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Submission + - By 2035, Nearly 100 Million Self-Driving Cars Will Be Sold Per Year (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: The rise of autonomous cars might turn out to be more rapid than even the most devout Knight Rider fans were hoping. According to a new report from Navigant Research, in just over two decades, Google Cars and their ilk will account for 75 percent of all light vehicle sales worldwide. In total, Navigant expects 95.4 million autonomous cars to be sold every year by 2035. That's pretty astonishing. For one thing, that's more cars than are built every year right now. As of 2012, which was a record-breaking year for car production, 60 million cars were rolling off global assembly lines per annum.

Submission + - An Interactive Map of Car Accidents Across the Globe (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: In a word, everywhere. About 1.24 million people die on the roads each year already, and that figure is set to triple to 3.6 million by 2030. Fatal road accidents happen so frequently that it becomes easy to lose sight of their standing in today's taxonomy of death, especially throughout the developing world. There, road-death counts have hit pandemic levels, on pace to suprass HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and other still-common killers as the fifith most common cause of death. Toggle around this new interactive feature from the Pulitzer Center and you'll get the idea. The map charts every traffic death in the world, color sorting deaths in 2010 (the most recent year for which we have data) by 100,000 people. Here are some key takeaways, among others.

Submission + - Soda Makes Five-Year-Olds Break Your Stuff, Science Finds (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Shakira F. Suglia and co-authors surveyed 2,929 mothers of five-year-olds and found that 43 percent consumed at least one serving of soft drinks per day. About four percent of those children (or 110 of them), drank more than four soft drinks per day, and became "more than twice as likely to destroy things belonging to others, get into fights, and physically attack people."

In the past, soda and its various strains have been related to depression, irritability, aggression, suicidal thoughts, and delusions of sweepstake-winning grandeur. Of course, this study didn't find out what types of soda the children had consumed.

Submission + - High Food Prices Are Fueling Egypt's Riots (vice.com) 1

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Two years ago, the New England Complex Systems Institute published a famous paper that sussed out the mathematical correlation between food prices and unrest: Every time food prices breached a certain threshold, riots broke out worldwide. That all-important threshold is about 210 on the FAO Food Price Index... In May 2013, right before millions of angry Egyptians took to Tahrir Square, the index was at 213. For most of the spring, it had hovered well above 210, meaning that food was prohibitively expensive for Egypt's poor for a full three months before people took to the streets in dissent. And sure enough, food acces is a crippling problem in Egypt even today. UPI reports that "Bassem Ouda, the minister of supplies in the government of President Mohamed Morsi—who was ousted by the army July 3—admitted last week the state has less than two months' supply of imported wheat in stock, or about 500,000 metric tons."

Submission + - The First "Practical" Jetpack May Be on Sale in Two Years (vice.com) 1

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: This week, New Zealand-based company Martin Aircraft became certified to take what it calls "the world's first practical jetpack" out for a series of manned test flights. If all goes well, the company plans to start selling a consumer version of the jetpack in 2015, starting at $150,000 to $200,000 and eventually dropping to $100,000. "For us it's a very important step because it moves it out of what I call a dream into something which I believe we're now in a position to commercialize and take forward very quickly," CEO Peter Coker told Agence France Presse .

Submission + - 3D Printing Makes Both Mechanical and Smart Keys Obsolete (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Two MIT students demonstrated this key hack at DEFCON last week. David Lawrence and Eric Van Albert wrote a piece of code that makes it possible create a 3D-printable model of any high-security Primus key. All thatâ(TM)s needed is a basic scanner, their software system to decipher the unique information in each key, and a 3D-printer to spit out the replica.

Thanks to high-tech cameras, would-be key pirates donâ(TM)t even need to have the key in their possession to duplicate it. A scanned photograph can be converted into a digital blueprint of the object, which can then be printed.

Submission + - Hardly Anyone Is Buying 'Smart Guns' (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: The technology is here. So-called "smart guns" are being programmed to recognize a gun owner’s identity and lock up if the weapon ends up in the wrong hands. Entrepreneurs and engineers have been developing technology to make safer guns since the early '90s, and by now we've got working prototypes of guns that read fingerprints, hand grips or even sensors embedded under the skin. But after 15 years of innovation, personalized guns still haven't penetrated the marketplace.

Submission + - Nanoparticle Drug Patches Will Deliver Cancer Treatment Without Needles (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Atif Sayed and Zakareya Hussein, both with backgrounds in electronics and nanotechnology, are developing Nanject, a "pharmaceutical nano patch" that can "be applied to the skin and will deliver specific amounts of target drugs where necessary." The two are crowd-funding the project on Microryza.

Two years ago Sayed was doing research into swarm robotics and artificial immune systems, and found inspiration in biological species—specifically, birds. "I was always obsessed with artificial intelligence and wanted to automate a lot of things which are kind of repetitive (like people working in factories, McDonalds, etc.)," wrote Sayed in an email. "At the same time, I was fascinated with nanorobotics or nanobots and wanted to do more research into this. Having people in my own family and friends who passed away due to cancer, I wanted to use nanobots to tackle and destroy cancer cells with little or no pain."

From there he came up with the idea of a nano patch. In place of needles and syringes, he would use magnetic nanoparticles that are small enough to pass through a hair follicle. He then wrote his thesis on "the synthesis of magnetic nanoparticles for its use in bio-medicine and targeted drug delivery." Sayed said he is now "at the point of realizing and connecting the tiny dots into one single product—Nanject."

Submission + - Compressive Sensing Camera Has No Lens, Never Needs Focusing (vice.com)

Submitted by derekmead
derekmead writes: If you get annoyed when your pictures of your cat Mopsy end up out of focus, imagine how frustrating out of focus images are in situation that are actually important, like surveillance. Researchers at Bell Labs have a potential solution: a lensless architecture for taking pictures that are never out of focus.

The new camera is based on the concept of compressive sensing, which, as the authors write in a paper available on the arXiv preprint server, makes it "possible to represent an mage by using fewer measurements than the number of pixels." In other words, it develops an image while tossing out superfluous data.

The architecture described by Gang Huang et al. is surprisingly simple: a single pixel sensor that can record three colors of light is arrayed behind an aperture assembly, potential made by an LCD, that can create a matrix of apertures of varying opacity. By using this matrix with multiple apertures to direct light to the sensor, multiple measurements of light data can be conducted at once. And because the sensor images what passes through the flat sensor, and not what's been focused on it through a lens, images physically can't be out of focus. Although, at this stage they aren't very sharp.

Submission + - Q&A: Alex Gibney on Hackers and Julian Assange (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: MB: I guess I never had the opportunity to feel so infuriated about Assange until I saw your film. Quite simply, what is the dude’s problem? What has it become?

Gibney: I think the seeds of whom Assange has become today were always there: In his childhood, in the way he approached the world through the computer, in his kind of solitism, in the way he kind of took to himself and also imagined himself to always be a grander figure than he necessarily was, a kind of self-regarding narcissism. These were always there, but they were balanced with a healthy sense of idealism, and a self-deprecating humor. The Julian Assange that Mark Davis captured just before the Afghan War logs is a more interesting figure.

I think in the late scene, and through much of the more vicious attacks on Wikileaks, his character flew out of balance, and now he’s something that’s closer to a human megaphone. If you look at the Wikileaks' twitter page, I think there’s something like 1.5 million followers. And then look at how many people that site is following. Two. And they’re both Wikileaks sites, so, you know (laughs), that’s kind of a grand metaphor. Lots to say, but not much to listen. Not much patience for listening, not much bandwidth for listening.

Submission + - Hate, Mapped (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: In a lot of ways, the Geography of Hate affirms what we already know: Americans are fucking racist. Homophobic and ableist, too.

But while that may not come as any great surprise, the map reveals a startling bigotry coursing beneath our preconceived notions of just where in the US hate is harbored most. Americans, it turns out, fall racist and homophobic and ableist, and are apparently vocal enough about it to spout off bigotry on social media, in no real discernible pattern, though it's often where we least expect bigotry that we find it rearing its ugly head.

The visualization comes way of Humboldt State University's Dr. Monica Stephens and the Floating Sheep--the same group that made a map of post-election Twitter hate speech. It comprises 150,000 geo-coded hate tweets flagged between June 2012 and April 2013 for including the word "chink," "gook," "nigger," "wetback," "spick," "cripple," "dyke," "fag," "homo," or "queer". At first blush it's awfully depressing, a real day ruiner, or worse. Click around and most slurs--not all, but most--see the intercontinental US pocked by deep reds, the research team's translation for "most hate." Jesus Christ. Is it 2013? It can't be 2013.

Submission + - For the First Time, Researchers Spy on the Undisturbed Quantum World (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: We can and have, nonetheless, created an absolutely amazing model/understanding of the quantum world (the world of the very, very small), but to actually watch it in any conventional sense of “watching” an electron in orbit is to disrupt the electron. Think about what it is to observe something: it involves a physical entity interacting with that something. For example, a photon (light particle) making a trip from the observer to the electron/atom/very small thing or the other way around.

That photon necessarily has an interaction with the very small thing being observed, changing it. So now we’re not observing what we wanted to observe, but instead this brand new thing that is a product of the observed and the observation. This is the basic problem of the “standard quantum limit”: looking without touching. Now, as detailed in a new paper in the journal Nature Photonics, researchers at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) claim to have beat the limit, seen the unseeable.

Submission + - A Working Bitcoin ATM Is in San Diego, But Its Most Vocal Backer Is Gone (vice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It seems like a sour ending for Jeff Berwick, whom co-owner Evan Rose effectively fired from the project. Berwick has spent the past month proselytizing about bitcoin to mainstream finance cable stations and media outlets across the web. But according to Berwick, Rose told him his "participation was no longer necessary."

Enough though, a product like BitcoinATM will likely break a lot more rich people's hearts before it is successfully deployed. (By the way, does this demonstration really count as deployment? No.) Regulatory permissions and licensing by governments around the globe will make the process a nightmare. In my interview with Berwick, his resolve seemed to be that such problems would figure themselves out along the way.

Submission + - CISPA's Immunity Provision Would Allow Corporate Hacking (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) passed the House last Thursday on a 288-127 vote. The bill now heads to the Senate, where it is expected to face stiff resistance. President Obama is on record as opposing CISPA, threatening to veto the bill if it doesn't address civil liberties concerns.

So, that's certainly something worth cheering about. On the tech side of things, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian continues his campaign to kill CISPA. The masses, meanwhile, are too transfixed by the Boston Marathon spectacle to care much about internet privacy. Not to devalue that horrible tragedy, but Americans might also want to watch their government's debate on a bill that will have vast repercussions far into the future.

Under CISPA, corporations would be allowed to aggressively combat loosely-defined “cybersecurity threats.” Rep. Jim Langevin wisely attached an anti-hack-back amendment to CISPA limiting corporations to cybersecurity measures only on their own networks. Language found in the exemptions section, however, effectively nullifies this amendment. Companies would be able to act with immunity outside their networks. Translation: it's illegal to hack as an act of civil disobedience (see: Anonymous), but perfectly legal if you are a corporation.

Submission + - China Took the Clean Energy Lead in 2012 (vice.com) 2

Submitted by derekmead
derekmead writes: According to a new study from Pew Charitable Trusts, China was the world leader in clean energy investment in 2012. The US, meanwhile, saw its grip loosen on many of the clean energy technologies it developed.

According to the research, total clean energy investment totaled $269 billion worldwide last year, a decline from 2011's record high of $302 billion. However, clean energy investment in the Asia and Oceania markets grew by 16 percent to $101 billion. In terms of investment—which is an indicator that a country or region has offered compelling projects, struck a good regulatory balance, and has a strong economy—that makes Asia the epicenter of the global clean energy market.

The Pew researchers thus labeled the US clean energy sector as "underperforming," largely for a trio of reasons. First, China's boom and manufacturing prowess has taken investment away from the US. Second, the US regulatory environment for clean energy is horrifically unstable (as is the regulatory environment as a whole) as politicians battle over budget rhetoric. Finally, the US has failed to capitalize on its innovation prowess and develop its clean energy manufacturing sector to its full potential.

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