62173079
submission
concertina226 writes:
Remember the Y2K Millennium Bug, which was the bane of IT professionals everywhere in 1999 as they rushed to reassure panicking companies, and had us all convinced that the world would come to a standstill in the year 2000?
Well, it's finally hit, albeit 14 years later. A computer glitch has seen military draft notices mistakenly sent to 14,215 men in Pennsylvania who were born between 1893-1897, ordering all recipients to register for the draft or face punishments of "a fine and imprisonment".
This might be a bit difficult for the men to do, since they're all, well, dead.
61851731
submission
concertina226 writes:
Bournemouth University's first-year archaeology undergraduate students have stumbled on a discovery that could rewrite the history of late-Roman Britain – the discovery of a family of skeletons located close to the site of a Roman villa in Dorset.
The researchers and students have been excavating fields in Winterborne Kingston, northern Dorset for the last six years as part of the Durotriges Project, which looks at the transition from the late Iron Age to the early Roman period in southern England.
Last year a Roman villa was found, and just a week ago, first-year students discovered the remains of a timber mausoleum containing the graves of five skeletons, just 90m away from the villa in the next field.
The villa was built during the height of the Roman Empire, just before the economic collapse, and the archaeologists believe that jewellery may have been kept by descendants as heirlooms instead of being buried with the dead, and eventually the final owners of the villa may have had to flee when the Roman Empire fell.
61825417
submission
concertina226 writes:
A team of archaeologists from universities in Poland, Peru and Colombia have discovered 150 mummies in the Atacama Desert belonging to an unknown culture that predate the Tiwanaku and Inca civilization by almost 500 years.
The bodies were mummified naturally by being buried directly in the sand with no stone structures, wrapped in cotton veils, reed mats or fishing nets, and radiocarbon dating shows that the oldest mummies came from 4th century AD, while the youngest mummies came from 7th century AD.
Under Project Tambo, the team have been excavating in the Tambo River delta in the northern region of the Atacama Desert since 2008 and the first mummies were found in 2012, but it took until March 2014 for the team to make major discoveries.
61802055
submission
concertina226 writes:
An American living in Japan has discovered an amazing time capsule – an enormous cache of vintage video game arcade machines, lying virtually untouched for almost two decades.
Alex Meyers moved to Japan eight years ago from Iowa and now works in the Japanese branch of a European pharmaceutical company. Two months ago, he went with his girlfriend to visit her grandmother, a Taiwanese property investor who also lives in Japan.
The grandmother said that she owned a big building in Chiba Prefecture, Greater Tokyo, and told him that she had owned a game arcade centre in the building since the 1970s. She said she was planning to throw the machines — dating back to the 1980s — away soon.
The game arcade is on two floors of the building, with games from the 1980s on the first floor, including famous titles like Donkey Kong, Galaxian and a Pac Man clone called Scandal Man. There are 62 video game machines on this floor, including 49 SEGA Aero City arcade cabinets, six SEGA Astro City machines, six NAMCO Consolettes and one Jaleco Pony Mark II.
61719823
submission
concertina226 writes:
An Israeli start-up has developed the world's first "electronic nose" that uses super-sensitive nanotechnology sensors to sniff out bombs, and can even outperform dogs.
The Tracense bomb detecting device is designed to test for numerous substances simultaneously with a high rate of accuracy, giving results almost instantly.
Odours are a combination of several specific molecules, whereby each smell contributing to the odour gives off its own specific chemical properties.
At the moment, there are systems able to break down odours using analytical chemistry equipment, but these systems are bulky and meant to be used in a laboratory, or requiring a big sample of an odour to detect what it is.
Tracense wants its invention to be an affordable portable device that can be easily used by the police and airport security, so the chip in the device contains hundreds of tiny nano sensors capable of detecting even the most minute traces of chemicals, even as low as a few molecules per 1,000 trillion.
61674347
submission
concertina226 writes:
A pizza restaurant in the Komi Republic of Russia has announced the launch of the country's first pizza delivery service using unmanned helicopter drones, following a successful test trial.
On 21 June, the company demonstrated drone technology to residents of Syktyvkarsk, the capital city of the Komi republic, flying the drone through the city's main square to deliver pizza to a man within half an hour. The drone was able to complete six commercial orders on its first day.
Drone enthusiasts will be able to see the software program being used to control the drone remotely, together with another field test showing the drone hovering over a hundred feet in the air and lowering a pizza box down on a cable.
61619061
submission
concertina226 writes:
Are you having problems replacing your last receptionist, or just fancy going high tech? If so, you could get yourself a virtual receptionist instead, who can interact with visitors via an iPad app.
Japanese app developer Analogue Twelve have come up with Beauty Receptionist (or rather, BIJIN=UKETSUKE in Japanese), an interactive iPad app that creates an interactive touch screen interface allowing guests to place an internal call using voice over internet protocol (VOIP) from the office foyer to someone in a particular team or department that they want to see.
If you would like a different "girl", you can pick from seven different avatars, and an additional in-app purchase of $2.98 is required per virtual receptionist.
61584497
submission
concertina226 writes:
Have you ever wished you could have a virtual personal assistant like Jarvis in Iron Man? Well, a Canadian start-up is trying to make that dream a reality, and is currently seeking your help on Kickstarter.
Ainova Robotics has designed an artificially intelligent virtual personal assistant called Jaesa (Just Another Essentially Smart Application), which at 150MB in size, will be able to run on iOS and Android devices, as well as Windows OS, Windows Phone and Mac OS X.
You can command Jaesa to open a computer program or mobile app for you, and even hold a conversation with her about anything you like.
When you first receive Jaesa out of the box, she will have a default personality, but according to software develop Arseniy Nikulchenko, who has been working on the project for over two years, her personality will change as you talk to her due to machine learning technology.
61566167
submission
concertina226 writes:
If you're planning to visit Japan this summer, you might want to check out the Oigawa Railway in Shizuoka Prefecture, as the railway line has dressed up one of its steam engines as Thomas the Tank Engine, and will be offering rides on the train as a special attraction.
The Oigawa Railway is famous for its old-fashioned steam locomotives, which are all in perfect working condition and carry passengers through isolated spots in the area, populated by mountains and hills, to one of the many hot spring resorts.
In order to drum up tourism and keep interest going in the steam trains, the rail line owners have collaborated with Japanese distribution company Sony Creative Products to offer people the chance to ride on a fully-working version of Thomas in July, using a C11-227 steam locomotive.
61562149
submission
concertina226 writes:
Drug dealers are at it again, using remote-controlled unmanned helicopter drones to drop drugs into prisons — but this time they've messed up.
Prison staff at Wheatfield Prison in Dublin noticed a large object crash-landing from above, and prisoners ran towards the drone, which was packed with lots of drugs.
Ironically, the drone is said to have crashed due to hitting special netting installed to prevent man-sized helicopters from attempting to land in the prison yard to help prisoners escape.
61558599
submission
concertina226 writes:
Israel-based security firm RISCO Group are clearly very proud of their good work in securing the World Cup, which includes monitoring and maintaining hundreds of wirelessly-connected CCTV security cameras dotted all over the 41,000-seat Arena Pantanal football stadium in Cuiaba, Brazil.
So proud, in fact, that they have made a huge faux pas this week by posting a photo of Luiz Cravo Dorea, head of international cooperation at the Brazil Federal Police, standing right in the middle of the World Cup's main command and control security centre.
Clearly visible in the picture are a bank of computer monitors showing the security centre's Wi-Fi SSID and password, as well as a secret internal email address used to communicate with some Brazilian government agency.
61529395
submission
concertina226 writes:
SpongeBob SquarePants fans alert! A real life version of the Krusty Krab, the iconic fastfood restaurant that SpongeBob works at in the Nickalodeon cartoon is set to open up in Ramallah, on the West Bank in Palestine.
The family restaurant has been designed to be an exact replica of Mr Krabs' establishment in Bikini Bottom, from the fixtures outside the building to the Krabby Patty burgers on the menu.
61493699
submission
concertina226 writes:
Be afraid, be very afraid – the dystopian future of genetically engineered robots featured in 1982 Harrison Ford film Blade Runner is coming towards us now.
A new exhibition entitled “Android: What is Human?” launching tomorrow at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) in Tokyo will showcase some of the most realistic humanoid robots that have ever been seen.
The three android robots include Otonaroid, an adult female android robot; Kodomorid, a human female child robot and Telenoid, a minimally designed robot. They are the brainchild of Japanese robotics expert Hiroshi Ishiguro, a professor at Osaka University’s Department of Systems Innovation who has been developing robots for over 20 years.
The three robots will be stationed in a permanent exhibition at the Miraikan and the public's interactions with these robots will help researchers to explore robot-human interactions, and to examine what it means to be human.
61462801
submission
concertina226 writes:
Scientists from the University of Queensland have used photons (single particles of light) to simulate quantum particles travelling through time, which would solve some famous paradoxes, such as the grandfather paradox that argue time travel is not possible.
The grandfather paradox states that if a time traveller were to go back in time, he could accidentally prevent his grandparents from meeting, and thus prevent his own birth. However, if he had never been born, he could never have travelled back in time, in the first place.
It was predicted in 1991 that quantum mechanics could avoid some of the paradoxes caused by Einstein's theory of relativity, as quantum particles behave almost outside the realm of physics, so the scientists simulated the behaviour of two photons interacting with each other in two different cases.
In the first case, one photon passed through a wormhole and then interacted with its older self. In the second case, when a photon travels through normal space-time and interacts with another photon trapped inside a closed timeline curve forever.
61457955
submission
concertina226 writes:
A restaurant in Russia has launched the country's first ever pizza delivery service using unmanned flying helicopter drones.
DoDo Pizza, located in Syktyvkarsk, the capital city of the Komi republic, launched the new service on Saturday, drawing much applause from people who watched the drone deliver a pizza within half an hour to a man standing in the city's main square.
When the drone reaches the customer's door, the manager calls the customer to come outside to accept the delivery, so that the pizza doesn't fall into the wrong hands, and the pizza is lowered to the ground using a cable.
