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Bug

Toyota Acceleration and Embedded System Bugs 499

Posted by Soulskill from the bugs-that-lead-to-crashes dept.
An anonymous reader writes "David Cummings, a programmer who worked on the Mars Pathfinder project, has written an interesting editorial in the L.A. Times encouraging Toyota to drop claims of software infallibility in their recent acceleration problems. He argues that embedded systems developers must program more defensively, and that companies should stop relying on software for safety. Quoting: 'If Toyota has indeed tested its software as thoroughly as it says without finding any bugs, my response is simple: Keep trying. Find new ways to instrument the software, and come up with more creative tests. The odds are that there are still bugs in the code, which may or may not be related to unintended acceleration. Until these bugs are identified, how can you be certain they are not related to sudden acceleration?'"
Social Networks

Facebook Axes "Beacon," Donates $9.5M To Settle Suit 71

Posted by kdawson from the all-your-data-are-you-know-the-rest dept.
alphadogg sends in a Network World piece that begins "Facebook has agreed to shut down a program that sparked a lawsuit alleging privacy violations, and set up a $9.5M fund for a nonprofit foundation that will support online privacy, safety, and security. The lawsuit centers around Facebook's Beacon program, which let third-party Web sites distribute 'stories' about users to Facebook. Beacon was launched in November 2007 and less than a year later plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit 'alleging that Facebook and its affiliates did not give users adequate notice and choice about Beacon and the collection and use of users' personal information.' ... Facebook never admitted wrongdoing but as part of a proposed settlement the company began sending notices to Facebook users this week. The settlement provides no compensation directly to users who receive the notice. Facebook users can opt out of the settlement, and should do so if they wish to pursue further legal action against Facebook related to the Beacon program. 'If you choose to do nothing and remain in the settlement class, you will be legally bound by the settlement,' a FAQ on the settlement Web site says. "By doing nothing, you will be giving up the right to sue Facebook and the other Defendants over claims related to or arising out of the Beacon program.'" Other defendents included Blockbuster, Fandango, Overstock.com, Zappos.com, and Gamefly. Neither the article nor the settlement site mentions what part, if any, they play in the settlement.
Mars

Martian Methane May Be Created By Lifeforms 297

Posted by kdawson from the little-green-bugs dept.
Following our recent discussions about the growing evidence pointing to possible life on Mars, reader skywatcher2501 writes with news of a study that has ruled out one possible explanation for the levels of methane seen on that planet — that it might be replenished by disintegrating meteors entering the atmosphere. So two theories remain: either the gas is created as a by-product of reactions between volcanic rock and water, or it is a by-product of a lifeform's metabolism.

Comment Re:Braking (Score 2, Informative) 144

by wildsurf (#29944622) Attached to: Appeal For Commuter GPS Logs To Aid Electric Cars
Michael, you have it actually backwards. Electric cars gain energy by braking without friction. The rotating wheels of the car act as a generator, converting the car's kinetic energy into electricity with about 70% efficiency. That's why the friction brakes on my Tesla still squeak; because the regenerative deceleration is enough 98% of the time, and I rarely need to use the friction brakes.

Another nice feature of the Tesla is that the regen is triggered merely by lifting off the accelerator, so you can practically drive with one foot. It's also arguably safer, because deceleration starts immediately with no lag from moving your foot to the brake pedal.
Patents

WARF and Intel Settle Patent Suit Over Core 2 Duo 79

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the with-a-bat'leth dept.
reebmmm writes "The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) and Intel have settled their patent suit over technology developed by Gurindar Sohi, a computer science professor at the University of Wisconsin — Madison. Professor Sohi developed technology that was ultimately patented by WARF using money he received from Intel. Last month, Judge Barbara Crabb found that the funding agreement was ambiguous, but that e-mails revealed that the money was an unrestricted gift and carried with it no obligation to license or assign any inventions to Intel. Trial was scheduled to begin today. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed."
Power

Blueprint For a Quantum Electric Motor 97

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the really-inboard-motor dept.
TechReviewAl writes "Alexey Ponomarev from the University of Augsburg in Germany and colleagues have revealed the blueprints for an electric motor built with just two atoms. The motor would have one neutral atom and one charged atom trapped in a ring-shaped optical lattice. The atoms jump from one site in the lattice to the next as they travel around the ring and placing this ring in an alternating magnetic field creates the conditions necessary to keep the charged atom moving round the the ring. A team from the University of Glasgow in the UK in fact built one of these quantum motors back in 2007, which they called an optical ferris wheel for ultracold atoms. 'The next step, say Ponomarev and co, is to attach the motor to a nanoscopic resonator, such as a spring board or nanomushroom, and make it vibrate. If you can do that, they say, you'd be powering a classical object using a quantum motor.'"

Comment Re:How far in the winter... (Score 1) 457

by wildsurf (#28790157) Attached to: MIT Electric Car May Outperform Rival Gas Models
Ok, one thing that always bothers me about these electric cars is the seeming ignorance surrounding the simple notion of how to provide climate comfort within the cabin.

HVAC takes a fairly small amount of energy relative to the car's overall usage. The electric drivetrain does produce a nontrivial amount of waste heat, which in theory could be used for cabin heating. Tesla chose not to do this, because it wasn't worth the added complexity. The Tesla at max acceleration uses 200kW, at highway cruising speed around 15kW, and the HVAC only about 2kW. And as for air conditioning, an ICE car doesn't have any obvious advantage over electric, that I can see. Most of the energy in the gasoline is lost as waste heat before it can be used to drive the AC compressor.

Common sense plays into this too. If you live in Minnesota in winter, don't drive in short sleeves. And if you live in Arizona, don't buy a black car.
Privacy

Social Security Numbers Can Be Guessed 268

Posted by timothy from the oh-there's-a-scheme-all-right dept.
BotScout writes "The nation's Social Security numbering scheme has left millions of citizens vulnerable to privacy breaches, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, who for the first time have used statistical techniques to predict Social Security numbers solely from an individual's date and location of birth. The researchers used the information they gleaned to predict, in one try, the first five digits of a person's Social Security number 44 percent of the time for 160,000 people born between 1989 and 2003. A Social Security Administration spokesman said the government has long cautioned the private sector against using a social security number as a personal identifier, even as it insists 'there is no fool-proof method for predicting a person's Social Security Number.'" Update: 07/07 00:01 GMT by T : Reader angrytuna links to Wired's coverage of the SSN deduction system, and links to the researchers' FAQ at Carnegie Mellon, which says that the research paper will be presented at BlackHat Las Vegas later this month.

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