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Biotech

Submission + - Paralyzed Dogs Walk Again After Cell Transplant (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by
kkleiner
kkleiner writes: "British researchers successfully restored the ability to walk in paralyzed dogs. Special cells taken from the dogs’ noses and transplanted to injured areas caused regrowth of neurons. Within six months the dogs amazingly regained used of their hind legs and were able to use a treadmill, some without a harness. The researchers hope the procedure might one day lead to a cure for humans with spinal cord injury."
The Internet

Submission + - Does Even Amazing Partisan Tech Deserve Applause? 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The press has been filled with wide-eyed articles about how Obama’s tech team pulled out the stops in their race against the Republicans. But as exciting as some of the new techniques dreamed up may be, Tom Steinberg points out it's important to reflect on the difference between choosing to use tech skills to win a particular fight, versus trying to improve the workings of the democratic system, or helping people to self-organize and take some control of their own lives. 'I am still filled with an excitement about the prospects for non-partisan technologies that I can’t muster for even the coolest uses of randomized control trial-driven political messaging,' writes Steinberg. 'The reason why all comes down to the fact that major partisan digital campaigns change the world, but they don’t do it in the way that services like eBay, TripAdvisor and Match.com do. What all these sites have in common – helping people sell stuff they own, find a hotel, or a life partner – is that they represent a positive change in the lives of millions of people that is not directly opposed by a counter-shift.'
Games

Submission + - Gameplay: the Missing Ingredient In Games (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Game designer Tadhg Kelly has an article discussing where the games industry has gone over the past several years. Gaming has become more of a business, and in doing so, become more of a science as well. When maximizing revenue is a primary concern, development studios try to reduce successful game designs to individual elements, then simply seek to add those elements to whatever game they're working on, like throwing spices into a stew. Kelly points out that indie developers who are willing to experiment often succeed because they understand something more fundamental about games: fun. Quoting: 'The guy who invented Minecraft (Markus “Notch” Persson) didn’t just create a giant virtual world in which you could make stuff, he made it challenging. When Will Wright created the Sims, he didn’t just make a game about living in a virtual house. He made it difficult to live successfully. That’s why both of those franchises have sold millions of copies. The fun factor is about more than making a game is amusing or full of pretty rewards. If your game is a dynamic system to be mastered and won, then you can go nuts. If you can give the player real fun then you can afford to break some of those format rules, and that’s how you get to lead rather than follow the market. If not then be prepared to pay through the nose to acquire and retain players.'
GNOME

Submission + - GNOME 3.8 To Scrap Fallback Mode (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Via LXer, an article at Phoronix tells of GNOME's plans to eliminate "fallback mode" (GNOME classic) in the 3.8 release.
Security

Submission + - 35% Of Americans Would Wear "Electric Shock Bracelet" in Order to Fly (infowars.com) 1

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Infowars.com reports: 'A survey commissioned by Infowars and conducted by Harris Interactive has found that 35% of American adults would be willing to wear an electric shock bracelet in order to fly, another startling example of how many Americans are willing to give up their rights in the name of safety. The idea of mandating travelers to wear an electric shock bracelet sounds like something out of a dystopian sci-fi movie, but the proposal was seriously considered and very nearly implemented by the Department of Homeland Security back in 2008. As the linked Youtube video highlights, not only would the bracelets have been used to deliver incapacitating electric shocks to suspected terrorists, they would also have contained tracking technology to spy on the wearer.
Android

Submission + - Why You Can't Build Your Own Smarthphone: Patents (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "In the mid-00s, more and more people started learning about Android, a Linux-based smartphone OS. Open source advocates in particular thought they could be seeing the mobile equivalent of Linux — something you could download, tinker with, and sell. Today, though, the Android market is dominated by Google and the usual suspects in the handset business. The reason nobody's been able to launch an Android empire from the garage is fairly straightforward: the average smartphone is covered by over 250,000 patents."
Science

Submission + - Scientists Study "Frictional Ageing" - Standing Objects Becoming Harder to Move (bbc.com) 1

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: The BBC reports: 'Have you ever had the impression that heavy items of furniture start to take root – that after years standing in the same place, they’re harder to slide to a new position? Do your best wine glasses, after standing many months unused in the cabinet, seem slightly stuck to the shelf? Has the fine sand in the kids’ play tray set into a lump?

If so, you’re not just imagining it. The friction between two surfaces in contact with each other does slowly increase over time. But why? A paper by two materials scientists at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, USA, suggests that the surfaces could actually be slowly chemically bonding together.

There are already several other explanations for this so-called “frictional ageing” effect. One is simply that two surfaces get squashed closer together. But a curious thing about friction is that the frictional force opposing sliding doesn’t depend on the area of the contacting surfaces. You’d expect the opposite to be the case: more contact should create more friction. But in fact two surfaces in apparent contact are mostly not touching at all, because little bumps and irregularities, called asperities, prop them apart. That’s true even for apparently smooth surfaces like glass, which are still rough at the microscopic scale. It’s only the contacts between these asperities that cause friction.'
Power

Submission + - Germany exports more power than ever despite phasing out nuclear enegery (google.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The german magazine "Der Spiegel" writes, that "the current export from Germany reached a record high this year — despite nuclear phase. Reason is the boom in green energy." Especially in the Netherlands power-plants are shut down because "electricity imported from Germany is cheaper." Is Germany an example of forward looking energy policy after all?
Government

Submission + - Voting doesn't have to end on election day 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In this latest election cycle, Americans got to participate up to two times: once in a primary and once in Tuesday's election. Now it's over, and voters will have no more say in the processes of their democratic republic for another two years. This may seem strange to the younger generation, who are used to being able to provide continuous input into anything and everything through modern technologies such as the Facebook and the internets. Conventional wisdom says that people can be trusted to choose the next American Idol, but should never be trusted with government-scale decisions. No, we leave that up to corrupt, brain-dead, power-hungry, self-consumed politicians because they are, um, better at it? So what if we could have a real democracy using internet technology? It would have to be consensus-based (not majority rule), which would then avoid the tyranny of the idiotic. Can you imagine a world where you get to participate in government more than once every couple of years? Here is how it would work, and here are scores of groups working on making it happen. Before you criticize: remember the alternative, which is the status quo. Are you willing to defend your current disenfranchisement because politicians are better at ruling over you than you are?
Data Storage

Submission + - Death of cassette tape is greatly exaggerated (torontosun.com) 1

Submitted by Meshach
Meshach writes: Interesting article from Toronto about how although they have been virtually abandoned for music cassette tapes are being actively used an an inexpensive storage medium. Companies looking to archive large amounts of data are always looking for a cheaper solution and cassette tapes are the newest fad. Apparently when access time is not a priority they are perfect and they require zero energy use when not in use.

Comment Re:2m? Not even close (Score 1) 119

of all the extended goal possibilities in the poll, which do you seriously believe would go toward bringing in new backers? More missions than before? More NPCs? I suspect that the lion's share of backers who would be swayed by those (and the "improved FPS mode"...) have already pledged.

That's me! I'm only going to pledge if there are at least 20 more NPCs! I don't know how many there are now, but there must be more!!!

J/K. In this household we're holding out for Linux support, and strongly hope for Mac for the sake of a couple other friends. The windows gamers in our group are also not likely to pledge without platform support, because they are busy engineers who nowadays mostly just play online games with our group.

Comment Re:If it doesn't run on my OS I don't buy it. (Score 1) 119

A sensible policy! Supposing your non-Windows OS is either Linux or Mac OS, are you interested in increasing the number of titles available by having another big game engine support it? Or is CryENGINE just not your style (it is rather different than DF after all).

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