Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

+ - 2015 To Be the Year of the Toyota Hydrogen Car?

Submitted by jgwhite
jgwhite (3630233) writes "What refuels in just three minutes, emits only water vapor and could prove a very real threat to the fossil fuels business? Answer: Toyota. At least, this is according to the latest news coming out of Reuters.

The auto manufacturer issued the press release on April 17, saying that by 2015, the first production hydrogen fuel-cell propulsion car will hit the market. However, many problems could persist, due to issues involving dangerous infrastructure. According to Elon Musk of Tesla Motors, “Hydrogen is a quite dangerous gas. It’s suitable for the upper-stage rocket, but not for cars.”

Nevertheless, this is certainly a major leap forward for “green car technology,” but Toyota could simply just be trying to lob an inefficient hydrogen car on the market, so they claim the pioneer title. At this point, don’t sell that Mustang just yet."

+ - The girlfriend of a student asks - what books for an M.Sc., ...

Submitted by peetm
peetm (781139) writes "Having visited with me and my wife recently, the girlfriend of an ex-student of mine asks ..

"... He recently mentioned that he would love to have a home library, like the one you have, with variety of good, useful and must-have books from different authors. I wonder if you would be so kind to advise me on this. Mostly, I was thinking your advice would be priceless when it comes to computer science related books, but .. I would appreciate any sort of advice on books from you. ..."

This ex-student is now taking an M.Sc. in CS (pure), and whilst I could scan my own library for ideas, I doubt that I'm really that 'current' with what's good, or whether my favourites would be appropriate: I've not taught on the M.Sc. course for a while, and in some cases, and just given their price, I shouldn't really recommend such books that are just pet loves of mine — especially to someone who doesn't know whether they'd even be useful to her boyfriend.

And, before you ask: YES, we do have a reading list, but given that he'll receive this as part of this course requirement anyway, I'd like to tease readers to suggest good reads around the periphery of the subject."

+ - The rise, fall, and rehabilitation of Internet Explorer->

Submitted by mattydread23
mattydread23 (2793761) writes "Why did Microsoft miss so many opportunities with the web? Why did IE drop the ball, what made Microsoft wake up to the potential of the Web — and will IE be able to stay modern in the world of living standards that never stop changing? Veteran Microsoft writer Mary Branscombe has penned the definitive history of Internet Explorer, from its genesis in the early 1990s all the way up to IE11 today. It's a long read, but fascinating for anybody interested in the future of the web and the standards that drive it."
Link to Original Source

+ - Making graphene work for real-world devices->

Submitted by aarondubrow
aarondubrow (1866212) writes "Graphene, a one-atom-thick form of the carbon material graphite, is strong, light, nearly transparent and an excellent conductor of electricity and heat, but a number of practical challenges must be overcome before it can emerge as a replacement for silicon in electronics or energy devices. One particular challenge concerns the question of how graphene diffuses heat, in the form of phonons. Thermal conductivity is critical in electronics, especially as components shrink to the nanoscale. Using the Stampede supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, Professor Li Shi simulated how phonons (heat-carrying vibrations in solids) scatter as a function of the thickness of the graphene layers. He also investigated how graphene interacts with substrate materials and how phonon scattering can be controlled. The results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Applied Physical Letters and Energy and Environmental Science."
Link to Original Source

+ - Commercial quantum computers made possible by qubit reliability breakthrough ->

Submitted by rofkool
rofkool (3603105) writes "Scientists at the University of California Santa Barbara have demonstrated a new level of qubit reliability that could herald the dawn of commercial quantum computing. Their research demonstrated a 99% level of qubit reliability, addressing one of the fundamental problems faced in the development of quantum computers for practical purposes. The findings could prove useful in furthering the applications of quantum computing for a variety of purposes, including economic systems, the environment, medicine and even space exploration."
Link to Original Source

+ - DIY Wearable Pi with Near-Eye Video Glasses->

Submitted by coop0030
coop0030 (263345) writes "Noe & Pedro Ruiz at Adafruit have created a pair of open source near-eye video glasses combined with a Raspberry Pi. Their 3D Printed design turns a pair of 'private display glasses' into a "google glass"-like form factor. It easily clips to your prescription glasses, and can display any kind of device with Composite Video like a Raspberry Pi. They have a video demonstrating the glasses, a tutorial on how to build them, along with the 3d files required to print it out."
Link to Original Source

+ - New Shape Born From Rubber Bands->

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Physicists playing with rubber bands have discovered a new shape. In an attempt to create a spring that replicates the light-bending properties of cuttlefish ink sacs, a team of researchers suspended two rubber strips of different lengths. Connecting the bottoms of the two strips to a cup of water, the shorter band stretched to the same length as the longer one. After gluing the two stretched strips together, the researchers gradually drained the water from the cup. As the bands retracted and twisted from the reduced strain, the researchers were shocked to see the formation of a hemihelix with multiple rainbow-shaped boundaries called perversions. The team hopes their work inspires nanodevices and molecules that twist and transform from flat strips into predetermined 3D shapes on demand."
Link to Original Source

+ - Lumina: PC-BSD's Own Desktop Environment->

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa (887896) writes "The PC-BSD project is developing a new open source (BSD license) desktop environment from scratch. The name of the project is Lumina and it will be based around the Qt toolkit. The ultimate goal is to replace KDE as the default desktop of PC-BSD. Lumina aims to be lightweight, stable, fast-running, and FreeDesktop.org/XDG compliant. Most of the Lumina work is being done by PC-BSD's Ken Moore. Even though Lumina is still in its early stages, it can be built and run successfully, and an alpha version can already be obtained from PC-BSD's ports/package repositories."
Link to Original Source

+ - Does the Sky Have a Faulty Filter? ->

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Just when scientists thought the ozone layer’s worst days were behind it, it turns out they may have been missing a big threat to its health. Soon-to-be-published findings suggest that a natural mechanism that filters air rising to the top of the sky may not work as well as previously thought. If subsequent studies confirm the findings, the faulty filter could also have big implications for global climate."
Link to Original Source

+ - Panel Says U.S. Not Ready for Inevitable Arctic Oil Spill->

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "As eagerness to explore the Arctic’s oil and gas resources grows, the threat of a major Arctic oil spill looms ever larger—and the United States has a lot of work to do to prepare for that inevitability, a panel convened by the National Research Council (NRC) declares in a report released yesterday. The committee, made up of members of academia and industry, recommended beefing up forecasting systems for ocean and ice conditions, infrastructure for supply chains for people and equipment to respond, field research on the behavior of oil in the Arctic environment, and other strategies to prepare for a significant spill in the harsh conditions of the Arctic."
Link to Original Source

+ - DC Revolving Door: Ex-FCC Commissioner Is Now Head CTIA Lobbyist->

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh (300774) writes "Up until three years ago, Meredith Attwell Baker was an Obama-appointed FCC commissioner. Now she's the newly minted CEO of the CTIA, the nation's largest lobbying group for the mobile phone industry. How can we expect regulators to keep a careful watch over industries when high-paying jobs in those industries await them after retirement? One of the most damning sentences in that article: 'More than 80 percent of FCC commissioners since 1980 have gone on to work for companies or groups in the industries they used to regulate.'"
Link to Original Source

+ - How cybercriminals profit from money laundering through gambling sites

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Online gambling involves huge volumes of transactions and cash flows that can obscure and disguise money laundering, according to McAfee. Players are not dealing with a tangible, physical product; physical currency does not change hands. As a result, illegal proceeds can be laundered by wagering them on one end of a transaction and receiving the payouts as gambling wins on the other end. Furthermore, gambling winnings are tax free in many jurisdictions, making official reporting to governments unworkable and authorities often incapable of monitoring transactions."

+ - Anonymous' Airchat Aims to Allow Communication Without Needing Phone or Internet->

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 (2447056) writes "Online hacktivist collective Anonymous has announced that it is working on a new tool called Airchat which could allow people to communicate without the need for a phone or an internet connection — using radio waves instead.

Anonymous, the amorphous group best known for attacking high profile targets like Sony and the CIA in recent years, said on the project's Github page: "Airchat is a free communication tool [that] doesn't need internet infrastructure [or] a cell phone network. Instead it relies on any available radio link or device capable of transmitting audio."

Despite the Airchat system being highly involved and too complex for most people in its current form, Anonymous says it has so far used it to play interactive chess games with people at 180 miles away; share pictures and even established encrypted low bandwidth digital voice chats.

In order to get Airchat to work, you will need to have a handheld radio transceiver, a laptop running either Windows, Mac OS X or Linux, and be able to install and run several pieces of complex software."
Link to Original Source

% APL is a natural extension of assembler language programming; ...and is best for educational purposes. -- A. Perlis

Close