funny – Page 194

Iranian App Helps Users Avoid Morality Police

An anonymous reader writes: Young people in Iran are using a new app called Gershad (a contraction of ‘Gashte Ershad’, or ‘guidance patrol’), to avoid the ‘morality police’ by sharing the location of checkpoints with other users. At checkpoints strict Islamic dress and behavior codes are enforced, and their ad hoc nature can make them difficult to avoid. Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, said of Gershad, “This is an innovative idea and I believe it will lead to many other creative apps which will address the gap between society and government in Iran.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Iranian App Helps Users Avoid Morality Police

Microsoft Plans To Make Windows 10, Xbox One Game "Crossbuys" A Habit

Gamers who preorder Remedy’s upcoming Xbox One game, Quantum Break, will receive a free digital copy for Windows 10 PCs — a “crossbuy” strategy that Microsoft’s Xbox chief plans to make a “platform feature” of the gaming console. Behind the scenes, Microsoft has worked to tie its Windows 10 and Xbox One operating systems closer together, sharing features and data. The Xbox One includes versions of Skype and Microsoft Edge, and Microsoft has said that universal apps written for Windows 10 can theoretically run on the Xbox One, as well as Windows 10 PCs and Windows 10 Mobile phones. Eventually, Microsoft envisions a world where PC and Xbox One gamers will drift between platforms, and where gamers on each platform will be able to compete with one another. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Shape-Shifting Polymer Holds 1,000 Times Its Own Mass – Watch Out Plastic Man!

University of Rochester researchers have announced the development of a new polymer, capable of supporting 1, 000 times its own mass. Polymers that can change shape when heated have been developed in the past, yet this new polymer exhibits the rare quality of becoming flexible when exposed to body heat. This property, which can be used to change the shape of a device, could make the substance useful in medical applications. When the new polymer is removed from the heat source (such as human body), the material immediately returns to its original configuration. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Shape-Shifting Polymer Holds 1,000 Times Its Own Mass – Watch Out Plastic Man!

Reluctant Wikipedia Lifts Lid On $2.5M Internet Search Engine Project

The Wikimedia Foundation has finally disclosed details of its controversial Knowledge Engine grant — and it confirms that Wikipedia is getting seriously into search, despite Jimmy Wales’ categorical denial that WMF is “doing a Google.” After a Wikipedia signpost article, and coverage at El Reg this week, the WMF caved and posted the Knight Foundation’s approval of the $250, 000 grant. The grant provides seed money for stage one of the Knowledge Engine, described as “a system for discovering reliable and trustworthy information on the Internet.” The discovery stage includes an exploration of prototypes of future versions of Wikipedia.org which are “open channels” rather than an encyclopedia, analyzing the query-to-content path, and embedding the Wikipedia Knowledge Engine “via carriers and Original Equipment Manufacturers.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Reluctant Wikipedia Lifts Lid On $2.5M Internet Search Engine Project

Sci-Hub, a Site With Open and Pirated Scientific Papers

lpress writes: Sci-Hub is a Russian site that seeks to remove barriers to science by providing access to pirated copies of scientific papers. It was established in 2011 by Russian neuroscientist Alexandra Elbakyan, who could not afford papers she needed for her research and it now claims to have links to 48 million pirated and open papers. I tried it out and found some papers and not others, but it provides an alternative for researchers who cannot afford access to paid journals. After visiting this site, one cannot help thinking of the case of Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide as a result of prosecution for his attempt to free scientific literature. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Sci-Hub, a Site With Open and Pirated Scientific Papers

Hertz Is Pulling a Disney

New submitter wcrowe writes: Hertz is laying off over 200 IT employees, outsourcing the work to IBM India Private Limited, which has filed paperwork for H1-B visas to bring in replacements from overseas. This sounds pretty similar to what Disney did a year ago. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hertz Is Pulling a Disney

World’s Largest Solar Power Plant To Supply Enough Energy For 1.1 Million People

Lucas123 writes: The world’s largest solar power plant is now live and will eventually provide 1.1 million people in Morocco with power and cut carbon emissions by 760, 000 tons a year. Phase 1 of the Noor concentrated solar power (CSP) plant went live last week, providing 140 megawatts (MW) of power to Morocco. Phases 2 and 3 will be completed by 2018 when the plant is expected to generate more than 500MW of power. The Noor plant, located in south-central Morocco, will cover 6, 178 acres and produce so much energy, that Morocco may eventually start exporting the clean energy to the European market. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Skylake Breaks 7GHz In Intel Overclocking World Record

MojoKid writes: Intel’s latest generation of processors built on the Skylake architecture are efficient as well as seriously fast. The flagship, Core i7-6700K, is an interesting chip as it’s clocked at a base 4GHz, and can peak at 4.2GHz with Turbo Boost. Of course, as fast as the 6700K is, overclocking can always help take things to the next level, or at least temporarily explore future potential. In Chi-Kui Lam’s case, he did just that, and managed to break a world record for Intel processors along the way. Equipped with an ASRock motherboard, G.SKILL memory, and a beefy 1.3KW Antec power supply — not to mention liquid nitrogen — Lam managed to break through the 7GHz barrier to settle in at 7025.66MHz. A CPU-Z screenshot shows us that all cores but one were disabled — something traditionally done to improve the chances of reaching such high clock speeds. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Skylake Breaks 7GHz In Intel Overclocking World Record

Talos Secure Workstation Is Free-Software Centric — and $3100 [Updated]

jones_supa writes: These days, the motivation to use open source software for many people is to avoid backdoors placed by intelligence organizations and to avoid software that has hidden privacy-intruding characteristics. For the operating system and userspace software, open choices are already available. The last remaining island has been the firmware included in various ROM chips in a computer. Libreboot has introduced an open BIOS, but it is not available for newer systems featuring the Intel ME or AMD PSP management features. Talos’ Secure Workstation fills this need, providing a modern system with 8-core POWER8 CPU, 132 GB RAM, and open firmware. The product is currently in a pre-release phase where Raptor Engineering is trying to understand if it’s possible to do a production run of the machine. If you are interested, it’s worth visiting the official website. Adds an anonymous reader about the new system, which rings in at a steep $3100: “While the engineers found solace in the POWER8 architecture with being more open than AMD/Intel CPUs, they still are searching for a graphics card that is open enough to receive the FSF Respect Your Freedom certification.” Update: 02/08 18:44 GMT by T : See also Linux hacker and IBM employee Stewart Smith’s talk from the just-completed linux.conf.au on, in which he walks through “all of the firmware components and what they do, including the boot sequence from power being applied up to booting an operating system.” Update: 02/08 23:30 GMT by T :FSF Licensing & Compliance Manager Joshua Gay wrote to correct the headline originally appeared with this story, which said that the Talos workstation described was “FSF Certified”; that claim was an error I introduced. “The FSF has not certified this hardware, ” says Gay, “nor is it currently reviewing the hardware for FSF certification.” Sorry for the confusion. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Talos Secure Workstation Is Free-Software Centric — and $3100 [Updated]

Carbon Dioxide From the Air Converted Into Methanol

Zothecula writes: The danger posed by rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide has seen many schemes proposed to remove a proportion it from the air. Rather than simply capture this greenhouse gas and bury it in the ground, though, many experiments have managed to transform CO2 into useful things like carbon nanofibers or even fuels, such as diesel. Unfortunately, the over-arching problem with many of these conversions is the particularly high operating temperatures that require counterproductive amounts of energy to produce relatively low yields of fuel. Now researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) claim to have devised a way to take CO2 directly from the air and convert it into methanol using much lower temperatures and in a correspondingly simpler way. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ken May

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