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Comment Press release... NOT!!! (Score 1) 77

by dex22 (#57275952) Attached to: Vizio May Soon Inform Customers When Its Smart TVs Are Spying On Them

In a statement, Vizio said, "When we're secretly collecting information, we will project a glowing eye on the wall above and behind the TV. When we're sending that collected information to our servers the TV will make a mysterious whispering sound. The real innovation here is that the whispering will always be almost imperceptible regardless of the volume of the current sound playing on the TV. It senses it. It's really VERY clever. We got the patent last week!"

Submission + - How Window Washers Almost Sunk Salesforce Tower's Interactive Light Sculpture (ieee.org)

Submitted by Tekla Perry
Tekla Perry writes: More than 11,000 light fixtures, 8 LEDs in each, 1000 drivers, cables for data and power snaking through multiple floors to a central computer, cameras around the city sending images to the cloud, where AI selects the most interesting ones for display—that's only some of the technology involved in the light show at the top of Salesforce Tower. EE and artist Jim Campbell explains it all--and how the window-washer problem stumped him for nearly a year.

Submission + - Why tech's favorite color is making us all miserable (fastcodesign.com)

Submitted by johnverse
johnverse writes: The cold, harsh blue light of modern touchscreens may be aesthetically pleasing, but it poses health problems—including an increased risk of obesity and some cancers. Designers and technologists should take cues from military history, and influencers like Bulletproof's Dave Asprey, and embrace the orange.

Submission + - Exactis Data Leak Exposed Sensitive Information of 200 Million Individuals (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Personal information including email addresses, physical addresses, hobbies, substance abuse history, the age and gender of a person's children, types of credit cards, asset values, and religious affiliations have been exposed by Exactis, a consumer data aggregator.

Vinny Troia, a security researcher, discovered the 2 TB public-facing database with records on over 200 million Americans and 110 million business contacts. Exactis and the FBI were informed of the leak.

Exactis' privacy policy states "Our website is scanned on a regular basis for security holes and known vulnerabilities in order to make your visit to our site as safe as possible."

A proposed class action lawsuit was filed against the Florida-based company on Thursday.

Submission + - Google Is Planning a Game Platform That Could Take On Xbox and PlayStation (kotaku.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We haven’t heard many specifics about Google’s video game plans, but what we have heard is that it’s a three-pronged approach: 1) Some sort of streaming platform, 2) some sort of hardware, and 3) an attempt to bring game developers under the Google umbrella, whether through aggressive recruiting or even major acquisitions. That’s the word from five people who have either been briefed on Google’s plans or heard about them secondhand.

So what is this streaming platform, exactly? Like Nvidia’s GeForce Now, the Google service would offload the work of rendering graphics to beefy computers elsewhere, allowing even the cheapest PCs to play high-end games. The biggest advantage of streaming, as opposed to physical discs or downloads, is that it removes hardware barriers for games. Whispers have been quieter about Google’s hardware, whatever that may look like, but the rumors we’ve heard suggest that it will link up with the streaming service in some way. We’re not sure whether Google is looking to compete with the technical specs of the next PlayStation and Xbox or whether this Google console will be cheaper and low-end, relying on the streaming service to pull weight.

Submission + - Harlan Ellison passed away (variety.com)

Submitted by mrflash818
mrflash818 writes: "Speculative-fiction writer Harlan Ellison, who penned short stories, novellas and criticism, contributed to TV series including “The Outer Limits,” “Star Trek” and “Babylon 5” and won a notable copyright infringement suit against ABC and Paramount and a settlement in a similar suit over “The Terminator,” has died. He was 84."

Submission + - Splitting Water For Fuel While Removing CO2 From the Air (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new study led by the University of California, Santa Cruz's Greg Rau highlights another tool for our CO2 removal toolbox: splitting seawater to produce hydrogen gas for fuel while capturing CO2 with ocean chemistry. In electrolysis, a device powered by electricity is used to split H2O, producing hydrogen gas. Several chemical modifications to this process have been proposed that can also grab CO2 from the atmosphere. Like the idea of using biofuels, this represents a "win-win" by producing an energy resource while capturing CO2, bringing the cost down. [T]he gist is that atmospheric CO2 goes into the ocean as bicarbonate—which won't acidify the water or harm ecosystems. So if you power the electrolysis process with renewable energy, you can turn solar/wind/hydroelectric energy into hydrogen fuel while also removing CO2 from the air.

The new study focuses on a basic estimate of the cost and maximum potential of this technique. First, the researchers worked out its efficiency of CO2 capture—about 0.3 tons captured per gigajoule of electricity input, including the losses from quarrying and crushing rock. That's around 10 times greater than biofuel schemes, but it depends on the assumption that there is demand for all the hydrogen fuel you make. The hydrogen can be used by vehicles, and there's the possibility of using hydrogen as a type of storage for the electric grid—using excess power to make hydrogen that can run a power plant when needed. So it's not too farfetched that demand could rise to meet supply. The researchers' back-of-the-envelope estimate puts the cost of this system at between $3 and $161 per ton of captured CO2, depending on which type of renewable energy powers it.

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