Comment Re:lol mimes (Score 2) 203
how does a mime have a "verbal altercation"?
Sign language.
Comment Re:Interesting... (Score 4, Informative) 119
From the article, "City officials said the first units in Boston will be funded by Cisco Systems, a leader in development of smart city solutions, at no cost to the city."
As for why Boston got them first, rather than other cities around the country, my guess would be because they're a local product. "The high-tech benches were invented by MIT Media Lab spinoff Changing Environments, a Verizon Innovation Program."
Julian Assange Plans Modeling Debut At London Fashion Show 173
An anonymous reader writes with news about a possible new direction for Julian Assange. Julian Assange is expected to make his London Fashion Week debut this September. The Australian WikiLeaks founder will reportedly model for Vivienne Westwood’s son, Ben Westwood, at a fashion show staged at the Ecuadorean Embassy, where he has been seeking refuge for the past two years. He is avoiding extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over claims of sex offences. “Julian’s been in the embassy for two years and it’s important that he doesn’t slip into obscurity,” said Ben Westwood. “I want to highlight Julian Assange’s plight. What happened to him is totally unfair.”
Comment How about a higher-spec F3 instead? (Score 1) 198
I've been running LG's F3 for a while, and there are things I love about it, and other things that I hate.
The good: Incredible battery life (can get two days with moderate use and still have battery to spare), slim design that can easily be operated with one hand, reasonably fast CPU, bright IPS display, good RF performance, and LTE. Also, it has a replaceable battery and a MicroSD slot.
The bad: That MicroSD slot is needed, because there's less than 1.3 GB of internal storage, and there's only 1 GB of RAM. Fortunately, Firefox allows you to move it to the SD card, otherwise I wouldn't be able to run it.
Suggestion: take the F3, and add more RAM and internal flash. A quad-core CPU would be nice, but isn't really necessary.
That being said, in spite of the overkill display, the G3 at least has brought back the replaceable battery and the MicroSD slot, which went missing on the G2.
Facial Recognition Might Be Coming To Your Car 131
cartechboy writes What if you got into your car and you had to authenticate that it was you behind the wheel? That might be what's coming in the near future as Ford's working with Intel to bring facial recognition to the car. The idea would be to improve safety and in-car tech with this system which is being called Project Mobil. When someone enters a Project Mobil-equipped car the system uses front-facing cameras to authenticate the driver. If the driver can't be authenticated it'll send a photo to the vehicle owner's phone asking for permission for this person to drive the vehicle. Once identified, the car can then automatically adjust certain settings to the driver's preference. This could also theoretically allow parents to control how loud their kids listen to the music while driving, how fast they can drive, and even simply monitor them driving. Obviously this NSA-like surveillance tech is a bit creepy on some levels, but there could be a lot of terrific applications for it. While only an experiment, don't be surprised if your dashboard stares back at you eventually.
Comment Re: Impressive (Score 1) 60
Except TFA only mentions load in terms of compression. In a space elevator, half of the structure (the half beyond the geostationary point) would be in tension.
Scientists Successfully Grow Full Head of Hair On Bald Man 109
realized writes: "A man with almost no hair on his body has grown a full head of it after a novel treatment by doctors at Yale University. The patient had previously been diagnosed with both alopecia universalis, a disease that results in loss of all body hair, and plaque psoriasis, a condition characterized by scaly red areas of skin. The only hair on his body was within the psoriasis plaques on his head. He was referred to Yale Dermatology for treatment of the psoriasis. The alopecia universalis had never been treated.
After two months on tofacitinib [an FDA-approved arthritis drug] at 10 mg daily, the patient's psoriasis showed some improvement, and the man had grown scalp and facial hair — the first hair he'd grown there in seven years. After three more months of therapy at 15 mg daily, the patient had completely regrown scalp hair and also had clearly visible eyebrows, eyelashes, and facial hair, as well as armpit and other hair, the doctors said."
After two months on tofacitinib [an FDA-approved arthritis drug] at 10 mg daily, the patient's psoriasis showed some improvement, and the man had grown scalp and facial hair — the first hair he'd grown there in seven years. After three more months of therapy at 15 mg daily, the patient had completely regrown scalp hair and also had clearly visible eyebrows, eyelashes, and facial hair, as well as armpit and other hair, the doctors said."
Comment Re:Backup? (Score 1) 396
How do you distinguish between intentional and unintentional changes? How much storage overhead do you need to keep all changes so that you can roll back any unintentional change?
I'm only a rocket scientist, not a CS person, but it seems intuitive to me. If it's an intentional change, then the new version will have a later last-modified date than the back-up. If the hash of the back-up copy made at the time it was written matches a hash calculated at the time of the second back-up, then the integrity of the back-up is confirmed. If the active copy has not been intentionally changed in the interval, and its hash no longer matches the other two, then the active should be discarded in favor of the back-up. I'm sure you can do the mental figuring for the equivalent to detect if the back-up rather than the active has bitrotted.
The challenge arrives if you have *both* intentional and unintentional changes to the same file between successive back-ups. To exclude unintentional changes, you would have to do hashes every time you save/compile/whatever,as well as keep a keystroke log of the edits. Then, you would have to execute the exact same change process on the back-up copy, repeating the process described above. It would be incredibly resource-intensive (essentially having a 'bot duplicate the work you have performed between back-ups), but it would sure be thorough.
Lord, I HOPE this is not an original idea. If I just invented it, and somebody tries to patent it later, you're in for a world of hurt.
Comment Re:Fox News? (Score 1) 682
The IRS guidelines on how long businesses should keep tax records for at least 2 or 3 years, in some circumstances (not involving filing a fraudulent return) they recommend up to 6 or 7 years.
The Internal Revenue Service -- Do As We Say Not As We Do.
Google: Indie Musicians Must Join Streaming Service Or Be Removed 364
Sockatume writes: In a statement to the Financial Times and reported by the BBC, Google has confirmed that it will remove the music videos of independent artists unless they sign up to its upcoming subscription music service. Many independent musicians and labels have refused to do so, claiming that the contracts offer significantly worse deals than the likes of Spotify and Pandora, and that Google is unwilling to negotiate on the rates it offers artists. A Google spokesperson indicated that the company could start removing videos within days.
Chinese-Built Cars Are Coming To the US Next Year 431
cartechboy (2660665) writes "Made In China." It's a sticker we all know too well here in the U.S., and yet, it seems not everything we buy is made in China. To date, there haven't been Chinese-built cars in the U.S., but we keep hearing they are coming. Now it seems it's about to become a reality, as Chinese-built Volvos will be arriving in the U.S. as early as 2015. The first model to arrive will be the S60L. The payoff for Volvo if it manages to convince buyers that its cars built in China are just as good as those currently built in Europe is vast. Not only will it save on production costs, but it will help buffer against exchange rate fluctuations. Volvo's planning to make China a manufacturing hub, and that makes sense since it's now owned by Chinese parent company Geely. But will Chinese-built cars be just as good as European-built cars, and will consumers be able to tell the difference?
Comment Re:Good hack (Score 2) 100
Yeah, it sucks for the actual Nigerian finance minister.
If I were Domino's, I would consider offering a reward (less than 30000 Euros but still significant) for information leading to the arrest and conviction of these hackers.
Comment Re:yuck epresso (Score 1) 192
Has anybody smoked in space? You know it's going to come up at some point.
I remembered hearing something about smoking on Mir. This article was the fisrt I stumbled on when I just googled it.
Comment Re:But they're still collecting your data. (Score 3, Funny) 97
Actually, things have changed. As part of this announcement they also announced that they will be digging through your browser history in order to provide more targeted ads, rather than just mining what you do through their website and websites that track for them
At last, a reason to keep Opera on my computer.
Comment Who's to say we're not being watched now? (Score 2) 686
Before diplomats from one country meet with diplomats from another country on Earth, they study everything they can about the situation and their counterparts. What if aliens are monitoring our communications to learn more about us -- what we do, why we do it, what we believe, how we're likely to respond to different scenarios, etc.? No one says that even if aliens came to Earth the first thing they'd do is find some schlub and say "Take me to your leader." Nor is it unlikely that a race capable of crossing the void between stars could hide from us, say by looking like a comet or asteroid.
