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Cryptofarm with thousands of PS4 Pros raided in Ukraine
The Security Service of Ukraine has discovered and raided a cryptocurrency mining farm that allegedly stole electricity from the country's power grid.
America can't solve its migrant labor crisis with automation
From the moment that Donald Trump set foot on the Trump Tower escalator, the promise of mass deportations for undocumented immigrants was a pillar of his presidential campaign. This is one promise that the current administration has managed to keep, with ICE enforcement efforts skyrocketing since Trump took office in January 2017. While the president's executive orders on immigration have played well with his political base, they've caused havoc with a number of US industries, from tourism to construction. But nowhere are the detrimental effects of these policies more clearly illustrated than in the agricultural sector. What's more, the current state of agricultural automation appears woefully unprepared to fully supplement the loss of migrant labor.
Shropshire farm completes harvest with nothing but robots
Researchers in Shropshire, England have managed to sow and harvest a field of barley using nothing but robots. Many aspects of farming have now been automated, but rarely is the entire process — planting, tending, monitoring and harvesting — completed without someone stepping foot inside the field. The 'Hands-Free Hectare' project was set up last October by a team from Harper Adams University. With £200,000 in government funding, they modified a tractor and combine harvester with cameras, lasers and GPS systems. Drones and a robot "scout," which could scoop up and carry soil samples, helped the group monitor the field from afar.
Recommended Reading: Radiohead's 'OK Computer' predicted the future
The Radiohead Prophesies: How 'OK Computer' Predicted the Future Stuart Berman, Pitchfork Pitchfork is celebrating the 20th anniversary of Radiohead's OK Computer this week, including a pretty interesting look at how Thom Yorke imagined the future in 1997. Released at a time when the internet was still a new thing, the album's content ties in directly to 2017. As Berman notes, "OK Computer is really more like the first draft for a never-filmed pilot episode of Black Mirror."
ICYMI: Improving pesticide's sticking abilities
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: MIT researchers created a kind of pesticide that is much more likely to stick on plant leaves because its additives are made of negatively and positively charged polymers that bond together. This means far less pesticide needs to be used for the same effect, and fewer pollutants are likely to get into the water system. If you're interested in watching the full dominoes video (and why wouldn't you be, that stuff is mesmerizing) you can find it here. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Google AI builds a better cucumber farm
Artificial intelligence technology doesn't just have to solve grand challenges. Sometimes, it can tackle decidedly everyday problems -- like, say, improving a cucumber farm. Makoto Koike has built a cucumber sorter that uses Google's TensorFlow machine learning technology to save his farmer parents a lot of work. The system uses a camera-equipped Raspberry Pi 3 to snap photos of the veggies and send the shots to a small TensorFlow neural network, where they're identified as cucumbers. After that, it sends images to a larger network on a Linux server to classify the cucumbers by attributes like color, shape and size. An Arduino Micro uses that info to control the actual sorting, while a Windows PC trains the neural network with images.
6 incredible high-tech urban farms
By Cat DiStasioFarm life typically calls to mind sprawling fields of plants in neat rows, dotted with bent-over bodies and heavy diesel-guzzling equipment. The world is rapidly changing, though, and so too is the face of agriculture. As the world's population booms and many people move to cities, a new generation of farms are sprouting up in bustling urban centers. New agricultural techniques are bringing crop yields indoors and, in some cases, underground in an effort to produce more food on a faster timeline with less energy and space. Read on to learn about some of the world's coolest indoor farms that are taking over the agricultural landscape leaf by leaf.
DJI's MG-1 drone is water-resistant, dustproof.. and made for farming
DJI's newest drone isn't its sexiest: it's a specialized, toughened agricultural drone. Yep, hard to get excited about unless you're a farmer perhaps, but the Agras MG-1 is dust-proof, water resistant and constructed from anti-corrosive materials. Smart decisions for an agriculture drone, but also ones we wouldn't mind some extra peace of mind in the consumer drones we pilot in the suburbs and cities. (Rain is a real danger, okay?) The MG-1 can even be rinsed clean after a day on ranch. When it comes to crop-spraying, the drone can carry over 10kgs of product -- and DJI pegs it at over 40 times more efficient than manual spraying -- although it uses a watering can to illustrate the comparison...
The Daily Grind: When's the last time you stopped to smell the MMO roses?
I got my first aquafarm in ArcheAge over the weekend, and after I'd planted some coral and laid a few bamboo fish traps, I floated up to the surface and sat in my rowboat. My farm is situated inside a picturesque bay that almost always features player clippers cutting to and fro as well as beautiful weather and water effects that I've talked about before. So I just sat there, taking screenshots and taking it all in. It's been quite a while since I've played an MMO that made me want to simply exist in it and it's nice to be virtually home, so to speak. What about you, Massively readers? When did you last stop to smell the MMO roses? What were you seeing or doing at the time? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Pumpkin Online hits its funding goal
Starting out with a niche premise of farming and inclusivity, Pumpkin Online was never going to hit record-breaking numbers during its Kickstarter campaign. But fans can rejoice today, as the game met its funding goal with just a bit over 48 hours to go on the overall campaign. That's a far sight from hitting any stretch goals, but it means that development on the game should continue. The Kickstarter page launched with a modest goal of $30,000 in funding; the game is also seeking entrance on Steam Greenlight. If you were fond of the concept but didn't want to toss money in without the safety of a funded campaign, there's still a little more time to throw money into the pot. [Thanks to wolfyseyes for the tip!]
Pumpkin Online Kickstarter promises farming and dating
If you've ever spend hours plugging away at Harvest Moon and thought that the game would be better if it were online, Pumpkin Online is aimed directly at you. The game is on Kickstarter now, and it's intended to be a combination of the best elements of games like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing while also creating a robust environment for players to work, craft, and interact together. Players will have access to a variety of professions and goals as well as the ability to customize the inside and outside of their farms. They can also pursue friendly or romantic relationships with the townsfolk, with an emphasis on inclusive relationships and character options for all players. As of this writing, it's about halfway to its goal, so if you like the idea of an inclusive game or just want to farm with your friends, you might want to toss a few dollars into the bucket.
Warlords of Draenor: Dog may be in our garrisons after all
It's no secret that I love Dog, the farm puppy I rescued from the fields of Halfhill in Mists of Pandaria. I've written about Dog on a couple of different occasions, because he was just a really cool and unique perk to leveling reputation with the Tillers. Does Dog do anything? No, not really -- he just hangs around on the farm, responds to a few different emotes, but he doesn't actively do anything to further the game. He's just Dog, defender of the farm house, digger of holes, and overall good boy. It was with some concern that I wondered what Dog's fate would be when Warlords of Draenor hit -- I didn't like the idea of leaving the poor little guy behind. According to a recent tweet by Cory Stockton, that may not be a worry after all. A certain "Dog" might have just found his way to your Garrison in a future build. - Mumper (@mumper) August 7, 2014
India plans to build the world's largest floating solar farm
Solar farms need three things: sunlight, photovoltaic panels and a huge expanse of land. It's the third in that list that's hampering green efforts in countries like India, where space is scarce and therefore very expensive. That's why India is copying Japan's (pictured) idea of building floating solar farms out on the water, saving a fortune in land costs and helping to prevent evaporation in the hottest months. A partnership between India's national hydroelectric company and Kolkata's college of renewable energy plans to build a 50 megawatt floating solar farm -- one of the world's largest -- at some point in the future. Before that, however, a small pilot project will be constructed in a lake in Kerala in south-west India later this year which is expected to generate around 12 kilowatts of power. While we can't cover all of the world's oceans with solar panels, it does seem like a clever fix while scientists continue to work on the supercritical steam issue.
Working As Intended: Dabbling in indie sandbox Villagers and Heroes
Villagers and Heroes is not the sort of sandbox that gets a lot of coverage in the gaming press. You can't gank in the game. No one will murder you for your ore or your logs. There are no petty internet crime lords generating scandals or developers being ousted for cheating. Clichéd zombies are not waiting to slaughter you come nightfall. You cannot fall off a cliff or treetop pathway to your death. You never have to walk 10 miles uphill in the snow both ways to get to your house. You don't have to wait in line for an instance. You don't really have to fight at all. In fact, the worst thing that might happen to you is that you'll run out of energy.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: human diamonds, floating farm and a 13-year-old nuclear fusioneer
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. Ever wish you could take a bite out of Kanye West? A new (possibly satirical) startup is taking meat alternatives to an absurd new level, with plans to make salami from animal meat and human tissue from celebrities. No word yet on what Kanye thinks of the venture. In other weird science news, a Swiss company says it is creating diamonds from cremated human remains. The company claims that its so-called memorial diamonds are almost indistinguishable from a typical diamond.
Breakfast Topic: I did not farm, but I will garrison
Look, farming isn't Warcraft, okay? It just doesn't fit the fantasy of a grim conflict, of a war between ideologies, of a setting divided and defined by conflict for me. I just couldn't make that mental leap - I felt stupid running around killing weeds once, much less doing it over and over again so someone I didn't even particularly like would like me. Not even the dog could motivate me to do it. But somehow dress up much of the same kind of gameplay behind stone walls and describe it as me constructing a fortified base on an alien planet and suddenly I am there. It all comes down to trappings - the garrison concept works with what I think of as Warcraft. It seems like bringing the RTS's whole 'construct a base, generate resources, use them for battle' gameplay into the MMO, and it works for me in a way the farm never could. So I'm down for it, ludicrously so. How about you? Did you farm? Are you looking forward to garrisons?
What we leave behind
I'm really concerned about Dog. Dog is the dog that I rescued from near starvation in the Heartland over in the Valley of the Four Winds. I was so excited to find and rescue this poor little guy that I even wrote a brief article about him at the time. Since then, Dog has been happily living the life of a king on my farm, and despite the fact that I was never able to name him, he seems to be happy enough to just respond to the name Dog, not to mention a few choice emotes. If you haven't already done so, try using /love, /pet, /bark, or /kiss on your puppy, because the result is adorable. Actually, I kind of love everything on my farm. Shaggy the yak from Farmer Fung, the sheep from Chee Chee, the piggies sent courtesy of Fish Fellreed (who is still my favorite), and of course Luna the cat from Ella. Even the chickens, although they have a disturbing tendency to flop over dead due to phasing. I spent a lot of time building up the farm and making it the nicest little place to hang out, even when I'm not currently farming crops. It's a good farm. I had fun building it. But I'm super concerned about Dog, because I know I'll be leaving soon.
EVE Evolved: Strategic resources for everyone!
The past four EVE Online expansions have mostly focused on adding small features and overhauling old game mechanics and content that were beginning to show their age. Crucible delivered dozens of small but highly-requested features and gameplay improvements, and Inferno and Retribution continued with overhauls of several aging PvP systems. Even Odyssey contained mostly small features and revamps, its biggest gameplay features being a new hacking minigame and a streamlined scanning interface. It's been several years since EVE has received a truly massive and game-changing feature like wormholes or a sovereignty revamp, but that may all be about to change! CCP recently announced its intention to start reaching for big ideas again, but this time set over a more realistic timeframe. If everything goes according to plan, the next five years could see the introduction of player-built stargates and true deep space colonisation. I wrote about the potential of this concept last week and looked at some of the big features we'd need to make it a reality, but I didn't really delve into my personal favourite idea for a potential future expansion: New strategic resources and player-created deadspace complexes. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at how strategic resources could be used to get even individual players invested in something worth fighting for, and how player-created deadspace dungeons could be a great way to introduce them.
Will Sunsong Ranch fade into irrelevance in patch 6.0?
We've had some good times and some bad times with the Sunsong Ranch. Its original owner was more than just a little annoying at times, and there were issues with virmen and birds and all manner of extremely tiresome weeds, but it seems like the torrid affair may be coming to a close with patch 6.0. Blizzard Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street tweeted the following over the weekend: @russtrotter We don't want you to feel like you have to go visit it forever. It's a MoP feature. It will still be there for you though. - Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) July 13, 2013 So, it seems like the good news is that the ranch definitely won't be gone for good. It will remain on Pandaria, in its peaceful setting,for you to visit whenever you see fit, grow some herbs, watch the virmen and the birds, kill a weed, or just shoot the breeze with your pets. However, it doesn't sound like it will continue to be updated in the new expansion. What does this mean for the farm's success? Did it perform how the devs had hoped? Did it kill herbing? Were players too reliant on it? It would certainly be interesting to see whether this means an enhanced farm, or even something more akin to the much-desired player housing might appear with 6.0. It is also possible, of course, that the farm might go the way of other features that have been left for dust, and never reappear.
Patch 5.2 PTR: How to get your hands on Sunsong Ranch
When we last visited Sunsong Ranch in patch 5.2, it was to news of several improvements of the farming content. This included some changes to the Master Plow, some changes to the way seeds were planted, and to top it all off, the option to purchase your farm and make it your very own. This meant that the farm would turn into a rest point and an area where one could immediately log out of the game -- something that players had been requesting ever since they began helping Yoon and planting their own crops on his farm. While we knew that the option would eventually be added, it was not available with patch 5.2's first iteration on the PTR. So we had no news on how much it would cost, what kind of reputation you would need to have, or what exactly would happen to Farmer Yoon after you purchased his property. The latest build to hit the PTR has now unlocked the feature, and players can now test out the content to their heart's content. But uh ... you can't purchase the farm.
