April 2022 – Page 127 – news.buyenne.com

No air currents required: Ballooning spiders rely on electric fields to generate lift

The work could lead to new types of ballooning sensors for atmospheric exploration.

Image from a 2018 observational study of ballooning in large spiders depicting a crab spider just as it is about to take off.

In 1832, Charles Darwin witnessed hundreds of ballooning spiders landing on the HMS Beagle while some 60 miles offshore. Ballooning is a phenomenon that's been known since at least the days of Aristotle—and immortalized in E.B. White's children's classic Charlotte's Web—but scientists have only recently made progress in gaining a better understanding of its underlying physics.

Now, physicists have developed a new mathematical model incorporating all the various forces at play as well as the effects of multiple threads, according to a recent paper published in the journal Physical Review E. Authors M. Khalid Jawed (UCLA) and Charbel Habchi (Notre Dame University-Louaize) based their new model on a computer graphics algorithm used to model fur and hair in such blockbuster films as The Hobbit and Planet of the Apes. The work could one day contribute to the design of new types of ballooning sensors for explorations of the atmosphere.

There are competing hypotheses for how ballooning spiders are able to float off into the air. For instance, one proposal posits that, as the air warms with the rising sun, the silk threads the spiders emit to spin their "parachutes" catch the rising convection currents (the updraft) that are caused by thermal gradients. A second hypothesis holds that the threads have a static electric charge that interacts with the weak vertical electric field in the atmosphere.

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Ein Großteil der Welt steht ambivalent zum Ukrainekrieg. Und das zu Recht

In Asien, Afrika und der arabischen Welt herrscht die Ansicht vor, dass Europa sich in eine Katastrophe stürzt – und dass die internationale Ordnung zerfällt

Ungarn: Russland-Freunde in der EU können Wahlen gewinnen

Mit Orbans Sieg hatte kaum jemand gerechnet. Doch auch linksliberale Kriegsszenarien brachten den Rechten Stimmen ein

38,000 health workers dispatched to Shanghai as COVID outbreak worsens

Reports of crowded quarantine centers and parents being separated from children.

Train attendants holding signs welcome a medical team from Tianjin at Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station on April 3, 2022 in Tianjin, China. A team of medical workers from Tianjin arrived in Shanghai on Sunday to support the city's fight against COVID-19 epidemic.

Health officials in China have dispatched more than 38,000 health workers to Shanghai as the city of roughly 26 million remains in an extended lockdown from a roaring outbreak of the ultratransmissible omicron coronavirus variant.

The megacity, which functions as China's financial hub, entered a two-stage lockdown on March 28 that was initially intended to end April 5. But with nearly the entire city still confined to their homes or quarantine centers, officials say the lockdown will go on.

"The city will continue to implement seal and control management and strictly implement 'staying at home', except for medical treatment," Shanghai's government said on its official WeChat account, according to Reuters. There was no indication when the lockdown will lift.

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App lets you crank the new MacBook Pro’s brightness to over 1,000 nits

It has a few caveats, but it works as advertised.

Vivid on a MacBook Pro and Pro Display XDR.

Developers Jordi Bruin and Ben Harraway have released an application called Vivid that allows Apple's new MacBook Pro models and Pro Display XDR to achieve double the brightness systemwide—something that previously wasn't possible.

For background: Apple says the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro's MiniLED display can reach 1,600 nits of peak brightness on highlights or 1,000 nits of full-screen brightness. That's nearly unrivaled in consumer laptop or desktop displays—it's more in the realm of what you'd expect from a high-end television.

But while certain HDR video content will take advantage of that on highlights, the normal desktop computing experience isn't much brighter than what you get on another monitor. macOS keeps things around 500 nits tops unless the content you're specifically watching calls for more—and most content doesn't.

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Maui Shell Alpha released (convergent desktop environment for Linux phones and PCs)

The developers of the Linux-based NitruxOS (NXOS) have been working on a slick new convergent desktop environment called Maui Shell designed to look good and function well on just about any device no matter the screen size, which makes it an interesting option for phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers – or devices that are […]

The post Maui Shell Alpha released (convergent desktop environment for Linux phones and PCs) appeared first on Liliputing.

Now the team has released the first official Alpha of Maui Shell, and it smooths out many of the rough edges that were visible when we last looked at the project a few months ago.

As noted in the official announcement, the Alpha release focused on filling in holes in Cask, the Maui Shell launcher.

Cask now offers controls for features such as Bluetooth, sound, network connections, display brightness, media playback and other behind-the-scenes settings.

The media player card has been tidied up, which makes it easier to see what’s currently playing and skip forward or back in your queue. A session card has been added to make it easier to switch among user accounts.

Other improvements that made the cut are an easy-to-toggle dark mode and an adaptive color scheme option. Enable adaptive mode and Maui Shell will analyze your wallpaper and set light or dark mode based on which is a better match.

Numerous other small but important visual changes were made. The dock and launcher have been cleaned up and highlighted with improved drop shadow effects. Overall, the result is a look that’s more uniform yet still allows important elements to stand out.

As you’d expect from an Alpha release, there are still plenty of bugs left to squash before Maui Shell gets a stable release. Two that NXOS mentioned are that reorganizing the launcher can cause your session to crash and that you should be ready for the unexpected when dragging content from one app to another.

If you want to try out the Maui Shell alpha release you’ll need to download the source files from GitHub (as well as MauiKit from the top of the Nitrux repo) and compile it yourself. If you’d rather have the heavy lifting done for you jusft wait for it to arrive in NitruxOS. That should be happening in the very near future.

You can also find more pictures and additional details about the Alpha release in the release announcement.

The post Maui Shell Alpha released (convergent desktop environment for Linux phones and PCs) appeared first on Liliputing.

Maui Shell Alpha released (convergent desktop environment for Linux phones and PCs)

The post Maui Shell Alpha released (convergent desktop environment for Linux phones and PCs) appeared first on Liliputing.

Now the team has released the first official Alpha of Maui Shell, and it smooths out many of the rough edges that were visible when we last looked at the project a few months ago.

As noted in the official announcement, the Alpha release focused on filling in holes in Cask, the Maui Shell launcher.

Cask now offers controls for features such as Bluetooth, sound, network connections, display brightness, media playback and other behind-the-scenes settings.

You can also find more pictures and additional details about the Alpha release in the release announcement.

The post Maui Shell Alpha released (convergent desktop environment for Linux phones and PCs) appeared first on Liliputing.

Texas’ power failure: Limited chance for profits vs. huge social costs

The business incentives for winterization are small, the societal incentives huge.

Wind turbines stretch across Texas scrubland.

Just over a year ago, a cold front moved into Texas and stayed there. As demand for electricity soared, various generating sources fell offline, leading to extensive grid failures that left customers without power for days. Nearly every form of power generation suffered from failures, as did the system supplying generators with natural gas. The total cost in terms of lost business and lives is estimated at roughly $130 billion.

Initial analyses provided some suggestions on how Texas could restructure its grid to provide better protection against future events like this. But a new study has asked a related question. Texas has economic incentives that should induce commercial generators to install winterization equipment on their own. Why weren't those incentives enough to get generating companies to install cold-weather hardware?

The new analysis finds that the financial incentives for winterization carry a high degree of risk. And the total incentives for winterization are far lower than Texas paid for the failure to winterize.

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Judge Drops Antitrust Claims From YouTube Piracy Lawsuit

Florida federal Judge Darrin Gayles has dismissed Content ID-related antitrust claims against YouTube. The allegations were part of a piracy lawsuit filed against the streaming platform last year by movie tycoon Carlos Vasallo. While the lawsuit has been slimmed down, YouTube still has to defend itself against copyright infringement claims.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

content-id Last year, Spanish-born movie tycoon Carlos Vasallo sued YouTube over various piracy-related claims.

The actor and producer owns the rights to the world’s largest collection of Mexican and Latin American movies, many of which are illegally shared on YouTube.

While copyright allegations against Google and YouTube aren’t new, the case came with an interesting twist. According to Vasallo, YouTube would only allow him to join the Content ID copyright protection program if he agreed to a revenue share deal. In addition, he had had to waive all possible piracy claims that took place in the past.

The movie tycoon refused to accept these terms. Instead, he opted to send old-fashioned DMCA takedown notices. However, according to the complaint filed at a Florida federal court last year, that did little to stop people from pirating his films.

Copyright and Antitrust Claims

The lawsuit accused YouTube of breaching antitrust law through ‘illegal tying.’ According to Vasallo, YouTube tied Content ID participation to a required revenue-sharing deal and the condition to waive older copyright claims.

The movie tycoon also accused YouTube of several copyright infringement claims by making movies available on the platform without permission. On top of that, YouTube allegedly violated the DMCA, by removing copyright management information from the videos.

YouTube disagreed and previously refuted the allegations. The streaming giant asked the court to dismiss the case, noting that the statute of limitations on many of the claims had expired.

After reviewing the arguments from both sides, U.S. District Court Judge Darrin Gayles ruled on the motion to dismiss last week. While the Judge was not ready to drop the entire case, he dismissed some of the claims.

No Illegal Tying

Starting with the antitrust allegations, Judge Gayles notes that there is no evidence that YouTube coerced the movie tycoon to join the Content ID program. This is one of the required elements for an ‘illegal tying’ claim.

“YouTube argues that Plaintiff fails to meet the second element because Plaintiff was not ‘forced’ to buy Content ID. Indeed, Plaintiff admits that it refused YouTube’s offer and nothing in the allegations suggests that Plaintiff ever purchased anything from YouTube or entered into any agreement,” Judge Gayles writes.

In addition, a successful claim involves some type of purchase, which isn’t the case here as the Content ID system is free of charge.

“Additionally, Plaintiff does not allege that it had to purchase Content ID. If Content ID is a free service offered by Defendants, Plaintiff’s claim must fail because the acceptance of a free service does not constitute an impermissible tie-in,” the order reads.

Based on these and other arguments, the court dismisses the antitrust claim against YouTube.

Expired Copyright Infringement Claims

Moving on to the copyright claims, the court agrees with Google that the three-year statute of limitations has passed for all alleged infringements that took place before May 3, 2018.

Google had requested to simply drop all copyright allegations as the movie tycoon lumped older and newer infringements together. However, Judge Gayles disagrees, which means that YouTube must defend itself against the more recent claims.

The same is true for the alleged DMCA claims. The movie tycoon accused YouTube of removing or altering ‘copyright management information’ while uploading videos from users, which would violate the DMCA.

YouTube countered that it wasn’t clear what copyright management information it had supposedly removed, or that it did so intentionally. However, Judge Gayles won’t dismiss these claims from the lawsuit at this stage.

All in all, this means that the case will continue without the antitrust allegations while limiting the copyright infringement allegations to the more recent uploads.

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A copy of U.S. District Court Judge Darrin Gayles’ order ruling on Google’s motion to dismiss is available here (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Return to Monkey Island confirmed by Ron Gilbert as real, slated for 2022 launch

“Ron Gilbert told me he’d never make another Monkey Island unless…”

That's the second-biggest surprise I've ever seen.

Return to Monkey Island, teased by Ron Gilbert on his official blog last week on April Fools' Day, has been confirmed as an actual video game that will release in 2022.

The game's announcement came as the very first April Fools' joke in Gilbert's 18 years of operating the blog Grumpy Gamer. Or at least it appeared to be an April Fools' gag. On Monday, Gilbert followed his post up by saying that he felt "bad" about the joke, adding, "Over the weekend, I whipped up the game so no one was disappointed."

Elsewhere, Gilbert said that the game has been in development for roughly two years by the team at Terrible Toybox, which also worked on the 2017 adventure game Thimbleweed Park. But Terrible Toybox has picked up a notable new partner this time around: Dave Grossman, who co-wrote and co-designed many legendary point-and-click games at Lucasfilm Games, including the first two Monkey Island titles.

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