The Daily Nerd (March 3rd, 2014)

The Daily Nerd (March 3rd, 2014) #

Gunshot victims to be suspended between life and death

Doctors will try to save the lives of 10 patients with knife or gunshot wounds by placing them in suspended animation, buying time to fix their injuries NEITHER dead or alive, knife-wound or gunshot victims will be cooled down and placed in suspended animation later this month, as a groundbreaking emergency technique is tested out for the first time.

Chris Granger — Toward a better programming

When I built the original prototype of Light Table I didn’t have any grand purpose or goal in mind. I simply had some ideas on how programming could be better and I wanted to see how hard they would be to build. Until fairly recently, it never dawned on me that I’ve actually spent the past decade trying out ideas on how programming could be better, from web frameworks, to Visual Studio, to Light Table and its future. And it wasn’t until I had that realization that I also came to the conclusion that I’d been going about this all wrong. As a matter of fact, I made a classic rookie mistake: I set out to answer a question I didn’t understand.

George Lucas explains how he invented lightsabers

was first seen as a special feature on the original trilogy’s DVD boxset in 2004, but this marks the first time the video has made its way onto the internet in an official capacity. It tells how ’ production staff planned and choreographed the movies’ increasingly complex fight sequences, and how they came to understand the capabilities and limitations of Lucas’ invented weapon. There’s one particularly interesting shot around two minutes into the video that shows Obi Wan Kenobi being run through by Darth Vader’s lightsaber. In Lucas’ cut of , the blade passes through an ethereal Obi Wan; in the early shot, it rips through his cloak, leaving a trail of fire and the aging Jedi’s upper body hanging in the air as his lower body slumps to the floor.

Shutting down Ubuntu One file services

Today we are announcing plans to shut down the Ubuntu One file services. This is a tough decision, particularly when our users rely so heavily on the functionality that Ubuntu One provides. However, like any company, we want to focus our efforts on our most important strategic initiatives and ensure we are not spread too thin.