Last minute geek

1. Facebook’s simplified Messenger app interface is rolling out to users
(English/engadget)

Facebook teased a Messenger redesign at its F8 conference back in May and then started slowly rolling out the simpler interface last October. Now, The Verge reports, the redesign is becoming available ...

2. That first plant grown on the moon? Already dead.
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... froze to death during the lunar night. From GBTimes: Liu Hanlong, head of the experiment at Chongqing University, said at a Chongqing government press conference on Tuesday that the temperature inside ...

3. LA teachers' strike: Charter school teachers walk out, too
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... Schools said more than a year and a half of negotiations with school management failed to yield a contract. At a morning news conference, teachers and their supporters chanted and waved signs outside Accelerated’s ...

4. Rome and the Catholic Church fighting over change tossed into the Trevi Fountain
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... Italian bishops' conference. "I still hope it will not be final."The newspaper ran a scathing article on the move in its Saturday edition, headlined "Money taken from the poorest". City councillors have ...

5. Tesla offers Model 3 as a reward to security researchers
(English/engadget)

The annual Pwn2Own contest at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, Canada usually ends with security researchers taking home the laptops they've exploited. This year they could take home a Tesla.  ...

6. A conference room full of holograms is the future of work
(English/engadget)

Sure, you can play immersive games and watch whales come out of the floor with Magic Leap, but another potential use case of AR is teleconferencing and work collaboration. That's mostly done via avatars ...

7. A history of the sprawling personality clashes over RSS
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... some of they key players (I volunteered for several years as a conference committee member for the O'Reilly P2P and Emerging Tech conferences, where much of this played out). That all said, I think Target's ...

8. Unemployed 20-year-old who lives with his parents confesses to massive German political dox
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... If the target reuses the same password across all their accounts, even better. Child’s play, really. The idea that the federal police should hire the hacker, a proposition raised during the press conference, ...

9. Samsung's 'Bots' and exoskeleton hint at the future of care
(English/engadget)

At Samsung's press conference, the day before CES officially opened, there was the usual parade of smart home gadgets and appliances. Then right at the end, almost as an aside, the company revealed ...

10. I want Sony's 360 Reality Audio to be the future of music
(English/engadget)

Sony's CES press conference didn't offer many surprises, aside from a lot of discussion around Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and a cameo by Pharrell Williams. The singer and producer was ...

11. Watch NVIDIA's CES press conference in 13 minutes
(English/engadget)

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12. Panasonic's GZ2000 4K OLED is for color accuracy fanatics
(English/engadget)

After alluding to it during its press conference, Panasonic has unveiled the GZ2000, a 4K OLED TV aimed at folks who want very accurate colors. Available in 55- and 65-inch models, it'll support both ...

13. Watch Samsung's CES 2019 press conference in 8 minutes
(English/engadget)

This year at CES Samsung celebrated 50 years in the electronics business, and seemed intent on blowing things out with a combination of smart home products, AI and 5G. Besides taking a victory lap ...

14. Intel's Lakefield stacks desktop and Atom cores on a ‘3D’ chip
(English/engadget)

Intel led its CES press conference today by announcing a lineup of no less than six new 9th-gen processors, but it's looking towards a future beyond these chips, too. The company shed some light on ...

15. Watch LG’s CES press conference in 8 minutes
(English/engadget)

Considering LG began its CES hype campaign in early December, the company's obscenely early press conference today -- the first of the show -- was unexpectedly short and sweet. LG is committed ...

16. A drone for the flipside of the horizon
(English/the-gadgeteer)

NEWS – The Titan Underwater Drone will be displayed at this years CES conference. The drone is a product of  Geneinno, a technology company dedicated to the design of modern underwater equipment. They ...

17. The Morning After: Is CES another auto show?
(English/engadget)

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous. Welcome to your weekend. CES is about to start, and before we dive headlong into a series of press conferences and hands-on demonstrations, we'll try to figure ...

18. Kevin Spacey charged with felony indecent assault and battery, releases video as Frank Underwood
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... to law enforcement's attention by the boy's mother, Heather Unruh, a former news anchor for WCVB in Boston. From the Globe: In Nov. 2017, during an emotional news conference, Unruh publicly accused Spacey ...

19. The Xbox One's original indie game is finally here
(English/engadget)

Patience. Below is a game steeped in time, from creation to consumption, and it demands patience from developers and players alike. Capybara Games revealed Below during the Xbox E3 conference in 2013, ...

20. An introduction to Python and containers: 6 conference talks you may have missed
(English/Linuxtoday)

Whether you're a new or experienced user, you'll learn something new about Python and containers in these videos. Read all

21. 'Donald's Right.' Putin praises Trump Syria withdrawal tweet as 'the right decision'
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

... at his yearly press conference, his 14th annual Q&A, which Russian and foreign media attended in Moscow. From the New York Times: Mr. Trump said on Wednesday that he was ordering the withdrawal because ...

22. Hot tech company trend: Branded fruit as conference swag
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

In an article published Wednesday, Fast Company revealed that logoed fruits and vegetables are a hot trend with tech companies, beating out the usual swag like stress balls or notebooks. Serial artrepreneur ...

23. 40 top Linux and open source conferences in 2019
(English/Linuxtoday)

 opensource.com: We've rounded up a few favorite picks for conferences to attend in 2019. Read all  ...

24. Impressive robot praised by Russia state television revealed to be a man in a costume
(English/BoingBoing ibag)

State-owned TV network Russia-24 ran a story about an impressive humanoid robot named Boris that wowed attendees at a youth technology conference. Turns out, Boris the Robot was actually a man inside a ...

25. NSA official: China is preparing for possible high-profile hacks
(English/engadget)

NSA official Rob Joyce told guests at a Wall Street Journal security conference that hacking-related Chinese activity had been climbing in recent months. He was concerned the country was "prepositioning" ...