Why Seeing Interstellar in 70mm Might Just Be Worth the Effort

With thousands of TV shows and movies available to stream at home, it takes more than just celebrities in a film to get people into theaters. You need to show them something spectacular, and for Christopher Nolan’s latest film, Interstellar , that meant shooting almost an hour of the movie with a 70mm IMAX camera. Read more…

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Why Seeing Interstellar in 70mm Might Just Be Worth the Effort

Uber and Its Shady Partners Are Pushing Drivers into Subprime Loans

The subprime lending market that plunged America into the Great Recession is back and as unscrupulous as ever. Instead of mortgages, this time a bubble has formed around auto loans , and reliably ruthless Uber is in the thick of it. Two “partners” in Uber’s vehicle financing program are under federal investigation, but Uber hasn’t slowed its aggressive marketing campaign to get drivers with bad credit to sign up for loans. Read more…

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Uber and Its Shady Partners Are Pushing Drivers into Subprime Loans

Movie filmed to look like a first person shooter game looks incredible

Here’s an action scene from a movie called Hardcore that’s filmed completely from one character’s point of view so it looks exactly like a first person shooter video game. In fact, it’s so good, it’s as if those FPS video games like Call of Duty all of a sudden came to life. Watch it. Read more…

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Movie filmed to look like a first person shooter game looks incredible

Android 5.0 Lollipop Is Here

Anyone blessed with a Nexus or Google Play edition device will very soon be able to enjoy Android’s latest software masterpiece, Lollipop. An official blogpost announces that Lollipop will begin its public rollout today though it’s light on specifics. Read more…

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Android 5.0 Lollipop Is Here

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo Deployed Its Braking System Prematurely

Following the tragic accident on Friday which saw Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo fail catastrophically, engineers are now scrabbling to understand the cause. In a new briefing , the National Transportation Safety Board has explained that the craft d eployed its braking system prematurely. Read more…

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Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo Deployed Its Braking System Prematurely

Nvidia’s Next-Gen Grass Simulations Are Mesmerizing

When developers are looking for the next jaw-dropping gaming visual to show off their newest titles with, the responsibility usually falls on some shiny, photo-real car porn or a wavy mullet with individual strands blowing in the wind. But the sizzle reels of the future may turn their cameras ground-ward if Nvidia’s new grass-mimicking effect is anything to go by. Read more…

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Nvidia’s Next-Gen Grass Simulations Are Mesmerizing

Buying Goods To Make Nuclear Weapons On eBay, Alibaba, and Other Platforms

Lasrick (2629253) writes The blossoming of online Internet-trading platforms has at least one downside: insufficient inspectors and product controls when it comes to goods relevant to nuclear proliferation. “On Alibaba (and other platforms), one can purchase many of the specialized items needed for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. A short list of items advertised for sale on the site include metals suitable for centrifuge manufacturing, gauges and pumps for centrifuge cascades for uranium enrichment, metallurgical casting equipment suitable for making nuclear weapon ‘pits, ‘ and high-speed cameras suitable for use in nuclear weapon diagnostic tests. A company on an Alibaba-owned Chinese Internet-trading platform even posted an ad for the sale of the rare metal gallium, which the seller trumpeted could be used to stabilize plutonium.” Although many companies have strict compliance procedures in place to help avoid proliferation, many do not. There are several procedures these platforms can put into place to minimize risk, and both national (and international) regulators have a role to play, as well as shareholders. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Buying Goods To Make Nuclear Weapons On eBay, Alibaba, and Other Platforms

Rhode Island Comic Con Oversold, Overcrowded

New submitter RobertJ1729 writes The Rhode Island Comic Con (RICC) is in the middle of a complete meltdown as hundreds are turned away at the door or denied reentry due to the event organizers selling far more tickets than the venue can accomodate. The Providence Journal reports that “According to Providence Fire Chief David Soscia, too many people were being let in at a time and the organizers were not correctly counting them. That led to over-congested areas in the building which has a maximum capacity of 17, 000 people.” Meanwhile the Rhode Island Comic Con Facebook page is being flooded with comments from angry attendees describing chaos both inside and out of the convention center. RICC initially posted, “Hello RICC fans! WE ARE NOT OVERSOLD!, ” and promised to honor tomorrow tickets sold for today. That post generated several hundred angry comments before eventually being deleted (though it survives in part on RICC’s twitter feed). Commenters are alleging that RICC is deleting negative Facebook comments. Users are tweeting at #ricomicconfail2014 to vent their frustration. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Rhode Island Comic Con Oversold, Overcrowded

Reactions To Disgusting Images Predict a Persons Political Ideology

LuxuryYacht writes A new study shows that the way your brain responds to photos of of maggots, mutilated carcasses, and gunk in the kitchen sink gives a pretty good indication of whether you’re liberal or conservative. “Remarkably, we found that the brain’s response to a single disgusting image was enough to predict an individual’s political ideology, ” Read Montague, a Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute psychology professor who led the study, said in a written statement. 83 men and women viewed a series of images while having their brains scanned in a functional MRI (fMRI) machine. The images included the disgusting photos described above, along with photos of babies and pleasant landscapes. Afterward, the participants were asked to rate how grossed out they were by each photo. They also completed a survey about their political beliefs, which included questions about their attitudes toward school prayer, gun control, immigration, and gay marriage. There was no significant difference in how liberals and conservatives rated the photos. But the researchers noted differences between the two groups in the activity of brain regions associated with disgust recognition, emotion regulation, attention and even memory. The differences were so pronounced that the researchers could analyze a scan and predict the person’s political leaning with 95 percent accuracy. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Reactions To Disgusting Images Predict a Persons Political Ideology