Tag: fnself-program1

For the first time a country has invested heavily in space mining

Concept image of a harvester for Deep Space Industries. (credit: Deep Space Industries) Luxembourg, a small European country about the size of Rhode Island, wants to be the Silicon Valley of the space mining industry. The landlocked Grand Duchy announced Friday it was opening a €200 million ($225 million) line of credit for entrepreneurial space companies to set up their European headquarters within its borders. Luxembourg has already reached agreements with two US-based companies, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, to open offices in Luxembourg and conduct major research and development activities. “We intend to become the European center for asteroid mining,” said Étienne Schneider, deputy prime minister and minister of the economy, during a news conference Friday. The mining of space resources is a long bet. Although some deep-pocketed investors from Google and other companies have gotten behind Planetary Resources, and people like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos have speculated that within a couple of decades most manufacturing and resource gathering will be done off Earth, there is precious little activity today. Humans have never visited an asteroid, and NASA is only just planning to launch its first robotic mission to visit and gather samples from an asteroid,  OSIRIS-REx , this summer. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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For the first time a country has invested heavily in space mining

Musk’s remarks at conference imply Tesla has huge autonomous car advantage

(credit: Mashable) On Wednesday night Elon Musk grandly told audiences at the Code 2016 conference that we might be living in a simulated universe . That comment has certainly sparked attention, but he said something else that’s still got us scratching our collective head: when asked about self-driving cars, Musk said that he considers it a “solved problem,” and that “we are probably less than two years away” from safe autonomous driving. This timeline is consistent with one that he gave Ars in 2015, but the head-scratchy bit is that every other expert we’ve spoken to thinks true self-driving cars (Level 4 autonomy according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) are at least a decade out. NHTSA defines a level 4 autonomous car as one that “is designed to perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip. Such a design anticipates that the driver will provide destination or navigation input, but is not expected to be available for control at any time during the trip. This includes both occupied and unoccupied vehicles.” Even Google’s experimental self-driving cars are classed as Level 3 by the agency. Autonomous driving experts we’ve consulted at Audi , BMW , Ford , Mercedes, and Volvo (all of which have extremely active self-driving research programs) have consistently told us the same thing: it’s comparatively easy to make a car drive itself on a highway where every car is going the same direction and there’s no pedestrian traffic. But a car that can drive itself through a busy urban interchange—think Manhattan or Mumbai at rush hour—is closer to 2030 than 2020. Even sensor OEM Mobileye, which supplies Tesla with some of its autopilot hardware , won’t have its Level 3-ready EyeQ5 system on a chip ready until 2020. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Musk’s remarks at conference imply Tesla has huge autonomous car advantage

Paris bans pre-1997 cars from its streets during the week

Don’t expect to see cars like this on Parisian streets after this summer (unless it’s a weekend). (credit: Don O’Brien @ Flickr ) Parisians with cars built before 1997 are going to need to head to the nearest car dealership if they want to keep driving in the city after July 1. The French capital has experienced quite horrific air pollution in the last few years, and there was  a massive spike in March 2015 that saw the city’s air quality drop lower than that of Beijing, China. After trying out temporary restrictions to vehicle traffic, Les Echos reports that the city has decided to implement new rules that will ban older and more polluting vehicles from its streets on weekdays. Those restrictions will also tighten over time; in 2020, only cars built since 2011 will be allowed. The vehicle classification scheme means you get one of these window stickers based on which Euro emissions standard your vehicle complies with. This announcement follows a decision by the French government to finalize a nation-wide scheme of ranking vehicle emissions (the system is based on the European emissions standards ). Any vehicle made on or before December 31, 1996 was built to conform with Euro 1, the weakest of these standards, and it’s these cars that are no longer allowed in the capital. Pre-2000 motorbikes and other two-wheeled vehicles are also on the hit list. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Paris bans pre-1997 cars from its streets during the week

Kraftwerk loses hip-hop music-sampling copyright case

(credit: Tobias Helfrich ) After a decades-long battle, the Bundesverfassungsgericht (the supreme German Constitutional Court) has overturned a ban on a song that used a two-second sample of a Kraftwerk recording. In 1997, music producer Moses Pelham used a clip from 1977 release Metall auf Metall (Metal on Metal) in the song Nur mir (Only Mine) performed by Sabrina Setlur. Lead singer of Kraftwerk, Ralf Huetter, sued Pelham, and in 2012 the electropop pioneer won his case for copyright infringement in Germany’s Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof), gaining damages and a block on Nur mir . However, in today’s judgment, the eight judges of the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court decided that the lower court did not sufficiently consider whether the impact of the sample on Krafwerk might be “negligible.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Kraftwerk loses hip-hop music-sampling copyright case

HP splits again, as Hewlett Packard Enterprise spins off IT services

In 2014, Hewlett-Packard announced that it was splitting into two separate companies: Hewlett Packard Enterprise, selling servers and enterprise services, and HP Inc, selling PCs and printers. That split completed last year at the cost of more than 30,000 jobs . In a surprise announcement today, the company is about to embark on a second split: Hewlett Packard Enterprise is spinning off its IT services business. The low-margin outsourced IT services business, which HP got into with its $14 billion acquisition of EDS in 2008, is to be merged with Computer Sciences Corp (CSC) to create a new company currently known only as SpinCo. HPE will own half of the new company, HPE CEO Meg Whitman will be on the new company’s board, and HPE and CSC will each nominate half of the board members. CSC’s current CEO, Mike Lawrie, will become CEO of the new company. HPE says that the deal will save around $1 billion in operating costs. HPE shareholders will own shares in both companies, owning half of the combined company, with their stake valued at around $4.5 billion. They’ll also receive a $1.5 billion cash dividend. Additionally, the merger will see some $2.5 billion in debt moved to SpinCo’s books. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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HP splits again, as Hewlett Packard Enterprise spins off IT services

This 1996 Sega training video is the most ‘90s thing you’ll see this week

This internal Sega video for testers is a wonderful snapshot of the ’90s. If you’ve ever wondered what Sega was like at the height of its game-making powers, wonder no more. A staff video from the Sega vaults—made in 1996, the same year that the Sony PlayStation would begin to take over the world—has been released by the production company behind it, Green Mill Filmworks . Not only is the video a fascinating behind-the scenes look at game development and game testing, it is also, without doubt, the most ’90s thing I’ve ever seen. Even excluding the baggy clothes, questionable hair cuts, and horrifying denim, the desks of game testers interviewed—many of whom said they worked up to 90 hours a week squashing bugs—are littered with ’90s paraphernalia. My personal favourite, aside from the multiple appearances of the obligatory (for the ’90s at least) Jurassic Park merchandise, is the spinning holographic disk that appears 13 minutes in. I had one of those as a kid, and while I still don’t quite understand what the appeal was, they were all the rage at school, even over here in the UK. Of course, there’s lots of Sega tech on show too, with testers having access to the Mega Drive (Genesis to our US friends), 32X, Sega CD, Game Gear, Saturn, and even the short-lived Sega Pico, a laptop-like educational system for kids that was powered by Genesis hardware. Each tester was also issued with development cartridges—which you can see being loaded up with memory chips by hand around 18 minutes in—before having to sit and play the game relentlessly, using a VHS recorder (yes really) to record gameplay and identify when and how bugs appeared. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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This 1996 Sega training video is the most ‘90s thing you’ll see this week

Uber to begin testing self-driving cars in Pittsburgh

(credit: Uber) One day, the Uber that comes to fetch you might not have anyone in the driver’s seat. On Thursday, Uber announced that it will begin testing an autonomous Ford Fusion hybrid on the streets of Pittsburgh, home to Uber’s Advanced Technology Center. Drivers in Pittsburgh should have no problem spotting the research vehicle—it’s carrying an array of sensors on its roof that includes a radar, lidar, and cameras. The Uber test car will actually be mapping its surroundings in addition to testing out autonomous driving—although there will be a human operator in the driver’s seat at all times to take over at a moment’s notice. We’ve known for some time that Uber has had an interest in autonomous vehicles. In the past, the company had been working with Google, but that relationship apparently deteriorated last year . It’s not the only ride-sharing service looking to ditch the human aspect, either. In January, we reported that General Motors invested $500 million in Lyft with the goal of developing a network of self-driving taxis. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Uber to begin testing self-driving cars in Pittsburgh

“Mega Cable” is here, as Charter finalizes purchase of TWC

(credit: Cole Marshall ) Charter Communications today said it has closed its acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks following approvals from the Federal Communications Commission and regulators in California , the final state that had to sign off on the deal. Charter has nearly quadrupled in size as a result of the transactions, going from 6.8 million customers to about 25.4 million in 41 states, second in the US after Comcast’s 28 million. The merger drew opposition from some advocacy groups, including one that took to calling the new Charter ” Mega Cable .” The cost of the acquisitions was originally expected to be about $67.1 billion, though Charter will reportedly  end up paying a bit more than that. Charter’s announcement today  said, “The completion of the transactions will drive investment into the combined entity’s advanced broadband network, resulting in faster broadband speeds, better video products, more affordable phone service, and more competition for consumers and businesses.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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“Mega Cable” is here, as Charter finalizes purchase of TWC

iOS 9.3.2 is here, fixes iPhone SE Bluetooth problems and other bugs

(credit: Andrew Cunningham) Apple has just released iOS 9.3.2, a minor update to iOS 9 that fixes a handful of minor bugs. The most significant fix is related to the iPhone SE, which ” could experience audio quality issues ” when paired to Bluetooth headsets. The full release notes are below: Fixes an issue where some Bluetooth accessories could experience audio quality issues when paired to the iPhone SE Fixes an issue where looking up dictionary definitions could fail Addresses an issue that prevented typing email addresses when using the Japanese Kana keyboard in Mail and Messages Fixes an issue for VoiceOver users using the Alex voice, where the device switches to a different voice to announce punctuation or spaces Fixes an issue that prevented MDM servers from installing Custom B2B apps All of these fixes are for minor edge cases that affect only small fractions of the iOS userbase—major development on iOS 9 stopped with iOS 9.3 , at which point Apple presumably shifted its focus to the new version of iOS that we’ll see at WWDC next month. The update is available for all devices that support iOS 9, including the iPhone 4S and newer; iPad 2 and newer; all iPad Minis and iPad Pros; and the fifth- and sixth-generation iPod Touches. Apple also released minor updates for its other iOS-derived platforms, the Apple Watch and the fourth-generation Apple TV. The release notes for watchOS 2.2.1 and tvOS 9.2.1 don’t name any specific fixes, but if you want the latest “bug fixes and security updates” you can download both of them now. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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iOS 9.3.2 is here, fixes iPhone SE Bluetooth problems and other bugs

No more get-out-of-jail-free card for CryptXXX ransomware victims

(credit: Aurich Lawson) For the past month, people infected with the CryptXXX ransomware had a way to recover their files without paying the hefty $500 fee to obtain the decryption key. On Tuesday, that reprieve came to an end. Researchers from security firm Proofpoint said in a blog post that version 2.006 has found a way to bypass a decryption tool that has been freely available for weeks. The tool was provided by Kaspersky Lab and was the result of flaws in the way CryptXXX worked. The crypto ransomware update effectively renders the Kaspersky tool useless, Proofpoint said. It did this with the use of zlib , a software library used for data compression. The new version also makes it harder to use the Kaspersky tool by locking the screen of an infected computer and making it unusable until the ransom is paid. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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No more get-out-of-jail-free card for CryptXXX ransomware victims