Talynebear

Note from the author: Yakuza-san say: "Yosh!" means "alright!" in Japanese and also, read this from right to left!

Comic by: YakuzaDuragon (via Pencil Tips)

Everyone hates Flash, right? You have to install a plug-in, it's resource intensive, it doesn't work on mobile, and it causes all sorts of security problems. YouTube has been working on ridding itself of Adobe's ancient Web plug-in for several years now, and while the whole site has been slowly transitioning away from Flash, today YouTube announced that it finally serves HTML5 video by default. Users of Chrome, IE 11, Safari 8, and "beta versions of Firefox" will all have a Flash-less experience.

YouTube's transition seems to have been pretty straightforward. Four years ago, YouTube laid out a laundry list of problems it had with HTML5, and today it has a blog post explaining how it has worked with the Web community to solve each issue.

MediaSource Extensions have enabled YouTube to add adaptive bitrate streaming, which can change video quality on the fly without having to stop and rebuffer the video. YouTube says this has reduced buffering by "50 percent globally and as much as 80 percent on heavily-congested networks."

Take a deep breath. About 78 percent of the air you inhaled is the most abundant pure element found on Earth. Besides its role in the atmosphere, it’s used in all sorts of products: fertilizers, propellants, you name it. It's also an essential component of DNA and proteins. It’s called nitrogen.

But it's something of a mystery. The nitrogen found on Earth doesn’t match the nitrogen found in the Sun or in the tails of comets. Those sources have nitrogen isotope fractions that differ from those on Earth. So how did nitrogen get to Earth in the first place, and where did it come from? One clue is that some very ancient meteorites do match the Earth’s isotopic abundances very closely, implying that the nitrogen may have come from an ancient source that wasn't so much interplanetary, but existed before the planets formed.

In a new study, researchers examined an ancient meteorite using techniques called transmission electron microscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometry. These provide a glimpse of the material it contains and revealed that the meteorite contains a mineral called carlsbergite.

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My late twenties have been nothing like the show Friends™ promised they would be.

Comic by: WerewolfLaser (via Big Smiles Everyone Comic)

In a brief statement on Wednesday evening, hotel chain Marriott International said that it would not block any personal Wi-Fi devices belonging to its customers.

Marriott International listens to its customers, and we will not block guests from using their personal Wi-Fi devices at any of our managed hotels. Marriott remains committed to protecting the security of Wi-Fi access in meeting and conference areas at our hotels. We will continue to look to the FCC to clarify appropriate security measures network operators can take to protect customer data, and will continue to work with the industry and others to find appropriate market solutions that do not involve the blocking of Wi-Fi devices.

Despite that pledge, Re/Code reports that the company is not rescinding a request for rulemaking that it submitted to the Federal Communications Commission late last year, in which it asked for the Commission's blessing to block personal hotspots.

In October, Marriott was fined $600,000 by the FCC following a complaint that one of its Nashville, Tennessee branches was interfering with and disabling personal Wi-Fi hotspots set up by its customers. Marriott agreed to pay the fine but remained defiant, asking the FCC to allow it to resume its practice.