At the 2016 Hugos, a Chinese book in translation made history by winning for Best Novel: Cixin Liu’s “Three Body Problem” . (more…)
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A history of Chinese science fiction, from 475 BC to Cixin Liu
Nanoloop has been providing ways for music and gaming enthusiasts to create tunes with a Game Boy for years now. The company is back with a new card for the original Game Boy handheld: the Nanoloop Mono. With the €69 (around $76) accessory, you can transform that classic gaming device into an analog mono synth. Thanks to one pin of Game Boy’s cartridge connector working as an audio input and a built-in amplifier, the Nanoloop Mono can generate sound and output it through the headphone jack in a completely analog fashion. The Nanoloop Mono packs in three analog filters and a noise generator on its hybrid sound chip. There’s also a step sequencer with per step control of the parameters and eight memory banks than can each hold 15 patterns per channel. While the card works best with the OG Game Boy, it will also provide some noise when used with the Game Boy Pocket and Game Boy Color. However, Nanoloop says sound quality suffers with those gadgets. It doesn’t work at all with the Game Boy Advance, but the company makes another card for that handheld: the Nanoloop 2.0 . While you decide whether or not to turn your collector’s item into a music making machine, the video below shows the Mono in action. Via: FACT Source: Nanoloop
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Nanoloop’s cartridge turns your Game Boy into an analog synth
According to multiple reports, Web of Trust, one of the top privacy and security extensions for web browsers with over 140 million downloads, collects and sells some of the data of its users — and it does without properly anonymizing it. Upon learning about this, Mozilla, Google and Opera quickly pulled the extension off their respective extension stores. From a report on The Register: A browser extension which was found to be harvesting users’ browsing histories and selling them to third parties has had its availability pulled from a number of web browsers’ add-on repositories. Last week, an investigative report by journalists at the Hamburg-based German television broadcaster, Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), revealed that Web of Trust Services (WoT) had been harvesting netizens’ web browsing histories through its browser add-on and then selling them to third parties. While WoT claimed it anonymised the data that it sold, the journalists were able to identify more than 50 users from the sample data it acquired from an intermediary. NDR quoted the data protection commissioner of Hamburg, Johannes Caspar, criticising WoT for not adequately establishing whether users consented to the tracking and selling of their browsing data. Those consent issues have resulted in the browser add-on being pulled from the add-on repositories of both Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, although those who have already installed the extension in their browsers will need to manually uninstall it to stop their browsing being tracked. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
With some of the world’s biggest bike makers now dedicating time to electric models , Zero Motorcycles knows it has its work cut out. The company has spent the last 10 years refining its gas-free lineup , gradually adding more power and (more importantly) increasing the range, giving riders the incentive they need to make the jump. For its 2017 roster, Zero has done the same again, updating its Zero S, Zero SR, Zero DS, Zero DSR, Zero FX and Zero FXS models, giving some the ability to go 200 miles on a single charge. Zero boasts that the Zero S and Zero SR models are the world’s first production electric motorcycles to exceed that milestone, but says that owners will only get that kind of performance when riding in the city. The company’s option Power Tank accessory, which does the heavy lifting, also provides enough juice for over 100 miles on the highway. For those seeking instant torque, Zero has improved its Z-Force powertrain and included interior permanent magnet (IPM) motors, resulting in greater acceleration and 116-ft-lb of torque. To ensure that riders worry more about riding than keeping their bike serviced, Zero is also debuting a new free mobile app that offers performance customization — including settings for maximum torque, top speed and regenerative braking. It also lets owners update their motorcycle’s firmware, saving a trip to the dealer. Oh, and each lithium-ion battery is backed by a five-year, unlimited mileage warranty. Zero says the 2017 models are already making their way to dealers and will retail for between $8, 495 and $15, 995. US buyers will also receive a 10 percent federal tax credit on top of any state incentives. That extra range will cost, though, with the Power Tank setting customers back an extra $2, 695. Via: Electrek Source: Zero Motorcycles
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Zero’s latest electric motorcycles boast 200+ mile range
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack halted heating distribution at least in two properties in the city of Lappeenranta, located in Eastern Finland. In both of these events, the attacks disabled the computers that were controlling heating in the buildings. An anonymous reader writes: Both of the buildings were managed by Valtia, the company which is in charge of managing the buildings overall operation and maintenance. According to Valtia CEO, Simo Ruonela, in both cases the systems that controlled the central heating and warm water circulation were disabled. In the city of Lappeenranta, there were at least two buildings whose systems were knocked down by the network attack. According to Rounela, the attack in Eastern Finland lasted from late October to Thursday — the 3rd of November. The systems that were attacked tried to respond to the attack by rebooting the main control circuit. This was repeated over and over so that heating was never working. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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DDoS Attack Halts Heating in Finland Amidst Winter
Remember when you saw those old-timey photos of room-sized vacuum-tube-powered computers , and laughed and laughed? That tech might be making a comeback, thanks to work from scientists from UC San Diego . They’ve built the first semiconductor-free, laser-controlled microelectronics device using free electrons in air, much like how vacuum tubes work. The research could result in better solar panels and faster microelectronic devices that can carry more power. Semiconductors based on silicon and other materials are great, obviously, having helped us squeeze billions of transistors into a few square inches. But they have some issues: Electron velocity is limited by the resistance of semiconductor materials, and a boost of energy is required to just to get them flowing through the “band gap” caused by the insulating properties of semiconductors like silicon. Vacuum tubes don’t have those problems, since they use free electrons in the air to carry (or not) a current. Getting free electrons at nanoscale sizes is problematic, however — you need either high voltages (over 100 volts), high temperatures or a powerful laser to knock them loose. The UC San Diego team solved that problem by building gold “mushroom” nanostructures with adjacent parallel gold strips (above). By combining a relatively low amount of power (10 volts) with a low-powered laser, they were able to dislodge electrons from the gold metal. The result was a tenfold (1000 percent) increase in conductivity in the system, a change sufficient “to realize on and off states, that is, the structure performs as an optical switch, ” according to the paper in Nature . The device can thus act as a transistors, power amplifier or photodetector, much as semiconductors do. However, it can theoretically work with less resistance and handle higher amounts of power. So far, the research is just a proof-of-concept, but it’s very promising. “Next, we need to understand how far these devices can be scaled and the limits of their performance, ” says author Dan Sievenpiper. The team aims to explore applications not just in electronics, but photovoltaics, environmental applications and, possibly, weaponry — the research was funded, after all, by DARPA. Source: UC San Diego
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Scientists built a chip without semiconductors
At $35, the Raspberry Pi is a fantastic little computer, but when you add in the cost of a display, mouse, and keyboard, things get a little more expensive. Good thing you don’t really need them. With VNC, you can access your Pi from a laptop or desktop computer using the same mouse, keyboard, and display that you always do, no rewiring required. Read more…
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How to Control Your Raspberry Pi from Any Computer Using VNC
Enlarge / Back in 2006, EarthLink planned on being a major broadband player. (credit: NIall Kennedy ) Internet provider Windstream today announced that it will buy EarthLink for $673 million in an all-stock transaction. The merger is focused on creating a stronger network operator for business customers, but it also provides a reminder that after all these years, dial-up Internet is still being sold. EarthLink was founded in 1994 to provide dial-up Internet service and had more than 1 million customers by the late 1990s. But while dial-up has long been overtaken by DSL, cable, and fiber network technologies, EarthLink is still offering its original Internet service and boasts , “We’re the dial-up Internet experts. It’s what we’ve been doing best since 1994.” EarthLink dial-up costs $9.95 a month for the first three months and $24.95 a month thereafter (or $14.50 a month if you prepay for a year). For that price, you’ll get “Unlimited 56K dial-up access,” e-mail, and “10MB of webspace for your own website,” the company says. EarthLink also advertises DSL, cable, and satellite service through reseller agreements that allow EarthLink to sell the services without building the networks itself. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Dial-up pioneer EarthLink still exists, and it’s merging with Windstream
Now that Turtle Rock Studios is no longer working on Evolve , it has some time on its hands… and it’s giving veteran gamers a treat. If you have a PC copy of the original Left 4 Dead (one of Turtle Rock’s best-known games), you can now install Dam It , an unfinished but playable free campaign that was meant to connect two of the shipping game’s stories ( Dead Air and Blood Harvest ). You start at an airfield and have to make your way through an apple orchard, a ravine, a covered bridge and a campground before a climactic fight at the campaign’s namesake hydroelectric dam. Unlike most other L4D tales, you’re actually encouraged to split up — you just need to stay close enough to offer support in a pinch. When Turtle Rock says “unfinished, ” it means just that. A panic event doesn’t work as intended, zombies don’t always behave as they should and graphics are rough around the edges. You do get two stand-alone survival maps on top of Dam It , though, and the core experience will no doubt be familiar. It’s not the Left 4 Dead 3 you might be hoping for (seriously, Valve, make it happen), but it’s definitely a taste of what the first title could have been like. Via: Polygon Source: Auger Resources
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‘Left 4 Dead’ creator releases an unfinished campaign
If you could print something out aboard the International Space Station, what would it be? That was the question posed to engineers and enthusiasts in the ISS Design Competition, and the winner — a clever and powerful device for launching palm-size satellites — will actually be getting beamed up. Read More
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3D-printed satellite launcher heads to ISS with blessing of Chris Hadfield and Grant Imahara