Last minute geek

1. UGREEN Power Bank review
(English/the-gadgeteer)

REVIEW – Some days it’s easy to keep our phones charged:  We’re at home, at the office, or in the car.  Other days, however, are more difficult:  We’re out and about, shopping or hiking, or at a conference ...

2. California sues Trump over climate-warming tailpipe emissions rollback
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... Mary Nichols, California’s top climate change official. “I believe we will win.” The two top Trump administration officials overseeing the move proudly defended it at a Thursday morning news conference ...

3. How Intel's Clear Linux Team Cut The Kernel Boot Time From 3 Seconds To 300 ms
(English/Linuxtoday)

Phoronix: Intel engineer Feng Tang spoke at this week's Linux Plumbers Conference in Lisbon, Portugal on how the Clear Linux team managed to boot their kernel faster. Read all  ...

4. PHP Creator Rasmus Lerdorf Shares Lessons Learned from the Last 25 Years
(English/Linuxtoday)

This year’s annual phpDay Italian PHP conference in Verona ended with a surprisingly reflective talk from the original creator of PHP. Read all  ...

5. New York has a new Rube Goldberg-ian dunk-a-rat-in-alcohol trap
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... most infested neighborhoods after a successful trial, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams revealed at a press conference on Thursday. The device, called Ekomille and created by private company Rat Trap ...

6. How school buses became yellow, and some of the safest vehicles on the road
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... bus yellow hits both peaks equally.” So although they may not have fully comprehended the science behind it, the color Cyr and his colleagues chose at the 1939 conference makes it hard for other drivers ...

7. Linux 5.3 rc8
(English/Linuxtoday)

Linus Torvalds: So we probably didn't strictly need an rc8 this release, but with LPC and the KS conference travel this upcoming week it just makes everything easier. Read all  ...

8. Come see me in Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Toronto and Maine!
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

...  M6E 2W1 Toronto, September 24: 360: How to Make Sense at the 6 Degrees Conference, with Aude Favre, Ryan McMahon and Nanjala Nyabola, Art Gallery of Ontario. Read the rest Read all  ...

9. University of Kansas's Campbell Conference changes its name to the Gunn Center Conference
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... Analog). Now, the Campbell Conference at the University of Kansas at Lawrence -- who give out the other Campbell award -- have announced that both the conference and the award will be renamed. The center ...

10. Loch Ness DNA suggests 'Nessie' might be eel, says geneticist
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... a high count of eel DNA. Whether such a finding, if legitimate, might indicate one huge eel or many little eels, no one knows. Professor Gemmell, who is a geneticist, said at a news conference in Scotland ...

11. Watch Sony’s IFA 2019 event in under 6 minutes
(English/engadget)

Sony has just finished its IFA press conference, where the star of the show was the launch of the new Xperia 5. The device has a 6.1-inch, 21:9 ratio OLED display, and boasts that it has Dolby Atmos ...

12. Live from Samsung's IFA 2019 press event!
(English/engadget)

Samsung already revealed the Galaxy Note 10 a few weeks ago, but the company is still hosting a press conference here in Berlin for IFA 2019. Between then and now, the Korean giant has announced the Galaxy ...

13. Beijing promises "no mercy" for the "backstage masterminds" of the Hong Kong uprising
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

China's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office hosted a press conference on the ongoing Hong Kong pro-democracy uprising, with spokesman Yang Guang directing every branch and agency of Hong Kong's government ...

14. Ring: "We don't use facial recognition"; also Ring: "We have a head of facial recognition research"
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... true, but you know what's also true? There's a dude at Ring Ukraine named Oleksandr Obiednikov whose title is "head of face recognition researchm" and who has given conference talks on how facial recognition ...

15. Robotic bird inspired by seagull steals show at World Robot Conference in China
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

The fifth annual World Robot Conference was open to the public in Beijing last Thursday, August 22, and this bionic flying bird based on a herring gull was one of the more spectacular sights. Other robots ...

16. Trump and Macron strike deal to end feud over France’s tax on tech giants
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... news conference with Trump as the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Biarritz, France, ended on Monday. From Bloomberg: The law Macron signed imposes a three per cent tax on the revenue of technology giants ...

17. DOJ is working with states on antitrust investigations of tech companies
(English/engadget)

... a Colorado tech policy conference that the DOJ was working wit... Read all  ...

18. Visionect Joan meeting room management device review
(English/the-gadgeteer)

REVIEW – If you have more than 1 conference room and more than 1 employee, you’ve most likely run into overbooked meeting space syndrome.  Sure, most corporate calendar systems will help broker online ...

19. "Inclusive" tech conference surprises registrees with a demand that they wear an unremovable, chipped surveillance bracelet
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

Sumana Harihareswara (previously) writes, "The Abstractions tech conference (Aug 21-23, in Pittsburgh) doesn't tell attendees this before they buy a ticket, but attendance requires you wear their wristband ...

20. CloudBees Advances State of the DevOps World
(English/Linuxtoday)

At its annual user conference, CloudBees previews a new Software Delivery Management platform as the DevOps vendor celebrates 15 years of Jenkins. Read all  ...

21. Unintentionally funny voice-over-IP demo from 1978
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... the VoIP that we know and love (?) today. Above is a 1979 video from the USC Information Sciences Institute of an experiment involving a "dramatization" of a group teleconference. As /r/ObscureMedia user ...

22. After Math: Things that shouldn't cost this much
(English/engadget)

... at the same dang press conference. That ain't... Read all  ...

23. Huawei's Android alternative powers Honor's first smart TV
(English/engadget)

Huawei has unveiled its Honor brand's first smart TV, which is also the first product powered by the Android alternative the company launched at its developer conference. As the controversial manufacturer ...

24. Huawei reveals Harmony OS, its alternative to Android
(English/engadget)

Huawei's long-rumored Android alternative, Hongmeng, is finally official. At today's Huawei Developer Conference, the company's Consumer Business Group CEO Richard Yu surprised the audience ...

25. Shingy, AOL's secret weapon for staying hip, is leaving
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... paid for him to watch “the future take shape across the vast online landscape,” adding that, “I fly all around the world and go to conferences” and “I listen to where media is headed and figure out how ...