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State of emergency declared as Florida struck by flesh-eating screwworms

Nice place! Via PBS : The discovery occurred earlier this month in the Florida Keys, where the U.S. Department of Agriculture detected the New World screwworm, a parasite that lives inside open wounds, in a deer. About 30 deer have been found dead or been euthanized in the last two weeks due to screwworm infections. As a result, the county declared an agricultural state of emergency. “The screwworm is a potentially devastating animal disease that sends shivers down every ranchers spine,” Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Adam Putnam said. “It’s been more than five decades since the screwworm infested Florida, and I’ve grown up hearing the horror stories from the last occurrence.”

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State of emergency declared as Florida struck by flesh-eating screwworms

Amazon to stream Ghibli-produced ‘Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter’

Amazon’s children’s video offerings are expanding once again. This time it’s with an animated version of Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter . That name might sound familiar if you were assigned a book report in 5th grade for Astrid Lindgren month but didn’t want to read Pippi Longstocking . The details of the show’s production are a little convoluted, so bear with me. It’s directed by Goro Miyazaki and hasn’t made it outside of Japan and the Scandanavian region. Goro is the son of famed Studio Ghibli mastermind Hayao Miyazaki ( Ponyo , Howl’s Moving Castle ), and Studio Ghibli co-produced this project . That version came out back in 2014 . What Amazon will stream is an English dub spanning 26 episodes, narrated by everyone’s favorite FBI agent , Gillian Anderson. She has a bit of history with Ghibli as she did the voice for Moro in the Princess Mononoke dub, which was handled by Disney. So, the chances of this being a solid version with western voice-overs are probably pretty high. But, again, it’s important to note that this isn’t a full-on Amazon Original. With Studio Ghibli on hiatus, this might be the last bit of the team’s work, so make the most of it. For those with little kids (and who aren’t just young at heart themselves), Amazon has also ordered Little Big Awesome which features flying sea turtles and “a jelly giant.” That hails from Ben Gruber of Spongebob Squarepants and Super Jail fame, and is being animated by the house of Metalocalypse , Titmouse Inc. It probably won’t be brutal, but we can always hope for a William Murderface Easter egg, can’t we? Source: Amazon

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Amazon to stream Ghibli-produced ‘Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter’

Forget holograms, here’s a ‘floating e-ink’ display

The amount of pixels in a display has been the source of forum flamewars since the advent of HDTV, which makes an experimental display technology from the University of Sussex so interesting. It’s called JOLED and it measures a whopping 7 x 6 voxels high and wide, respectively. Hold on, it gets more interesting. Each voxel is a diminutive multi-colored sphere, and they’re suspended in mid-air by an array of ultrasound speakers that “create high-pitched and high-intensity soundwaves that are inaudible but forceful enough to hold the spheres in place, ” according to the school . That holds the JANUS objects in place, but to make them spin and show different colors at different times is something else entirely. What seems to be the key to the rotation is that the spheres are coated with titanium dioxide — also used to purify air when mixed with concrete — which, when a exposed to an electrical field causes them to rotate. “JOLED could be like having a floating e-ink display that can also change its shape, ” researcher Deepak Sahoo said in a canned press release quote. Maybe don’t expect to have these sitting on your desk, though. The school suggest that it could wind up like many of Disney Research’s projects and be used in commercial or tourism settings. Some examples? Showing the changing patterns of carbon footprints or changes in currency conversion rates. So, don’t expect to watch Luke Cage on one of these in HDR anytime soon is what I’m saying. “We also want to examine ways in which such a display could be used to deliver media on-demand, ” University of Sussex’s Sriram Subramanian said. “A screen appears in front of the user to show the media and then the objects forming the display fall to the ground when the video finishes playing.” The scientists hope to increase the pixel density as well as the amount of colors displayed (sound familiar?), and will be presenting their research next week at Japan’s ACM User Interface Software and Technology Symposium. Via: TechCrunch Source: University of Sussex

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Forget holograms, here’s a ‘floating e-ink’ display

Why You Should Upgrade Your Raspberry Pi

The hard-working developers behind Raspbian OS, the custom-made Linux distro tweaked for the Pi, have announced a major update called Pixel (short for Pi Improved Xwindows Environment, Lightweight, if you’re wondering). It’s now the default OS offered for download by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and here’s why you should give it a try. Read more…

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Why You Should Upgrade Your Raspberry Pi

You Can Soon Buy That Tiny Scooter That Looks Like a Laptop You Can Ride

A Segway you can carry in a laptop bag? That’s what Cocoa Motors promised when it revealed the WalkCar , an ultra-compact personal transport, last year. And finally, after a year of perfecting its design, the WalkCar will be available for pre-order starting on October 21. Read more…

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You Can Soon Buy That Tiny Scooter That Looks Like a Laptop You Can Ride

Google To Divide Its Index, Giving Mobile Users Better and Fresher Content

Desktop Google searches could soon feel slightly out of touch compared to those done via smartphones as the company begins to push mobile search. Google has said it is fully splitting its search index into two versions: a rapid updated mobile one, and a secondary search index for the desktop web. SearchEngineLand reports: The news came today during a keynote address from Gary Illyes, a webmaster trends analyst with Google, at Pubcon. Illyes didn’t give a timeline in his talk, but in a follow-up with Search Engine Land, he confirmed that it would happen within “months.” Google first announced that it was experimenting with the idea of a mobile index last year at SMX East. Since that time, Google’s clearly decided that a mobile index makes sense and is moving ahead with the idea. It’s unclear exactly how the mobile index will work. For example, since the mobile index is the “primary” index, will it really not be used for any desktop queries? Will it only contain “mobile-friendly” content? How out-of-date will the desktop index be? Desktop usage is now a minority of Google queries but still generates substantial usage. The most substantial change will likely be that by having a mobile index, Google can run its ranking algorithm in a different fashion across “pure” mobile content rather than the current system that extracts data from desktop content to determine mobile rankings. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google To Divide Its Index, Giving Mobile Users Better and Fresher Content

Ubuntu 16.10 Released, Ready to Download

After six months of development, Ubuntu 16.10, the latest stable release of the world’s most popular desktop Linux distro, is now available to download. The ISO image file of Ubuntu 16.10 is a little larger (up from 1.4GB to 1.5GB). OMGUbuntu talks about the new features (condensed): Ubuntu 16.10 is not a big update over Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, released back in April. If you were hoping it’d be a compelling or must-have upgrade you’ll be sadly disappointed. There are a number of small improvements to the Unity desktop and the Compiz window manager that powers it. Improvements that help everything work that little bit faster, and that little bit smoother. Ubuntu 16.10 also performs better in virtual machines thanks to the new Unity Low Graphics Mode. An all-new version of the Nautilus file manager also features, and is packed with some significant UI and UX differences. Plus, as always, there’s a newer Linux kernel to enjoy. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Ubuntu 16.10 Released, Ready to Download

Apple reportedly wants to use changeable E Ink keyboards

Apple’s plans for advanced laptop controls may extend beyond that rumored OLED touch strip . Both 9to5Mac and TrustedReviews report that Apple has been in talks to use a laptop version of Sonder Design’s dynamic keyboard technology, which uses E Ink to change key labels on the fly. Just how Tim Cook and company would implement the hardware isn’t clear, but it might work the way these keyboards have operated since the days of Art Lebedev’s Optimus Maximus . If so, you’d get handy labels on keys as you switch contexts, such as brushes in an image editor or different characters when you switch languages. Although Sonder has confirmed that talks have taken place, it’s not saying whether or not it has a deal. It only adds that it’s “closing B2B procurement contracts” with three laptop makers, and that Foxconn (which helped get Sonder off the ground) and E Ink are helping. Given the timing, you probably aren’t going to get a MacBook with this keyboard any time soon. Even if Apple has a contract in place (there’s no guarantee that it has), you probably wouldn’t see these livelier keyboards until 2017 at the earliest. Source: 9to5Mac , TrustedReviews

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Apple reportedly wants to use changeable E Ink keyboards

Feds strike another multi-national “tech support” scam

Federal authorities say a group of scammers that “bilked millions” from US consumers with pop-up ads and hijacked Web browsers has been sued by the Federal Trade Commission. The scheme, which operates under the name Global Access Tech Support, used pop-up ads that told consumers their computers were “hacked, infected, or otherwise compromised,” according to the FTC complaint (PDF) published yesterday. Consumers are then instructed to call a toll-free number in the message. The pop-ups “are typically designed so that consumers are unable to close or navigate around them, rendering consumers’ web browser unusable.” Anyone who calls the toll-free number is connected to telemarketers in India, who then roll out a sales pitch explaining that the caller’s computer is “in urgent need of repair.” The telemarketers claim they’re affiliated with either Microsoft or Apple or are “certified” by those companies. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Feds strike another multi-national “tech support” scam