As grizzly bears expand their range in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming into places where they haven’t been seen in a century or more, they’re increasingly encountering humans. From a report: Things intensified last summer as trails and campgrounds across the region flooded with inexperienced tourists seeking refuge in the outdoors during the coronavirus pandemic. Grizzly attacks spiked. Bear managers were inundated…
Tag: garbage
Western Digital’s Ultrastar DC ZN540 Is the World’s First ZNS SSD
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom’s Hardware: Western Digital is one of the most vocal proponents of the Zoned Namespaces (ZNS) storage initiative, so it is not surprising that the company this week became the first SSD maker to start sampling of a ZNS SSD. When used properly, the Ultrastar DC ZN540 drive can replace up to four conventional…
SpaceX Starship as a trash collector in Earth orbit?
SpaceX Starship’s many tasks may include launching humans into space, carrying satellites into orbit and — perhaps — removing troublesome pieces of space debris. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/spacex-starship-clean-up-space-junk…
A Dead Soviet Satellite and An Old Rocket Booster Could Collide In Space Tonight
Space traffic experts are tracking two pieces of orbital garbage that appear to be careening toward each other: A defunct Soviet satellite and a discarded Chinese rocket booster that are expected to nearly miss each other — with a slight chance of colliding — Thursday evening. CNN reports: No one knows for sure if the objects will collide, and near-misses happen…
Oracle’s Plan to Keep Java Developers from Leaving for Rust and Kotlin
ZDNet reports:
Oracle has released version 15 of Java, the language created 25 years ago by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems, which Oracle snapped up in 2009 for about $7.4bn to gain what it said was the “most important software Oracle has ever acquired”. Java 15, or Oracle Java Development Kit (JDK) 15, brings the Edwards-Curve digital signature algorithm, hidden classes, and…
Big Oil Is in Trouble. Its Plan: Flood Africa With Plastic.
Confronting a climate crisis that threatens the fossil fuel industry, oil companies are racing to make more plastic. But they face two problems: Many markets are already awash with plastic, and few countries are willing to be dumping grounds for the world’s plastic waste. The industry thinks it has found a solution to both problems in Africa. From a report: According…
Germany is Banning Single-Use Plastic Straws, Cotton Buds and Food Containers
Germany is banning the sale of single-use plastic straws, cotton buds and food containers, bringing it in line with a European Union directive intended to reduce the amount of plastic garbage that pollutes the environment. From a report: The Cabinet agreed Wednesday to end the sale of plastics including single-use cutlery, plates, stirring sticks and balloon holders, as well as polystyrene…
Linus Torvalds Hopes Intel’s AVX-512 ‘Dies A Painful Death’
“Linux creator Linus Torvalds had some choice words today on Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (AVX-512) found on select Intel processors,” reports Phoronix:
In a mailing list discussion stemming from the Phoronix article this week on the compiler instructions Intel is enabling for Alder Lake (and Sapphire Rapids), Linus Torvalds chimed in. The Alder Lake instructions being flipped on in GCC right now…
A Moment of Clarity Regarding the Raison d’Etre for the App Store
John Gruber, writing at DaringFireball: Feel free to file Google’s release this week of an update to their iPad Gmail app with support for split-screen multitasking under “better late than never,” but this is so late it borders on the absurd. It’s like the difference between showing up fashionably late and showing up a week after the party. Split-screen multitasking was…
Stack Overflow Investigates Why Developers Love Rust So Much
This year Stack Overflow’s Developer Survey of 65,000 programmers found that Rust was their most-loved programming language — for the fifth year in a row. To understand why, they interviewed the top contributor to the site’s Rust topic. (“The short answer is that Rust solves pain points present in many other languages, providing a solid step forward with a limited number…