Tag: Revolution

Jack Ma, Once Proponent of 12-Hour Workdays, Now Foresees 12-Hour Workweeks

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Alibaba founder Jack Ma discussed Mars and artificial intelligence in their first joint appearance on Thursday. From a report: The duo chatted for over half an hour about their vision of how technology, especially artificial intelligence, will shape the future. “I’m always amazed by your vision of technology, I’m not a tech guy,” Ma said in…

Ringing the Changes: How Britain’s Red Phone Boxes Are Being Given New Life

It’s a design classic, but in these days of ubiquitous mobile phones, only 10,000 of the red kiosks remain on the streets. Can they survive the next decade? The Guardian: John Farmer, who describes himself as an activist shareholder, is a man with a mission — to save Britain’s red phone boxes. These were once a feature of every high street…

This month’s top sci-fi reminds us to beware technocrats bearing gifts

In her latest sci-fi column, Helen Marshall finds simmering revolution against the tech moguls in two new novels, The Warehouse and The Return of the Incredible Exploding Man Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24332450-500-this-months-top-sci-fi-reminds-us-to-beware-technocrats-bearing-gifts/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Celebrating the 28th Anniversary of the Linux Kernel

Exactly 28 years ago today, a 21-year-old student named Linus Torvalds made a fateful announcement on the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.minix. i-Programmer commemorates today’s anniversary with some interesting trivia: Back in 1991 the fledgling operating system didn’t have a name, according to Joey Sneddon’s 27 Interesting Facts about Linux: Linux very nearly wasn’t called Linux! Linus wanted to call his “hobby” project…

India’s Chandrayaan-2 is 2 weeks away from its moon landing

The spacecraft is slowing down for its final orbit, with its next maneuver scheduled for August 28. It’s due to land September 7. Details about the mission, plus Chandrayaan-2’s first image of the moon, here. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/india-chandrayaan-2-due-to-land-moon-sept-7-2019…

A brief history of Saturn’s amazing rings

New analyses of Saturn’s rings reveal how and when they were made, from what, and whether they’ll last. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/history-saturns-rings…

‘I Want a Super-Smart Chair!’

Long-time Slashdot reader shanen writes:
Imagine you had a perfect chair for using your computer. Also a perfect chair for watching TV. And a chair for listening to music, a chair for reading, a chair for napping, a work chair that keeps you awake, and a perfect chair for dinner. Also a massage chair and a diagnostic chair that checks your temperature,…

Guido van Rossum Looks at Python’s Past, Present, and Future

This week from 63-year-old Python creator Guido van Rossum shared some interesting stories with ZDNet’s senior reporter Nick Heath: While sharing software with the world today only takes a few clicks, in the 1980s it was an altogether more laborious affair, with van Rossum recalling the difficulties of trying to distribute Python precursor ABC. “I remember around ’85, going on a…

Was ‘The Matrix’ Part of Cinema’s Last Great Year?

In 2014 Esquire argued that great movies like The Matrix “predicted a revolution in film that never happened,” adding “We are in many ways worse off now than we were 15 years ago as a culture. We seem to have run out of original ideas.” This week two film critics debated whether 1999 was in fact cinema’s last great year. Slashdot…