In this continuation of the quintessential space opera, we find a forlorn heroine and a lost Stormtrooper on a journey that reconnects them with not only the not-so-distant past, but with the faces and personalities that lead to the Galactic Empires ruin. But there are new enemies rising, and it'll take new heroes to keep them at bay.
The Force it seems, is not done with this particular part of the Galaxy.
"The GLE550e has the first plug-in hybrid powertrain ever offered in a Mercedes-Benz SUV. Its 3.0-liter V6 gasoline engine and electric motor together produce 436 horsepower. Using only electric power, Mercedes says the GLE550e can travel up to 18.6 miles and reach a speed of 81 mph."
Wow. In other words, plug it in for the commute or grocery shopping and never waste time at the gas station unless you need to go far.
Mercedes is doing exactly what I thought Lexus would do in the mid-sized hybrid crossover space two years ago. With their new XC90, Volvo and Merc are beginning to lead.
I wonder if this the Tesla e-motor hardware they've been discussing? Or something else entirely?
Great little movie. Worth the 4 min of your time.
"A Hitchcock mashup where Kubrick is the villain. "Jimmy was having a rather beautiful day until he bumped into Jack and things got weird."
Brilliant. Simply brilliant.
ComputerShow is a beautiful and inspiring throwback. It's the SNL WeekendUpdate of Tech & Geekdom. And in this episode, Angela's facial expressions are laugh-out-loud* hilarious.
*I Don't think LOL would have been a thing for something like a decade after the time in Computer Show's fictional universe.
According to Megan Garber, writing for The Atlantic in early October 2013 (click blog title for link), apparently, one of the fungi that feeds in old rye bread (ergot) is somewhat hallucinagenic. It makes people sick when they invest it, but absorption through the skin causes a flying-like sensation. So between the 1300s and the 1700s people used to take that mold, along with brewed up roots and other things (witches brew) and rub it on a broom handle. Then ladies would insert that between their legs (no panties back then) and get hi. This is why witches "fly" on brooms.
But sometimes people got high from unwittingly eating the mold. Or bein forced to tear it cause nothing else was around:
"The Massachusetts of 1692 likely did see an outbreak of the fungus that had contributed, in other contexts, to 'witch's brew.'
The epicenter of the outbreak? Salem."
Science!
The accusations against Fan Duel and Draft Lings sound damning but closer scrutiny leads me to believe that there's a lot more smoke than there is fire. The involved parties never bet against the published data, as has happened on Wall Street, though it is not clear whether employees were allowed to participate themselves with access to information that was not publicly available. Investigations are ongoing but Fantasy Sports companies would do well to look deeply at their culture to see how, if at all, they can self-regulate.
Regardless, Nevada has suddenly decided to ask for gaming licenses from the two companies and any others like it.
from the AP article:
"DraftKings and FanDuel — sites that have insisted they aren't gambling and have promised to make millionaires out of sports fans — both pulled out of Nevada by Thursday evening.
That day's decision from the Nevada Gaming Control Board allows for daily fantasy sports in the state as long as the operator has or gets a gambling license. No one operating a daily fantasy site has one.
"If you're licensed in Nevada, you're good to go," said A.G. Burnett, chief of the state's Gaming Control Board. That includes traditional sports books where gamblers generally wager on the outcome of a given game.
The decision comes amid growing backlash by regulators and investigators, including New York's attorney general, after it was revealed employees often played on competing sites, raising questions about possible insider information being used to win."
One thing doesn't seem to have anything to do with the other.
A decade ago, Nevada's gaming lobby successfully shut down the online gambling businesses of the day by getting Congress to ban the practice.
The current Fantasy Sports betting system is legal due to the fact that the preponderance of data about the sports, the players and other factors makes Fantasy a game of skill, rather than chance. Regardless, Nevada is having none of that.
Rather than embrace the mobile revolution and offer compelling products (or use their tremendous resources to acquire some), it seems that the establishment believes that if you want to gamble, you'd better walk into a casino. And you'd better turn off your phone.
the U.S. oil giant Exxon is mysteriously missing.
"In a statement Friday, the CEOs of BP, Shell, Saudi Aramco, Total, Repsol, Statoil, Eni, Petroelos Mexicanos, Reliance Industries and BG Group said they recognize greenhouse gas emissions trends are inconsistent with the ambition to keep warming below a level many consider dangerous."
This could be the beginning of some traction in what's clearly one of the scourges of humanity's future.
"Scientists — at least, the ones who like to theorize about these things — have long said that an advanced alien civilization would be marked by its ability to harness the energy from its sun (rather than scrabbling over its planet’s resources like us puny earthlings). They envision something like a Dyson Sphere, a hypothetical megastructure first proposed by physicist Freeman Dyson that would orbit or even encompass a star, capturing its power and putting it to use."
It's admittedly a looooooong shot; but the fact that respected scientists are hypothesisizing about advanced extraterrestrial life is surprising and interesting.
I have a feeling the cause is some as-yet units covered natural phenomenon, which may actually turn out to be *even more* interesting.
The following is great news.
Google and Mercedes told us, if their technology is at fault once it becomes commercially available, they’ll accept responsibility and liability. But all involved expect fewer crashes as the technology evolves.
And in an announcement before a talk he’s planning to give with the Swedish Embassy today, Volvo chief Håkan Samuelsson said that the Swedish company would take the blame, too (emphasis mine):
Mr Samuelsson will address a select audience at a seminar entitled “A Future with Self Driving Cars – Is it Safe?” at the House of Sweden in Washington DC, during which he will emphasize that the introduction of self-driving cars on the world’s roads will happen more quickly than many lawmakers anticipated.
He will urge regulators to work closely with car makers to solve controversial outstanding issues such as questions over legal liability in the event that a self-driving car is involved in a crash or hacked by a criminal third party.
Mr Samuelsson will clearly state Volvo’s position on both of these contentious issues.
He will say Volvo will accept full liability whenever one if its cars is in autonomous mode, making it one of the first car makers in the world to make such a promise.
He will add that Volvo regards the hacking of a car as a criminal offense.
"If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I'm not kidding."
-Elon Musk
Yikes. I know personalities are strong, but that's a burn I don't think I ever expected out of Tesla leadership.
I was moved by Weir's recent novel, The Martian. So I spent a thousands words or so thinking about it on Geeks of Doom:
"Rather than yet another science fiction blockbuster epic, Andy Weir‘s novel eschews the grandiose space empire stuff in favor of focus and intimacy. In that respect, The Martian is a minor work with major scope. The author achieves this in some interesting ways. There’s a focus on the “how” things get done. Put another way, Weir’s protagonist, Mark, delivers the action of the story to the reader with both high-level strategic sci-fi love (“I have to generate food”) and then drills down into the tactics of how that’s achieved (“I’ve created 192 square meters of farmland and have 600 liters of water for the potatoes I’m about to plant, which should last me 200 Sols beyond my NASA rations”).
This is where Weir’s best work — his ability to create intimacy between reader and character — comes in. Through Mark’s logs, readers begin to delight in what’s typically thought of as the mundane: the geekery of how to build bombs and how to make water from scratch. The inside baseball of how to grow food and survive in the most inhospitable place ever visited."
-Me
Check out my entire review of the widely acclaimed book that spawned popular film.
To be clear: We did not turn down the new Windows devices. MSFT gave to AT&T. If @microsoft wakes up, we'll talk about @TMobile carrying
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) October 8, 2015Russia, some say, in an attempt to take domestic attention off of the ongoing stalemate in Ukraine (and the failing economy tied to the sanctions regarding that situation), has decided to shore up it's ally Assad, in Syria-- to show the domestic audience how powerful the Bear really is.
To that end, what better way to help a friend than by firing missiles at their enemies?
Except when you miss.
"At least four Russian cruise missiles, headed for Syria, have reportedly crash-landed in Iran, Pentagon sources tell CNN and other outlets.
And further down:
"Russia's high-tech military gear is just not that great
For all Russia's military might — its force, one of the largest in the world, has been modernizing in recent years — its higher-tech equipment such as cruise missiles has long lagged behind Western standards."
The Pentagon brass is going to have a great happy hour tonight.
Crazy interesting. And...awful. No one seems to accept people as they are.
"Last year, journalist Esther Honig published a viral series of images showing how photo retouchers in 27 countries around the world “enhanced” a portrait of her according to their cultural preferences. Inspired by that project, the UK medical website Superdrug Online Doctor just published a similar experiment that explores body image."
Interesting story. It's literally the means by which so many of my friends and I have all found one another.
"Va. Delegate Kea* Is Grateful For Changes To 1965 Immigration Act" by Tom Gjelten
NPR - October 5, 2015
*Keam is pretty much the way Koreans pronounce "Kim."
Watching Bill Mahr talk about the Pope's visit the other day, I was surprised at how easy the hardcore atheist was about the tidings of the Bishop of Rome. Of course, he used the Pope's messages for his own political means, but the quotes he pulled from the Bible were the touching, compassionate sort that I remember hearing from the local Fathers as I attended CCD.
"Sell everything you own and give it to the poor."
"Be on your guard against all kinds of greed"
"When you give a banquet, invite the poor, even though they cannot repay you."
Not gonna lie. I can't remember the last time I invited the poor to a party I threw. In the Republican's defense though, the third quote can definitely be interpreted as an argument for supply-side economics.
60k tweets about in the morning alone.
Unlike most balanced Twitter trends, All sentiment was negative. Between the fact that users do NOT opt-in and the current climate around bullying, we've got a new reason to sing "Blame Canada."
"Especially in cities, people don't want the burden of owning cars, they want easy access to mobility. To that end, Razzacki said the app was designed to be simple."
Take away a letter and get an entirely new, derivative work:
Iron Man - "I" = Ron Man. "Heroic small-government advocate and city employee Ron Swanson builds a robo suit to keep the town that he works for from getting any work done. Also to cook bacon with the suit's repulsor beam."
They sent children to a summer camp without mobile devices.
"After five days without phones or tablets, these campers were able to read facial emotions and correctly identify the emotions of actors in videotaped scenes significantly better than a control group. What fostered these new empathic responses? They talked to one another. In conversation, things go best if you pay close attention and learn how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. This is easier to do without your phone in hand. Conversation is the most human and humanizing thing that we do."
If only I could turn on a Faraday cage during the time I spend at home during the holidays.