Marijuana company buys entire town in California to make it weed friendly

A cannabis products producer bought the town of Nipton, California (pop. 20) for $5 million, with the intention of turning into a weed “destination.” From BBC : American Green wants to invest up to $2.5m (£1.9m) in revitalising the town to make it more tourist-friendly as well as eco-friendly. “We thought that showing that there was a viable means of having a cannabis-friendly municipality and further making it energy independent could be a way of really inspiring folks to say, ‘Why can’t we do that here?'” project manager Stephen Shearin told Bloomberg. “The gold rush built this city,” he adds. “The green rush can keep it moving the way people envisioned it years ago.” The Gateway to the Mojave National Preserve. . 30 April 2017 Nipton, CA A post shared by Prince Travels (@prince_travels) on May 2, 2017 at 9:00am PDT Nipton California. pic.twitter.com/l8PBEbFk35 — Jeff Lloyd (@lloydjbl) April 16, 2016

See the original article here:
Marijuana company buys entire town in California to make it weed friendly

Startup Unveils Revolutionary New Rechargeable Alkaline Batteries

Slashdot reader cdreimer quotes the New York Times: Alkaline batteries can be made far more cheaply and safely than today’s lithium-ion batteries, but they are not rechargeable… Ionic Materials could change that equation with an alkaline battery the company said could be recharged hundreds of times. One additional benefit of the company’s breakthrough: An alkaline battery would not be as prone to the combustion issues that have plagued lithium-ion batteries in a range of products, most notably some Samsung smartphones. Cheaper and more powerful batteries are also considered by many to be the driver needed to make the cost of renewable energy technologies like wind and solar competitive with the coal, gas and nuclear power that support the national energy grid. The company “has demonstrated up to 400 recharge cycles for its prototypes, ” and it’s now even investigating aluminum-based alkaline batteries which would also be lighter than lithium-ion batteries. The company is backed by Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy, who also envisions the batteries being used in electric cars. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read the original post:
Startup Unveils Revolutionary New Rechargeable Alkaline Batteries

‘World of Warcraft’ Game Currency Now Worth More Than Venezuelan Money

schwit1 quotes TheBlaze: Digital gold from Blizzard’s massive multiplayer online game “World of Warcraft” is worth more than actual Venezuelan currency, the bolivar, according to new data. Venezuelan resident and Twitter user @KalebPrime first made the discovery July 14 and tweeted at the time that on the Venezuela’s black market — now the most-used method of currency exchange within Venezuela according to NPR — you can get $1 for 8493.97 bolivars. Meanwhile, a “WoW” token, which can be bought for $20 from the in-game auction house, is worth 8385 gold per dollar. According to sites that track the value of both currencies, KalebPrime’s math is outdated, and WoW gold is now worth even more than the bolivar. That tweet has since gone viral, prompting @KalebPrime to joke that “At this rate when I publish my novel the quotes will read ‘FROM THE GUY THAT MADE THE WOW GOLD > VENEZUELAN BOLIVAR TWEET.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

See the original article here:
‘World of Warcraft’ Game Currency Now Worth More Than Venezuelan Money

Chicago police see less violent crime after using predictive code

Law enforcement has been trying predictive policing software for a while now, but how well does it work when it’s put to a tough test? Potentially very well, according to Chicago police. The city’s 7th District police report that their use of predictive algorithms helped reduce the number of shootings 39 percent year-over-year in the first 7 months of 2017, with murders dropping by 33 percent. Three other districts didn’t witness as dramatic a change, but they still saw 15 to 29 percent reductions in shootings and a corresponding 9 to 18 percent drop in murders. It mainly comes down to knowing where and when to deploy officers. One of the tools used in the 7th District, HunchLab, blends crime statistics with socioeconomic data, weather info and business locations to determine where crimes are likely to happen. Other tools (such as the Strategic Subject’s List and ShotSpotter ) look at gang affiliation, drug arrest history and gunfire detection sensors. If the performance holds, It’ll suggest that predictive policing can save lives when crime rates are particularly high, as they have been on Chicago’s South Side. However, both the Chicago Police Department and academics are quick to stress that algorithms are just one part of a larger solution. Officers still have be present, and this doesn’t tackle the underlying issues that cause crime, such as limited access to education and a lack of economic opportunity. Still, any successful reduction in violence is bound to be appreciated. Source: Reuters

View post:
Chicago police see less violent crime after using predictive code

Proposed emojis include the drunk face and sad poo we’ve all been missing

It’s only been a month since the Unicode Emoji Consortium released version 10 of the colorful little communication icons, including more diverse images along with zombies, a T-rex and (yes) a sandwich icon. Now, though, the group has yet another set of proposed emojis for next year. Along with more math and science items and a silly drunk face emoji, the new group of 67 tiny pictures includes, wait for it, a new sad poo emoji. The top two requested emoji in this list are “face with smiling eyes and party horn and party hat, ” which I guess is sort of a “let’s party” emoji, along with “frowning face with question marks as eyes, ” which is totally going to be my go-to “WTF” emoji when it shows up on my iPhone. The other proposed images range from a self-explanatory “smiling face with smiling eyes and three hearts” to a more complex image like “blue face with clenched teeth and icicles.” There are body parts, like the tops of various heads (including a bald one), items of clothing like a hiking boot and lab coat, new animals like a llama and hippopotamus, more foods like a “moon cake” and mango and various activity emojis like “flying disc” and firecracker. Other proposals include cool science objects, like a test tube and DNA double helix, as well as stuff like a roll of toilet paper (handy when stuck in the bathroom with only your phone and one of the two poop emojis) and a ball of yarn. These are all just draft emojis, of course. The final encoding in Unicode 11.0 isn’t set to release until June of 2018. The final candidates will be decide in the fourth quarter of this year, and decided in the first quarter of 2018. The Emoji subcommittee says that it received many proposals for new emoji that weren’t “well-formed.” The authors have been informed of the need to re-submit, so the list can change at any time. Via: The Verge Source: Unicode

Continue Reading:
Proposed emojis include the drunk face and sad poo we’ve all been missing

What kind of gaming rig can run at 16K resolution?

The consumer gaming world might be in a tizzy about 4K consoles and displays of late, but that resolution standard wasn’t nearly enough for one team of PC tinkerers. The folks over at Linus Tech Tips have posted a very entertaining video showing off a desktop PC build capable of running (some) games at an astounding 16K resolution. That’s a 15260×8640, for those counting the over 132 million pixels being pushed every frame—64 times the raw pixel count of a standard 1080p display and 16 times that of a 4K display. The key to the build is four Quadro P5000 video cards provided by Nvidia. While each card performs similarly to a consumer-level GTX1080 (8.9 teraflops, 2560 parallel cores), these are pro-tier cards designed for animators and other high-end graphic work, often used for massive jumbotrons and other multi-display or multi-projector installations. The primary difference between Quadro and consumer cards is that these come with 16GB of video RAM. Unfortunately, the multi-display Mosaic technology syncing the images together means that mirrored memory doesn’t stack, leading to the rig’s most significant bottleneck. All told, the graphics cards alone would cost over $10,000, including a “quadrosync” card that ties them all together to run a single image across 16 displays. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

More:
What kind of gaming rig can run at 16K resolution?

Charter has moved millions of customers to new—and often higher—pricing

Enlarge / A Charter Spectrum vehicle. (credit: Charter ) Charter Communications has moved 30 percent of the customers it acquired in a blockbuster merger onto new pricing plans, resulting in many people paying higher prices. Charter closed the acquisitions of Time Warner Cable (TWC) and Bright House Networks in May 2016. Before the merger, Charter had about 6.8 million customers; afterwards, Charter had 25.4 million customers in 41 states and became the second-largest US cable company after Comcast. The merger was quickly followed by customer complaints about pricing in the acquired territories. In November 2016 , we noted that “tens of thousands of ex-Time Warner Cable video subscribers have canceled their service since the company was bought by Charter, and pricing changes appear to be the driving factor.” At the time, Charter CEO Thomas Rutledge explained that the TWC video customer base was “mispriced” and needed to be moved “in the right direction.” Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read the article:
Charter has moved millions of customers to new—and often higher—pricing

America’s newest aircraft carrier uses “digital” catapult on fighter for first time

Enlarge / An F/A-18 flies above the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) as its pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Jaime Struck, prepares for the first arrested landing aboard the new carrier on July 28. (credit: US Navy ) Last week, an F/A-18F Super Hornet from the US Navy’s Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 23 successfully landed and then took off from the recently commissioned USS Gerald R. Ford —the first full use of the ship’s next-generation flight arresting system and electromagnetic catapult. The landing and launch off the Virginia coast are a pair of major milestones for the systems, which have seen their share of controversy (and cost overruns). But the test doesn’t close the book on the catapult’s problems. The catapult, called the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), has suffered from control problems that have prevented the Navy from certifying it for use with fully loaded strike aircraft. Earlier launches at a test site at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, in April of 2014 caused a high level of vibration in the wings of F/A-18s loaded with 480-gallon wing-mounted fuel tanks—the configuration commonly used to launch aircraft on long-range strike missions. The vibrations were so strong that Navy officials were concerned about the safety of launching aircraft fully loaded. US Navy Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read the original post:
America’s newest aircraft carrier uses “digital” catapult on fighter for first time

After 43 years, gentle touch of a neutrino is finally observed

Enlarge / The neutron source at Oak Ridge National Lab. (credit: Oak Ridge National Lab ) Neutrinos are noted for being extremely reluctant to interact with other matter. While it’s possible to build hardware that will detect them, these detectors tend to be enormous in order to provide sufficient material for the neutrinos to interact with. Those interactions also take the form of energetic events that transform the identity of particles (for example, converting protons to neutrons). Given the neutrino’s low mass and tendency not to interact, the idea of detecting one simply bumping into another particle seems almost ludicrous. But that’s what scientists from Oak Ridge National Lab are reporting today. They’ve seen brief flashes as atoms get nudged by a neutrino, which imparts a tiny bit of its tiny momentum to the atom’s nucleus. Oak Ridge National Lab is home to some hardware called the Spallation Neutron Source. This accelerates a beam of protons and smashes them into a tank of mercury. This creates debris that includes lots of neutrons, which are used for a variety of scientific purposes. But the debris also includes some neutrinos that are otherwise lost in the spray of particles that come flowing out of the collisions. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read the original:
After 43 years, gentle touch of a neutrino is finally observed

Man sues Los Angeles for parking ticket, gets $650K

In 2015 Cody Weiss got a ticket for parking longer than the posted time limit. He says the ticket was wrongfully issued, and decided to contest the ticket. He learned that the City of LA doesn’t directly review tickets; it outsources the job to a private company. That didn’t sit well with Weiss, so he sued the city and won. Yesterday, the Los Angeles City Council approved a $650,000 payout. From the LA Times : Weiss argued that his ticket, which he received for parking longer than the posted time limit, was wrongfully issued. The court found a problem with the fact that the initial review was handled by a company called PRWT, a subcontractor for Xerox. An investigation by NBC4 found that PRWT automatically denied most ticket appeals, even when strong evidence was presented that someone was wrongly ticketed. Image: Charleston’s TheDigitel

Continue Reading:
Man sues Los Angeles for parking ticket, gets $650K