Vandals snipped another fiber optic cable line in the San Francisco Bay area this week, the 12th incident of its kind in the region over the past year.
The latest attack occurred in the San Joaquin Valley town of Stockton, disrupting Internet, mobile phone, and 911 service for tens of thousands of AT&T and Verizon customers in three counties east of San Francisco. Service was restored about a day after the Tuesday incident.
The FBI, which is investigating the attacks, has not stated a motive, but it said the attacks usually occur in remote areas where there are no surveillance cameras. The initial attacks on California telecommunications lines began in July 2014. Whoever is responsible appears, for the moment, to be operating with impunity.
In a press call on Friday, Tesla Motors founder and CEO Elon Musk announced some upgrades to the performance version of the Model S, specifically “ludicrous mode,” which, for an extra $10,000, will take the car from 0 to 60mph in 2.8 seconds.
That's already half-a-second faster than the “McLaren F1-fast” Model S P85D that Ars reviewed in May, which offered an "insane mode." When press asked Musk if he hoped this would generate additional sales for Tesla, Musk responded, “I have no idea. We are just trying to make awesome cars,” according to MarketWatch. (A reporter apparently asked Musk what comes after "ludicrous mode," and he said Tesla watchers won't see that level until the company's next-generation roadster in four years—which will come with "maximum plaid.")
In addition, new purchasers of Tesla Model S cars will have the option to upgrade their car with a 90kWh battery pack (up from 85kWh standard) for an extra $3,000. Musk said that this will give the car an additional 15 miles of range at 65mph. MarketWatch said that Musk called the 90kWh battery “important for the Model X SUV,” which is anticipated in the coming year.
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Yeezy Display, designed by Tyler Fink, is designed specifically for Kanye West as he is the only one that will be allowed to license it for a $50,000 fee. That should be spare change well spent for him.
Bethesda Softworks has posted a couple of videos showing what gameplay will be like in Fallout 4, the highly anticipated new game in the Fallout series of post-apocalyptic video games. The videos, originally screened at E3 in June, show what exploration and combat is like in the game.
Vox writer Phil Edwards has created an impressive chart that features eight highly-skilled Futurama voice actors and over 200 of the characters that they portrayed during the seven seasons that the popular television show aired.
by Mika McKinnon on Earth & Space, shared by Ria Misra to io9
This animated flyover of the Norgay mountains and Sputnik plains on Pluto are based on the freshly-delivered close-approach images from the New Horizons flyby. See features just a single kilometre big as you experience what it would be like to hitch a ride on the spacecraft as it skimmed past the dwarf planet.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk introduced a new "Ludicrous Mode," for the dual motor version of the Model S during a call on Friday. The upgrade costs $10,000 for new buyers and results in a 10 percent acceleration improvement from the previous model. The hold music before the conference call began was a loop of the rap song "Beast Mode" by Ludacris.
Female gamers are quite used to hearing guys online say the equivalent of, “IT’S-A ME, SEXIST JERK!” But now, they’ve got scientific evidence of what we’ve all long suspected—namely, those men are compensating for something. According to a new study at the Kasumovic Lab, males who are verbally hostile to women while playing games are also much more likely to suck at the game. It’s a quantitative demonstration of something obvious, or at least obvious to everyone except for the guys guilty of this behavior.
Based on a representative sampling of 163 games of Halo 3 played last year, researchers show the worse a male player was, the more likely he was to verbally abuse a female teammate, with the likelihood increasing if she was also someone to whom they were losing. (Almost as if they hated the thought of a woman succeeding in an ...
Conan and Paul Rudd go way back. Specifically, they have an ongoing joke where every single time Rudd goes on Conan, he plays a clip from the 1988 film Mac and Me instead of a clip from one of his upcoming movies. He’s been doing it for years (here it is during Anchorman 2), so everyone was ready for another Rudd-Roll when he went on the show for Ant-Man.
However, when Paul Rudd went on Conan yesterday he apologized to the audience and said that since Marvel was a lot more serious about publicity, he’d have to end his Mac and Me prank.
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[Spoiler]PSYCHE, never trust anything Paul Rudd says. Favorite part? The utterly defeated and betrayed look on Conan’s face.[/spoiler]
Hulu has tons of great shows but the ADS, oh my gosh, THE ADS. I remember wanting to check out Fresh Off The Boat on Hulu but was constantly demoralized by women relentlessly trying to sell me these horrid floral pants. I also turn into a super impatient monster when waiting on the Jane the Virgin plot twists (they happen, like, every 5 minutes) so I’m not a huge fan of the ads. It’s a pretty common complaint about Hulu that despite paying for a subscription, you still can’t escape those advertisements.
Well, Hulu’s been listening, and while they’re not getting rid of the ads altogether, they will be introducing an ad-free subscription for a few more bucks. While the Hulu subscription is $7.99, the ad-free subscription, allegedly titled NOAH (No Ads Hulu), will be $12-14. It’s not a huge jump, so I can imagine Hulu users going for the upgrade.
The variety of flavors and experiences you can have with it is unknown to a lot of people still. There are these gins out there now that don’t just taste like juniper, that they can be floral, they can be fruity, they can be spicy, they can be dark and weighty tasting or they can be light and ethereal tasting.
LOS ANGELES—In a groundbreaking discovery that could help shed light on the evolution of fame, anthropologists from UCLA announcedThursday that they had unearthed a potential missing link between A- and B-list celebrities. “Though such a link has been hypothesized for decades, our team was able to identify a possible transitional individual, which we discovered in a recent independent film, who appears to exist between big-name, bankable movie stars and the secondary tier of supporting and small-screen actors,” said lead researcher Heather Collins, noting that any evidence linking the leading cast of Avengers: Age Of Ultron to California’s most vaguely recognizable character actors could serve as a clue to how stars have ascended the Hollywood ranks over the ages. “When considering the highest apex celebrities, such as George Clooney or Meryl Streep, we must ask: What preceded them? This missing link could be the key to understanding how a ...
"I know for damn sure he knew who I was," Rousey said. "He was running against me for ‘Best Fighter’ that year and he had signed MMA fighters, so his feigned ignorance was meant to really be a snarky remark to me. …
"I don’t let those kind of things slide, but I’m also a patient girl. I’m not the kind of chick you make snarky remarks about. I waited a whole year to say something. And you know what? If I didn’t win ‘Best Fighter’ this year, I would have waited two years or three years."
And the timing of it all?
"It got a big reaction, and I’ve got a fight to sell," she said with a laugh. "So great timing, huh? I’m not dumb."
Write/Speak/Code is on a mission to empower women software developers to become thought leaders, conference speakers, and open source contributors. We run conferences and events across the US. http://writespeakcode.com (Permalink)
Old school geology can’t really be done by helicopter. It requires boots and hammers on the ground, interrogating rocks until they give up their identities and reveal their histories. Planetary geologists are pretty much trapped in helicopters, analyzing whatever can be measured by passing or orbiting spacecraft.
But there are some rare exceptions. What the Mars Curiosity rover lacks in hammers, it more than makes up for in lasers. With those armaments, Curiosity is uncovering some basics of Martian geology that can fill in portions of the history we’ve gleaned from orbit.
Mars’ crust is dominated by rocks produced through volcanism. It seemed to lack Earth’s igneous diversity, however, and little is known about Mars’ early volcanic history around 4 billion years ago. But that’s exactly how old the rocks of Gale Crater, where Curiosity spends its roving days, are.
A Chicago woman was found dead in a Texas jail cell this week after being arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer. Friends and relatives of Sandra Bland told news channel ABC 7 they do not believe the county sheriff’s account of what happened, and #BlackLivesMatter activists on social media are taking up her cause—including a planned Friday protest at the sheriff’s office in Hempstead, Texas.
Bland, 28, was driving from Illinois to Texas to start a new job at her alma mater, Texas Prairie View A&M, when she was pulled over for improperly signaling a lane change on Friday, July 10, according to the Waller county sheriff’s department. She allegedly got into an altercation with the police officer who pulled her over and was taken into custody. A video taken by a bystander shows two policemen holding Bland down as she complains of their rough treatment:
Bland was found dead the morning of July 13 in her cell after spending three days awaiting a bond hearing. The sheriff’s department said the cause was “self-inflicted asphyxiation.” Sheriff Glenn Smith told ABC 7 that jailers saw Bland at 7 am for breakfast and heard from her at 8 am, and that she was found dead an hour later, despite their attempts to perform CPR.
An autopsy on Bland ruled that she died from suicide by hanging, a county forensic spokeswoman told the New York Daily News.
Bland’s friends and family are dubious that Bland—who was starting a new job and had recently spent the Fourth of July weekend with family in Chicago—would harm herself. Social media users are using the hashtags #WhatHappenedtoSandraBland, #SandraBland, #JusticeForSandy, and #BlackLivesMatter to express their skepticism over the official reports of Bland’s death and outrage at how she was treated.
She never shoulda been in handcuffs, never shoulda been in the hands of a system that could kill her. #Abolish#WhatHappenedToSandraBland
“And that’s why it’s very, very important that a thorough investigation is done and that we get a good picture of what Miss Bland was going through the last four, five days of her life,” he said.
The investigation into Bland’s death has been turned over to the Texas State Rangers, the statewide law enforcement agency.
Oculus has partnered with Montreal-based "virtual reality technology and content innovator" Felix & Paul Studios in what is being called the largest live-action VR deal to date. As part of the partnership, announced Friday, Felix & Paul will be producing a "slate of VR experiences," which will be distributed on the Rift when it hits the market. The content will also be available on the Gear VR.
Felix & Paul will be writing, directing, and producing the content, including all aspects of physical and post-production. In a statement, Oculus Studio Head Jason Rubin said the multi-project deal will allow Oculus to deliver a "variety of experiences" to Rift and Gear VR users.
While it seems that much of the discourse around curbing gun violence focuses on the need to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, these two issues — gun violence and mental illness — “intersect only at their edges.” These are the words of Jeffrey Swanson and his colleagues in their new article examining the personality characteristics of American gun owners.
To think otherwise, they argue, is to fall prey to the narrative of gun rights advocates, who want us to think that “controlling people with serious mental illness instead of controlling firearms is the key policy answer.” Since the majority of people with mental illnesses are never violent, this is unlikely to be an effective strategy while, at the same time, further stigmatizing people with mental illness.
What is a good strategy, then, short of the unlikely event that we take America’s guns away?
Swanson and colleagues argue that a better policy would be to look for signs of impulsive, angry, and aggressive behavior and limit gun rights based on that. Evidence of such behavior, they believe, “conveys inherent risk of aggressive or violent acts” substantial enough to justify limiting gun ownership.
Using a nationally representative data set, they estimate that 8,865 people out of every 100,000 both (1) owns at least one gun and (2) exhibits impulsive angry behavior: angry outbursts, smashing things in anger, or losing their temper and engaging in physical fights. If I do my math right, that’s almost 22 million American adults (~321,300,000 people minus the 23% under 18 divided by 100,000 and multiplied by 8,865).
1,488 out of those 100,000, or almost 3.6 million, also carries a gun outside the home. People who owned lots of guns (six or more) were four times as likely to both have anger issues and carry outside the home.
The numbers of angry and impulsive people who own and carry guns, importantly, far exceeds the number of people who have been hospitalized for mental illness. This is a dangerous population, in other words, much larger than the one currently excluded from legal gun ownership.
“It is reasonable to imagine,” Swanson and his colleagues conclude, that people who are angry, aggressive, and impulsive have an arrest history. Accordingly, they advocate gun restrictions based on indicators of this personality type, such as convictions for misdemeanor violence, DUIs, and restraining orders. This, they think, would do a much better job of reducing gun violence than a focus on certified mental illness.
Super Opinionated.
