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Submission + - Emails Show Feds Asking Florida Cops to Deceive Judges (wired.com) 1

Submitted by Advocatus Diaboli
Advocatus Diaboli writes: Police in Florida have, at the request of the U.S. Marshals Service, been deliberately deceiving judges and defendants about their use of a controversial surveillance tool to track suspects, according to newly obtained emails. At the request of the Marshals Service, the officers using so-called stingrays have been routinely telling judges, in applications for warrants, that they obtained knowledge of a suspect’s location from a “confidential source” rather than disclosing that the information was gleaned using a stingray.

Submission + - 3D-printed material can carry 160,000 times its own weight.

Submitted by rtoz
rtoz writes: Researchers found a new design which is based on the use of microlattices with nanoscale features, combining great stiffness and strength with ultralow density.
The actual production of such materials is made possible by a high-precision 3-D printing process called projection microstereolithography.

Normally, stiffness and strength declines with the density of any material; that’s why when bone density decreases, fractures become more likely. But using the right mathematically determined structures to distribute and direct the loads, the lighter structure can maintain its strength.

This newly invented material is among the lightest in the world.
These matericals can easily withstand a load of more than 160,000 times their own weight.

By Using light to imprint features onto polymer or plastic, the researchers disproved the established diffraction limit, and they proved first time that it is possible to print sub-wavelength features one-hundredth the thickness of a human hair. This discovery allows manufacturers to imprint finer features into items such as DVDs to significantly improve storage capabilities, or to probe the traffic of protein or DNA.

This approach could be useful anywhere there’s a need for a combination of high stiffness (for load bearing), high strength, and light weight — such as in structures to be deployed in space, where every bit of weight adds significantly to the cost of launch. But the Researcher says there may also be applications at smaller scale, such as in batteries for portable devices, where reduced weight is also highly desirable.

As this research was funded by DARPA, it could also end up on robots and drones.

Submission + - Google's Nest buys Home Monitoring Camera Company Dropcam

Submitted by rtoz
rtoz writes: The popular home monitoring camera startup "Dropcam" will be acquired by Nest Labs, the maker of smart thermostats and smoke detectors.

The deal is worth $555 million in cash.

Nest itself was purchased by Google just four months ago for $3.2 billion.

Dropcam is a cloud-based Wi-Fi video monitoring service. It was founded in 2009. Dropcam lets users place cameras throughout a home for live-viewing and recording. The cameras also include options for night vision and two-way talking with built-in microphones.

Dropcam has never disclosed sales, but it is routinely the top-selling security camera on Amazon, and it recently branched into selling in retail stores like Apple and Best Buy.

People concerned about the privacy implications of Google’s acquisition of Nest may be further unsettled by Nest’s purchase of a home surveillance company. Nest's founder Matt Rogers anticipated this issue , insisted that there’s no reason to worry. In his blog post, he says that data won’t be shared with anyone, including Google, without a customer’s permission.

Nest has run into product challenges recently. In April, Nest said it was suspending sales of its smoke alarms after it determined the units could be switched off unintentionally. The products are now back on the market.

Comment Dr. Dre (Score 1) 147

Literally the only thing I care about from this WWDC is the role Andre Young will be playing as an Apple employee. As long as he's drawing an Apple paycheck, they won't get another penny from me for anything. As far as I'm concerned, the guy is a misogynist and a homophobe. His presence is an insult to every female, gay and lesbian employee there.

Comment Form factor? (Score 1) 414

by babymac (#45101191) Attached to: Shuttleworth: Apple Will Merge Mac and iPhone
Personally, I'd love to see such a thing. It would be great not having to travel with both a laptop and a phone. It would also be great to have your phone function as your computer and to be able to use that computer with any display, keyboard and mouse that happen to be nearby. However -- there is that question of form factor. No one wants to do serious work on a tiny phone display, so especially in travel situations you would need to take a proper display, keyboard and mouse -- in other words, a laptop. Someone else already hinted at a laptop "shell" form factor that would just function as a dock for smartphone. But really what company would want to sell the shell when they could just as easily sell a full fledged laptop? And wouldn't traveling with the shell defeat the purpose of traveling light and "discarding" the laptop?

Comment Antarctica doesn't need dead drops... (Score 3, Interesting) 174

by babymac (#45018905) Attached to: Dead Drops P2P File Sharing Spreads Around Globe
As a six month veteran of the US Antarctic Program, I can tell you McMurdo Station doesn't need dead drops. There's plenty of file sharing going on pretty much in the open. I attended meetings in the library that would pretty much devolve into file sharing swap meets. I suppose it must have been like the mid-1990s on college campuses. Fun stuff!

Comment Re:The future of driverless cars looks like a bus (Score 3, Insightful) 662

by babymac (#44647447) Attached to: Concern Mounts Over Self-Driving Cars Taking Away Freedom
Expect to see a lot of competition and lobbying from local taxi authorities to prevent you from doing exactly this. They will argue that it's not safe for individuals to rent their cars out in this way - and to some extent they will have a point. Plus, when your fancy new car comes home with vomit (or worse) all over the interior you're going to be really angry.

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