Fed2 Star - September 9, 2019 - page 1 (of 2)
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Fiona Craig
Sep 9, 2018, 6:02:20 AM9/9/18
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Fed2 Star
Earthdate September 9, 2018
[This is a subscription mailing list. Details about how to stop
receiving it are at the foot of the email.]
For a fancy formatted version go the Fed2 Star website:
http://www.ibgames.net/fednews/current/index.html
In this week’s Fed2 Star: no Fed2 Star next week because Hazed will be
on holiday, if you’re coming to the End of the Universe party before Fed
closes please check your password in advance, dairy cows housed on a
floating farm, birds given jobs as trash collectors, idiot police hand
out virus-filled USB sticks, a robot that can find Waldo faster than a
child, a kit to make your own superhero gauntlet, dos and don’ts of
using a phone, and amazing moving sculptures of animals on the beach.
Plus Winding Down, the tech newsletter from Alan.
Official News part one
IT’S A JOLLY HOLIDAY WITH HAZED
by Hazed
It’s time for me to head off on my annual vacation. I’m heading to my
own private luxury asteroid for a week of complete seclusion, where I
intend to meditate and indulge in mindfulness. That doesn’t mean I will
doing nothing, not at all; I need to take care of my spiritual wellbeing
and allow my mind to recover from the stresses of my daily life. It
isn’t easy being as fabulous as I am, and even demi-goddesses need a
break sometimes!
In real life, I am taking a week off my real life job and while I won’t
be going away, I’m going to be heading off on day trips to interesting
places.
As a result, there will be no Fed2 Star next week. We’ll be back on
Sunday September 23.
END OF THE UNIVERSE PARTY: PASSWORD REMINDER
by Hazed
As I announced in last week’s Fed2 Star, the time has come to close Fed
down after 30 thirty years. [LINK] We’ve be holding an End of the
Universe party over the final weekend, on Saturday 29 and Sunday 30
September, then the game will close at the reset on the morning of
Monday October 1.
I hope as many old players as possible can come into the game for the
party to reminisce and to say goodbye.
If you haven’t been in Fed for a while, you may have forgotten your
logon details. Please take the time in the next few weeks to check if
you still have an account and that you are able to log on, and if not
email feed...@ibgames.com to ask for your ID and password.
Don’t leave it to the last minute – I don’t want to spend the final
weekend resetting passwords!
REAL LIFE NEWS: FLOATING DAIRY FARM
by Hazed
What do you do when you want to provide fresh food to the inhabitants of
a city, but you’re short of space? You put some cows on a floating
platform, that’s what. The Port of Rotterdam in The Netherlands will see
the world’s first offshore dairy farm this year.
The facility will be right in the middle of the city’s Merwehaven
harbour, where 40 Meuse-Rhine-Issel cows will be milked by robots. It’s
being set up by a Dutch property company called Beladon, and the aim is
to help the city produce more of its own food.
Reducing the distance food has to travel from production to plate will
reduce transport pollution, and with the global population growing, and
70% forecast to live in cities, urban indoor farms could become
important. This floating dairy farm will be on three levels, and
anchored to the ocean floor.
It is expected to open later this year, and should produce about 800
litres of milk a day.
We just have to hope that cows don’t get seasick.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45130010
REAL LIFE NEWS: THEME PARK DEPLOYS BIRDS AS RUBBISH COLLECTORS
by Hazed
A French theme park is deploying an unusual team to clear up litter: six
“intelligent” birds.
The Puy du Fou theme park, in the west of Franch, has taught the rooks
to collect cigarette ends and other small bits of rubbish, and deposit
them into a small box which will reward them with some food.
The head of the park, Nicolas de Villiers said it wasn’t just about
keeping the park clean, but also about showing “that nature itself can
teach us to take care of the environment”. He said the rooks are
“particularly intelligent” and “like to communicate with humans and
establish a relationship through play”.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45155818
DUMB COPS OF THE WEEK: FREE MEMORY STICKS LOADED WITH MALWARE
by Hazed
Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau ran a security quiz recently and
gave the 250 winners USB drives. Problem was, 54 of the memory sticks
came infected with malware.
The infection came from a computer used by an employee of the Shawo Hwa
Industries Co “to transfer an operating system to the drives and test
their storage capacity”. The virus is an old Chinese-language virus that
tries to steal personal data from 32-bit machines, then forwards it to
an IP address in Poland which was shut down in 2015.
So no harm done, apart from the cops being left with egg on their faces.
Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/10/taiwanese_police_malware/
ROBOT OF THE WEEK: FINDING WALDO
by Hazed
Never mind worries about robots stealing our jobs – now they are out to
steal our fun, too. A robot has been developed that can scan a page in
the Where’s Waldo (or Wally in the UK) book and find the little stripy
guy in as little as four-and-a-half seconds.
The robot has been built by a creative agency called redpepper (note the
trendy lack of capital letters). It uses a robot arm with a camera on
the end to take a high-res picture of a two-page Where’s Waldo spread,
then analyses it for recognizable cartoon human faces. It compares all
the faces it has found to its known image of Waldo, then when it finds
him it uses a rubber hand to point to him.
This is a good demonstration of how machine learning AIs are developing.
Watch a video of the Waldo-finding robot here:
https://gizmodo.com/a-wheres-waldo-finding-robot-is-here-to-steal-your-todd-1828226739
Earthdate September 9, 2018
[This is a subscription mailing list. Details about how to stop
receiving it are at the foot of the email.]
For a fancy formatted version go the Fed2 Star website:
http://www.ibgames.net/fednews/current/index.html
In this week’s Fed2 Star: no Fed2 Star next week because Hazed will be
on holiday, if you’re coming to the End of the Universe party before Fed
closes please check your password in advance, dairy cows housed on a
floating farm, birds given jobs as trash collectors, idiot police hand
out virus-filled USB sticks, a robot that can find Waldo faster than a
child, a kit to make your own superhero gauntlet, dos and don’ts of
using a phone, and amazing moving sculptures of animals on the beach.
Plus Winding Down, the tech newsletter from Alan.
Official News part one
IT’S A JOLLY HOLIDAY WITH HAZED
by Hazed
It’s time for me to head off on my annual vacation. I’m heading to my
own private luxury asteroid for a week of complete seclusion, where I
intend to meditate and indulge in mindfulness. That doesn’t mean I will
doing nothing, not at all; I need to take care of my spiritual wellbeing
and allow my mind to recover from the stresses of my daily life. It
isn’t easy being as fabulous as I am, and even demi-goddesses need a
break sometimes!
In real life, I am taking a week off my real life job and while I won’t
be going away, I’m going to be heading off on day trips to interesting
places.
As a result, there will be no Fed2 Star next week. We’ll be back on
Sunday September 23.
END OF THE UNIVERSE PARTY: PASSWORD REMINDER
by Hazed
As I announced in last week’s Fed2 Star, the time has come to close Fed
down after 30 thirty years. [LINK] We’ve be holding an End of the
Universe party over the final weekend, on Saturday 29 and Sunday 30
September, then the game will close at the reset on the morning of
Monday October 1.
I hope as many old players as possible can come into the game for the
party to reminisce and to say goodbye.
If you haven’t been in Fed for a while, you may have forgotten your
logon details. Please take the time in the next few weeks to check if
you still have an account and that you are able to log on, and if not
email feed...@ibgames.com to ask for your ID and password.
Don’t leave it to the last minute – I don’t want to spend the final
weekend resetting passwords!
REAL LIFE NEWS: FLOATING DAIRY FARM
by Hazed
What do you do when you want to provide fresh food to the inhabitants of
a city, but you’re short of space? You put some cows on a floating
platform, that’s what. The Port of Rotterdam in The Netherlands will see
the world’s first offshore dairy farm this year.
The facility will be right in the middle of the city’s Merwehaven
harbour, where 40 Meuse-Rhine-Issel cows will be milked by robots. It’s
being set up by a Dutch property company called Beladon, and the aim is
to help the city produce more of its own food.
Reducing the distance food has to travel from production to plate will
reduce transport pollution, and with the global population growing, and
70% forecast to live in cities, urban indoor farms could become
important. This floating dairy farm will be on three levels, and
anchored to the ocean floor.
It is expected to open later this year, and should produce about 800
litres of milk a day.
We just have to hope that cows don’t get seasick.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45130010
REAL LIFE NEWS: THEME PARK DEPLOYS BIRDS AS RUBBISH COLLECTORS
by Hazed
A French theme park is deploying an unusual team to clear up litter: six
“intelligent” birds.
The Puy du Fou theme park, in the west of Franch, has taught the rooks
to collect cigarette ends and other small bits of rubbish, and deposit
them into a small box which will reward them with some food.
The head of the park, Nicolas de Villiers said it wasn’t just about
keeping the park clean, but also about showing “that nature itself can
teach us to take care of the environment”. He said the rooks are
“particularly intelligent” and “like to communicate with humans and
establish a relationship through play”.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45155818
DUMB COPS OF THE WEEK: FREE MEMORY STICKS LOADED WITH MALWARE
by Hazed
Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau ran a security quiz recently and
gave the 250 winners USB drives. Problem was, 54 of the memory sticks
came infected with malware.
The infection came from a computer used by an employee of the Shawo Hwa
Industries Co “to transfer an operating system to the drives and test
their storage capacity”. The virus is an old Chinese-language virus that
tries to steal personal data from 32-bit machines, then forwards it to
an IP address in Poland which was shut down in 2015.
So no harm done, apart from the cops being left with egg on their faces.
Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/10/taiwanese_police_malware/
ROBOT OF THE WEEK: FINDING WALDO
by Hazed
Never mind worries about robots stealing our jobs – now they are out to
steal our fun, too. A robot has been developed that can scan a page in
the Where’s Waldo (or Wally in the UK) book and find the little stripy
guy in as little as four-and-a-half seconds.
The robot has been built by a creative agency called redpepper (note the
trendy lack of capital letters). It uses a robot arm with a camera on
the end to take a high-res picture of a two-page Where’s Waldo spread,
then analyses it for recognizable cartoon human faces. It compares all
the faces it has found to its known image of Waldo, then when it finds
him it uses a rubber hand to point to him.
This is a good demonstration of how machine learning AIs are developing.
Watch a video of the Waldo-finding robot here:
https://gizmodo.com/a-wheres-waldo-finding-robot-is-here-to-steal-your-todd-1828226739
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