171543506
submission
KindMind writes:
According to The Register, a combination of cement and carbon black crystals can act as a capacitor. From the story:
"Researchers at MIT claim to have found a novel new way to store energy using nothing but cement, a bit of water, and powdered carbon black – a crystalline form of the element.
The materials can be cleverly combined to create supercapacitors, which could in turn be used to build power-storing foundations of houses, roadways that could wirelessly charge vehicles, and serve as the foundation of wind turbines and other renewable energy systems – all while holding a surprising amount of energy, the team claims.
According to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 45 cubic meters of the carbon-black-doped cement could have enough capacity to store 10 kilowatt-hours of energy – roughly the amount an average household uses in a day. A block of cement that size would measure about 3.5 meters per side and, depending on the size of the house, the block could theoretically store all the energy an off-grid home using renewables would need."
170711698
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KindMind writes:
Thieves has discovered new ways to steal cars by pulling off smart devices (like smart headlights) to get at and attack via the CAN bus. From the article:
"... It was driven by the theft of Tabor's RAV4. Leading up to the crime, Tabor noticed the front bumper and arch rim had been pulled off by someone, and the headlight wiring plug removed. The surrounding area was scuffed with screwdriver markings, which, together with the fact the damage was on the kerbside, seemed to rule out damage caused by a passing vehicle. More vandalism was later done to the car: gashes in the paint work, molding clips removed, and malfunctioning headlamps.
A few days later, the Toyota was stolen."
147719774
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KindMind writes:
Customers are suing McDonald's for violating Illinois state law on biometrics privacy. From the article: Shannon Carpenter sued McDonald’s in April on behalf of himself and all other affected residents of Illinois. He claimed the fast-chow biz has broken BIPA by not obtaining written consent from its customers to collect and process their voice data, nor has it explained in its privacy policy how or if the data is stored or deleted.
The testing was covered by Slashdot here.
143934356
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KindMind writes:
From the summary: Scientists found frozen plant fossils, preserved under a mile of ice on Greenland. The discovery helps confirm a new and troubling understanding that the Greenland Ice Sheet has melted entirely during recent warm periods in Earth's history.
105058488
submission
KindMind writes:
The Register has an article on the possibility that a super nova or a series of them could explain a mass die-off of marine animals around 2.6 million years ago.
From the article: A gigantic supernova explosion may have triggered mass extinctions for creatures living in Earth’s prehistoric oceans some 2.6 million years ago, according to new research published in Astrobiology. Marine animals like the megalodon ... suddenly disappeared during the late Pliocene. Around the same time, scientists ... noticed a peak in the iron-60 isotope in ancient seabeds.
89644481
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KindMind writes:
USA today writes that Waze and others are causing traffic planners to try to figure out how to gain control back. From the article: While traffic savvy GPS apps like Waze and Google Maps have provided users a way to get around traffic, it has caused massive headaches for city planners ... With highways frequently congested, navigation apps like Google Maps and Waze started telling drivers to hop off the freeway at Fremont's Mission Boulevard, cut through residential streets and then hop back on the highway where things were clearer — much to the distress of the people who lived there. “The commuters didn’t live or work in Fremont and didn’t care about our residential neighborhoods,” said Noe Veloso, Fremont’s principal transportation engineer ... Fremont instituted commute-hour turn restrictions on the most heavily used residential cut-through routes. The city also partnered with Waze through its Connected Citizens Program in order to share data and information, such as the turn restrictions, so that the app takes them into account. The result has been effective, but Veloso is worried the changes may simply reroute commuters into other neighborhoods.
76188695
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KindMind writes:
The Register reports that Elon Musk, in an appearance on the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, said that to begin with, human residents on the red planet would need to live in "transparent domes". Before a move to more hospitable habitats one needs only "to warm it up" and Musk thinks there's a fast way and a slow way to do that. The fast way "is drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles" and the slow way "is to release greenhouse gases, like we are doing on Earth."
68009657
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KindMind writes:
According to AP, Waze has caused trouble for LA residents by redirecting traffic from Interstate 405 to neighborhood side streets paralleling the interstate. A case of the the "Law of Unintended Consequences" maybe?
63728277
submission
KindMind writes:
On Wired, Reed Hastings (Netflix's CEO) has his take on net neutrality. He lays the problem at the feet of the large ISPs. He says "It's worth noting that Netflix connects directly with hundreds of ISPs globally, and 99 percent of those agreements don't involve access fees. It is only a handful of the largest U.S. ISPs, which control the majority of consumer connections, demanding this toll. Why would more profitable, larger companies charge for connections and capacity that smaller companies provide for free? Because they can."
59957965
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KindMind writes:
From the Washington Post: Psychologist Robert Epstein has been researching this question and says he is alarmed at what he has discovered. His most recent experiment, whose findings were released Monday, found that search engines have the potential to profoundly influence voters without them noticing the impact ... Epstein, former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today and a vocal critic of Google, has not produced evidence that this or any other search engine has intentionally deployed this power. But the new experiment builds on his earlier work by measuring SEME (Search Engine Manipulation Effect) in the concrete setting of India’s national election, whose voting concludes Monday.
52424431
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KindMind writes:
Cringely writes on the idea that technological advances have changed the health care system, and not for the better. The Idea is that companies now rate individuals instead of groups, and so move to a mode of preventing giving policies that might lose money, instead of the traditional way that insurances costs were spread over a group. From the article: "Then in the 1990s something happened: the cost of computing came down to the point where it was cost-effective to calculate likely health outcomes on an individual basis. This moved the health insurance business from being based on setting rates to denying coverage. In the U.S. the health insurance business model switched from covering as many people as possible to covering as few people as possible — selling insurance only to healthy people who didn’t much need the healthcare system."
48328289
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KindMind writes:
Sky Deutschland is considering a proposal to use bone conduction to broadcast ads to train riders. The idea is that the riders rest their heads against a part of the train, like the train window, and then bone conduction would broadcast ads directly into their ears.
44828719
submission
KindMind writes:
To probably no one's surprise, wiping a smart phone by standard methods doesn't get all the data erased. Wired writes '... Problem is, even if you do everything right, there can still be lots of personal data left behind. Simply restoring a phone to its factory settings won’t completely clear it of data. Even if you use the built-in tools to wipe it, when you go to sell your phone on Craigslist you may be selling all sorts of things along with it that are far more valuable — your name, birth date, Social Security number and home address, for example.'
44828531
submission
KindMind writes:
Alfred Anaya was a custom stereo installer who branched out to making secret compartments for valuables, who the DEA sent to prison as a co-conspirator when a drug dealer used his creation to smuggle drugs.
But Wired points out the bigger question: 'The challenge for anyone who creates technology is to guess when they should turn their back on paying customers. Take a manufacturer of robot kits for hobbyists. If someone uses those robots to patrol a smuggling route or help protect a meth lab, how will prosecutors determine whether the company acted criminally?'
36162071
submission
KindMind writes:
All permits for new plants and license extensions for existing plants are being frozen. From the article:
"The U.S. government said it will stop issuing permits for new nuclear power plants and license extensions for existing facilities until it resolves issues around storing radioactive waste. The government's main watchdog, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, believes that current storage plans are safe and achievable. But a federal court said that the NRC didn't detail what the environmental consequences would be if the agency is wrong."
The NRC says that "We are now considering all available options for resolving the waste issue, But, in recognition of our duties under the law, we will not issue [reactor] licenses until the court's remand is appropriately addressed."
Affected are 14 reactors awaiting license renewals, and an additional 16 reactors awaiting permits for new construction.
