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IBM

IBM Will Share Tech With China To Help Build IT Industry There 108

Posted by Soulskill from the different-tack-from-Google dept.
An anonymous reader sends this report from Reuters: IBM Corp will share technology with Chinese firms and will actively help build China's industry, CEO Virginia Rometty said in Beijing as she set out a strategy for one of the foreign firms hardest hit by China's shifting technology policies. IBM must help China build its IT industry rather than viewing the country solely as a sales destination or manufacturing base, Rometty said. ... [Her] remarks were among the clearest acknowledgements to date by a high-ranking foreign technology executive that companies must adopt a different tack if they are to continue in China amid growing political pressure. A number of U.S. technology companies operating in China are forming alliances with domestic operators, hoping a local partner will make it easier to operate in the increasingly tough environment for foreign businesses.
Crime

LAPD Police Claim Helicopters Stop Crimes Before They Happen 160

Posted by samzenpus from the bear-in-the-air dept.
HughPickens.com writes True Angelenos don't even bother to look up when one of the LAPD's 17 helicopters rattles their windows searching for a car-jacked Camry or an assault suspect hiding under a jacaranda but few doubt that more bad guys would get away without the nation's largest police helicopter fleet to help chase them. Now the LA Times reports that data shows that LA's helicopters are stopping crimes before they happen. Tapping into the data-driven policing trend, the department uses heat maps, technology and years of statistics to identify crime "hot spots." Pilots then use their downtime to fly over them, on the theory that would-be criminals tend to rethink their nefarious plans when there's "ghetto birds," as Ice Cube calls them, hovering overhead [explanatory video with annoying sound]. Months of data show that the number of serious crimes reported in the LAPD's Newton Division in South L.A. fell during weeks when the helicopters conducted more flights. During the week of Sept. 13, when the helicopter unit flew over Newton 65 times, the division recorded 90 crimes. A week later, the number of flights dropped to 40 and the number of reported crimes skyrocketed to 136, with rises seen among almost all types of crime, including burglary, car theft and thefts from vehicles. "It's extremely cutting edge," says Capt. Gary Walters, who heads the LAPD's air support unit. "It's different. It's nothing that we've ever done before with this specificity."

But Professor Geoffrey Alpert. a policing expert who has studied the use of police helicopters in Miami and Baltimore, says the choppers can deter crime in the short-term but criminals will likely return when they're not around (PDF). "You are deterring the criminals but you aren't getting rid of them and their intent. Those criminals could strike in a different time and place," says Alpert. "I mean that's the whole thing about random patrol. You see a police car and it's the same thing. You hide, he goes around the block and you go back to your breaking and entering."
Transportation

Major Security Vulnerabilities Uncovered At Frankfurt Airport 91

Posted by samzenpus from the how-many-fluid-ounces-is-that? dept.
jones_supa writes "According to a report published in this Sunday's edition of the mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag newspaper, investigators sent by the European Commission found it surprisingly easy to smuggle banned items past security at Frankfurt Airport. It said undercover investigators posing as passengers were able to smuggle weapons or other dangerous items through security every second time they tried to do so. One of the biggest problems was improperly trained staff, who were often not able to recognize dangerous items when viewing the screens they use to look at x-ray images of baggage. The staff is sourced via a privately owned service provider. Germany's Federal Police said they introduced new measures immediately after learning of the security deficits to ensure that passenger safety was guaranteed. Fraport AG, the company that operates the Germany's biggest airport, also took the findings seriously and begun an operation to retrain a total of 2,500 workers."
Earth

Living On a Carbon Budget: The End of Recreation As We Know It? 652

Posted by samzenpus from the cutting-down dept.
Lasrick writes Dawn Stover looks at unrealistic expectations and the distribution of limited energy resources: 'This is a question that should move from the fringes of the energy debate to its very heart. Economists and energy experts shy away from issues of equity and morality, but climate change and environmental justice are inseparable: It's impossible to talk intelligently about climate without discussing how to distribute limited energy resources. It's highly unlikely that the world can safely produce almost five times as much electricity by 2035 as it does now—which is what it would take to provide everyone with a circa-2010 American standard of living, according to a calculation by University of Colorado environmental studies professor Roger Pielke Jr. The sooner policy makers accept this reality, the sooner they can get to work on a global solution that meets everyone's needs. First, though, they need to understand the difference between needs and wants.' Not something most people even think about.
The Military

Radical Dual Tilting Blade Helicopter Design Targets Speeds of Over 270mph 103

Posted by Soulskill from the for-all-your-helicopter-racing-needs dept.
Zothecula writes: As one of the contenders in the race to win a $100 billion contract from the U.S. government for the next generation of attack helicopter in the Army's Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator (JMR-TD) program, AVX Aircraft Company has conceived a futuristic machine kitted out with coaxial rotors, ducted fans and a retractable undercarriage that could hit speeds of over 270 mph (435 km/h).

Comment My sense (Score 1) 536

My sense is that the MEAN Stack (Mongo, Express, AngularJS, Node) is sort of winning. There's some packaging of it over at mean.io.

Personally, I'm really getting interested in Meteor (www.meteor.com). Watch the videos, and realize I saw a smart non-coder go from zero to *ridiculously* interactive site design in three months.
Classic Games (Games)

Grandmother Buys Old Building In Japan And Finds 55 Classic Arcade Cabinets 133

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the treasure-trove dept.
An anonymous reader writes A grandmother agreed to purchase an old building in Chiba, which is just outside of Tokyo. When her family arrived to check out the contents of the building it was discovered that the first two floors used to be a game center in the 1980s. Whoever ran it left all the cabinets behind when it closed, and it is full of classic and now highly desirable games. In total there are 55 arcade cabinets, most of which are the upright Aero Cities cabinets, but it's the game boards that they contain that's the most exciting discovery. Boards include Donkey Kong, Street Fighter Alpha 2 (working despite the CPS2 lockout chip's tendency to kill old boards), and Metal Slug X.

Comment Long-Term vs. Short-Term (Score 1) 273

by mreed911 (#46578123) Attached to: IRS: Bitcoin Is Property, Not Currency
How does one determine which specific Bitcoin (or fraction) was spent from one's owned pool to determine whether any appreciation is long-term or short-term? Is it a record-keeping thing only, much like tossing pennies in a jar every day and recording it in a ledger, then taking random pennies back out to pay and noting that they're the oldest, whether or not they are (or can be proven to be)? I foresee IRS challenges around long-term vs. short-term in audits, especially for folks with lots of transactions.

Comment Re:Why single out Whole Foods? (Score 1) 794

by mreed911 (#46372049) Attached to: Whole Foods: America's Temple of Pseudoscience
And here's why we'll spend some of our money at whole foods: freshness. The produce and meet at the local supermarket (HEB) is safe, (often) locally sourced and tasty, but there's a marked degree of improvement for SOME THINGS at Whole Foods. For the parent post, it's the meat. For me, it's vegetables, particularly root vegetables. It's muck akin to grades of meat - the vegetables are a "grade higher" in freshness, presentation and taste. If I'm making sauce? HEB tomatoes and mozzarella are fine. If I'm making a Caprese salad? Whole Foods FTW. I also really enjoy their salad bar variety for lunch - it trumps almost every other available option near me, is reasonably priced and offers me a place to sit and eat nearby. Again, easy win. Bulk and/or standard items? HEB is the place... unless we're headed to Costco for the 55 gallon drum of something.
Android

Wozniak To Apple: Consider Building an Android Phone 249

Posted by samzenpus from the building-with-the-enemy dept.
snydeq writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has some advice for Apple CEO Tim Cook: consider offering a phone based on the rival Google Android platform. Speaking at the Apps World conference in San Francisco, Wozniak made the suggestion of an Apple Android device when responding to a question about the fate of the faltering BlackBerry platform, saying that BlackBerry should have built an Android phone, and that Apple could do so, too. 'BlackBerry's very sad for me,' Wozniak lamented. 'I think it's probably too late now' for an Android-based BlackBerry phone. Apple, Woz said, has had some lucky victories in the marketplace in the past decade, and BlackBerry's demise may provide a cautionary tale: 'There's nothing to keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market.'"

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