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Arthur T Knackerbracket suggests a story from Phys.org:

Any driver operating a steering wheel all alone who has gone into a "microsleep" and survived to tell the story knows how frightening that can be.

According to a news release from Hoffmann + Krippner on AB Newswire, "Traffic experts claim that about 25 percent of all accidents are caused by extreme fatigue while driving. This makes nodding-off, also referred to as 'micro-sleep,' in combination with heart attacks, as the leading cause of accidents, exceeding the number of accidents caused by alcohol and drugs."

The challenge for technologists is to come up with a system that can safely act faster than the victim's microsleep state or, if a victim has a medical condition that incapacitates the person, can support a safe-stop outcome.

News of a thin strip of sensors inserted beneath the wheel's covering is attracting interest as a way to smarten the steering wheel to recognize drowsy or incapacitated drivers. A steering wheel add-on to this effect has been developed by Hoffmann + Krippner, an engineering firm based in Germany, along with Guttersberg Consulting.

This technology can measure sensitivity in addition to position. The technology is called SensoFoil, thin-film membrane potentiometers that act as reliable membrane position sensors. The operator during normal driving constantly moves hands on the wheel, changing pressure as fingers grip the wheel. Using SensoFoil inside the steering wheel, the vehicle can sense if the operator has fallen asleep with hands on the wheel or if hands are no longer on the wheel. This can trigger the safety protocol, either to wake up the driver or implement corrective measures.

Phoenix666 writes:

A court battle between a divorced couple over the future of their frozen embryos began Monday with an attorney for the former husband accusing the woman of using the dispute to get money.

Dr. Mimi Lee, 46, a pianist and part-time anesthesiologist, married Stephen Findley, a wealthy executive, five years ago. Shortly before the wedding, Lee learned she had breast cancer.

Unsure whether the disease would make it impossible for her to have children, the couple went to a fertility center, where Lee's eggs and Findley's sperm created five embryos, now frozen.

Findley filed for divorce two years ago and wants the embryos destroyed. Lee, now infertile, wants to implant the embryos into a surrogate and have a baby. Without the embryos, she will never have a child who shares her genes.

If the embryos are implanted and carry to term, the ex-husband becomes a father without consent. If the embryos are destroyed, the ex-wife is denied the deep need to procreate. The embryos themselves have issues either way. Modern biomedical ethics are complex.

Arthur T Knackerbracket suggests an ITWorld story:

Windows Phone isn’t going away.

You might think it was doomed, following Microsoft’s reorganization of its phone business just days ago, especially after Microsoft wrote down the value of the business. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella put those fears to rest, however, in an interview with ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley.

Nadella has emphasized, time and again, that his goal is for Microsoft to establish new product categories that partners can build upon. In the phone business, however, partners haven’t followed Microsoft’s lead.

Nadella seems to be fine with that. “If there are a lot of OEMs, we’ll have one strategy. If there are no OEMs, we’ll have one strategy,” Nadella said of Windows Phone's future. Microsoft seems content to go it alone, or if a hardware partner like HTC or Samsung commits to the platform, that’s fine too. 

Nadella has previously characterized Windows 10 as an operating system that straddles multiple hardware platforms: the desktop PC, the notebook, the tablet, the phone, the Surface Hub, HoloLens, and the Xbox. The market hasn't really bought this story so far, at least where Windows phones are concerned.

[...]

Still, we now know this: Microsoft’s in phones for the long haul. And that’s reassuring both to fans of the platform and to those who are keeping an eye on Microsoft’s long-term vision for Windows 10.

Phoenix666 writes:

Shoppers like to think they're in control of their own food decisions, but there's actually a complex web of manipulations between supermarkets and food processors going on behind the scenes.

Who's really in charge at the supermarket? Most of us assume that we're in control of our own shopping decisions. After all, we are the ones with a grocery list in one hand and a wallet in the other. It should be that way. But the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) doesn't believe it's so. Most shoppers, even the most conscientious and frugal, can fall victim to the manipulations of a food industry that pairs up with supermarkets to influence our purchasing decisions.
...
1) Unconscious Mind

Our unconscious minds rely on habit and what's deemed comfortable and familiar to us. Supermarkets use tools such as windowless buildings, forgettable music, large carts, scrumptious bakery smells, and constantly reorganized aisles to make shoppers stay longer and, by extension, spend more.
...
2) Defaults

Defaults are what you get at the supermarket, unless you actively choose something else. This can be packaging size, product formulations, or standard food combinations.
...
3) Willpower Reserves

Supermarkets and food processors count on the fact that many of us will go shopping at the end of a long day, perhaps on the way home from work, or with tired, hungry kids in tow. That's when it's hardest to rely on willpower reserves.

It must explain why Cheetos constantly show up in the shopping cart.

Arthur T Knackerbracket suggests a Phys.org story:

Civil liberties groups asked a federal appeals court Tuesday to again strike down as unconstitutional a portion of a law used by the government to justify the collection and storage of Americans' phone records.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union told the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan in court papers that it should rule that a law Congress passed on June 2 is being used illegally. The National Security Agency has relied on the law and a ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to continue data collection.

The ACLU also urged the court to immediately block the collection of call data related to the civil rights groups and to return the case to the lower court, where a judge could rely on the appeals court's findings to ban the collection of records more widely.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit in May struck down the law but did not immediately block phone data collection. It said the unprecedented and unwarranted bulk collection of Americans' phone records was illegal because it wasn't authorized by Congress. It urged Congress to define the issue.

In its new filing, the ACLU said Congress has not expanded the government's statutory authority and it would be "bizarre" for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to conclude that bulk collection was implicitly endorsed by Congress because it did not expressly prohibit it.
[...]
The government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Phoenix666 writes:

You start out in Earth's orbit, then push back through the cosmos with a running ticker of how many light-minutes, -hours, or -years you are from our planet. Depending on how far you are from Earth, you'll hear a chart-topping song from the corresponding month or year. You can either just kick back and enjoy the ride, scroll your mouse wheel to activate hyperdrive, or manually scrub through time and space using the timeline on the left of the site.

It may sound complicated, but calculating the reach of radio waves over time and space is really straightforward. Radio waves travel at the speed of light, so if you were one light year away from Earth—that's 5.9 trillion miles—you'd hear broadcasts from a year ago. And it may have taken New Horizons nearly a decade to get close to Pluto, but the dwarf planet is a mere five light-hours or so from Earth. Every known planet or former planet in our solar system would still be hearing contemporary jams broadcast in the last few hours.

Three of the members (writer Chris Baker, developer Mike Lacher, and designer Brian Moore) of Lightyear.fm's team have worked together before on independent creative projects. Lacher built the audio system for the site, Moore designed the site interface, and Baker made sure the tunes were legit.

So Gliese 86 is listening to the best metal guitar riff of all time.

Arthur T Knackerbracket reports a story from ITWorld:

After halting the service due to an influx of spam, Google is ready to open Map Maker again, with changes that hand much of the control back to users.

Map Maker lets people update the information in Google Maps to make it more accurate. The service will reopen in phases starting early next month, Pavithra Kanakarajan of the Google Map Maker team said in a blog post Monday.

Google suspended the service in May after a rash of unwanted edits. In one prominent case, a prankster drew the Android mascot urinating on the Apple logo. Google turned off user moderation and started reviewing edits manually itself, but that caused a huge backlog and eventually it suspended Map Maker altogether.

Part of the solution is to appoint individuals who will act as regional editors, to ensure that the abuses that were seen earlier cannot occur again. Whether this will slow down the entire process too much or prove to be a workable solution is yet to be seen.

Phoenix666 writes:

The world's fossil fuel companies risk wasting billions of dollars of investment by not taking global action to fight climate change seriously, according to the chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Fatih Birol, who will take the top job at the IEA in September and is one of the world's most influential voices on energy, warned that companies making this mistake would also miss out on investment opportunities in clean energy.
...
The World Bank and Bank of England have already warned of the serious risk climate action poses to trillions of dollars of fossil fuel investments and the G20 is investigating the risks. The think-tank Carbon Tracker has estimated that over $1tn (£0.6tn) of oil investments and $280bn of gas investments would be left uneconomic if the world's governments succeed in their pledge to limitglobal warming to 2C.

The warnings are based on policy proposals that are entirely creatures of human decisions rather than hard economic realities. Then again, all demand is ultimately the product of human decisions.

"exec" writes:

Dell contradicts Microsoft, says Windows 10 will be installed on PCs starting July 29. It turns out Windows 10 will be installed on PCs from four major manufacturers.

Dell Inc. CEO Michael Dell said on Twitter that he expects Windows 10 to ship on new Dell PCs on July 29, contradicting a statement made yesterday by Microsoft.

Microsoft, which is still testing the highly anticipated operating system, said consumers would have to work with their local retailers to upgrade to Windows 10 after purchasing their new devices, in a blog post.

This means that all new units, such as the Dell XPS 15, on which Microsoft demoed Windows 10 during Computex, would not come with Windows 10 preinstalled, but rather users would have to upgrade at retail locations.

After some confusion regarding what was actually going to happen, Microsoft announced:

[...] Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Acer will begin shipping PCs on July 29 with Windows 10 preinstalled, Microsoft told Bloomberg.

Yusuf Mehdi, Vice President of Windows and Device Marketing, was mistaken when he wrote in a blog post that PCs shipping on July 29 would not have the new operating system preinstalled.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has a story from The Register:

Hackers appear to have stolen the entire user database of cloud-based Bitcoin mining outfit Cloudminr.io and are offering to sell 79,267 accounts including passwords for a single Bitcoin.

The Norwegian company's website is offline and criminal advertisements showcasing some of the CSV database of members has popped up on web clipboards like Pastebin. Despite their removal, some are still accessible in web caches.

The account information could be used to access Bitcoin wallets if Cloudminr.io users have made the common error of re-using passwords.

While users have rushed to change passwords, popular review site The Cloud Mining Directory says CloudMinr.io is "most likely an elaborate Ponzi scheme" after initally labelling it possibly the largest Bitcoin mining operations in the industry.

Phoenix666 writes:

Now, Hankook has completed initial testing on its fifth-generation airless tire, dubbed the iFlex. The tires do not require any air pressure, instead relying on a new type of eco-friendly material (Hancook demurs when asked for details). Geometric shapes built into the material provide the bounce and springiness normally provided by air pressure. But, unlike the previous iFlex, this version's designed to mount onto a traditional rim, making it compatible with current vehicles.

Hankook ran the iFlex through a battery of tests to compare it to more conventional rubber, measuring durability, hardness, stability, slalom and speed, at up to 80 mph. The company says the tires matched conventional tires in terms of performance.

Anyone who got a flat from the epidemic of potholes this Spring or who is plagued by nails and other road debris that cause slow leaks will welcome this development. Naturally, the real question is whether it's spelled, "tire" or "tyre."

Phoenix666 writes:

The new and improved dual monitor support primarily addresses a longtime complaint from Cinnamon users with more than one screen: there was no way to set up your panels independently. That's been fixed, which means you can now have a completely different panel on each of your monitors. In fact, you don't have to have multiple screens to take advantage of this one. The updates to the panel mean you can now set up your single monitor with multiple instances; for example, one at the top and bottom of your screen (though I'm not sure why you'd want to).

Wait, did you catch that in the last paragraph? Cinnamon 2.6 has a new feature that addresses a longtime complaint from users. In fact, there are quite a few new features that can be traced right back to user-submitted bugs and feature requests, which is another thing that feels increasingly rare in Linux desktops.

This release sees the Cinnamon developers focusing on some of what are sometimes call "paper cut" fixes, which just means there's been a lot of attention to the details, particularly the small, but annoying problems. For example, this release adds a new panel applet called "inhibit" which temporarily bans all notifications. It also turns off screen locking and stops any auto dimming you have set up, making it a great tool for when you want to watch a video or play a game.

It can be a challenge to strike a balance between project vision and what users think they want, because what they say they want is not always the same thing as what they want or need. Has this update of Cinnamon managed it?

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

The BBC are reporting that troubled community website Reddit has lost another female member of its senior team with the resignation of chief engineer Bethanye Blount, only days after the resignation of Ellen Pao. The BBC report continues:

Ms Blount told website Recode she believed Ms Pao had been put on a "glass cliff" - or set up to fail. Victoria Taylor, who oversaw a popular question-and-answer section of the site, was sacked last month.

"Victoria wasn't on a glass cliff. But it's hard for me to see it any other way than Ellen was," Bethanye Blount said in an interview.

But Ms Blount, a former Facebook employee, added that her own decision to leave Reddit just two months after joining, had not been based on gender issues. And new chief executive, Steve Huffman, said he was "confident" that the site could recruit female executives.

The phrase "glass cliff" is used to describe women placed in leadership roles during times of crisis, when positive change is hard to achieve.

[...]

Despite the ongoing turmoil, Reddit is in good financial shape, according to Mr Huffman, also one of its co-founders.

"Reddit has a lot of cash," he said, in an Ask Me Anything session on the site.. "Monetisation isn't a short-term concern of ours."

The site currently attracts 164 million monthly users.

As of this morning, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has flown by Pluto. Early images (here and here) are the best glimpses we have had of the dwarf planet. More detailed pictures are expected to be released this afternoon and over the next 16 months.

Update: New Horizons is expected to call home at 8:53 PM EDT.

Update: Contact with New Horizons re-established! Telemetry download has begun.

Update: New Horizons team unveils its first findings from the Pluto flypast – that briefing is on Wednesday at 3pm ET [sic] (8pm BST/Thursday 5am AEST) [updated at 14:59 UTC 15 July]

Phoenix666 writes:

Land Rover is recalling more than 65,000 cars to fix a software bug that can "unlatch" the vehicles' doors.

Drivers would get no dashboard warning that the doors of their car had been unlocked, the firm said.

The glitch affects Range Rover and Range Rover Sport vehicles sold between 2013 and now.

In a statement, Land Rover said no accidents or injuries were reported to have occurred as a result of the bug.

Another entry in the forthcoming blockbuster book, "The Internet of Things will be Fun Times."

CoolHand writes:

Visordown.com reports that the US Military is working with British engineering company Malloy Aeronautics to develop a flying hoverbike to transport soldiers quickly across a battlefield.

A hoverbike powered by a BMW R1200R engine could one day be soaring over the battlefields of the future.

Working alongside a US military research and development firm, the hoverbike could form a new class of tactical reconnaisance vehicle that has more than a touch of the speeder bikes from Return of the Jedi about it.

But this isn't technology from 'a galaxy far, far away' - the Hoverbike can already be seen flying (albeit tethered to ropes).

Malloy Aeronautics said: 'We combined the simplicity of a motorbike and the freedom of a helicopter to create the world's first flying motorcycle. When compared with a helicopter, the Hoverbike is cheaper, more rugged and easier to use – and represents a whole new way to fly.

Related links:
http://www.businessinsider.com/hoverbike-is-like-a-flying-motorcycle-2014-8?op=1
http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/22/us-military-hoverbike/

c0lo writes:

CNET, Business Insider, techcrunch and many others report on Hillary's beef with "on-demand/gig economy". Specifically:

"Many Americans are making extra money renting out a small room, designing websites, selling products they design themselves at home, or even driving their own car," Clinton said during a speech at the New School in New York City. "This on-demand, or so-called 'gig economy,' is creating exciting opportunities and unleashing innovation. But it's also raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future."

"Fair pay and fair scheduling, paid family leave and earned sick days, child care are essential to our competitiveness and growth," the former secretary of state said, referring to benefits not accorded to independent contractors such as drivers at Uber.

Meanwhile, others are quick to point that her "main super PAC decisively favored Uber over conventional cabs by a 25:1 margin" (doh, she didn't say Uber is bad, only that it is evil toward its empl... err... contractors) and Rand Paul tweets: "America shouldn't take advice on the sharing economy from someone who has been driven around in a limo for 30 years." (yeah, Dr Paul, zillions of male gynecologists were never pregnant, of course they know nothing about giving birth).