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Burglars have used heavy cutting equipment to break into up to 70 safety deposit boxes in a vault in London's jewellery quarter.

Mozilla’s goal of high quality plugin-free gaming on the Web is taking a giant leap forward today with the release of Unity 5. This new version of the world’s most popular game development tool includes a preview of their amazing WebGL exporter. Unity 5 developers are one click away from publishing their games to the Web in a whole new way, by taking advantage of WebGL and asm.js. The result is native-like performance in desktop browsers without the need for plugins.

Unity is a very popular game development tool. In fact the company says just under half of all developers report using this tool. The engine is highly suited for mobile development and as such has been used to produce a wealth of content which is particularly well suited for Web export. Small download size, low memory usage, and rendering pipeline similarities make this content straight forward to port to the Web. Unity has a long history of providing their developers the ability to ship online via a Web plugin. In recent years, browser vendors have moved to reduce their dependency on plugins for content delivery.

A new cross browser approach was needed and it has arrived

Mozilla and Unity worked together to find a way to bring content developed in Unity 5 to the Web using only standard compliant APIs and JavaScript. Unity’s new approach to Web delivery is made possible by using a combination of IL2CPP and a cross-compiler named Emscripten to port its content. IL2CPP was developed at Unity Technologies and converts all ingame scripts to C++. This approach has performance benefits when porting to multiple platforms, including the Web. Unity then uses Emscripten to convert the resulting C++ to asm.js, a subset of JavaScript that can be optimized to run at near native speeds in the browser. asm.js was pioneered by Mozilla. The code then executes in the browser as any other Web content. It accesses hardware via standard compliant APIs such as WebGL, IndexedDB, and Web Audio. The results of this collaboration have now reached the point where it’s time to get them into the hands of developers.

“Unity has always been a strong supporter of Web gaming,” said Andreas Gal, CTO of Mozilla. “With the ability to do plugin-free WebGL export with Unity 5, Mozilla is excited to see Unity promoting the Web as a first-class platform for their developers. One-click export to WebGL will give Unity’s developers the ability to share their content with a new class of user.”

Clicking on the images above will take you to live examples of Unity 5 exports using WebGL 1.

At GDC, Mozilla will also be providing a first look at WebGL 2. While the shipping Unity WebGL export targets WebGL 1, Unity and Mozilla have been working together to take advantage of WebGL 2, the next generation standard for 3D graphics on the Web. Unity has redeveloped their Teleporter demo to showcase the technology in action.

Mozilla and Unity will be showing off a number of titles developed in Unity and exported to the Web, including Nival’s Prime World Defenders and AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA! for Awesome by Dejobaan Games, which can be played right on their website. You can also try Dead Trigger 2 and Angry Bots available via Unity Technologies’ website.

For more information on Unity’s news please see their blog post.

For more information on Mozilla’s news at GDC see this post.

Edited March 4th to clarify that current Unity support is for WebGL 1 while WebGl 2 is an experimental technology being developed in conjunction with Mozilla.

Dutch horsemeat trader Willy Selten is found guilty of falsifying documents and sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison.

FOO FIGHTERS mainman and former NIRVANA drummer Dave Grohl spoke about his love of SEPULTURA during an appearance on last night's edition of "The Late Late Show With James Corden". He said (see video below): "You know what's crazy? One of my favorite heavy metal bands of all time is from Brazil. This band called SEPULTURA. I mean, SEPULTURA, they're amazing, but one of the crazy things they did, they made this album called 'Roots'. But they incorporated crazy Brazilian instrumentation into, like, the heaviest music you've ever heard in your life. It kind of, like, changed the game. It was the heaviest thing ever." Grohl wrote the foreword to "My Bloody Roots: From Sepultura To Soulfly And Beyond", the autobiography of former SEPULTURA frontman Max Cavalera. Cavalera told Phoenix New Times: "Dave Grohl did an awesome intro. He tells a story about how he bought a $50,000 speaker for his studio sound system, and he pops in [SEPULTURA album] 'Roots' and it blew up the whole fucking thing. [Mimicking Grohl] ''Roots' blew up my whole system.' I love that story. If your album can blow up a $50,000 system, you're doing something right."

New York park rangers remove a bust of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, which had been sneaked into a Brooklyn park at night by guerrilla artists.

Thorazine, or chlorpromazine, was the first antipsychotic. It freed many people with severe schizophrenia from mental asylums, but that's not why it was developed. It was first tested because it's an antihistamine. Yes, like the allergy medications.

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Tailor-made cancer vaccines that target unique genetic errors in a patient's tumour have been developed in the US.

From the man that found a crocodile to the person who discovered a decomposed body, here are 10 incredible stories of some very unusual things people have found under beds.

jones_supa writes Phoronix has noticed that the Visual Studio 2015 product page mentions that the new IDE can target Linux out of the box. Specifically the page says "Build for iOS, Android, Windows devices, Windows Server or Linux". What this actually means is not completely certain at this point, but it certainly laces nicely with the company opening up the .NET Framework. And speaking of cross-platform software: new submitter mccrew writes Google has released a tool that lets Android apps run on any machine that can run its Chrome browser. Called Arc Welder, the tool acts as a wrapper around Android apps so they can run on Windows, OS X and Linux machines. The software expands the places that Android apps can run and might make it easier for developers to get code working on different machines.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eldavojohn writes A couple weeks ago, Google contacted the CNNIC (China's CA) to alert them of a problem regarding the delegated power of issuing fraudulent certificates for domains (in fact this came to light after fraudulent certificates were issued for Google's domains). Following this, Google decided to remove the CNNIC Root and EV CA as trusted CAs in its Chrome browser and all Google products. Today, the CNNIC responded to Google: "1. The decision that Google has made is unacceptable and unintelligible to CNNIC, and meanwhile CNNIC sincerely urge that Google would take users' rights and interests into full consideration. 2. For the users that CNNIC has already issued the certificates to, we guarantee that your lawful rights and interests will not be affected." Mozilla is waiting to formulate a plan.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A few weeks ago, the announcement that the most recent lineup of German power metallers RAGE was breaking up caused a furor within the metal scene. While RAGE co-founder Peavy Wagner decided to continue the band with new members, guitarist Victor Smolski set his mind on following his passion for neo-classical, orchestral metal and continue on the path that he began with the LINGUA MORTIS ORCHESTRA CD "LMO". This marks the birth of new band called ALMANAC. "ALMANAC is the continuation of the concept which I started back in 2013 with 'LMO'," says Smolski. "The well-known faces of 'LMO' stay the same: both female singers Jeannette Marchewka and Dana Harnge, as well as the Orquestra Barcelona Filharmonia. On top of that, I am proud to announce that we also have two outstanding male singers joining us: Andy B. Franck (BRAINSTORM) and David Readman (PINK CREAM 69)! All of them offer me the possibility to add more variety and a new musical dimension to the new tracks' arrangements." Smolski will announce the bass player and drummer of ALMANAC at a later date, but the band's baptism of fire is close. "I will present the whole new band on our first live appearance on the Musikmesse Frankfurt [music fair]," says Smolski. ALMANAC will perform on April 16 at 17.30 CET on the Agora Stage. Furthermore, Smolski plans to enter the studio later this year to record the ALMANAC debut album.

From Rasputin's penis to Einstein's brain, take a look at some of the weirdest things that happened to famous people after they were dead.

One in ten Americans takes an anti-depressant drug like Zoloft or Prozac. These drugs have been shown to work in some patients, but their design is based on a so-called "chemical imbalance" theory of depression that is incomplete, at best.

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Whisky is one of the world’s most popular spirits, and comes in many different classes and types. The character and flavour of these differing types vary widely; this, of course, comes down to their varying chemical composition. Here, we take a look at where some of these different compounds come from, and what they contribute. […]

Ethan Jones is back with another interesting visual breakdown of movie logos, this time focusing on DreamWorks. You know that intro sequence, where a fishing line gets dropped into the water from a boy on the moon. Here are all the variations that have popped up in DreamWorks movies since they first started using the logo in 1997.

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Staph infections are one of the most pervasive and annoying bacterial infections faced by hospitals every year. It infects half a million people in the US every year, with symptoms ranging from skin infections to heart problems — and worse, some strains (commonly known as MRSA) have evolved to resist common antibiotics.

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Gotcha! Coffee Tryin to steal my toast!😡

Thank you all for watching and sharing aug(de)mented Reality 3!!!🍻

Hello LA👋 (at Franks Coffee Shop)

Fans of Cadbury Dairy Milk in the US say it tastes different when it's made in Britain and some Australians say the same. Hershey's milk chocolate is different again. What's the explanation?

jones_supa writes: A year ago, animation studio Pixar promised its RenderMan animation and rendering suite would eventually become free for non-commercial use. This was originally scheduled to happen in the SIGGRAPH 2014 computer graphics conference, but things got delayed. Nevertheless, today Pixar is releasing the free version into the wild. Free, non-commercial RenderMan can be used for research, education, evaluation, plug-in development, and any personal projects that do not generate commercial profits. This version is fully featured, without a watermark or any kind of artificial limits. Featuring Pixar's new RIS technology, RenderMan delivers extremely fast global illumination and interactive shading and lighting for artists. The software is available for Mac, Linux, and Windows. In conjunction with the release, Pixar has also launched a new RenderMan Community site where users can exchange knowledge and resources, showcase their own work, share assets such as shaders and scripts, and learn about RenderMan from tutorials.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter MarcAuslander sends this Associated Press report: Eneco, a Dutch-based energy company with more than 2 million customers, said Tuesday it is installing 'e-Radiators' — computer servers that generate heat while crunching numbers — in five homes across the Netherlands in a trial to see if their warmth could be a commercially viable alternative for traditional radiators. The technology is the brainchild of the Dutch startup company Nerdalize, whose founders claim to have developed the idea after huddling near a laptop to keep warm after their home's thermostat broke and jokingly suggesting buying 100 laptops. Nerdalize says its e-Radiators offer companies or research institutes a cheaper alternative to housing servers in data centers. And because Nerdalize foots the power bill for the radiators, Eneco customers get the warmth they generate for free. The companies said the environment wins, too, because energy is effectively used twice in the new system - to power the servers and to heat rooms.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When I think of smooth and creamy desserts, the first two things that come to mind are pudding and mousse. While they share similar characteristics, these creamy, no-bake desserts have a few differences. Do you know what sets pudding and mousse apart?

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After 1723 posts and several years of use, I've switched my blog from the proprietary, Google-owned-and-hosted Blogger to a self-hosted instance of the free software Ghost blogging application. If you are reading this in one of the blog agregators I'm carried on, you may have seen some old postings showing up as a result; apologies if this happens.

I've been watching the Ghost project for a while waiting for it to reach the point I could reasonably use it for my needs. It got there recently and I had the opportunity to move to a new server recently so took the plunge.

Here's what I really like about it, and why I went with it:

• It is free software. Obviously this is #1 in the list
• It is actively and openly developed, moving at a good clip
• I was able to import my Blogger blogs into it quite easily
• It is focused on minimalism
• It runs as a separate application

While the first three may be obvious in terms why they are important, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the last two.

It may sound like stating the obvious, but: I want a blogging system for my blog. Not a web site builder. Not a content management system. A blog application. As a counterexample, Wordpress has long exited the land of simple blogging system and become a website building suite. There is nothing wrong with that, but it means it diverges from my desire for a clean, minimal and elegant system for blogging. I've run a few Wordpress sites over the last few years, so I'm not just speaking hypothetically but from first-hand experience.

With Ghot, you write your blogs in a very plain and simple full-screen, two-pane user interface using markdown. No word-processor-wannabe toolbars, switching between keyboard and mouse, lots of menus everywhere. Just a text editor, a live preview next to it and all the editing and formating you could want in a blog. Tags live in a bar below, configuration in a slide-in drawer on the right, and a simple button to save and publish.

Yet in this simple system it still manages to have multiple author support, tag and author specific RSS feeds, static pages, theming ...

Since it runs as its own process, I can have systemd manage it as a separate service listening on a local socket with haproxy forwarding traffic to it. Upgrading the blog becomes a simple matter of setting up a parallel install, testing it, and when I'm happy with it changing the haproxy routing and restarting haproxy. Zero downtime, even if things go wrong. If a security problem or some other issue arrises, I can shut down just the blog and none of the other things I have running on the server are affected. I can even move it to another machine if desired without interuption.

While setting it up, along with other "must have" tools for me such as Kanboard, it reminded me of some aspects of the Kolab architecture, specficially how it is built around a swarm of services that take care of different aspects of the task of "collaboration suite" in concert with each other.

Finally, I'd like to give a shout-out to the author of the Willsong II theme. I purchased the theme after trying his no-cost Willsong 1 theme; it looks nice and professional, and I both wanted to support his efforts and get some of the nice features of Willsong II. It also happens to use the KDE Oxygen font by default, which I thought was pretty spiffy. Unfortunately I ran into some small problems with the theme after installing it. I wrote the author and he responded almost immediately and quickly identified and fixed a bug in the theme. He even customized it a bit for me, even though I didn't ask for that. So: great customer support, and he's got a few other themes with a shared common core that he's working on. If you're looking for a good Ghost theme I recommend giving his efforts a look.

Why a long night's sleep may be worse for you than a short one

sciencehabit writes: Where did the thief go? You might get a more accurate answer if you ask the question in German. How did she get away? Now you might want to switch to English. Speakers of the two languages put different emphasis on actions and their consequences, influencing the way they think about the world, according to a new study (abstract). The work also finds that bilinguals may get the best of both worldviews, as their thinking can be more flexible.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Glassware in the laboratory comes in a range of different shapes and sizes, and is used for a number of purposes. Don’t know your round-bottomed flask from your Florence flask, or your pipettes from your burettes? This graphic has you covered. Below there’s also a little detail on the usage of each.

Basic Glassware

These items should be familiar to anyone who’s been in a chemistry practical lesson in school. Test tubes are the archetypal image of chemistry, whilst beakers also make frequent appearances in school practicals. Boiling tubes aren’t that different from test tubes in appearance, but are used when heating is required – they tend to be made of thicker glass, and are slightly larger and wider.

Flasks

Of all the flasks used in chemistry, the most iconic is the conical (Erlenmeyer) flask. Named after the German chemist Emil Erlenmeyer, who created the flask in 1860, it’s designed so that its contents can be swirled easily without spilling out. This also makes them useful for boiling liquids, and additionally their necks can support filter funnels.

Volumetric flasks are used primarily in the preparation of standard solutions. To create a solution of a specific concentration, we need to know the volume of the solution; the narrow neck of the volumetric flask will have a thin graduation to show where a specific volume is reached.

Round-bottomed flasks and Florence flasks look very similar, but there is a slight difference between the two. Both have round bottoms, designed to spread out heat evenly when they are heated. They are frequently used by chemists for reactions and in rotary evaporators. Whereas round-bottomed flasks will usually have a ground glass joint on their neck, to allow connection to other apparatus, Florence flasks, supposedly named after Florence in Italy, tend to merely have a lip. They can also come with either a flat bottom so they are free-standing, or a rounded bottom, and have longer necks.

The Kjeldahl flask has an even longer neck, and was developed for use in the Kjeldahl method, which is used to determine the nitrogen content in a substance.

Pear-shaped flasks are usually rather small flasks, used for small-scale distillations. Their shape allows recovery of more material than the round-bottomed flasks.

The rather odd-looking retort flasks are used in distillations, though their use was primarily before the advent of condensers. Today, they are very rarely used.

The Schlenk flask and the Straus flask are another two that look fairly similar. Schlenk flasks are commonly used in air-sensitive chemistry, as the side arm allows an inert gas such as nitrogen to be pumped into the vessel. The Straus flask, on the other hand, is used to store dried solvents. The main neck is actually filled in halfway up, and connected to a plugged smaller neck; this main neck can be connected to other apparatus, and allows the solvent to be extracted when the plug is slightly withdrawn or removed entirely.

Finally, the Claisen flask, designed by chemist Ludwig Claisen, is designed for vacuum distillation; distillation under vacuum produces problematic amounts of bubbles when solutions are boiled. Claisen’s flask includes a capillary tube that inserts small bubbles into the liquid, easing the ferocity of boiling, whilst the branched portion of the flask hosts a thermometer. Today, Claisen’s flask is less commonly used.

Funnels, Analysis & Separation

A variety of different apparatus can be used for filtration. The most obvious is the filter funnel, into which filter paper can be placed, and a mixture can then be poured through. The smaller thistle funnel is not used for filtering at all, but to add liquids into apparatus.

The Buchner flask can be used in conjunction with a Buchner funnel in vacuum filtration, and is a much quicker process than the gravity filtration used with normal filter funnels. A vacuum tube can be affixed to the flask’s sidearm, which rapidly sucks through the solvent, leaving any solid in the Buchner funnel.

For separating solutions or liquids of different densities, separating funnels can be used. Liquids of a lower density will float to the top, then the mixtures can be tapped off separately. The similar-looking dropping funnel is used to add liquids or solutions to a reaction.

Another method of separating mixtures of compounds is column chromatography, which can be carried out using a chromatography column. The mixture is passed through a column of silicon dioxide or aluminium oxide, with different components of the mixture taking differing amounts of time to pass through the column.

Finally, the Thiele tube is a piece of apparatus used to determine the melting point of a solid compound. It contains and heats an oil bath, into which a sample can be placed along with a thermometer. Heating then allows melting point to be determined. The design of the flask allows the oil to circulate, ensuring even heating.

Condensers

A range of different condensers can be utilised in laboratories as important components of distillation apparatus. The most commonly seen condenser in schools is the Liebig condenser, which has an inner tube through which vapour flows, surrounded by a ‘jacket’ through which cool water passes and condenses the vapour. The Graham condenser is similar to this, but has a coiled path for the vapour to flow through and condense. Meanwhile, the Friedrichs condenser inverts the arrangement, having a spiral coil through which the coolant flows, with the vapour surrounding it. Other varieties of condenser are also available, though are not shown here.

Another piece of glassware that falls loosely into this category is the fractionating column. This helps separate a mixture during distillation, as vapours collect and distill on the small glass ‘trays’ ascending the column. Only the most volatile gases will ascend all the way to the top of the column to be distilled off.

Measuring Apparatus

A number of pieces of chemistry glassware are used to accurately measure volumes; the most obvious being the graduated cylinder, or measuring cylinder, which can come in a variety of sizes.

For measuring volumes of solutions more precisely, a volumetric pipette can be used. These come in a variety of sizes, each measuring a fixed volume of solution. Graduated pipettes can also be used, which allow various small volumes to be measured out. For measurement of volumes during titrations (the addition of one solution to another to determine an unknown concentration) burettes are used. These are long, narrow tubes, with incremental volume markings, which allow precise volumes of solutions to be dropped into another solution.

For measuring the volume of gas produced in a reaction, a gas syringe can be used. This piece of apparatus can be attached to the top of a flask via a piece of tubing, and the gas produced pushes the plunger out of the syringe, allowing the gas volume to be measured.

The only piece of glassware we haven’t mentioned is the Soxhlet extractor. This is used to extract chemicals from a solid sample into a liquid. You can see it in action in this video which details the extraction of caffeine from coffee.

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References & Further Reading

• Classic kit – Chemistry World