The Millennium Falcon is the king of cool when it comes to classic sci-fi spaceships. The vessel is a kitbashed masterpiece and bold image that screams Star Wars. It’s also a “piece of junk, ” a “bucket of bolts, ” and constant headache for Han Solo and company, but hey, she’s got it where it counts. Read more…
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How Sound Engineers Made the Millennium Falcon’s Most Iconic Noise
After a long drought, California is suddenly getting pounded with its biggest storm in a decade. Whoa, what’s happening? It’s all the work of an atmospheric river, a particular weather event that can be devastating when it hits land. Read more…
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The Meteorological Phenomenon That’s Flooding California
jones_supa writes: In Windows, the kernel version number is once again in sync with the product version. Build 9888 of Windows 10 Technical Preview is making the rounds in a private channel and the kernel version has indeed been bumped from 6.4 to 10.0. Version 6.x has been in use since Windows Vista. Neowin speculates that this large jump in version number is likely related to the massive overhaul of the underlying components of the OS to make it the core for all of Microsoft’s products. The company is working to consolidate all of its platforms into what’s called OneCore, which, as the name implies, will be the one core for all of Microsoft’s operating systems. It will be interesting to see if this causes any software comparability issues with legacy applications. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Windows Kernel Version Bumped To 10.0
sciencehabit writes The Amazon is home to perhaps dozens of isolated tribes who make their living far off the grid from the wider society, growing crops and hunting and gathering in the forest. These reclusive peoples are threatened by drug running, illegal logging, and highway construction, even if they dwell in ‘protected’ reserves in Peru or Brazil; one group, apparently pushed out of its lands, made contact this summer. Now, researchers have a new way of examining their fate without disruptive and frightening flyovers by aircraft. Researchers use high-resolution WorldView or GeoEye satellite images to monitor demographic changes in isolated Amazon tribes. The scientists got location and population estimates for five isolated villages along the Brazil-Peru border from Brazilian government reports and other sources. Then they examined 50-centimeter resolution satellite images taken in 2006, 2012, and 2013 and could spot the peoples’ horticultural fields and characteristic pattern of either longhouses or clusters of small houses; these villages could be clearly differentiated from the transient camps of illegal loggers or drug runners. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Satellites Spot Hidden Villages In Amazon
Brazil was not bluffing last year, when it said that it would disconnect from the United States-controlled internet due to the NSA obscenely invasive surveillance tactics . The country is about to stretch a cable from the northern city of Fortaleza all the way to Portugal. This is a big deal. Read more…
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Brazil Is Keeping Its Promise to Disconnect from the U.S. Internet
A new study on solar energy from Deutsche Bank bears very good news . Thanks to technology and innovation, solar energy will be just as cheap as energy from fossil fuels by 2016. That’s basically tomorrow, and it’s awesome. Read more…
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Study: Solar Energy Will Be as Cheap as Fossil Fuel Energy by 2016
Good news, you lovers of freedom and justice. The FTC is going after AT&T for throttling the mobile internet speed of unlimited data customers. In the words of FTC chairwoman Edith Ramirez: ” The issue is simple : Unlimited means unlimited.” Read more…
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The FTC Is Finally Suing AT&T for Throttling Customers’ Data
The current drought in the U.S. certainly feels like it’s one for the history books. But it’s likely not the worst North America has seen in the last millennium. A new study from NASA shows that a drought in 1934 was by far the worst to strike the continent in 1000 years. Read more…
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The worst drought of the last 1,000 years was in 1934
An anonymous reader writes Parents in China’s Zhejiang province can give their own blood to earn some extra points on their child’s high school entrance exam. Four liters of donated blood will get your child one extra point; 6 liters adds two points; and 8 liters, three. From the article: “The policy burst into the national limelight this week, when a Weibo user posted a photo of a bandaged arm, saying, ‘For my future child, I say one thing: Relax when you take the high school entrance exam. Your dad’s already helped you gain points.’ The post was widely shared. Though the user declined to be interviewed by China Real Time, he also clarified his original post, saying that he had in fact been giving blood since age 18.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Blood For Extra Credit Points Offer Raises Eyebrows In Test-Mad China
An anonymous reader writes The state-run OAO Rosneft has discovered a vast pool of crude in the Kara Sea region of the Arctic Ocean, arguably bigger than the Gulf of Mexico. From the article: “The discovery sharpens the dispute between Russia and the U.S. over President Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine. The well was drilled before the Oct. 10 deadline Exxon was granted by the U.S. government under sanctions barring American companies from working in Russia’s Arctic offshore. Rosneft and Exxon won’t be able to do more drilling, putting the exploration and development of the area on hold despite the find announced today.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Exxon and Russian Operation Discovers Oil Field Larger Than the Gulf of Mexico