Earlier this week, Elon Musk got into a bit of a tiff with the Flat Earth Society. The brief exchange was likely partly inspired by ‘Mad’ Mike Hughes’ plans to using a launch ramp constructed from the remnants of a mobile home. Musk asked, sensibly enough, why we don’t have a Flat Mars Society, given that we have a Flat Earth Society. The FES responded with the following: According to the Flat Earth Society, in fact, Earth is the only verified flanet (flat+planet). In fact, when challenged to explain why the Earth would be unique in this fashion, the organization trotted out the uniqueness of Earth to explain itself.
When Apple launched the iPhone 7 last year, it broke with its usual tradition and adopted two different modems for different versions of the device. Testing then showed that performance between the two, with Qualcomm modems generally outperforming Intel, particularly in lower signal areas. After the iPhone X launch, it looked like Intel’s performance might have improved or even Qualcomm, at least on some carriers, but more careful testing suggests that’s not the case. reports on extensive testing by Cellular Insights and focused on testing LTE Band 4, the band used by every major US carrier but Sprint.
The Yeti (Abominable Snowman) has deep roots in Nepalese folklore. It entered Western popular culture in the 19th century. The Abominable Snowman moniker was coined in 1921, as a translation of the Tibetan phrase “man-bear snowman,” which makes South Park’s spoof on manbearpig smarter than I’d ever realized. It’s half man, half bearpig! Or is that half manbear and half pig? Or is it half man, half bear, and half pig? EXCELSIOR! But there’s always been a more prosaic explanation for the so-called Abominable Snowman — the Himalayan Brown Bear. Himalayan brown bears are up to seven feet tall, and they’re the largest animal in the Himalayas.
If you’ve flown more than a handful of times, chances are you’ve experienced some type of problem moving from Point A to B. While local incidents can be absorbed by the airline system as a whole, a sharp delay or major problem at one airport can lead to cascading delays and cancellations across the country, as flights are rerouted and passenger manifests shuffled to try and keep everyone moving towards their destinations. Christmas is a particularly tough problem from a scheduling perspective, and American Airlines just made a mistake that could make holiday travel difficult-to-impossible for hundreds of thousands of people.
Samsung announced it has begun mass production of parts based on its 2nd generation 10nm LPP process node. It’s a significant step for the company, which faces competition from TSMC and GlobalFoundries for customers who want cutting-edge technology. As process node progressions and the degree of improvement offered by moving from one node to the next have slowed and shrunk respectively, it’s become more common for foundries to split their performance improvements across multiple generations. Samsung’s first generation of 10nm, 10nm LPE, offered 27 percent higher performance or 40 percent lower power consumption compared with its 14nm predecessor. The new 10nm LPP process is less of a jump, with a 10 percent performance improvement or a 15 percent power reduction compared with 10nm LPE parts.
Roberts Space Industries, the developer behind the long-and-still-awaited Star Citizen, has announced it now offers players the opportunity to buy a land-claim license to help fund development. For $50 or $100, you can buy the rights to a 4km-by-4km lot or an 8km-by-8km estate, respectively. That’s enough to raise eyebrows, given has already raised $168 million since its Kickstarter campaign began. But the situation gets even stranger as you dig into it. According to : These claim licenses are being made available for pledging to help fund Star Citizen’s development. The ability to obtain these claim licenses will ultimately be available for in-game credits and/or otherwise earnable through play in the game.
Greater Los Angeles is one of the world’s 40 crowded megacities, in need of low-pollution commuter cars. Still, the LA Auto Show has plenty of SUVs, crossovers and trucks being unveiled as well, since this is really the premier auto show for all the southwest. Here’s our take on the best cars of the show, which runs through Sunday, Dec. 10, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The tech star of the show is the Infiniti VC-T (“variable compression-turbocharged”) engine, in the 2018 QX50 compact SUV. Fuel economy climbs by as much as one-third over a comparable V6.
Of all the various branches of government, none rely on trust more than intelligence agencies. The military scarcely makes a habit of broadcasting its troop movements or deployments on the front page of the newspaper. But Congress — a civilian government — has the power to call various military leaders to testify and to investigate reports of malfeasance. The intelligence agencies of the United States, on the other hand, work in a shadowed world. Their intelligence operations are often approved in the FISA Court rather than by a normal federal judge. And they have been granted enormous power to gather data on individuals both within and outside America, all in the name of making and keeping America a safer place.
Uber is gaining a reputation for making every mistake it’s possible to make. From mishandling harassment claims to , Uber just can’t get it right. The ongoing case with Waymo over the alleged theft of intellectual property is another example and one that’s getting more bizarre before our eyes. A witness in the case has testified that Uber with the express purpose of stealing trade secrets from competitors. The case stems from Uber’s hiring of former Google/Waymo engineer Anthony Levandowski. Waymo claims that Levandowski took vast repositories of confidential information from Waymo upon his departure, and then promptly got hired by Uber to put that information to use developing the company’s own self-driving car tech.
