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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:45 | Votes:100

posted by on Tuesday March 21 2017, @11:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the unidentified-flying-lasers dept.

Fresh insights into living cells, brighter video projectors and more accurate medical tests are just three of the innovations that could result from a new way of fabricating lasers.

The new method, developed by an international research team from U of T Engineering, Vanderbilt University, the Los Alamos National Laboratory and others, produces continuous laser light that is brighter, less expensive and more tuneable than current devices by using nanoparticles known as quantum dots.

"We've been working with quantum dots for more than a decade," says Ted Sargent, a professor in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at U of T. "They are more than five thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair, which enables them to straddle the worlds of quantum and classical physics and gives them useful optical properties."

"Quantum dots are well-known bright light emitters," says Alex Voznyy, a senior research associate in Sargent's lab. "They can absorb a lot of energy and re-emit it at a particular frequency, which makes them a particularly suitable material for lasers."

By carefully controlling the size of the quantum dots, the researchers in Sargent's lab can 'tune' the frequency, or colour, of the emitted light to any desired value. By contrast, most commercial lasers are limited to one specific frequency, or a very small range, defined by the materials they are made from.

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

posted by on Tuesday March 21 2017, @09:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the pure-coincidence dept.

Vague and secretive order bans devices larger than a phone on certain flights to US

It looks like the TSA has finally got round to reading XKCD 651. They have quietly banned electronic devices "larger than a phone" from the cabins of all airlines from a list of 13 countries. It isn't clear whether the ban affects electronic devices used by the aircraft's crew, for example the "electronic flight bag" used by the flight crew, which typically include a tablet.

The affected airlines have just 96 hours to comply.

US Bans Tablets and Laptops on Flights From Eight Muslim-Majority Countries

The Department of Homeland Security today announced new carry-on restrictions for flights to the US from eight Middle Eastern countries, confirming reports from yesterday that such a ban would be implemented as soon as this week. The restrictions forbid electronic devices larger than a smartphone from being carried in the cabin of the airplane, including laptops, tablets, e-readers, cameras, portable DVD players, and handheld gaming devices (larger than a smartphone).

Those devices can, however, all be placed into checked baggage. Neither DHS nor the Transportation Security Administration provided a firm rationale for the ban, how it chose which airports would be embroiled in the new security measures, or whether the ban is in any way related to an active terrorist plot. News of the ban first began percolating online yesterday when the Royal Jordanian airline partially disclosed it in a since-deleted tweet, which was framed as a message for passengers.

"Evaluated intelligence indicates that terrorist groups continue to target commercial aviation, to include smuggling explosive devices in various consumer items," reads a DHS press release put out this morning. "Based on this trend, the Transportation Security Administration, in consultation with relevant Departments and Agencies, has determined it is prudent to enhance security, to include airport security procedures for passengers at certain last point of departure airports to the United States."

The action will affect nine airlines in eight countries across 10 airports, senior administration officials confirmed in a press briefing Monday. The list of countries includes Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. The list of airlines affected includes Royal Jordanian, Egypt Air, Turkish Airlines, Saudi Arabian Airlines, Kuwait Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Qatar Airways, Emirates, and Etihad Airways. The order is being issued as a security directive from the TSA. Airlines will have 96 hours to comply or the DHS will work with the FAA to revoke clearance for those airlines to land in the US, officials said.

Source: The Verge

Other outlets covering this story: Ars Technica The Register


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

posted by CoolHand on Tuesday March 21 2017, @08:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the soylentils-minds-are-more-like-memory-gutters dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

There's been a long-standing debate about whether memory athletes are born with superior memories, or whether their abilities are due to their training regimens. These tend to include an ancient memorization strategy called the method of loci, which involves visualizing important pieces of information placed at key stops along a mental journey. This journey can be an imaginary walk through your house or a local park, or your drive to work. The important thing is that you can mentally move back through it to retrieve the pieces of information you stored. (The ancient Greeks are said to have used it to remember important texts.)

To find out what's going on in top-level rememberers' brains, Konrad teamed up with neuroscientist Martin Dresler at Radboud University in the Netherlands. They recruited 23 of the top 50 memory competitors in the world. All were between the ages of 20 and 36. Then, the scientists scanned the memory athletes' brains while they were just relaxing, and also while they memorized a list of 72 words.

The team, and their co-investigators at Stanford University, found that the memory athletes' brains don't appear to be built any differently from yours or mine, according to results they published in the journal Neuron. "That was quite surprising, since these are really the best memorizers in the world," Dresler says. "And still, they didn't show a single memory structure, any single region or collection of regions that was anatomically strikingly different from normal control subjects."

Even so, their brains don't work the way yours or mine does. The athletes were able to recall at least 70 of the 72 words they studied — compared to an average of only 39 words for the non-athletes they were compared to. What's more, while the professional rememberers' brains were structurally similar to the control group, the memory athletes' brain scans showed unique patterns of activity, where brain regions that are involved in memory and cognition were statistically more likely to fire together.

The method of loci is also known as the memory palace, and Konrad says the first step is to make up a set of locations. The place doesn't matter as much as your familiarity with it. Then you create a map in your mind with a series of stops. The first stop might be your front door. The second could be the table next to it where you put down your sunglasses. Then, when you're given a list of words to memorize, you visualize scenes that link the words with each stop.

[Editor's Note: there is a nice TED talk on the memory palace method and memory competitors here]

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday March 21 2017, @06:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-that-Gary-Larson dept.

Police in a small suburban town of 50,000 people just outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, have won a court order requiring Google to determine who has used its search engine to look up the name of a local financial fraud victim.

The court order demanding such a massive search is perhaps the most expansive one we've seen unconnected to the US national security apparatus and, if carried out, could set an Orwellian precedent in a bid by the Edina Police Department to solve a wire-fraud crime worth less than $30,000.

Investigators are focusing their probe on an online photo of someone with the same name of a local financial fraud victim. The image turned up on a fake passport used to trick a credit union to fraudulently transfer $28,500 out of an Edina man's account, police said. The bogus passport was faxed to the credit union using a spoofed phone number to mimic the victim's phone, according to the warrant application. (To protect the victim's privacy, Ars is not publishing his name that was listed throughout the warrant signed February 1 by Hennepin County Senior Judge Gary Larson.)

The warrant demands Google to help police determine who searched for variations of the victim's name between December 1 of last year through January 7, 2017. A Google search, the warrant application says, reveals the photo used on the bogus passport. The image was not rendered on Yahoo or Bing, according to the documents. The warrant commands Google to divulge "any/all user or subscriber information"—including e-mail addresses, payment information, MAC addresses, social security numbers, dates of birth, and IP addresses—of anybody who conducted a search for the victim's name.

Source: ArsTechnica


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday March 21 2017, @04:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the ham-and-mayo-on-wry? dept.

Mayo Clinic, one of the country's top hospitals, is in the midst of controversy after its CEO said that the elite medical facility would prioritize the care of patients with private health insurance over those with Medicare and Medicaid.

The prioritization by the Rochester, MN-headquartered medical practice was recently revealed by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. And it has quickly drawn out some sharp critics—as well as sympathizers.

In a statement to the Minnesota Post Bulletin, Dr. Gerard Anderson, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Hospital Finance and Management, compared the prioritization to policies seen in developing countries. "This is what happens in many low-income countries. The health system is organized to give the most affluent preference in receiving health care," he wrote.

Likewise, Minnesota Department of Human Services Commissioner Emily Piper, expressed surprise and concern by the statements of Mayo's CEO, Dr. John Noseworthy. "Fundamentally, it's our expectation at DHS that Mayo Clinic will serve our enrollees in public programs on an equal standing with any other Minnesotan that walks in their door," she said. "We have a lot of questions for Mayo Clinic about how and if and through what process this directive from Dr. Noseworthy is being implemented across their health system."

Specifically, Noseworthy said in a video to Mayo employees late last year:

We're asking... if the patient has commercial insurance, or they're Medicaid or Medicare patients and they're equal, that we prioritize the commercial insured patients enough so... we can be financially strong at the end of the year.

In statements, Mayo has confirmed Noseworthy's prioritization and added that about 50 percent of its patients are beneficiaries of government programs. "Balancing payer mix is complex and isn't unique to Mayo Clinic. It affects much of the industry, but it's often not talked about. That's why we feel it is important to talk transparently about these complex issues with our staff."

Source: Ars Technica


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday March 21 2017, @03:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the sooner-than-Duke-Nukem-Forever dept.

Intel has released a 3D XPoint drive. It's not vaporware!

The Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X has a write endurance rating of 30 Drive Writes Per Day, and Intel is hopeful that future products can offer even higher ratings once 3D XPoint memory has more broadly proven its reliability. Today's limited release 375GB models have a three year warranty for a total write endurance rating of 12.3 PB, and once the product line is expanded to broad availability of the full range of capacities in the second half of this year the warranty period will be five years.

Intel is offering the 375GB P4800X in PCIe add-in card form factor with a MSRP of $1520 starting today with a limited early-ship program. In Q2 a 375GB U.2 model will ship, as well as a 750GB add-in card. In the second half of the year the rest of the capacity and form factor options will be available, but prices and exact release dates for those models have not been announced. At just over $4/GB the P4800X seems to fall much closer to DRAM than NAND in price, though to be fair the enterprise SSDs it will compete against are all well over $1/GB and the largest DDR4 DIMMs are around $10/GB.

The product is not as fast at sequential transfers as some SSDs:

The raw specs for the P4800X leaked in February. To summarize: it's a datacenter-oriented part, built for applications with high read/write loads, looking for low latency. The sequential transfer rates of 2400MB/s read, 2000MB/s write, are good, but some of the fastest NAND flash can pull slightly ahead. Where the P4800X excels is its ability to sustain high I/O loads, courtesy of those low latencies.

[...] The P4800X can do 550,000 read IOPS and 500,000 write IOPS, but critically, Intel says it achieves this even at low queue depths. The spec sheet figure has a queue depth of 16, and the company says that a queue depth of about 8 tends to be about the limit seen in the real world. Moreover, Intel says that the latency of each I/O operation remains low even under heavy load. 99.999 percent of operations have a read or write latency below 60 or 100 microseconds (respectively) with a queue depth of 1, rising to 150 or 200 microseconds with a queue depth of 16. Under a comparable load, Intel's own P3700 NAND SSD can only serve 99 percent of operations with a latency below about 2,800 microseconds. Likewise, under sustained write workloads, the P4800X retains its low latency for reads, whereas the read latency of the P3700 NAND steadily deteriorates as the write bandwidth increases.


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the rising-from-the-dead dept.

According to Symantec, A North Korean hacking group called Lazarus may be responsible for recent cyber attacks on the banking sector.

A North Korean hacking group known as Lazarus was likely behind a recent cyber campaign targeting organizations in 31 countries, following high-profile attacks on Bangladesh Bank, Sony and South Korea, cyber security firm Symantec Corp said on Wednesday.

Symantec said in a blog that researchers have uncovered four pieces of digital evidence suggesting the Lazarus group was behind the campaign that sought to infect victims with "loader" software used to stage attacks by installing other malicious programs.

"We are reasonably certain" Lazarus was responsible, Symantec researcher Eric Chien said in an interview.

The North Korean government has denied allegations it was involved in the hacks, which were made by officials in Washington and Seoul, as well as security firms.

U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday March 21 2017, @12:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the I'll-determine-what's-sensitive dept.

ISPs that want the federal government to eliminate broadband privacy rules say that your Web browsing and app usage data should not be classified as "sensitive" information.

"Web browsing and app usage history are not 'sensitive information,'" CTIA said in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission yesterday. CTIA is the main lobbyist group representing mobile broadband providers such as AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA, and Sprint.

The FCC rules passed during the Obama administration require ISPs to get opt-in consent from consumers before sharing sensitive customer information with advertisers and other third parties. The FCC defined Web browsing history and app usage history as sensitive information, along with other categories such as geo-location data, financial and health information, and the content of communications. If the rules are overturned, ISPs would be able to sell this kind of customer information to advertisers.

The opt-in rules are scheduled to take effect on or after December 4, 2017, but ISPs have petitioned the FCC to eliminate the rules before that happens. The latest CTIA filing was a reply to groups that opposed the petition to overturn the rules.

In making its argument that Web browsing and app usage history are not sensitive information, CTIA said that the Federal Trade Commission has taken a different stance than the FCC.

"To justify diverging from the FTC's framework and defining Web browsing history as 'sensitive,' the commission and the [privacy rule supporters] both cherry-picked evidence in an attempt to show that ISPs have unique and comprehensive access to consumers' online information," CTIA wrote. "As the full record shows, however, this is simply not true. Indeed, even a prominent privacy advocacy organization asserted that it is 'obvious that the more substantial threats for consumers are not ISPs,' but rather other large edge providers."

Source: ArsTechnica


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday March 21 2017, @10:28AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-just-infosec dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

The global cybersecurity workforce remains stagnant at just 11 percent, according to the 2017 Women in Cybersecurity Report[PDF], co-authored by The Executive Women's Forum on Information Security, Risk Management and Privacy (EWF) and the Center for Cyber Safety and Education, which partnered with (ISC)2. The report is based on survey responses from over 19,000 information security professionals in 170 countries.

Report co-author and EWF founder Joyce Brocaglia says the most important finding of the report is that "it isn't just one thing" causing the persistent shortage of women in information security, but rather a "confluence of events."

The findings, says Brocaglia, show that women are underrepresented, are paid less than their male colleagues, feel undervalued, and feel discriminated against. "That's what's leading to this stagnation."

The shortage is severe in North America, with only 14 percent of the infosec workforce composed of women, but even more striking elsewhere; women only claim 7 percent of the workforce in Europe, 8 percent in Asia, and 5 percent in the Middle East, according to the report.

"Common sense should tell you we should be doing more about this," says co-author and EWF executive director Lynn Terwoerds, noting that in order to solve the cybersecurity skills shortage, the industry must do a better engaging the female population.

Source: http://www.darkreading.com/careers-and-people/women-still-only-11--of-global-infosec-workforce/d/d-id/1328409


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday March 21 2017, @08:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-appropriate dept.

Steven Hawking looks to be hitching a ride with Virgin Galactic:

Stephen Hawking, the world's most renowned physicist and cosmologist, stated today that he is, in fact, heading to space—and it's happening all thanks to the Virgin group (and a bit of modern technology).

In a statement back in 2015, Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin group, said that, one day, he hoped to be able to carry Hawking to the stars. In the statement, Branson noted that this offer came as a result of the great respect and admiration that he has for Hawking:

'Professor Stephen Hawking is one of the people I admire most in the world, an undisputed genius who has opened our eyes to the wonders of the universe, while also happening to be a kind and delightful man. He is the only person I have given a free ticket with Virgin Galactic, and he is signed up to fly as a Future Astronaut with us if his health permits it.'

At 75 years of age, Hawking won't be the oldest astronaut ever (that designation belongs to John Glenn, who went to space at the age of 77), but he will be the first person to go to space with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)—also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. ALS is a motor-neuron disease that generally leads to death within five years of the initial diagnosis. Hawking's condition was first diagnosed when he was 21, and he was not expected to see his 25th birthday."

[...] When discussing the anticipated event, Hawking told Good Morning Britain that he never dreamed he'd have such an opportunity, and that he "said yes immediately." Hawking continued by noting that he looks forward to the voyage with great anticipation, comparing flying into space to the same joy that his three children have brought him. During the discussion, he stated, "my three children have brought me great joy – and I can tell you what will make me happy, to travel in space."

- https://futurism.com/stephen-hawking-is-going-to-outer-space/


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the Great-A'Tuin dept.

Korean researchers have developed a technology that can remotely control an animal's movement with human thought.

In the 2009 blockbuster "Avatar", a human remotely controls the body of an alien. It does so by injecting human intelligence into a remotely located, biological body. Although still in the realm of science fiction, researchers are nevertheless developing so-called 'brain-computer interfaces' (BCIs) following recent advances in electronics and computing. These technologies can 'read' and use human thought to control machines, for example, humanoid robots.

New research has demonstrated the possibility of combining a BCI with a device that transmits information from a computer to a brain, or a so-called 'computer-to-brain interface' (CBI). The combination of these devices could be used to establish a functional link between the brains of different species. Now, researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have developed a human-turtle interaction system in which a signal originating from a human brain can affect where a turtle moves.

Unlike previous research that has tried to control animal movement by applying invasive methods, most notably in insects, KAIST researchers propose a conceptual system that can guide an animal's moving path by controlling its instinctive escape behaviour. They chose the turtle because of its cognitive abilities as well as its ability to distinguish different wavelengths of light. Specifically, turtles can recognize a white light source as an open space and so move toward it. They also show specific avoidance behaviour to things that might obstruct their view. Turtles also move toward and away from obstacles in their environment in a predictable manner. It was this instinctive, predictable behaviour that the researchers induced using the BCI.

Do they call the procedure, "turtling?"


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday March 21 2017, @05:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the keep-it-to-yourself dept.

RAND corporation recently received rare access to study a couple hundred 0-day vulnerabilities and their exploits.

It turns out that 0-day vulnerability discoveries live for about 6.9 years, and that the ones found by a pair of serious opponents (typically nation-state governments) have only a few percent overlap. This means that releasing discoveries to the public provides very little defensive value while obviously destroying offensive ability.

The report (summary and full text[PDF]) includes quite a bit more about the industry, including some estimates of pricing and headcount.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday March 21 2017, @04:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the won't-help-the-noise dept.

http://www.foxnews.com/auto/2017/03/17/ktm-looking-to-create-buzz-with-fuel-injected-two-stroke-engine.html

Two-stroke engines offer twice as many power strokes for a given number of rotations and pistons by doing the exhaust and intake simultaneously. This normally happens spanning the end of the power stroke and the beginning of the compression stroke, though ideally it would only steal time from the beginning of the compression stroke. By tradition, nearly all two-stroke engines use a carburetor and are lubricated by oil being mixed into the fuel. The problem is pollution: unburned fuel passes right through the cylinder because the intake and exhaust valves open together, and this is made much worse by having the fuel be about 2% to 3% lubricating oil.

KTM fixes this for their two-stroke motorcycles by adding fuel injection. KTM injects into the transfer port, which isn't as good as injecting directly into the compression chamber but should still be a huge improvement. Honda has also filed a patent for a general purpose two-stroke with fuel injection. If one of them simply adds a normal oil pump, many of the problems of two-stroke pollution and annoyance should be gone. Next up, we need this small enough for chainsaws and weed cutters.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday March 21 2017, @02:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the squeezably-soft dept.

The New York Times published an article about toilet paper theft and the use of technology to prevent it:

The toilet paper thieves of the Temple of Heaven Park were an elusive bunch.

They looked like most park visitors, practicing tai chi, dancing in the courtyards and stopping to take in the scent of ancient cypress and juniper trees. But hidden in their oversize shopping bags and backpacks was a secret: sheet upon sheet of crumpled toilet paper, plucked surreptitiously from public restrooms.

Now the authorities in Beijing are fighting back, going so far as to install high-tech toilet paper dispensers equipped with facial recognition software in several restrooms.

Before entering restrooms in the park, visitors must now stare into a computer mounted on the wall for three seconds before a machine dispenses a sheet of toilet paper, precisely two feet in length. If visitors require more, they are out of luck. The machine will not dispense a second roll to the same person for nine minutes.

This seems to be too funny to be real, but the article has an animated GIF that demonstrates this device's operation.


Original Submission

posted by on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the they-can-still-screw-over-the-rest-of-the-world dept.

Fraud, scams, and "unfair" terms and conditions all need to be cleaned up on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, the European Commission has said—warning the US firms that any failure to comply with the order will lead to sanctions.

It comes after the trio of free content ad networks were put on notice in November last year, when Brussels' officials asked the companies to address two areas of concern.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google—all of which are routinely blasted by regulators and lawmakers in Europe—have one month to submit proposals for how they plan to comply with the EU's demands. If their offers come up short against the bloc's regulatory framework, then consumer authorities could threaten to take enforcement action, the commission said.

"Given the growing importance of online social networks it is time to make sure that our strong EU rules, that are there to protect consumers from unfair practices, are complied with in this sector," said Brussels' justice commissioner, Vera Jourová.

"It is not acceptable that EU consumers can only call on a court in California to resolve a dispute. Nor can we accept that users are deprived of their right to withdraw from an online purchase. Social media companies also need to take more responsibility in addressing scams and fraud happening on their platforms."

The commission—citing the Unfair Contract Terms Directive—wants the companies' terms of service to "be brought into conformity with European consumer law."

Source: ArsTechnica


Original Submission