A San Diego-based EV conversion company salvaged a charred Ferrari ( they had many to choose from ) by turning it into what the company claims is the first fully electric Ferrari, a 415-horsepower electric tire-crusher. It’s glorious, if a little blasphemous. Read more…
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The World’s First Electric Ferrari Ditches The V8 For Tire-Crushing Electric Motors
When he was a boy, growing up in Nottingham, England, Andrew Gower couldn’t afford to buy all of the video games he wanted to play. Rather than mope, he rallied. A wunderkind programmer, Gower created his own versions of the most popular games, pieced together from clues printed in text and image in the pages of video game magazines. Gower’s take on Lemmings— the 1991 Amiga game that was developed by DMA Design six years before the studio made Grand Theft Auto— was his masterwork. “I was proud of that game,” he says. “It was the first [computer game] I’d made that didn’t look like it had been put together by a kid.” Gower would grow up to become, along with his brothers Paul and Ian, the co-founders of Jagex Games Studio and creators of its flagship title RuneScape. It’s one of the longest-running massively-multiplayer online games (MMOG), in which players quest together across the Internet in a fantasy world that, like Facebook, continues to rumble and function even when an individual logs off. Launched in 2001, the earliest version of the game looked rather like a fantasy-themed version of The Sims . Characters were viewed from a divine camera, looking down on the action from an isometric perspective. RuneScape takes place in the world of Gielinor, where gods roam among men. The game eschews a linear storyline, allowing players to set their own goals and objectives. Now in its third iteration (the basic game was superseded by a new version in both 2004 and 2013, each of which upgraded its graphics and overhauled the underlying code base), RuneScape has reached an enviable milestone in the fickle world of MMOs: 15 years old. Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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From MUD to MMOG: The making of RuneScape
Reader Thelasko writes: The BBC has a story about people with names that break computer databases. “When Jennifer Null tries to buy a plane ticket, she gets an error message on most websites. The site will say she has left the surname field blank and ask her to try again.” Thelasko compares it to the XKCD comic about Bobby Tables, though it’s a real problem that’s also been experienced by a Hawaiian woman named Janice Keihanaikukauakahihulihe’ekahaunaele, whose last name exceeds the 36-character limit on state ID cards. And in 2010, programmer John Graham-Cumming complained about web sites (including Yahoo) which refused to accept hyphenated last names. Programmer Patrick McKenzie pointed the BBC to a 2011 W3C post highlighting the key issues with names, along with his own list of common mistaken assumptions. “They don’t necessarily test for the edge cases, ” McKenzie says, noting that even when filing his own income taxes in Japan, his last name exceeds the number of characters allowed. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Upgrading to Windows 10 is easy if you’re already on Windows 7 or 8 . However, if you want a clean install , you have to install an older version first. Next month, the first big update to Windows 10 will fix this. Read more…
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Next Month You Can Use Windows 7, 8 Product Keys to Activate Windows 10
Inkcase is exactly what you just guessed it is: a phone case with an e-ink screen that provides a simpler, more economical view on your communications. (more…)
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Inkcase is an e-ink display for your iPhone
After reporting 700 pilgrims dead in a stampede near the holy city of Mecca two weeks ago , Saudi authorities have come clean with the true number killed after pressure from investigators: 1,453 were killed and hundreds remain missing. Indeed, Shiite Iran in particular has challenged its Sunni arch-rival’s status as the custodian of Islam’s two holiest sites, warning that if diplomacy doesn’t yield an independent investigation, “the Islamic Republic is also prepared to use the language of force.” Nearly one-third of the deaths in the incident were pilgrims from neighboring Iran. Given all of this, it’s not terribly surprising that a more accurate accounting of the tragedy had to come from an outside source. As Ruth Graham noted last month in The Atlantic, Saudi officials weren’t eager to take responsibility: “In Saudi Arabia, the country’s health minister chalked up the latest incident to a failure to follow instructions, and the head of the Central Hajj Committee blamed ‘some pilgrims from African nationalities.’” In the meantime, hundreds of worshipers still remain missing and so the true extent of last month’s disaster is not fully known.
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Saudis halved the death toll in Hajj stampede: true count is 1453
Horrible browser plugins used to offer extended multimedia features for website, often at the cost of a much worse overall experience — thankfully, they’re going the way of the dodo. Chrome recently banished plugins like Java and Silverlight (and made auto-playing Flash ads disabled by default ), and now Firefox is doing the same. Mozilla just announced in a blog post that nearly all old-school plugins will not be supported in Firefox by the end of 2016. That’s a long ways away, but it’s still good news. Naturally, the impossible-to-kill Adobe Flash platform is exempted from this doom, but everything else will be completely disabled. Mozilla also noted that new platforms, like the 64-bit Firefox for Windows, will launch without plugin support since they don’t have to support a legacy base of users. Let’s take a moment of thanks for standards like HTML5 making the web a better place to browse and start counting down the days until Flash can join Java in the internet’s trash pile. Via: PC World Source: Mozilla
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Firefox will stop supporting web plugins (except for Flash) by the end of 2016
Cablevision , an iconic US cable TV company founded in 1973, has been purchased by France’s Altice for $17.7 billion. The sale has been approved by shareholders and is expected to go through in the first half of 2016. “Nearly half a century later, the time is right for new ownership of Cablevision and its considerable assets, ” said CEO James L. Dolan. Not included in those assets, however, is Cablevision’s Madison Square Garden company — the Dolan family will keep the downtown New York arena, along with Radio City Music Hall and the Rangers and Knicks pro sports franchises. It’s also holding onto AMC Networks, the home of Mad Men , Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead . Altice was a company little known in the US until it purchased regional cable group Suddenlink for $9.1 billion in May. In Europe, the family-owned company provides internet, pay-TV and mobile phone offerings. “The acquisition of Cablevision represents Altice’s next step in the US market, ” said CEO Patrick Drahi.” That’s an understatement — with the Cablevision acquisition, Altice is now the fourth-largest cable TV provider in the US. Filed under: Home Entertainment , Internet , HD Comments Source: Cablevision Tags: Acquisition, Altice, Cable, Cablevision, France, hdpostcross, ISP, Knicks, MadisonSquareGarden
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Cablevision buyout makes Altice the fourth-largest US cable operator
You knew T-Mobile wasn’t going to let Sprint’s sweet family plan go unanswered, didn’t you? Sure enough, the magenta network has trotted out an upgraded Simple Choice family plan that gives two people unlimited calling, text and 10GB of full-speed data (each, not total) for the same $100 that Sprint is asking. That’s not as alluring if you regularly consume gigs upon gigs of internet content (Sprint’s data is also unlimited), but T-Mobile is also charging just $20 for every additional line instead of Sprint’s $40. If you have phone-toting kids, that could add up. This is also cheaper than what you’d get at AT&T or Verizon, where you’re looking at $140 or more to give a family of four 10GB of shared data. You’ll have to wait a day (until July 15th) to change plans if you’re already a T-Mo family subscriber, but it’s probably worth the short wait. Just don’t tell Marcelo Claure that. Filed under: Cellphones , Wireless , Mobile , T-Mobile Comments Source: T-Mobile Newsroom
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T-Mobile’s latest family plan gives everyone 10GB of full-speed data
$100 buys you a snap-fit 3D printer. Whitney Hipolite of 3DPrint.com says the resin-based Peachy Printer is ” amazing .” One of the great things about the Peachy Printer is that since it is only available in kit form, it can can be completely customized to the size you want. Read the rest
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The $100 Peachy 3D Printer is amazing