At the Rusborg 2016 Middle Ages festival in Russia, a re-enactor spotted a drone in the sky and did what anyone in the 9th century would: He knocked it out of the sky with his spear. Talk about period rush!
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Medieval reenactor spears drone from the sky
jones_supa writes: The storage services provider Backblaze has released its reliability report for Q1/2016 covering cumulative failure rates of mechanical hard disk drives by specific model numbers and by manufacturer. The company noted that as of this quarter, its 60, 000 drives have cumulatively spun for over one billion hours (100, 000 years). Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST) is the clear leader here, with an annual failure rate of just 1% for three years running. The second position is also taken by a Japanese company: Toshiba. Third place goes to Western Digital (WD), with the company’s ratings having improved in the past year. Seagate comes out the worst, though it is suspected that much of that rating was warped by the company’s crash-happy 3 TB drive (ST3000DM001). Backblaze notes that 4 TB drives continue to be the sweet spot for building out its storage pods, but that it might move to 6, 8, or 10 TB drives as the price on the hardware comes down. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Backblaze Releases Billion-Hour Hard Drive Reliability Report
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: FBI agents are currently trying to subpoena one of Tor’s core software developers to testify in a criminal hacking investigation, CNNMoney has learned. But the developer, who goes by the name Isis Agora Lovecruft, fears that federal agents will coerce her to undermine the Tor system — and expose Tor users around the world to potential spying. That’s why, when FBI agents approached her and her family over Thanksgiving break last year, she immediately packed her suitcase and left the United States for Germany. “I was worried they’d ask me to do something that hurts innocent people — and prevent me from telling people it’s happening, ” she said in an exclusive interview with CNNMoney. Earlier in the month, Tech Dirt reported the Department of Homeland Security wants to subpoena the site over the identity of a hyperbolic commenter. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Developer Of Anonymous Tor Software Dodges FBI, Leaves US
Paul Sawers, writing for VentureBeat (condensed): Netflix really wants to show you how fast (or slow) your Internet connection is, and to do so it has launched a new website at Fast.com that conveys the real-time speed of your connection to the Web. It’s designed to give people “greater insight and control of their Internet service.” Netflix said it was for: Providing a website featuring non-downloadable software for testing and analyzing the speed of a user’s Internet connection, as well as downloadable computer software for testing and analyzing the speed of a user’s Internet connection.Compared to Speedtest.net, Fast.com doesn’t offer any details on how fast is your upload speeds, what’s the ping time, and any detail on location and ISP. However, it’s seemingly faster, and automatically detects your download speeds when you visit the website. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Netflix Launches Fast.com To Show How Fast Your Internet Connection Really Is
An anonymous reader writes: In 2014, Threshold Entertainment announced it would be producing a live-action film based on the Russian stacking game Tetris. Today, Threshold Entertainment announced it had secured $80 million in funding for the project. Threshold’s Larry Kasanoff has worked on the Mortal Kombat film in 1995, which grossed $70 million. Media mogul Bruno Wu, will serve as co-producer on the film ensuring that the movie will be able to sustain any unplanned budget overruns. According to Deadline, the film is planned for a 2017 release with Chinese locations and a Chinese case. However, Kasanoff notes “the goal is to make world movies for the world market.” What’s more is that the movie could be the basis of a trilogy, the producer says, with a plot that’s “not at all what you think; it will be a cool surprise.” Kasanoff told the Wall Street Journal that “this isn’t a movie with a bunch of lines running around the page. We’re not giving feet to the geometric shapes… What you [will] see in Tetris is the teeny tip of an iceberg that has intergalactic significance.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Live-Action Tetris Movie Secures $80 Million Funding, Plans To Be Part Of A Trilogy
An anonymous reader writes: The Iraqi government has ordered ISPs to shut down Internet access in the entire country to prevent exam cheating for Iraq’s official exams for secondary and high schools. This is the second year in a row when Iraq does this, after the same thing happened in 2015. Companies like Akamai and Dyn also noted the government’s poor decision on Twitter. It appears that Iraqi officials never heard of signal jammers and video cameras to combat exam cheating. The country’s Internet went dark May 14-16th, between 05:00 AM and 08:00 AM GMT. An Iraqi ISP leaked on Facebook the content of an email it received from state officials. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Iraq Shuts Down Internet In Entire Country To Prevent Exam Cheating
As we creep ever closer to an autonomous-car future , one thing is for certain, most of the driverless cars we see being tested look hideous thanks to all the sensors strapped to the roof. Today Acura introduced its second generation Automated Acura RLX Development Vehicle with updated sensors and a more pleasing aesthetic. Gone is the spinning LIDAR system replaced with a more compact and robust version of the light detection and ranging technology. It’s also got updated RADAR, camera, GPS and higher performance GPUs and CPUs as well as what Acura is calling “more intelligent software algorithms to support more complex testing scenarios.” Acura and its parent company Honda have been testing autonomous cars at its GoMentum Station in the Bay Area since last year with a specially outfitted RLX (shown in the video below with the spinning LIDAR system). This new car will replace that vehicle.
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Acura introduces a sleeker self-driving test car
Watching YouTube videos together with your friends can be fun, but it’s a pain to make sure you’re all watching something at the same time. ShareTube does the work for you, syncing playback of videos for everyone in the room. Read more…
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ShareTube Lets You and Your Friends Watch YouTube Videos In Sync Together
This should become a thing of the past. (credit: Microsoft ) Anyone who’s installed Windows 7 any time in the last, oh, five years or so probably didn’t enjoy the experience very much. Service Pack 1 for the operating system was released in 2011, meaning that a fresh install has five years of individual patches to download and install. Typically, this means multiple trips to Windows Update and multiple reboots in order to get the system fully up-to-date, and it is a process that is at best tedious, typically leading one to wonder why, at the very least, it cannot pull down all the updates at once and apply them with just a single reboot. The answer to that particular question will, unfortunately, remain a mystery, but Microsoft did today announce a change that will greatly reduce the pain of this process. The company has published a “convenience rollup” for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (and Windows Server 2008 R2), which in a single package contains all the updates, both security and non-security, released since the Service Pack, up through April 2016. Installing the rollup will perform five years of patching in one shot. In other words, it performs a very similar role to what Windows 7 Service Pack 2 would have done, if only Windows 7 Service Pack 2 were to exist. It’s not quite the same as a Service Pack—it still requires Service Pack 1 to be installed, and the system will still report that it is running Service Pack 1—but for most intents and purposes, that won’t matter. Microsoft will also support injecting this rollup into Windows 7 Service Pack 1 system images and install media. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Windows 7 now has a Service Pack 2 (but don’t call it that)
Kiruna, the northernmost city in Sweden, is sinking. In fact, by 2050, most of its structures will have collapsed into the iron mines below it. So engineers have embarked upon an ambitious project to move Kiruna—along with its 20, 000 residents—two miles to the east. A new documentary explains exactly how they plan to do it. Read more…
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How Sweden Is Relocating an Entire City