Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Earthquake sensors track urban traffic, too (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Besides the roar of engines and honking of angry drivers, rush-hour traffic also makes underground “noise.” We can’t hear most of these ground vibrations, but seismic sensors can. With a network of 5300 geophones—devices that convert ground movements into voltage—researchers recorded 1 week’s worth of urban vibrations in a 70-km2 area of Long Beach, California. By analyzing the seismic data, they could measure how fast individual trains were moving between stations, count the number of planes landing and taking off at the airport, and calculate the average speed of vehicles on a 10-lane highway. Without GPS or cameras, seismic systems could allay privacy concerns by tracking urban activity in an anonymous way.
Google

Google Announces Project Ara Developer Conference, Shows Off First Prototype 66

Posted by samzenpus from the save-the-date dept.
An anonymous reader writes Google today announced it will be hosting the second iteration of its Project Ara Module Developers Conference for its modular device project early next year. The first event will be in Mountain View on January 14, 2015, with satellite locations at Google offices in New York City, Buenos Aires, and London. The same agenda will be repeated in Singapore on January 21, 2015, with satellite locations at Google offices in Bangalore, Tokyo, Taipei, and Shanghai. The company also released a video showing off the first prototype from Project Ara. Until now, all we've seen so far are industrial design models. This one actually boots up.

Submission + - Australian Government tries to force telcos to store user metadata for two years (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by AlbanX
AlbanX writes: The Australian Government has introduced a bill that would require telecommunications carriers and service providers to retain the non-content data of Australian citizens for two years of it can be accessed — without a warrant- by local law enforcement agencies.

Despite tabling the draft legislation into parliament, the bill doesn't actually specify the types of data the Government wants retained. The proposal has received a huge amount of criticism from the telco industry, other members of parliament and privacy groups.
Science

CERN Looking For Help Filling In the Gaps In Photo Archive 28

Posted by samzenpus from the what-does-this-look-like-to-you? dept.
rHBa writes According to the BBC scientists at the European nuclear research center CERN have uncovered an archive of images from its first 50 years and are asking for help in deciphering what is going on in them. Dr Sue Black, who was a key figure in the campaign to save Bletchley Park, said "we believe that much of this information could be crowd-sourced from the CERN community."

Submission + - Some Researchers Agree With Musk That A.I. Could Be Dangerous (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Researchers from some of the top U.S. universities said Elon Must wasn't so far off the mark when he said last week that artificial intelligence poses a threat to humans. "If I were to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it's probably that... With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon." Musk said at an M.I.T. symposium . Musk's comments came after he tweeted in early August that AI is "potentially more dangerous than nukes." Andrew Moore, dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon, Musk has "a valid concern and it's really an interesting one. It's a remote, far future danger but sometime we're going to have to think about it." AI researchers disagree on when the technology will be available, some saying 20 years, others believe 50 or, even 100 years away. Stuart Russell, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the UC Berkeley, compared AI research to that of nuclear fusion. "The first thing you think of is containment. You need to get energy out without creating a hydrogen bomb. The same would be true for AI. If we don't know how to control AI it would be like making a hydrogen bomb."
HP

HP Unveils Industrial 3D Printer 10X Faster, 50% Cheaper Than Current Systems 111

Posted by samzenpus from the brand-new dept.
Lucas123 writes HP today announced an 3D industrial printer that it said will be half the cost of current additive manufacturing systems while also 10 times faster, enabling production parts to be built. The company also announced Sprout, a new immersive computing platform that combines a 23-in touch screen monitor and horizontal capacitive touch mat with a scanner, depth sensor, hi-res camera, and projector in a single desktop device. HP's Multi Jet Fusion printer will be offered to beta customers early next year and is expected to be generally available in 2016. The machine uses a print bar with 30,000 nozzles spraying 350 million drops a second of thermoplastic or other materials onto a print platform. The Multi Jet Fusion printer uses fused deposition modeling, an additive manufacturing technology first invented in 1990. the printer works by first laying down a layer of powder material across a build area. Then a fusing agent is selectively applied with the page-wide print bar. Then the same print bar applies a detailing agent at the parts edge to give high definition. The material is then exposed to an energy source that fuses it.
Technology

Video Remote Vision Through a Virtual Reality Headset (Video) 44

Posted by Roblimo from the it-looks-much-better-over-there-than-it-does-here dept.
Add some material-handling devices and you'd have software-controlled Waldos, first described by Robert A. Heinlein in the 1942 short story titled Waldo. So while the idea of a pair of artificial eyes you control by moving your head (while looking at the area around the artificial eyes, even if it's in orbit), sounds like futuristic fun, especially if you use an Oculus Virtual Reality device instead of an LED screen, it not only hasn't caught up with science fiction, but is a fair ways behind science fact. Still, the idea of being able to control a vision system deep under the sea or in orbit around Saturn is certainly interesting in and of itself. (Alternate Video Link)

Submission + - New study shows three abrupt pulses of CO2 during last deglaciation (washington.edu)

Submitted by vinces99
vinces99 writes: A new study shows that the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide that contributed to the end of the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago did not occur gradually but rather was characterized by three abrupt pulses. Scientists are not sure what caused these abrupt increases, during which carbon dioxide levels rose about 10 to 15 parts per million – or about 5 percent per episode – during a span of one to two centuries. It likely was a combination of factors, they say, including ocean circulation, changing wind patterns and terrestrial processes. The finding, published Oct. 30 in the journal Nature, casts new light on the mechanisms that take the Earth in and out of ice ages.

“We used to think that naturally occurring changes in carbon dioxide took place relatively slowly over the 10,000 years it took to move out of the last ice age,” said lead author Shaun Marcott, who did the work as a postdoctoral researcher at Oregon State University and is now at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “This abrupt, centennial-scale variability of CO2 appears to be a fundamental part of the global carbon cycle.”

Previous research has hinted at the possibility that spikes in atmospheric carbon dioxide may have accelerated the last deglaciation, but that hypothesis had not been resolved, the researchers say. The key to the new finding is the analysis of an ice core from the West Antarctic that provided the scientists with an unprecedented glimpse into the past.

Submission + - Scientists grow tiny human stomachs in lab dishes (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Because the digestive systems of mice, flies, and other model organisms differ from those of humans, researchers have been hard-pressed to find a way to study the development of human gut maladies such as peptic ulcer disease. So several groups have turned to pluripotent stem cells—cells derived from human embryos or reprogrammed adult cells that can turn into any cell type in the body—to try to grow digestive organs in the lab. Last week, one group of researchers announced the creation of a lab-grown small intestine from stem cells. Today, a different team reports that they’ve perfected the recipe of molecules needed to coax both types of stem cells to grow into small spheres that, despite their size, have all the properties of a functional stomach. When the researchers exposed the ministomachs to the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, infections of which are blamed for many stomach ulcers and cancers, they saw the same molecular and cellular changes already known to occur in life-size stomachs.

Submission + - Swedish regulator orders last 'hold-out' ISP to retain customer data (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Despite the death of the EU Data Retention Directive in April, and despite the country having taken six years to even begin to obey the ruling, the Swedish government, via its telecoms regulator, has forced ISPs to continue retaining customer data for law enforcement purposes. Now the last ISP retrenching on the issue has been told that it must comply with the edict or face a fine of five million krona ($680,000).

While providers all over Europe have rejoiced in not being obliged any longer to provide infrastructure to retain six months of data per customer, Sweden and the United Kingdom alone have insisted on retaining the ruling — particularly surprising in the case of Sweden, since it took six years to begin adhering to the Data Retention Directive after it was made law in 2006. Britain's Data Retention and Investigatory Powers bill, rushed through in July, actually widens the scope of the original EU order.
Privacy

Help a Journalist With An NFC Chip Implant Violate His Own Privacy and Security 142

Posted by Soulskill from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept.
An anonymous reader writes: His wife thinks he's crazy, but this guy got an NFC chip implanted in his arm, where it will stay for at least a year. He's inviting everyone to come up with uses for it. Especially ones that violate his privacy and security. There must be something better to do than getting into the office or unlocking your work PC.

He says, "The chip we are using is the xNTi, an NFC type 2 NTAG216, which is about the size of a grain of rice and is manufactured by the Dutch semiconductor company NXP, maker of the NFC chip for the new iPhone. It is a glass transponder with an operating frequency of 13.56MHz, developed for mass-market applications such as retail, gaming and consumer electronics. ... The chip's storage capacity is pretty limited, the UID (unique identifier) is 7 bytes, while the read/write memory is 888 bytes. It can be secured with a 32-bit password and can be overwritten about 100,000 times, by which point the memory will be quite worn. Data transmission takes place at a baud rate of 106 kbit/s and the chip is readable up to 10 centimeters, though it is possible to boost that distance."

Submission + - As H-1B Investigative Reports Emerge, Feds Set to Destroy H-1B Records

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: A year-long investigation by NBC Bay Area's Investigative Unit and The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) raises questions about the H-1B visa program. In a five-part story that includes a mini-graphic novel called Techsploitation, CIR describes how the system rewards job brokers who steal wages and entrap Indian tech workers in the US, including the awarding of half a billion dollars in Federal tech contracts to those with labor violations. "Shackling workers to their jobs," CIR found after interviewing workers and reviewing government agency and court documents, "is such an entrenched business practice that it has even spread to U.S. nationals. This bullying persists at the bottom of a complex system that supplies workers to some of America’s richest and most successful companies, such as Cisco Systems Inc., Verizon and Apple Inc." In a presumably unrelated move, the U.S. changed its H-1B record retention policy last week, declaring that records used for labor certification, whether in paper or electronic, "are temporary records and subject to destruction" after five years under the new policy. "There was no explanation for the change, and it is perplexing to researchers," reports Computerworld. "The records under threat are called Labor Condition Applications (LCA), which identify the H-1B employer, worksite, the prevailing wage, and the wage paid to the worker." Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, added: "It undermines our ability to evaluate what the government does and, in today's world, retaining electronic records like the LCA is next to costless [a full year's LCA data is less than 1 GB]." President Obama, by the way, is expected to use his executive authority to expand the H-1B program after the midterm elections.

Submission + - Verizon Launches Tech News Site That Bans Stories On U.S. Spying 2

Submitted by blottsie
blottsie writes: The most-valuable, second-richest telecommunications company in the world is bankrolling a technology news site called SugarString.com. The publication, which is now hiring its first full-time editors and reporters, is meant to rival major tech websites like Wired and the Verge while bringing in a potentially giant mainstream audience to beat those competitors at their own game.

There’s just one catch: In exchange for the major corporate backing, tech reporters at SugarString are expressly forbidden from writing about American spying or net neutrality around the world, two of the biggest issues in tech and politics today.

Submission + - Open Educational Robot for under $50

Submitted by lkcl
lkcl writes: Straight from the crowd-funding page comes news of Hack-E-Bot, described as a "low price and open source robot that hopes to encourage children to learn about engineering, electronics, and programming". Part of the reason for achieving such a low price appears to be down to the use of a tiny $7 off-the-shelf Arduino-compatible board called Trinket from Adafruit. The Trinket (ATTiny328 PIC) press-fits neatly into a supplied breadboard: all connections and any educational experiments can be done entirely without soldering. It's cute, it's under $50, you can pay extra for one to be given free to a child if you want, and there's a lower-cost kit version available if you prefer to use your own embedded board and are prepared to write your own software. I absolutely love the whole idea, and they've already reached the incredibly low $7,000 funding target, so it's going ahead.

Comment Re:Don't get mad, get even (Score 2) 451

by dgatwood (#48256017) Attached to: Ken Ham's Ark Torpedoed With Charges of Religious Discrimination

I just keep thinking how unfortunate it is that they put it in northern KY. If it were closer to the southern edge, it would be in direct competition with Discovery Park of America. Incidentally, if you're in western KY or west TN, that's worth the drive. While you're down there, take a drive through Reelfoot, have some catfish or frog legs, and then go bald eagle watching.

Slashdot Top Deals

"When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical." -- Jon Carroll

Close