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Nestle's GPS Tracking Candy Campaign 172

Posted by samzenpus from the oompa-loompa-I'm-tracking-you dept.
colinneagle writes "In a cool yet creepy marketing campaign, Nestle plans to stalk UK consumers. The company kicked off a unique promotion called 'We will find you' that involves GPS trackers embedded in chocolate bars. When a winning consumer opens the wrapper, it activates and notifies the prize team who promises to track them down within 24 hours to deliver a check for £10,000. A Nestle spokesman added that 'inside their wrappers, the GPS-enabled bars looked just like normal chocolate bars.'"

Comment Re:get a real car (Score 3, Funny) 309

by synaptik (#41186017) Attached to: Kindle Fire Is Sold Out Forever

Personally, I think automatic gearboxes are pointless if you're healthy and not somehow disabled.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to hold onto the steering wheel, work the clutch, talk on the phone, eat a messy taco, *and* have to shift gears manually? Do you *want* me to get in an accident, or something?
Businesses

Managing Human Workers With an Algorithm 186

Posted by Soulskill from the pointy-haired-algorithm dept.
New submitter prayag writes "With the advent of crowdsourcing platforms it has become easier for people to 'automate' simple, yet repetitive tasks that computers aren't good at by hiring thousands of people at once. This can help some business cheaply accomplish certain tasks, but it can also be misused by spammers. A company called MobileWorks is even outsourcing this concept, reaching out to workers in developing nations whose income needs aren't as high. 'Kulkarni, who founded the company in 2010 with fellow graduate students from the University of California, Berkeley, says the value of tasks is set so that workers can reasonably earn $2 to $4 an hour; payments are on a sliding scale, with lower rates for poorer countries. "Even though they are acting as agents of a computer program, we are creating an opportunity for them," he says. MobileWorks charges its clients rates starting at $5 per hour for workers' time.'"

Comment Re:Efficiency? (Score 2) 248

by synaptik (#40658509) Attached to: East Texas Getting Compressed Air Energy Storage Plant

Compressed air heats up and you need that heat to stay in the tank or you lose the energy.

Can you explain how that is a net loss, if all your power generation relies upon is the PSI? I do understand that air heats when compressed. But it also chills when decompressed, causing the heat that it released earlier to be sucked back in to the system. ...Is it perhaps that when the heat of compression dissipates out of the system, the PSI has been reduced?
Wikipedia

Why Is Wikipedia So Ugly? 370

Posted by timothy from the looks-nice-to-me dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Megan Garber writes in the Atlantic that aesthetically, Wikipedia is remarkably unattractive. 'The gridded layout! The disregard for mind-calming images! The vaguely Geocities-esque environment! Whether it's ironic or fitting, it is undeniable: The Sum of All Human Knowledge, when actually summed up, is pretty ugly.' But Wikipedians consider the site's homeliness as a feature rather than a bug. 'Wikipedia has always been kind of a homely, awkward, handcrafted-looking site,' says Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, adding that the homeliness 'is part of its awkward charm.' Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr have built followings in part because of their exceedingly simple interfaces. Everything about their design says, 'Come on, guys. Participate. It's easy,' while Wikipedia, so far, has been pretty much the opposite of that. 'The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit' might more properly be nicknamed 'the free encyclopedia that any geek can edit.' This is particularly problematic because one of the Wikimedia Foundation's broad strategic goals is to expand its base of editors. While the editing interface is friendly to the site's super-users who tend to be so committed to Wikipedia's mission that they're willing to do a lot to contribute to it, if Wikipedia wants to make itself more attractive to users, a superficial makeover may be just the thing Wikipedia needs to begin growing in a more meaningful way."
Biotech

Scientists Resurrect 500-Million-Year-Old Gene Inside Modern Organism 135

Posted by Soulskill from the you-bred-velocibacteria? dept.
An anonymous reader writes with news that researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have taken a gene from 500-million-year-old bacteria and inserted it into modern E. coli bacteria. They then allowed the bacteria to evolve over the course of a thousand generations to see whether it would resemble its original 'evolutionary trajectory.' From the article: "After achieving the difficult task of placing the ancient gene in the correct chromosomal order and position in place of the modern gene within E. coli, Kaçar produced eight identical bacterial strains and allowed 'ancient life' to re-evolve. This chimeric bacteria composed of both modern and ancient genes survived, but grew about two times slower than its counterpart composed of only modern genes. 'The altered organism wasn’t as healthy or fit as its modern-day version, at least initially,' said Gaucher, 'and this created a perfect scenario that would allow the altered organism to adapt and become more fit as it accumulated mutations with each passing day.' The growth rate eventually increased and, after the first 500 generations, the scientists sequenced the genomes of all eight lineages to determine how the bacteria adapted. Not only did the fitness levels increase to nearly modern-day levels, but also some of the altered lineages actually became healthier than their modern counterpart."

Comment Re:Doomed competition (Score 1) 146

by synaptik (#40630147) Attached to: Google Nexus 7 Parts Cost $18 More Than Kindle Fire
What is the difference between these two outcomes:
1. Realizing you will later be on a bus/train/plane/car/deserted island with no connectivity, and preloading your sd card with content to consume during your adventure
2. Realizing you will later be on a bus/train/plane/car/deserted island with no connectivity, and preloading your device with content to consume during your adventure

?

Or, are you bemoaning the loss of opportunity to swap pre-loaded sd cards with your fellow travellers/castaways? Because if so, you could just do one of the following:

a. Trade devices for a while
b. Swap the files via NFC or bluetooth
NASA

Hubble Discovers 5th Moon of Pluto 137

Posted by Soulskill from the more-traffic-for-some-new-horizons-frogger dept.
Stirling Newberry writes "This image shows 'P5,' the placeholder name for a fifth natural moon of Pluto, a tiny sliver that orbits ~29,000 miles from its primary in a circular orbit. Other than Charon, Hubble has been the means by which astronomers have found all of the known moons of Pluto. 'The new detection will help scientists navigate NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft through the Pluto system in 2015, when it makes an historic and long-awaited high-speed flyby of the distant world. The team is using Hubble’s powerful vision to scour the Pluto system to uncover potential hazards to the New Horizons spacecraft. Moving past the dwarf planet at a speed of 30,000 miles per hour, New Horizons could be destroyed in a collision with even a BB-shot-size piece of orbital debris.'"
Google

Nokia: Google's Nexus 7 Tablet Infringes Our Patents 183

Posted by timothy from the this-is-a-storm-and-that's-got-ports dept.
walterbyrd writes with a story at The Inquirer outlining the latest volley in the patent wars surrounding mobile hardware, this time aimed at the new Aus-built Nexus 7 tablet from Google by Nokia, in which the company's spokesman says, "Nokia has more than 40 licensees, mainly for its standards essential patent portfolio, including most of the mobile device manufacturers. Neither Google nor Asus is licensed under our patent portfolio. 'Companies who are not yet licensed under our standard essential patents should simply approach us and sign up for a license.'"
Biotech

Sequencing the Unborn 146

Posted by Soulskill from the time-to-reboot-gattaca dept.
sciencehabit writes "What if you could read much of your child's medical future while it was still in the womb? Taking a major step toward that goal, one fraught with therapeutic potential and ethical questions, scientists have now accurately predicted almost the whole genome of an unborn child by sequencing DNA from the mother's blood and DNA from the father's saliva (abstract)."
Android

Radiation Detecting Android Phone Coming To Japan 133

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the also-detects-invasion-by-mothra dept.
itwbennett writes "Softbank, Japan's third largest carrier, has teamed up with Sharp to create a radiation detector chip for the latest model in the company's popular, bare-bones Pantone line of smartphones. The chip 'can detect gamma radiation in the air at doses of between 0.05 and 9.99 microsieverts per hour,' according to an IDG News Service report. 'The phone then uses its GPS to place readings on a map. Due to go on sale in July, it runs Android 4.0 and features standard functionality for Japanese handsets, including mobile TV, touch payments and infrared transmission.'"

Comment Re:Good (Score 1) 270

by synaptik (#40019903) Attached to: Facebook Is Killing Text Messaging
I have a better proposal. How about: the carriers charge more than the current market will bear, giving an opportunity for cheaper alternatives (such as, I dunno... Facebook messaging) to arise. Then the carriers start to see their SMS business dwindle away. Oh wait, that's already happening. Gosh, and no regulation needed!

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