A Team of Geeks has Recreated a Full-Sized 3D Printed Stargate at a Museum

A Team of Geeks has Recreated a Full-Sized 3D Printed Stargate at a Museum




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The Musée royal de Mariemont in Belgium is currently holding an exhibition called “From Stargate to Comics: Egyptian Gods In Geek Culture,” and one of the center piece of the exhibition is a 3D printed 20-foot tall replica of a Stargate. The gate is composed of over 2,000 parts featuring 10,000 cutting. Th whole thing took over 1,000 hours to complete. Wow. Just wow.

For those interested, the exhibition will end on November 20th, 2016.

The exhibition will propose to address and further develop this inspiration in recent years through film (Stargate, The Mummy Returns, Immortal Ad Vitam, or the highly anticipated X-Men: Apocalypse) but also through comics and comics (Thor, Batman, Mighty Isis, Wonder Woman, the Avengers, Apocalypse, Shazam, Fantastic 4 …; so many characters of DC Comics franchises, Marvel also Vertigo) or through video games/ board games and role playing games (Age of Mythology, Pathfinder, Deus …).

[Musée royal de Mariemont | Vigo Universal | Via NA]












































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Report: Google is turning Waze into a ride-sharing platform

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is planning to launch a carpool-based ride-sharing service using Waze in the Bay Area. The new feature would connect drivers and potential passengers going along the same route via the navigation app.

The new Waze Commute will launch this fall and unlike Lyft and Uber, won’t act like an on-demand hailing platform for trips around town. Instead it’ll be similar to the ad-hoc casual carpool system where someone gets a ride from another person based on their commute route. The service is already available in Israel.

In the Bay Area, the pilot is currently limited to select employers that have signed up for the service. While drivers would use the same app they currently employ to get directions, potential passengers would use the Waze Rider app.

According to the WSJ, the drivers will only make about $.54 a mile. Not exactly the kind of money you would make driving for Uber or Lyft. Instead, Google is hoping to gramt commuters a way to make giving strangers a ride a bit more formal.

Source: Wall Street Journal

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Miraculous Spray-On Coating Protects a Watermelon From a 150-Feet Drop

Have you ever wondered if those miracle sprays that promise to protect the liner of your pickup truck from damage actually work? Here’s proof they do. The amateur scientists at YouTube’s How Ridiculous covered a watermelon in Line-X spray and dropped it off a 150-feet tall tower. Not only did the watermelon survive the fall, it actually bounced on impact. Whoa.

Read more…

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California Lawmakers Approve Mandatory Sentencing For Rape


Brock Turner, a former Stanford University swimmer, who received six months in jail and three years’ probation for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. State lawmakers have approved a proposal to mandate prison terms for such a crime.

AP


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AP

Brock Turner, a former Stanford University swimmer, who received six months in jail and three years’ probation for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. State lawmakers have approved a proposal to mandate prison terms for such a crime.

AP

The California Assembly unanimously passed a measure that requires a prison sentence for anyone convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious person.

The 66-0 vote comes in reaction to the six-month jail sentence (and three years’ probation) imposed in June by Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky on former Stanford student Brock Turner. He had been convicted earlier in the year on three felony counts of sexually assaulting an intoxicated and unconscious woman at a fraternity party. That sentence was widely condemned as too lenient. Prosecutors had sought a sentence of six years in prison.

Turner is scheduled to be released on Friday after serving half of the six-month sentence, based on his good behavior.

“Sexually assaulting an unconscious or intoxicated victim is a terrible crime and our laws need to reflect that,’ said Assemblyman Bill Dodd (D-Napa), one of the bill’s authors. “Letting felons convicted of such crimes get off with probation discourages other survivors from coming forward and sends the message that raping incapacitated victims is no big deal.”

Current California law imposes a prison sentence when physical force is used in the course of a rape. The new law would mandate a prison term whenever the victim is intoxicated or unconscious and the perpetrator does not have to use force.

The bill now goes to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk for his signature.

The sentencing of Brock Turner brought a firestorm of protests. A campaign to recall Judge Persky has more than a million signatures on a petition calling for his removal. The judge requested a temporary transfer to a civil court, where he will not hear criminal cases.

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How to Stop WhatsApp From Giving Facebook Your Phone Number

WhatsApp’s privacy settings are changing, and not for the better. As of today, the phone numbers of WhatsApp users will be shared with parent company Facebook. This will allow Facebook to run analytics on user activity and send you friend requests for people you talk to in WhatsApp. And of course, it will allow Facebook to serve targeted ads to WhatsApp users.

Thankfully, there is a way to opt out of this. But WhatsApp’s opt-out period is only 30 days long, so if you don’t want your phone number shared with Facebook, opt out now before the window closes.

WhatsApp keeps the policy change somewhat hidden, but there are two options. Both are outlined in the FAQ, and both of them will work inside the Android and iOS apps.

Option 1: Read the Terms and Conditions

When you update to the newest version of WhatsApp, you’ll see a new set of terms and conditions. Once the app is done updating, the first screen in the process will come up. Don’t tap “Agree” just yet! Scroll all the way down and uncheck the box that will share your WhatsApp info with Facebook.

Option 2: In Your Settings

If you’ve already updated to the latest version and just breezed through the setup, go into your WhatsApp settings. Tap “Account.” Here, you’ll find a new option for “Share my account info” and a brief description of what checking the box means. Just uncheck that box and you are done.

Take that advertisers and Facebook! New app, who dis?

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Now You Can Finally Use Your Drone to Make Money

The skies are about to get substantially more populated with drones.

They won’t deliver packages to your doorstep anytime soon, but a large menu of other kinds of commercial drone missions will become legal on Monday thanks to new federal rules. The guidelines also make it much simpler to become a commercial drone pilot, lowering the barrier of entry for people and companies to use unmanned aircraft commercially.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s new drone regulations limit commercial operations to relatively low-risk scenarios. The aircraft must weigh less than 55 pounds, remain below 400 feet, and cannot fly beyond the operator’s visual line of sight, at night, or directly over crowds of people.

But limiting flights to this fairly narrow context isn’t a problem, says Chris Anderson, the former Wired editor-in-chief who is now CEO of 3DR, a leading drone maker. “The vast majority of commercial uses that we can think of fall into that space perfectly,” says Anderson. “It’s a nice alignment between what’s safe, what the FAA feels is an easy thing to do now, and what’s commercially attractive.”

The use of drones to inspect and monitor infrastructure like cell phone towers, wind turbines, and tall bridges is likely to become much more popular now. Insurance companies will use unmanned aircraft to inspect rooftops. Crucially, the new rules allow for flights of above 400 feet when flying near structures taller than that, and up to 400 feet above the top of the structure.

It’s actually been possible since 2014 to fly drones commercially, but doing so has required an exemption from the FAA. The agency has granted more than 5,000 such passes, according to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. Aerial photography has been the most popular application.

A quadcopter drone inspects a wind turbine.

But most of the commercial drone operators thus far have been individuals or fairly small companies, and now that’s going to change, says Anderson. Before, big companies in industries like insurance and construction were deterred by the lack of formal regulations, and the requirement that drone pilots also be licensed to fly manned airplanes. Now becoming a drone pilot will be similar to getting a driver’s license. The new rules will clear the way for these companies to train many operators and deploy drones at a much larger scale than we’ve seen so far, he says.

A new process will allow companies to apply for waivers to fly missions that are outside the scope of the rules as long as they can demonstrate the reliable safety of the operation. Jesse Kallman, head of regulatory affairs and business development at Airware, which sells drone hardware and software systems, anticipates that the agency will “pretty quickly” begin approving waivers for night operations, for example. Insurance companies and others would like to fly at night because that’s when the temperature is optimal for using thermal imaging to inspect for leaks and other issues on tall buildings and structures.

More rules are coming. Next, the FAA has said it will regulate flights directly over crowds of people, which will create new opportunities for news organizations, law enforcement, and other security companies. Package delivery and other operations that involve flying beyond the drone operator’s line of sight, meanwhile, are probably years away. A lot more safety tests, and perhaps new kinds of air traffic control systems, are needed.

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