An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday, the final Raspberry Pi printed circuit board (PCB) layout was revealed. The word 'packed' comes to mind as this is one very complicated looking board. The reason for that is just how much Raspberry Pi has strived to save money on the machine by using complex routing to keep things small and cheap. The Raspberry Pi team don't believe the design is going to change again unless they missed something. With that in mind, they revealed the final board is exactly the same size as a credit card, measuring 85.65 x 53.98mm."

Gunkerty Jeb writes "The days of wondering whether those drunken sex party photos are indeed the Olsen Twins, or if they are just the Mary-Kate and Ashley's faces photo-shopped on the bodies of Lindsay Lohan and Amy Winehouse are OVER! A group of academic researchers at the University of Cambridge has developed a new technique for making JPEG images copy-evident, so that users can tell whether an image has been recompressed and copied."

An anonymous reader noted that Apple appears to have lost another of its 4th generation iPhones. This doesn't seem like the most efficient distribution mechanism, Steve. Wonder if the SWAT team will get called in.

An anonymous reader writes "In Truro, Massachusetts (a town on Cape Cod), a zoning decision came up for vote, where the results were 136 for, 70 against. The vote required 2/3 approval to pass. The Town Clerk and Town Accountant believe that since .66 * 206 is less than 136, the vote passes. However, an 'anonymous caller' noted that a more accurate value of 2/3 would require 137 (or perhaps even 138 votes) for the measure to be considered passed. The MA Secretary of State and State Attorney General are hard at work to resolve this issue." Updated 20100422 23:55 by timothy: Oops! This story is a year old (rounding up), which I didn't spot quickly enough. Hope they've got it all worked out in the meantime.

The Georgia House Judiciary Committee took up a bill that would "prohibit requiring a person to be implanted with a microchip," and would make violating the ban a misdemeanor. Things started to get weird at the hearing when a woman who described herself as a resident of DeKalb County told the committee, "I'm also one of the people in Georgia who has a microchip." Not sure of what she was trying to say, she was allowed to continue and added, "Microchips are like little beepers. Just imagine, if you will, having a beeper in your rectum or genital area, the most sensitive area of your body. And your beeper numbers displayed on billboards throughout the city. All done without your permission." Further prodding revealed that the woman's co-workers would torture her by activating the chips with their cell phones and that the chips were implanted by "researchers with the federal government." The committee thanked the woman for her input, and later approved the bill.

theodp writes "Gizmodo has an angry piece on IBM helping Florida to predict how delinquent your child's going to be. The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice has decided to start using IBM predictive analytics software to help them determine which of the 85,000 kids who enter their system each year poses the biggest future threat. From IBM's sales pitch: 'Predictive analytics gives government organizations worldwide a highly-sophisticated and intelligent source to create safer communities by identifying, predicting, responding to and preventing criminal activities. It gives the criminal justice system the ability to draw upon the wealth of data available to detect patterns, make reliable projections and then take the appropriate action in real time to combat crime and protect citizens.'"

eldavojohn writes "The National Institute for Standards and Technology has unveiled a new clock that will 'neither gain nor lose one second in about 3.7 billion years,' making it an atomic clock twice as precise as the previous pacesetter, which was based on mercury atoms. Experts call it a 'milestone for atomic clocks.' The press release describes the workings: 'The logic clock is based on a single aluminum ion (electrically charged atom) trapped by electric fields and vibrating at ultraviolet light frequencies, which are 100,000 times higher than microwave frequencies used in NIST-F1 and other similar time standards around the world.' This makes the aluminum ion clock a contender to replace the standard cesium fountain clock (within 1 second in about 100 million years) as NIST's standard. For those of you asking 'So what?' the article describes the important applications such a device holds: 'The extreme precision offered by optical clocks is already providing record measurements of possible changes in the fundamental "constants" of nature, a line of inquiry that has important implications for cosmology and tests of the laws of physics, such as Einstein's theories of special and general relativity. Next-generation clocks might lead to new types of gravity sensors for exploring underground natural resources and fundamental studies of the Earth. Other possible applications may include ultra-precise autonomous navigation, such as landing planes by GPS.'"

jonasvdc tips an announcement by Square Enix that Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II are being developed for the iPhone and the iPod touch. The graphics and UI have been modified to look and run better on the touchscreen devices, but everything from Cecil to the classic Black Mage is clearly recognizable. The announcement did not include any information on a price or release date.

Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."

theodp writes "While the universal remote has served humanity with distinction, its days are numbered, and your smartphone is to blame. Whether you want to control your music, your television or your PowerPoint presentation, there's probably a solution using your phone. Try as it might, the universal remote simply can't navigate the digital world the way the smartphone can — it's a lot easier to put the remote's abilities in the smartphone than vice versa."

Ynot_82 writes "The French national police force, the Gendarmerie Nationale, has spoken about their migration away from the Windows platform to Linux. Estimated to have already saved the force 50 Million Euros, the migration is due to be completed on all 90,000 workstations by 2015. Of the move, Lt. Col. Guimard had this comment: '"Moving from Microsoft XP to Vista would not have brought us many advantages and Microsoft said it would require training of users. Moving from XP to Ubuntu, however, proved very easy. The two biggest differences are the icons and the games. Games are not our priority."'"

"The Washington Times is reporting that the DHS wants to replace your boarding pass with a GPS-enabled shock bracelet. Plans for the device include subduing passengers remotely as well as onboard interrogation. There's even a promotional video." Perhaps Paul Ruwaldt (the official named in this story) has been watching "The Coneheads" a bit too much, or not actually flying enough. Expressing interest is not quite the same as ordering mass quantities, but it's scary enough.

contraba55 wrote with a link to an Engadget story on a sign of the postmodern times. Oscar Pistorius, a world-class sprinter, has been denied a shot at participating in the Olympics this year. He's a double-amputee, but he's not out because of his handicap; he's disqualified because he's faster than most sprinters. "The runner — who uses carbon-fiber, prosthetic feet — was reviewed by the International Association of Athletics Federations (or IAAF), a review which found the combination of man and machine to be too much for its purely human competitors. According to the IAAF report, the 'mechanical advantage of the blade in relation to the healthy ankle joint of an able bodied athlete is higher than 30-percent.' Additionally, Pistorius uses 25-percent less energy than average runners due to the artificial limbs, therefore giving him an unfair advantage on the track."