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Submission + - headlights that make rain invisible (autoblog.com) 1

Submitted by zlives
zlives writes: According to CNET, the headlight uses a camera housed within the headlight assembly to detect rain (and presumably snow or hail) as it falls, and then it uses a processor to anticipate the path of the rain. Finally, the actual light is created by a projector, which uses the information supplied by the processor to block out the pixels where the rain is expected to be. This technology, as you can see in the image above, should help improve visibility since there will be less light reflected back at the driver by raindrops.

Submission + - Turn That Frown Upside Down? Maybe Not: Negative People Reply to Emails 36% Fast (contactually.com)

Submitted by antdude
antdude writes: A Contactually blog reports "Turn That Frown Upside Down? Maybe Not: Negative People Reply to Emails 36% Faster ... Engineers at Contactually, a referral marketing platform, recently analyzed over 100 million email conversations and determined that being negative actually is helpful when it comes to email. On average, negative people tend to reply to emails 36% faster than their positive, bubbly colleagues..."

Seen on Slate from HardOCP.

Submission + - DEP Says Fracking Not to Blame for Flammable Water (theepochtimes.com)

Submitted by jjp9999
jjp9999 writes: The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection declared on Monday that fracking is not to blame for methane in water in Susquehanna County. Their 16-month investigation concluded the methane was naturally occurring, not from hydraulic fracturing wells nearby. Last year, the EPA declared flammable sink water in Dimock, Pennsylvania, was not contaminating, after it was made famous by the documentary film, "Gasland."

Submission + - Alpha Centauri Bb Given a Name (space.com) 1

Submitted by SchrodingerZ
SchrodingerZ writes: The nearest planet outside our solar system has recently been named Albertus Alauda. Originally named Alpha Centauri Bb, the planet is the closest known planet not orbiting the Sun, being a mere 4.3 light years away. The name comes from Jay Lark, who won the naming contest held by Uwingu starting last month and ending on April 22. Lark remarks that the name comes from the Latin name of his late grandfather, stating, "My grandfather passed away after a lengthy and valiant battle with cancer; his name in Latin means noble or bright and to praise or extol." The competition for naming the planet came from Uwing, a company which used the buying of name proposals and votes to fund grants for future space exploration ventures. Albertus Alauda won the competition with 751 votes, followed by Rakhat with 684 votes, and Caleo, with 622 votes.

Submission + - NASA lets us watch the Sun spin for 3 years in 4 minute video (geek.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Back in February 2010 NASA launched the Solar Dynamics Observatory–a 3-axis stabilized satellite and fully redundant spacecraft. The aim of the SDO is to monitor solar activity and see how that impacts space weather.

As part of its observations, the SDO captures an image of the Sun every 12 seconds using the onboard Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, but varies those shots across 10 different wavelengths. NASA has now collected 3 year’s worth of image data from the SDO and has put together a video letting us see the Sun spin in all its glory.

Submission + - Amazon's Cloud Exodus? (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: There are rumblings around this week's OpenStack conference that companies are moving away from AWS, ready to ditch their training wheels and build their own private clouds. Inbound marketing services company HubSpot is the latest to announce that it's shifting workloads off AWS, citing problems with 'zombie servers,' unused servers that the company was paying for. Others that are leaving point to 'business issues,' like tightening the reins on developers who turned to the cloud without permission.

Submission + - How can I talk to IOS with my embedded USB design?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This is an Ask Slashdot topic.

We have developed a portable battery powered device that uses USB for configuration, telemetry, and support. We have a companion pc utility that works fine but our marketing brethren would prefer an ios solution.

The technical challenges include the electrical interface and software. How have slashdotters solved these challenges? (Besides Android...)

Thanks in advance!

Submission + - "Brute Force" Aimed at WordPress (briandonohue.org)

Submitted by nightcats
nightcats writes: This morning I attempted to login into the WordPress admin area and received the message, "Wordpress administrator area access disabled temporarily due to widespread brute force attacks." An inquiry with my webhost providers revealed that "There is a an active brute force attack against WordPress sites across the internet and this is creating issues with the network and servers." I was advised to login via FTP with the following changes to the .htaccess file, replacing "xxx" with the IP address:
Order deny,allow Deny from all Allow from x.x.x.x

Submission + - IAU: No, You Can't Name That Exoplanet (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: The International Astronomical Union (IAU) — the official body that governs the designations of all celestial bodies — in their capacity of purveyors of all things “official” has deemed attempts at crowdsourcing names for exoplanets illegitimate. “In the light of recent events, where the possibility of buying the rights to name exoplanets has been advertised, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) wishes to inform the public that such schemes have no bearing on the official naming process,” writes Thierry Montmerle, General Secretary of the IAU in Paris, France. Although the “schemes” are not specifically named, the most popular US-based “exoplanet naming” group Uwingu appears to be the target of today’s IAU statement. Set up by Alan Stern, planetary scientist and principal investigator for NASA’s Pluto New Horizons mission, Uwingu encourages the public to nominate and vote (for a fee) on names for the slew of exoplanets steadily being discovered.

Submission + - A tale of two tests: why Energy Star LED light bulbs are a rare breed (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: Just over a week ago Gizmag reported that Philips' 22 W LED light bulb, designed as a like-for-like replacement of a 100-W incandescent light bulb, was the first LED bulb of its type to receive the stamp of approval from Energy Star. But looking at the Energy Star requirements reported by Philips in its press release, it seemed a little strange that Philips' product is the only one to have been certified – given that products long on the market appear, at face value, to meet those requirements. Since then, Gizmag has spoken to LED light bulb makers Switch Lighting and other industry players to find out why they're apparently playing catch-up.

Submission + - Bing Delivers Five Times as Many Malicious Websites as Google

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: According to an 18-month study from German independent testing lab AV-Test, searches on Bing returned five times more links to malicious websites than Google searches. The study looked at nearly 40 million websites provided by seven different search engines. About 10 million results came from Bing and another 10 million from Google. 13 million sites were provided by the Russian service Yandex, with the rest coming from Blekko, Faroo, Teoma and Baidu respectively. Of these 40 million sites, AV-Test found 5,000 pieces of malware—and admittedly small percentage of websites.

Submission + - Not even investors know what Google Glass is for (citeworld.com)

Submitted by bdking
bdking writes: Google says it plans to ship its Google Glass Explorer Edition by the end of April to developers and consumers who paid $1,500 to test the computer-enabled eyewear, with vague plans for a general release (at a lower price) by year's end. But what will you really be able to do with Google Glass, beyond having information presented before your eyes? Even investors who are set to spend millions funding apps development for Google Glass have no clue. Is Google Glass being overhyped as a "transformational" device?

Submission + - Speeding Ticket Robots -- Laws As Algorithms (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As the age of autonomous cars and drone surveillance draws nearer, it's reasonable to expect that the government increasingly automate the enforcement of traffic laws. We already deal with red light cameras, speed limit cameras, and special lane cameras. But they aren't widespread, and there are a host of problems with them. Now, Ars reports on a group of academics who are attempting to solve the problem of converting simple laws to machine-readable code. They found that when the human filter was removed from the system, results became unreasonable very quickly. For example, if you aren't shy about going 5mph over the limit, you'll likely break the law dozens of times during an hour of city driving. On the freeway, you might break it continuously for an hour. But it's highly unlikely you'd get more than one ticket for either transgression. Not so with computers (PDF): 'An automated system, however, could maintain a continuous flow of samples based on driving behavior and thus issue tickets accordingly. This level of resolution is not possible in manual law enforcement. In our experiment, the programmers were faced with the choice of how to treat many continuous samples all showing speeding behavior. Should each instance of speeding (e.g. a single sample) be treated as a separate offense, or should all consecutive speeding samples be treated as a single offense? Should the duration of time exceeding the speed limit be considered in the severity of the offense?' One of the academics said, 'When you're talking about automated enforcement, all of the enforcement has to be put in before implementation of the law—you have to be able to predict different circumstances.'

Submission + - DIY project crowdfunds "open source spectrometry" X-Prize (spectralchallenge.org) 2

Submitted by jywarren
jywarren writes: Public Lab http://publiclaboratory.org/ which brought us the DIY Balloon Mapping Kit http://kck.st/x5vsyA and the highly successful DIY Spectrometry Kit http://kck.st/PI9XOq has launched a prize pool for identifying contaminants in your neighborhood — using only low cost, open source spectrometry. Phase 1 is open for submissions — you can enter or simply contribute to the prize pool.

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