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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:47 | Votes:109

posted by n1 on Monday April 21 2014, @11:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the better-than-a-mind-map dept.

Better late than never, Kurzweil reports on researchers generating a human brain blueprint.

Researchers at the Allen Institute for Brain Science have generated a blueprint for how to build a human brain at unprecedented anatomical resolution.

This first major report using data from the the BrainSpan Atlas of the Developing Human Brain is published in the journal Nature. The data provide insight into diseases like autism that are linked to early brain development, and to the origins of human uniqueness. The rich data set is publicly available via the Allen Brain Atlas data portal.

posted by Woods on Monday April 21 2014, @10:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the blink-of-an-eye dept.

General Mills quickly reversed its website's controversial new legal policies.

Last week when General Mills changed their website's legal policies they quietly added language to its website to alert consumers that they give up their right to sue the company if they download coupons, "join" it in online communities like Facebook, enter a company-sponsored sweepstakes, or contest/interact with it in a variety of other ways.

It wasn't long before General Mills tried to clarify its position, stating that consumers "joining our online communities" could not sue the company, did not apply to people who visit its Facebook pages and Twitter accounts.

Yesterday, General Mills announced a stunning about-face regarding its controversial plans to make consumers give up their right to sue.

posted by n1 on Monday April 21 2014, @09:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the think-of-the-children! dept.

My kids aged 10 and 8 years, are slowly getting to know the internet. They are mostly playing online games on friv.com or sending emails to other kids from school. We are limiting their time at the computer to at most 1 hour daily, and we are supervising, checking on them every 10 minutes or so, or using "x11vnc -viewonly -display :0". Also I have modified the "/etc/hosts" to include stuff from a (now defunct) site which contains about 1500 lines that block various unwanted sites where each line looks like "127.0.0.1 www.doubleclick.net". Also I modified "/etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf" to include line "*.* @my_pc" so that all the computers report back to me (and I have lwatch running on my administration desktop). But I still feel that this is not enough, and I want your advice about protecting kids from the dangers of internet.

posted by n1 on Monday April 21 2014, @08:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the conclusions-would-damage-the-economy dept.

Biofuels have direct, fuel-cycle GHG emissions that are typically 30-90% lower than those for gasoline or diesel fuels. However, since for some biofuels indirect emissions-including from land use change-can lead to greater total emissions than when using petroleum products, policy support needs to be considered on a case by case basis.

The IPCC has released a finalized draft of its Working Group III report. Sourced from Forbes, their analysis: that ethanol is worse than petroleum. The Working Group itself managed to say... Well, after a quick read-through of chapter 8, it appears they managed to keep any actual meaning occluded by a thick screen of political double-speak. So, I guess they said whatever you would like them to have said since nobody can prove any different.

posted by Woods on Monday April 21 2014, @07:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the does-everything-except-the-dishes dept.

DMG Mori USA, a well established builder of high quality machining centers, has partnered with Sauer Lasertec of Germany to create a hybrid additive and subtractive machine. Combining the two existing technologies of five axis milling and laser metal deposition, the machine can switch back and forth between adding and subtracting material to get the best of both worlds.

posted by LaminatorX on Monday April 21 2014, @05:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the Tree-Falling-in-the-Forest dept.

Wired reports on a project to record ambient sounds from all over the world.

From the article:

Bryan Pijanowski wants to capture the sounds of the world on a single day, and he needs your help. On Earth Day, April 22, Pijanowski hopes to enlist thousands of people in recording a few minutes of their everyday surroundings with his Soundscape Recorder smartphone app. All those sonic snippets could create an unprecedented soundtrack to life on Earth and as they accumulate, year after year, scientists could use them to measure patterns and changes in our sonic environments.

"I've been on a campaign to record as many ecosystems as possible," said Pijanowski, a soundscape ecologist at Purdue University. "But there's only so many places in the world I can be. I thought about how I could get more recordings into a database, and it occurred to me: We have a couple billion people on this planet with smartphones!"

posted by janrinok on Monday April 21 2014, @03:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the you-cannot-be-a-nobody-anymore dept.

The New York times has an article about the loss of anonymity:

Cities are our paradises of anonymity, a place for both self-erasure and self-reinvention. But soon, cities may fall first in the disappearance, or at least a radical remaking, of privacy. Information about our innocuous public acts is denser in urban areas, and can now be cheaply aggregated. Cameras and sensors, increasingly common in the urban landscape, pick up all sorts of behaviors. These are stored and categorized to draw personal conclusions; all of it, thanks to cheap electronics and cloud computing, for affordable sums.

posted by janrinok on Monday April 21 2014, @01:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the my-best-friend-is-a-bot dept.

The New York Times published a blog posting which documents some of the strange and interesting history of the usage of bots, including the sales of access to them, in order to essentially buy popularity on Facebook and other social networking sites as as well as their use by political parties. The article also describes how they have evolved in the never-ending battle to outwit the bot detection efforts by those sites.

posted by janrinok on Monday April 21 2014, @12:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the but-who-will-make-a-profit? dept.

One gallon of beer yields on average about a pound of spent grain, the malted barley husks leftover after mashing and the sweet liquid is drained. It's a food grade product and for years, smaller craft brewers have donated or sold on the cheap their spent grain to farmers to feed cows and other livestock. Now The Oregonian reports that the FDA, charged with tightening the country's food safety network, has proposed a rule that strikes financial fear into the hearts of brewers and distillers nationwide which could cost the industry millions and increase the price of beer and spirits. The proposal would classify companies that distribute spent grain to farms as animal feed manufacturers, possibly forcing them to dry and package the material before distribution. The equipment and set up to do that would cost about $13 million per facility, says Scott Mennen, vice president of brewery operations at Widmer. "That would be cost prohibitive," Mennen said. "Most brewers would have to put this material in a landfill."

The FDA rule would also require brewers and distillers to keep extensive records to allow for traceability in the event of a problem, and to adopt new safety procedures, for example by storing and shipping spent grain in closed sanitized containers. "Beer prices would go up for everybody to cover the cost of the equipment and installation," says James Emmerson, executive brewmaster of Full Sail Brewing Co. The proposal has sparked an outpouring from opponents, with hundreds of comments pouring into the FDA. "This is the kind of stuff that makes government look bad," says Rep. Peter DeFazio. "It would mark a huge setback adding tons of waste to our landfills."

posted by n1 on Monday April 21 2014, @10:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the when-the-data-doesn't-fit-the-agenda dept.

Heap Analytics has an informative blog post on how visualizations can be used to misrepresent data.

Data visualization is one of the most important tools we have to analyze data. But it's just as easy to mislead as it is to educate using charts and graphs. In this article we'll take a look at 3 of the most common ways in which visualizations can be misleading.

posted by n1 on Monday April 21 2014, @09:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the men-are-only-good-for-one-thing dept.

Our ancestors originally had 24 pairs of chromosomes, the last with 700 genes each until they shed enough to combine with the 23rd pair, forming our modern sex chromosomes. The new X stabilized at 1,100 genes, but Y continued to shrink and now has a mere 27 genes. While any absent/damaged X genes in one parent can be filled in with the other parent's good copy, males inherit their father's Y chromosome directly, and any mistakes in transcription are thus passed on to the next generation.

The popular theory is that Y will keep shrinking until it combines with another chromosome, which will then take over its task. A much more optimistic theory has come out of UC Berkeley:

The human Y, however, may be done shrinking, says Wilson Sayres...the lead author of a new analysis that suggests the Y isn't shrinking, it's honed. It has one job and one job only. ...
"The few genes that are left on the Y, if you lose them, you have big problems ... Sperm don't swim, their heads are malformed, they can't fertilize an egg."

Sayres feels this explains why Y chromosomes around the world have only 1/10 of the genetic variation other chromosomes do. The old "Genghis Khan" theory was that a few men produced far more offspring than others did, but a complex computer DNA simulation proved that there's too much variation in the human genome for it to work. In other words, we're the product of only the best Y-chromosome genes on a huge variety of men not primarily the historic aggressors nature might consider the 'best' at reproducing.

posted by n1 on Monday April 21 2014, @07:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the promoting-paranoia dept.

According to the latest research from Pew Research Center, Americans are generally excited about the new technology they expect to see in their lifetimes but when confronted with some advances that already appear possible from skies filled with drones to meat made in a lab they get nervous. Overall, respondents were upbeat about how technology will shape the near future. In the report, 59% of Americans think tech developments will make life in the next half-century better, while only 30% said they will make life worse. But some of the advances that may be closest to becoming reality are the ones survey respondents were most worried about (PDF). Nearly two out of three Americans think it would make things worse if U.S. airspace is opened up to personal drones. A similar number dislike the idea of robots being used to care for the sick and elderly, and of parents being able to alter the DNA of their unborn children. Only 37% of respondents think it will be good if wearable devices or implants allow us to be digitally connected all the time. People were split almost evenly (48%-50%) on whether they would ride in a driverless car. But only 26% said they'd get a brain implant to improve their memory or intelligence, and a mere 20% said they'd try eating meat made in a lab. Some 9% said they'd like to be able to time travel. A similar number said they'd like something that would keep them healthy or extend their lives, 6% said they wanted a flying car (or bike), 3% said they'd take a teleportation device and a mere 1% said they want their own jetpack.

Asked to describe in their own words the futuristic inventions they themselves would like to own, the public offered three common themes: 1) travel improvements like flying cars and bikes, or even personal space crafts; 2) time travel; and 3) health improvements that extend human longevity or cure major diseases. "In the long run, Americans are optimistic about the impact that scientific developments will have on their lives and the lives of their children but they definitely expect to encounter some bumps along the way," says Aaron Smith, a senior researcher at Pew and the author of the report. "They are especially concerned about developments that have the potential to upend long-standing social norms around things like personal privacy, surveillance, and the nature of social relationships."
posted by n1 on Monday April 21 2014, @05:28AM   Printer-friendly
from the designed-on-a-raspberry-pi-and-paid-for-with-bitcoin dept.

Over the last several months, some of the more inspiring stories around 3D printing have had to do with the printing of prosthetic devices, particularly hands. It appears at least some prefer the cheaper 3D printed models to the expensive options. This is one such story.

I was very curious to see what sort of experience he would have with the 3D printed Cyborg Beast mechanical hand design (total cost in materials of about $50), but I wasn't expecting too much. Jose works in an environment that involves a lot of lifting and moving of boxes, so I was kind of expecting that the Cyborg Beast, which in this case is made of ABS plastic (same material as legos), wouldn't hold up for long. To my surprise, however, Jose says it's been doing very well, and that he actually prefers it to his far more expensive myoelectric prosthesis!

posted by n1 on Monday April 21 2014, @03:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the science-always-wins dept.

Arstechnica has a quite good breakdown of scientists utterly failing to detect dark energy or axion-based dark matter by bouncing neutrons off of neutron mirrors.

Their experiment takes the form of a very cold beam of neutrons. These neutrons float into a chamber containing two neutron mirrors. As the neutrons travel through the chamber, they bounce back and forth between the mirrors, finally exiting at the other end, where they hit a neutron detector.

If you know the angle at which the neutrons hit the first mirror, the distance between the mirrors, and the size of the mirrors, you will know exactly which direction the neutrons will be headed when they exit the chamber. By placing the detector at the right location, you will see lots of neutrons. However, if gravity is not exactly the strength that you expect, or the neutrons are slowed because they stopped to play with a passing dark matter particle, then the detector will see fewer neutrons.

I don't know about you lot but this type of thing excites me. It's proper science at its best; perform an experiment and get jazzed about a conclusive result. No worries about who believes what, just Scientific Method all up in your face.

posted by n1 on Monday April 21 2014, @02:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the survival-of-the-fittest dept.

It seems likely that everyone here has heard the old saw "No one ever got fired for buying|using Microsoft". Well, times change.
The government of the Italian province of South Tyrol wants to save money and, noting Munich's savings of over 10 million euros, it sees Free Software as a solution. (The freedom thing isn't lost on them either.)

Governor Arno Kompatscher says "We've started to review our license costs. If there are free and open source alternatives, and where the costs and risks of changing are justified, we will switch to these." The new policy is meant to reduce IT costs. Should this fail, the region must resort to reduce its workforce, in order to balance the region's budget.

Did you catch the nuance? If you are a gov't employee and they can't change software because you aren't adaptable enough to use something other than Windows, you can plan on being the first one out the door. Hat tip to Robert Pogson for just the right spin on this story.

posted by janrinok on Monday April 21 2014, @12:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the you-can-almost-hear-the-juice-being-sucked-down-the-wires dept.

Gizmodo has a story showing just how much energy the US is consuming:

In 2012, American homes consumed 3.65 billion kilowatthours (kWh) worth of electricity up from 720 million kWh in 1950 - more than double per household than our British counterparts, and second only to China. How did the American home become such an energy hog, despite so many advances in efficient appliances and construction? Blame the American Dream. That 3.65 billion kWh is just part of America's total annual energy consumption, but it is overwhelmingly employed by the residential and commercial sectors. According the the US Department of Energy, the residential sector alone consumes 37 percent of the total electricity production that's an average annual consumption of 10,837 kWh, or 903 kWh monthly. Louisiana residents consumed the most electricity in 2012 with 15,046 kWh, while Maine consumed the least, just 6,367 kWh, though this is due partly to LA's ubiquitous electrically-driven A/C units and Maine's opposing reliance on heating oil.