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Submission + - Drone taken out of sky by angry hockey fans (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The quadrocopter almost certainly belonged to a private individual — but the incident shows there's nothing less popular than a drone at a party

Submission + - NYC loses appeal to ban large sugary drinks (cnn.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: New York's Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that New York City's ban on large sugary drinks, which was previously blocked by lower courts, is illegal.

"We hold that the New York City Board of Health, in adopting the 'Sugary Drinks Portion Cap Rule,' exceeded the scope of its regulatory authority," the ruling said.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had pushed for the ban on sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces as a way to fight obesity and other health problems.
Idle

Submission + - Car Juggling Robot

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A 70ft (21.5m) tall diesel powered robot that will actually juggle three VW Beetle automobiles.
With a haptic control interface to allow a human operator (on board in the head) to have full sensory feedback from the throwing and catching forces.
With an industrial machine vision system to assist the hand placement in catching the vehicles and could autonomously control the juggling.
A single-arm human scale proof-of-principle working model will be capable of tossing and catching objects weighing 250lb (114kg).
http://www.bugjuggler.com/

Submission + - SpaceX Falcon 9R vertical take-off and landing test flight (youtube.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The competition heats up: SpaceX today released a new video of the most recent Falcon 9R vertical take-off and landing test flight.

Video below the fold. The flight was to test the deployment and use of fins for controlling the stage during its return to Earth. Watch them unfold and adjust themselves beginning at about 1:15 into the video. In the second half you can see them near the top of the stage.

Yet another video from SpaceX of the world’s most blase cows.

You can imagine new cows to the herd, reacting to the launch as the conditioned cows just yawn, just another 100 foot tall rocket launching and landing nearby. Nothing to see here.

Submission + - African firm is selling pepper-spray bullet firing drones (suasnews.com)

Submitted by garymortimer
garymortimer writes: South Africa-based Desert Wolf told the BBC it had secured the sale of 25 units to a mining company after showing off the tech at a trade show in London.

It is marketing the device as a “riot control copter” that can tackle crowds “without endangering the lives of security staff”.

But the International Trade Union Confederation is horrified by the idea.

Submission + - Exclusive: How an FBI Informant Orchestrated the Hack of an FBI Contractor (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Weeks after he started working quietly as an FBI informant, Hector Xavier Monsegur, known by his online alias "Sabu," led a cyber attack against one of the bureau's very own IT contractors.

In July 2011, at Monsegur's urging, members of AntiSec, an offshoot of the hacking collective Anonymous, took advantage of compromised log-in credentials belonging to a contractor with a top secret security clearance employed at the time by ManTech International.

According to chat logs recorded by Monsegur at the behest of the FBI and obtained by Motherboard, the informant directed hackers to pilfer as much data as possible from ManTech's servers as investigators stood by. Stolen data was published as the third installment of AntiSec's "Fuck FBI Friday" campaign: a collection of leaks intended to embarrass the same federal agency that presided over the hack and others.

Submission + - Why is there no net neutrality in mobile ? (recode.net)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: The net neutrality issue has become a very hot topic recently, but curiously on the mobile scene, the net neutrality rules were absent

Why ?

Simply because the wireless companies have successfully convinced regulators four years ago to keep mobile networks mostly free of net neutrality rules

Now that Federal Communications Commission officials are looking into whether wireless networks should remain exempt from net neutrality rules the mobile carriers have lobbied hard to foil FCC's latest attempt

“Wireless is different it is dependent on finite spectrum,” Meredith Attwell Baker, the new head of CTIA, the wireless industry’s lobbying arm, told reporters Tuesday

Baker previously served as the top lobbyist for Comcast’s NBCUniversal division, joining the company after serving as an FCC commissioner

On the other side of the spectrum, net neutrality advocates are hoping to convince regulators to include wireless networks more fully under any new proposed rules. They are pushing for the FCC to re-regulate broadband Internet under a section of the law (called Title II), which was written with old phone networks in mind

The FCC will be taking public comments about what it should do about new net neutrality rules through the end of July

You can comment by emailing to openinternet@fcc.gov or go to http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/uploa... to file a Consumer Informal Complaint

Submission + - Elon Musk's Solar City makes manufacturing capacity play with Silevo acquisition (examiner.com)

Submitted by MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: Elon Musk is well known as a private space flight entrepreneur, thanks to his space launch company SpaceX. He is also a purveyor of high end electric cars manufactured by his other company, Tesla Motors. But many people do not know that Musk has a third business, Solar City, which is a manufacturer of solar panels. Tuesday that company announced a major play to increase the output of solar panels suitable for home solar units.

Solar City has acquired a company called Silevo, which is said to have a line of solar panels that have demonstrated high electricity output and low cost. Silevo claims that its panels have achieved a 22 percent efficiency and are well on their way to achieving 24 percent efficiency. It suggests that 10 cents per watt is saved for every point of efficiency gained.

Solar City, using the technology it has acquired from Silevo, intends to build a manufacturing plant in upstate New York with a one gigawatt per year capacity. This will only be the beginning as it intends to build future manufacturing plants with orders of magnitude capacity. The goal appears to be for the company to become the biggest manufacturer of solar panels in the world.

Submission + - Wikipedia creates new rules, forcing editors to disclose if they're paid (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: The Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit which operates Wikipedia and related projects, explained yesterday that it will establish new rules covering paid editing.

The heart of the change is that anyone who is paid to edit the site must "add your affiliation to your edit summary, user page, or talk page, to fairly disclose your perspective," according to Wikimedia's explanation of the change. The organization has also published an FAQ on paid editing.

The changes come after some high-profile commotions over paid editing. In October, Wikipedia deleted more than 250 accounts believed to be connected to a PR firm that was writing articles on the site. In January, the Wikimedia Foundation fired an employee who was accused of taking paid editing gigs.

Submission + - Kingston and PNY caught bait-and-switching cheaper components after good reviews

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Over the past few months, we’ve seen a disturbing trend from first Kingston, and now PNY. Manufacturers are launching SSDs with one hardware specification, and then quietly changing the hardware configuration after reviews have gone out. The impacts have been somewhat different (more on that) but in both cases, unhappy customers are loudly complaining that they’ve been cheated, tricked into paying for a drive they otherwise wouldn’t have purchased.

Submission + - Average HS Student Given Little Chance of AP CS Success

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "AP Computer Science is taught in just 10% of our high schools," lamented The White House last December as President Obama kicked off CSEdWeek. "China teaches all of its students one year of computer science." And the U.S. Dept. of Education has made the AP CS exam its Poster Child for inequity in education (citing a viral-but-misinterpreted study). But ignored in all the hand-wringing over low AP CS enrollment is one huge barrier to the goal of AP-CS-for-all: College Board materials indicate that the average 11th grader's combined PSAT/NMSQT score of 96 in reading and math gives him/her only a 20%-30% probability of getting a score of '3' on the AP CS exam (a score '4' or '5' may be required for college credit). The College Board suggests schools tap a pool of students with a "60-100% likelihood of scoring 3 or higher", so it's probably no surprise that CS teachers are advised to turn to the College Board's AP Potential tool to identify students who are likely to succeed (sample Student Detail for an "average" kid) and send their parents recruitment letters — Georgia Tech even offers some gender-specific examples — to help fill class rosters.

Submission + - Canadian Supreme Court Delivers Huge Win For Internet Privacy (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For the past several months, many Canadians have been debating privacy reform, with the government moving forward on two bills involving Internet surveillance and expanded voluntary, warrantless disclosure of personal information. Today, the Supreme Court of Canada entered the debate and completely changed the discussion, issuing its long-awaited R. v. Spencer decision, which examined the legality of voluntary warrantless disclosure of basic subscriber information to law enforcement. Michael Geist summarizes the findings, noting that the unanimous decision included a strong endorsement of Internet privacy, emphasizing the privacy importance of subscriber information, the right to anonymity, and the need for police to obtain a warrant for subscriber information except in exigent circumstances or under a reasonable law.

Submission + - Lie Like a Lady: The Profoundly Weird, Gender-Specific Roots of the Turing Test (popsci.com)

Submitted by malachiorion
malachiorion writes: Alan Turing never wrote about the Turing Test, that legendary measure of machine intelligence that was supposedly passed last weekend. He proposed something much stranger—a contest between men and machines, to see who was better at pretending to be a woman. The details of the Imitation Game aren't secret, or even hard to find, and yet no one seems to reference it. Here's my analysis for Popular Science about why they should, in part because it's so odd, but also because it might be a better test for "machines that think" than the chatbot-infested, seemingly useless Turing Test.

Submission + - Are Flying Drones a Peeping Tom's Dream Tool? (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Fears are growing that helicopter drones could be used to sexually harass women and take secret photographs of them.

This week, Andrea Mears, 23, was charged with assault and breach of the peace for attacking a drone hobbyist who was flying a quadracoptor over a Connecticut beach, according to NBC Connecticut. Meanwhile in Seattle, a resident wrote to the Capitol Hill Seattle community blog to report that a drone had flown into her back garden and hovered next to the third-floor window of her home.

The woman said that when her husband challenged the drone operator, who was standing on the street outside their home, he claimed to be conducting "research", and insisted that it was legal for him to fly his drone over their property.

While drone enthusiasts are up in arms and Haughwout might well be completely innocent, the fact remains that these small remote-controlled aircraft are able to fly almost silently in the air, and most of the time, we have no idea what they are being used for.

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