factor authentication. Now, the company is adding another option: authentication with a secure USB key. Read more…
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Google Adds a USB Key Option to Two-Factor Authentication
Leo Reynolds Geology rewards an active imagination. It gives us a lot of tantalizing clues about very different times and places in Earth’s history, leaving us to try to answer “Man, what would that be like? ” One of the things that’s tough to image involves changing something that most of us never give a second thought—the fact that compasses point north. That’s plainly true today , but it hasn’t always been. What we call the “north” magnetic pole—the object of your compass’ affection—doesn’t need to be located in the Arctic (it noticeably wanders there, by the way). It feels equally at home in the Antarctic. The geologic record tells us that the north and south magnetic poles frequently trade places. In fact, the signal of this magnetic flip-flopping recorded in the seafloor was the final key to the discovery of plate tectonics, as it let us see how ocean crust forms and moves over time . That the poles flip is interesting in itself, but “Man, what would that be like? ” Does the magnetic pole slowly walk along the curve of the Earth over thousands of years, meaning your compass might have pointed to some part of the equator for long stretches of time? Do the poles weaken to nothing, disappearing for a while before re-emerging in the new configuration? Do they somehow flip in the blink of an eye? Given the number of species that use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate—especially for seasonal migrations—this is more than an academic curiosity. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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The north pole moved to the North Pole in a single human lifetime
Wait, what happened at this thing?!? Microsoft In San Francisco today, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said something that was more than a little surprising: Microsoft loves Linux. The operating system once described as a “cancer” by Nadella’s predecessor, Steve Ballmer, is now being embraced (if not extended) with open arms, at least when it comes to Redmond’s Azure cloud platform. Nadella told us that some 20 percent of VMs on Azure use the open source operating system. The San Francisco event served dual purpose. First, it was an opportunity for Microsoft to tell the world just how much Azure had grown—Microsoft may not have been first to the cloud computing scene, but a ton of investment and development means that the company is now credible, and, if Gartner’s magic quadrants are to be believed, world-leading. Second, the event served to introduce new features and partnerships. Microsoft’s major sales pitch for Azure is essentially a three-pronged argument that Microsoft is the only company that can really do cloud right. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Microsoft “loves Linux” as it makes Azure bigger, better
New submitter DemonOnIce writes: According to The Verge and original report the site that monitor’s China’s Great Firewall activity, China is conducting a large-scale attack on iCloud and Microsoft accounts using its government firewall software. Chinese users may be facing an unpleasant surprise as they are directed to a dummy site designed to like an Apple login page (or a Microsoft one, as appropriate). Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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China Staging a Nationwide Attack On iCloud and Microsoft Accounts
Scott James Remnant, now Technical Lead on ChromeOS, was a Debian developer before that. That’s how he became involved from the beginning (becoming Developer Manager, and then serving on the Technical Board) on the little derivative distribution that Mark Shuttleworth decided to make of Debian Unstable, and for which the name Ubuntu was eventually chosen. On this date in 2004, Ubuntu 4.10 — aka Warty Warthog, or just Warty — was released, and Remnant has shared a detailed, nostalgic look back at the early days of the project that has (whatever else you think of it ) become one of the most influential in the world of open source and Free software. I was excited that Canonical sent out disks that I could pass around to friends and family that looked acceptably polished to them in a way that Sharpie-marked Knoppix CD-ROMs didn’t, and that the polish extended to the installer, the desktop, and the included constellation of software, too. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Ubuntu Turns 10
I’m not going to lie: I’m pretty delighted that I (and my partner ) won Audi’s TDI Challenge, where nine Diesel A3s attempted to drive from Albuquerque to San Diego on a single tank of Diesel. Part of why I’m delighted is because winning means it’s over, since it was a pretty miserable process . Here’s how we did it. Read more…
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How To Squeeze 830 Miles Out Of One Tank Of Fuel And Remain Sane…ish
Tinder just announced that the so-far totally free dating app will launch a premium service in early November. “We are adding features users have been begging us for, ” said CEO Sean Rad . No word on what those features will be yet, however. Read more…
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Tinder just announced that the so-far totally free dating app will launch a premium service in early