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Displays

Interesting Uses For a USB LED Screen? 403

Posted by kdawson from the your-messge-here dept.
Hogwash McFly writes "My boss gave me one of those USB-powered red LED scrolling displays as a Christmas gift, and while cycling the usual 'I read your emails' and 'ID10T Error' messages will be entertaining for a day or two, I was wondering if it could be put to more constructive uses. The configuration file is plaintext and supports different scroll speeds, flashing, bitmaps, and WAV sounds. The font is defined as 5x5 pixels per character, also stored in plaintext as 5 hex values, one for each vertical line of pixels. A dynamically generated message could prove useful in my day-to-day work on the helpdesk, but are there any interesting uses beyond network notifications and news feeds?"
Space

Esther Dyson To Train For Space Flight 38

Posted by timothy from the dyson-vacuum-of-space dept.
DynaSoar writes "Esther Dyson, known to many as a founding and consistently guiding member of ICANN, and for working with the startups of Flickr, del.icio.us, Medscape and others, is now expanding her interests upwards. She recently announced that she will be heading to Moscow to train as backup astronaut for Charles Simonyi, who plans to fly aboard Soyuz TMA-14 next year. The US$3 million price tag won't be her first cash contribution towards personal space flight. She's already an investor in Space Adventures, the company that arranges the space tourist flights on Soyuz."

Comment Re:Easy way to massively improve fuel consumption (Score 1) 674

by charliebear (#25177597) Attached to: Simple Device Claimed To Boost Fuel Efficiency By Up To 20%

plenty of european and japanese cars already feature such a device.

Some American cars have had "instant fuel economy" readouts as an option for many years. I know the 1992 Lincoln Town car had this as an option. Of course it still got 12 miles per gallon, but at least you knew about it.
NASA

ISS Gets New Recycling Gear, Ready For Larger Crew 158

Posted by CmdrTaco from the yay-for-august dept.
TnGoastiiaiu submitted a space.com story that expands on coverage we've had earlier about improvements being made to the ISS to increase crew capacity. He writes "ISS gets new recycling gear that transforms human waste to drinking water. Some of the water will be used to get Oxygene, too. This way it will soon be possible to host more crew members. " Also, someone needs to smack the webmaster over there for putting a background texture behind the text. It's pretty unreadable along the left hand side of the screen.
Mozilla

Firefox Goes for World Download Record 344

Posted by samzenpus from the record-for-the-lamest-marketing-campaign dept.
Kelson writes "For the upcoming release of Firefox, Mozilla is preparing Download Day 2008: a campaign to set a world record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. Participants are asked to pledge to download Firefox 3 on the day that it's launched. The exact date hasn't been scheduled yet, but everything seems on track for June."
Biotech

3D Crystal Grown On a DNA Lattice 61

Posted by kdawson from the holy-grail dept.
An anonymous reader suggests an article over at ScienceDaily about the achievement of the holy grail of nanoscience: "[R]esearchers at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have for the first time used DNA to guide the creation of three-dimensional, ordered, crystalline structures of nanoparticles. The ability to engineer such 3-D structures is essential to producing functional materials that take advantage of the unique properties that may exist at the nanoscale — for example, enhanced magnetism, improved catalytic activity, or new optical properties."

Feed USB BB gun sports barrel-mounted webcam, ensures home security (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Household

While there's certainly a variety of options to keep watch and protect your property from curious intruders, the latest branch of vCrib gives a new meaning to being on guard. Crafted by the designer of the Virtual Crib home automation software, the USB BB gun sports automatic firing, manual reloading, and the ability to fire based on commands given remotely on a PC. Moreover, the weapon actually packs a webcam on the barrel, allowing users to login via computer, tilt / swivel the gun with simple mouse flicks, and fire away if you spot any intruders within its broad line of sight. It shouldn't need mentioning that we'd make absolutely sure our landlord was cool with mounting a remotely-controlled weapon in the window, but if you need to take home security into your own hands (without actually being at home), be sure to click on through to see this controversial creation spittin' hot fury.

Continue reading USB BB gun sports barrel-mounted webcam, ensures home security

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Feed Bee Colony Collapse Disorder And Viral Disease Incidence Under Investigation (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Researchers at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health Greene Infectious Disease Laboratory have been playing an important role investigating viral disease incidence as it relates to honey bee colony deaths, specifically the increased deaths in bee colonies with unique symptoms, called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
Security

Blurring Images Not So Secure 166

Posted by CmdrTaco from the release-the-blue-dot dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Dheera Venkatraman explains in a webpage how an attacker might be able to extract personal information such as check or credit card numbers, from images blurred with a mosaic effect, potentially exposing the data behind hundreds of images of blurred checks found online, and provides a ficticious example. While much needs to be developed to apply such an algorithm to real photographic images, he offers a simple, yet obvious solution: cover up the sensitive information, don't blur it."

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It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

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