What is ‘Human Centered Design’ and Why Should Engineers Care?… Not long ago my friend and I had a chuckle at the expensive of a coworker who liked to use fancy words like ‘affordance’ and ‘signifiers’ in conversation to describe what we would just call a handle. I later realized the joke was on us after […]
External feed Read More at the Source: https://engineerdog.com/2019/05/03/seven-fundamental-principles-of-design-every-engineer-should-know/
Did you just open Firefox only to find all of your extensions disabled and/or otherwise not working? You’re not alone, and it’s nothing you did. Reports are pouring in of a glitch that has spontaneously disabled effectively all Firefox extensions. Each extension is now being listed as a “legacy” extension, alongside a warning that it “could not be verified for use in Firefox and has been disabled”. A ticket submitted to Mozilla’s Bugzilla bug tracker…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/03/a-glitch-is-breaking-all-firefox-extensions/
People who run their own mail servers are increasingly finding that the mail they send to Gmail users is being rejected, because the company’s anti-spam algorithm treats small, independently managed mail-servers as high-risk mail sources. And since Gmail users never receive the blocked messages, it can be impossible to convey to them that they’re missing some messages. This happened to me last month and Ken Snider, our awesome sysadmin, was somehow able to fix it,…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/01/algorithmic-discrimination.html
Complex 3D-printed designs often require the use of an automatically generated support structure around them for stability. While this enables some truly incredible results, it adds considerable time and cost to the printing process. Plus there’s the painstaking process of removing all the support material without damaging the object itself. If you’ve got a suitably high-end 3D printer, one solution to this problem is doing the supports in a water soluble filament; just toss the…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2019/04/28/3d-printing-with-multiple-soluble-filaments/
Dan Lipiniski is the worst Democrat in Congress, a man who literally inherited his seat from his father and has spent his career in Congress opposing minimum wage laws, access to abortion, and rights for LGBTQ people, taking massive contributions from literal railbarons in exchange for fighting railroad safety rules. Lipinski sits in one of the Democrats’ safest seats, meaning whomever wins the Democratic primary in his Illinois district automatically gets sent to Congress, so…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/27/support-marie-newman.html
When Americans see governments shutting down Internet communications, they should see nothing but counterproductive, authoritarian exercises of power In the wake of the terrible Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka, that government shut down access to Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, and other social media services. The shutdown garnered praise from some within the United States and other democratic countries, but as tragic as the circumstances may be, Americans must never come to see social media or…
Last week, the American public finally got its hands on the Mueller report–more than 400 pages, much of the text redacted, detailing the special counsel’s much anticipated findings. Within minutes of that release, many copies of that file were uploaded to the Internet Archive. On Amazon, other outfits were charging $7.99 for an EPUB of the report. At the Internet Archive we made the Mueller Report searchable and downloadable. And free. The government initially released…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://blog.archive.org/2019/04/26/the-mueller-report-searchable-and-accessible-on-the-archive/
Enlarge (credit: Elliot Margolies) Recycling sounds great in principle (because it is), but a frustrating number of devils lurk in the details. For example, while some materials like aluminum can readily be melted down and turned right back into new aluminum cans, recovered plastics tend to be lower quality than “virgin” material. That’s because recycled plastic retains some of its previous properties—like Lego bricks that can’t be separated. The next plastic you make won’t be…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1496029
Price gouging has skyrocketed the price of insulin, forcing folks to ration this lifesaving biologic. CBS News: “Nobody cared or nobody understood that without this next vial of insulin, I wouldn’t live to see another week,” said 28-year-old Kristen Whitney Daniels. She started rationing her insulin after she was kicked off her parents’ insurance plan two years ago. “I can’t really explain how isolating and how terrifying it is,” she said. She’s now a patient…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/25/insulin-prices-are-killing-peo.html
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says that it will refuse to contract with any vendor or consultant that offers services to primary challengers for the Democratic nomination: it’s a rule that ensure that candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who won a primary challenge against Joe Crowley, a right-wing finance industry creep who’d sat as a Democratic Congressman since 1999) will not be able to depose other establishment Dems. In response, 31 colleges’ Young Democrats clubs have…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/25/establishment-creeps.html
Over the last few months, David Cohen, a Comcast executive who oversees the telecom giant’s lobbying operation, has cut big checks to Republican candidates while pushing to advance his company’s regulatory agenda. On Thursday afternoon, however, Cohen will open his Philadelphia home to host Joe Biden, helping the Democratic former vice president kick off his bid for the White House. Biden, who announced his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday morning, has depicted himself as…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2019/04/25/joe-biden-presidential-bid-lobbyists-fundraiser/
On its 49th birthday, Earth Day is having a midlife crisis. In the beginning, it was a policy-shaking event that awakened a new generation of activists. But now even environmentalists have misgivings about it. Sure, they can get behind planting trees and clearing trash out of rivers, but they have issues with Earth Day itself. What issues, you ask? I asked environmentalists to weigh in. Their qualms were numerous: Earth Day is too short. (C’mon,…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://thebulletin.org/2019/04/how-earth-day-became-public-relations-swag-day/
Plus: Employee diversity, harassment brouhahas within Microsoft, Google Special report Three of the five people axed from JavaScript package management biz NPM Inc last month claim bosses got rid of them for trying to form a union.…
External feed Read More at the Source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/22/npm_fired_employees_unionize/
More than 1,000 people participating in the Extinction Rebellion have been arrested during the past week in London. The international movement, which seeks radical changes “to minimize the risk of human extinction and ecological collapse,” began in the United Kingdom six months ago after the release of a dire report on global warming from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and is spreading to other European countries. In recent days, protesters in London have…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://thebulletin.org/2019/04/climate-rebels-occupy-london/
The Debian Project Leader elections just finished and the winner is Sam Hartman! His term as project leader starts inmediately today April 21st and expires on April 20th 2020. Of a total of 1003 developers, 378 developers voted using the Condorcet method. More information about the result is available in the Debian Project Leader Elections 2019 page. Many thanks to Joerg Jaspert, Jonathan Carter and Martin Michlmayr for running. And special thanks to Chris Lamb…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://bits.debian.org/2019/04/results-dpl-elections-2019.html
Click here to go see the bonus panel!Hovertext:Eventually, SMBC will be nothing but irritating redheads faithfully describing their own flawed reasoning.Today’s News:
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/hobby
I have a First Amendment right to express my anger about Georgia’s proposed abortion ban through peaceful protest. As a concerned citizen, I have visited the Georgia capitol many times to talk with our lawmakers about various issues. While recently advocating against a particularly harmful piece of legislation — House Bill 481, which would, if signed into law, effectively ban all abortion in Georgia — I found myself caught up in a debate over my…
Mckayla Wilkes, a 28-year-old administrative assistant, part-time student, and mother of two, has had enough. In late March, she announced that she was mounting a bid for Maryland’s 5th Congressional District, aiming to unseat one of the oldest and most powerful Democratic members, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. Wilkes is running on a host of progressive policies, but plans to put particular focus on Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and affordable housing. A…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2019/04/19/steny-hoyer-primary-challenger/
A little over two weeks ago, India successfully test-fired an interceptor rocket that shot down a live satellite. In a surprise television address, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, then triumphantly declared that India was now the fourth country to acquire the ability to shoot down satellites, after the United States, Russia, and China. The test’s success clearly demonstrates the advancement of India’s military capabilities in outer space. But how much of an advancement is it,…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://thebulletin.org/2019/04/an-anti-satellite-test-ban-is-urgently-needed/
How Super Mario Kart looks under traditional bsnes emulation… [credit: DerKoun / FrameCompare ] Gamers of a certain age probably remember being wowed by the quick, smooth scaling and rotation effects of the Super Nintendo’s much-ballyhooed “Mode 7” graphics. Looking back, though, those gamers might also notice how chunky and pixelated those background transformations could end up looking, especially when viewed on today’s high-end screens. Emulation to the rescue. A modder going by the handle…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1492535