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11 Oct 06:36

Here's A Smart Explanation Of Why That Car Fire Is Not A Big Problem For Tesla (TSLA)

by Alex Davies

Tesla fire

Since a Tesla Model S caught fire after crashing last week, the big question has been: Is this a major problem for the electric car company?

A Quora user phrased it a bit differently, asking, "Can Tesla recover from this battery fire attention?"

The best answer came from Jason Lemkin, managing director at Storm Ventures.

The fire won't be a problem, he argued, because Tesla clearly presented the facts of the case and properly put the crash in context.

With Lemkin's permission, we've republished his excellently reasoned answer:

--

Can Tesla recovered from this battery fire attention?

Yes, no problem.

Elon Musk and Tesla got sufficiently ahead of it and properly explained the fire in context: Model S Fire | Blog | Tesla Motors. Also, no one was injured in a serious accident.

High-energy density batteries are potentially bombs, pure and simple. Tesla designed a system of true firewalls to protect against catastrophic explosions that seems to have worked well.

Even here, where the "bomb" finally went off due to firewall breaches -- it was contained and there were no injuries and the driver had sufficient warning and time to exit the Model S properly.

Accidents happen in cars -- all the time. Every day. The reality is with ~20k Teslas on the road, and tons of accidents already, the fact that this is the first (at least known) explosive fire says it's all working well. See, e.g., Tesla Motors: Tesla Motors Inc.: What happens when a Tesla car crashes?

Also, Tesla didn't attempt to blame the customer. They immediately reached out in mostly the right way, and offered him a loaner immediately and provided a Root Cause Analysis, er, explanation for the events. The customer concurred and thanked Tesla.

That's the way to do it.

Most blame the customer, and/or obscure the facts.

Read more from Jason Lemkin at SaaStr.com.

ELON MUSK: Here's Why That Model S Caught On Fire

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11 Oct 05:35

The web is working for part-time businesses

by Emily Wood
Part-time businesses play an important role in our lives and in our economy. From the gardening mom who sells her plants, to the hobbyist antiques dealer, to the weekend wedding photographer, people everywhere are earning extra money while doing what they love.

Research released yesterday by The Internet Association shows that the web is powering American part-time businesses. Nine out of 10 part-time business owners rely on the Internet to conduct their business, and the impact is significant. Internet enabled part-time businesses employ 6.6 million people and contribute $141 billion to the U.S. GDP.

We're proud to play our part to support these business owners as they grow their businesses online. Technology is at its best when it makes lives easier—and every day, our products help businesses find new customers and publishers earn money from their content while running more efficiently. With the power of the web, businesses can build better lives for their families and strengthen our economy while doing what they love.

Posted by Lisa Gevelber, VP, Americas Marketing

11 Oct 05:34

A distant solar system had the ingredients to support life, study finds

by Jacob Kastrenakes

In a solar system over 100 light years from Earth, researchers have spotted one of the building blocks of life-sustaining planets. That building block may not sound like much: just a single asteroid containing a lot of water. But it's this same type of asteroid that may have brought water to earth when it was first being formed. And this marks the first time that such an asteroid has been detected outside our own solar system — indicating that this far-off realm may once have been home to habitable planets.

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11 Oct 04:05

Reports of flesh-rotting drug krokodil popping up in Midwestern suburbs and NYC clubs

by Adrianne Jeffries

There have now been at least eight cases of the skin-rotting Russian drug krokodil reported in the US, according to medical professionals who spoke with The Verge, and at least three resulted in death.

Krokodil is the street name for the nasty, cheap concoction that is derived from cooking codeine with chemicals such as lighter fluid or gasoline, then injected into the skin. It’s up to 10 times as potent as morphine and lasts half as long, which makes it extremely addictive.

It was thought to be confined to Eastern Europe and Russia, where it has had devastating effects. However, it has shown up in the last year in two patients in Arizona, three deaths in Oklahoma, and three patients in Illinois, one of whom is in critical condition.

...

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11 Oct 04:05

Google Malaysia homepage falls victim to DNS attack

by Sam Byford

Google's Malaysian homepage is currently inaccessible after falling victim to an apparent hacking attack. A splash page at www.google.com.my carries the message "Google Malaysia STAMPED by PAKISTANI LEETS", with "Team MadLEETS" claiming responsibility. The bottom of the page reads "Pakistan Zindabad," a patriotic slogan meaning "Long Live Pakistan."

The attack does not appear to be political in nature, however. "There’s not much reason behind it, only to prove that security is just an illusion. It does not exist," said team leader Leet in a statement to TechCrunch. "We have no political intentions whatsoever."

According to The Hackers Post, the incident is the latest in a long line of DNS poisoning attacks by Leet. Google Malaysia...

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11 Oct 04:02

PS3 USB headsets won’t work with PS4 at launch, patch to come ‘in the future’

by Engadget

If you were planning to use a PlayStation Pulse headset with your PS4 at launch, Sony has some bad news. Until there’s a system update “in the future” (still time to fix it before November, guys!) you won’t be able to use any of the firm’s USB headsets with the PlayStation 4, the company told Game …

The post PS3 USB headsets won’t work with PS4 at launch, patch to come ‘in the future’ appeared first on AIVAnet.

11 Oct 04:01

Eigenaren 'verouderde' RT-tablets krijgen 8.1-update

by Kristian van Tuil
Bezitters van een Dell XPS 10 en Lenovo Yoga 11 krijgen een update, maar voor de Samsung Ativ Tab en Asus VivoTab RT is dat nog onzeker.
11 Oct 04:01

Official Study Finds French Farmers Committing Suicide At Startling Rate

by Adam Taylor

Franch Farmer Agriculture

France’s Ministry of Agriculture has published a new report that appears to show a grim epidemic of suicides amongst French farmers.

Titled "Surveillance of mortality by suicide among farmers" and conducted by the Institut de veille sanitaire, the report found that between 2007 and 2009, 485 farmers committed suicide — meaning that one farmer committed ended his or her own life every two days.

Rates of suicide amongst farmers were found to be 20% higher than for the rest of the population. The highest rate for suicide during this period was found to belong to cattle farmers aged between 45 and 64-years-old, who had a rate 47% above the national average.

"These figures are shocking," Jean-Bernard Bayard, Vice President of the main French farmer's union FNSEA told The Local. "We knew there was a high number of suicides but this study makes it clear how bad the problem has become."

While French farmers are said to be the greatest beneficiary of European Union agricultural subsidies, their lives are far from easy. Dominique Barrau, the secretary general of the FNSEA farmers' union, told AFP that farmer had to deal with isolation (many live and work alone) and economic stress — notably, pressure on wholesale milk and meat prices in 2008 and 2009. The study is now being extended to 2010 and 2011 to see if the trend persisted.

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11 Oct 04:01

Vaticaan spelt naam Jezus verkeerd

Vanwege een spelfout wordt de eerste officiële medaille met de afbeelding van paus Franciscus teruggenomen. Op de medaille staat de naam Jezus gespeld met een L aan het begin.

De Italiaanse Munt is niet verantwoordelijk voor de fout. "Onze eigen projecten controleren we, maar nu had het Vaticaan de muntvorm zelf aangeleverd," verklaarde een woordvoerder.

De medaille was vandaag uitgegeven in goud, zilver en brons. Pauselijke medailles worden verleend als het Vaticaan bijzondere waardering wil uitdrukken voor verdiensten van katholieken.

11 Oct 03:57

Some Alarming Facts About Mental Illness In America

by Pamela Engel

Mental illness is a increasingly widespread in the U.S., affecting around one in five American adults every year, according to survey from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

Of the 45.6 million adults who had diagnosable mental illness in 2011, 11.5 million had serious mental illness. Other surveys put those numbers even higher.

Mental illness has been on the rise over the past few decades. Between 1987 and 2007, the number of people with mental disorders that qualify for Supplemental Security Income or Social Security Disability Insurance increased about two and a half times, according to the New York Review of Books.

Primarily this epidemic is related to improvements in recognizing and diagnosing mental illnesses, though some claim we've gone too far in prescribing drugs for treatment.

 The most common metal illnesses are depressive disorders and anxiety disorders. As the chart below indicates, depression affects people aged 40 to 59 almost twice as much as any other age group.

Mental illness by age

Despite its prevalence, mental illness still has a stigma in America.

Only 57% of Americans adults believed that people are caring and sympathetic to persons with mental illness, according to a 2007 survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Worse, only 25% of adults with mental health symptoms believed that people are caring and sympathetic to persons with mental illness.

Mental distress (a proxy for mental illness) is most prevalent in the South, where many states rank high for depression and low for overall well-being, as well as Appalachia, according to this map from the CDC:

Mental health map CDC

This could be linked to poverty and people who aren't able to afford treatment. Data shows that people who report experiencing serious psychological distress are more likely to live in poverty.

Of those who indicated in a 2007 CDC survey that they had serious psychological distress, only 38% had received treatment in the past year.

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11 Oct 03:21

Whole Foods Worker Reveals What You Should And Shouldn't Buy There

by Ashley Lutz

Whole Foods New York storeWhole Foods has earned the nickname "whole paycheck" because of the hefty price tags on its organic food. 

But a longtime employee of the chain said it doesn't have to be that way. 

The worker, who spent more than three years working at a Whole Foods in Chicago, first posted tips and tricks for surviving the grocery store on Reddit

We reached out to the worker, who gave us permission to publish her tips but wished to remain anonymous. 

Here are expert do's and don'ts for shopping there. 

Do: 

  • Do buy things like oats, grains, and bulk at Whole Foods. "Oats—including steel-cut oats—are $1.39 a pound at Whole Foods, the worker says. "Those steel-cut oats that come in a tin are like $6 a pound.

  • Do buy raisins and other dry fruits in bulk. "Thompson raisins are $2.99 a pound, which is cheaper than the $3.99 I spend on raisins elsewhere," the worker says.

  • Do buy cakes. "The quality is insanely better —Whole Foods cakes have actual buttercream, whereas other stores use something called 'Bettercream' that's made of chemicals," the worker advises. You can also buy slices of cake. 

  • Do buy bread. "They're $2.99 a loaf and fresh-baked, and they can slice it for you," the worker writes.

  • Do buy yogurt. "Greek yogurt is $5.99 for the 365 brand, compared to $7.99 for Fage anywhere else (I've seen it for $6.99, but still)," the worker says. 

  • Do buy soy or almond milk—but only in bulk. "The 2-packs of half gallons are about $5.99," the worker reveals. "The half gallons by themselves are $3.39, which is the same price you'll find them elsewhere."

  • Do buy spices, which are affordable in the bulk section. 

Don't: 

  • Don't buy nuts. "There are nuts that are like $17.99/lb. Nuts that are $9.99 a pound at WF are $5.99/lb at my local market, and sometimes cheaper at ALDI," the worker advises. 

  • Don't buy produce. "Apples are like $2.99/lb to other stores' $1.69, and to my memory it's even cheaper at ALDI," the worker writes. 

  • Don't buy chicken. "It's $6.99/lb compared to $2.99/lb elsewhere. It's crazy," the worker writes. 

  • Don't buy dairy milk. "Whole Foods charges like $5.99 for conventional milk while ALDI charges about $2.39," the worker says.

  • Don't buy meat. The worker says that steak and ground beef are usually cheaper at other stores. 

SEE ALSO: Chain Restaurant Workers Reveal The Items They Refuse To Eat

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11 Oct 03:20

Report: Grand Theft Auto V coming to PC in early 2014

by Kyle Orland

Eurogamer today cited "multiple industry sources" reporting that Grand Theft Auto V will be coming to Windows PCs in the first quarter of 2014.

While Rockstar still has yet to officially announce a PC version of the popular crime simulator, which made over $1 billion in just three days following its console release, industry watchers have long assumed that the game would see an eventual PC release, just as its predecessors did. There have been some signs that a PC version is in the works from retailers and from hints in the game's underlying code.

Adding more fuel to the fire, just yesterday chipmaker Intel said it didn't expect GTA V to "be console exclusive very long." GPU maker Nvidia briefly mentioned a PC version of GTA V in an August financial call, but the company quickly amended its statement to say the reference was an error.

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments


    






11 Oct 03:20

Four Embarrassing Life Events You Should Tell Your Financial Advisor About

by Mandi Woodruff

amanda bynes lindsay lohan mugshots side by side

One sign of a truly great financial advisor is their ability to stretch and mold your financial plan to fit your life for the long haul. 

That doesn't mean you'll need a massive investment overhaul every year or even every five years, but the better-informed your advisor is of major changes in your life, the better she'll be able to strategize and troubleshoot. 

"Our objective, as advisors, is to be one of the top three people a client calls when a personal problem occurs," said Avani Ramnani, CFP and director of financial planning for Francis Financial.

"We encourage our clients to call us even if they don’t think that the problem is financially related. This way, if we know about the problem, we can determine the true financial impact of that on our clients." 

The problem is, some of the most embarrassing troubles we face in life are exactly the sort of events financial advisors should know about. Here are few scenarios that would warrant a quick call to your advisor: 

You've had a run-in with the law. Even something as innocuous as a speeding ticket could upend the carefully stacked house of cards your financial advisor has built for you. "If you’re in a potential liability situation, the advisor should be kept aware," says  Heather J. Swob, CFP  and wealth advisory manager for Truepoint Inc. "While there are look-back provisions that might keep you from moving assets, the advisor can still provide some valuable advice." 

A family member is struggling with an addiction. You'd be surprised how much time and energy financial advisors put into protecting your assets from your own family. It may seem like telling your advisor about a son or sister's drug addiction is delving too deeply in personal matters, but advisors need to know who in your family they should look out for. "Situations like this increase the risk that theft could occur and the advisor should be sure to look for strange activity in the accounts," Swob said. "Additionally, estate documents should be reviewed to keep assets out of the [family member's] control in the event of a sudden death." 

Your mental condition is deteriorating.  Time is a crucial factor when it comes to developing a financial plan, and your advisor should know if your time frame has changed due to an illness or medical condition, especially if it affects your mental capacity. "We once had a client who kept talking about what a difficult economic time this is and how things were falling off the cliff," Ramnani said. "On further inquiry, it turned out that he had been diagnosed with a health issue and was to undergo major surgery. We were able to talk about the financial impact of his conditions and actually had him make an emergency change to his wills." 

You and your spouse are sleeping in separate bedrooms. Again, personal matters are the last thing anyone wants to bring up with their financial advisor, but even minor hints that your marriage may be on the rocks constitute vital information. "If a divorce or separation is looming, the advisor needs to be made aware as there are several items to consider as you move forward in the process," Swob says.

The bottom line: There are countless life changes that can derail even the most solid financial plans. Most advisors will make it their business to routinely check in on clients to see if their financial outlook has changed, but communication, as ever, is a two-way street.

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11 Oct 03:20

A 15-Year-Old Girl Is Very Close To Breaking An Appalachian Trail Record

by Dina Spector

Neva Warren

Neva Warren, 15, wants to become the youngest hiker to complete the Appalachian Trail solo. And she's nearly there.

On Wednesday, Warren was 15 miles from the trail's northern end on Mount Katahdin in Maine, the AP reported. However, the teen still has to complete a 100-mile section of the trail that she skipped over to earlier in order to reach the mountain before it closes to hikers for winter.

The Appalachian Trail, more commonly known as the AT, stretches more than 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine. It typically takes about six months to complete, with hikers covering around 15 miles each day.

Warren, who is from Florida, started at the trail's southern end in Georgia on April 1. She celebrated her 15th birthday while passing through Virginia in June.

Warren hikes the trail alone, but her parents are not too far away. They follow her in a camper and can track her whereabouts through a GPS device that posts her location to a website, according to Bangor Daily News.

She meets up with her parents and sleeps in the camper at night when she can, the website writes. Although there have been close to two dozen times when she hasn't ended her day near an access road and has slept on the trail by herself. 

Known as "Chipmunk" on the trail, she's been posting updates of her journey to Instagram.

Each year, around 2,000 hikers attempts to travel the AT's full length, but only one-quarter of those make it to the end. Currently, the youngest thru-hiker is a 6-year-old boy who finished the trail with his parents and older sister in 2002, according to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy.

SEE ALSO: Now experience the Appalachian Trail for yourself

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11 Oct 03:18

First Arma 3 story DLC arriving Oct. 31

by Colin Campbell

Bohemia Interactive has announced that its Arma 3 DLC "Survive" campaign will be released on Oct. 31.

The Windows PC military simulation's first story campaign episode features a NATO peacekeeping soldier on a mission in the game's Mediterranean island setting. Open-world, near-future tactical shooter Arma 3 was released in September with single-player campaigns planned to follow as free downloadable content. The update will also include new content for the core game.

"It's an opportunity to provide yet more building blocks for the platform like new weapons, animations, 3D objects, scripted modules, each designed to grant content creators even greater freedom to create and share their own content," explained the game's creative...

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11 Oct 03:17

Haswell MacBook Airs get Boot Camp firmware fix

by MobileNations

Firmware update fixes Boot Camp issue on mid 2013 MacBook Air

Apple on Thursday posted EFI Firmware Update 2.7, an update aimed specifically at new MacBook Air models made since mid-2013 (that is, the ones equipped with “Haswell” processors).

This update addresses an issue which may cause a black screen to appear when installing Windows 7 or Windows 8 using Boot Camp Assistant if both an external optical drive and USB thumb drive are connected to the system. This update also ensures that the system will boot by default into OS X after installation of Windows 8.

The post Haswell MacBook Airs get Boot Camp firmware fix appeared first on AIVAnet.

11 Oct 03:16

There's A New Crowdfunding Campaign To Give Money To Twitter's Forgotten Co-Founder

by Jillian D'Onfro

NoahGlass

Noah Glass, one of the original co-founders of Twitter, got kicked out in 2006 and will make hardly any money when the company goes public this fall.

Unless the sympathy of people on the Internet can change that, that is.  

Matthew Dieters, a member of the San Francisco tech scene, just launched a campaign on crowdfunding website Crowdtilt to raise $1 million for the forgotten founder. 

After The New York Times published an excerpt from Nick Bilton's book "Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal" that made Jack Dorsey look like a jerk and Glass seem like a casualty of Silicon Valley war, Dieters decided that Glass shouldn't be left in the lurch.

He designed the campaign to rally as much support as possible behind Glass, shooting to raise $1 million, although the campaign will be successful as long as people contribute $10,000. The campaign expires November 13, around the time the Twitter IPO is expected

Check out the blurb Dieters posted on the campaign:

We'll never fully know what happened behind the closed doors at Twitter that led to@noah's (co-founder of twitter) messy departure, but we do love Twitter. This is a thanks to Noah who will not see the fruits of his labor when Twitter IPOs.

Noah has taken this all in good faith, wishing the Twitter team "best of luck" and "success" upon the IPO announcement. But the situation still stands that Noah will not benefit on November 15 alongside the rest of Twitter's brilliant team.

Let's come together to change that, and give Noah a token of "thanks" for the tool he helped create for us.

Without Noah, Twitter as we know it would not exist today - this is how we can express appreciation!

@noah is not affiliated with this campaign though all funds will be distributed to @noah if it tilts and he accepts the funds.

This support-oriented project is not the first of its kind. Earlier this year 350 people pooled over $13K to send thanks to Edward Snowden for leaking important government documents.  

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11 Oct 03:14

Now Even Harvard Business School Is Working On Free Online Courses

by Max Nisen

harvard business schoolA few weeks after Wharton announced that it would be offering a substantial part of its core MBA classes online, Harvard business school is developing online courses of its own, according to a report at Bloomberg Businessweek.

The effort is known as "HBX," and follows in the footsteps of HarvardX, the university's existing set of 17 courses on the free EdX platform, none of which have a business focus.

Relatively few details are available about the content of the courses, but according to HBS marketing head Brian Kenny, they will likely be available in the spring or summer of next year. 

A job posting found by Businessweek's Louis Lavelle and Erin Zlomek for a director of academic content development provides a bit more detail. They'll be expected to create interactive elements, "mini-simulations," and develop a testing model to measure accomplishment and engagement.

So expect more than just a series of taped lectures. 

One of the school's most prominent professors, Clay Christensen, has been predicting this for some time. He's the father of the concept of disruption innovation, and sees it coming for higher education in general and business schools in particular. 

"At Harvard Business School, we’re getting disrupted by online learning," Christensen said recently at the World Business Forum in New York City. "It truly isn’t as good, but does this technology, over time, get good enough to meet the needs of our customers? The answer is yes."

The threat to universities comes on multiple fronts: Online education is dramatically less expensive; it gives the best professors the ability to reach hundreds of thousands of people, instead of a couple hundred a semester; and the actual student experience is getting better all the time.

The traditional MBA is particularly vulnerable. Places like Harvard charge so much and graduates expect such high salaries that the number of companies that can hire MBAs is dwindling. If they can find cheaper ways to teach those skills, they're going to use them. 

Whether it wants to offer its best professors a wider platform to convince them to stay, or prepare for an online future, HBS is acknowledging what has been the standard can't last forever. 

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11 Oct 03:08

There’s a gigantic Steam sale for Capcom’s 30th anniversary

by Dave Tach

Many Capcom games and their add-ons are discounted on Steam to celebrate the company's 30th anniversary from Oct. 10-14, according to the sale's official Steam page.

Games discounted 40-70 percent include the following:

  • Dead Rising 2 for $9.99 (regularly $19.99)
  • DmC: Devil May Cry for $24.99 (regularly $49.99)
  • Lost Planet 3 for $29.99 (regularly $49.99)
  • Remember Me for $24.99 (regularly $49.99)
  • Resident Evil 6 for $19.99 (regularly $39.99)
  • Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition for $7.49 (regularly $29.99)

Capcom and Steam are also offering discounts on several bundles, including:

  • Capcom Action Hits Bundle, which includes Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, Dead Rising 2, Devil May Cry 4, Lost Planet 2,...

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11 Oct 03:08

LG puts curved batteries into mass production ahead of potential curved smartphone

by Chris Welch

With a wave of curved phones and other gadgets on the way, batteries will inevitably need to follow the same trend. So LG has decided to get a head start; its LG Chem division has already put curved batteries into mass production. The batteries — a perfect match for the company's curved displays – will be used to power LG's next-generation smartphone lineup, according to a press release issued today. LG Chem also hopes to have the curved battery in other phones, watches, and glasses. The company says it owns an exclusive patent of "Stack & Folding" technology which reduces stress on curved battery designs.

LG is also trumpeting other battery advancements its made of late, including the "stepped battery" seen in its flagship G2;...

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11 Oct 02:59

Google TV reportedly being phased out in favor of a new 'Android TV' brand

by Nathan Ingraham

It's been a quiet year on the Google TV front — the company's biggest portal into the living room was barely a presence at Google I/O this past summer, and now we're getting an idea why that was the case. According to a report from GigaOm, Google plans to phase out the Google TV brand — but a rebranded "Android TV" will still be available to manufacturers. That's according to an unnamed executive at an unnamed consumer electronics manufacturer, but it wouldn't come as a big surprise despite the ambiguities. Most smart TVs already have many of the features Google TV offers, and the platform itself is based off of Android.

With Google TV never gaining significant mindshare from a consumer perspective, it might make sense to relaunch...

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11 Oct 01:03

This 28-Year-Old Sold His First Startup For $30 Million And Is Back With A Cool New Company

by Julie Bort

Alex Polvi

Alex Polvi made a name for himself in the tech industry back in 2010 at the ripe old age of 25. That's when Rackspace bought his first startup, Cloudkick, for an estimated $30 million.

Now he's back with his new company, CoreOS, and it's worth watching for several reasons.

First, it's got interesting technology. CoreOS makes an operating system based on Linux that works like the custom operating system Google built for itself. (CoreOS even has former a former Googler on its team.)

The upshot is it lets corporate computer servers run more software using less hardware.

Second, CoreOS, a Y Combinator startup, has some interesting angels. Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, super angel Ron Conway and football great Joe Montana, reports Bloomberg's Ari Levy. Montana invested after attending Y Combinator's pitch day in August. He was impressed by the young Polvi, he told Bloomberg.

The seed round was undisclosed but somewhere between $1 and $5 million, TechCrunch's Alex Williams reports.

On top of that, CoreOS's has one of the rock stars of the Linux world as its advisor, Greg Kroah-Hartman. Kroah-Hartman is one of two top people leading Linux. The other is Linux creator Linus Torvalds.

Like Linux, CoreOS is free and open source. Anyone can take it, use it, modify it. The company will make money selling for subscriptions to enterprises who want to pay for extra support.

SEE ALSO: A Rare Tour Of Facebook's Hardware Labs And The Amazing Stuff It Builds There

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11 Oct 01:03

Modders give Saints Row 4 an FPS perspective

by Dave Tach

A group modders released the alpha version of a Saints Row 4 mod that turns the third-person action game into a first-person shooter, and YouTube user Holy Cowlick created a video tour of the game's new perspective.

Check out the video above to see just how well Steelport holds up at street level and learn about the handful of hoops you'll have to jump through to get it working correctly. You can download the work-in-progress mod from the Saints Row Mods forums.

For more on the vibrant Saints Row modding community and how Mike "IdolNinja" Watson began working with developer Volition to create official mod tools, be sure to read our interview from earlier this year.

11 Oct 01:03

Rabbijnen VS runnen knokploegen

De FBI heeft een bende opgerold die joodse mannen met geweld dwong om van hun vrouw te scheiden. Aan het hoofd van de bende stonden twee rabbijnen uit New York en New Jersey, zegt de Amerikaanse justitie.

De rabbijnen werden benaderd door orthodox-joodse vrouwen die wilden scheiden, maar daarbij op tegenstand stuitten van hun man. De rabbijnen zeiden dat ze voor een bedrag van enkele tienduizenden dollars konden zorgen voor een 'get', een joods echtscheidingsdocument.

Ontvoerd en gemarteld

De rabbijnen stuurden vervolgens knokploegen op de mannen af die hen met geweld dwongen om zo'n get te tekenen. De slachtoffers werden bijvoorbeeld urenlang ontvoerd en gemarteld.

Volgens justitie hadden de rabbijnen jaarlijks zo'n twintig 'klanten'. Ze liepen tegen de lamp door een undercoveractie van twee FBI-agenten. Behalve de twee rabbijnen zijn acht handlangers opgepakt.

In de joodse wet is een civielrechtelijke scheiding niet genoeg om te kunnen hertrouwen. Daarvoor is een get nodig.

11 Oct 01:02

Report: PS4 won’t support Bluetooth or USB chat at launch

by Dave Tach

The PlayStation 4 won't support chat over Bluetooth or USB headsets at launch, Game Informer reports.

A Sony representative told the publication that updates will bring support for Bluetooth and USB headset chat sometime after the console's launch on Nov. 15. We've reached out to Sony to confirm the report and will update this article with more information as we have it.

The PS4 will ship with a mono earbud headset and microphone combination (pictured above) for chat. A representative for Sony told Polygon at San Diego Comic Con 2013 that the PS4 will support PlayStation 3 wireless headsets, though it sounds like they won't be supported on launch day.

Microsoft reversed its initial policy and announced in August that its next-gen...

Continue reading…

11 Oct 01:02

Facebook to rip search opt-out from under those who were using it

by Casey Johnston
Here's the dialog you'll see if you were opted out of search, when Facebook gets around to opting you back in.
Facebook

If you checked that box saying you don’t want to appear in Facebook search results, get ready: soon, that choice is going away. Facebook announced in a blog post Thursday that it's removing the ability to opt out of appearing in search results, both for friends and globally, for those who’ve had it enabled.

Facebook actually removed the search opt-out for everyone who didn’t have it enabled early this year, around the time it introduced Graph Search. Now, ten months later, Facebook is giving the boot to anyone who actually cared enough to opt out, referring to the checkbox as an “old search setting.” Facebook claims that less than one percent of users were taking advantage of the feature.

In simpler times, Facebook was smaller and easier to navigate, and everyone had a privacy setting asking “Who can look up your timeline by name?” Now that there are so many profiles that users become confused when they know they have a friend or know someone in a group, but try to find them by search and they don’t appear, says Facebook.

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11 Oct 01:01

Nederlandse piloten vanaf december op F-35

DEN HAAG - Nog dit jaar gaan Nederlandse piloten vliegen met de F-35 (JSF). Dat heeft minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert van Defensie woensdag aan de Tweede Kamer laten weten. Ze maakte op Prinsjesdag bekend in totaal 37 JSF's te willen aanschaffen als vervanger van de F-16.

10 Oct 20:26

Never mind Retina Displays: Get ready for 4K on the new Mac Pro

by MobileNations

Never mind Retina Displays: Get ready for 4K on the new Mac Pro

Last year Apple introduced MacBook Pros with Retina Displays, and many folks watching the Mac market have assumed that it’s only a matter of time before the rest of the line has them too. That may be true, but the newly redesigned Mac Pro is going to leapfrog that by offering something that so far, no other Mac can handle – 4K video. And not just 4K video, but 4K video on three screens.

The Mac Pro doesn’t have a built-in display, of course. What it does have is Thunderbolt 2 and dual AMD FirePro graphics processing units with up to six gigabytes of dedicated VRAM. That’s enough horsepower to drive three 4K displays simultaneously – ideal for pro video workstations, visual effects work in cinema, and film editing.

That only scratches the surface of what the Mac Pro will be able to do. It even has a dedicated HDMI port that conforms to the 1.4 specification, which supports 4K video, so you’ll be able to connect it directly to a 4K “broadcast monitor” to see how the images you’re working on will look in real life.

Now, 4K processing on the Mac is nothing new. Blackmagic Design, for example, makes switchers, capture and playback cards designed to work with Macs that do 4K. But having 4K native support is an entirely different story.

What is 4K?

4K is also known UHDTV, or Ultra High Definition TV. 4K operates at 3840 x 2160 resolution, four times what today’s HDTVs do. That sounds like a lot, and it is. It’s 8.3 million individual pixels, compared to 2.0 million pixels for a standard 1080p HD signal. As a point of comparison, Apple’s Thunderbolt Display sports a resolution of 2560 x 1440, or about 3.3 million pixels.

4K is a lot of pixels to push, which is why you need something like Thunderbolt 2 or HDMI 1.4 to push them all. It’s also why you need powerful graphics processors like the FirePro to process that data.

Some companies have garnered a fair degree of publicity for themselves by introducing 4K televisions for home use, but so far, they’re the rarified domain of people with big media rooms who can afford really gargantuan TVs. 84-inch UHD sets were the first to appear; now they’ve gone down in size to 55-inch or smaller.

Blu-ray Disc (BD) resolution maxes out at 1920 x 1080, for example – that’s “standard” HD resolution. Some companies have introduced BD players that will “upscale” to 4K resolution (and 4K TVs will upscale HD content themselves, as well); Sony’s also shown off a 4K video player and a download service that provides native 4K content.

Why is 4K important?

4K is used in cinema. The past decade has seen a big switch in most movie theaters from traditional film projection to digital film projection. No longer are movie theater projectionists rolling big spools of film from reels – they’re showing movies using LCD projectors, Digital Micromirror Devices (DMDs) and similar technology.

The benefit for you is that the days of seeing scratches and dust are over: you watch a pristine “print” of the movie whether you show up on opening weekend or three weeks later. Digital movies don’t wear out like film prints do. The advantage for the film distributors and the movie theaters is that there’s no actual bulky, fragile film to transport or maintain – movies can be downloaded, depending on the connection to the theater, or delivered on a hard drive.

Video and film editing, special effects and post-production is still a vital business for Apple, and it’s a place where the Mac Pro had done well over the years – but the Mac Pro hasn’t aged well for the new era of digital filmmaking. By incorporating the massive bandwidth of Thunderbolt 2 (six ports, each operating at 20 Gbps bandwidth), the prodigious parallel processing power of the Mac Pro’s CPUs and GPUs, and by streamlining the throughput as much as possible, Apple’s tried to optimize the new Mac Pro to be a digital filmmaking powerhouse.

Still pricy

Small form-factor 4K displays are still pretty expensive. To get a 32-inch 4K monitor, you’re still going to spend upwards of $3,000 at the moment. That price will come down as the technology is more broadly used, though.

But Apple’s never been known to skimp on monitors. The company advertises only one model at present – the 27-inch Thunderbolt Display. It’s available at a wallet-crushing $999. It has some nice features that make it particularly convenient for a Thunderbolt-equipped Apple computer user, like built in MagSafe power adapter for laptops, USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt and Gigabit Ethernet – but it’s also squarely in the high end of the 27-inch display market.

Apple probably won’t compete on price with any new 4K display right out of the gate. But given the dearth of 4K monitors available today (Asus is one of the few companies to have one in production), it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Apple offer a new screen for the Mac Pro.

Apple is not just making the new Mac Pro ready for 4K but is really pushing the capability as one of the device’s big selling points. That should give you some idea of who they think is a key market for the new device – it’s squarely aimed at creative professionals in film, television and video. People who are working with 4K content today or preparing to do so, and need a computer that can keep up with them.

4K isn’t something that every Mac owner should want or need. In fact, it’s going to remain a pretty specialized technology for a while, until the price comes down and programming becomes available for it.

Back to the Retina Display

“Retina Display” is a marketing term invented by Apple to describe displays that have high enough resolution so you don’t notice individual pixels at a typical viewing distance. That’s a bit subjective, and the pixel density of devices labeled with Retina Displays has varied. The iPhone, for example, sports a 326 pixel per inch density. The 15-inch MacBook Pro has a pixel density of about 220 pixels per inch, while the 13-inch rMBP has about a 227 PPI density.

Right now, Apple’s 27-inch Thunderbolt Display has a 109 PPI density. Even Asus’ 31.5-inch 4K-native display, the PQ321Q, sports a pixel density of only about 140 pixels per inch. If we accept that you have to go well north of 200 pixels per inch for a screen to be a “Retina Display,” none of these even come close. Any way you slice it, it appears that we’re still a fair distance still from a Retina Display in a larger form factor.

Retina Display or no, the new Mac Pro is set to push video editing and processing on the Mac in new directions. We’ll have to wait to see the fruits of that effort for a while, but make no mistake – the new Mac Pro is set to change things in a big way.

The post Never mind Retina Displays: Get ready for 4K on the new Mac Pro appeared first on AIVAnet.

10 Oct 20:25

In China, Couples Are Dressing Identically To Show Off Their Love

by Megan Willett

chinese couple matching t-shirts outfits

China's smitten couples are showing their love for each other by dressing identically.

The Wall Street Journal's Laurie Burkitt and Jason Chow wrote about how more and more young newlyweds are wearing themed t-shirts or matching outfits on outings together.

"We want everyone to envy us," Wu Zhuan told The WSJ of his and his wife's matching blue shirts with yellow and black hearts.

The trend is known as qing lü zhuang, and is a way for couples to be romantic and show the world that their significant other "belongs" to them.

The popular outfits are even being marketed and sold as one entity. One of China's major shopping websites, Taobao, has over three million results from online stores that offer qing lü zhuang-related clothing — a 57% increase over the past year, according to The WSJ.

As for Wu Zhuan and his new wife, they're even planning to buy special mittens that will allow them to hold hands without letting go.

Here's hoping they'll end up like this adorable Nebraska couple who wore matching outfits for 35 years.

SEE ALSO: China Has Set Some Truly Insane World Records

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10 Oct 20:24

Just In Case That $4.7 Billion Deal Falls Through, BlackBerry's Co-Founders May Swoop In And Buy The Company (BBRY)

by Steve Kovach

mike lazaridis

Troubled BlackBerry smartphone maker is for sale.

In recent weeks, private equity firm Fairfax Holdings said it wants to buy BlackBerry for $4.7 billion. BlackBerry agreed, but now it looks like Fairfax may not be able to get the cash it needs to take BlackBerry private.

Meanwhile, other companies like Samsung, Intel, Cisco, and SAP are reportedly sniffing around BlackBerry, and it's possible it could be broken up and sold in chunks.

The latest development: BlackBerry's co-founders Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin are thinking about buying the company back and taking it private. The revelation comes from an SEC filing that says Lazaridis and Fregin might join together and buy BlackBerry.

Right now, the two own 8% of BlackBerry's shares. Now Lazaridis and Fregin might scoop up the remaining shares they don't own. The SEC filing says BlackBerry's board has formed a special committee that would help Lazaridis and Fregin buy the rest of the company's shares. Goldman Sachs and Centerview Partners will also help with the transaction, according to the filing.

Long story short: Despite Fairfax's $4.7 billion bid, the deal is far from done. Meanwhile other companies and BlackBerry's own cofounders are thinking about swooping in. Lazaridis and Fregin or Fairfax Holdings would likely buy the entire company. The other option is for several companies to come in a buy chunks of BlackBerry like its enterprise business and patents.

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