Comment Joe Scott (Score 2) 101
I wonder if the PBS reporter saw the same Joe Scott video I did
Comment Re:Schools are always behind (Score 4, Interesting) 264
And in all the school districts around me, they're teaching only Google Docs and Sheets. They don't use PCs at all. Kindergarten through 12th grade is all Chromebooks.
Submission + - Slashdot Alum Samzenpus's Fractured Veil Hits Kickstarter
CmdrTaco writes: Long time Slashdot readers remember Samzenpus,who posted over 17,000 stories here, sadly crushing my record in the process! What you might NOT know is that he was frequently the Dungeon Master for D&D campaigns played by the original Slashdot crew, and for the last few years he has been applying these skills with fellow Slashdot editorial alum Chris DiBona to a Survival game called Fractured Veil. It's set in a post apocalyptic Hawaii with a huge world based on real map data to explore, as well as careful balance between PVP & PVE. I figured a lot of our old friends would love to help them meet their kickstarter goal and then help us build bases and murder monsters! The game is turning into something pretty great and I'm excited to see it in the wild!
Brave Browser Claims 69x Better Performance For Its Ad-Blocker After Switching From C++ To Rust (zdnet.com) 337
The Brave web browser "claims to have delivered a '69x average improvement' in its ad-blocking technology using Rust in place of C++" reports ZDNet.
They cite a blog post by Brave performance researcher Dr. Andrius Aucinas and Brave's chief scientist Dr. Ben Livshits: The improvements can be experienced in its experimental developer and nightly channel releases... "We implemented the new engine in Rust as a memory-safe, performant language compilable down to native code and suitable to run within the native browser core as well as being packaged in a standalone Node.js module," the two Brave scientists said. The new engine means the Chromium-based browser can cut the average request classification time down to 5.6 microseconds, a unit of time that's equal to a millionth of one second.
Aucinas and Livshits argue that the micro-improvements in browser performance might not seem significant to end users but do translate to good things for a computer's main processor. "Although most users are unlikely to notice much of a difference in cutting the ad-blocker overheads, the 69x reduction in overheads means the device CPU has so much more time to perform other functions," the pair explain.
Their blog post notes that loading a web page today can be incredibly complex. "Since loading an average website involves 75 requests that need to be checked against tens of thousands of rules, it must also be efficient."
They cite a blog post by Brave performance researcher Dr. Andrius Aucinas and Brave's chief scientist Dr. Ben Livshits: The improvements can be experienced in its experimental developer and nightly channel releases... "We implemented the new engine in Rust as a memory-safe, performant language compilable down to native code and suitable to run within the native browser core as well as being packaged in a standalone Node.js module," the two Brave scientists said. The new engine means the Chromium-based browser can cut the average request classification time down to 5.6 microseconds, a unit of time that's equal to a millionth of one second.
Aucinas and Livshits argue that the micro-improvements in browser performance might not seem significant to end users but do translate to good things for a computer's main processor. "Although most users are unlikely to notice much of a difference in cutting the ad-blocker overheads, the 69x reduction in overheads means the device CPU has so much more time to perform other functions," the pair explain.
Their blog post notes that loading a web page today can be incredibly complex. "Since loading an average website involves 75 requests that need to be checked against tens of thousands of rules, it must also be efficient."
Microsoft 'Wins Over Skeptics, Open-Source Great Satan No More', Declares Bloomberg (dailyherald.com) 271
Microsoft cloud chief Scott Guthrie says the company wasn't ready to acquire GitHub in 2014. "We would have screwed it up," he tells Bloomberg. But as he sees it, there was also another problem.
"The open-source world would've rightly looked at us at the time as the antichrist. We didn't have the credibility that we have now around open source..."
An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg's report: Since then, Microsoft has turned itself into one of the biggest developers of open-source software and has persuaded customers to trust applications built using rival tools and programs to Microsoft's Azure cloud-computing service, boosting Azure revenue and usage. More than 60 percent of the company's team that works with cloud-app developers were hired for their expertise in non-Microsoft programming tools or cloud services. A full version of the open-source Linux operating system is even being added to Windows. The efforts are bringing new software builders to the Microsoft camp.
Last June, Guthrie and Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella finally unveiled an agreement to acquire GitHub. While there was still some initial agita in the developer community and rivals gained some refugee users from GitHub, one year later the deal is noteworthy mainly for how little drama it's caused. Most GitHub users just continued putting their code there. "Some people were upset, but few, because Microsoft had spent years building up goodwill with the open-source community," said Matt Asay, an Adobe Inc. senior director who is a longtime open-source developer and previous Microsoft opponent. "There was a knee-jerk sort of 'remember, they're the Great Satan' reaction, but it was halfhearted."
The article also notes that after Microsoft acquired GitHub, 113,000 code repositories moved to GitLab.
"The open-source world would've rightly looked at us at the time as the antichrist. We didn't have the credibility that we have now around open source..."
An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg's report: Since then, Microsoft has turned itself into one of the biggest developers of open-source software and has persuaded customers to trust applications built using rival tools and programs to Microsoft's Azure cloud-computing service, boosting Azure revenue and usage. More than 60 percent of the company's team that works with cloud-app developers were hired for their expertise in non-Microsoft programming tools or cloud services. A full version of the open-source Linux operating system is even being added to Windows. The efforts are bringing new software builders to the Microsoft camp.
Last June, Guthrie and Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella finally unveiled an agreement to acquire GitHub. While there was still some initial agita in the developer community and rivals gained some refugee users from GitHub, one year later the deal is noteworthy mainly for how little drama it's caused. Most GitHub users just continued putting their code there. "Some people were upset, but few, because Microsoft had spent years building up goodwill with the open-source community," said Matt Asay, an Adobe Inc. senior director who is a longtime open-source developer and previous Microsoft opponent. "There was a knee-jerk sort of 'remember, they're the Great Satan' reaction, but it was halfhearted."
The article also notes that after Microsoft acquired GitHub, 113,000 code repositories moved to GitLab.
Comment Re:walmart app (Score 1) 202
Most important feature: Using Walmart pay is now the only possible way to submit a receipt to get money back with price matching. Also, the money that is refunded goes into the Walmart Pay account and is unable to be withdrawn or spent elsewhere.
But more to your point: Our local Walmart now has grocery pickup. With the receipt stored on the app via Walmart Pay, it keeps track of frequently ordered items, allowing for quick reorder and pickup from directly within the app.
Comment Re:Fuck em (Score 1) 110
I'm pretty sure that it's this one
Comment Re:Success! (Score 1) 164
You really think Steam Machines affected the Windows Store at all? That's the funniest thing I've heard all day.
Comment Says the simulation (Score 1) 403
As far as I know, I'm the only conscious being in this simulated universe and nothing else is rendered or precisely computed until I observe it. What appears to be fundamental laws of the universe could very well be high level abstractions that are run at "good enough" quality for my personal experience to be believable, and only have more dedicated and precise simulations when I'm measuring the data personally. And even that could be unreliable. When you live in a system that controls everything, can you trust even your basic observations?
Also, if the fundamental laws of physics are determined by a simulation, why would anyone assume that the operators of the simulation would copy their own laws of physics exactly?
Comment Re:Dear Tesla (Score 2) 55
All of their patents are open, sure. That's not stopping them from having trade secrets that they haven't patented.
Comment Re:Am I reading this right? (Score 0) 79
They use the helium to pressurize the oxygen tank. In low gravity with no engines ignited, the liquid oxygen just sloshes around, floating everywhere. They need the liquid oxygen to be at the back of the tank in order to reignite the engine for later burns. Having the tank pressurized with helium pushes the liquid oxygen down to the back.
Desktop Apps Make Their Way Into the Windows Store (arstechnica.com) 75
With Windows 8, Microsoft introduced Windows Store, which consisted of "Metro / Modern UI" apps which worked best on touch capable devices. Since the release of Windows 8, many users complained that they wanted traditional apps -- the applications they had grown accustomed to -- to be included in Windows Store. This would have come in handy to especially Windows RT users, who couldn't easily get traditional applications installed on their devices. Well, guess, what, that's changing now. Though only for Windows 10 users who have gotten the Anniversary Update -- and guess what, many haven't and might not for another month and a half. At any rate, ArsTechnica elaborates: Until now, applications built for and sold through the Windows Store in Windows 10 have been built for the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), the common set of APIs that spans Windows 10 across all the many devices it supports. This has left one major category of application, the traditional desktop application built using the Win32 API, behind. Announced at Build 2015, codename Project Centennial -- now officially titled the Desktop App Converter -- is Microsoft's solution to this problem. It allows developers to repackage existing Win32 applications with few or no changes and sell them through the store. Applications packaged this way aren't subject to all the sandbox restrictions that UWP applications are, ensuring that most will work unmodified. But they are also given the same kind of clean installation, upgrading, and uninstallation that we've all come to expect from Store-delivered software. Centennial is designed to provide not just a way of bringing Win32 apps into the store; it also provides a transition path so that developers can add UWP-based functionality to their old applications on a piecemeal basis. Evernote, one of the launch applications, uses UWP APIs to include support for Live Tiles and Windows' notification system. In this way, developers can create applications that work better on Windows 10 but without having to rewrite them entirely for Windows 10.
Comment Re:Tim Sweeney (Score 1) 103
GAH, *Losing. Stupid typos.
Comment Tim Sweeney (Score 1) 103
I can't wait to hear the rant Tim Sweeney goes on when he hears this. The only gaming store he hasn't insinuated is evil is Steam, and that's probably because he knows that's a loosing battle. I wonder how much money Epic has spent to develop their Epic Games Launcher.
Comment Re:A wasted vote... (Score 1) 993
The problem with this is that in a lot of red/blue states, the third party candidate is getting a huge percentage of votes. Take Indiana: It typically votes Republican for president. And if you go by the current end result estimate, it'd vote for Trump. But Trump is only leading by 6%. Gary Johnson is getting 10% because there's a lot of "Never Trump" people. If those Never Trump people voted for Hilary instead, they'd actually accomplish their goal.
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