Andrew

Skier Nicolas Vuignier recently shared a viral video in which he created “bullet time” footage of himself skiing by swinging an iPhone 6 around his head using a special contraption he built himself.

The original 3-minute video can be seen above, in case you haven’t watched it yet. It amassed well over 3.5 million views in just a couple of weeks.

If you’re interested in doing this project yourself, here’s some great news: Vuignier just revealed the full details of how he built his rig and how the video was made. Here’s the 5-minute-long “making of” video:

Vuignier’s creation is called the Centriphone. It looks like a white plastic glider of sorts. After inserting your iPhone, the 3D printed case keeps the phone’s camera pointed directly at you while it’s being swing around.

What you can capture with the Centriphone is amazing — particular when you’re doing an extreme sport:

The design for the Centriphone has been open-sourced and can be downloaded from GitHub and printed out using a 3D printer. If you’d like to purchase a pre-made one without having to worry about crafting the thing yourself, Vuignier is now taking pre-orders for his patent-pending invention through a new Centriphone website.

Vuignier says he’s currently working on even more elaborate versions that allows you to mount heavier devices such as GoPro cameras.

Some days, you’re just stuck working in your Terminal and need a quick break. For those days, a Game Boy game or two might help pass the time a little quicker.

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An anonymous reader writes: In a new research paper the VP of Infrastructure at Google argues for hard drive manufacturers and data center provisioners to consider revisions to the current 3.5" form-factor in favour of taller, multi-platter form factors — with the possibility of combining the new format with HDDs of smaller circumference which hold less data but have better seek times. Eric Brewer, also a professor at UC Berkeley, writes "The current 3.5" HDD geometry was adopted for historic reasons – its size inherited from the PC floppy disk. An alternative form factor should yield a better TCO overall. Changing the form factor is a long term process that requires a broad discussion, but we believe it should be considered."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Real life is for March!

Poor leap day. It only gets to happen once every four years, is best known as a scheduling headache, and has no celebratory traditions to speak of, outside of letting people who were born on February 29 feel like they have a real birthday. While other holidays enjoy their own convenience store aisles, novelty cards, and Very Special Episodes of television, leap day stands patiently on the sidelines, waiting for its turn to briefly disorient us before retreating into hiding for another four years.

So in a way, it's fitting that it took a surreal television series like 30 Rock to actually celebrate leap day.

In the sixth season of Tina Fey and Robert Carlock's dearly departed NBC sitcom, "Leap Day" revealed that in 30 Rock's bizarro world, February 29 is a bona fide holiday. Everyone wears yellow and blue or risks getting their eyes poked and/or hair yanked. "Leap Dave Williams" is a beloved folk figure on par with Santa Claus; he supposedly emerges from the Mariana Trench once every four years, to exchange children's tears for candy.

And in a perfect 30 Rock-ian flourish, "Leap Day" features a fake movie about Leap Dave Williams playing repeatedly in the background (naturally, it's airing on a loop on the USA Network). The film-within-the-show stars Jim Carrey as a brusque lawyer who magically becomes Leap Dave Williams after an ice-fishing mishap; Andie MacDowell plays his long-suffering love interest, standing by and shaking her head at his rascal ways.

I dare you to watch Carrey leap through the streets yelling, "I saved Leap Day! And connected with my son! And I solved the big case from earlier!" without breaking into at least the shadow of a grin. Not only is 30 Rock's fake film a sly parody of Carrey's particular brand of feel-good slapstick, it's also silly, hyperbolic, and a pitch-perfect parody of the treacly holiday movies that leap day never gets.

So happy leap day, everyone! Make sure you've got your yellow-and-blue outfit all ready, lest you feel like getting your eyes poked and/or hair yanked.

Mark Wilson writes: The Acceptable Ads program from Adblock Plus has proven slightly controversial. The company behind the ad blocking tool, Eyeo, has already revealed a little about how it makes money from the program - despite the fact that no money changes hands in most whitelisting cases - and today it has opened up further about how is makes its money. Whilst recognizing that people do want to block ads, Eyeo is also aware that sites do need to benefit from ad revenue - hence Acceptable Ads, non-intrusive ads that it is hoped are less irritating and therefore easier to stomach. But Eyeo itself also wants to make money. How does it decide which company to charge to Acceptable Ads whitelisting, and which to charge? If you're expecting full transparency, you might be disappointed, but we are given a glimpse into how the financial side of things works./i

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It seems the Melissa Click saga has come to an end. A few months after being filmed confronting a photojournalist during a student protest at the University of Missouri, the mass media professor was fired yesterday for infringing on the student’s rights.

Click was charged with assault last month for calling for “muscle” to remove photojournalists from a public space on the university campus during the November 2015 protests. Click apologized for the incident shortly after the story went viral.

The Columbia Daily Tribune reports that the university’s Board of Curators voted 4-2 in favor of the termination, which was being demanded by over 100 Missouri state lawmakers, even though over 100 university faculty voiced their support of Click.

Chairwoman Pam Henrickson, who herself voted against the firing, shared the news in a prepared statement:

“Dr. Click was not entitled to interfere with the rights of others, to confront members of law enforcement or to encourage potential physical intimidation against a student,” the statement says. “…when she interfered with members of the media and students who were exercising their rights in a public space and called for intimidation against one of our students, we believe demands serious action.”

“Her actions in October and November are those that directly violate the core values of our university,” says Interim Chancellor Hank Foley.

Click now has the right to file an appeal in response to her termination.

LichtSpektren writes: Phoronix reports that Bradley M. Kuhn and Karen M. Sandler at the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFS) have posted a blog post today arguing that Canonical's plan to distribute Ubuntu 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus" with support for the ZFS file system violates the Linux kernel's GPLv2 license. On February 18, Dustin Kirkland at Canonical wrote on his blog: "We at Canonical have conducted a legal review, including discussion with the industry's leading software freedom legal counsel, of the licenses that apply to the Linux kernel and to ZFS. And in doing so, we have concluded that we are acting within the rights granted and in compliance with their terms of both of those licenses...The CDDL cannot apply to the Linux kernel because zfs.ko is a self-contained file system module — the kernel itself is quite obviously not a derivative work of this new file system. And zfs.ko, as a self-contained file system module, is clearly not a derivative work of the Linux kernel but rather quite obviously a derivative work of OpenZFS and OpenSolaris. Equivalent exceptions have existed for many years, for various other stand alone, self-contained, non-GPL kernel modules. Our conclusion is good for Ubuntu users, good for Linux, and good for all of free and open source software." The SFS's blog post of today states: "We are sympathetic to Canonical's frustration in this desire to easily support more features for their users. However, as set out below, we have concluded that their distribution of zfs.ko violates the GPL."

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Amy Davidson, writing for The New Yorker:

It is essential to this story that the order to Apple is not a subpoena: it is issued under the All Writs Act of 1789, which says that federal courts can issue “all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.” Read as a whole, this simply means that judges can tell people to follow the law, but they have to do so in a way that, in itself, respects the law. The Act was written at a time when a lot of the mechanics of the law still had to be worked out. But there are qualifications there: warnings about the writs having to be “appropriate” and “agreeable,” not just to the law but to the law’s “principles.” The government, in its use of the writ now, seems to be treating those caveats as background noise. If it can tell Apple, which has been accused of no wrongdoing, to sit down and write a custom operating system for it, what else could it do?

Lost amid the technical debate over encryption is the legal debate over this incredibly broad application of the All Writs Act.

NYT report on a 6-3 Supreme Court decision in 1987:

Justice Scalia’s opinion was forcefully denounced as an unjustified obstacle to law enforcement in dissenting opinions by Associate Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Lewis F. Powell Jr. Chief Justice Rehnquist joined in both of the dissents.

Justice Scalia, however, said, “There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.” […]

Justice Scalia’s majority opinion today said that although the search for weapons was lawful — a shot had just been fired through the floor of the apartment, injuring a man below — the police were not justified in moving the stereo components even slightly to check the serial numbers without “probable cause” to believe they were stolen. He thus affirmed a ruling by an Arizona appellate court that the stereo components, which turned out to have been stolen in an armed robbery, could not be used as evidence against the occupant of the apartment.

Associate Justice William J. Brennan Jr., the Court’s senior member, who is its leading liberal, apparently assigned Justice Scalia to write the majority opinion, which he joined. Under the Supreme Court’s procedures, the Chief Justice assigns opinions when he is in the majority. When the Chief Justice dissents, as in the Arizona case, the senior member of the majority has assignment power.

Conservative judges, as a general rule, tend to side with law enforcement in search and seizure cases. Scalia was certainly a conservative, but by no means was he in lockstep with them.

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The New York Times took a dive into whether Donald Trump's supporters are unusually racist — or, in the newspaper's delicate phrasing, "responsive to religious, social and racial intolerance." And they came up with a stunning statistic: Nearly one in five Trump supporters didn't approve of freeing slaves in the Confederacy.

A YouGov/Economist poll in January asked respondents if they approved or disapproved of "the executive order that freed all slaves in the states that were in rebellion against the federal government."

That executive order is better known as the Emancipation Proclamation. Thirteen percent of respondents — and "nearly 20 percent of Trump supporters," the Times reports, compared with 5 percent of Marco Rubio's — said they disapproved of it.

It gets even worse. An additional 17 percent of respondents said they weren't sure.

Before asking about slavery, YouGov first asked two broader poll questions about executive orders: Do you approve of them, and do you think they're constitutional? Then they asked about specific presidential actions, including freeing the slaves, desegregating the military, interning Japanese Americans during World War II, and deferring deportation for some unauthorized immigrants.

Framing the question this way is a reminder that one of Lincoln's greatest acts, and a turning point in American history, was also a controversial exercise of presidential power. And it's stunning how many people can't bring themselves to say they approve of it.

An anonymous reader writes: When companies like Ancestry.com and 23andMe first invited people to send in their DNA for genealogy tracing and medical diagnostic tests, privacy advocates warned about the creation of giant genetic databases that might one day be used against participants by law enforcement. DNA, after all, can be a key to solving crimes. It 'has serious information about you and your family,' genetic privacy advocate Jeremy Gruber told me back in 2010 when such services were just getting popular. Now, five years later, when 23andMe and Ancestry both have over a million customers, those warnings are looking prescient. âoeYour relativeâ(TM)s DNA could turn you into a suspect.â

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First, watch the video above. Don't think too much about it. Just press play, and let the frog scream send a shiver through your bones. Just a normal frog scream, right? That's what I thought, too.

This, my friend, is no ordinary frog scream. This is a beautiful instrument, capable of producing a rich, squeaky tune. This is a frog scream that can play the Imperial March. I know, I wasn't expecting this when I woke up this morning either.

Here's how to make an unsettling frog scream your new favorite instrument. Open the YouTube video posted by user helen ge. Now imagine your numerical keys are individual keys on a piano. For each note in the Imperial March, press a corresponding number in the following order: 6, 6, 6, 8, 5, 6, 8, 5, 6....

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SpaceX is gearing up for its next Falcon 9 rocket launch this Wednesday, which will send a telecommunications satellite into orbit for the company SES. It will also attempt to land its rocket after launch, but doesn't expect a successful recovery.

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One of Marvel Comics' biggest conundrums is the question of how legendary comics creator Stan Lee will be remembered. On one hand, Lee is the man who built the Marvel Universe; its superheroes have become permanent fixtures in popular culture. On the other hand, there's a darker side to his history — the stories that he took all the credit and left none to spare for his co-creators, partners, and artists — that threatens to mar how we'll view his legacy.

Vulture's Abraham Riesman spent months talking to several Marvel writers, editors, and creative minds about Lee's impact on the world of comic books. The result is a complex, fair, and extensive piece that pinpoints a specific fracture point between Lee and the great artist-writer Jack Kirby. It's a 1966 article by Nat Freedland, published in the New York Herald Tribune, that had a lasting effect on Marvel, the friendship between Lee and Kirby, and Lee's legacy:

"That article did enormous damage to Jack, personally and professionally," recalls [comic book historian Mark] Evanier, who knew Kirby better than most. "It convinced Jack he couldn't get the proper recognition [at Marvel]." Kirby stayed put for a while (he’d later say he wanted to leave but had to earn money to support his family), but abandoned Marvel to work for DC in 1970. Almost right away, he wrote and drew a short story about a thinly veiled Lee analogue named Funky Flashman. Funky is a verbose fraud who orders around a Roy Thomas pastiche named Houseroy and constantly declares his own greatness without ever producing anything. "I know my words drive people into a frenzy of adoration!!" he insists. "Image is the thing, Houseroy!" Kirby’s anger was shared by other people in the industry who disapproved of Lee’s methods: A DC comic called Angel and the Ape featured a comics editor named Stan Bragg, who asks a creator, "Why are you so ungrateful? When you write good stories and do good artwork, don’t I sign it?" A satirical series called Sick featured a strip in which comics editor Sam Me tells an artist to make some arduous revisions before reminding him, "And don’t forget to sign my name to it!"

Freedland's article unintentionally distilled the way audiences saw Lee, as this wizard of imagination, in comparison with how Lee's colleagues knew him — the man behind the curtain. And while Riesman's article doesn't necessarily give you a solid answer regarding how you should feel about Lee, it does give you an understanding of why his legacy is as complex as some of the characters he created.

"We understand that he erred, but that only forces us to try harder to understand him and see the man in full," Riesman writes.

Head to Vulture to read Riesman's full piece.

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My name name is Rustam Azmi, and I’m a photographer based in Dubai. I recently captured this photo of lightning striking the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper. In this post I’ll share a little about how the shot was made.

It was one of those rare days in Dubai where it was really foggy in the morning, really sunny during the day, and raining with thunderstorms in the evening. I missed shooting fog in the morning and was upset about it, but I heard that there is going to be a strong storm in the evening, so got I got excited to shoot it.

Preparation and Planning

The most difficult part was selecting the location for the shoot. My friend Zohaib Anjum and I scouted few locations but didn’t find anything we liked. Then we thought of going up on a rooftop, but there was the risk of getting struck by lighting instead of shooting a lighting strike.

But we eventually decided to go on a roof of a 56-floor building. Our gear was covered up in plastic to protect it from getting soaked in the rain.

Shooting

After we got to the rooftop, we couldn’t believe our eyes. The weather was unlike anything I’ve seen through living here for 28 years. I quickly placed my Canon 5D Mark III over the edge and started shooting.

After few minutes of shooting, it started pouring and raining down hail, so I grabbed my equipment and ran back inside.

When the rain turned into light showers, I couldn’t believe my eyes again: the sunset was beautiful and the light was falling on the other side of the Burj Khalifa.

Soon there were an unbelievable number of lightning strikes, but I couldn’t shoot them properly because water was beginning to get onto the front element of my lens.

As the Sun was almost gone below the horizon line, the rain eased up and I was able to shoot some more. Using an intervalometer, I started shooting a steady stream of back-to-back photos. After almost 400 shots, I still hadn’t captured a good lightning shot.

Frustrated and exhausted, I kept saying: “Please God! Just one shot! Please!.” A few minutes later, there was a flash of lightning and my camera captured my dream shot. I felt the strike hit the skyscraper, even though I was quite a distance away.

Processing

To process my photo, I imported it into Lightroom and did some basic adjustments first (e.g. color correction, lens correction, HSL). I then exported it to Photoshop CC and removed some water and flares. I used Colorfex Pro to enhance contrast and details in the sky, dodged and burned the sky, used a warm filter for the ground. Finally, I denoised the shot, added some sharpening, resized it for sharing on the Web, and watermarked it.

I feel like this photo is one of the best photos I’ve taken so far, as I have never seen any photo of lightning striking the Burj Khalifah at blue hour from this type of vantage point. The shot has since been featured on Dubai’s official Instagram, and is going to be printed in a number of newspapers as well.

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About the author: Rustam Azmi is a photographer based in Dubai, UAE. You can find more of his work on Facebook, 500px, and Instagram.

Edward Snowden noted the following passage from this NYT report, but it was subsequently removed from the article:

China is watching the dispute closely. Analysts say the Chinese government does take cues from United States when it comes to encryption regulations, and that it would most likely demand that multinational companies provide accommodations similar to those in United States.

Last year, Beijing backed off several proposals that would have mandated that foreign firms providing encryption keys for devices sold in China after heavy pressure from foreign trade groups. …

“… a push from American law enforcement agencies to unlock iPhones would embolden Beijing to demand the same.”

I have no idea why The Times removed this, because it’s one of the most important but so far least talked about issues in this case. U.S. culture is in many ways insular, making it easy to see this as a “U.S.” issue. But it’s not — it’s a worldwide issue.

I’ve long wondered why China allows companies like Apple to sell devices without back doors for their government. A big part of why they tolerate it seems to be the fact that no government gets this.

Update: Daniel Roberts has posted a screenshot of the entire segment on China that was cut from the article.

Update, 20 February 2016: The NYT has published a new report revisiting the Chinese angle.

Apple today released an updated version of iOS 9.2.1, which is designed to prevent the "error 53" device-bricking message that some iOS users received after having their iPhones or iPads repaired by third-party services using components not sourced from the original device.

Non-matching repair components that affected the Touch ID fingerprint sensor caused an iOS device to fail a Touch ID validation check because the mismatched parts were unable to properly sync. The validation check occurred during an iOS update or restore, and when failed, Apple disabled the iPhone, effectively "bricking" it in an effort to protect Touch ID and the related Secure Enclave that stores customer fingerprint information.

Apple originally explained that error 53 was intentional, implemented as a way to prevent the use of a malicious Touch ID sensor that could be used to gain access to the Secure Enclave, but customers with bricked devices were not happy with the explanation and Apple found itself facing a class-action lawsuit.

Today's update will restore iPhones and iPads that have been disabled due to "error 53" to full working condition and it will ensure that future iOS devices that have had similar repairs will not be fully disabled. Touch ID will not, however, be accessible until Apple-authorized repairs are made to a device affected by the issue.

Alongside the new version of iOS 9.2.1, Apple has also published a support document outlining how customers can resolve the "error 53" problem, and it has issued an apology, shared by TechCrunch. Apple now says the error 53 bricking issue was meant to be a factory test and was never intended to affect customers.

"Some customers' devices are showing 'Connect to iTunes' after attempting an iOS update or a restore from iTunes on a Mac or PC. This reports as an Error 53 in iTunes and appears when a device fails a security test. This test was designed to check whether Touch ID works properly before the device leaves the factory.

Today, Apple released a software update that allows customers who have encountered this error message to successfully restore their device using iTunes on a Mac or PC.

We apologize for any inconvenience, this was designed to be a factory test and was not intended to affect customers. Customers who paid for an out-of-warranty replacement of their device based on this issue should contact AppleCare about a reimbursement."

The updated version of iOS 9.2.1 is available through iTunes and is not designed for customers who update their devices over the air. It can be downloaded on the iPhone 6, 6s, 6 Plus, 6s Plus, iPad mini 3, iPad mini 4, iPad Air 2, and iPad Pro.


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LichtSpektren writes: Ubuntu developer Dustin Kirkland has posted on his blog that Canonical plans to officially support the ZFS file system for the next Ubuntu LTS release, 16.04 "Xenial Xerus." The file system, which originates in Solaris UNIX, is renowned for its feature set (Kirkland touts "snapshots, copy-on-write cloning, continuous integrity checking against data corruption, automatic repair, efficient data compression") and its stability. "You'll find zfs.ko automatically built and installed on your Ubuntu systems. No more DKMS-built modules!" N.B. ext4 will still be the default file system due to the unresolved licensing conflict between Linux's GPLv2 and ZFS's CDDL.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has officially acknowledged the "1970" date bug affecting 64-bit iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices. The support document does not identify a current fix, but Apple said that an upcoming iOS software update will prevent the issue from occurring in the future.

Manually changing the date to May 1970 or earlier can prevent your iOS device from turning on after a restart. An upcoming software update will prevent this issue from affecting iOS devices. If you have this issue, contact Apple Support.

Manually changing an iOS device's date to January 1, 1970 results in a continuous reboot cycle, effectively bricking the device. Restoring through iTunes in DFU Mode also does not appear to work.

Apple has not provided a reason for the bug, but YouTube video maker and programmer Tom Scott speculates that setting the date close to January 1, 1970, which is 0 in Unix time, may be resulting in an integer underflow -- in this case, a date prior to January 1, 1970.

iOS then handles the underflow by returning the negative integrer to the maximum value, which Scott says results in a date that is some 20 times longer than the universe is expected to last. Scott believes iOS may have difficulties handling this large number, resulting in affected devices crashing.


German website Apfelpage.de shared a second YouTube video showing that opening an iPhone and resetting its battery could fix the problem, but this method could damage your smartphone and void your warranty if done incorrectly. The safer option may be to visit a Genius Bar or contact Apple Support online or by phone.

iOS is a Unix-based operating system, and Unix time starts at 00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970. Apple does not allow you to manually set your iOS device to a date prior to then, likely in an effort to prevent a bug like this, but changing the date to May 1970 or earlier still causes issues on 64-bit devices.
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An anonymous reader writes: A recent paper from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign shows that bitcoin mining profits can be increased considerably if mining hardware is allowed to produce occasional errors. The research shows that mining hardware that allows occasional errors ("approximate mining") can run much faster and take up less area than a conventional miner. Furthermore, the errors that are produced by the miner do no corrupt the blockchain since such errors are easily detected and discarded by the bitcoin network. Mining profits can increase by over 30%.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Update: We've got some more information and diagrams from Micron's Winter Analyst Conference earlier today.

After samples of their upcoming 3D NAND were sighted in the wild at CES, Micron has taken the time to provide some details about the flash memory and their plans for it. A lot of this is a recap of information we've previously covered, but we've got some new details and a better idea of the roadmap for the future.

The entire flash memory industry has shifted focus to the devlopment of 3D NAND flash memory as the replacement for planar NAND flash memory. Samsung took an aggressive approach and has enjoyed some great success with their V-NAND branded 3D NAND, but it hasn't been an entirely trouble-free transition. Micron has been more conservative both in technology and timing, but they plan on having a strong competitor on the market later this year.

Micron's first generation 3D NAND takes the form of a 256Gb MLC die and a 384Gb TLC die (compare with their 128Gb 16nm MLC and TLC). At a high level, the die will be partitioned into four separate planes, compared to two planes for most competing NAND. A 480GB drive using the four-plane 256Gb dies will have access to approximately the same amount of parallelism as a 480GB drive using two-plane 128Gb dies, so this capacity jump won't bring the performance drops that have tarnished some NAND process shrinks.

The key development that allows Micron to produce a four-plane die without inflating die size and cost relative to the two-plane competition is that they've layered much of the required additional circuitry under the 3D flash array, instead of sitting alongside. Micron says that their "CMOS Under the Array" design puts more than 75% of the logic (things like address decoding and page buffers) under the flash memory. It doesn't make the additional segmentation of the four-plane design entirely free, but it allows it to be a very cost effective performance optimization. This is still planar CMOS logic, not any kind of 3D or stacked logic; it's just got some metal interconnect layers and the flash array piled on top.

On a smaller scale, the 3D NAND will have a page size of 16kB and erase block sizes of 16MB for the MLC and 24MB for the TLC. Because CPUs and filesystems are still mostly dealing with 4kB chunks, Micron has included a partial page read capability that allows for a 4kB read to be done a bit faster and with about half the power of a full 16kB page read. This helps offset some of the penalty the larger page size can have on random 4kB read performance. The large erase block sizes won't have much of a direct impact on performance and are a necessary efficiency measure: erasing requires charge pumps to produce higher voltages than reads or writes use, and it's a slower and more power-hungry operation. If you're going to fire up that extra circuitry and block access to the entire plane for 1ms or more, you might as well erase a usefully large amount of flash.

For the architecture of the individual memory cells, we have nothing new to report. Intel and Micron are alone in their decision to stick with floating-gate flash technology instead of transitioning to charge-trap flash. We've previously explained how the technologies differ and what kinds of advantages the manufacturers want to reap from the change. The cost is that the design process involves different tradeoffs that are not as thoroughly explored and understood as the dynamics of floating-gate flash, and for now Micron is sticking with what they know. Micron's 3D NAND might not have the best write endurance, but they're expecting to have an advantage in data retention time for healthy flash. They aren't providing exact numbers, but they're estimating that drives relying on simpler BCH ECC can get effective program-erase cycle lifetimes in the thousands and drives with LDPC will have effective cycle counts of tens of thousands. Once the process has matured it should exceed their 20nm planar NAND's write endurance.

The first 3D NAND Micron has ready for the market will produced to the endurance standards for client drives, with enterprise-grade 3D NAND following later. The MLC is currently a few weeks ahead of the TLC in the qualification process, but given the state of the client SSD market the TLC will be the more popular product and will overtake the MLC in volume produced within a few months of 3D NAND drives hitting the market. Overall their 3D NAND will comprise a majority of their flash output on a per-GB basis by the second half of 2016. Micron is sampling drives with 3D NAND to partners this month and is planning for general availability in June. Other drive vendors using Micron's NAND will be on similar release schedules.

Micron hasn't announced any specific drive models, but they've given a general roadmap that is unsurprising. Consumer and client products will come during the middle of the year, with the capacity and cost improvements allowing for things like 2TB 2.5" drives and 1TB single-sided M.2 drives. Toward the end of 2016 and into 2017 we'll see enterprise products such as very high capacity (8TB+) drives and updates in the existing product segments for SAS and PCIe drives.

Looking further to the future, Micron gave a presentation last week at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference entitled "A 768Gb 3b/cell 3D-Floating-Gate NAND Flash Memory". This was more about bragging about their R&D in an academic context than announcing any concrete future product plans, but it does represent the most likely successor to their first-generation 3D NAND. The chip in question provides a whopping 768Gb (96GB) capacity when operated as TLC, and 512Gb (64GB) as MLC. The die size is about the same as their 32-layer 384Gb TLC, the areal bit density is almost doubled, and most of the other details are the same—implying that the layer count has probably increased, though Micron isn't saying how many layers it uses. If Micron has plans to switch to charge-trap flash they're keeping it under wraps for now, and any such transition isn't imminent. The second-generation 3D NAND will start production in their Singapore fab this summer, and volume will be ramping up around the end of 2016 (during the second quarter of their fiscal year 2017). Micron predicts their second-generation 3D NAND will be at least 30% cheaper per Gb than the first generation, which they report to be at least 25% cheaper than their 16nm planar NAND.

 

I was really into the novel Ready Player One. I was also really into the news that Steven Spielberg was directing a movie adaptation (so was author Ernest Cline). And then I got really excited when I saw that it wasn't floating around in development purgatory, but was going to be released at the end of next year. And so I scrolled forward to December of 2017 in my calendar and marked the day, as I am sometimes wont to do, in all-caps: THIS IS THE DAY THE READY PLAYER ONE MOVIE COMES OUT.

But then Star Wars had to step in. Rian Johnson's as-of-yet untitled Episode VIII, originally slated to debut in May of next year, decided to push its release until December, instead. It wasn't due to problems, said the various reports, but rather to...

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Founded in Manhattan in 1853, Steinway & Sons is widely considered to be one of the greatest piano makers in the world. Its grand pianos grace the world’s grandest stages and are played by the best pianists.

Architectural photographer Chris Payne visited the company’s factory at One Steinway Place in Astoria, New York, and created beautiful photos that document how raw materials are turned into some of the world’s finest musical instruments. His project is titled “Making Steinway: An American Workplace.”

Payne first toured the Steinway factory in 2002 while working as an architect. After his father and grandmother (both pianists) passed away, he decided to return to the factory to shoot a series about the instrument that had been so central to his family.

“The piano is something we all know and love as a whole; its deceptively simple, iconic form is instantly recognizable,” Payne writes. “But my photographs look in a different direction: a deconstruction of the piano’s unseen constituent parts and a glimpse into the skilled labor required to make them.”

“After spending countless hours photographing the choreographies of production and scrutinizing the parts and pieces that will never be visible outside the factory, I came to realize that a piano is one of the supreme acts of human invention and imagination.”

You can find more of Payne’s work on his website. These photos will also be released as a limited edition book titled “Making Steinway” next month.

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Image credits: Photographs by Chris Payne and used with permission

You may have heard somewhere that poor cable management inside your PC’s case can block fans and air pathways, making your CPU and GPU’s temperatures rise. This video puts that theory to the test, and proves that most mid-size cases do just fine with or without decent cable management.

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Everything from dachshunds dashing in the sun to the horrors of the PuppyMonkeyBaby.

Super Bowl commercials increasingly fall victim to overhype. The idea of watching the game not for the game but for the ads has put too much pressure on something that has always been, at best, a solid 30- or 60-second gag.

The ads are getting better at avoiding some of their worst pitfalls — including the misogynistic and sexist tendencies that dragged down many of the ads from earlier in the decade. But they also increasingly feel like a lot of money thrown after nothing, especially because so many of them are for companies or products you've never heard of before.

Still, there are always at least a few ads worth checking out — and some real stinkers. Here are the nine best and five worst commercials from Super Bowl 50 — and one we simply couldn't classify. If you want to see all of the ads, you can check out our comprehensive collection here.

The best Super Bowl commercials

1) Heinz: Wiener dogs

The Super Bowl is a place for cute animals behaving cutely. Cute animals appeal to people, regardless of any other philosophical differences they may have. But it's hard to do a cute animal ad well, in a way that actually sells the product. Heinz's ad is both an immensely appealing image — all those dachshunds dressed as hot dogs, bounding through a happy meadow — and a subtle showcase of its full line of ketchups, branded here as a family that just loves hugging dogs.

2) T-Mobile: "Restricted Bling"

The surprising theme of this year's Super Bowl commercials: solid comedic performances from people you might not expect. First on that list for me is musician Drake, who drops by this T-Mobile ad to perform his hit "Hotline Bling," which is then changed by cellphone company executives to reflect things like music streaming incurring data charges. Sure, Drake started out as an actor, but he's never been known for his comedic skills. It's fun to see him toss out punchlines in this ad.

3) Budweiser: Helen Mirren

See also: Helen Mirren telling you why you'd be an idiot not to get a designated driver, while also sitting near a Budweiser. Somehow, it's hard to imagine Mirren drinking an ice-cold Bud, but she's clearly having fun telling off a theoretical drunk driver for his or her stupidity.

4) Turbotax: "Never a Sellout"

Also in the "British greats turning in slyly comedic performances" category is this meta-commentary on the fact that the celebrities who appear in commercials make lots and lots of money to shill things. Here, Oscar winner Sir Anthony Hopkins says he will never, ever sell out — before revealing all of the stuff he has emblazoned with the Turbotax logo. Hopkins saying "Turbotax" is an unexpected delight.

5) Shock Top: "Unfiltered Talk"

Our final installment in the "stars being funny" genre is this ad from Shock Top, featuring T.J. Miller of Silicon Valley and the upcoming film Deadpool shouting surprisingly funny insults at the orange that emblazons the brewer's every bottle. That's really all there is, but it's filled with great lines. (The full version is even better.)

6) Audi: "Commander"

Every year, there's an ad that aims to put a lump in your throat — and succeeds against all odds. This year, that ad is this Audi spot, which aims to promote a car so fast it will make you feel like you're traveling into space with the help of a former astronaut, who has become an old man, and the strains of David Bowie's "Starman." It's also likely the year's best-directed ad, and it's another where the full version is best.

7) Doritos: "Doritos Dogs"

Doritos' plan of turning over its commercials to amateur filmmakers has produced mixed results in the past, but both of this year's spots were solidly funny. This one, in particular, takes a pretty basic gag — a bunch of dogs want to break into a grocery store to eat some Doritos — and adds several fun twists.

8) Jason Bourne

Super Bowl movie trailers are often guilty of trying to cram too many cool moments into a 30- or 60-second spot, a sin this ad is definitely guilty of. But at the same time, the Bourne movies were so massively successful — both creatively and commercially — that any footage from the shrouded-in-secrecy fourth film feels like a revelation.

9) Marmot: "Love the Outside"

My wife hated this ad, but I liked the way it rode the line between being incredibly disturbing and incredibly weird. You will ... almost certainly disagree.

The worst Super Bowl commercials

1) Quicken Rocket Loans: "What We Were Thinking"

This ad feels like something that will pop up in The Big Short 2 as ironic foreshadowing of a second economic collapse. Yes, homeownership is a good thing, and, yes, it can help drive the economy, but this ad postulates that the only thing preventing many of us from getting a mortgage is that we don't have a smartphone app that will help us do so. It all feels like the edge of a dark, dystopian future.

2) Xifaxan: "Relief"

This ad, featuring a digestive tract that looks like a discarded abomination from the Jim Henson Creature Shop, is one of three incredibly strange commercials that clogged up the game with cautionary tales about things going wrong with your bodily functions. It doesn't help that the little stomach with legs is so odd-looking.

3) OICIsDifferent.com: "Envy"

This commercial concludes with a guy who can't poop staring longingly at a woman trailing toilet paper from her shoe. It's like a really weird riff on the beginning of 101 Dalmatians, only instead of dogs bringing a couple together, it's horrible constipation and toilet paper.

4) Mountain Dew Kickstart: "PuppyMonkeyBaby"

Dear God, get it out of here! Kill it with fire!

5) Nintendo: Pokémon 20th anniversary

Unlike the four other "worst" ads listed above, this one doesn't horrify. It's just poorly conceived and executed. There are some nice moments, but overall it feels like a rough attempt to equate getting really good at Pokemon with getting really good at running, football, or chess. And even though I enjoy Pokemon, that seems specious.

Best or worst commercial? I can't decide.

NFL: Seal and baby choir

The NFL goes all in on the idea that Super Bowl victories lead to lots of babies being born in the champion city nine months later. Maybe that's true, but at first, having a choir of said Super Bowl babies sing along with Seal seems creepy. And then the Super Bowl babies from 2014 arrive, and the whole ad veers back toward being cute. Babies can save everything! (Except the Puppymonkeybaby.)

Photographer AnaHell has a curious and creative photo project titled Secret Friends. Each photo shows a strange creature with an egg-shaped head and torso. What you’re actually seeing is a person bent over, face to their knees, with a face drawn onto their exposed back.

“I am a photographer who plays with the ordinary and deconstructs it to reveal another perspective,” AnaHell writes at Bored Panda. “I take advantage of the immediate surroundings, often photographing close friends and family members in their own living spaces.”

You can find more of AnaHell’s work over on her website.

(via AnaHell via Lost At E Minor)

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Image credits: Photographs by AnaHell and used with permission