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Hardware

Submission + - Optical camouflage used to render car interiors invisible (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Keio University in Japan is using optical camouflage to make the interior of a car effectively invisible. Professor Masahiko Inami at Keio University believes the camo can be adapted so the driver would no longer see the interior of the car as it is replaced with a constantly updated exterior view.

That may be jarring at first, but it does make a lot of sense from a visibility perspective. Nothing outside is hidden from the driver, and turning to see where you are reversing would allow the driver to see very clearly what obstacles there are. Importantly, the projection retains a sense of depth as to where things actually are in relation to the vehicle. Another advantage of such a system is it can render daylight visuals even when it’s dark outside, again meaning better visibility for the driver.
Security

Submission + - Adobe Reader zero-day found, selling for $50k (scmagazine.com.au)

Submitted by mask.of.sanity
mask.of.sanity writes: A new exploit is being reportedly sold on underground cybercrime forums that is capable of compromising machines running the latest versions of Adobe Reader.

The exploit escapes the sandbox in Windows-based Reader installs of versions X and IX. It was selling for as much as US$50,000 on a few small underground criminal websites.

It was already incorporated into a version of the hugely popular Blackhole exploit kit.

Concerned users can protect themselves by switching pdf readers.
Android

Submission + - Microsoft Office for Android will appear in early 2013 (blogspot.de)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For months, keep the rumors that Microsoft plans to bring its Office package on the smartphones. Originally, it was then that the Microsoft Office for Android should appear in November. But now there is tangible evidence of a Microsoft Office release for the Green Men in early 2013.
Biotech

Submission + - Ear-powered medical devices in development (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: Our ears work by converting the vibrations of the eardrum into electrochemical signals that can be interpreted by the brain. The current for those signals is supplied by an ion-filled chamber deep within the inner ear – it’s essentially a natural battery. Scientists are now looking at using that battery to power devices that could be implanted in the ear, without affecting the recipient’s hearing.

The “battery chamber” is located in the cochlea. It is internally divided by a membrane, some of the cells of which are designed to pump ions. The arrangement of those specialized cells, combined with an imbalance of potassium and sodium ions on opposite sides of the membrane, are what creates the electrical voltage.

A team of scientists from MIT, the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology have recently succeeded in running an ultra-low-power radio-transmitting chip using power from these battery chambers – in guinea pigs’ ears.
Lord of the Rings

Submission + - New Dinosaur Named After the Eye of Sauron (nationalgeographic.com) 1

Submitted by
SchrodingerZ
SchrodingerZ writes: "A new study shows that 95 million years ago, the dinosaur Sauroniops pachytholus roamed northern Africa. The fossil, originally found in southern Morocco, only consisted of the upper skull, which included the eerie looking eye socket which resembles the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings movies. Andrea Cau, the leader of the study in Bologna, Italy, explains "The idea of a predator that is physically known only as its fierce eye reminded me of Sauron, in particular as depicted in Peter Jackson's movies." Using skull comparison, it is theorized the two-legged meat-eater would have been 40 feet tall, challenging the Tyrannosaurus Rex in height. More fossils are needed for a full analysis, but so far it is very clear this dinosaur towered over many."
Hardware

Submission + - Samsung may start making ARM server chips (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "Samsung's recent licensing of 64-bit processor designs from ARM suggests that the chip maker may expand from smartphones and tablets into the server market, analysts believe. Samsung last week licensed ARM's first 64-bit Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53 processors, a sign the chip maker is preparing the groundwork to develop 64-bit chips for low-power servers, analysts said. The faster 64-bit processors will appear in servers, high-end smartphones and tablets, and offer better performance-per-watt than ARM's current 32-bit processors, which haven't been able to expand beyond embedded and mobile devices. The first servers with 64-bit ARM processors are expected to become available in 2014."
Space

Submission + - Super-Earth Discovered in Stars' Habitable Zone (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "The family of planets circling a relatively close dwarf star has grown to six, including a potential rocky world at least seven times more massive than Earth that is properly located for liquid water to exist on its surface, a condition believed to be necessary for life. Scientists added three new planets to three discovered in 2008 orbiting an orange star called HD 40307, which is roughly three-quarters as massive as the sun and located about 42 light-years away in the constellation Pictor. Of particular interest is the outermost planet, which is believed to fly around its parent star over 320 days, a distance that places it within HD 40307's so-called "habitable zone.""
Transportation

Submission + - Motorcycle App Helps You Ride Faster, Turn Sharper, Brake Harder

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Alexander George writes about a new app that takes the data from a smartphone’s accelerometers, GPS, and inclinometer to plot information for braking force, lean angles, speed, and on-track location onto Google Maps to shave precious milliseconds off each lap time in motorcyle races. Race Sense is designed to be a useful tool for someone who races for a living and a very fun toy for those who just like to brag about what lean angle they got at their ride day, and what top speed they reached down the main straight. Australian Grand Prix motorcycle road racer Anthony West provided much of the R&D that went into tweaking the app. "With sponsorship's so hard to find and I need another way to survive. I spent some of my own money developing it with an Italian guy who also likes to ride himself, and who writes programs," says West who designed Race Sense to fulfill the needs of a genuine MotoGP racer. "Sometimes it's one second [separating] 20 people. If you adjust one little thing thinking about something in one corner you can lose four places.""
Government

Submission + - California Sex Offenders get Support from the EFF (wired.com) 2

Submitted by Bobfrankly1
Bobfrankly1 writes: The EFF sued to block portions of the approved Prop 35 today. Prop 35 requires sex offenders (including indecent exposure and non-internet offenses) to provide all of their online aliases to law enforcement. This would include e-mail addresses, screen and user names, and other identifiers used on the internet.
The heart of the matter as the EFF sees it, would be not only the chilling effect it would have on free speech, but also the propensity of these kind of laws to be applied to other (non-sex offending) people as well.

Submission + - ATM-enabled 'gone in 60 seconds' casino heist 1

Submitted by craighansen
craighansen writes: ATM machines specifically marketed for providing casino spending money in 60 seconds were the key to an million-dollar gone-in-60-seconds bank fraud. According to the FBI press release, defendant Ara Keshishyan and 13 co-conspirators opened accounts at Citibank with small initial deposits, and multiple withdrawals were made nearly simultaneously at ATM machines in several casinos in California and Nevada. They allegedly used much of the proceeds to gamble and enjoy casino "comps." According to another article, Citibank found the breach, closed the loophole, and notified law enforcement authorities. Because the were transactions below $10,000, in addition to the bank fraud and conspiracy charges, they got charged with "conspiracy to illegally structure financial transactions to avoid reporting requirements, which is punishable by up to five years in prison, and a $250,000 fine." A previous on-line journal named this caper Ocean's 14, even though Danny Ocean isn't among the list of defendants.
Science

Submission + - Nanoscale Device Makes Light Travel Infinitely Fast (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Physicists have developed a tiny device in which the index of refraction for visible light is zero—so that within it, visible light travels infinitely fast. The gizmo won't lead to instantaneous communication—the famous speed limit of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity remains in force—but it could have a variety of pretty cool uses, including serving as an element in a type of optical circuitry.
United States

Submission + - Puerto Rico Votes to become US State (cnn.com)

Submitted by who_stole_my_kidneys
who_stole_my_kidneys writes: In an overshadowed Election Day contest, Puerto Ricans voted in favor of statehood in a nonbinding referendum, marking the first time such an initiative garnered a majority.
Puerto Ricans were asked about their desires in two parts. First, by a 54% to 46% margin, voters rejected their current status as a U.S. commonwealth. In a separate question, 61% chose statehood as the alternative, compared with 33% for the semi-autonomous "sovereign free association" and 6% for outright independence.

Submission + - Puerto Rico votes to become 51st state (yahoo.com)

Submitted by DrEnter
DrEnter writes: Not really getting much attention in all of the presidential election coverage was the fact that Puerto Rico voted to become a U.S. State yesterday. The option has come up for a vote several times in the past, but never had much popular support until this year when it won with 53% of the vote choosing to change the government structure and a surprising 65% of the vote for choosing statehood as that change. The other choices were a sovereign-free association (31%) and independence (4%). Obama has already committed to supporting the will of the voters and there is currently no major opposition in either the House or the Senate. It looks like the U.S. may have a 51st state in a few months! Now this Wikipedia page can get some attention.
Medicine

Submission + - Do Recreational Drugs Help Programmers? (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "Among the winners of last night's election: marijuana users. Voters in both Washington and Colorado approved referenda that legalized marijuana for recreational use, though the drug remains illegal under federal law. There's been a long-standing debate among programmers as to whether recreational drugs, including pot and hallucinagens like LSD, can actually help programmers code. Don't forget, there was a substantial overlap between the wave of computer professionals who came of age in the '60s and that era's counterculture."
Businesses

Submission + - Elon Musk Will Usher in the Era of Electric Cars (vice.com)

Submitted by
pigrabbitbear
pigrabbitbear writes: "There’s a reason why Elon Musk is being called the next Steve Jobs. Like Jobs, he’s a visionary, a super successful serial entrepreneur, having made his initial fortune with a company he sold to Compaq before starting Paypal. Like Jobs, he saved his beloved baby Tesla Motors from the brink of oblivion. Like Jobs, he’s a genius generalist with “huge steel balls” (according to his ex-wife) and a knack for paradigm-shifting industry disruption. Which means he’s also demanding. “Like Jobs, Elon does not tolerate C or D players,” SpaceX board member and early Tesla investor Steve Jurvetson told BusinessWeek.

But while Jobs was slinging multi-colored music players and touchable smartphones, Musk is building rocket ships and electric-powered supercars. It’s why his friends describe him as not just Steve Jobs but also John D. Rockefeller and Howard Hughes all wrapped in one. His friend Jon Favreau used Musk as the real-life inspiration for the big screen version of Tony Stark. Elon Musk is a badass."

Submission + - How CoreSite Survived Sandy (slashdot.org)

Submitted by
Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: "When Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast, the combination of high winds, rain, and storm surges wreaked havoc on homes and businesses alike. With a data center on the Avenue of the Americas, CoreSite Realty escaped the worst the storm had to offer. But was it coincidence or careful planning?
Slashdot sat down for an interview with Billie Haggard, CoreSite’s senior vice president of data centers. He’s responsible for the design, construction, maintenance, facilities staffing and uptime, reliability and energy efficiency of CoreSite’s data centers. He described what it took to weather the worst weather to hit New York City in decades."

Submission + - 'World of Warcraft' candidate for Maine State Senate wins election (bangordailynews.com)

Submitted by
Teancum
Teancum writes: "Colleen Lachowicz, candidate for the State Senate District 25 of Maine, won the election yesterday against her opponent Thomas Martin. This race was notable in part because her World of Warcraft character that was mentioned earlier on Slashdot, where the Maine Republican Party turned her game playing into a significant issue. It is also notable that she was able to raise a total of $6,300 in campaign contributions from gamers who came to her defense in her successful campaign. The Maine GOP even tried to block these contributions where Lachowicz was cleared of any wrong doing and the investigation was dropped."
Data Storage

Submission + - Death of cassette tape is greatly exaggerated (torontosun.com) 1

Submitted by Meshach
Meshach writes: Interesting article from Toronto about how although they have been virtually abandoned for music cassette tapes are being actively used an an inexpensive storage medium. Companies looking to archive large amounts of data are always looking for a cheaper solution and cassette tapes are the newest fad. Apparently when access time is not a priority they are perfect and they require zero energy use when not in use.
Robotics

Submission + - Dragonfly spy drone fits in a hand Georgia Tech (suasnews.com)

Submitted by
garymortimer
garymortimer writes: "The TechJect Robot Dragonfly is a multi-engineering design. It requires everything from aerodynamics, machine design, mechatronics, electronics, communication systems, flight control software, user-interfaces and much more. We’ve put in a lot of work to bring harmony to chaos and bring the dragonfly to life; however, getting something robust enough to endure the elements, strong enough to outlast crashes and accidents; smart enough so everyone can operate them easily; and finally cheap enough so everyone can afford one, we have to professionally manufacture the robot bugs; which is an expensive proposition."

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