71226225
submission
jones_supa writes:
A year ago the animation studio Pixar promised its RenderMan animation and rendering suite to eventually become free for non-commercial use. This was originally scheduled to happen in the SIGGRAPH 2014 computer graphics conference, but things got delayed. Nevertheless, today Pixar is releasing the free version into wild. Free non-commercial RenderMan can be used for research, education, evaluation, plug-in development, and any personal projects that do not generate commercial profits. This version is fully featured, without a watermark or any kind of artificial limits. Featuring Pixar's new RIS technology, RenderMan delivers extremely fast global illumination and interactive shading and lighting for artists. The software is available for Mac, Linux and Windows. In conjunction with the release, Pixar has also launched a new RenderMan Community site where users can exchange knowledge and resources, showcase their own work, share assets such as shaders and scripts, and learn about RenderMan from tutorials.
71203723
submission
Press2ToContinue writes:
Scientists conducting a mindbending experiment at the Large Hadron Collider next week hope to connect with a parallel universe outside of our own.
The staggeringly complex LHC ‘atom smasher’ at the CERN centre in Geneva, Switzerland, will be fired up to its highest energy levels ever in a bid to detect — or even create — miniature black holes.
If successful a completely new universe will be revealed – rewriting not only the physics books but the philosophy books too.
It is even possible that gravity from our own universe may ‘leak’ into this parallel universe, scientists at the LHC say.
The experiment is sure to inflame alarmist critics of the LHC, many of whom initially warned the high energy particle collider would spell the end of our universe with the creation a black hole of its own.
But so far Geneva remains intact and comfortably outside the event horizon.
71200237
submission
Press2ToContinue writes:
Astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets using the Kepler satellite. By analyzing these planetary systems, researchers have calculated the probability for the number of stars that might have planets in the habitable zone. The calculations show that billions of stars in the Milky Way will have one to three planets in the habitable zone, where there is the potential for liquid water and where life could exist.
71170423
submission
wrp103 writes:
Australian researchers have come up with a non-invasive ultrasound technology that clears the brain of neurotoxic amyloid plaques — structures that are responsible for memory loss and a decline in cognitive function in Alzheimer’s patients.
71078327
submission
MojoKid writes:
One of the highlights of the opening keynote at the NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference in San Jose (GTC), was NVIDIA CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang's special guest, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk and the "fireside chat" the two participated in. With NVIDIA's focus on deep learning and machine vision technologies for cars, much of the talk centered around autonomous vehicles and the notion that someday they may be so reliable, that they're actually safer on the road than cars operated by humans. Think about it. Is the idea of a vehicle that recognizes distance, velocity, weather conditions and real-time changes, faster than a human can, all that far-fetched? In the interview shot here, Musk even thinks we may get to a day when human drivers could be outlawed in favor of an all autonomous driving society.
71042313
submission
PvtVoid writes:
An industry consultant, Cherian Abraham, put the fraud rate at 6 percent, compared with a traditional credit card fraud rate that is relatively minuscule, 10 cents for every $100 spent. [i.e. one tenth of one percent]
The vulnerability in Apple Pay is in the way that it — and card issuers — “onboard” new credit cards into the system. Because Apple wanted its system to have the simplicity for which it has become famous and wanted to make the sign-up process “frictionless,” the company required little beyond basic credit card information about a user. Nor did it provide much information to the banks, like full phone numbers and addresses, that might help them detect fraud early.
The banks, desperate to become their customers’ default card on Apple Pay — most add only one to their iPhones — did little to build their own defenses or to push Apple to provide more detailed information about its customers. Some bank executives acknowledged that they were were so scared of Apple that they didn’t speak up.
71030941
submission
Press2ToContinue writes:
Martine Rothblatt talks about outlandish feats that sound like science fiction—including an explanation of how she used artificial intelligence to simulate the human brain and create a copy of her wife—in the same way most executives discuss quarterly business forecasts.
The CEO of biotech firm United Therapeutics, founder of SiriusXM radio, and America’s highest-paid female and transgender executive is also working with Craig Venter, who helped sequence the human genome, to use organs from genetically-modified pigs for human organ transplants. The goal is to come up with a way to create a never-ending supply of organs.
“When we started doing this, the longest a genetically-modified pig could survive in a bath of human blood was two hours and now that we are up to over eight days, it’s mind-blowing,” she said, in a wide-spanning conversation that drew an audience of hundreds at the South by Southwest conference.
Rothblatt also explained how she hired a team of robotic scientists to create a robot that was a “mind clone” of her wife, Bina Aspen.
Starting with a “mindfile”—a digital database of a person’s mannerisms, personality, recollections, feelings, beliefs, attitudes, and values gleaned from social media, email, videos, and other sources—Rothblatt’s team created a robot that can converse, write Tweets, and even express human emotions such as jealousy and pain in ways that mimic the person she was modeled after.
70981299
submission
Press2ToContinue writes:
One notorious California prison is trying to turn criminals into coders. Inmates are taking classes to learn how to become computer programmers when they get out.
What could possibly go wrong?
70981219
submission
Press2ToContinue writes:
You probably haven't bought a 3D printer yet, have you? Sure they make great models of... stuff, but how many 10cm figurines of Bart Simpson does a house need? No, what you really want on your kitchen counter is a PancakeBot.
Claiming the prestigious title of "world's first pancake printer", the PancakeBot allows wrist-weary cooks to design and "print" their own pancakes.
Created by Miguel Valenzuela, the bot comes with a neat piece of software that allows you to 'trace' out your desired pancake shape, before transferring the design to the bot via an SD card. A motor-driven printing arm then squeezes batter (that you still have to make) onto a griddle, which then cooks your undoubtedly wacky 'cake.
70928473
submission
retroworks writes:
From Motherboard.vice:
"The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) has given the greenlight to Palcohol, a powdered alcohol that you mix with water to make, well, liquid alcohol. The TTB had already approved the product for sale last year but almost immediately backtracked on that decision, saying the approval had been “issued in error.”
"TTB spokesperson Tom Hogue today said the approval is only based on whether or not the label on the product matches what’s actually inside, according to the Associated Press. Palcohol sorted out the labelling issues since last year and so four flavors of Palcohol are now approved for legal sale."
70870819
submission
walterbyrd writes:
The White House has established a $100 million program that endorses fast-track, boot camp IT training efforts and other four-year degree alternatives. But this plan is drawing criticism because of the underlying message it sends in the H-1B battle.
The federal program, called TechHire, will get its money from H-1B visa fees, and the major users of this visa are IT services firms that outsource jobs.
70832001
submission
randomErr writes:
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) found out that a scent-trained dog can identify thyroid cancer in human urine samples 88.2 percent of the time. Frankie, a male German shepherd mix identified the presence of cancerous cells in 30 out of 34 samples. The shepherd was only slightly less accurate than a standard thyroid biopsy. This offers the possibility of a cheaper, less invasive approach to diagnosis of the illness said Donald Bodenner, M.D., PhD, the study's senior investigator.
70810299
submission
HughPickens.com writes:
Jonathon Mahler writes in the NYT that in much the same way that Facebook swept through the dorm rooms of America’s college students a decade ago, the social app Yik Yak, which shows anonymous messages from users within a 1.5-mile radius is now taking college campuses by storm. "Think of it as a virtual community bulletin board — or maybe a virtual bathroom wall at the student union," writes Mahler. "It has become the go-to social feed for college students across the country to commiserate about finals, to find a party or to crack a joke about a rival school." And while much of the chatter is harmless, some of it is not. “Yik Yak is the Wild West of anonymous social apps,” says Danielle Keats Citron. “It is being increasingly used by young people in a really intimidating and destructive way.” Since the app’s introduction a little more than a year ago, Yik Yak has been used to issue threats of mass violence on more than a dozen college campuses, including the University of North Carolina, Michigan State University and Penn State. Racist, homophobic and misogynist “yaks” have generated controversy at many more, among them Clemson, Emory, Colgate and the University of Texas. At Kenyon College, a “yakker” proposed a gang rape at the school’s women’s center.
Colleges are largely powerless to deal with the havoc Yik Yak is wreaking. The app’s privacy policy prevents schools from identifying users without a subpoena, court order or search warrant, or an emergency request from a law-enforcement official with a compelling claim of imminent harm. Esha Bhandari, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, argues that "banning Yik Yak on campuses might be unconstitutional," especially at public universities or private colleges in California where the so-called Leonard Law protects free speech. She said it would be like banning all bulletin boards in a school just because someone posted a racist comment on one of the boards. In one sense, the problem with Yik Yak is a familiar one. Anyone who has browsed the comments of an Internet post is familiar with the sorts of intolerant, impulsive rhetoric that the cover of anonymity tends to invite. But Yik Yak’s particular design can produce especially harmful consequences, its critics say. “It’s a problem with the Internet culture in general, but when you add this hyper-local dimension to it, it takes on a more disturbing dimension,” says Elias Aboujaoude.” “You don’t know where the aggression is coming from, but you know it’s very close to you.”
70797119
submission
schwit1 writes:
World leaders have fretted for years that terrorists may try to steal one of Pakistan’s nuclear bombs and detonate it in a foreign country. But some Karachi residents say the real nuclear nightmare is unfolding here in Pakistan’s largest and most volatile city. Of all places to locate a nuclear reactor, they argue, who could possibly make a case for this one — on an earthquake-prone seafront vulnerable to tsunamis and not far from where al-Qaeda militants nearly hijacked a Pakistan navy vessel last fall.
