69447583
submission
bugnuts writes:
Local Albuquerque, NM Hackerspace, Quelab, created and unintentionally launched a solar-powered tetroon over the city, prompting several calls to the FAA, Kirtland AFB, and news organizations, describing it as a "floating tortilla chip." The tetroon allows sunlight to pass through the top layer, heating the inner black layers, creating a hot-air balloon as the interior gas expands.
Besides the well-known "Roswell" incident, New Mexico often has many UFO sightings due to the prevalence of technology and military groups, good weather, and clear skies.
44703981
submission
bugnuts writes:
Nearly all modern DSLRs use a Bayer filter to determine colors, which filters red, two greens, and a blue for each block of 4 pixels. As a result of the filtering, the pixels don't receive all the light and the pixel values must be multiplied by predetermined values (which also multiplies the noise) to normalize the differences. Panasonic developed a novel method of "filtering" which splits the light so the photons are not absorbed, but redirected to the appropriate pixel. As a result, about twice the light reaches the sensor and almost no light is lost. Instead of RGGB, each block of 4 pixels receives Cyan, White + Red, White + Blue, and Yellow, and the RGB values can be interpolated.
3838255
submission
bugnuts writes:
Blizzard announced a policy change to Addons for the popular game World of Warcraft which asserts requirements on UI programmers, such as charging for the program, obfuscation, soliciting donations, etc. Addons are voluntarily-installed UI programs that add functionality to the game, programmed in Lua, which can do various tasks that hook into the WoW engine.
The new policy has some obvious requirements such as not loading the servers or spamming users, and it looks like an attempt to make things more accessible and free for the end user. But unlike FOSS, it adds other requirements that assert control over these independently coded programs, such as distribution and fees.
Blizzard can already control the ultimate functionality of Addons by changing the hooks into the WoW engine. They have exercised this ability in the past, e.g. to disable addons that automate movement and "one-button" combat. Should they be able to make demands on independent programmers' copyrighted works, such as download fees or advertising, who are not under contract to code for Blizzard? Is this like Microsoft asserting control over what programmers may code for Windows?
