feed on feeds - 2014/09/26 - items 0 to 15

En äldre man omkom under fredagskvällen efter att en fritidsbåt kapsejsat vid Krokholmarna i Vättern. Larmet kom in vid 20-tiden sedan ett par hittat mannen i vattnet.

You might want to go back to Video 1 before watching this one (or reading the transcript). This video is the second part of our recording of a panel discussion at the recent science fiction convention in Detroit. Panelists include writer and forensic science expert Jen Haeger; professor and generally fascinating guy Brian Gray; and expert in Aeronautical Management and 20-year veteran of the Air Force Douglas Johnson. In this video, they continue running down a list of science fiction predictions, both successful and unsuccessful, and evaluating how realistic or far-fetched each now seems. (Alternate Video Link)

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MojoKid writes: Save for a smattering of relatively small, 3K and 4K laptop displays, we haven't quite gotten to the same type of pixel density on the PC platform, that is available on today's high-end ultra-mobile devices. That said, the desktop display space has really heated up as of late and 4K panels have generated a large part of the buzz. Acer just launched the first 4K display with NVIDIA G-Sync technology on board. To put it simply, G-SYNC keeps a display and the output from an NVIDIA GPU in sync, regardless of frame rates or whether or not V-Sync is enabled. Instead of the monitor controlling the timing and refreshing at say 60Hz, the timing control is transferred to the GPU. The GPU scans a frame out to the monitor and the monitor doesn't update until a frame is done drawing, in lock-step with the GPU. This method completely eliminates tearing or frame stuttering associated with synchronization anomalies of standard panels. There are still some quirks with Windows and many applications that don't always scale properly on high-DPI displays, but the situation is getting better every day. If you're a gamer in the market for a 4K display, that's primed for gaming, the Acer XB280HK is a decent new option with this technology on board, though it does come at a bit of a premium at $799 versus standard 28-inch panels.

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MojoKid writes: Save for a smattering of relatively small, 3K and 4K laptop displays, we haven't quite gotten to the same type of pixel density on the PC platform, that is available on today's high-end ultra-mobile devices. That said, the desktop display space has really heated up as of late and 4K panels have generated a large part of the buzz. Acer just launched the first 4K display with NVIDIA G-Sync technology on board. To put it simply, G-SYNC keeps a display and the output from an NVIDIA GPU in sync, regardless of frame rates or whether or not V-Sync is enabled. Instead of the monitor controlling the timing and refreshing at say 60Hz, the timing control is transferred to the GPU. The GPU scans a frame out to the monitor and the monitor doesn't update until a frame is done drawing, in lock-step with the GPU. This method completely eliminates tearing or frame stuttering associated with synchronization anomalies of standard panels. There are still some quirks with Windows and many applications that don't always scale properly on high-DPI displays, but the situation is getting better every day. If you're a gamer in the market for a 4K display, that's primed for gaming, the Acer XB280HK is a decent new option with this technology on board, though it does come at a bit of a premium at $799 versus standard 28-inch panels.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ebolautbrottet hotar inte bara de drabbade länderna i Västafrika, utan utgör ett hot mot hela världen.

Två fritidsbåtar har varit inblandade i olyckor i hårt väder på Vättern, vid Askersund. Nu försöker räddningstjänst och sjöräddningen hitta eventuella personer som kan ha fallit i vattnet.

Perl Framework for authoring Juju charms

Under helgen ska alla Gävlebor drogtestas.

An anonymous reader writes: The radio program "This American Life" has published an extraordinary investigative report on how the U.S. government regulators in charge of keeping an eye on the banks actually interact with powerful financial institutions (podcast here). Financial journalist Michael Lewis describes the report thus: "The Fed failed to regulate the banks because it did not encourage its employees to ask questions, to speak their minds or to point out problems. Just the opposite: The Fed encourages its employees to keep their heads down, to obey their managers and to appease the banks. That is, bank regulators failed to do their jobs properly not because they lacked the tools but because they were discouraged from using them. The report quotes Fed employees saying things like, 'until I know what my boss thinks I don't want to tell you,' and 'no one feels individually accountable for financial crisis mistakes because management is through consensus.'"

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An anonymous reader writes: The radio program "This American Life" has published an extraordinary investigative report on how the U.S. government regulators in charge of keeping an eye on the banks actually interact with powerful financial institutions (podcast here). Financial journalist Michael Lewis describes the report thus: "The Fed failed to regulate the banks because it did not encourage its employees to ask questions, to speak their minds or to point out problems. Just the opposite: The Fed encourages its employees to keep their heads down, to obey their managers and to appease the banks. That is, bank regulators failed to do their jobs properly not because they lacked the tools but because they were discouraged from using them. The report quotes Fed employees saying things like, 'until I know what my boss thinks I don't want to tell you,' and 'no one feels individually accountable for financial crisis mistakes because management is through consensus.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Interesting thread going on under a post by Andrew Baron about ello.

Andrew thinks Ello is going in the "right direction." I think not. It's VC-funded, no feeds, no API, it's buggy, it's more like Twitter in 2006 without the API. There's no appeal in that, at least not for me. I suppose it could catch on. Lots of things catch on.

Ultimately the killer idea would be for Facebook to federate. Let me put my content on my server, to be part of whatever networks I want it to be part of, and at the same time also be on Facebook. That combination imho would create an infinite number of competitors to Facebook. Funny thing is I think they're actually doing this. Why? Where do you think the kickass new ideas for networking will come from? From a service operating at Facebook's scale or from something new that gets a chance to iterate, to start small, and get to some new place. If you know how technology develops, you know that only the latter approach has a chance of working. I've been waiting for a platform vendor to get to the stage Facebook is at now, and realize that they'll do better if they plant the seeds for successors of their current product, and make sure they have a good seat from which to observe. Then keep the checkbook out, and make investments and acquisitions, and help distribute the products that achieve critical mass (in this day, distribution means operating huge data centers).

Jeffrey Kishner: Running River4 Locally with Dropbox.

Pro-democracy students storm government headquarters to oppose China's tightening grip on former British colony.

Zothecula writes: With LEDs being the preferred long-lasting, low-energy method for replacing less efficient forms of lighting, their uptake has dramatically increased over the past few years. However, despite their luminous outputs having increased steadily over that time, they still fall behind more conventional forms of lighting in terms of brightness. Researchers at Princeton University claim to have come up with a way to change all that by using nanotechnology to increase the output of organic LEDs by 57 percent.

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