iOS 7.1.1 is available this morning for compatible Apple devices. The small update includes improved Touch ID performance as well as some bug fixes. Visit Apple’s (yet-to-be updated) updates page to learn more . Read more…
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iOS 7.1.1 is available this morning for compatible Apple devices.
Subterranean captains’ chairs, rounded counters for flight monitoring, perfect pastels in the crew’s uniforms: Midcentury Herman Miller and Eames furnishings look awesome on the Starship Enterprise. Take a minute to check out these throwback posters and you’ll be daydreaming of Captain Kirk shaking you an out-of-this-world gin martini. [ MattWileyArt via Retroist ] Read more…
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The Starship Enterprise Looks Great Decked Out In Midcentury Design
Researchers borrowed optical techniques from astronomy and ophthalmology to dramatically improve imaging of biological samples. This video, created by scientists at the HHMI Janelia Farm Research Campus, shows neurons in the brain of a living zebrafish embryo. You can see the difference in quality when their new technique of “adaptive optics” is switched on and off. According to physicist/engineer Eric Betzig who led the research, “The results are pretty eye-popping.” Yes. Yes they are. ( HHMI News , via National Geographic )
Alyson Hurt Earlier this month, Comcast told the Federal Communications Commission that it needs the green light to purchase Time Warner Cable as a way to stay competitive with Google, Netflix, and others. Nevertheless, in its latest quarterly earnings report published on Tuesday, Comcast reported that it made $1.9 billion in profits in the first quarter of 2014—an 18 percent increase year-over-year. “Our operating momentum is continuing as we enter 2014 and is highlighted by our second consecutive quarter of video customer growth, as well as strength in high-speed Internet and business services,” Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts said in a statement. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Rolling in it: Comcast profited $1.9 billion in first 3 months of 2014
Pavel Durov, founder and former CEO of Vkontakte. Pavel Durov/VK Pavel Durov, the founder of Vkontakte (VK)—the largest social network in Russia—said on Tuesday that he fled the country one day after being forced out of the company, claiming that he felt threatened by Kremlin officials. In a post on his profile page on Monday, Durov explained that he was fired from his position as CEO of VK and that the so-called “Russian Facebook” is now “under the complete control” of two oligarchs close to President Vladimir Putin. Durov explained that after seven years of relative social media freedom in Russia, his refusal to share user data with Russian law enforcement has set him at odds with the Kremlin, which has recently been trying to tighten its grip on the Internet, according to The Moscow Times . Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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“Russian Facebook” founder flees country after being forced out as CEO
The leaked slide that purports to out the next-generation Thunderbolt controller. VR-Zone Thunderbolt 2 just started showing up in devices late last year, but a new slide leaked by VR-Zone is giving us our first glimpse at what the next version is going to look like. Dubbed “Alpine Ridge,” the new Thunderbolt controllers will double Thunderbolt 2’s bandwidth from 20Gbps to 40Gbps, will reportedly support PCI Express 3.0, and will reduce power usage by 50 percent compared to current controllers. The downside is that the new version will require the use of a new connector—it supports charging for devices that use up to 100W of power and it’s 3 mm shorter than current connectors, but adapters will be required to maintain compatibility with older Thunderbolt accessories. Doubling the available bandwidth will enable next-generation Thunderbolt controllers to drive two 4K displays simultaneously, where current controllers can only drive one. The new controllers will allegedly be compatible with a variety of other protocols as well, including DisplayPort 1.2, USB 3.0, and HDMI 2.0. Intel will offer two different versions of the controller—a version that uses four PCI Express lanes to drive two Thunderbolt ports and an “LP” (presumably “Low Power”) version that uses two PCI Express lanes to drive one port. This is consistent with the current controllers. High-end devices like the Mac Pro and Retina MacBook Pro use two-port controllers, while lower-end, lower-power devices like the Mac Mini and MacBook Air use the one-port version. Thunderbolt 2 gave the specification a performance boost but didn’t change all that much about the protocol. It combined the original Thunderbolt’s two 10Gbps channels to allow for higher maximum speeds, but it didn’t increase the total amount of bandwidth available or introduce any new protocols. The upside is that it maintained full compatibility with all of the original Thunderbolt cables and accessories, something that this next-generation Thunderbolt controller won’t be able to do without adapters (though to be fair, USB 3.1 and the new Type-C USB connector have the same problem). Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Next-gen Thunderbolt doubles speeds but changes the connector
Alan sez, “According to various media reports ( e.g. BBC ) the technology subreddit has scrubbed its moderator team after users discovered that the sub was holding a secret censorship list of banned words that included ‘National Security Agency’, ‘GCHQ’, ‘Anonymous’, ‘anti-piracy’, ‘Bitcoin’, ‘Snowden’, ‘net neutrality’, ‘EU Court’, ‘startup’ and ‘Assange’. On its face, this looks like a list of politicized terms, and blocking them looks like a highly political and partisan act — for example, by blocking “net neutrality,” then stories that are critical of network discrimination would be blocked, while straight news stories that overwhelmingly quoted corporate spokespeople using uncritical terms would make the front door. More charitably, it may have been the act of overworked (and ultimately irresponsible) moderators to simply ban hot-button topics altogether. Here’s the Reddit post that outed /r/technology’s moderators. Once the news got publicized, the moderator team did a ‘U turn’ and removed the auto-deletion software, as well as booting the mods responsible for it in the first place. Still, as the BBC story notes, the technology sub is no longer “featured”, meaning it doesn’t appear in the subreddits that are promoted to new users and appear on the front page. Reddit downgrades technology community after censorship [BBC] ( Thanks, Alan ! )
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Reddit’s /r/technology demoted over scandal of secret censorship that blocked Internet freedom stories
Look at this gorgeous wood plank floor. Except, wait. The floor is actually made from brown paper . Read more…
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Turn Brown Paper into a Realistic-Looking Faux Wood Floor
ananyo (2519492) writes “Overall working hours have fallen over the past century. But the rich have begun to work longer hours than the poor. In 1965 men with a college degree, who tend to be richer, had a bit more leisure time than men who had only completed high school. But by 2005 the college-educated had eight hours less of it a week than the high-school grads. Figures from the American Time Use Survey, released last year, show that Americans with a bachelor’s degree or above work two hours more each day than those without a high-school diploma. Other research shows that the share of college-educated American men regularly working more than 50 hours a week rose from 24% in 1979 to 28% in 2006, but fell for high-school dropouts. The rich, it seems, are no longer the class of leisure. The reasons are complex but include rising income inequality but also the availability of more intellectually stimulating, well-remunerated work.” (And, as the article points out, “Increasing leisure time [among less educated workers] probably reflects a deterioration in their employment prospects as low-skill and manual jobs have withered.”) Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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In the US, Rich Now Work Longer Hours Than the Poor
I’m catching some signals, fellow aphid. Are you? benimoto Internal communications in plants share striking similarities with those in animals, new research reveals . With the help of tiny insects, scientists were able to tap into this communication system. Their results reveal the importance of these communications in enabling plants to protect themselves from attack by insect pests. Like any organism, plants need to transport essential nutrients from one part to another. This is achieved by two parts of the plant: the xylem and the phloem. Xylem, which is largely made of dead cells, transports water and dissolved nutrients obtained by roots up to the aerial tissues of the plants. By contrast, the phloem is made up of living cells—active tubes that transport a syrupy sap, rich in sugars made by photosynthesis in the leaves. In the 1980s, scientists discovered that phloem cells also function as a communication system through which electrical signals travel, similar to the electrical signals transmitted through the neurons in your nervous system. Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Using bugs—aphids, specifically—to spy on plants’ electrical communications