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Submission + - Hydrogen-Powered Drone Flies for 4 Hours (roboticstrends.com)

stowie writes: Hycopter uses its frame to store energy in the form of hydrogen instead of air. With less lift power required, Hycopter’s fuel cell turns the hydrogen in its frame into electricity to power its rotors. Hycopter can fly for four hours at a time and 2.5 hours when carrying a 2.2-pound payload. "By removing the design silos that typically separate the energy storage component from UAV frame development — we opened up a whole new category in the drone market, in-between battery and combustion engine systems."

Submission + - The Myth of Outsourcing's Efficiency

Presto Vivace writes: Why outsourcing winds up producing cost creep over time

Outsouring over time starts to create its own bureaucracy bloat. It’s the modern corporate version of one of the observations of C. Northcote Parkinson: “Officials make work for each other.” As Clive describes, the first response to the problems resulting from outsourcing is to try to bury them, since outsourcing is a corporate religion and thus cannot be reversed even when the evidence comes in against it. And then when those costs start becoming more visible, the response is to try to manage them, which means more work (more managerial cost!) and/or hiring more outside specialists (another transfer to highly-paid individuals).

Submission + - Best Portable Hard Drives of 2015 (techgeck.com)

TechGeck.com writes: With loads of data you collect from different sources, it becomes difficult to manage with the limited space availability of your laptop or desktop secondary storage. Hence, it lead to increase in demand of external drives. External drives previously was coming up with the separate adopter you need to plugin. But now, with slimmer portable hard drives comes up with 3.0 USB connectivity, that plugins to your station just like pen drives. These portable hard drive have now become the perfect storage for your laptop needs like music, movies or photos storage.

These faster portable hard drives are coming safe with encryption and password security software to take care of your privacy concerns as well as automatic backup softwares.

Submission + - China plans to land on the far side of the moon by 2020 (examiner.com)

An anonymous reader writes: According to a story in Quartz, the Chinese have decided to land the Chang’e 4 probe on the far side of the moon. Chang’e 4 is a backup probe to the Chang’e 3, which landed on the lunar surface in December 2013 and carried a rover called Yutu. Because the spacecraft will have to be reconfigured, its scheduled launch will be delayed until sometime before 2020, likely after the Chang’e 5 sample return mission which is currently scheduled to launch in 2017.

Submission + - Why there needs to be a quantum theory of gravity

StartsWithABang writes: If you’re not a theoretical physicist yourself, you might think that physics is physics — we ask questions about the Universe, do experiments/make observations, and get the answers — and math is just a tool that we use to help us get there. But that really sells the power of mathematics short. For a physical theory to be valid, there are a whole host of mathematical properties that theory needs to possess, including being free of logical inconsistencies, making predictions about observables, and that those predictions agree with observations. Yet when we look at our theory of gravitation at the smallest scales and with the strongest gravitational fields, our theory itself fails, which is precisely why we need a quantum theory of gravity.

Submission + - Feds bust cops who cleaned up credit histories by filing fake police reports. (miamiherald.com)

McGruber writes: For a few very profitable years, Vanessa and Mario Perez made more than $322,000 by clearing up the blemished credit reports of people with bad bill-paying histories, almost as if by magic.

Federal authorities say the Perezes had a secret weapon: a network of dirty Miami-Dade County, Florida police officers, who wrote 215 falsified police reports. The Perezes used these falsified police reports to claim their customers were victims of identity theft when they were not.

The false ID theft claims provided the Perezes’ clients with an official excuse for their bad credit histories so they could get negative items removed from their reports. In turn, the customers could boost their credit scores with reporting agencies such as Equifax and obtain credit cards, loans and other financing again.

Submission + - Should I get an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi? (opensource.com)

An anonymous reader writes: I spend a lot of time at conferences and events like Maker Faires, and having co-authored a book on the Raspberry Pi, I spend a lot of time talking to people about things like small electronics and open hardware. Probably the most frequent question I hear is, "Should I get a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino?" They're both inexpensive boards, but if you want to reuse it in the future, you'll need to think about multiple projects as you're planning.

Submission + - The multi-core debate in mobile

alexvoica writes: There have been a few articles recently about whether SoCs for mobile devices need to scale beyond a certain core count.

One side says that 8 cores and above is overkill and that building highly scalable dual- and quad-core processors is the way forward. For example, Patrick Moorhead has written an article titled Why 8 And 10 CPU Cores In Smartphones Are A Bad Idea – An Auto Industry Lesson about the perils of multicore over-indulgence. My personal take on the whole debate can also be found here.

The other side says that more cores offer more granularity for workloads and that we shouldn't be afraid to move to 10- or 12-core processors. For example, Gary Sims argues in his article Why 8 and 10 CPU cores in smartphones are a good idea – a lesson from the kitchen that adding an additional clusters of CPUs is cheap from an area perspective and that more cores offer more granularity for different workloads.

Submission + - Court of Appeals says Samsung's legal payments to Apple should be reduced (betanews.com)

Mark Wilson writes: Patent lawsuits in the world of technology are nothing new, and the case between Apple and Samsung resulted in one of the largest fines ever being handed down. Samsung was order to pay $930 million in damages after a court found that the company had violated Apple patents with its smartphone and tablet designs.

Today the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned part of the original ruling, saying that the jury was wrong to say that Samsung infringed on Apple's trade dress intellectual property. The exact details of what this will mean are yet to come out, but it should lead to a fairly hefty reduction in Samsung's legal costs.

Submission + - Texas appearently sharing drivers' license photos with FBI (dallasnews.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The Dallas Morning News "Watchdog" column reports that the Texas Dept. of Public Safety entered into a "Memorandum of Understanding" with the FBI back in 2013 that allows the DPS to share drivers' license photos with the FBI under limited circumstances. It also reports that back in 2012 the FBI was working to get similar agreements with other states.

Texas is the state that recently added — and later repealed — a requirement that you submit a full set of fingerprints to get or renew your driver's license.

Submission + - Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team responds in Nepal (opensource.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Since the devastating earthquake in Nepal, there have been responses from all over the world from relief agencies, governments, non-profits, and ordinary citizens. One interesting effort has been from the crowdsourced mapping community, especially on OpenStreetMap.org, a free and open web map of the world that anyone can edit (think the Wikipedia of maps.)

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), an NGO that works to train, coordinate, and organize mapping on OpenStreetMap for humanitarian, disaster response, and economic development, has mobilized volunteers from around the world to help map since the Haiti earthquake in 2010.

Submission + - Intelligence officers given immunity from hacking laws, tribunal told (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader writes: GCHQ staff have been given immunity from prosecution for hacking into computers, laptops and mobile phones under legislative changes that were never fully debated by parliament, a tribunal has been told.

The re-writing of a key clause of the Computer Misuse Act has exempted law enforcement officers from the prohibition on breaking into other people’s laptops, databases, mobile phones or digital systems. It came into force in March.

Addressing the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which deals with complaints about the intelligence services and surveillance, lawyers for Privacy International said they had only been informed of the alteration earlier this week.

Submission + - IBM develops silicon photonics chip to boost data transfer beyond 100Gb/s (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: IBM has announced a new photonics technology which will allow silicon chips to use light as an alternative to wired electrical signals to transport data more rapidly over long distances. Scientists have developed and trialed the new fully integrated wavelength multiplexed silicon photonics chip which Big Blue claims will allow the creation of 100Gb/s optical transceivers. The firm hopes that these speeds will enable data centers to reach greater data and bandwidth rates for the growing demand from the cloud computing and Big Data industries.Silicon photonics works by deploying minuscule optical units to transfer light pulses to send large volumes of data at very high speeds between server computer chips, data centers, supercomputers. The optical technology aims to tackle the limitations on transporting data such as congestion and expensive interconnects.

Submission + - Nasdaq will start using Bitcoin technology (cnn.com)

mpicpp writes: The Nasdaq stock exchange is tapping Bitcoin's powerful new transaction technology to create a more secure, efficient system to trade stocks.

Most people have heard of Bitcoin (XBT) as a system of electronic money — one that hasn't really caught on yet.

But what gets less attention is blockchain, the technology that powers the Bitcoin system. It's a computer program that automatically processes transactions and creates a perfect, reliable digital record.
High-tech bankers are starting to realize this could revolutionize trading. Nasdaq (NDAQ), a favorite exchange among many technology companies, is making the first move.

On Monday, the stock market announced it will start using a blockchain system to keep records for its Nasdaq Private Market, which handles trading of shares in the pre-IPO phase before a company goes public.
Nasdaq sees the blockchain's perfect recordkeeping as a major step in the right direction for more transparency. The pre-IPO market doesn't typically see as much trading and what does occur is often by a tight circle of employees and early investors.

"Blockchain technology will provide extensive integrity, audit ability, governance and transfer of ownership capabilities," Nasdaq said in its public announcement.

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