Singapore is a country known worldwide for both a very high cost of living and limited real estate space — that combination makes it hard to imagine a better location for a gigantic vending machine that spits out luxury cars. That’s right, folks. Autobahn Motors, a company that started out selling used vehicles in conventional showrooms, recently opened a 15-story building in… Read More
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Singapore gets a gigantic ‘vending machine’ for buying luxury cars
Not very pleased with your internet speeds? Think about the people Down Under. Australia’s “bungled” National Broadband Network (NBN) has been used as a “cautionary tale” for other countries to take note of. Despite the massive amount of money being pumped into the NBN, the New York Times reports, the internet speeds still lagged behind the US, most of western Europe, Japan and South Korea — even Kenya. The article highlights that Australia was the first country where a national plan to cover every house or business was considered and this ambitious plan was hampered by changes in government and a slow rollout (Editor’s note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source), partly because of negotiations with Telstra about the fibre installation. From the report: Australia, a wealthy nation with a widely envied quality of life, lags in one essential area of modern life: its internet speed. Eight years after the country began an unprecedented broadband modernization effort that will cost at least 49 billion Australian dollars, or $36 billion, its average internet speed lags that of the United States, most of Western Europe, Japan and South Korea. In the most recent ranking of internet speeds by Akamai, a networking company, Australia came in at an embarrassing No. 51, trailing developing economies like Thailand and Kenya. For many here, slow broadband connections are a source of frustration and an inspiration for gallows humor. One parody video ponders what would happen if an American with a passion for Instagram and streaming “Scandal” were to switch places with an Australian resigned to taking bathroom breaks as her shows buffer. The article shares this anecdote: “Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world have downloaded Hand of Fate, an action video game made by a studio in Brisbane, Defiant Development. But when Defiant worked with an audio designer in Melbourne, more than 1, 000 miles away, Mr. Jaffit knew it would be quicker to send a hard drive by road than to upload the files, which could take several days.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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How Australia Bungled Its $36 Billion High-Speed Internet Rollout
Enlarge Apple has just released iOS 10.3.2 to the public, following around a month and a half of beta testing that began shortly after iOS 10.3 came out. It’s available as an over-the-air update or through iTunes for any devices that run iOS 10: the iPhone 5 and newer, the fourth-generation iPad and newer, the iPad Mini 2 and newer, both iPad Pros, and the sixth-generation iPod Touch. Like the intervening iOS 10.3.1 update, the release notes for 10.3.2 only say that it “includes bug fixes and improves the security of your iPhone or iPad,” which suggests that the release is primarily focused on security updates. According to Apple’s security update page , it fixes quite a wide range of bugs that affect everything from the iPhone 5 on up: one in the AVEVideoEncoder, one in CoreAudio, two in iBooks, one in IOSurface, two in the kernel, one Notifications bug, one in Safari, four SQLite bugs, one TextInput problem, a whopping eight WebKit-related fixes that address an even larger number of vulnerabilities, and an update to the certificate trust policy. As with any update that fixes a large number of bugs, you should patch as soon as you can to prevent exploits of the now-public vulnerabilities. Read on Ars Technica | Comments
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iOS 10.3.2 arrives with nearly two dozen security fixes
https://youtu.be/RW7W-OKZBsw The original name for The Beverly Hillbillies was The Hillbillies of Beverly Hillbillies. The core cast in this unaired pilot from 1962 didn’t change with the new name, and it also features the amazing customized 1921 Oldsmobile Model 43-A touring car built by car customizer George Barris (who created Black Beauty from Green Hornet , the Batmobile from the 1966 Batman TV series, and the Munster’s Koach).
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Unaired pilot for Beverly Hillbillies (1962)
Bikers interested in going green have reason to rejoice today. Harley-Davidson has already shown off its prototype Livewire electric bike, and it’s promised to offer you a real one in the next five years . Today, the motorcycle manufacturer said it has plans to make 100 new motorcycles over the next 10 years, including an entire range of electric vehicles. Vice president Bill Davidson confirmed that electric bikes are Harley-Davidson’s future to Drive magazine while in Sydney to celebrate the brand’s 100th anniversary in Australia. While an electric Harley won’t have the signature engine boom that its combustion-powered bikes have, Davidson said that the company is working on a sound that he likens to a jet engine. “It is an amazing motorcycle, ” he told Drive . “While it doesn’t have a 45-degree, pushrod twin-cylinder engine it has the performance expected from a Harley Davidson even if it won’t sound the same, ” he said. So far, we’ve only seen the one Livewire concept model with a limited top speed and range, it’s likely thHarleyely-Davidson will create both sport and cruiser-style bikes to appeal to both the speed freaks and the touring bikers. Davidson noted that as automated cars become more ubiquitous, driving enthusiasts may turn to motorcycles to get their manual fix, telling Drive , “I think the more automatic cars [happen], motorcycling will become more appealing. I see it as a huge opportunity.” Via: Autoblog Source: Drive
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Harley-Davidson embraces the potential of electric motorcycles
President Trump on Thursday signed a long-delayed executive order on cybersecurity that “makes clear that agency heads will be held accountable for protecting their networks, and calls on government and industry to reduce the threat from automated attacks on the internet, ” reports The Washington Post. From the report: Picking up on themes advanced by the Obama administration, Trump’s order also requires agency heads to use Commerce Department guidelines to manage risk to their systems. It commissions reports to assess the country’s ability to withstand an attack on the electric grid and to spell out the strategic options for deterring adversaries in cyberspace. [Thomas Bossert, Trump’s homeland security adviser] said the order was not, however, prompted by Russia’s targeting of electoral systems last year. In fact, the order is silent on addressing the security of electoral systems or cyber-enabled operations to influence elections, which became a significant area of concern during last year’s presidential campaign. The Department of Homeland Security in January declared election systems “critical infrastructure.” The executive order also does not address offensive cyber operations, which are generally classified. This is an area in which the Trump administration is expected to be more forward-leaning than its predecessor. Nor does it spell out what type of cyberattack would constitute an “act of war” or what response the attack would invite. “We’re not going to draw a red line, ” Bossert said, adding that the White House does not “want to telegraph our punches.” The order places the defense secretary and the head of the intelligence community in charge of protecting “national security” systems that operate classified and military networks. But the secretary of homeland security will continue to be at the center of the national plan for protecting critical infrastructure, such as the electric grid and financial sector. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Trump Signs Executive Order On Cybersecurity
Germany was able to set a new national record for the last weekend of April with 85 percent of all electricity consumed in the country being produced from renewables — wind, solar, biomass, and hydroelectric power. Digital Trends reports: Aided by a seasonal combination of windy but sunny weather, during that weekend the majority of Germany’s coal-fired power stations weren’t even operating, while nuclear power stations (which the country plans to phase out by the year 2022) were massively reduced in output. To be clear, this is impressive even by Germany’s progressive standards. By comparison, in March just over 40 percent of all electricity consumed in the country came from renewable sources. However, while the end-of-April weekend was an aberration, the hope is that it won’t be for too much longer. According to Patrick Graichen of the country’s sustainability-focused Agora Energiewende Initiative, German renewable energy percentages in the mid-80s should be “completely normal” by the year 2030. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Germany Sets New National Record With 85 Percent of Its Electricity Sourced From Renewables
The Ocean Cleanup , a Dutch foundation that aims to deal with plastics polluting our seas, says it’s finally ready to put its technology to work. In a statement released today, the organization has revealed that it plans to start cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in early 2018 using its newly redesigned cleaning system. That garbage patch is the biggest collection of debris in the ocean, a massive soup of visible and microscopic plastic particles poisoning marine life. The ship captain who discovered it in 2003 said he “never found a clear spot” in the week it took to cross the region. While Boyan Slat (the organization’s founder) originally envisioned trapping plastic trash with one large screen tethered to the ocean floor, the new design is smaller, sturdier and can save the group a ton of money. Instead of deploying a 60-mile stationary screen, they plan on releasing 50 smaller ones that measure 0.6 miles in length. They’ll weigh the floating screens down with anchor, so they can move with the currents like plastics do, albeit a bit slower in order to trap debris. Slat told FastCompany that he expected the original design to clean up half of the massive garbage patch in 10 years for $320 million. Now, he expects the new design to cut that timespan in half and to cost the group significantly less than that amount. Since he and his team still need to fund the project, though, they plan to use the plastic they collect to make items they can sell, such as sunglasses, chairs and car bumpers. Source: The Ocean Cleanup
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50 floating screens will clean the Pacific garbage patch next year
A one-of-a-kind Harry Potter prequel has been stolen, and author J.K. Rowling is eager to get it back in the right hands. Read more…
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Rare Harry Potter Prequel Stolen, J.K. Rowling Pleads for Return
Something unusual happens when a drop of molten glass falls into water. As it cools, it creates a crystal clear tadpole-like droplet that’s bulletproof on one end, but impossibly fragile on the other. We’ve known about these droplets for 400 years, but scientists have only recently figured out what makes them almost… Read more…
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Scientists Finally Know What Makes These Weird Glass Droplets So Incredibly Strong