Month: December 2015

I LOVE VLC Player. It plays anything! So, I use it all the time on Linux and Windows… even my Macbook Pro! Now, I can use it on my Chromebook!

VLC finally available for Chrome OS

Android Authority – By: Edgar Cervantes – “When in doubt of whether you’ll be able to play some obscure media file or not, just download VLC. That has been our philosophy for a long time. VLC is famous for supporting the largest variety of media formats. I have personally never encountered a file which doesn’t work with this player, and now Chrome OS users can finally enjoy it.

This happens to be huge news, as Chrome OS was one of the last major operating systems without official VLC support. VLC is pretty much everywhere right now. There are versions for Android, iOS, Windows, Linux and OS X, as well as more obscure operating systems like Solaris, Haiku, ReactOS and others.

Chrome OS was certainly late to the party, but that is due to very valid reasons. Adopting solutions like PPAPI, NaCL and Javascript would require rewriting all the code and would bring some issues to the database. Of course, this was before Google announced ARC (Android Runtime for Chrome), a feature that would allow Chromebooks to run Android apps.

This changed everything for VLC. They were able to keep 95% of the code they already had, and adapting the rest to work with the web-based operating system. The final result is an application that works just as well as all other VLC versions.

It supports the same video and audio formats, as well as subtitle files. You can even play streams. Other supported features include playlists, accelerated playback, an audio equalizer, audio/video synchronization and hardware-accelerated video/audio decoding.

The only trick here is that the team has only tested it with two Chrome OS devices: the Chromebook Pixel and the HP Chromebook 14, which are the only two machines the team had access to. Please do test it on your own devices, though, and try to report any bugs you find.

Ready for some mad media playback? Just click through the button below to download the app from the Chrome Web Store. And don’t forget to hit the comments and let us know how VLC for Chrome OS is treating you!”

Looks like I have to register my drone. Stupid government. Grump.

A complete list of drones that need to be registered with the FAA

BGR – By: Yoni Heisler – “Just in time for the holidays, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) earlier this week donned their Grinch costume and announced that individuals with drones that weigh more than half a pound (.55 pounds or 250 grams, to be exact) will have to register it with the FAA. On top of that, the registration process requires drone owners to fork over $5.

It may sound like your everyday email scam at first glance, but rest assured that the FAA’s new guidelines are legit and are set to go into effect on December 21. To encourage drone registration, the FAA is willing to waive the aforementioned $5 fee if users register by January 20, 2016.

‘Registering unmanned aircraft will help build a culture of accountability and responsibility, especially with new users who have no experience operating in the U.S. aviation system,’ U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said this week. ‘It will help protect public safety in the air and on the ground.’

And lest you think this is some registration you can gleefully ignore, the penalties for not registering eligible drones are stiff, and include civil fines in the $27,000 range, criminal fines as high as $250,000, and up to three years in prison.

All that said, if you’re at all curious if you need to register a drone you might have in your possession, Wired has come out with an exhaustive list detailing which drones from which manufacturers need to be accounted for. Suffice it to say, if you have a drone that can take video footage, you’re going to have to register. On the flipside, most drones that can fit inside your hand will likely pass muster.

Drones that must be registered include the following:

3DRobotics

3DR
3DR Solo (with gimbal)
3DR Solo (without gimbal)

DJI
DJI Inspire 1
DJI Inspire Pro
DJI Phantom 3 Advanced
DJI Phantom 3 Professional
DJI Phantom 3 Standard

Helimax RC
Helimax FORM500
Helimax Voltage 500

Parrot
Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 (Elite Edition)
Parrot Bebop
Parrot Bebop

Yuneec

Yuneec Typhoon G Yes

Yuneec Typhoon Q500 4
Yuneec Typhoon Q500+

Amazon
Hubsan x4 FPV
Hubsan x4 Pro

BH Photo
UDI U818A-1 Discovery HD
UDI U842 Falcon

Drones that do not need to be registered include the following:

Parrot Rolling Spider minidrone from Parrot
Sky Viper s670 Stunt Drone
Syma X5
Syma X5C
Hubsan x4 camera
Hubsan x4 Nano
Hubsan x4 (H107L
Extreme Fliers Micro Drone 2.0
Air Hogs Millenium Falco
Helimax 1SQ No Helimax RC $100 0.07
Helimax 1SQ V-cam No Helimax RC $130 0.07
Helimax 1Si (with camera
Helimax 230Si (with camera)
Parrot Airborne Cargo minidrone
Parrot Airborne Night minidrone

For more context, the FAA has a page up with a few illustrative examples indicating which type of drones are likely to need registration and which ones don’t. Of course, if you just google the weight of any drones you own, you should be good to go.

Happy flying.”

Our ol’ buddy By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols seems to think so!

Amid abandonment and failures, ?is Firefox the walking dead?

ZDNet – By: By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols – “Once upon a time I was a big Firefox fan.

Firefox 1.0 was a world better than the decrepit Internet Explorer 6 in 2005. A decade later it’s a different story. Mozilla and Firefox are the zombies, and IE — alongside its Windows 10 browser cousin Edge, are alive and well.

How did Firefox go from being a popular, open-source web browser to the unpopular program it is today? It happened a little something like this.

It’s been getting slower and klutzier release after release. I run all the major browsers and Firefox can’t compete. I like Google Chrome the best today, but I think it could stand some improvement and competition.

Unfortunately, Firefox is no longer a competitor.

This isn’t just my opinion. The federal government’s Digital Analytics Program (DAP), shows that Firefox has dropped in popularity from 11 percent in March to 9.7 percent in December. That’s far behind, Chrome, with shy of 42 percent, and all varieties of IE with 22.2 percent.

In short, fewer and fewer people like Firefox.

It’s not simply that Firefox is slow and prone to bugs. Mozilla, Firefox’s parent organization, seems to be falling apart at the seams.

I date Mozilla’s collapse to Brendan Eich, Mozilla co-founder and creator of JavaScript, being forced out as CEO in June 2014. Nine days after being named CEO, Eich went from Mozilla’s savior to a pariah. Eich’s donation of $1,000 to the campaign supporting California’s anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8 in 2008 led to a bloody internal fight. Eich eventually backpedaled from his position, but it was too little, too late.

Since then Mozilla has drifted both with its goals and its technology. Firefox, the web browser, became an after-thought. Mozilla’s leadership put its focus on Firefox OS, its smartphone operating system rival to Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

It failed — badly.

By early December, the word was out. Mozilla was giving up on Firefox OS. Ari Jaaksi, Mozilla’s senior vice president of connected devices, explained (perhaps as he was packing his desk): “Because we were not able to deliver the best user experience possible, we decided to stop offering Firefox OS smartphones through carrier channels.”

Oh, in theory, Firefox OS will live on as Internet of Things (IoT), but that won’t save Mozilla’s bacon.

Neither will Thunderbird, a once popular e-mail client. Mozilla is trying, for the second time, to kill off Thunderbird. While web-based e-mail is now much more popular than clients, many old-time Mozilla fans aren’t happy with Mozilla booting Thunderbird to the curb.

Equally damaging was when Mozilla alienated its loyal developer community by deprecating XPCOM and XUL, the foundations of its once popular extension system. Mozilla also annoyed its users by quietly deploying Suggested Tiles, a built-in commercial ad system.

Three months later Mozilla killed the unpopular program.

Mozilla also replaced its profitable Google ad deal with three different search engine deals: Yahoo, Yandex, and Baidu. How much does Mozilla make from these deals? We don’t know. Mozilla isn’t saying.

We do know, however, that Yahoo is in a world of hurt thanks to its many mistakes.

Ironically, in its latest financial report for 2014 but just released earlier this month, the Mozilla Foundation has its best financial year ever. The foundation increased its revenue from $314 million to more than $329 million. In the bank, Mozilla has $266.5 million in assets. Of course, this was all before Mozilla turned away from Google and to Yahoo for its main revenue stream.

While Mozilla may be cash-rich, it’s hard to see where it goes from here. It’s grand plan for the future, Firefox OS, is a dead operating system walking. The Firefox web browser continues to bleed both users and developers.

Mozilla and Firefox will continue to stumble forward, but it’s both a zombie group and product. It’s only a matter of time until both expire once and for all.”