Category: reader

Jedi-ism Becomes a Serious Religion

An anonymous reader writes: 390, 127 Brits declared their religion as Jediism in their last census — many as a joke, but some are quite serious, the BBC reports. Cambridge University Divinity Faculty researcher Beth Singler estimates at least 2, 000 of them are “genuine, ” around the same number as the Church of Scientology. The U.K. Church of Jediism has 200, 000 members worldwide. Their belief system has expanded well beyond the Star Wars universe to include tenets from Taoism, Buddhism, Catholicism and Samurai. Former priest, psychotherapist and writer Mark Vernon finds real power in the Jedi story: “The reason it’s so powerful and universal is that we have to find ourselves. It’s by losing ourselves and identifying with something greater like the Jedi myth that we find a fuller life.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

See more here:
Jedi-ism Becomes a Serious Religion

Apple A8X IPad Air 2 Processor Packs Triple-Core CPU, Hefty Graphics Punch

MojoKid writes When Apple debuted its A8 SoC, it proved to be a modest tweak of the original A7. Despite packing double the transistors and an improved GPU, the heart of the A8 SoC is the same dual-core Apple “Cyclone” processor tweaked to run at higher clock speeds and with stronger total GPU performance. Given this, many expected that the Apple A8X would be cut from similar cloth — a higher clock speed, perhaps, and a larger GPU, but not much more than that. It appears those projections were wrong. The Apple A8X chip is a triple-core variant of the A8, with a higher clock speed (1.5GHz vs. 1.4GHz), a larger L2 cache (2MB, up from 1MB) and 2GB of external DDR3. It also uses an internal metal heatspreader, which the Apple A8 eschews. All of this points to slightly higher power consumption for the core, but also to dramatically increased performance. The new A8X is a significant power house in multiple types of workloads; in fact, its the top-performing mobile device on Geekbench by a wide margin. Gaming benchmarks are equally impressive. The iPad Air 2 nudges out Nvidia’s Shield in GFXBench’s Manhattan offscreen test, at 32.4fps to 31 fps. Onscreen favors the NV solution thanks to its lower-resolution screen, but the Nvidia device does take 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited by a wide margin, clocking in at 30, 970 compared to 21, 659. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Continue Reading:
Apple A8X IPad Air 2 Processor Packs Triple-Core CPU, Hefty Graphics Punch

CHP Officers Steal, Forward Nude Pictures From Arrestee Smartphones

sabri writes: Following the initial suspension of a California Highway Patrol officer earlier this week, news has come out that the CHP has an entire ring of officers who steal and subsequently share nude pictures. The nudes are stolen from women who are arrested or stopped. Officer Sean Harrington of Martinez reportedly confessed to stealing explicit photos from the suspect’s phone, and said he forwarded those images to at least two other CHP officers. Where is the ACLU when you need them the most? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Excerpt from:
CHP Officers Steal, Forward Nude Pictures From Arrestee Smartphones

Google exec sets a new record for highest-altitude jump (video)

Move over Felix Baumgartner (pictured above) — just two years after the daredevil’s record setting 128, 000 foot Red Bull Stratos space jump , Google VP Alan Eustace has topped it. The New York Times reports Eustace rode a balloon 135, 908 feet above New Mexico and dove back to Earth, opting for just a specially designed spacesuit / life support system instead of Baumgartner’s capsule + suit combo . It took two hours for the ride up, and another 15 minutes for the trip down, which peaked at speeds of up to 800 mph before the parachute system kicked in, and he glided back down to a landing site 70 miles away from where he started. He’s apparently been working on the project since 2011, and declined assistance from Google to go it alone, working with Paragon Space Development Corporation on the project, dubbed “StratEx.” He recorded the whole thing on GoPro cameras (of course) and you can watch highlights from the feat embedded after the break. [Image credit: AP Photo/Red Bull Stratos, Balazs Gardi] Filed under: Misc , Transportation , Google Comments Via: Larry Page (G+) Source: New York Times , Paragon SDC

See the original post:
Google exec sets a new record for highest-altitude jump (video)

All the planets in the Solar System fit between the Earth and the Moon

I never thought of this, but you can fit all the planets in the Solar System back to back into the distance from the Earth to the Moon—about 238, 900 miles (384, 400 kilometers)—with room to spare: 4, 990 miles (8, 030 kilometers.) Seeing it visualized really give you a good idea of how much empty space is out there. Read more…

See more here:
All the planets in the Solar System fit between the Earth and the Moon

Microsoft is doing great, and so are Surface Pro 3 and Office 365

The cloud has been a solid source of income for Microsoft in recent times, and while the company is still in the middle of a huge transition, the future is looking bright under recently appointed CEO Satya Nadella. Today, Microsoft released its earnings for the first fiscal 2015 quarter, with the main takeaway being the growth of its Devices and Consumer revenue by 47 percent, to $10.96 billion, and a total of $23.20 billion in overall revenue, a 25 percent increase compared to the same period last year. In other words, business is superb over in Redmond. Part of the reason for this is how successful its productivity suite, Office 365, has been — there are now over 7 million subscribers to the Home and Personal software. What’s more, Microsoft revealed that the Surface Pro 3 drove the momentum of its Surface line to a revenue amount of $908 million; meanwhile, 2.4 million Xbox units were sold during the quarter, though the company didn’t specify how many of those were for its newest console, the Xbox One. Developing… [Image credit: Michael Kappel/Flickr] Filed under: Desktops , Laptops , Tablets , Software , Microsoft Comments

Visit link:
Microsoft is doing great, and so are Surface Pro 3 and Office 365