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freesword writes:

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports on the US Defense Secretary being briefed on the latest from DARPA.

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel got a first-hand look at a life-size robot Tuesday, the latest experiment by the Pentagon's hi-tech researchers. The hulking Atlas robot (developed by Boston Dynamics) is designed not as a warrior but as a humanitarian machine that would rescue victims in the rubble of a natural disaster, officials said.

Scientists also showed Hagel the latest technology for prosthetics, including a mechanical hand that responds to brain impulses and a prosthetic arm controlled by foot movements.

Let's all give a big welcome to our new robotic and cyborg overlords.

bucc5062 writes:

Slate reposted an article that presented an analysis of income disparity and developer support between apple (iOS) and Android.
One question presented to be answered was:

Android has about an 80 percent market share in some areas of the world. "Android is the dominant platform of the next decade. Why aren't designers paying it more attention?" Bowles asked.

By using a site called mapbox the author attempted to make the point that developers are less interested in Android because Android users tend to have lower incomes.

As a developer do we really look at these types of issues when making decisions regarding what or where we code? Rather, do we make decisions based on familiarity of coding environment and topic? Jane knows Objective C so she codes for iOS while Bob knows Java so he codes for Android. The general view is that the theory is just hokem, but the more interesting result of the Business Insider article was learning about Mapbox.

AnonTechie writes:

New Lawsuit Claims FBI Used No Fly List To Pressure Muslims Into Becoming Informants:

Over the past few months, we've covered the bizarre trial of Rahinah Ibrahim, who was incorrectly placed on the no fly list, leading to a series of other problems, meaning that the Stanford PhD grad student was unable to fly back into the US for the past ten years. When the unredacted ruling in that case was finally released last week, we discovered that Ibrahim is still in the "terrorist screening database" (TSDB), though not on the no fly list, and barred from getting a visa to travel back to the US, even though the US admits she's no threat, because of a "secret exception" to the "reasonable suspicion" standard. And, given that the exception is secret, we may never know what it is.

stormwyrm writes:

The BBC reports that four of the biggest technology firms, Adobe, Apple, Google, and Intel, have settled a class action lawsuit against them that alleged that they conspired to hold down salaries. The amount of the settlement has not been disclosed by the companies involved.

The US lawsuit had claimed $3bn (£1.8bn) in damages on behalf of more than 64,000 workers at the four firms.

If the companies had lost the case and damages were awarded, they could have tripled to $9bn under US antitrust laws.

Chuck Mulloy, spokesman for Intel, said the firm denies any wrongdoing but chose to settle "to avoid the risks, burdens and uncertainties of ongoing litigation."

Meanwhile, Adobe said in a statement: "We firmly believe that our recruiting policies have in no way diminished competition for talent in the marketplaces."

Google and Apple declined to comment.

Papas Fritas writes:

Christina Bonnington reports that the public is not gobbling up iPads like they used to. Analysts had projected iPad sales would reach 19.7 million but Apple's financial results for the second quarter of its fiscal 2014 show they sold 16.35 million iPads, a drop of roughly 16.4 percent since last year. "For many, the iPad they have is good enough unlike a phone, with significant new features like Touch ID, or a better camera, the iPad's improvements over the past few years have been more subtle," writes Bonnington. "The latest iterations feature a better Retina display, a slimmer design, and faster processing. Improvements, yes, but enough to justify a near thousand dollar purchase? Others seem to be finding that their smartphone can do the job that their tablet used to do just as well, especially on those larger screened phablets."

According to Andrew Cunningham the takeaway from Apple's sales drop in iPads is that Apple's past growth has been driven mostly by entering entirely new product categories, like it did when it introduced the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, and the iPad in 2010 and that Apple needs an entirely new category to fuel future growth. "The most persistent rumors [of a new product category] involve TV (whether a new Apple TV set-top box or an entire television set) and wearable computing devices (the perennially imminent "iWatch"), but calls for larger and cheaper iPhones also continue."

Both bucc5062 and AnonTechie passed us this story:

bucc5062 writes:

In what seems to be a case of "If I can't control your toy I want one of my own", Vladimir Putin now wants Russia to have it's own "Internet" or at the least, exert more control over the existing structure.

The Kremlin has been anxious to exert greater control over the Internet, which opposition activists - barred from national television - have used to promote their ideas and organize protests.

According to Supreme Leader Putin, the Internet was created by the CIA (Sorry Al, you've been replaced), perhaps to influence the minds of innocent Russians. This was not the first time the CIA has been actively trying to change the hearts and minds of the Russian people, using Dr. Zhivago as a means to undermine the government.

A recently declassified CIA memo from April 1958, excerpted in the soon-to-be-published book "The Zhivago Affair," explains their intent: "...We have the opportunity to make Soviet citizens wonder what is wrong with their government, when a fine literary work by the man acknowledged to be the greatest living Russian writer is not even available in his own country."

Put in that light, one could see how a leader such as Putin could make the connection between underground publishing of a classic and the subversive nature of the Internet today.

[Editor's Note: I am outside of the USA but I could not get any of the CBSNews links to show any useful information. YMMV.]

AnonTechie writes:

'Vladimir Putin says Internet is a 'CIA project'

Russian president Vladimir Putin provided further indications that his administration will be tightening control over Internet access in the country on Thursday, when he condemned the Internet as being a "CIA Project". The Associated Press quoted Putin speaking at an event in St. Petersburg that the Internet was a "CIA Project" and that it "is still developing as such." The comments come just days after executives at Russia's largest social network reported that Putin-affiliated oligarchs have seized control of their company. Vkontakte founder Pavel Durov said that he had been ousted from the company he founded, and driven from Russia by board members who have now taken over control of the social network. Around the same time, Google Maps in Russia decided to begin logging Crimea as part of Russia.

kaszz writes:

The 2011 Skills Gap Survey by the Manufacturing Institute shows that about 600,000 manufacturing jobs are unfilled nationally in US because employers can't find qualified workers. There's a need for a new generation of welders, pipe-fitters, electricians, carpenters, machinists and other skilled tradesmen, high schools should be helping with this. WSJ writes that there may be a feature where welders could make 150,000 USD[Log-in Required]. Employers in US are so yearning to motivate young people that many are willing to pay to train and recruit future laborers. Ariel Corp recently announced that the manufacturer of gas compressors is donating 1,000,000 USD for updating the Knox County Career Centers computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) equipment, so students can train on the same equipment used in Ariel's operations. There seems to be a trend of college exam inflation.

lhsi writes:

UK science is going to get a £200m polar research vessel.

The ship is likely to be 130m long and sport a helipad, cranes, onboard labs, and have the ability to deploy subs and other ocean survey and sampling gear.

It should be ready to enter service in 2019, and will support scientists in both the Antarctic and the Arctic.

The strength of its hull will allow it to push deeper into pack ice than any previous British research vessel.

AnonTechie writes:

The California Senate on Thursday voted down a state measure that would require smarter anti-theft security on smartphones. The bill, introduced by State Senator Mark Leno and sponsored by George Gascon, San Francisco's district attorney, would have required a so-called kill switch which would render a smartphone useless after it was stolen on all smartphones sold in California. The proposal needed 21 votes to pass in the 40-member chamber. After debate on Thursday morning at the Capitol, in Sacramento, it fell two votes short of passing, with a final count of 19 to 17 in favor.

freesword writes:

The Norwegian Army is evaluating the use of commercial off the shelf (COTS) Virtual Reality (VR) goggles in an 'Augmented Reality' (AR) application, enabling troops to look through the armor walls protecting their vehicles. In a recent test troops were able to drive an M-113 armoured personnel carrier using the Oculus Rift gaming-goggles.

The tested apparatus included a prototype of the Oculus Rift goggles coupled with specially developed cameras and image processing software delivered by the Hamar company. The panoramic images captured by the cameras covered the entire vehicle's surrounding providing real-time situational awareness. Augmented Reality information overlay developed by another company Augmenti, was also tested by the Army.

alhsi writes:

A former oil executive has said that fracking is not safe. From the article:

In a message "straight from the horse's mouth," a former oil executive on Tuesday urged New York state to pass a ban on the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, saying, 'it is not safe.' "Making fracking safe is simply not possible, not with the current technology, or with the inadequate regulations being proposed," Louis Allstadt, former executive vice president of Mobil Oil, said during a news conference in Albany called by the anti-fracking group Elected Officials to Protect New York.

[.....] "Now the industry will tell you that fracking has been around a long time. While that is true, the magnitude of the modern technique is very new," Allstadt said, adding that a fracked well can require 50 to 100 times the water and chemicals compared to non-fracked wells.

He also noted that methane, up to 30 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, is found to be leaking from fracked wells "at far greater rates than were previously estimated."

lhsi writes:

The Bechdel test is used to determine the gender equality of a piece of media (e.g. a film); the original test being "It has to contain at least two women in it, who talk to each other, about something besides a man". A new study (full text, PDF) applied this test to conversations in social media (twitter) and found that Twitter conversations among men featured fewer mentions of women. In turn, there were more conversations between female Twitter users that contained references to men than conversations without a male reference .

The researchers did not find such a male bias in all Twitter users. The conversations of students proved to be more balanced regarding references to the respective other gender. In contrast, the tweets of fathers were even more male-biased: they interacted even less with female users and mentioned women even less often than childless men.

So, what does this mean?

An anonymous coward writes:

Recently a mysterious ring in the sky appeared over Leamington Spa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR4ngTFHSPk

After much speculation it seems that the ring is likely to have been due to fireworks tests by Warwick Castle: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-2 7037579

An example of a similar vortex smoke ring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFHElJxSMrM#t=1m09 s

lhsi writes:

Data crunching the stats of the three starting Pokémon of the original games has found that Squirtle offers the best stats, both in the early game and later on.

Additional data crunching in the article shows that the overall power level has not increased significantly between each version or generation of the games.

Fluffeh writes:

Following the ongoing case reported earlier DVDFab, the Chinese based company behind ripping software of the same name has made arguments in a New York Federal Court stating that US Law isn't World Law and that their assets must be returned to the company so they can continue to trade outside US borders:

For example, shutting down the DVDFab domain names and enjoining the payment processors prevents defendant Feng Tao from using such domain names and payment processors for sales of unrelated products, and for sales of DVDFab products outside the United States.

The AACS (licensing outfit including Warner Bros, Disney, Microsoft and Intel) countered by saying that the injunction was ignored and that they were threatened:

Frank stated that if AACS LA refused the deal, DVDFab Defendants would distribute the software for free, thereby rendering AACS LA irrelevant.

For the time being, all U.S.-controlled DVDFab domain names, social media accounts and payment processing services remain unavailable. However, the software maker is still operational through several new domains, which can be easily found through Google and other search engines.

AnonTechie writes:

Last week, scientists announced the discovery of Kepler-186f, a planet 492 light years away in the Cygnus constellation. Kepler-186f is special because it marks the first planet almost exactly the same size as Earth orbiting in the "habitable zone" - the distance from a star in which we might expect liquid water, and perhaps life. What did not make the news, however, is that this discovery also slightly increases how much credence we give to the possibility of near-term human extinction. This because of a concept known as the Great Filter.

The Great Filter is an argument that attempts to resolve the Fermi Paradox: why have we not found aliens, despite the existence of hundreds of billions of solar systems in our galactic neighbourhood in which life might evolve? As the namesake physicist Enrico Fermi noted, it seems rather extraordinary that not a single extraterrestrial signal or engineering project has been detected (UFO conspiracy theorists notwithstanding).

lhsi writes:

The medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology has published an article that found that people with more years of education may be better able to recover from a traumatic brain injury. Those with an education equal to a college degree were more than seven times more likely to fully recover from their injury than people who did not finish high school.

The cognitive reserve theory is that people with more education have a greater cognitive reserve, or the brain's ability to maintain function in spite of damage. The concept has emerged for brain disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, where people with higher levels of education have been shown to have fewer symptoms of the disease than people with less education, even when they have the same amount of damage in the brain from the disease.

stroucki and stephenw32768 wrote:

The BBC reports that previously unknown digital works by American artist Andy Warhol were discovered and recovered from 30 year old Amiga disks with the assistance of Carnegie Mellon University Computer Club. In total, 18 images were recovered, most are also signed by Warhol.