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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:43 | Votes:95

posted by mrpg on Sunday June 10 2018, @10:40PM   Printer-friendly
from the O,N,Ar dept.

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

In desert trials, next-generation water harvester delivers fresh water from air

Scientists who last year built a prototype harvester to extract water from the air using only the power of the sun have scaled up the device to see how much water they can capture in arid conditions in Arizona. Using a kilogram of MOF[*], they were able to capture about 7 ounces of water from low-humidity air each 24-hour day/night cycle. A new and cheaper MOF could double that.

[...] "There is nothing like this," said Omar Yaghi, who invented the technology underlying the harvester. "It operates at ambient temperature with ambient sunlight, and with no additional energy input you can collect water in the desert. This laboratory-to-desert journey allowed us to really turn water harvesting from an interesting phenomenon into a science."

[*] Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are:

compounds consisting of metal ions or clusters coordinated to organic ligands to form one-, two-, or three-dimensional structures. They are a subclass of coordination polymers, with the special feature that they are often porous. The organic ligands included are sometimes referred to as "struts", one example being 1,4-benzenedicarboxylic acid (BDC).

Also at Berkeley News.

Practical water production from desert air (open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aat3198) (DX)


Original Submission

posted by mrpg on Sunday June 10 2018, @08:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the trepanation++ dept.

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

[...] After all, who needs a hole in the head? Yet for thousands of years, trepanation -- the act of scraping, cutting, or drilling an opening into the cranium -- was practiced around the world, primarily to treat head trauma, but possibly to quell headaches, seizures and mental illnesses, or even to expel perceived demons.

[...] "In Incan times, the mortality rate was between 17 and 25 percent, and during the Civil War, it was between 46 and 56 percent. That's a big difference. The question is how did the ancient Peruvian surgeons have outcomes that far surpassed those of surgeons during the American Civil War?"

[...] Whatever their methods, ancient Peruvians had plenty of practice. More than 800 prehistoric skulls with evidence of trepanation -- at least one but as many as seven telltale holes -- have been found in the coastal regions and the Andean highlands of Peru, the earliest dating back to about 400 B.C. That's more than the combined total number of prehistoric trepanned skulls found in the rest of the world.

Source: Remarkable skill of ancient Peru's cranial surgeons


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday June 10 2018, @05:58PM   Printer-friendly
from the big-brother dept.

A new algorithm has been used to detect violence in drone-captured video footage:

A drone surveillance system capable of highlighting "violent individuals" in a crowd in real time has been built by [researchers].

The artificially intelligent technology uses a video camera on a hovering quadcopter to study the body movements of everyone in view. It then raises an alert when it identifies aggressive actions, such as punching, stabbing, shooting, kicking, and strangling, with an accuracy of about 85 per cent. It doesn't perform any facial recognition – it merely detects possible violence between folks. And its designers believe the system could be expanded to automatically spot people crossing borders illegally, detect kidnappings in public areas, and set off alarms when vandalism is observed.

The inventors are based at the University of Cambridge, in England, India's National Institute of Technology, and the Indian Institute of Science. They hope their autonomous spy drones will help cops crush crime and soldiers expose enemies hiding in groups of innocents.

Also at Science Magazine.

Eye in the Sky: Real-time Drone Surveillance System (DSS) for Violent Individuals Identification using ScatterNet Hybrid Deep Learning Network (arXiv:1806.00746)


Original Submission

posted by mrpg on Sunday June 10 2018, @03:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the fairing-processing dept.

SpaceX plans to build an Operations Area on 63-67 acres between the Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building and Industrial Center. The highlights include 300-foot tall tower housing a launch and landing control center, a booster and fairing processing and storage facility, and a rocket garden:

It will be an operational monument to Elon Musk's vision: a towering SpaceX launch control center, a 133,000-square-foot hangar and a rocket garden rising in the heart of Kennedy Space Center.

According to plans detailed in a draft environmental review published recently by KSC, SpaceX will undertake a major expansion of its facilities at the space center sometime in the not-too-distant future.

The review says SpaceX is seeking more room and a bigger presence "in its pursuit of a complete local, efficient, and reusable launch vehicle program."

The expansion would enable SpaceX to store and refurbish large numbers of Falcon rocket boosters and nose cones at the operations center down the road from NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Sunday June 10 2018, @01:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the getting-tougher dept.

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

The FCC has approved new rules expressly banning unauthorized charges on phone bills, a practice that was already illegal under federal law but never formally codified within the agency. It’s the first time the commission is adopting an explicit rule.

The new rules ban unexpected phone bill charges, also known as “cramming” many services that a customer didn’t ask for onto a bill. The rules also ban the practice of tricking a customer into switching phone carriers. From now on, if a company is found to have used deception to obtain your consent to switch carriers, your consent will be deemed invalid.

Changes are also being made to how third-party verification services, which are supposed to validate a sale or carrier switch, confirm that a customer really intended to take action. The third-party verification process will no longer need user approval for every service purchased, in order to save customers time and streamline the process. It’s a change that’s supposed to be helpful, but it sounds like it could lead to unexpected charges when you aren’t paying attention. Finally, carriers that abuse third-party verification, such as by editing out parts of a customer’s phone call with a third party to make it sound like an approval to switch carriers, will be suspended from using them for several years.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/8/17441426/fcc-bans-unauthorized-phone-bill-charges


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Sunday June 10 2018, @11:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-not-going-his-way dept.

https://thehackernews.com/2018/06/marcus-hutchins-malware.html

Marcus Hutchins, the British malware analyst who helped stop global Wannacry menace, is now facing four new charges related to malware he allegedly created and promoted it online to steal financial information.

Hutchins, the 24-year-old better known as MalwareTech, was arrested by the FBI last year as he was headed home to England from the DefCon conference in Las Vegas for his alleged role in creating and distributing Kronos between 2014 and 2015.

Kronos is a Banking Trojan designed to steal banking credentials and personal information from victims' computers, which was sold for $7,000 on Russian online forums, and the FBI accused Hutchins of writing and promoting it online, including via YouTube.

Hutchins pleaded not guilty at a court hearing in August 2017 in Milwaukee and release on $30,000 bail.

However, earlier this week, a revised superseding indictment [PDF] was filed with the Wisconsin Eastern District Court, under which Hutchins faces four new charges along with the six prior counts filed against him by the FBI a month before his arrest.

According to the new indictment, Hutchins created a second piece of malware, known as "UPAS Kit," and also lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) when he was arrested and questioned last year in Las Vegas.

[...] As the news on the revised indictment broke, Hutchins, who has repeatedly denied any illegal activity, called the charges "bullshit" and appealed to his Twitter followers for donations to cover legal costs.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Sunday June 10 2018, @08:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the sensible dept.

Joe Manchin, the senior Senator from West Virginia, has inserted language in the FY19 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies appropriations bill that will force Amtrak to employ at least one ticketing agent in every state that it serves.

His reasoning? "Amtrak has told me that most of their sales are now online, but West Virginians buy far more tickets at the Charleston station than most places around the country. That's not surprising, as nearly 30% of West Virginia is without internet access, and mobile broadband access is also difficult in my state's rugged, mountainous terrain, making online ticket sales difficult."

Source: https://www.manchin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/manchin-secures-language-to-ensure-amtrak-ticket-agent-in-west-virginia


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Sunday June 10 2018, @06:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the got-to-start-somewhere dept.

Singapore could become the second country to legalize mitochondrial replacement therapy

This small city state could become the second country—after the United Kingdom—to explicitly legalize mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT), a controversial assisted reproduction technique that allows women who are carriers of some rare genetic disorders to give birth to healthy babies.

Members of the Singaporean public and religious groups have until 15 June to provide their feedback about MRT to the Bioethics Advisory Committee (BAC). Based on its findings, a 13-member BAC review committee will make formal recommendations to the government later this year about whether to legalize the technology.

"Our position is to keep a close watch on what happens in the U.K., to track the U.K. experience, and to learn from what they have done," says Oi Lian Kon, who studies human genetics at the National Cancer Centre Singapore and is leading the BAC review group.

MRT is used to address devastating genetic diseases that arise from abnormalities in the DNA in mitochondria, the cell's power sources, and that commonly affect energy-intensive organs such as the brain and heart, as well as muscles. Children inherit mitochondria only from their mothers; replacing faulty mitochondria in an egg or embryo with normal ones from a donor can result in healthy babies. But it also means that offspring will bear DNA from three "parents," which makes MRT a controversial procedure.

Previously: UK Parliament Gives Three-"Source" IVF the Go-Ahead.
Approval for Three-Parent Embryo Trials
UK's Fertility Regulator Approves Creation of First "Three-Parent" Babies

Related: U.S. Panel Gives Tentative Endorsement to Three-Person IVF
Newcastle University Study Verifies Safety of Three-Person IVF
First Three-Person Baby Born Using Spindle Nuclear Transfer
Baby Girl Born in Ukraine Using Three-Parent Pronuclear Transfer Technique


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Sunday June 10 2018, @04:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the tourist-trap dept.

A new study in Conservation Physiology, published by Oxford University Press, reveals that white shark activity increases dramatically when the animals are interacting with cage-diving operators.

In recent decades, wildlife tourism has rapidly expanded and is one of the fastest growing sectors of the tourism industry. Ecotourism opportunities to cage-dive with white sharks, large marine predators, are available in Australia, South Africa, the United States of America, Mexico, and New Zealand, with up to seven companies operating simultaneously in one site.

Previous studies have shown that wildlife tourism can change behavior of animal species by altering their habitats or eating patterns. How these changes affect the health of individual animals or animal populations is unclear.

The study shows that white sharks are more active and likely use more energy when interacting with tourism operators compared to other situations (e.g. when operators are absent), raising questions about the behavioral changes such tourism may be causing.

The researchers tracked ten white sharks at South Australia's Neptune Islands with devices for nine days, finding that the increased movement when sharks are interacting with cage-diving operators results in overall dynamic body acceleration, a proxy for activity, 61% higher compared to other times when sharks are present in the area.

[...] "Spending time interacting with cage-diving operators might distract sharks from normal behaviors such as foraging on natural, energy-rich prey like pinnipeds," Huveneers added.

[...] This study indicates that wildlife tourism may change the activity levels of white sharks and calls for an understanding of the frequency of shark-tourism interactions to appreciate the impact of ecotourism on this species fitness.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Sunday June 10 2018, @02:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the but-you-might-not-be-able-to-tell dept.

After years of talk, Tor may finally be integrated with the main Firefox browser soon:

The Tor Project announced that it's working with Mozilla to integrate Tor into Firefox. Eventually, this should completely eliminate the need for the Tor Browser, as most of its features would be merged into Firefox's new "super-private mode."

The Tor Browser is based on the Extended Support Release (ESR) version of Firefox, because it's a more stable development cycle that only patches bugs and doesn't add new features for 11 months or so. This means it doesn't disrupt how the Tor Browser works too much, and the Tor Project developers don't have to integrate many new features into their browser every few weeks.

Despite this, the Tor Project developers said that it takes a lot of time to rebase Tor Browser patches to new versions of Firefox. This is why Mozilla has started integrating Tor's patches into Firefox on its own through the "Tor Uplift Project."

Firefox has also adopted new security features from the Tor Browser such as first party isolation (which prevents cookies from tracking you across domains) and fingerprint resistance (which blocks user tracking through canvas elements). However, first party isolation is off by default in Firefox and fingerprint resistance can break some websites. You can enable first party isolation in about:config or by installing this add-on for it.

[...] The developers said all these features would enable a "real" private mode in Firefox, which could completely replace the need for the Tor Browser to exist. This "super-private mode" could be used by hundreds of millions of users eventually, which is why Mozilla first needs to ensure that the Tor network can scale with such usage. That means more people will need to run Tor relays. Mozilla may be able to help here by donating money to nonprofits that can run Tor relays.

Could this be the way to get Firefox above 10% market share (except that if it's done correctly, nobody will be able to measure it)?

Fusion Project overview


Original Submission

posted by takyon on Sunday June 10 2018, @12:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the esoteric-death dept.

What killed the computer hacker who turned in Chelsea Manning still a mystery

Forensic pathologists who performed Adrian Lamo's autopsy were unable to determine how the 37-year-old died in March in Wichita. His autopsy report, released Wednesday afternoon, lists Lamo's cause and manner of death as "undetermined." That means that after a thorough examination of his body, results of toxicology testing and information about Lamo's life and last hours, there is nothing that points to a specific reason he died.

"Despite a complete autopsy and supplemental testing, no definitive cause of death was identified," Scott Kipper, deputy coroner and medical examiner at the Sedgwick County Regional Forensic Science Center, wrote in the report.

Adrian Lamo.

Previously: Adrian Lamo Dies at Age 37


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday June 09 2018, @10:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the bad-critic-no-cookie-for-you dept.

So a professional critic is the last person you’d expect to use copyright to try to squelch someone else’s fair use rights. But that’s exactly what happened last month, when James Grubb, a journalist from VentureBeat, used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to censor a critic just for highlighting a few paragraphs of his work on Twitter.

On May 2, VentureBeat’s gaming section published Grubb’s review of a forthcoming video game, Red Dead Redemption II. His opinions on the game weren’t shared by everyone, which is no surprise. Another video game critic, Jake Magee, took a shot at Grubb on Twitter, suggesting he only liked games that contained “progressive political posturing.” Alongside that criticism, Magee posted screenshots from Grubb’s review—his goal was to show his followers the text that, as he saw it, supported his point.

That was apparently too much for Grubb, who promptly sent a DMCA notice to Twitter over the matter. Twitter soon slapped black boxes over the images that Magee had posted. It wasn't until several days later that the boxes were removed and the post was restored.

What justified this copyright takedown, in Grubbs’ view? First, Grubb said that Magee posted his entire article in a screenshot, a post which, in his view, “crosses the line of acceptable fair use.” Grubb also suggested that he wouldn’t have taken legal action if Magee had simply included a link to his article.

[...] Journalists and critics should know the basics of fair use. It’s a right that their work relies on. At the very least, before a professional critic uses the DMCA to have another critic’s material removed, a double-take is needed on fair use.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday June 09 2018, @08:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the hiding-from-vegans dept.

Plants use many of the same methods as animals to camouflage themselves, a new study shows.

Research on plant camouflage is limited compared to the wealth of knowledge about how animals conceal themselves.

But a review by scientists from the University of Exeter and the Kunming Institute of Botany (Chinese Academy of Sciences) found plants use a host of techniques long known to be used by animals.

These include blending with the background, "disruptive colouration" (using high-contrast markings to break up the perceived shape of an object) and "masquerade" (looking like an unimportant object predators might ignore, such as a stone).

"It is clear that plants do more than entice pollinators and photosynthesise with their colours -- they hide in plain sight from enemies too," said Professor Martin Stevens, of the Centre for Ecology and Conservation on Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall.

"From 'decoration', where they accumulate things like dust or sand on their surface, to disruptive coloration, they use many of the same methods as animals to camouflage themselves.

"We now need to discover just how important a role camouflage has in the ecology and evolution of plants."

[...] "Animal camouflage has provided scientists with arguably the best examples of evolution in action," said Professor Stevens. "It has been widely studied since the first pioneers of evolutionary biology, but relatively little research has been done into plant camouflage.

"Plants give us a fascinating parallel way of understanding how evolution works."

The paper, published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, is entitled: "Plant camouflage: ecology, evolution, and implications."


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday June 09 2018, @05:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-it dept.

You might say we're all living inside a ruinous waking nightmare that spawned from the dream of Web 2.0.

Don't get me wrong: It was a beautiful dream.

Web 2.0. We are all of us producers. With our blogs and our comments and our tweets and our YouTube channels we will democratise content and the algorithms -- those glorious algorithms -- will aid in the process. We will upvote and favourite and like and the wheat will be separated from the chaff.

Magic.

I think we can all agree that Web 2.0 didn't quite work as advertised.

It gave us Minecraft. It gave us Wikipedia, collaborative spaces, online tools. But it also gave us Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, Gamergate, incels, toxic communities, Logan Paul wandering into a suicide forest. It gave us Twitter bullying, Kelly Marie Tran harassment campaigns on Instagram.

It gave us terrible, opportunistic video games about school shootings.

Wednesday, after yanking Active Shooter, a video game where you play as a high school shooter, from its Steam store, Valve made an announcement. In a blog titled "Who gets to be on the Steam Store" Valve discussed the steps it's taking to prevent a video game like Active Shooter from making it to the Steam store in the future.

Its solution is about as Web 2.0 as it gets.

"[W]e've decided," wrote Valve, "that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling."

"Taking this approach allows us to focus less on trying to police what should be on Steam, and more on building those tools to give people control over what kinds of content they see."

In 2018, at this current moment, it seems like a decision out of time. An old-fashioned solution to a problem that literally every single platform on the internet is currently trying to solve. We live in a world where Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are in the process of trying to actively take responsibility for the content produced and posted on their platforms.

Meanwhile, Valve is busy trying to abdicate that responsibility.


Original Submission

posted by mrpg on Saturday June 09 2018, @03:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the AI-drinking-coffee dept.

Submitted via IRC for boru

Caffeine is the most widely consumed stimulant to counter the effects of sleep loss on neurobehavioral performance. However, to be safe and most effective, it must be consumed at the right time and in the right amount. This study proposed an automated optimization algorithm to identify safe and effective caffeine-dosing strategies that maximize alertness under any sleep-loss condition.

"We found that by using our algorithm, which determines when and how much caffeine a subject should consume, we can improve alertness by up to 64 percent, while consuming the same total amount of caffeine," said principal investigator and senior author Jaques Reifman, PhD. "Alternatively, a subject can reduce caffeine consumption by up to 65 percent and still achieve equivalent improvements in alertness."

[...] The algorithm was assessed by computing and comparing dosing strategies for four previously published experimental studies of sleep loss. For each study, two dosing strategies were computed -- one which enhanced the predicted PVT performance using the same total amount of caffeine as in the original studies, and another which achieved an equivalent level of performance as in the original studies using a lower amount of caffeine.

Source: New algorithm determines ideal caffeine dosage and timing for alertness


Original Submission