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Robotics

Giant Robotic Jellyfish Unveiled by Researchers 43

Posted by samzenpus from the thank-you-science dept.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, an anonymous reader writes in with news about a giant robot jellyfish. As if there weren't enough real jellyfish around to trigger our thalassophobia, researchers at Virginia Tech have created Cryo -- an eight-armed autonomous robot that mimics jelly movement with the help of a flexible silicone hat. The man-sized jellybot altogether dwarfs previous efforts, hence the upgrade from small tank to swimming pool for mock field tests. And unlike the passively propelled bots we've seen recently, Cryo runs on batteries, with the researchers hoping to better replicate the energy-efficient nature of jelly movement to eventually increase Cryo's charge cycle to months instead of hours. That's also the reason these robotic jellyfish are getting bigger -- because the larger they are, the further they can go."
Power

Submission + - US is Happy To Pay More for Clean Energy. Well, a Little More (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Fluffeh
Fluffeh writes: "A recent study of over 1,000 folks for a paper published in Nature Climate Change has found that the average US citizen is inclined to pay a premium to ensure that by 2035, 80% of US power comes from clean energy. At random, respondents received one of three "technological treatments" or definitions of clean energy that included renewable energy sources alone, renewable sources plus natural gas, and renewable sources plus nuclear power. Delving into the socioeconomics, researchers found that Republicans, Independents, and respondents with no party allegiance were less likely by 25, 13 and 25 percentage points respectively to support a NCES than respondents that identified themselves as Democrats."
Android

Submission + - And this is how Android can be controlled by Kinec (huntall.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When it comes to hacks with Kinect know it’s not as simple as standing in front of the camera and start moving to detect our movements, that was the beginning. And it’s boring to see what Microsoft shows us, we decided it was best to talk about something more complicated,
Apple

Submission + - Apple Blows Away Wall Street Again

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Apple announced first quarter results blowing past Wall Street's estimates after consumers snapped up 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPads, doubling sales from a year earlier, swelling its cash hoard to almost $100 billion, and sending its shares up 8 percent into record territory. "Customer demand was off the charts in the quarter," says Apple Chief Financial Office Peter Oppenheimer. But what is perhaps most amazing is that there is still plenty of room for more growth. "I would say Apple still has many unpenetrated international markets, says Hendi Susanto at Gabelli & Co. "Apple is still far from its saturation.""
Android

Submission + - ITC judge: Motorola Mobility infringed Microsoft p

Submitted by chrb
chrb writes: An International Trade Commission judge has issued a preliminary ruling that Motorola Mobility infringed one of Microsoft's patents. The disputed patent covers storing a meeting request on a mobile device, and was rejected by the European Patent Office as being "obvious". The judge also ruled that six other Microsoft patents were not being infringed. Experts say that this will strengthen Microsoft's hand in collecting patent fees on Android. Microsoft recently claimed that it now collects patent fees on over half of all Android devices sold.
China

Submission + - US Chamber of Commerce infiltrated by a group in C (wsj.com)

Submitted by SpzToid
SpzToid writes: The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that a group of hackers in China breached the computer defenses of the United States Chamber of Commerce. The intrusion was quietly shut down in May 2010, while FBI investigations continue.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Geng Shuang, said cyberattacks are prohibited by Chinese law and China itself is a victim of attacks.

Still, the Chamber continues to see suspicious activity, they say. A thermostat at a town house the Chamber owns on Capitol Hill at one point was communicating with an Internet address in China, they say, and, in March, a printer used by Chamber executives spontaneously started printing pages with Chinese characters.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft and Nokia mulling to bid on RIM jointly (wsj.com) 1

Submitted by CSHARP123
CSHARP123 writes: WSJ's anonymous sources indicates that MS and Nokia casually considered to bid on Research in Motion Ltd (RIM). The talks outcome is not clear. The Journal suggests that this wasn't anything more than a simple idea that came up at one of the regular meetings between senior executives from all three companies — perhaps it could have even been just a casual talk—but one wonders how does Microsoft and Nokia executives think to profit on this take over. May be RIM provides a good backdoor entry for MS in the enterprise space for its Windows Phone 7. Recently, Amazon was also considering to bid on RIM. It is interesting to see who will gobble up RIM.
Censorship

Submission + - Coders Develop Ways to Defeat SOPA Censorship

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Atlantic reports that one developer who doesn't have much faith in Congress making the right decision on anti-piracy legislation has already built a work around for the impending censorship measures being considered and called it DeSOPA. Since SOPA would block specific domain names (e.g. www.thepiratebay.com) of allegedly infringing sites, T Rizk's Firefox add-on allows you to revert to the bare internet protocol (IP) address (e.g. 194.71.107.15) which takes you to the same place. “It could be that a few members of congress are just not tech savvy and don’t understand that it is technically not going to work, at all," says T Rizk. "So here’s some proof that I hope will help them err on the side of reason and vote SOPA down." Another group called “MAFIAAFire” decided to respond when Homeland Security’s ICE unit started seizing domain names, by coding a browser add-on to redirect the affected websites to their new domains and more than 200,000 people have already installed the add-on. ICE wasn’t happy and asked Mozilla to pull the add-on from their site but Mozilla denied the request, arguing that this type of censorship may threaten the open Internet."
Android

Submission + - Apple patents using apps during calls (cbsnews.com) 1

Submitted by bizwriter
bizwriter writes: Apple has had quite a week in patents for the iPhone, and it's only Tuesday. First was the victory at the International Trade Commission over HTC. And now there's a shiny new patent on switching to an app during a live phone call. There may be non-infringing ways of doing something similar, but they probably will be clumsy in comparison.

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