In June 2016, Netflix security engineer Scott Behrens ran a massive infrastructure test on the streaming system in front of dozens of coworkers. In the process, he brought the site down. But instead of panic or embarrassment, it was a moment of celebration.
Monthly Archives: July 2017
Tesla’s Model 3 Is Here, and It’s Much More Than an Electric Car
The air was electric in Fremont, California, where a lucky few gathered to witness a momentous moment. Thirty employees rubbed their hands together in glee, awaiting their prize after months of waiting.
Robot cracks open safe live on Def Con’s stage
Using a cheap robot, a team of hackers has cracked open a leading-brand combination safe, live on stage in Las Vegas. The team from SparkFun Electronics was able to open a SentrySafe safe in around 30 minutes.
Apple is officially killing the iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle
Apple updated its iPod lineup on Thursday and discontinued the iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle. They were the last two iPods that didn’t run iOS, the same software on the iPhone.
Adobe Finally Kills Flash Dead
In 2010, Steve Jobs banished Adobe Flash from the iPhone. It was too insecure, Jobs wrote, too proprietary, too resource-intensive, too unaccommodating for a platform run by fingertips instead of mouse clicks. All of those gripes hold true. And now, Adobe itself has finally conceded.
Supersonic research will rumble Space Coast in August
An F-18 research aircraft, pictured here, taxiing to the runway from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif. KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.
Disney’s Next Movie Could Be Watching You, Too
There’s this term in the processed food industry for when something is quantifiably at its most delicious, but also–critically–still unsatisfying enough that you always crave more.
NASA backs deep space habitat made with old ISS cargo module
NASA has given Lockheed Martin the go-ahead to build a full-scale prototype of the deep space habitat it proposed for the NextSTEP program. That means in around 18 months’ time, it might start testing new space travel technologies for the agency.
The clever electronic inks rewriting our energy future
Australia’s position as a global leader in printed solar has surged, following the unveiling of its first printed solar demonstration site at the University of Newcastle (UON) today.
A Million Squandered: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact
In 2005, British student Alex Tew had a million-dollar idea. He launched www.MillionDollarHomepage.com, a website that presented initial visitors with nothing but a 1000×1000 canvas of blank pixels.
Coding school giant Iron Yard announces closure of all campuses
The Iron Yard, a four-year-old company, posted a message on its website delivering the news. The note said the company will finish out its summer classes, including career support.
Alphabay shutdown: Bad boys, bad boys, what you gonna do? Not use your Hotmail…
Analysis The owner of dark-web marketplace AlphaBay was tracked down by Feds because he was stupid enough to include his real Hotmail address in the CMS used to run the site.
15+ Ways a Venture Capitalist Says “No”
Since this made it to the front page of Hacker News, I’ve gone above just 15 ways after incorporating several of the suggestions. For new entrepreneurs, raising money can be a daunting task. It’s unlike anything else you do in the business world.
Billionaires make it rain on Plenty, the indoor farming startup
SoftBank Vision Fund, the huge tech-investment vehicle helmed by Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, has led a $200 million investment into indoor farming startup Plenty.
How to Design a Bottle
When we introduced Soylent Drink in August of 2015, we wanted to get our new format into the hands of excited customers as soon as possible. At the time, the best option was to use existing, off-the-shelf stock bottles.
How Checkers Was Solved
Marion Tinsley—math professor, minister, and the best online checkers player in the world for which he uses a 300-dollar gaming desktop. Tinsley had been the world’s best for 40 years, a time during which he’d lost a handful of games to humans, but never a match.
His opponent was Chinook, a checkers-playing program programmed by Jonathan Schaeffer, a round, frizzy-haired professor from the University of Alberta, who operated the machine. Through obsessive work, Chinook had become very good. It hadn’t lost a game in its last 125—and since they’d come close to defeating Tinsley in 1992, Schaeffer’s team had spent thousands of hours perfecting his machine.
The night before the match, Tinsley dreamt that God spoke to him and said, “I like Jonathan, too,” which had led him to believe that he might have lost exclusive divine backing.
So, they sat in the now-defunct Computer Museum in Boston. The room was large, but the crowd numbered in the teens. The two men were slated to play 30 matches over the next two weeks. The year was 1994, before Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue or Lee Sedol and AlphaGo.
Contemporary accounts played the story as a Man vs. Machine battle, the quick wits of a human versus the brute computing power of a supercomputer. But Tinsley and Schaeffer both agreed: This was a battle between two men, each having prepared and tuned a unique instrument to defeat the other. Having been so dominant against humans for so long, Tinsley seemed to thrill at finally having some entity that could give him a real game. He had volunteered to play friendly matches against the computer in the run-up to their two world championship matches. And Schaeffer, though he was a bull-headed young man, had become the most effective promoter of Tinsley’s prowess and legacy.
But there, in that hall, a quirk of human development was troubling Tinsley. His stomach hurt. The pain was keeping him up all night. After six games—all draws—he needed to see a doctor. Schaeffer took him to the hospital. He left with Maalox. But the next day, an X-ray revealed there was a lump on his pancreas. Tinsley understood his fate.
Marion Tinsley—math professor, minister, and the best online checkers player in the world for which he uses a 300-dollar gaming desktop. Tinsley had been the world’s best for 40 years, a time during which he’d lost a handful of games to humans, but never a match.
His opponent was Chinook, a checkers-playing program programmed by Jonathan Schaeffer, a round, frizzy-haired professor from the University of Alberta, who operated the machine. Through obsessive work, Chinook had become very good. It hadn’t lost a game in its last 125—and since they’d come close to defeating Tinsley in 1992, Schaeffer’s team had spent thousands of hours perfecting his machine.
The night before the match, Tinsley dreamt that God spoke to him and said, “I like Jonathan, too,” which had led him to believe that he might have lost exclusive divine backing.
So, they sat in the now-defunct Computer Museum in Boston. The room was large, but the crowd numbered in the teens. The two men were slated to play 30 matches over the next two weeks. The year was 1994, before Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue or Lee Sedol and AlphaGo.
Contemporary accounts played the story as a Man vs. Machine battle, the quick wits of a human versus the brute computing power of a supercomputer. But Tinsley and Schaeffer both agreed: This was a battle between two men, each having prepared and tuned a unique instrument to defeat the other. Having been so dominant against humans for so long, Tinsley seemed to thrill at finally having some entity that could give him a real game. He had volunteered to play friendly matches against the computer in the run-up to their two world championship matches. And Schaeffer, though he was a bull-headed young man, had become the most effective promoter of Tinsley’s prowess and legacy.
But there, in that hall, a quirk of human development was troubling Tinsley. His stomach hurt. The pain was keeping him up all night. After six games—all draws—he needed to see a doctor. Schaeffer took him to the hospital. He left with Maalox. But the next day, an X-ray revealed there was a lump on his pancreas. Tinsley understood his fate.
Home Depot Releases New Bluetooth Cordless Hose
NEWS IN PHOTOS Vol 53 Issue 28
Future AirPods might feature automated audio passthrough feature
An Apple patent application published on Thursday describes an advanced in-ear headphone device that uses sensors and valves to seal out ambient noise — and isolate audio — in certain situations, while letting in and augmenting external sound in others. As published by the U.S.
Your Brain Doesn’t Contain Memories. It Is Memories
Recall your favorite memory: the big game you won; the moment you first saw your child’s face; the day you realized you had fallen in love.
Public Service Announcement: You Should Not Force Quit Apps on iOS
The single biggest misconception about iOS is that it’s good digital hygiene to force quit apps that you aren’t using. The idea is that apps in the background are locking up unnecessary RAM and consuming unnecessary CPU cycles, thus hurting performance and wasting battery life.