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Submission + - 'Smart' vending machines triple sales (techeye.net)

Submitted by bossanovalithium
bossanovalithium writes: A vending machine in Japan which recommends drinks to customers based on facial recognition data has tripled sales.

JR East Water Business has previously installed two vending machines in JR Shinagawa station and it is believed that the recognition technology is responsible for a vast increase in sales in comparison to traditional machines.

The vending machines recommend beverages after physical attributes of customers are picked up by sensors which allow the machines determine age, sex and other attributes, before offering a number of suggestions.
Idle

Submission + - Mount Everest mountaineers get 3G services (techeye.net)

Submitted by bossanovalithium
bossanovalithium writes: It's what every mountaineer wants they reach the summit of Mount Everest, 3G high speed communication. "Hi honey, I'm on top of the world".

Those who have trekked it to the top will soon able to call their mates, go on Facebook or Twitter and boast that they've got there thanks to TeliaSonera and its subsidiary in Nepal, Ncell, which have bought 3G to the Mount Everest area.

Climbers who reached Everest's 8,848-metre peak previously depended on expensive and erratic satellite phone coverage and a voice-only network set up by China Mobile in 2007 on the Chinese side of the mountain.
Transportation

Submission + - Vans drive themselves across the world (techeye.net)

Submitted by bossanovalithium
bossanovalithium writes: Four driverless electric vans successfully ended a 13,000-kilometre test drive from Italy to China which mirrored the journey from East to West carried out by Marco Polo in the Middle Ages.

The four vans, packed with navigation gear and other computer software drove themselves Across Eastern Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan and the Gobi Desert without getting lost.

The vans arrived at Shanghai Expo. They had been equipped with four solar-powered laser scanners and seven video cameras that work together to detect and avoid obstacles.
The Internet

Submission + - Meet NELL, the computer that lears from the net. (techeye.net) 1

Submitted by bossanovalithium
bossanovalithium writes: Carnegie Mellon University has taught a computer how to read and learn from the internet.

According to Dennis Baron at the Oxford University press blog, the computer is called NELL and it is reading the internet and learning from it in much the same way that humans learn language and acquire knowledge. Basically by soaking it all up and figuring it out.

NELL is short for Never Ending Language Learner and apparently it is getting brainier every day.

Submission + - The new dawn of phone calls (techeye.net)

Submitted by bossanovalithium
bossanovalithium writes: We can fly to the Moon but we can't have a phone call with reasonable quality. Why? TechEye talks to Xconnect's Eli Katz on how we can hear each other better and what's in the pipeline for telecoms the world over.

Back in 1936 — 74 years ago — boffins accepted that about 3.3Khz was the accepted frequency that telephone calls are going to run on and it's been like that, generally, ever since. Call quality is reasonable but leaves a lot to be desired. Think calls from Skype to Skype where quality is often crystal clear.
Power

Submission + - Self powered parts are the future (techeye.net)

Submitted by bossanovalithium
bossanovalithium writes: The idea is that the parts will make external power sources redundant — because they can convert energy from body heat, light and vibrations straight into electricity. Self powered electronics have already sporadically been used in technology like wall-mount remote control units for air conditioners, says Nikkei, but existing parts are bulky and cost a couple thousand yen a piece. 3,000 yen is about $35 — which means they're not the best bet, financially, yet.

Other bits and pieces where the self powered sensors could be used are boilers and, er, pacemakers. If something requires a battery that's difficult to change, the sensors would be ideal as they'll keep the pacemaker ticking instead of the user dropping dead because he's not a surgeon or there aren't enough AAA's in the house.

An umbrella consortium comprising such names as Panasonic and Toyota are workignon bringing the rpice of self powered parts down to levels where they can be mass produced.
Transportation

Hyperdrive Propulsion Could Be Tested At the LHC 322

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-can't-believe-i-used-the-transportation-topic dept.
KentuckyFC writes "In 1924, the influential German mathematician David Hilbert calculated that a stationary mass should repel a particle moving towards or away from it at more than half the speed of light (as seen by a distant inertial observer). Now an American physicist has pointed out that the equal and opposite effect should also hold true: that a relativistic particle should repel a stationary mass. This, he says, could form the basis of a 'hypervelocity propulsion drive' for accelerating spacecraft to a good fraction of the speed of light. The idea is that the repulsion allows the relativistic particle to deliver a specific impulse that is greater than its specific momentum, an effect that is analogous to the elastic collision of a heavy mass with a much lighter, stationary mass, from which the lighter mass rebounds with about twice the speed of the heavy mass. Unlike other exotic hyperdrive proposals, this one can be tested using the world's largest particle accelerator, the LHC, which will generate beams of particles with the required energy (abstract). Placing a test mass next to the beam line and measuring the forces on it as the particles pass by should confirm the theory — or scupper it entirely."

Submission + - UK Hacker expected to foot bill for US Gov to patc (computerweekly.com) 1

Submitted by
bossanovalithium
bossanovalithium writes: "Gary McKinnon, the UK hacker trying to escape extradition appears to be expected to foot the bill for the US Government to patch holes his breaching uncovered — to the tune of $700,000. It's not really the norm for someone to pay for exploits to be patched, damages fixed, yes, but this is a very different thing."

Comment Would be a great move (Score 2, Insightful) 512

by bossanovalithium (#29503927) Attached to: French Deputies Moving Against Photoshopped Ads
Imagine the kudos that would come about and the prized badge that a few pics without this tag would hold. It's time people were no longer brainwashed into this aspiration for what is clearly not possible without a few layers of photoshop. We'd all be a bit nicer to each other and ourselves if we started to accept the fact that no-one is perfect.

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