Pixie: Open Source Renderer For Windows/OS/Linux

Being a HUGE 3D art/rendering enthusiast, I was pretty excited to find this. Pixie is an open source Photo-realistic rendering engine comparable to some of the higher end renderer's such as Maxwell, Brazil and Vray.

Some of the features of this project include:

• Object instancing / delayed primitives
• Displacements
• Programmable shading
• High quality texture/shadow/environment mapping
• High dynamic range input/output
• Scalable, multi-resolution raytracing using ray differentials
• Motion blur
• Depth of field
• Level of detail
• Reyes style rendering
• Occlusion culling
• Network parallel rendering
• DSO shaders
• Global illumination
• Automatically raytraced smooth reflections / shadows
• Caching/baking computation with LOD
• Scalable, multi-threaded rendering
• Arbirtaty output values
• 64 bit compatibility
• Inline archives
• Conditional execution
• Named resources

The only downside I can tell so far is it appears that you'll have to compile it yourself if you want to tinker around with it. Besides that, it's nice to see a project like this in the works and plan on playing around with it over the next few months. It certainly looks very impressive.

If you try it, please let me know what you think!

Click the image above to go to the website.

Apple's Safari browser a security risk?

If you're using Apple's Safari browser, PayPal has some advice for you: Drop it, at least if you want to avoid online fraud.

Safari doesn't make PayPal's list of recommended browsers because it doesn't have two important anti-phishing security features, according to Michael Barrett, PayPal's chief information security officer.

"Apple, unfortunately, is lagging behind what they need to do, to protect their customers," Barrett said in an interview. "Our recommendation at this point, to our customers, is use Internet Explorer 7 or 8 when it comes out, or FireFox 2 or Firefox 3, or indeed Opera."

Safari is the default browser on Apple's Macintosh Computers and the iPhone, but it is also available for the PC. Both Firefox and Opera run on the Mac.

Unlike its competitors, Safari has no built-in phishing filter to warn users when they are visiting suspicious Web sites, Barrett said. Another problem is Safari's lack of support for another anti-phishing technology, called Extended Validation (EV) certificates. This is a secure Web browsing technology that turns the address bar green when the browser is visiting a legitimate Web site.

When it comes to fighting phishing, "Safari has got nothing in terms of security support, only SSL, that's it," he said. Apple representatives weren't immediately available to comment on this story.

Click the Image above to read more

The Sun will distroy the Earth unless we can change our orbit

[New calculations by University of Sussex astronomers predict that the Earth will be swallowed up by the Sun in about 7.6 billion years unless the Earth's orbit can be altered.

Dr Robert Smith, Emeritus Reader in Astronomy, said his team previously calculated that the Earth would escape ultimate destruction, although be battered and burnt to a cinder. But this did not take into account the effect of the drag caused by the outer atmosphere of the dying Sun.

He says: "We showed previously that, as the Sun expanded, it would lose mass in the form of a strong wind, much more powerful than the current solar wind. This would reduce the gravitational pull of the Sun on the Earth, allowing the Earth's orbit to move outwards, ahead of the expanding Sun.

"If that were the only effect the Earth would indeed escape final destruction. However, the tenuous outer atmosphere of the Sun extends a long way beyond its visible surface, and it turns out the Earth would actually be orbiting within these very low density outer layers. The drag caused by this low-density gas is enough to cause the Earth to drift inwards, and finally to be captured and vaporised by the Sun."]

To read on, please click the image above.

Manterns: Candles for Men? haha

This is pretty humorous... and creepy. A candle company called Manterns caters to men who appreciate the smell of Dirt, Whiskey, Baseball Glove, Sawdust or Bacon Cheeseburger. This is a caption from their website:

"Manterns are 100% soy wax candles scented specially for men. With unique scents like bacon cheeseburger, the ballpark, dirt, beer and hot wings, the man in your life is sure to love this one of a kind gift. In fact, we guarantee it 110%. These manly candles come in 8oz whiskey and 16oz pint glasses for enjoyment long after the candle is gone.

What are you waiting for? Get a guy in your life the man-scented candle he'll enjoy!"

Click the Picture above to go to the website