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Netflix will stream Matt Groening’s fantasy cartoon ‘Disenchanted’

It’s been almost 30 years since Matt Groening launched his yellow nuclear Simpsons family on the Fox network. It’s been about 18 since he took to the stars with Futurama . Both series have been successful, with plenty of recent merchandise , VR celebrations and mobile games to keep fans invested in the respective animated universes. Groening is headed to Netflix with his next project, Disenchantment , another animated series for grown ups. This time, however, Groening will explore the epic fantasy genre via the misadventures of the “hard-drinking young princess Bean, her feisty elf companion Elfo, and her personal demon Luci.” “Ultimately, ” said Groening in a statement, ” Disenchantment will be about life and death, love and sex, and how to keep laughing in a world full of suffering and idiots, despite what the elders and wizards and other jerks tell you.” Disenchantment has an all-star voice cast as well. The lead voice actors feature BoJack Horseman ‘s Abbi Jacobson as Bean, Nat Faxon from The Cleveland Show as Elfo and American Dad’ s Eric Andre as Luci. The cast will also have Futurama ‘s John Dimaggio and Ren and Stimpy ‘s Billy West along for the ride. The animation is being created by the same studio that does Futurama , Rough Draft Studios. The show itself will appear on Netflix in ten episode blocks starting in 2018. Source: Netflix

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Netflix will stream Matt Groening’s fantasy cartoon ‘Disenchanted’

These Ingenious 2,500-Year-Old Chinese Wood Joints Make Buildings Earthquake-Proof

Over thousands of years, the building science of timber framing developed independently in both Northern Europe and China. But one big difference between the regions is that China, by virtue of its size and geological traits, is prone to devastating earthquakes. Ancient Chinese builders thus needed a way to create wooden structures that could not be shaken apart, and that were not so stiff that its support members would shatter. They designed and engineered the solution at least as early as roughly 500 B.C. The builders created a series of brackets known as dougong .  When interlocked together, these could transfer the incredibly heavy weight of a temple roof to the supporting columns, and they contained so many redundancies that they could not be shaken apart.  They also, by spreading their tolerances over multiple joints, contained a measure of flexibility that prevented them from cracking and splitting. Check out the ingenious way that they fit together in the computer animation below: The craziest part of that system is that the columns are not sunken into the foundation nor moored, but are freestanding, and yet they stayed in place during the shake test. The video below, which is of a modern-day architect demonstrating dougong with a scale model, is a bit slower but really gives you a good look at the components and how they fit together: It’s crazy to see how wobbly it all looks, but how it all gets locked into place by the immense weight of the roof; and that wobbliness of course affords the flexibility required for the structure to withstand an earthquake without shattering. Also, this architect must look at people playing Jenga and think “Idiots.”

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These Ingenious 2,500-Year-Old Chinese Wood Joints Make Buildings Earthquake-Proof

Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Hundreds of Victims For Years

An anonymous reader shares a report: A mysterious piece of malware has been infecting hundreds of Mac computers for years — and no one noticed until a few months ago. The malware is called “FruitFly, ” and one of its variants, “FruitFly 2” has infected at least 400 victims over the years. FruitFly 2 is intriguing and mysterious: its goals, who’s behind it, and how it infects victims, are all unknown. Earlier this year, an ex-NSA hacker started looking into a piece of malware he described to me as “unique” and “intriguing.” It was a slightly different strain of a malware discovered on four computers earlier this year by security firm Malwarebytes, known as “FruitFly.” This first strain had researchers scratching their heads. On the surface, the malware seemed “simplistic.” It was programmed mainly to surreptitiously monitor victims through their webcams, capture their screens, and log keystrokes. But, strangely, it went undetected since at least 2015. There was no indication of who could be behind it, and it contained “ancient” functions and “rudimentary” remote control capabilities, Malwarebytes’s Thomas Reed wrote at the time. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Mysterious Mac Malware Has Infected Hundreds of Victims For Years

Sweden Accidentally Leaks Personal Details of Nearly All Citizens

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hacker News: Swedish media is reporting of a massive data breach in the Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen) after the agency mishandled an outsourcing deal with IBM, which led to the leak of the private data about every vehicle in the country, including those used by both police and military. The data breach exposed the names, photos and home addresses of millions of Swedish citizen, including fighter pilots of Swedish air force, members of the military’s most secretive units, police suspects, people under the witness relocation program, the weight capacity of all roads and bridges, and much more. The incident is believed to be one of the worst government information security disasters ever. In 2015, the Swedish Transport Agency hand over IBM an IT maintenance contract to manage its databases and networks. However, the Swedish Transport Agency uploaded IBM’s entire database onto cloud servers, which covered details on every vehicle in the country, including police and military registrations, and individuals on witness protection programs. The transport agency then emailed the entire database in messages to marketers that subscribe to it. And what’s terrible is that the messages were sent in clear text. When the error was discovered, the transport agency merely thought of sending a new list in another email, asking the subscribers to delete the old list themselves. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Sweden Accidentally Leaks Personal Details of Nearly All Citizens

Fourth Ethereum Platform Hacked This Month: Hacker Steals $8.4 Million From Veritaseum Platform

An anonymous reader writes: “Veritaseum has confirmed today that a hacker stole $8.4 million from the platform’s ICO on Sunday, July 23, ” reports Bleeping Computer. “This is the second ICO hack in the last week and the fourth hack of an Ethereum platform this month. An ICO (Initial Coin Offering) is similar to a classic IPO (Initial Public Offering), but instead of stocks in a company, buyers get tokens in an online platform. Users can keep tokens until the issuing company decides to buy them back, or they can sell the tokens to other users for Ethereum. Veritaseum was holding its ICO over the weekend, allowing users to buy VERI tokens for a product the company was preparing to launch in the realm of financial services.” The hacker breached its systems, stole VERI tokens and immediately dumped them on the market due to the high-demand. The hacker made $8.4 million from the token sale, which he immediately started to launder. In a post-mortem announcement, Middleton posted online today, the Veritaseum CEO said “the amount stolen was miniscule (less than 00.07%) although the dollar amount was quite material.” The CEO also suspects that “at least one corporate partner that may have dropped the ball and [might] be liable.” Previous Ethereum services hacks include Parity, CoinDash, and Classic Ether Wallet. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Fourth Ethereum Platform Hacked This Month: Hacker Steals $8.4 Million From Veritaseum Platform

For twelve years, this family has let bees nest in their living room

In addition to benefiting from excellent feng shui, the family harvests about 15 kilograms of honey each year from their bee housemates , who showed up on the day of a wedding. (more…)

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For twelve years, this family has let bees nest in their living room

Nanomaterial charges everyday batteries in seconds

If you want a battery that charges in seconds rather than hours, you go for a supercapacitor . There are some catches to that, though: either you give up the long-lasting energy of a chemical battery (like the lithium pack in your phone) or have to resort to exotic storage tech to get a long lifespan. Drexel researchers think they have a better balance. They’ve developed electrodes based on a nanomaterial, MXene, that promise extremely quick charging times for chemical batteries. The near-2D design combines an oxide-metal ‘sandwich’ with hydrogel to create a structure that’s extremely conductive, but still lets ions move freely as the battery builds up a charge. In the lab’s design, you can charge MXene electrodes within “tens of milliseconds” — you could top up a phone in seconds or an electric car in minutes . As is often the case, the big challenge is scaling this up to production-quality energy cells. It could be years before this reaches something you can buy. However, its very focus on supporting chemical batteries makes it more practical. Factories would only have to adapt to the new electrodes, rather than throwing out their existing battery know-how. If nothing else, the existence of the MXene design shows that ultra-fast charging is becoming more realistic. Via: ScienceAlert Source: Drexel University , Nature

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Nanomaterial charges everyday batteries in seconds

Slackware, Oldest Linux Distro Still In Active Development, Turns 24

sombragris writes: July 17 marked the 24th anniversary of Slackware Linux, the oldest GNU/Linux still in active development, being created in 1993 by Patrick Volkerding, who still serves as its BDFL. Version 14.2 was launched last year, and the development version (Slackware-current) currently offers kernel 4.9.38, gcc 7.1, glibc 2.25, mesa 17.1.5, and KDE and Xfce as official desktops, with many others available as 3rd party packages. Slackware is also among the Linux distributions which have not adopted systemd as its init system; instead, it uses a modified BSD init which is quite simple and effective. Slackware is known to be a solid, stable and fast setup, with easy defaults which is appreciated by many Linux users worldwide. Phoronix has a small writeup noting the anniversary and there’s also a nice reddit thread. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Slackware, Oldest Linux Distro Still In Active Development, Turns 24

ASUS ROG Zephyrus review: Gaming laptops will never be the same again

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus is an entirely new breed of gaming notebook. It packs in the most powerful laptop graphics hardware on the market, NVIDIA’s GTX 1080 , in a frame that’s almost half the size of similar machines. Mostly, that’s due to being one of the first notebooks to feature NVIDIA’s Max-Q design standard, which is laser-focused on slimming down gaming laptops with beefy GPUs. That does lead to some compromises, especially around battery life, but the Zephyrus is still a wonder to behold. Hardware The Zephyrus, which is part of ASUS’s Republic of Gamers brand, is surprisingly thin at 17.9 mm thick. You won’t mistake it for an ultraportable like the MacBook or ASUS’s Zenbook , but it also doesn’t betray itself as a completely decked out gaming laptop, like Dell’s Alienware lineup. It clocks in at 4.93-pounds, 3 pounds lighter than the Razer Blade Pro , which was considered lightweight for a gaming machine when it came out last year. When it’s closed, the Zephyrus features one of the most subtle and attractive designs we’ve seen from an ASUS gaming laptop. The only elements that really stand out are its polished metal lid and copper vents, but otherwise it doesn’t call attention to itself. It’s slim and unassuming enough to fade into the background, but it packs in a ton of power. Open it up, and the laptop’s gaming DNA becomes clear. The bottom rear of the Zephyrus expands as you lift up the lid, creating a noticeable gap that pushes the screen up at an angle, and allows for better air intake. That open portion of the laptop also rocks red LED lights when you plug it in. (The mantra for most gaming machines: Got some empty space? Put an LED on it.) Cool air comes in from below, while hot air is exhausted through vents on the sides. ASUS also developed thinner and stronger fan blades made out of a new polymer to push air throughout the system. The company worked together with NVIDIA to design its cooling technology, and it shows. There’s clearly more ingenuity involved with removing heat from the system than we’ve typically seen from ASUS. And you can expect future Max-Q laptops to be similarly inventive. The laptop feels sturdy, overall, though I could see potential problems with its expanding bottom half. All it takes is one fall from a desk, or one spilled drink, to throw a wrench into the meticulous cooling design. Thankfully, there’s none of the sloppy build quality we’ve seen from other ASUS laptops, like the Zenbook 3. Port-wise, the Zephyrus is a bounty. It includes four USB 3.1 connections, a USB-C Thunderbolt 3 port, a full-sized HDMI connection, and a headphone jack. And since the laptop is too thin for a full-sized Ethernet port (which is mind boggling, to be honest), ASUS includes a USB converter in the box. We don’t normally mention AC adapters in reviews, but in the Zephyrus’s case, it seems necessary: It’s huge! Honestly, it seems more reminiscent of a PC power supply than a laptop’s. That’s probably due to the massive amount of juice the laptop needs when you’re gaming. Keyboard and trackpad Chris Velazco/AOL Unlike most other laptops, ASUS pushed the Zephyrus’s keyboard and trackpad all the way to its front edge. That allowed the company to place all of its high-powered hardware towards the back of the case — in particularly, the CPU and GPU — so it could all be cooled at once. It took me a while to get used to the Zephyrus’s strange keyboard orientation, and even longer to adjust to its trackpad, which sits to the right of the keys instead of below it. The keyboard is comfortable to type on, even though the keys have a very short travel distance. Not surprisingly, it was better suited to gaming than typing. Moving around first person shooters using the WASD keys felt just as responsive as my desktop keyboard. There’s also an array of LEDs behind every key, which you can customize using an app. ASUS bundles a comfortable wrist-rest in the box, which is useful if you’re worried about repetitive stress injuries. While the trackpad placement is a bit strange, we’ve seen similar laptops like the Razer Blade Pro place it on the right side as well. When it comes to games, I actually found it more useful than a typical trackpad, since it almost mimics the feeling of using a mouse. It’s surprisingly smooth and responsive — in many ways it felt more accurate than a standard trackpad. Obviously, it’s not something you’d use for an FPS, but it gives you a way to play slower paced games in areas where you can’t fit a gaming mouse. You can also transform the trackpad into a virtual numberpad by hitting the key right above it, which some gamers might appreciate for hitting hotkeys. It wasn’t as accurate as having a physical numberpad, but it felt more convenient than just relying on the standard top number row. Display and sound The Zephryus’s 15.6-inch, 1080p screen doesn’t seem particularly impressive at first, especially when other gaming laptops include 4K displays these days. But its 120Hz refresh rate and support for NVIDIA’s G-Sync technology should be appealing to gamers, since it allows for smooth play no matter what framerate you’re getting. The screen shined when playing colorful, fast-paced games like Overwatch and Doom . There wasn’t any tearing at all — it’s an experience more reminiscent of a high-end gaming monitor, than a standard laptop screen. It’s clear that ASUS wanted to focus on speed instead of pixel count, but it would have been nice to see a slightly higher resolution to take advantage of the laptop’s bountiful horsepower. 4K would have been nice, especially since the Zephyrus can actually play games at such a high resolution, but even 1, 440p would have been a decent compromise. A 1080p screen feels dated, and it’ll seem even more limiting over the next few years. While the Zephyrus’s display was bright enough for indoor gameplay, it didn’t fair as well outdoors. I appreciated its matte finish, which minimized reflections, but just don’t expect to be fragging your friends while sitting in the park. The laptop’s speakers, which are towards the front near the keyboard, are loud, yet tinny. You wouldn’t want to use them for any serious music or movie sessions. That doesn’t matter much for games, since most people will just plug in an elaborate pair of headphones, but it’s a disappointment nonetheless. Performance and battery life PCMark 7 PCMark 8 (Creative Accelerated) 3DMark 11 3DMark (Sky Diver) ATTO (top reads/writes) ASUS ROG Zephyrus (2.8GHz Intel Core i7-7700HQ, NVIDIA GTX 1080) 6, 030 7, 137 E20, 000 / P17, 017 / X7, 793 31, 624 3.4 GB/s / 1.64 GB/s Alienware 15 (2.8GHz Intel Core i7-7700HQ, NVIDIA GTX 1070) 6, 847 7, 100 E17, 041 / P16, 365 20, 812 2.9 GB/s / 0.9 GB/s Alienware 13 (2.8GHz Intel Core i7-7700HQ, NVIDIA GTX 1060) 4, 692 4, 583 E16, 703 / P12, 776 24, 460 1.78 GB/s / 1.04 GB/s Razer Blade Pro 2016 (2.6GHz Intel Core i7-6700HQ, NVIDIA GTX 1080) 6, 884 6, 995 E18, 231 / P16, 346 27, 034 2.75 GB/s / 1.1 GB/s ASUS ROG Strix GL502VS (2.6GHz Intel Core i7-6700HQ , NVIDIA GTX 1070) 5, 132 6, 757 E15, 335 / P13, 985 25, 976 2.14 GB/s / 1.2 GB/s HP Spectre x360 (2016, 2.7GHz Core i7-7500U, Intel HD 620) 5, 515 4, 354 E2, 656 / P1, 720 / X444 3, 743 1.76 GB/s / 579 MB/s Lenovo Yoga 910 (2.7GHz Core i7-7500U, 8GB, Intel HD 620) 5, 822 4, 108 E2, 927 / P1, 651 / X438 3, 869 1.59 GB/s / 313 MB/s Razer Blade (Fall 2016) (2.7GHz Intel Core-i7-7500U, Intel HD 620) 5, 462 3, 889 E3, 022 / P1, 768 4, 008 1.05 GB/s / 281 MB/s Razer Blade (Fall 2016) + Razer Core (2.7GHz Intel Core-i7-7500U, NVIDIA GTX 1080) 5, 415 4, 335 E11, 513 / P11, 490 16, 763 1.05 GB/s / 281 MB/s ASUS ZenBook 3 (2.7GHz Intel Core-i7-7500U, Intel HD 620) 5, 448 3, 911 E2, 791 / P1, 560 3, 013 1.67 GB/s / 1.44 GB/s HP Spectre 13 (2.5GHz Intel Core i7-6500U, Intel HD 520) 5, 046 3, 747 E2, 790 / P1, 630 / X375 3, 810 1.61 GB/s / 307 MB/s Razer Blade Stealth (2.5GHz Intel Core i7-6500U, Intel HD 520) 5, 131 3, 445 E2, 788 / P1, 599 / X426 3, 442 1.5 GB/s / 307 MB/s Under the hood, our Zephyrus review unit featured an Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor running at 2.8GHz, along with 16GB of RAM. But of course, the star of the show is NVIDIA’s GTX 1080 GPU. Just a year ago, the idea of cramming that GPU into a laptop was impressive. Now, we can do it in gaming notebooks that are slimmer than we’ve ever seen before. This isn’t a stripped down version of the GTX 1080 either, it’s still clocked at 1.5-1.7GHz and packs in 8GB of GDDR5X RAM. But instead of focusing on getting as much performance from the video card as possible, NVIDIA’s Max-Q philosophy emphasizes peak efficiency — basically, the point where you can get the most bang for your GPU buck. Our unit also featured a 512GB M.2 SSD, which is significantly faster than the older SATA variety. Your first impressions of the Zephyrus will depend on the type of computer you’re most used to. If you mainly dabble in ultraportables, you’ll likely be intimidated by how large it seems. But if you’re familiar with gaming laptops, it’ll seem remarkably slim. As soon as I was done marveling at what an engineering feat it is, I installed several games to test out its capabilities — and the results were impressive. I saw around 100-110 frames per second in Overwatch with all of the graphics settings at maximum. That was particularly notable since I set the render scale to 140 percent, which made the computer process the game at a higher resolution than 1080p for a sharper image. Doom, meanwhile, hit its 200FPS cap with everything maxed at 1080p, and Hitman’s benchmark achieved a solid 100FPS. Christopher Velazco/AOL Clearly, the Zephyrus’s hardware is overkill for 1080p, but that also makes it ideal for playing games on external monitors and TVs. It hit around 45 FPS on average in Hitman while running on a 4K monitor in high settings. Hooking it up to my 4K TV and receiver over HDMI was also a cinch, and I was able to create a console-like experience with the Witcher 3 by plugging in an Xbox controller and booting up Steam’s big picture mode. And given just how powerful it is, the Zephyrus had no trouble handling VR with the Oculus Rift. Its specs are well above the minimum requirements, so that’s not a huge surprise. Just be prepared to use up almost all of its USB ports. As you can imagine, this laptop gets hot when you’re playing games — especially around where its powerful components sit. But ASUS’s cooling setup does a decent job of keeping things from getting out of hand. While playing Overwatch and Doom , the GPU temperature hovered between 75c and 80c, which is typical for a gaming PC. I never saw any issues due to overheating. You’ll certainly hear the system’s fans, once they get going, but they’re nowhere near as loud as what I’ve heard on other high-powered gaming laptops. ASUS ROG Zephyrus 1:50 Alienware 15 4:31 Surface Book with Performance Base (2016) 16:15 Apple MacBook Pro 2016 (13-inch, no Touch Bar) 11:42 HP Spectre x360 (13-inch, 2015) 11:34 Apple MacBook Pro with Retina display (13-inch, 2015) 11:23 Apple MacBook Pro 2016 (15-inch) 11:00 HP Spectre x360 15t 10:17 Apple MacBook Pro 2016 (13-inch, Touch Bar) 9:55 ASUS ZenBook 3 9:45 Apple MacBook (2016) 8:45 Samsung Notebook 9 8:16 Alienware 13 7:32 Microsoft Surface Pro 4 7:15 HP Spectre 13 7:07 Razer Blade Stealth (Spring 2016) 5:48 Razer Blade Stealth (Fall 2016) 5:36 Dell XPS 15 (2016) 5:25 (7:40 with the mobile charger) Razer Blade Pro (2016) 3:48 ASUS ROG Strix GL502VS 3:03 The Zephyrus fit well into my daily workflow — I was even able to get some work done while balancing it on my lap. Its biggest downside, unfortunately, is battery life. In our test, which involves looping an HD video, the Zephyrus lasted just 1 hour and 50 minutes. And while gaming, expect between an hour and 90 minutes of play. The terrible battery life is a shame, but it makes sense given how thin and powerful this computer is. You can’t do that without making tradeoffs. You’ll want to keep the Zephyrus plugged in for the best performance, anyway. On battery, Overwatch was locked at around 30 FPS. As soon as I plugged in power, it skyrocketed to 110 FPS. Configuration options and the competition The Zephyrus we tested starts at $2, 699, but there’s also a slightly cheaper model with a GTX 1070 and 256GB SSD for $2, 299. That’s a bit less than the $3000 Acer Predator 700, which also sports a Max Q design and features a GTX 1080. Basically, if you want this combination of portability and power, be prepared to pay dearly. Otherwise, you’ll have to make do with heavier gaming laptops like the Alienware 15 . Razer’s Blade Stealth is another option, since you can add the company’s Core dock to use an external GPU. And of course, if games are your main concern, you can also consider buying or building a small desktop. It won’t be as portable as the Zephyrus, but you’ll save a ton. Wrap-up No matter how you look at it, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus is remarkable. It marks a new era for gaming laptops, one where you can expect a thin, five-pound notebook to pack as much power as an eight-to-ten pound machine from a few years ago. It could conceivably be the answer to all of your gaming needs, even on your television, since it’s easy to move around your house. It’s a shame that the battery life stinks, but that’s a decent compromise for a laptop unlike any other.

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ASUS ROG Zephyrus review: Gaming laptops will never be the same again