Month: August 2016

Enlarge / Along Honey Cut Bayou, in eastern Baton Rouge, just north of Interstate 12. (credit: Louisiana Civil Air Patrol)

The first damage analysis of the slow-moving tropical system that deluged southern Louisiana last weekend is sobering. But for all the destruction it has caused, the low pressure system was not classified as a tropical storm or depression. Had it been a tropical cyclone, the storm would almost certainly rank among the 10 costliest hurricanes to strike the United States.

Louisiana newspaper The Advocate recently shared an analysis by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber. The analysis uses geographic information system data to study homes and businesses that had flooded in nine parishes in southeastern Louisiana. Some of the report's key findings include:

• About 31% of homes (a total of 110,000 residences) within the nine parishes flooded.
• The estimated value of homes located in flooded areas is $20.7 billion.
• About 280,000 Baton Rouge metropolitan statistical area residents live in flooded areas.
• As a region, a maximum of just 15% of all homes—not solely in the flood-impact areas—were insured against flooding.
• Overall, 7,364 businesses employing 73,907 individuals are located in areas affected by floods. These represent 21% of businesses in the region.
• Proportionally, businesses in Livingston experienced the most severe impact with 3,305 businesses that employ 27,653 employees in the areas of flood-impact, representing 91% of businesses and 94% of employees.

The $20.7 billion dollar figure for residential damages represents the estimated total value of residences in areas that flooded, not the actual damage. While that total will be significantly lower, this damage report does not include losses sustained to businesses, automobiles, or other personal items lost in the floodwaters. It will take some time before a total damage amount is released, which will include damage from insurers.

The Google Transparency Project is a Washington, DC group that's laser-focused on letting Americans know about Google's lobbying efforts. To get its message out, GTP has worked with journalists at Re/Code and The Intercept, which have run stories about Google's many visits to the White House, the prevalence of ex-Googlers in the US Digital Service, and other links.

What wasn't known, until today, is who was paying the bills for research by the "nonprofit watchdog" group. "The folks running the Google Transparency Project won’t say who is paying for it, which is odd for a group devoted to transparency," noted Fortune's Jeff John Roberts, one of many journalists who the group reached out to in April.

Today, Roberts has published a followup, confirming that based on a tip, he found at least one funder—Oracle. That's the same company that lost a major copyright trial to Google and continues to spar with the search giant in court.

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has accused T-Mobile USA of violating net neutrality principles with a new "unlimited" data plan that throttles video. The group is weighing whether to file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission, and the EFF is evaluating a similar offering from Sprint.

T-Mobile's $70-per-month unlimited data plan limits video to about 480p resolution and requires customers to pay an extra $25 per month for high-definition video. Going forward, this will be the only plan offered to new T-Mobile customers, though existing subscribers can keep their current prices and data allotments.

"From what we've read thus far it seems like T-Mobile's new plan to charge its customers extra to not throttle video runs directly afoul of the principle of net neutrality," EFF Senior Staff Technologist Jeremy Gillula told the Daily Dot.

Enlarge / An un-strung recurve bow, showing the recurved limbs and the central riser. (credit: John Timmer)

A lot of us have only seen archery on episodes of Game of Thrones, or maybe we have hazy memories of a simple fiberglass bow at summer camp. If that's your picture of the technology, than a modern bow probably looks like it was dropped off by aliens.

To find out how this equipment actually functions, we took a subway ride to Gotham Archery, where Anjalie Field walked us through all the moving (and, hopefully, stationary) parts of a bow that's fit for competitive archery. Field got hooked on the sport while young, and she loved it so much that when she ended up at a college without an archery team, she founded one.

Field explained that there are two classes of bows. The string on a compound bow is threaded through a series of pulleys. These pulleys rotate off-center as the string is drawn back, changing the forces involved. Typically, this means that the initial draw requires considerable force, but once it's fully drawn, less effort is involved in holding it there.

Back at E3, a mere ten minutes with an early version of Titanfall 2 were enough. We were convinced that the grappling hook was a welcome addition that already felt like an integral part of Titanfall's rocket-pack-parkour-meets-mechs shooting action. Now, we've had a chance to put a few more hours into a "pre-alpha" version of the game during early access to this weekend's "technical test" on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (which is available to the public starting today, running again August 26 through 28).

With the benefit of more time, we can confirm that the grappling hook changes the Titanfall formula for the better. Double jumps and zippy wall running are still nice, but they're not always a feasible way to gain the height you need to clamber on to an enemy mech or gain an advantageous shooting position. The grappling hook is often just a simpler way to scale a multi-story vertical wall or gain a little speed boost while trying desperately to dash to a far off objective (or even to rocket forward toward an unsuspecting enemy to score a quick jump-kick kill).

The hook is so useful that we found ourselves cursing its limitations—after a couple of uses in short succession, you have to wait a few seconds for the hook to recharge. This is a necessary limitation to stop players from simply grappling around the map with nonstop abandon, but... actually, that nonstop abandon sounds like a lot of fun!