fangmcgee - Slashdot User

Submission + - Intruder-Detecting Smart "Curtains" Could Replace Your Anti-Theft System (ecouterre.com)

Submitted by fangmcgee on Thursday September 27, 2012 @04:22PM

fangmcgee writes: A swathe of woven fabric could soon give pricy anti-burglary systems a run for their money. Don’t be fooled by its nondescript appearance, however. Developed by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM in Berlin, the material contains a fine lattice of conductive threads interspersed among the polyester fibers. When the fabric is cut or penetrated, a built-in microcontroller springs into action, triggering an alarm that alerts authorities to the precise location of the break-in. While the smart textile could provide useful coverage for home and office safes, precious artwork, or cargo in the back of a trailer or truck, IZM has its sights on a far loftier prize: protecting entire buildings.

Submission + - Smiling Banned for New Jersey ID's, Thanks to Facial-Recognition Software (vice.com)

Submitted by

pigrabbitbear

on Tuesday September 25, 2012 @11:48AM

pigrabbitbear writes: "You heard that right: Smiling has been banned in New Jersey. Well, it’s only been banned for driver’s license photos, but I doubt there would be many offenders anyway. (Ha!!1) The reason is mildly Orwellian: the Garden State is rolling out new software to try to track down license fraud with the use of facial recognition software that matches new photos to a database of all old driver’s license photos to make sure the same person isn’t getting licensed twice under assumed names. I guess the software doesn’t work well if one smiles, but wait, how many people are actually trying to get multiple licenses with their own face on there?"

Submission + - Foxconn has 150,000 workers building iPhone 5, still can't keep up with demand (bgr.com)

Submitted by zacharye on Tuesday September 25, 2012 @11:26AM

zacharye writes: Apple announced earlier this week that it sold 5 million iPhone 5 smartphones during the handset’s first three days of availability but that staggering figure didn’t please some analysts, who were expecting opening weekend sales to reach as high as 10 million units. The idea that weaker than expected demand may have been the culprit for the discrepancy can likely be set aside, however, as a new report suggests that Apple has dramatically increased iPhone 5 orders for the month of October and Foxconn is having trouble keeping pace with demand...

Submission + - Lab-Grown, 3D-Printed Leather Could Be a Reality in Five Years (ecouterre.com)

Submitted by fangmcgee on Tuesday September 25, 2012 @11:13AM

fangmcgee writes: Lab-grown leather apparel could hit the runways in as little as five years—all without harming a hair on a single animal’s head, according to Andras Forgacs, co-founder and CEO of Modern Meadow, a Missouri-based startup that’s approaching meat-and-leather production from an tissue-bioengineering, rather than farming, point of view. Backed by Breakout Labs, the grant-awarding foundation headed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Modern Meadow seeks to combine regenerative medicine with three-dimensional printing to synthesize leather and ultimately meat. Just one question: Will animal-rights advocates bite?

Submission + - First Film Shot Using Google Glass Debuts on YouTube (ecouterre.com)

Submitted by fangmcgee on Friday September 14, 2012 @04:32PM

fangmcgee writes: Diane von Furstenberg wants you to experience her Spring/Summer 2013 show at New York Fashion Week through the eyes of the folks who made it happen: the stylists, the models, and the grande dame of American fashion herself. A short film released on YouTube features footage captured entirely using Google’s micro-camera-equipped “Glass” eyeglasses. Is this the future of fashion on film? More important, who’s watching whom?

Submission + - iPhone 5 Scorns Standards Promise To European Commission (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by

WebMink

on Friday September 14, 2012 @12:20PM

WebMink writes: "Back in 2009, Apple signed an agreement aimed at reducing electronic waste resulting from mobile phone accessories. But this week's launch of the iPhone 5 shows them reneging on that commitment. Instead of including a micro-USB connector on the iPhone, as they agreed to do along with the rest of the phone industry, they created yet another proprietary connector. At a stroke, they have junked earlier iPhone accessories, forced a new industry in Apple-only accessories to arise and broken their promise to the EC. It's a huge missed opportunity both for their customers and for the environment."

Submission + - NASA to use 3D Printing for Self-Building Spacecraft aka Replicators (tech-stew.com)

Submitted by

techfun89

on Friday September 14, 2012 @11:19AM

techfun89 writes: "A new spin on 3D printing technology could have spacecraft building themselves by taking materials from space junk or asteroids. The "SpiderFab" project has received $100,000 from NASA's innovative Advanced Concepts program to determine the feasibility of such a self-construction design. With some planning and more funding they hope to launch a 3D-printing test mission within several years.

"The system could then morph in orbit into a very large system a dozen or hundreds of meters in size," Hoyt told InnovationNewsDaily. "It would be like launching a CubeSat that creates a 50 meter-length boom."

The possibilities with this self-building technology would allow for space telescopes the size of ARICEBO in Puerto Rico. Or even more intriguing, such technology can be sent to distant star systems and then build arrays and communications transmitters to send signals back to Earth."

Submission + - YouTube Refuses to Remove anti-Islamic Film Clip

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Friday September 14, 2012 @10:21AM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "BBC reports that Google officials have rejected the notion of removing a video that depicts the prophet as a fraud and philanderer and has been blamed for sparking violence at US embassies in Cairo and Benghazi on grounds it does not violate YouTube's policies, but restricted viewers in Egypt and Libya from loading it due to the special circumstances in the country. Google's response to the crisis highlighted the struggle faced by the company, and others like it, to balance free speech with legal and ethical concerns in an age when social media can impact world events. "This video – which is widely available on the Web – is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube," Google said in a statement. "However, given the very difficult situation in Libya and Egypt, we have temporarily restricted access in both countries." Underscoring Google's quandary, some digital free expression groups have criticised YouTube for censoring the video. Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says given Google' s strong track record of protecting free speech, she was surprised the company gave in to pressure to selectively block ithe video "It is extremely unusual for YouTube to block a video in any country without it being a violation of their terms of service or in response to a valid legal complaint," says Galperin. "I'm not sure they did the right thing.""

Submission + - eBay Adopts New Logo After 15 Years (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec on Thursday September 13, 2012 @12:23PM

hypnosec writes: eBay, after nearly 15 years, has changed its logo doing away with the overlapped design by coming up with a more orderly and spaced out design. The new logo is straighter in terms of character arrangement but, it still carries the subtle representation of its community that is "connected and diverse" community. Announcing the change on the website, President Devin Wenig wrote “Today we’re creating the future again. We’ve been building the new eBay. And today, we’re proud to introduce a new look for the eBay brand.”

Submission + - Google's Augmented-Reality "Glass" Specs Will Come in Different Colors (ecouterre.com)

Submitted by fangmcgee on Thursday September 13, 2012 @11:36AM

fangmcgee writes: Diane von Furstenberg shared her New York Fashion Week spotlight on Sunday with an unlikely collaborator: Google. The legendary designer and Council of Fashion Designers of America president sent Google’s much-vaunted augmented-reality goggles down the Lincoln Center catwalk with her Spring/Summer 2013 collection. Von Furstenberg even had Google founder Sergey Brin join her and her creative director, Yvan Mispelaere, on the runway for her victory lap. Each sported a pair of the futuristic frames with a different colored accent: von Fursteberg in orange, Brin in blue, and Mispelaere in black.

Submission + - Glass by Google Makes Its Runway Debut at New York Fashion Week (ecouterre.com)

Submitted by fangmcgee on Tuesday September 11, 2012 @10:15AM

fangmcgee writes: Diane von Furstenberg shared her New York Fashion Week spotlight on Sunday with an unlikely collaborator: Google. The legendary designer and Council of Fashion Designers of America president sent Google’s much-vaunted augmented-reality goggles down the Lincoln Center catwalk with her Spring/Summer 2013 collection. Von Furstenberg even had Google founder Sergey Brin join her and her creative director, Yvan Mispelaere, on the runway for her victory lap. Each sported a pair of the futuristic frames with a different colored accent: von Fursteberg in orange, Brin in blue, and Mispelaere in black.

Submission + - Activision Blizzard secretly watermarking World of Warcraft users. (ownedcore.com)

Submitted by

kgkoutzis

on Tuesday September 11, 2012 @09:34AM

kgkoutzis writes: "A few days ago I noticed some weird artifacts covering the screenshots I captured using the WoW game client application. I sharpened the images and found a repeating pattern secretly embedded inside. I posted this information on the OwnedCore forum and after an amazing 3 day cooperation marathon, we managed to prove that all our WoW screenshots, since at least 2008, contain a custom watermark inside. This watermark includes our userIDs, the time the screenshot was captured and the IP address of the server we were on at the time. It can be used to track down activities which are against Blizzard's Terms of Service, like hacking the game or running a private server. The users were never notified by the ToS that this watermarking was going on so, for four years now, we have all been publicly sharing our account and realm information for hackers to decode and exploit. You can find more information on how to access the watermark in the aforementioned forum post which is still quite active."

Submission + - World's First "Invisible" Bike Helmet Goes on Sale [VIDEO] (ecouterre.com) 1

Submitted by fangmcgee on Saturday August 18, 2012 @01:28PM

fangmcgee writes: It’s been seven years in the making, but the world’s first “invisible” bike helmet is now available for purchase. The brainchild of Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin, two industrial designers from Sweden, the Hövding—Swedish for “chieftain”—is essentially a collar that deploys an airbag-like hood in case of an impact. Unlike regular hard-hat helmets, which the duo deride as “bulky, like a hard mushroom on your head,” the Hövding is designed to be unobtrusive. But the device is more than an expression of vanity. “An invisible bicycle helmet is a symbol of the ‘impossible,’” Haupt and Alstin say in the video. “If people say it’s impossible, we have to prove them wrong.”

Submission + - Meet TshirtOS, the World's First Programmable T-Shirt (ecouterre.com)

Submitted by fangmcgee on Tuesday August 14, 2012 @12:55PM

fangmcgee writes: Your T-shirt has always doubled as your personal billboard, but why settle for just one static statement per wear? Leave it to the wizards at CuteCircuit to pioneer the world’s first programmable T-shirt. An unlikely collaboration with Ballantine’s, a producer of blended Scotch whisky, “TshirtOS” allows you to display virtually anything you want, whether it’s your Facebook status, Mindy Kaling’s latest tweet, a screed on global warming, or a picture of Maru the cat.

Submission + - Opensat DIY Satellite Set to Launch This December (hhjjj.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14, 2012 @12:26PM

An anonymous reader writes: South Korean artist Song Hojun has created his own DIY satellite from scratch – and he’s planning to launch it into space this coming December. Song created the satellite from assorted junk he found in back-alley electronics stores in his home town of Seoul, and over the course of six years he has finally managed to complete his space-bound project. Song’s satellite cost just over $400 to make, however the cost of launching it to space is going to be a lot, lot more – over $100,000.

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