‘What’s Oculus Rift?’ And Other Questions About Facebook’s New Foray Into Virtual Reality

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But if Oculus is so great, then why do people seem so surprised that Facebook has acquired it?

Partly it’s that Oculus, despite its popularity among gamers and its buy-in from the tech community, is still a small start-up. (It got its start on Kickstarter, where, in a 2012 campaign that sought $250,000 in funding, it raised more than $2 million. It remains one of Kickstarter’s most successful campaigns.) And, furthermore, Oculus has been focused on what many have seen as a niche technology for a niche demographic—hard-core gamers 

via ‘What’s Oculus Rift?’ And Other Questions About Facebook’s New Foray Into Virtual Reality – Megan Garber – The Atlantic.

Why the display server doesn’t matter

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The result of this is the display server doesn’t matter much to applications because we have pretty good toolkits that already hide all this information from us. And it doesn’t matter much to drivers as they’re providing much the same operations to anything that uses them (i.e. buffer management and passing shaders around).

via Bob’s development blog: Why the display server doesn’t matter.

N.S.A. Breached Chinese Servers Seen as Security Threat

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William Plummer, a senior Huawei executive in the United States, said the company had no idea it was an N.S.A. target, adding that in his personal opinion, “The irony is that exactly what they are doing to us is what they have always charged that the Chinese are doing through us.”

via N.S.A. Breached Chinese Servers Seen as Security Threat – NYTimes.com.

Apple rejects Tank Battle 1942 for depicting Germans & Russians as “enemies”

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In case you think you’ve read that wrong, I’ll summarise: a World War II-themed game that depicts fighting between two countries that actually fought in WWII breaks the rules. And apparently Drive on Moscow, Panzer Corps, and every single one of Hunted Cow’s other Tank Battle games don’t.

via Apple rejects Tank Battle 1942 for depicting Germans & Russians as “enemies” UPDATED.

Why, oh WHY, do those #?@! nutheads use vi?

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Yes, there are definite reasons why the vi/vim editing model is just superior to any other out there. And you don’t need to be a Unix whiz to use it, either: vim is available for free for almost any platform out there, and there are plug-ins to get the functionality inside all major IDEs.

via Why, oh WHY, do those #?@! nutheads use vi?.

If you want to research vi/vim editing some more, here are some useful references:

And of course:

How to return to the moon in just four years

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In a four-launch scenario, the lander would precede the crew to the moon. The first two launches would be a moon injection stage followed by a lunar lander. These two vehicles would rendezvous in Earth’s orbit before the moon injection stage would send the lander ahead to the moon. The next two Falcon launches would carry a second moon injection stage and then the crew in their capsule/service module. After a similar boost in a moon-injection stage, they would meet up with the lander in lunar orbit.

The rest of the mission would be like the Apollo mission — Americans on the moon, once again taking giant leaps for mankind.

via How to return to the moon in just four years | Fox News.

How to set up your own private instant messaging server

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The video below will walk through the process of setting up and installing Prosody, a lightweight Lua-based instant messaging server application. We’ll be using Ubuntu 12.04 for our server, though Prosody is a cross-platform application and will run on Windows, OS X, and a number of different Linuxes. Strap in, grab your server, and let’s roll!

via How to set up your own private instant messaging server | Ars Technica.