Comment You are relieved, Captain (Score 1) 28
I'll remember him as Captain Jean-Luc Picard but I'll forever love his turn as Gurney Halleck in the David Lynch version of Dune.
Submission + - Researchers Induce Smells With Ultrasound, No Chemical Cartridges Required (uploadvr.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A group of independent researchers built a device that can artificially induce smell using ultrasound, with no consumable cartridges required. [...] The team of four are Lev Chizhov, Albert Yan-Huang, Thomas Ribeiro, Aayush Gupta. Chizhov is a neurotech entrepreneur with a background in math and physics, Yan-Huang is a researcher at Caltech with a background in computation and neural systems, and Ribeiro and Gupta are co-researchers on the project with software engineering and AI expertise.
Instead of targeting your nose at all, the device directly targets the olfactory bulb in your brain with "focused ultrasound through the skull." The researchers say that as far as they're aware, no one has ever done this before, even in animals. A challenge in targeting the olfactory bulb is that it's buried behind the top of your nose, and your nose doesn't provide a flat surface for an emitter. Ultrasound also doesn't travel well through air. The solution the researchers came up with was to place the emitter on your forehead instead, with a "solid, jello-like pad for stability and general comfort," and the ultrasound directed downward towards the olfactory bulb.
To determine the best placement, they say they used an MRI of one of their skulls to "roughly determine where the transducer would point and how the focal region (where ultrasound waves actually concentrate) aligned with the olfactory bulb (the target for stimulation)". [...] According to the researchers, they were able to induce the sensation of fresh air "with a lot of oxygen", the smell of garbage "like few-day-old fruit peels," an ozone-like sensation "like you're next to an air ionizer," and a campfire smell of burning wood. While technically head-mounted, the current device does require being held up with two hands. But as with all such prototypes, it likely could be significantly miniaturized.
Instead of targeting your nose at all, the device directly targets the olfactory bulb in your brain with "focused ultrasound through the skull." The researchers say that as far as they're aware, no one has ever done this before, even in animals. A challenge in targeting the olfactory bulb is that it's buried behind the top of your nose, and your nose doesn't provide a flat surface for an emitter. Ultrasound also doesn't travel well through air. The solution the researchers came up with was to place the emitter on your forehead instead, with a "solid, jello-like pad for stability and general comfort," and the ultrasound directed downward towards the olfactory bulb.
To determine the best placement, they say they used an MRI of one of their skulls to "roughly determine where the transducer would point and how the focal region (where ultrasound waves actually concentrate) aligned with the olfactory bulb (the target for stimulation)". [...] According to the researchers, they were able to induce the sensation of fresh air "with a lot of oxygen", the smell of garbage "like few-day-old fruit peels," an ozone-like sensation "like you're next to an air ionizer," and a campfire smell of burning wood. While technically head-mounted, the current device does require being held up with two hands. But as with all such prototypes, it likely could be significantly miniaturized.
Submission + - Young hacker behind historic breach speaks out for 1st time (abcnews.com)
alternative_right writes: On a recent Tuesday morning, as his parents were driving him to the federal prison in Connecticut where he'll be locked up for the foreseeable future, 20-year-old Matthew Lane sent a text message to ABC News.
"It's extremely sad, and I'm just scared," he wrote.
Barely a year earlier, while still a teenager, he helped launch what's been described as the biggest cyberattack in U.S. education history — a data breach that concerned authorities so much, it prompted briefings with senior government officials inside the White House Situation Room.
"It's extremely sad, and I'm just scared," he wrote.
Barely a year earlier, while still a teenager, he helped launch what's been described as the biggest cyberattack in U.S. education history — a data breach that concerned authorities so much, it prompted briefings with senior government officials inside the White House Situation Room.
Comment Why is Ancestry doing this? (Score 2) 48
Because it's highly unlikely that it's for the benefit of their customers. This has been going on for a while and they seemed to be fine with it. What prompted the change in policy? There's got to be a money angle here but I'm not sure what it is.
Comment Commodore PC-10-III Reporting In (Score 1) 523
My first was a 4.77MHz 8088 machine that had a turbo button to take it to 10 glorious MHz. A single 5.25" floppy drive with no hard drive or modem etc. CGI and IIRC EGA graphics as well with some games doing some interesting things with palettes to make it seem like they could do more than 4 colors. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize i could SAVE (and subsequently LOAD) programs that I'd written in GWBASIC.
Comment What about Bitcoin? (Score 1) 99
Why did Bitcoin not take off as a generic name for any cryptocurrency token? There's a rich history of proper nouns becoming regular nouns as part of a language e.g. google meaning any search engine, coke meaning any soda, etc. Bitcoin has the same number of syllables as crypto and is easier to write out as a whole as well.
I bought some bitcoin today!
Oh yeah? What kind?
Ethereum
Comment Re:Not cool (Score 1) 161
Agreed. I'd half-seriously suggested that nVidia and AMD get into the business of making ASICs as a way to reduce the demand for GPUs for mining. This is one of two ways to do that. The other way would be to make ASICs that far outstrip regular GPUs for mining, thus making the GPUs far less attractive to miners. I think nVidia should (or maybe is planning to) go that route if (or when) its CMP series takes off. I'd be interested to see what their long term plan is here.
Comment Re:The ol saying.. (Score 1) 51
It's a little different in this case. Muslim developers who've put such an app out there will typically make them free so it counts as a charity of sorts which is why a free app doesn't raise the kind of eyebrows in this context. Selling your location data is completely unexpected but it looks like the increased awareness means consumers will at least be more interested in this aspect of things going forward.
Comment Re: Well, if you need to face Mecca (Score 1) 51
I'm surprised I've not thought of this before. I know there are plenty of apps that will do more than just calculate the direction of Mecca but if it were a unipurpose app that only did that part and none of the additional bells and whistles to corner the market.
Comment Re:Well, if you need to face Mecca (Score 2) 51
It's the Great Circle direction. This means that the direction is NE in e.g. Eastern US which can be counter-intuitive to those who've not experienced distances on a sphere.
Comment Re:RIGGED ELECTION!!!! (Score 1) 54
Hear! Hear! Let the modding begin!
Comment Re:I'll be hanging on to x86 Mac for a while (Score 1) 213
Looks like Windows 10 is available on ARM as well so maybe we won't lose dual boot capabilities either!
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...
Comment RIP Rob (Score 1) 344
You will be missed.
Comment Re:BS "most popualar" (Score 1) 367
Aww yiss! My latest purchase included so many carbon atoms I didn't know what to do with them!
Comment Re:from my limited experience (Score 1) 357
I try to simplify my examples, but basicaly you must check the Muhammads... plus some random obviously NON-Muhammads as a deterrent - it is not so easy for the Islamic "Peace Corp" to find a white blond Adolf that will try to make connection with his 72 virgins in an airplane (that is the main reason for the existance of TSA - not to prevent Adolf from killing a passenger because he disagreed with the winner of the Eurovision music contest...)
Never underestimate the power of a few million dollars (or other pressure that's brought to bear) to break a profile that's so easy to spot. That's beyond the fact that there are plenty of blond blue-eyed muslims out there to break your profile on its own. Even Malcolm X attested to that.
