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Technology

Submission + - 3D Printer Round-up: Cube 3D, Up! and Solidoodle (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "3D printing is a fascinating new technology and an exploding new market. The process involved is pretty basic actually. Heat up some plastic, and sort of like that Play-Doh Fun Factory you were so fond of as a kid, you extrude the melted plastic out to create objects. It all started back in 2007 when the first RepRap machine was built. The idea behind RepRap was to design a machine that could build complex parts in three dimensions using extruded molten plastic and that machine could also "self-replicate" or build a copy of itself. Since then, 3D printers of all types have emerged from the community and this round-up of machines covers a few of the more prominent names in 3D printing systems. The Cube 3D, the Up! Mini and the Solidoodle 2 can all get you into 3D printing at retail consumer price points with precision down to 100 microns. The technology has very much come of age and it's going to be interesting to see where these machines can take us."
Math

Submission + - TI-84+C-Silver Edition: That C stands for Color! (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by skade88
skade88 writes: Do you remember those large TI-8X line of calculators with a BW display from when you were growing up and learning all about math? Yeah well, you can still get them because TI has yet to update or change their line of TI-8X calculators from their 96x64 display, processors designed in the 1980s with just a few kilobytes of user accessible memory. They still cost in the $100.00 to $150.00 range.

Even XKCD made a great comic on this issue... a while ago.

That is all about to change now that the TI-8X line of calculators is 22 years old. Their new TI-84+C-Silver edition will come with a 320x240 16-bit color display, 3.5MB of flash ROM, and 21KB of RAM. I am going to dust off my graphics programming skills from 1994 and see what fun stuff I can make on this puppy!

Ars has a good preview of the device along with speculation on why it took so so so very long for TI to finally bring calculators up to a level of technology that could have been delivered a decade ago.
Businesses

Submission + - 6 Weird Habits Of Successful People (openforum.com)

Submitted by
Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: "With a title like 6 Weird Habits Of Successful People I bet you're expecting superstitions, like Charles Dickens insisting on sleeping facing north. (Gee, I thought you're supposed to face east?) But this short article really does have some useful advice, such as:

They are quitters. You know the saying “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” Not so much. In fact, that’s wrong. Winners quit a lot. They have a keen eye for what is not working and not supporting the finish line (check rule one again for that). Once they identify the thing sucking energy, money and resources from their business, they cut it out fast.

I liked it. I think you might, too."
Science

Submission + - IQ 'a myth,' study says (thestar.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The idea that intelligence can be measured by a single number — your IQ — is wrong, according to a recent study led by researchers at the University of Western Ontario. The study, published in the journal Neuron on Wednesday, involved 100,000 participants around the world taking 12 cognitive tests, with a smaller sample of the group undergoing simultaneous brain-scan testing.
KDE

Submission + - KDE Software Compilation 4.10 RC1 Released (kde.org)

Submitted by
jrepin
jrepin writes: "Today KDE released the first release candidate for its renewed Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. Thanks to the feedback from the betas, KDE already improved the quality noticably. Further polishing new and old functionality will lead to a rock-stable, fast and beautiful release in January, 2013. One particular change in this RC is an updated look to Plasma workspaces."

Submission + - Senator Introduces Bill to Study Impact of Violent Video Games (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by seepho
seepho writes: Senator Jay Rockefeller (D — WV) has introduced a bill directing the National Academy of Sciences to lead an investigation to determine what impact violent video games have on children. Senator Rockefeller commented, "Recent court decisions demonstrate that some people still do not get it. They believe that violent video games are no more dangerous to young minds than classic literature or Saturday morning cartoons. Parents, pediatricians, and psychologists know better. These court decisions show we need to do more and explore ways Congress can lay additional groundwork on this issue. This report will be a critical resource in this process."

Submission + - Intellectual Ventures Makes its Case For Patent Trolling (wired.com)

Submitted by
speedplane
speedplane writes: "How many stories have we read hating on the biggest patent troll of them all? Finally we see Intellectual Ventures making their case in a Wired op-ed, filled with everything you would would expect from a company suing the tech world on thousands of dubious patents: "the system needs intermediaries within the market – companies like Intellectual Ventures – to help sift through and navigate the published landscape. By developing focused expertise, these patent licensing entities and intermediaries can function as patent aggregators, assembling portfolios of relevant inventions and providing access through licensing." And my favorite gem: "Ultimately, the users of those products – you – are the ones who benefit.""

Submission + - Linking to radio streams without license is not permitted (tweakers.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Dutch Judge rules that linking and embedding of radio streams without a license is forbidden in the Netherlands. This was the outcome of a court ruling in The Hague, in a lawsuit of Buma/Stemra against the administrator of Nederland.fm and Op.fm.
Hardware

Submission + - Cree releases landmark 200 lumen-per-watt LED (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "One of the ways — if not the best way — to track the progress of LEDs over the past few years has been through the metric of lumens-per-watt. As you can gather from the name this is an efficiency rating that is based on the amount of visible light emitted relative to the amount of power consumed. A lumens-per-watt (lpw) rating is especially interesting because it works regardless of the light source — the lpw rating for an incandescent bulb is a lowly 15 (or so) while newer LED bulbs are in the range of 75. While 75 lpw is plenty efficient, it’s no where near what manufacturers like Cree are working on. In fact, the company has just put out a 200 lpw LED known as the XLamp MK-R."
Space

Submission + - How would you build a micro satellite?

Submitted by
Dishwasha
Dishwasha writes: "After reading about the possibility of an earth-link planet "only" 12 light years away, I instantly thought about the possibility of sending an amateur micro satellite. Although such a thing would not reach 12 light years in my lifetime, perhaps the satellite would be a legacy that I could hand over to my children and they to their children, etc. From my perspective, the sooner we start sending out probes in to the universe and the more we send out, the earlier the start we get in exploring the universe beyond just our singular earth perspective.

A fellow co-worker of mine turned me on to the CubeSat standard and apparently there are commercial space companies that will launch CubeSat systems from their payload for a modest fee.

Is anybody in the /. community involved in amateur micro satellite systems? How would I go about getting involved at an amateur level? Are there any amateur user groups and meetups I can join? I have limited background in all the prerequisites but am eager to learn even if it takes a lifetime. Any links to design and engineering of satellites would be appreciated."
Power

Submission + - Is safe, green thorium power finally ready for prime time? (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "If you’ve not been tracking the thorium hype, you might be interested to learn that the benefits liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs) have over light water uranium reactors (LWRs) are compelling. Alvin Weinberg, who invented both, favored the LFTR for civilian power since its failures (when they happened) were considerably less dramatic — a catastrophic depressurization of radioactive steam, like occurred at Chernobyl in 1986, simply wouldn’t be possible. Since the technical hurdles to building LFTRs and handling their byproducts are in theory no more challenging, one might ask — where are they? It turns out that a bunch of US startups are investigating the modern-day viability of thorium power, and countries like India and China have serious, governmental efforts to use LFTRs. Is thorium power finally ready for prime time?"
Programming

Submission + - How experienced/novice programmers see code (synesthesiam.com)

Submitted by
Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: "We always talk about how programmers improve their skill by reading others' code. But the newbies aren't going to be as good at even doing that, when they start. There's some cool research underway, using eye tracking to compare how an experienced programmer looks at code compared to a novice. Seems to be early days, but worth a nod and a smile."
Space

Submission + - Property Rights in Space?

Submitted by ATKeiper
ATKeiper writes: A spate of companies has announced plans in the last couple of years to undertake private development of space. There are asteroid-mining proposals backed by Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, various moon-mining proposals, and, announced just this month, a proposed moon-tourism venture. But all of these — especially the efforts to mine resources in space — are hampered by the fact that existing treaties, like the Outer Space Treaty, seem to prohibit private ownership of space resources. A new essay in The New Atlantis revisits the debates about property rights in space and examines a proposal that could resolve the stickiest treaty problems and make it possible to stake claims in space.
Android

Submission + - Qt 5 Is Here, Digia Claims It's Qt For The Future (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: The Qt project and Digia, the company behind Qt framework, have released the most awaited C++ framework for developers, Qt 5.0. The company claims that it's one of the best releases till date and has invested a significant amount of time behind this release. It's an overhaul of the Qt 4.x series and makes Qt fit for the future.
Businesses

Submission + - Most Kickstarter Projects Fail to Deliver on Time 1

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: A recently conducted analysis found that out of the top 50 most-funded Kickstarter projects, a whopping 84 percent missed their target delivery dates. As it turns out, only eight of them hit their deadline. Sixteen hadn't even shipped yet, while the remaining 26 projects left the warehouse months late.
Google

Submission + - Holiday easter eggs show up in Google Search

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: Google employees are no strangers to hiding little surprises across their services to make users smile when they stumble across them. This holiday season is no exception, as Google has modified several search terms to deliver a themed addition to your search results.
Transportation

Submission + - Boeing uses 20,000 lbs. of potatoes to check aircraft wireless network signals (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Boeing calls it Project SPUDS or rather Synthetic Personnel Using Dielectric Substitution — that is, using sacks of potatoes perched on aircraft seats to test the effectiveness of wireless signal in an airliner cabin. Boeing said it was researching an advanced way to test wireless signals in airplane and needed a way to effectively simulate say 200-300 people sitting in seats throughout the aircraft."
Facebook

Submission + - Developer of Facebook browser extension banned from Facebook (fbpurity.com)

Submitted by
earlzdotnet
earlzdotnet writes: "The developer of F.B. Purity (Fluff Busting Purity) has been banned from Facebook. F.B. Purity is a set of browser extensions for Firefox, Chrome, and others to make Facebook more accessible and remove some of it's most annoying features.

Facebook complains that they are violating their terms of service by interfering with Facebook's user-interface and not using the official API. They also claim to own the "FB" set of letters and say F.B. Purity must remove those letters from it's domain and product. And finally, Facebook also complains that his website is spam and therefore direct links to it is blocked from Facebook.

The developer is not yet banned from Facebook, but has been told that his personal account will be banned at anytime, along with the Facebook page set up for F.B. Purity. This isn't the first time F.B. Purity has caught the eye of Facebook's legal team, but it is the first time they've decided to outright ban the developer. However, it's impossible to ban the browser extension because it is... well, an extension to your browser. Facebook probably can't even detect one is using it."
Privacy

Submission + - European data retention rule could violate fundamental E.U. law (pcadvisor.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The European Union's data retention law could breach fundamental E.U. law because its requirements result in an invasion of citizens' privacy, according to the Constitutional Court of Austria, which has asked the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to determine the directive's validity.

The primary problem with the data retention law is that it almost exclusively affects people in whom government or law enforcement have no prior interest. But authorities use the data for investigations and are informed about people's personal lives, the court said, and there is a risk that the data can be abused.

"We doubt that the E.U. Data Retention Directive is really compatible with the rights that are guaranteed by the E.U. Charter of Fundamental Rights," Gerhart Holzinger, president of the Constitutional Court of Austria said in a statement.

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