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EnerPlex Surfr Samsung Galaxy S4 case has solar and battery power
Posted: 28 Oct 2013 03:52 AM PDT
| EnerPlex Surfr Samsung Galaxy S4 case has solar and battery power Posted: 28 Oct 2013 03:32 AM PDT If you use the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone, and is that a lot of time away from an outlet you may be looking for options that help your device from longer. A company called EnerPlex has unveiled a new case for the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone called the EnerPlex Surfr that has an internal battery […] | | Nintendo Wii U Skylanders SWAP Force bundle launches in November Posted: 28 Oct 2013 03:17 AM PDT Nintendo will be offering several bundles for its Nintendo Wii U game console this holiday season. Nintendo had previously announced bundles including the Super Mario Bros U bundle and the Just Dance 2014 Basic Pack bundle. Nintendo has now unveiled a new Wii U bundle that features the popular kids game Skylanders SWAP Force. The […] | | Livescribe 3 smartpen uses Bluetooth Smart technology to sync handwritten memos Posted: 28 Oct 2013 03:03 AM PDT Livescribe has been making smartpens able to turn your handwritten notes and drawings into digital content for a while. Last year we reviewed the Livescribe Sky WiFi smartpen and found it to be an interesting little gadget. Livescribe is back today with a new smartpen called the Livescribe 3 smartpen. The device has the same […] | | Logitech unveils iPad Air accessories including keyboards and cases Posted: 28 Oct 2013 02:41 AM PDT Logitech has unveiled a new series of accessories designed specifically for the iPad Air tablet. The new accessories include the Logitech FabricSkin Keyboard Folio, the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover, Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Folio, and the Logitech Folio Protective Case. Three of those protective accessories also include integrated keyboards that use Bluetooth technology. The Bluetooth keyboard […] | | LG G Flex announced, claims self-healing properties Posted: 27 Oct 2013 07:09 PM PDT LG has officially released specs for G Flex, the company’s long-rumored curved-screen smartphone. The phone is curved along the horizontal axis, features an unusual lockscreen with direct-to-app pinching, and in an homage to X-Men’s Wolverine “self-heals” scratches in its outer casing. The phone joins Samsung’s Galaxy Round among the first curved-screen smartphones that will reach […] | | Buffer spam-and-hack attack resolved, new security layers instituted Posted: 27 Oct 2013 05:59 PM PDT Buffer, an app that lets users schedule and post Facebook, Twitter and Google+ updates, is now back up and running after a two-day hack-and-spam ordeal. Buffer was hacked yesterday, sending out third-party spam to thousands of Buffer users’ Facebook pages. The company has cleaned up the mess for the most part and instituted new security […] | | Pew report shows Facebook delivers the news to 20 percent of Americans Posted: 27 Oct 2013 04:12 PM PDT A Pew Research Center report released this week shows that 30% of adult American Facebook users get some of their news from Facebook. That’s about 20% of the adult population of the US. But most of those people don’t see Facebook as the primary or most important way they get news. Rather, news consumption on […] | | HP Chromebook 11 Review Posted: 27 Oct 2013 03:09 PM PDT Following the Acer C720, which we recently reviewed, HP has brought its own new Chrome OS-harboring laptop to the market, the Chromebook 11. Unlike some of the other Chromebooks that are available, HP has elected to aim its focus on the design aspect of its offering, bringing to market a small laptop that in some […] | | Nokia Lumia 929 photo and video leaked Posted: 27 Oct 2013 11:49 AM PDT Update: The YouTube video was removed by the user, moments after we published this post; we have therefore removed the embedded player for now. Anybody care to leak another version? A photo and video of the yet-to-be-released Nokia Lumia 929 has been leaked by WPCentral forum member Falorin. The Windows Phone device appears scuffed and […] | | NYSE runs Twitter IPO tests, works to avoid Facebook NASDAQ IPO repeat Posted: 27 Oct 2013 10:24 AM PDT The New York Stock Exchange ran a series of tests this weekend to prepare for Twitter’s impending IPO, which could occur as soon as Nov. 7. The tests were to ensure the NYSE will be ready to handle the high speed and volume of the high-profile IPO. Systems were checked three times in real-time simulations […] | You are subscribed to email updates from SlashGear
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"When the next hurricane is headed toward New York City, some differences in subway preparations will..."
Posted: 28 Oct 2013 01:54 AM PDT
| "When the next hurricane is headed toward New York City, some differences in subway preparations will..." Posted: 27 Oct 2013 07:06 AM PDT " When the next hurricane is headed toward New York City, some differences in subway preparations will be noticeable, but most will not. Maybe you will see a new, stronger, plastic replacement for plywood. You will see a few new-style vent and entrance covers. But you might not see too many futuristic gadgets. "We have to work with what we have," says George Deodatis, a professor in the Columbia University Department of Civil Engineering, who was an author of a 2011 New York State-sponsored report on the effect climate change will have on the region's economy and infrastructure. "I remember [the M.T.A.] saying that if we are going to completely strengthen the system, then we will have to stop running the system," Deodatis says. But it could be strengthened piecemeal, and Deodatis can't understand why the M.T.A. opened the South Ferry station so recently without a floodgate of some kind. "To me, this is still a huge question." Transit officials are thinking hard about long-term accommodations. "We are looking at tunnel plugs, dams, watertight doors — submarine doors, people call them," says John O'Grady, the M.T.A.'s engineer in charge of capital investment. "We are looking at erectable, scaled, closure mechanisms. We are looking at things called tiger dams, and tiger dams are essentially large bladders that are filled with water and anchored to the ground in front of a component, and they provide at least a temporary blockage from flooding." The authority is surveying transit systems around the world that have canopied entrances and retractable gates, that have ventilators and fans elevated on towers, like snorkels. Perhaps you have already noticed the completely rebuilt sea wall alongside the A-line segment (also rebuilt) that crosses Jamaica Bay, but something you most likely have not noticed are the new pump trains the M.T.A. spent the summer building. Also invisible will be the stormproofing work done underground. Some ducts carrying electrical cables from under-the-street Con Ed power stations to the subway ventilation fans for the Clark Street tunnel brought in enough water to flood the 2 and 3 lines. "Water just poured in through the ducts," Frank Jezycki says. Everything is connected at the city's roots, and little things become big when disastrous flooding hits, one big lesson the M.T.A. learned from Sandy. But mostly you will see plywood and tarps and sand bags, because where they worked, they worked, just the way the old pumps powered by compressed air did. These things saved the Lexington Avenue line, for instance, making it the first line restored to service and enabling the entire system to get back up and running much sooner than it otherwise would have. The most important thing you won't be able to see in the next hurricane is the experience that a disaster brings with it. It is not as eye-catching as an experimental tunnel balloon, but Sandy showed that experience is the system's most vital asset, the experience of people who knew how to deal with the giant pumping and breathing and excreting 660-mile-long passenger-rail system that shuttles a fleet of underground trains a cumulative 341 million miles a year. If a storm bigger than Sandy comes, nobody knows for sure what will happen, even with Slosh maps. But the M.T.A. will draw on the experience of those who have been through some version of it before. " - Robert Sullivan, Could New York City Subways Survive Another Hurricane? Buried in this paean to the generally unloved transit workers is the stark reality that a jury-rigged plywood dam (extended at the 11th hour from 3 feet high to eight and a half feet high) saved hundreds of millions of dollars and weeks — if not months — of subway closure. But at the flood's peak the water level was only a few inches below the top: Joe Valentino, a carpenter who for decades has made concrete forms, walls, all kinds of temporary structures for the subway system, recalls the 148th Street dam as imperfectly done — it was made in two phases when he would have preferred one — but good enough: "Is there something we could have done that would have worked 10 times better? I would say yes. Under the circumstances, it obviously worked pretty damn good." It endured, with about three inches to spare. The triumph might seem like a small one in the face of Sandy's destruction, but it wasn't. Here's what it prevented from happening: After flooding the No. 3 line tracks to the south, and destroying millions of dollars worth of equipment, the Harlem River would have continued south, following Lenox Avenue to about 142nd Street, a junction where the 3 line joins the 2 line, which runs to and from the Bronx. By consulting both the Slosh maps and its own topographical maps, the transit authority determined the water would have flowed toward the Bronx, via what's called the Harlem River-Lenox tunnel, and then east to 149th Street on the Grand Concourse. Then, in the worst case, the water would have moved through a connecting track, and like liquid moving through a Krazy Straw, the Harlem River would have flowed south through another under-river crossing, the Harlem River-Jerome tunnel, to 125th Street in Manhattan. From there, it would have flooded the downhill Lexington Avenue line — which happens to be the busiest one in the city, carrying more people every day, 1.8 million of them, than any other American subway system — to about 103rd Street, where the tracks rise, up toward Carnegie Hill. "It's all downhill — the Harlem River never breaks a sweat," Jezycki says. "That's all based on the elevations. A multibillion dollar transit system that keeps New York City viable was only inches away from a catastrophic failure. There is no reason to believe that the tweaks being made to the system are going to stop the next Sandy — one only a few feet higher in the largest surge — because wholesale change will require billions and enormous disruption to the current system. Prepare for the worst. | | "Don’t put your purpose before your connection." Posted: 27 Oct 2013 06:43 AM PDT | | "The tendency of humans to segregate by place has also persisted across long time spans and eras..." Posted: 27 Oct 2013 06:08 AM PDT " The tendency of humans to segregate by place has also persisted across long time spans and eras despite the transformation of specific boundaries, political regimes and the layout of cities. Research by archaeologists indicates that spatial divisions like ours were found in ancient cities, too. The greatest divisions of place today are at the very top, creating what we might call the new 1 percent neighborhoods. In recent decades, cities have been pulling apart; income inequality by neighborhood has increased. As a consequence, the kinds of mixed-income neighborhoods many of us remember from growing up have grown rarer, while exclusively affluent and exclusively poor neighborhoods have grown much more common. The Great Recession has exacerbated this divergence. Just as they have been among individuals, economic hardships have been unequally shared by neighborhoods: poverty, vacancy rates and particularly unemployment rates increased at a greater clip in disadvantaged and minority neighborhoods from 2005 to 2011 than elsewhere. We live in a free society, of course, but the high-end spatial concentration of income and its associated resources, like well-endowed schools, security, abundant services and political connections, in effect pulls up the drawbridge from our neighbors. The hypersegregation of "the truly advantaged" speaks volumes about the continuing significance of place and raises important questions about what kind of society we want to be. " - Robert Sampson, Division Street, U.S.A. | | "I STILL remember how this felt: the first piece I ever got nationally published was in a scholarly..." Posted: 27 Oct 2013 05:28 AM PDT " I STILL remember how this felt: the first piece I ever got nationally published was in a scholarly journal that paid in contributors' copies, but I've never had a happier moment in my career. And it's not strictly true that you never benefit from exposure — being published in The New York Times helped get me an agent, who got me a book deal, which got me some dates. But let it be noted that The Times also pays in the form of money, albeit in very modest amounts. So I'm writing this not only in the hope that everyone will cross me off the list of writers to hit up for free content but, more important, to make a plea to my younger colleagues. As an older, more accomplished, equally unsuccessful artist, I beseech you, don't give it away. As a matter of principle. Do it for your colleagues, your fellow artists, because if we all consistently say no they might, eventually, take the hint. It shouldn't be professionally or socially acceptable — it isn't right — for people to tell us, over and over, that our vocation is worthless. Here, for public use, is my very own template for a response to people who offer to let me write something for them for nothing: Thanks very much for your compliments on my [writing/illustration/whatever thing you do]. I'm flattered by your invitation to [do whatever it is they want you to do for nothing]. But [thing you do] is work, it takes time, it's how I make my living, and in this economy I can't afford to do it for free. I'm sorry to decline, but thanks again, sincerely, for your kind words about my work. Feel free to amend as necessary. This I'm willing to give away. " - Tim Krieder, Slaves of the Internet, Unite! | You are subscribed to email updates from Stowe Boyd
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