47787663
submission
coondoggie writes:
With the FBI saying it does indeed use drones to watch over certain situations inside the US and the recent hullabaloo over the NSA’s citizen surveillance practices, it is apparent we are being watched all the time in one form or another. Here we take a look at other world-wide evidence that indeed, somebody is definitely watching you.
47597799
submission
coondoggie writes:
The FBI/Internet Crime Complaint Center reported today it has received "hundreds of complaints" from people claiming they have seen their mug shots on 20 different websites, who all often then charge anywhere from $100 to $500 to remove it. Thing is, if the victim paid to have it removed once, it likely pops up again elsewhere.
47589601
submission
coondoggie writes:
A couple of interesting developments in the Seattle are this week must have been keeping law enforcement busy. First, a number of outlets are reporting that prosecutors have charged two men with what is being called the largest metal theft in state history — 4.3 miles of copper wire from the underside of an elevated train line over an eight month period spanning 1010-2011.
47549309
submission
coondoggie writes:
NASA again stepped up its plan to mitigate the asteroid threat to Earth by announcing two significant new programs that call on a multitude of scientists and organizations to help spot, track and possibly alter the direction of killer space rocks.
First off, the agency announced the latest in its series of Grand Challenges where it dares public and private partnerships to come up with a unique solution to a very tough problem, usually with prize money attached for the winner
47512593
submission
coondoggie writes:
t's a list one would never aspire to be on. The FBI today said it named the 500th criminal to its iconic "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives," program — a list that has been kept since 1950. The idea behind the Ten Most Wanted was to get the names and faces of criminals out to the public and ultimately lead to their capture. And the FBI says the list has done just that in a major way: Of the 500 fugitives who have been named to the list, 469 have been apprehended or located. Of those, 155 fugitives have been captured or located as a direct result of citizen cooperation, the agency says.
47386445
submission
coondoggie writes:
Carnegie Mellon researchers call the project Six Degrees of Francis Bacon (SDFB). But what it is is an great big data mining project that tries to trace the influence and ideas of Bacon, William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton and more than 6,000 others from the 16th-17th centuries to let scholars and students reassemble and discuss or debate the era's networked culture.
47352879
submission
coondoggie writes:
A network of video cameras melded a unique algorithm let scientists with the Carnegie Mellon University track the locations of multiple individuals in complex, indoor setting — just like Harry Potter's Marauder's Map. The Carnegie Mellon system was able to automatically follow the movements of 13 people within a nursing home, even though individuals sometimes slipped out of view of the cameras and researchers said they made use of multiple cues from the video feed: apparel color, person detection, trajectory and, perhaps most significantly, facial recognition, according to university researchers.
47325955
submission
coondoggie writes:
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) this week put out a call to fuel producers to offer options that would safely let general aviation aircraft stop using leaded fuel by 2018. The FAA says there are approximately 167,000 aircraft in the United States and a total of 230,000 worldwide that rely on the current 100 octane, low lead fuel for safe operation. It is the only remaining transportation fuel in the United States that contains the addition of tetraethyl lead (TEL), a toxic substance, to create the very high octane levels needed for high-performance aircraft engines. Operations with inadequate octane can result in engine failures, the FAA noted.
47320147
submission
coondoggie writes:
Few things can ignite passion as much as an amazingly designed aircraft or rocket flashing through the sky. Here we take a look at some of the latest in high-tech flying machines. Some are only prototype s that are pure research vehicles, others you may someday see of fly in in the next few years or more in other cases.
47218573
submission
coondoggie writes:
At the Design Automation Conference (DAC) here this week, John Kubiatowicz, professor in the UC Berkeley computer science division, offered a preview of Tessellation, describing it as an operating system for the future where surfaces with sensors, such as walls and tables in rooms, for example, could be utilized via touch or audio command to summon up multimedia and other applications. The UC Berkeley Tessellation website says Tessellation is targeted at existing and future so-called "manycore" based systems that have large numbers of processors, or cores on a single chip. Currently, the operating system runs on Intel multicore hardware as well as the Research Accelerator for Multiple Processors (RAMP) multicore emulation platform.
47160365
submission
coondoggie writes:
After a major conflagration of criticism from Congress and flight attendants over the Transportation Security Administration's proposed decision in March to let a bunch of previously prohibited items such as small pocket knives on aircraft as carry-ons, the TSA has had a change of heart.
47151673
submission
coondoggie writes:
Seems like a natural fit: NASA today said it would team up with Lego to offer a competition to see who can build the coolest models of future airplanes and spacecraft. The "NASA's Missions: Imagine and Build" competition is open now with an entry deadline of July 31. Winners in each category will be selected by a panel of NASA and LEGO officials and announced Sept. 1.
47124147
submission
coondoggie writes:
IBM says it has packed an integrated circuit about the size of a nickel with technology that can enable gigabit/sec mobile data-rate and clutter-cutting radar image applications. The integrated circuit takes advantage of millimeter-wave spectrum which spans the 30 GHz to 300 GHz range, 10 to 100 times higher than the frequencies used for mobile phones and Wi-Fi. Frequencies in the range of 90-94GHz are well suited for short and long range, high-resolution radar imaging, IBM said.
47119641
submission
coondoggie writes:
IoS devices are vulnerable to malware coming from a malicious charger according to researchers from Georgia Tech. The researchers, who will be presenting their proof-of-concept charger known as Mactans at the upcoming Black Hat security conference, say: “despite the plethora of defense mechanisms in iOS, we successfully injected arbitrary software into current-generation Apple devices running the latest operating system (OS) software. All users are affected, as our approach requires neither a jail-broken device nor user interaction.”
