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Science

Scientists Capture the Sound Made By a Single Atom 100

Posted by timothy from the golf-clap-defined dept.
Jason Koebler writes Researchers at Columbia University and Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology say that they have, for the first time, "captured" the sound a single atom makes when it is excited—a single "phonon," as it were. So, why do this? For one, the team wanted to simply see if it could capture the softest sound ever made, which is certainly a noble goal. But, secondly, the researchers wanted to explore the quantum nature of sound. Photons have always been used in quantum experiments, but they're pretty hard to manipulate because they're so fast. Phonons move 10^5 slower and thus could make quantum communication easier.

Submission + - Hewlett-Packard pleads guilty to Bribery (usatoday.com)

Submitted by Charliemopps
Charliemopps writes: Hewlett-Packard and three subsidiaries pleaded guilty Thursday to paying bribes to foreign officials in Russia, Mexico and Poland and agreed to pay $108 million in criminal and regulatory penalties. For over 10 years Hewlett-Packard kept 2 sets of books to track slush-funds they used to bribe government officials for favorable contracts.

Submission + - SanDisk Releases 512GB SD Card (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: SanDisk today announced the world's highest capacity SD card, a 512GB model that represents a 1,000-fold increase over the company's first 512MB card that it shipped a decade ago. The SanDisk Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I memory card has a max read/write rate of 95MB/s and 90MB/s, respectively. The card is rated to function in temperatures from -13 to 185 degrees Fahrenheit. The 512GB model retails for $800. The card also comes in 128GB and 256GB capacities.
United States

U.S. Threatened Massive Fine To Force Yahoo To Release Data 223

Posted by timothy from the your-government-at-work dept.
Advocatus Diaboli writes The U.S. government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day in 2008 if it failed to comply with a broad demand to hand over user data that the company believed was unconstitutional, according to court documents unsealed Thursday that illuminate how federal officials forced American tech companies to participate in the NSA's controversial PRISM program. The documents, roughly 1,500 pages worth, outline a secret and ultimately unsuccessful legal battle by Yahoo to resist the government's demands. The company's loss required Yahoo to become one of the first to begin providing information to PRISM, a program that gave the National Security Agency extensive access to records of online communications by users of Yahoo and other U.S.-based technology firms.

Submission + - Chrome OS Can Now Run Android Apps with No Porting Required

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On Thursday, Google launched "App Runtime for Chrome (Beta)" which allows Android apps to run on Chrome OS without the need for porting. At the moment, only Duolingo, Evernote, Sight Words, and Vine are available on the platform with the rest of the Play Store's offerings to come later. Google "built an entire Android stack into Chrome OS using Native Client" in order to achieve this.
Books

Publishers Gave Away 123 Million Books During World War Two 121

Posted by samzenpus from the publish-or-perish dept.
An anonymous reader writes Information wants to be free? During the Second World War, it actually was. Publishers took advantage of new printing technologies to sell crates of cheap, paperback books to the military for just six cents a copy, at a time when almost all the other books they printed cost more than two dollars. The army and the navy shipped them to soldiers and sailors around the world, giving away nearly 123 million books for free. Many publishers feared the program would destroy their industry, by flooding the market with free books and destroying the willingness of consumers to pay for content. Instead, it fueled a postwar publishing boom, as millions of GIs got hooked on good books, and proved willing to pay for more. It's a freemium model, more than 70 years ago.

Submission + - U.S. threatened massive fine to force Yahoo to release data (washingtonpost.com) 1

Submitted by Advocatus Diaboli
Advocatus Diaboli writes: The U.S. government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day in 2008 if it failed to comply with a broad demand to hand over user data that the company believed was unconstitutional, according to court documents unsealed Thursday that illuminate how federal officials forced American tech companies to participate in the NSA’s controversial PRISM program. The documents, roughly 1,500 pages worth, outline a secret and ultimately unsuccessful legal battle by Yahoo to resist the government’s demands. The company’s loss required Yahoo to become one of the first to begin providing information to PRISM, a program that gave the National Security Agency extensive access to records of online communications by users of Yahoo and other U.S.-based technology firms.

Submission + - Overstock.com Becomes First Retailer to Accept Bitcoin Worldwide

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In January, Ovestock.com started accepting bitcoins as a method of payment in the U.S. On Thursday, it started accepting bitcoins from consumers all over the world. "You can order in North Korea if you want," stated Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, "as long as you're having things delivered to, say, Singapore." The company will reportedly save significantly in foreign credit card transaction fees, but the fact that some governments are mobilizing to regulate the new currency could, at the very least, continue to stunt its widespread adoption.

Submission + - Stephen Hawking tries Linux powered Wheelchair made by Intel (themukt.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: While media was crazy about a smart watch, Intel created a smart chair for disabled people. Stephen Hawking, one of the smartest brains on the planet, gave Intel’s Linux powered wheelchair a try and talked about it. The company showcased their ‘Connected Wheelchair’ at the ongoing Intel Developer Conference (IDF).

Submission + - Scientists Capture the Sound Made By a Single Atom 1

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: Researchers at Columbia University and Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology say that they have, for the first time, "captured" the sound a single atom makes when it is excited—a single "phonon," as it were.
So, why do this? For one, the team wanted to simply see if it could capture the softest sound ever made, which is certainly a noble goal. But, secondly, the researchers wanted to explore the quantum nature of sound. Photons have always been used in quantum experiments, but they're pretty hard to manipulate because they're so fast. Phonons move 10^5 slower and thus could make quantum communication easier.

Submission + - City of Turin to Switch from Windows to Linux and Save €6M (zdnet.com)

Submitted by jrepin
jrepin writes: The municipality of Turin in Italy hopes to save 6 million Euro over five years by switching from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux in all of its offices. The move will mean installing the open source operating system on 8,300 PCs, which will generate an immediate saving of roughly €300 per machine (almost €2.5m altogether, made up from the cost of Windows and Office licences) — a sum that will grow over the years as the need for the renewal of proprietary software licences vanishes, and the employees get used to the new machines.

Comment Internet? (Score 1) 540

by timothy (#47883817) Attached to: Cuba Calculates Cost of 54yr US Embargo At $1.1 Trillion

Actually the U.S. hasn't even had much luck getting the Cuban gov't to allow the Cuban people to hear uncensored *radio.*

What a crazy series of claims, overall. Would Cuba's overlords like a high-speed, uncensored internet link from Miami? Doesn't seem hard ...

Of course, the crazy runs deep and is bilateral: the U.S. has a crazy embargo, and has for decades.

Submission + - Net neutrality comments surge past 1.7M, an all-time record for the FCC

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Following Wednesday's Internet Slowdown campaign, the Federal Communications Commission says it has now received a total of 1,750,435 comments on net neutrality, surpassing the approximately 1.4 million complaints it saw after the exposure of Janet Jackson's breast during Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004.

Wednesday saw citizens submit more than 700,000 new comments to the FCC, and place more than 300,000 calls to the agency.
Google

The Documents From Google's First DMV Test In Nevada 194

Posted by samzenpus from the showing-their-work dept.
An anonymous reader writes "IEEE Spectrum contributor Mark Harris obtained a copy of the DMV test Google's autonomous car passed in Nevada in 2012 and associated documents. What has not been revealed until now, is that Google chose the test route; that it set limits on the road and weather conditions that the vehicle could encounter; and that its engineers had to take control of the car twice during the drive.

Submission + - Stanford Engineer Aims to Connect the World with Ant-Sized Radios (stanford.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: # Article:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/...

# From Article:

"A Stanford engineering team has built a radio the size of an ant, a device so energy efficient that it gathers all the power it needs from the same electromagnetic waves that carry signals to its receiving antenna â" no batteries required.

Designed to compute, execute and relay commands, this tiny wireless chip costs pennies to fabricate â" making it cheap enough to become the missing link between the Internet as we know it and the linked-together smart gadgets envisioned in the "Internet of Things."

"The next exponential growth in connectivity will be connecting objects together and giving us remote control through the web," said Amin Arbabian, an assistant professor of electrical engineering who recently demonstrated this ant-sized radio chip at the VLSI Technology and Circuits Symposium in Hawaii.

Much of the infrastructure needed to enable us to control sensors and devices remotely already exists: We have the Internet to carry commands around the globe, and computers and smartphones to issue the commands. What's missing is a wireless controller cheap enough to so that it can be installed on any gadget anywhere.

"How do you put a bi-directional wireless control system on every lightbulb?" Arbabian said. "By putting all the essential elements of a radio on a single chip that costs pennies to make."

Cost is critical because, as Arbabian observed, "We're ultimately talking about connecting trillions of devices.""

# Archives of Article:
1: https://archive.today/5aIuj
2: http://web.archive.org/web/201...

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