(Telecompaper) Telia Lithuania has signed a EUR 1.2 million deal to supply PCs to state institutions. The contract was signed with the State Agency for Digital Solutions (VASA)...

(Telecompaper) KDDI and Altius Link have launched a new customer support project harnessing the digital transformation (DX) expertise of the KDDI Customer Centre, including generative AI technology...

(Telecompaper) NEC Corporation has received an order for a next-generation supercomputer system from Japan's National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology...

(Telecompaper) Exponential-e, UK provider of cloud, communications, connectivity and cyber security services, has secured a place as a supplier on the new Crown Commercial Service (CCS) G-Cloud 14 Framework...

(Telecompaper) Malawian operator TNM and League of Malawi (SULOM) have jointly announced 100 percent electronic ticketing for all matches beginning 01 December...

(Telecompaper) France's telecom authority Arcep has published draft recommendations for public consultation with the aim to clarify what operators should do in...

(Telecompaper) Ericsson has urged governments to play a key role in developing strategies that support internet access and online education...

(Telecompaper) The Swedish streaming market is undergoing a "significant upswing" after a period of slower growth, according to consultancy Mediavision, with 600,000 new streaming subscriptions in the third quarter compared with Q3 2023. The main reason is the arrival of more affordable, ad-supported subscription...

Our long-term Super Meteor hasn’t had a proper custodian in a few months and with a 4,000-odd km tour to the South coming up, I decided to grab the keys and give this bike a proper send-off from our long-term garage. Before this, I hadn’t spent proper seat time aboard the Super Meteor, and ever since it had entered our fleet, I’d always wanted to take it for a long road trip.

Even before I’d clocked a single kilometre on this ride, I was smitten by how good this bike looks. And it’s an opinion the general public seems to share. From the large teardrop-shaped fuel tank, that swooping rear fender and those chrome exhaust header pipes, this bike is a looker. There were some much larger and way more expensive bikes with me on the trip but even when parked next to those machines, the Super Meteor always had people swarming around it.

Those textbook good looks do come at a price though. Due to that long, low-slung silhouette that the Super Meteor cuts, suspension travel at the rear is quite limited. And it is set up quite stiff, which means that you feel every little bump on the road. It’s not as bad as some other Chinese cruisers at this price point, but it’s not a very pleasant ride either. What makes matters worse is that sofa-like feet-forward riding position, which means your back bears the brunt of all the abuse Indian roads subject the bike to. And when you inevitably encounter a mountainous speedbreaker on the road, you need to slow down to a halt and negotiate it carefully due to the limited ground clearance on offer.

To its credit, the Super Meteor only scraped its belly twice over the multitude of speed breakers I came across and that could be due to the fact that I had loaded the bike up with luggage, plus 80kg me. 

Thankfully, that sweet 648cc parallel-twin mill diverts your mind from all these shortcomings as soon as you twist the throttle. There’s no sudden surge like on a KTM 390 Duke (my personal bike that I usually tour on), but there’s strong pull available at fairly low revs in just about any gear. 100kph in sixth gear is effortless and if you choose to venture beyond that threshold, this engine will be a willing companion along with a sweet soundtrack to accompany it. Fuel economy while cruising at triple-digit speeds constantly ranged in the early to mid-20s for me.

If you’ve done any amount of touring you’ll know that an engine that just makes power isn’t everything; refinement is equally important. And I’m pleased to report that the Super Meteor has fared exceptionally well in this regard. What did annoy me on those long days was the fuel gauge that had a mind of its own once it dropped below the halfway point. In fact, if you put the bike on the side stand, the fuel level would climb back up and stay there for a good 5-10 minutes once you start riding, and then drop back down at an alarmingly quick rate. On a bike that’s got some proper mile-munching capabilities, fixing this niggle would go a long way.

The last service we did was a pretty comprehensive one as I wanted to make sure everything was shipshape before such a long ride. The total was Rs 10,351 which seems a little steep, and more than half of that amount (Rs 5,900) went towards replacing the front and rear brake pads. This is something to keep in mind because our bike had only done 4,000km when we got it serviced and the pads were nearly worn out.

In our nine months with it, there have been no worrying issues with the bike. It has held up largely well but there is a bit of oxidation on the engine casing and the triple clamp has also started to rust. However, our bike was parked outside through the monsoon so I suppose this may not have happened if the bike had sheltered parking.

Barring these issues, the Super Meteor 650 has been faultless and I have to say I’ll be quite dejected to see it go. However, the silver lining to this proverbial dark cloud is that we will quite possibly be swapping the Super Meteor for the new Himalayan, and that is one new Royal Enfield I believe will be a serious contender in the sub-Rs 4 lakh ADV tourer category. An exciting year up ahead indeed!

Also see:

Royal Enfield Super Meteor 650 long term review, 3500km report

Royal Enfield Super Meteor 650 long term review, 1180km report

Honda has filed a patent for a twin-screw supercharger, similar to the one found on the Kawasaki H2.

1. Last Supermoon Of 2024 Emerges This Week—Here’s What To Know About The ‘Beaver’ Moon  Forbes
2. November supermoon will rise this week, and here's why it's so special  NBC Chicago
3. The Next Full Moon Will Be the Last of Four Consecutive Supermoons  Science@NASA
4. Beaver Moon 2024: See the final 'supermoon' of the year rise next to the 'Seven Sisters'  Livescience.com
5. Be sure to catch this week's full supermoon, the last one for a year  MLive.com

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Stellantis is the latest US electric vehicle stakeholder to firm up its EV supply chain with synthetic graphite produced in Tennessee.

The post The Domestic EV Supply Chain Is Getting A Big Dose Of Synthetic Graphite appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Waymo is growing its ridership by leaps and bounds, and opening up to more and more riders almost every week it seems. It’s also working on its PR, looking to score brownie points for helping different disadvantaged groups. Or maybe it’s just trying to do good in the world — ... [continued]

The post Waymo Supporting Single Mothers & Vulnerable Road Users appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Other World Computing (OWC) has launched the Thunderbolt 5 Hub, which promises to elevate device connectivity for Macs, PCs, and even tablets like the iPad Pro. This new hub delivers an impressive 80Gb/s of bi-directional data speed -- double that of Thunderbolt 4 and USB4 -- and supports up to 120Gb/s for users needing higher display bandwidth. With just a single cable, users can expand their device’s ports to include three Thunderbolt 5 ports and a USB-A port, making this hub a productivity game changer. For tablet users, the OWC Thunderbolt 5 Hub is especially transformative, turning an iPad Pro… [Continue Reading]

SurveyMonkey, a widely used platform for creating surveys and forms, has expanded its social sharing capabilities to include WhatsApp. This addition allows users to share their surveys and forms directly with WhatsApp contacts and groups, aiming to simplify the distribution process. WhatsApp joins SurveyMonkey’s existing social sharing options, which include LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Microsoft Teams. With over 2 billion active users globally, WhatsApp is recognized as one of the most popular messaging apps. SurveyMonkey customers in over 130 countries, speaking 56 different languages, can now leverage this integration to share surveys and forms through a platform that… [Continue Reading]

A couple of months ago, we reported how Google Search will label if an image was AI-generated, edited by photo editing software or taken with a camera by working with Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) as a technical standard. Well, now Google officially supports C2PA metadata in the about this image feature.

Google wrote this morning, Google Search now supports this [C2PA] metadata in the "About this image" feature."

Google updated its image meta data documentation to add a new section for "How C2PA metadata can appear in Google Search results."

The new section reads:

If an image contains C2PA metadata, Google can extract those details and may show information in the "About this image" feature, such as how the image was created or if it was edited with AI tools. This metadata comes from a signer, which is usually an app, device, or service (for example, photo editing software, the camera itself, or other services that modify or create images) that meets the following conditions:

• The app, device, or service has adopted C2PA version 2.1 or later.
• The image's manifest must be signed by a certificate from a Certification Authority on the C2PA Trust List.

It does seem like Adobe products, like Photoshop, Illustrated, and others, do support this metadata.

I just wonder how it handles the image above, which I generate using Midjourney AI and then edit later in Photoshop.

Forum discussion at X.

Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have discovered an ingenious new way to recycle Lithium Ion batteries, and it’s so simple that even your mum could do it. Maybe. The problem with battery recycling has always been that it’s rather cumbersome. Traditional methods involve breaking down batteries into their constituent parts, then extracting the valuable materials such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel. The process works, but it’s not exactly what you’d call efficient, and it can be quite costly....

The post Quick-Release Binder – Recycling Lithium Ion Batteries Just Got Super Easy appeared first on The Red Ferret Journal.

It’s hard not to enjoy the constant stream of Chinese electric cars coming down the pipe. Another day, another ridiculously cheap model. This LUQI M1 EV300 electric car is reminiscent of the Renault Twizy (£6950), but with a touch more room and polish. Of course it’s only a city runabout (or should we say crawlabout?), but it’s definitely got bags of cute. Unfortunately there are pathetically few specifications to hand, apart from the fact that it’s Chinese, costs $900,  comes...

The post LUQI M1 EV300 – $900 for your next super slow EV? appeared first on The Red Ferret Journal.

In terms of top-grossing Wednesday openers, the month of April has never been a super place to launch a movie. That is, until now with The Super Mario Bros Movie. 

If you need to add encryption or digital signing to the Thunderbird email app (or other supporting apps) on Android, there's one clear and easy route to success.

As Fr. Tom gets close to the end of his series on Darwin and Christianity, he reflects on the terms and concepts of nature and super-nature.

We have a mid-week supplemental lesson from Jeannie today with helpful information about the "Christian" and "Gnostic" apocryphal books and why they were rejected by the Church.

In this second supplemental lesson, Jeannie continues her teaching on the apocryphal books, in particular, the Gnostic gospels.

Following the Scripture readings and the sermon, there are prayers that are skipped in some churches. These prayers are part of the Litany of Fervent Supplication, and Fr. Thomas feels they are very important.

Fr. John compares the worldviews of Joni Erickson Tada and Christopher Reeve.

With help from his daughter, Fr. Joseph tries to stay on pitch while singing Dan Idzikowski's "Superchristological and Homoousiosis".

The legend of Sunshine Boy and his lesson in humility.

"The danger...is that any systemization of spiritual realities is both wrong and thus misleading. Systems, definitions and diagrams of the inner life are, in a sense, by definition wrong because they are an attempt to reduce to something that is merely rational that which transcends our rational capacity. The spiritual life is known and experienced, but because it is supra-rational, it cannot be spoken of in rational categories. Which does not mean that it cannot be spoken of at all. Irony, metaphor, and apophatic statements can sometimes point toward supra-rational, inner realities, or to what such realities are not. However, the word ‘sometimes’ is key."

In the anecdotal introduction to a new reflection, Fr. John tells the story of the fall of Constantinople to the western crusaders in 1204, showing how this event, inspired in part by new claims of papal supremacy, resulted in the permanent separation of eastern and western Christendom.

In this episode, Fr. John discusses the immediate aftermath of the mutual excommunications of 1054 and the ways in which papal supremacy emerged as the main point of continued division between the east and the west.

In this episode, Fr. John discusses the coming of the crusades and the decisive role played by Pope Gregory VII.

In this final episode of Reflection 15, Fr. John discusses the thirteenth-century popes Innocent III and Gregory IX, showing the close connection between their efforts to advance papal supremacy on the one hand and direct crusades against the Orthodox on the other. He concludes the reflection by noting the recent meeting of Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew and placing it within the context of centuries of cultural division between east and west.

In this episode, Fr. John discusses Pope Urban II's calling of the First Crusade and the impact it and the crusades of the twelfth century had upon relations between the Orthodox and Roman Catholics.

In his first podcast, Dn. Michael tackles the question of Sola Scriptura and the Tradition of the Church.

the incredible web-based Mac/NeXT system emulator somehow keeps getting better #

I have just read two fascinating pieces about Pope Francis’ recent and controversial document Fiducia Supplicans, which officially allows Roman Catholic priests to bless persons in same-sex relationships, one by an Orthodox and the other by a Roman Catholic.

Scott Hanselman and his wife will be joining the walk for diabetes on May 6 2006. They've set a goal of raising $10,000 for this event and could use your help in reaching that goal. I encourage all of you to go to Scott's blog to find out more about this worthy cause, or go directly to diabetes.org to make... (64 words)

Even though we live in a pluraistic society, Orthodox Christians must uphold the uniqueness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Fr Tom teaches us that Christ and the Cross are not simply one way to the Father, but the only way. (Sunday before the Elevation of the Precious Cross)

Throughout the scriptures the imagery of the supper is used to depict the hospitality of God toward us. Fr Tom reminds us to respond well to the invitation to be united to Christ. (Twenty-ninth Sunday after Pentecost. Sermon given in Florida.)

We all receive an invitation to the marriage supper of the Lamb, but how will we respond? Will we be found ready in our wedding garments? Fr. Tom calls us to look to the precious and life-giving cross to prepare ourselves as a bride waiting for the consummation of all things in Christ.

Listen as Fr. Tom discusses how active participation in the life of the Church now gives us a foretaste of the inheritance that awaits us in eternity.

Fr. Gregory Hallam examines the hymn we sing throughout the Liturgy in commemoration of our Lord's institution of the Holy Eucharist.