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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:110

posted by martyb on Wednesday April 22 2015, @10:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the like-the-good-old-days-of-compuserv-and-prodigy dept.

Google is launching a wireless service soon that will charge you for data used, not bulk rates like current carriers:

The service, which would compete with local wireless providers like AT&T and Verizon, is expected to let customers pay only for the data they use on the network. That would mean users only pay when they make calls, listen to music or use apps, as opposed to common wireless service agreements that charge a bulk rate for a certain amount of data.

What Google wants to do is somewhat unique, according to the Journal's report. The company plans to offer two types of services that overlap. When users are on Wi-Fi, their phone calls and other data would use that connection. When not on a Wi-Fi signal, customers would use common cellular radio signals, which are more costly.

Google isn't building its own wireless network to do this. Instead, the Internet giant has reportedly made a deal with US carriers Sprint and T-Mobile to use their networks. For now, this scheme is only expected to be available on Google's Nexus 6 smartphone.

The devil is in the details, of course, what price the data? How good the coverage? Google has tantalized us for years with prospects of its Fiber, unfortunately still unavailable in backwaters like New York City, so it's a bit hard to get excited about this one. On the other hand, maybe it could disrupt cell carriers everywhere?

Update: Google's Project Fi service has been officially announced. It is currently limited to Nexus 6 owners in the United States.

With Project Fi, Google starts plans at $20 per month for unlimited domestic calling and unlimited domestic + international texting. On top of that you can select how much data you believe you will need, with the cost being $10/GB. The unique aspect of Project Fi when compared to other network operators is how Google is changing the situation with unused data. Rather than rolling it over or having it disappear, Google simply credits you for the difference. For example, a user who pays $30 for 3GB per month may only use 1.4GB that month. In that situation, Google will credit them $16 for the data they did not use. [...] Given the rounding, they might as well just charge $1 for every 100MB used, as any overages are charged as the same rate as the data in the plan itself.

Google is also taking much of the pain out of roaming in other nations. The data you purchase for your Project Fi plan is usable in 120 different countries, although it's limited to a speed of 256Kbps. Google's network also extends beyond cellular carriers, with Google's network configured to automatically utilize public hotspots as part of the network itself. WiFi calling is supported, and so the transition between cellular and WiFi should be seamless in theory. Google is also promising that information will be encrypted so that users can have their privacy preserved when using public WiFi.

posted by CoolHand on Wednesday April 22 2015, @09:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the creating-a-virtual-world-from-the-real-world dept.

Two architecture school graduates have taken LIDAR to the next level with a project meant to precisely reproduce London:

Today, they’re at the forefront of large-scale 3-D laser scanning, specializing in striking, ghostly reproductions of castles, museums, ice floes and more, conjured from billions of millimeter-precise dots.

Their latest undertaking is a sprawling scan of Mail Rail, a network of abandoned tunnels once used to transport mail beneath London. Like much of the group’s work, it sits at the intersection of utility and beauty, commerce and art. On one level, it’s an unprecedentedly detailed document of a historically significant site—a laudable bit of high-tech preservation.

15 years ago a buddy of mine in the 101st Airborne told me the military had done this with American cities to facilitate low-level chopper flying to put down civil insurrection, so it would be cool and useful to have archives like this available to civilians. Especially since I've really been looking forward to living in the Matrix.

posted by martyb on Wednesday April 22 2015, @08:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the let-the-good-times-roll dept.

Physicists have said they have fine-tuned an atomic clock to the point where it won’t lose or gain a second in 15bn years – longer than the universe has existed.

The “optical lattice” clock ( http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150421/ncomms7896/full/ncomms7896.html ), which uses strontium atoms, is now three times more accurate than a year ago when it set the previous world record, its developers reported in the journal Nature Communications.

The advance brings science a step closer to replacing the current gold standard in timekeeping: the caesium fountain clock that is used to set Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the official world time.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/apr/22/record-breaking-clock-invented-which-only-loses-a-second-in-15-billion-years

[Also Covered By]: http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/22/8466681/most-accurate-atomic-clock-optical-lattice-strontium

posted by CoolHand on Wednesday April 22 2015, @06:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the geeks-who-can't-handle-their-guns dept.

BBC News reports that French police have arrested a 24-year old Algerian man accused of plotting a terror attack against churches who called an ambulance after suffering self-inflicted gunshot wounds:

The man, a computer science student who had lived in France for several years, was detained on Sunday after he apparently shot himself by accident and called for an ambulance. Police followed a trail of blood leading to his vehicle, where they found notes "unambiguously demonstrating" he planned an imminent attack, according to [Minister of the Interior] Mr Cazeneuve. "Several war weapons, hand guns, ammunition, bullet-proof vests, and computer and telephone hardware" were discovered at his car and home, Mr Cazeneuve added.

No links between the man and other terror groups was found, although he was previously flagged by police after he expressed the desire to travel to Syria to fight with militants, a sentiments shared by hundreds of other French citizens already fighting with ISIS. The man has also been connected to the death of a woman found in her car near Paris, although no details have yet been released concerning his link to that case.

posted by CoolHand on Wednesday April 22 2015, @04:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the save-the-boobies dept.

Color Genomics has announced the sale of a $249 genetic testing kit for determining breast and ovarian cancer risk. The company will analyze samples for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, as well as 17 other genetic variants associated with an increased risk of breast or ovarian cancer.

Until now, such testing has typically cost thousands of dollars. Gil says his company slashed the cost in a variety of ways, including using the latest technology to automate much of the process. The firm also recruited software engineers from leading companies, including Google and Twitter, to develop computer programs that streamline the analysis. In addition, Gil tells Shots, the company saves money by making the price so low that women don't need to get their insurance companies involved.

Critics question whether the results will provide women with reliable information, and say that ambiguous or misleading results could lead to unnecessary mastectomies and oophorectomies.

Color Genomics' website notes that men can also develop breast cancer, albeit rarely. Genetic testing of men can help them determine whether they could pass mutations in BRCA1, BRCA2 and other genes to their children. The test analyzes the following genes: ATM, BARD1, BRCA1, BRCA2, BRIP1, CDH1, CHEK2, EPCAM, MLH1, MSH2, MSH6, NBN, PALB2, PMS2, PTEN, RAD51C, RAD51D, STK11, and TP53.

posted by CoolHand on Wednesday April 22 2015, @02:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the scarecrows-r-us dept.

Science Daily has an interesting story on improvements in MRI:

Thanks to the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) capabilities in Beckman's Biomedical Imaging Center (BIC), Johnson can view dynamic images of vocal movement at 100 frames per second--a speed that is far more advanced than any other MRI technique in the world.

"Typically, MRI is able to acquire maybe 10 frames per second or so, but we are able to scan 100 frames per second, without sacrificing the quality of the images," said Brad Sutton, technical director of the BIC and associate professor in bioengineering at Illinois.

The researchers published their technique in the journal Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

An abstract is available; article is paywalled.

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday April 22 2015, @12:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the take-back-the-internet dept.

During an outbreak of common sense in a Hamburg, Germany, court it was ruled that.. no, advertisers don't get their own way every time.

Zeit Online GmbH and Handelsblatt GmbH as representatives of the advertising world filed suit against Eyeo GmbH (the owners of AdBlock Plus) claiming that the latter should not be allowed to distribute software (a browser plugin that blocks ads) that disrupts their income stream.

The court did not look favourably on the advertisers' case.

From an article in The Register :

Ben Williams, a director of Eyeo, wrote in a blog: "The Hamburg court decision is an important one, because it sets a precedent that may help us avoid additional lawsuits and expenses defending what we feel is an obvious consumer right: giving people the ability to control their own screens by letting them block annoying ads and protect their privacy."

This has ramifications for another simmering case in neighboring France.

posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday April 22 2015, @10:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the augmented-moter-werke dept.

BMW has been busy working on an AR project, and they are showing off their new prototype. Though the demo isn't a real-world road-test (they setup a real car in front of a screen that displays the 'world'), reviewers are intriqued with the results. Wired's Alex Davies got to throw on a pair and take them for a test drive:

I gave the goggles a try before their debut at the Shanghai auto show this week, and was impressed by how seamlessly they added a digital layer to whatever I was looking at.

To do that, it was crucial to minimize the motion-to-photon latency: the time it takes the system to see something, process it, and add graphics. That will never be eliminated—it will always take some amount of time to achieve that—so Qualcomm reduces it by predicting how your head will move, using cameras an inertial sensors. As the system develops, Qualcomm VP of connected experiences Jay Wright says, it edges closer to "effective zero latency."

The goggles themselves aren't super stylish, as Davies puts it, they "aren't the goofiest thing on the planet, but I'd need a major boost in self-confidence before plopping them on my head and driving around town."

A big selling point of this tech is the ability to display road names and navigation arrows directly on top of roads, eliminating the need to look at your phone/dashboard. This beats out most HUD tech that is currently on cars, as even that information is usually off in a lower corner of your widnshield. Another cool feature is the ability to see "through" your car's door panels; the BMW team is exploiting the cameras that are already on the outside of their new MINI models.

CNET shows off some video of the prototype demos on their "Tomorrow Daily" show (the AR portion is in the first 3 minutes). Re/code has a piece as well.

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday April 22 2015, @08:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-root-of-twitter-is-twit-not-tweet dept.

Twitter has announced a series of new anti-abuse measures, following the leak of the CEO's admission that Twitter "sucks at dealing with abuse and trolls." It has extended its definition of violent threats to include "promoting violence against others." Punitive measures include temporary account suspensions, obligations to delete certain tweets, and requiring phone verification to reenable account access. The company is also devoting more resources to reviewing abuse complaints, and is experimenting with a feature that would automatically identify potentially abusive tweets by looking for similarities with past abuse.

In a potentially troll-enabling move, Twitter has added an option to allow users to receive direct (private) messages from users they don't follow. The feature is opt-in and could allow additional public engagement with businesses and journalists.

Finally, Twitter has shifted management of all non-U.S. user accounts to Twitter International, headquartered in Ireland. That means those users will be subject to stricter European Union data protection laws. Twitter's latest transparency report indicates that the U.S. government made 1,622 requests for information involving 3,299 accounts from July 1, 2014 through December 31. Twitter complied with 80% of the requests.

posted by mrcoolbp on Wednesday April 22 2015, @06:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the dagnabbit-stupid-freaking.... dept.

A 37-year-old Colorado Springs man was cited for discharging a weapon within city limits after shooting his Dell computer 8 times with a 9mm handgun. The police report said that he "was fed up with fighting his computer for the last several months" and shot it in a back alley behind his home. What was not mentioned is exactly why he was so "fed up" with his computer. Could this senseless and violent tragedy have been avoided if his PC were running Linux instead?

posted by mrcoolbp on Wednesday April 22 2015, @04:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the monopoly-Time dept.

Six leading Democratic senators have written to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Department of Justice (DoJ) asking them to reject the proposed $45.2 billion acquisition of Time Warner by Comcast.

In the two-page letter, signed by Senators Franken, Sanders, Markey, Wyden, Warren, and Blumenthal, the senators warn that "Comcast-TWC's unmatched power in the telecommunications industry would lead to higher prices, fewer choices, and poorer quality services for Americans."

Sources have told the Wall Street Journal that both the FCC and DoJ are not happy with the proposed merger, and that the FCC may hold a formal hearing into the deal soon. Bloomberg also reported that staff attorneys at the DoJ's antitrust division are prepared to recommend blocking the deal [autoplay video].

posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday April 22 2015, @02:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the some-people-go-both-ways dept.

Emily Badger writes in the Washington Post that a study shows that one-way streets are bad for everyone but speeding cars with an analysis done on the entire city of Louisville, comparing Census tracts with multi-lane one-way streets to those without them. The basic pattern holds city-wide: They found that the risk of a crash is twice as high for people riding through neighborhoods with one-way streets. What is more interesting though is that crime is higher and property values are lower in census tracts with one way streets..

First, they took advantage of a kind of natural experiment: In 2011, Louisville converted two one-way streets near downtown, each a little more than a mile long, back to two-way traffic. In data that they gathered over the following three years, Gilderbloom and William Riggs found that traffic collisions dropped steeply—by 36 percent on one street and 60 percent on the other—after the conversion, even as the number of cars traveling these roads increased. Crime dropped too, by about a quarter, as crime in the rest of the city was rising. Property values rose, as did business revenue and pedestrian traffic, relative to before the change and to a pair of nearby comparison streets. The city, as a result, now stands to collect higher property tax revenues along these streets, and to spend less sending first-responders to accidents there.

Some of the findings are obvious: Traffic tends to move faster on a wide one-way road than on a comparable two-way city street, and slower traffic means fewer accidents. What's more interesting is that crime flourishes on neglected high-speed, one-way, getaway roads and that two-way streets may be less conducive to certain crimes because they bring slower traffic and, as a result, more cyclists and pedestrians, that also creates more "eyes on the street"—which, again, deters crime. "What we’re doing when we put one-way streets there is we’re over-engineering automobility," says William Riggs, "at the expense of people who want a more livable environment."

posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday April 22 2015, @01:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the Bruce-Schneier-knows-Alice-and-Bob's-shared-secret dept.

Starting with Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, Bruce Schneier has attempted compiling a list of recent/current US intelligence community whistle-blowers.

He counts 6 (possibly 7) of them.

This Warren Buffet quote seems relevant

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks

posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday April 21 2015, @11:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the start-today dept.

My father, a Naval officer, was quite fond of shouting "Do something, even if it's stupid!" I expect that, in the heat of battle, indecision is worse than nothing at all.

Back in the day I worked for Dave Johnson's Working Software. We scored a big contract to port Random House Webster's Electronic Dictionary And Thesaurus College Edition - yes that was its real name - from MS-DOS to Mac OS System 7. Included in our contract was $5,000 "Timely Completion Bonus" of which I would receive $3k but only if I completed the work in the allotted time.

I found myself strangely unable to get started. Dave from time to time would politely ask me whether I had, then finally he got very assertive that I should start.

"Look: if you write anything at all, even if it crashes then you can debug it."

I remembered this recently, and it is working well for me. One must not implement too much buggy code or you will never get it debugged, but writing something bad then fixing it may well be better than not implementing anything at all.

(I got my bonus.)

posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday April 21 2015, @09:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the better-living-through-chemistry dept.

The NYT reports that drugs like Adderall were once only prescribed to help children with attention deficit disorders focus on their school work but then college students found those drugs could increase their ability to study. Now a growing number of workers use them to help compete. What will happen as these drugs are more widely used in the workplace? According to Anjan Chatterjee, the use of neurotechnologies to enhance healthy people’s brain function could easily become widespread. "If anything, we worship workplace productivity by any means. Americans work longer hours and take fewer vacations than most others in the developed world. Why not add drugs to energize, focus and limit that annoying waste of time — sleep?" Julian Savulescu says that what defines human beings is their extraordinary cognitive power and their ability to enhance that power through reading, writing, computing and now smart drugs. "Eighty-five percent of Americans use caffeine. Nicotine and sugar are also cognitive enhancers," says Savulescu.

But cognitive neurologist Martha Farah, says that regular use on the job is an invitation to dependence. "I also worry about the effect of drug-fueled productivity on people other than the users," says Farah. "It is not hard to imagine a supervisor telling employees that this is the standard they should aspire to in their work, however they manage to do it (hint, hint). The eventual result will be a ratcheting up of “normal” productivity, where everyone uses (and the early adopters’ advantage is only fleeting)."