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Comment Burn to brain cells (Score 1) 268

As the original aim was to record the memories of the event, the best back up is to create new memories as soon as possible. Sit your kids in front of the monitor and subject ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H show them the videos. Provide plenty of glucose and caffeine so that they back up the memories as accurately as possible. Verbal annotations will help too.
If you want extra back-up diversity, invite members of your close family, and then extended family, work, church, sewing club, etc., to multiple showings. Produce fill-in-the-blanks question sheets about key events and run competitions to spot hard-to-see or difficult-to-catch occurrences. This will ensure multiple imprints of the video material in the neuro-cellular structures of the viewer's heads. Indeed, additional augmented memories may be generated by this whole exercise that can be shared later. And if you record those events on up-to-date video recording media, you will have a useful meta-recording to digest and disseminate further!

Comment UK vs US roads (Score 4, Informative) 190

Whenever I travel to the UK, I'm impressed and often overwhelmed with the level of visual information that there is when driving - UK roads are fantastically well lined and signposted, they are especially good at night with reflectors/cats eyes down the middle of the road and often different colored ones on the side of the road. As you drive down a freeway/motorway there will typically be at least 4 or 5 signs warning you of a turn-off - two actual directions, and then 100m count-down signs! In the US, you're lucky if there's more than one, and usually that one single sign is just before the turn-off! Of course, computer-driven cars will be able to use GPS/satNav, but driving in the UK is like driving a video game compared to the US. In a lot of Colorado cities, they don't even paint a line across the road at the stop/traffic lights!

Comment Black box in the Gents (Score 1) 238

If you did high-school physics you may have heard about black body radiation and a thing called a black box - a box that absorbs all light that enters it. This could be a box with a hole in it lined with light-absorbing material, such that any light entering the hole never goes out again. That hole is essentially "black" and can be very, very black indeed. It can be so black, that your mind can play tricks on you as to what it is. This experience occurred to me at work in the, ahem, Gent's, with a toilet roll dispenser. For months, this dispenser (one of those that is stainless steel and holds two rolls, one above the other) had a matt black plastic cover on the front about where a lock was supposed to be, (you can see where this is going). It was absolutely a solid black plastic cover. Quite boring, but clearly covering a hole for some reason. One day, while waiting for nature to, err, take its course I poked the cover and in a flash, found it was a hole! It was a stunning realization that this plastic thing I'd been staring at for months, every day, was actually, nothing. I've subsequently checked this many times and it's an extremely good black box because even when I knew what it was, it still looked like a solid cover. Sadly, last week the facilities folks filled it up with a new lock and ruined a great physical phenomenon. It will be sadly missed.
Government

Amazon Seeks US Exemption To Test Delivery Drones 155

angry tapir writes: Amazon.com has asked the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration for permission to test drones outdoors for use in its Prime Air package delivery service. In the run up to launching the service, which aims to deliver packages in 30 minutes or less, the online retailer is developing aerial vehicles that travel over 50 miles (80 kilometers) per hour, and will carry 5pound (2.3 kilogram) payloads, which account for 86 percent of the products sold on Amazon. They need to ask permission because the FAA specifically banned such behavior last month.
Earth

Mapping a Monster Volcano 105

bmahersciwriter (2955569) writes In one of the biggest-ever seismology deployments at an active volcano, researchers are peppering Mount St Helens in Washington state with equipment to study the intricate system of chambers and pipes that fed the most devastating eruption in U.S. history. This month, they plan to set off 24 explosions — each equivalent to a magnitude-2 earthquake — around around the slumbering beast in an effort to map the its interior with unprecedented depth and clarity.

Comment Re:Mandatory features: (Score 1) 427

Agree with you on lots of these. Interesting about the battery life - why 36 hours? You mention e-ink - but mirasol looks better. Color, high res, high frame rate, great outdoors. With you on the touch screen - I prefer buttons. Could be okay though, but you still have the glove issue when it's cold.

Comment Should be banned (Score 1) 769

All plastic pod coffee systems should be banned or at least CRV charged on every single pod or equivalent. The only "pods" I've seen that come close to being eco-friendly are the commercial Flavia ones that are just foil in a UFO shape. Plastic creamer pods should be banned too! Those stupid bits of plastic stick around for thousands of years. If you want a quick cuppa, boil a kettle and drink tea or a decent instant coffee.

Submission + - Affordable 3D metal printer developed, opensourced (techienews.co.uk)

hypnosec writes: Researchers have developed and opensourced a low-cost 3D metal printer capable of printing metal tools and objects with cost under £1,000. A team of researchers led by Associate Professor Joshua Pearce at the Michigan Technological University developed the firmware and the plans for the printer and have made it available freely to anyone interested in taking this further. Built with cost of just £913, the open source 3D printer is definitely a huge leap forward as the starting price of commercial counterparts is £300,000. Pearce claimed that their technology will not only allow smaller companies and start-ups to build inexpensive prototypes, but it will allow other scientists and researchers to build tools and objects required for their research without requiring to shell out thousands. The associate professor also claimed that using the technology, countries can use it to print components and parts for machines such as windmills.

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