Tag: funny

Researchers Discover A Surprising New Role for Lungs: Making Blood

schwit1 quotes ScienceAlert: In experiments involving mice, the team found that lungs produce more than 10 million platelets (tiny blood cells) per hour, equating to the majority of platelets in the animals’ circulation. This goes against the decades-long assumption that bone marrow produces all of our blood components. Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco also discovered a previously unknown pool of blood stem cells that makes this happen inside the lung tissue — cells that were incorrectly assumed to mainly reside in bone marrow. “This finding definitely suggests a more sophisticated view of the lungs — that they’re not just for respiration, but also a key partner in formation of crucial aspects of the blood, ” says one of the researchers, Mark R. Looney. The platelet-producing cells actually migrate from the bone marrow to the lungs. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Researchers Discover A Surprising New Role for Lungs: Making Blood

New Release Of StarCraft In 4K Ultra High Definition Annouonced

The classic 90s-era videogames StarCraft and StarCraft: Brood War will be re-released this summer — remastered in 4K Ultra High Definition. An anonymous reader quotes The Verge: It will also include a number of updates, such as remastered sound, new additional illustrations for the campaign missions, new matchmaking capabilities, the ability to connect to Blizzard App, the ability to save to the cloud, and more… Blizzard also announced that it was issuing a new update to StarCraft: Brood War this week, which will include some bug fixes and anti-cheat measures, but will also make StarCraft Anthology (which includes StarCraft and Brood War) available to download for free. Kotaku reports that the news was announced at this weekend’s I

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New Release Of StarCraft In 4K Ultra High Definition Annouonced

A 21st-Century Version Of OS/2 Warp May Be Released Soon

dryriver writes: A company named Arca Noae is working on a new release of the X86 OS/2 operating system code named “Blue Lion” and likely called ArcaOS 5 in its final release. Blue Lion wants to be a modern 21st Century OS/2 Warp, with support for the latest hardware and networking standards, a modern accelerated graphics driver, support for new cryptographic security standards, full backward compatibility with legacy OS/2, DOS and Windows 3.1 applications, suitability for use in mission-critical applications, and also, it appears, the ability to run “ported Linux applications”. Blue Lion, which appears to be in closed beta with March 31st 2017 cited as the target release date, will come with up to date Firefox browser and Thunderbird mail client, Apache OpenOffice, other productivity tools, a new package manager, and software update and support subscription to ensure system stability. It is unclear from the information provided whether Blue Lion will be able to run modern Windows applications. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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A 21st-Century Version Of OS/2 Warp May Be Released Soon

Ubuntu Linux 17.04 ‘Zesty Zapus’ Final Beta Now Available For Download

BrianFagioli writes: The final beta of Ubuntu 17.04 ‘Zesty Zapus’ became available for download Thursday. While it is never a good idea to run pre-release software on production machines, Canonical is claiming that it should be largely bug free at this point. In other words, if you understand the risks, it should be a fairly safe. Home users aside, this is a good opportunity for administrators to conduct testing prior to the official release next month. “The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the final beta release of the Ubuntu 17.04 Desktop, Server, and Cloud products. Codenamed ‘Zesty Zapus’, 17.04 continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution, ” says Adam Conrad, Canonical. “The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Ubuntu Linux 17.04 ‘Zesty Zapus’ Final Beta Now Available For Download

Hackers Claim Access To 300 Million iCloud Accounts, Demand $75,000 From Apple To Delete the Cache of Data

A hacker or group of hackers calling themselves the “Turkish Crime Family” claim they have access to at least 300 million iCloud accounts, and will delete the alleged cache of data if Apple pays a ransom by early next month. Motherboard is reporting that the hackers are demanding “$75, 000 in Bitcoin or Ethereum, another increasingly popular crypto-currency, or $100, 000 worth of iTunes gift cards in exchange for deleting the alleged cache of data.” From the report: The hackers provided screenshots of alleged emails between the group and members of Apple’s security team. One also gave Motherboard access to an email account allegedly used to communicate with Apple. “Are you willing to share a sample of the data set?” an unnamed member of Apple’s security team wrote to the hackers a week ago, according to one of the emails stored in the account. (According to the email headers, the return-path of the email is to an address with the @apple.com domain). The hackers also uploaded a YouTube video of them allegedly logging into some of the stolen accounts. The hacker appears to access an elderly woman’s iCloud account, which includes backed-up photos, and the ability to remotely wipe the device. Now, the hackers are threatening to reset a number of the iCloud accounts and remotely wipe victim’s Apple devices on April 7, unless Apple pays the requested amount. According to one of the emails in the accessed account, the hackers claim to have access to over 300 million Apple email accounts, including those use @icloud and @me domains. However, the hackers appear to be inconsistent in their story; one of the hackers then claimed they had 559 million accounts in all. The hackers did not provide Motherboard with any of the supposedly stolen iCloud accounts to verify this claim, except those shown in the video. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hackers Claim Access To 300 Million iCloud Accounts, Demand $75,000 From Apple To Delete the Cache of Data

Norway Plans to Build the World’s First Ship Tunnel

Norway is planning to build the world’s first ship tunnel through the country’s Stad peninsula, which is home to harsh weather conditions that often delay shipments and cause dangerous conditions for ship crews. The proposed tunnel would enable ships to travel through the peninsula in safety. New Atlas recently interviewed Stad Ship Tunnel Project Manager Terje Andreassen about the project: NA: We’d usually expect a canal to be built for this kind of purpose, so why a tunnel? Because in this case we are crossing a hill which is more than 300 meters (384 ft) high. The only alternative is a tunnel. From a maritime point of view this is still a canal, but with a “roof.” NA: How would you go about making such a large tunnel — would you use a boring machine, for example, or explosives? First we will drill horizontally and use explosives to take out the roof part of the tunnel. Then all bolts and anchors to secure the roof rock before applying shotcrete. The rest of the tunnel will be done in the same way as in open mining. Vertical drilling and blasting with explosives down to the level of 12 m (42 ft) below the sea level. NA: How much rock will be removed, and how will you go about removing it? There will be 3 billion cubic meters (over 105 billion cubic ft) of solid rock removed. All transportation from the tunnel area will be done by large barges. NA: What, if any, are the unique challenges to building a ship tunnel when compared with a road tunnel? The challenge is the height of this tunnel. There is 50 m (164 ft) from bottom to the roof, so all secure works and shotcrete must be done in several levels. The tunnel will be made dry down to the bottom. We solve this by leaving some rock unblasted in each end of the tunnel to prevent water flowing in. Assuming it does indeed go ahead — and with the Norwegian government having already set aside the money, this seems relatively likely — the Stad Ship Tunnel will reach a length of 1.7 km (1.05 miles), and measure 37 m (121 ft) tall and 26.5 m (87 ft) wide. It’s expected to cost NOK 2.3 billion (over US$272 million) to build and won’t actually speed up travel times, but instead focuses on making the journey safer. Top-tier architecture and design firm Snohetta has designed the entrances, and the company’s early plans include sculpted tunnel openings and adding LED lighting on the tunnel ceiling. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Norway Plans to Build the World’s First Ship Tunnel

Scientists Sent a Rocket To Mars For Less Than It Cost To Make ‘The Martian’

Ipsita Agarwal via Backchannel retells the story of how India’s underfunded space organization, ISRO, managed to send a rocket to Mars for less than it cost to make the movie “The Martian, ” starring Matt Damon as Mark Watney. “While NASA’s Mars probe, Maven, cost $651 million, the budget for this mission was $74 million, ” Agarwal writes. In what appears to be India’s version of “Hidden Figures” (a movie that also cost more to make than ISRO’s budget for the Mars rocket), the team of scientists behind the rocket launch consisted of Indian women, who not only managed to pull off the mission successfully but did so in only 18 months. Backchannel reports: A few months and several million kilometers later, the orbiter prepared to enter Mars’ gravity. This was a critical moment. If the orbiter entered Mars’ gravity at the wrong angle, off by so much as one degree, it would either crash onto the surface of Mars or fly right past it, lost in the emptiness of space. Back on Earth, its team of scientists and engineers waited for a signal from the orbiter. Mission designer Ritu Karidhal had worked 48 hours straight, fueled by anticipation. As a child, Minal Rohit had watched space missions on TV. Now, Minal waited for news on the orbiter she and her colleague, Moumita Dutta, had helped engineer. When the signal finally arrived, the mission control room broke into cheers. If you work in such a room, deputy operations director, Nandini Harinath, says, “you no longer need to watch a thriller movie to feel the thrill in life. You feel it in your day-to-day work.” This was not the only success of the mission. An image of the scientists celebrating in the mission control room went viral. Girls in India and beyond gained new heroes: the kind that wear sarees and tie flowers in their hair, and send rockets into space. User shas3 notes in a comment on Hacker News’ post: “If you are interested in Indian women scientists and engineers, there is a nice compilation (a bit tiresome to read, but worth it, IMO) of biographical essays called ‘Lilvati’s Daughters.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Scientists Sent a Rocket To Mars For Less Than It Cost To Make ‘The Martian’

Microsoft’s Project Scorpio Will Pack Internal PSU, 4K Game DVR Capture

According to an exclusive report from Windows Central, Microsoft’s upcoming “Project Scorpio” gaming console will feature an internal power supply unit (PSU), similar to the Xbox One S, and 4K game DVR and streaming at 60 frames-per-second (FPS). From the report: In Microsoft’s efforts to make Project Scorpio a true 4K system, it will also feature HEVC and VP9 codecs for decoding 4K streams for things such Netflix, just like the Xbox One S. It will also leverage HEVC for encoding 2160p, 60 frame-per-second (FPS) video for Game DVR and streaming. Microsoft’s Beam streaming service has been running public 4K stream tests for some time, and it’s now fair to assume it will not only be PC streamers who will benefit. Project Scorpio’s Game DVR will allow you to stream and record clips in 4K resolution with 60FPS, according to our sources, which is a massive, massive step up from the 720p, 30FPS you get on the current Xbox One. With every bit of information we receive about Project Scorpio, the theme of native 4K keeps appearing — not only for games, but also console features. We now believe Scorpio will sport 4K Game DVR, 4K Blu-ray playback, and 4K streaming apps, but the real showstopper will be the 4K games Microsoft will likely flaunt at E3 2017. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft’s Project Scorpio Will Pack Internal PSU, 4K Game DVR Capture

‘We Didn’t Lose Control Of Our Personal Data — It Was Stolen From Us By People Farmers’

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the worldwide web, wrote an open-letter over the weekend to mark the 28th anniversary of his invention. In his letter, he shared three worrisome things that happened over the last twelve months. In his letter, Berners-Lee pointed out three things that occurred over the past 12 months that has him worried: we do not assume control of our personal data anymore; how easy it is for misinformation to spread on the web; and lack of transparency on political advertising on the web. Cyborg rights activist Aral Balkan wrote a piece yesterday arguing that perhaps Berners-Lee is being modest about the things that concern him. From the article: It’s important to note that these (those three worrisome things) are not trends and that they’ve been in the making for far longer than twelve months. They are symptoms that are inextricably linked to the core nature of the Web as it exists within the greater socio-technological system we live under today that we call Surveillance Capitalism. Tim says we’ve “lost control of our personal data.” This is not entirely accurate. We didn’t lose control; it was stolen from us by Silicon Valley. It is stolen from you every day by people farmers; the Googles and the Facebooks of the world. It is stolen from you by an industry of data brokers, the publishing behavioural advertising industry (“adtech”), and a long tail of Silicon Valley startups hungry for an exit to one of the more established players or looking to compete with them to own a share of you. The elephants in the room — Google and Facebook — stand silently in the wings, unmentioned except as allies later on in the letter where they’re portrayed trying to “combat the problem” of misinformation. Is it perhaps foolish to expect anything more when Google is one of the biggest contributors to recent web standards at the W3C and when Google and Facebook both help fund the Web Foundation? Let me state it plainly: Google and Facebook are not allies in our fight for an equitable future — they are the enemy. These platform monopolies are factory farms for human beings; farming us for every gram of insight they can extract. If, as Tim states, the core challenge for the Web today is combating people farming, and if we know who the people farmers are, shouldn’t we be strongly regulating them to curb their abuses? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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‘We Didn’t Lose Control Of Our Personal Data — It Was Stolen From Us By People Farmers’

How The FBI Used Geek Squad To Increase Secret Public Surveillance

In 2011 a gynecology doctor took his computer for repairs at Best Buy’s Geek Squad. But the repair technician was a paid FBI informant — one of several working at Geek Squad — and the doctor was ultimately charged with possessing child pornography, according to OC Weekly. An anonymous reader quotes their new report: Recently unsealed records reveal a much more extensive secret relationship than previously known between the FBI and Best Buy’s Geek Squad, including evidence the agency trained company technicians on law-enforcement operational tactics, shared lists of targeted citizens and, to covertly increase surveillance of the public, encouraged searches of computers even when unrelated to a customer’s request for repairs. Assistant United States Attorney M. Anthony Brown last year labeled allegations of a hidden partnership as “wild speculation.” But more than a dozen summaries of FBI memoranda filed inside Orange County’s Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse this month in USA v. Mark Rettenmaier contradict the official line… Other records show how [Geek Squad supervisor Justin] Meade’s job gave him “excellent and frequent” access for “several years” to computers belonging to unwitting Best Buy customers, though agents considered him “underutilized” and wanted him “tasked” to search devices “on a more consistent basis”… evidence demonstrates company employees routinely snooped for the agency, contemplated “writing a software program” specifically to aid the FBI in rifling through its customers’ computers without probable cause for any crime that had been committed, and were “under the direction and control of the FBI.” The doctor’s lawyer argues Best Buy became an unofficial wing of the FBI by offering $500 for every time they found evidence leading to criminal charges. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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How The FBI Used Geek Squad To Increase Secret Public Surveillance