Although we’re sure they exist, we wouldn’t want to meet anybody that can’t look back fondly on the halcyon days of youth that included playing hide-and-go-seek. Some kids never grow up and continue the tradition with geocaching or orienteering, but that sense of limitless discovery wanes over time. [Kurt] came up with a small scavenger hunt beacon that brings back the unending wonder that accompanies the unknown.
The beacon is just a simple ATtiny13 that flashes a message with an invisible IR LED. To receive the messages, [Kurt] made a scavenger decoder shield for an Arduino. The decoder includes a phototransistor and a 20×4 LCD display. All [Kurt] needs to do is hold the decoder up to the beacon for the text in the firmware of the ATtiny to be displayed. The beacon is only one inch square and powered by a watch battery, so it can be hidden anywhere.
[Kurt] suggests that the text of one beacon should provide the clue to the next. We’re thinking this is just a great excuse for a walk in the park. You can check out [Kurt]‘s IR decoder getting data from a beacon after the break.
Florian Mueller's update on the patent battles between Apple, Motorola, and Samsung has a clear slant, but it is still a worthwhile look at how the mobile patent wars may be settled. There is little cheer for the free software world here. "They hope that the disruptive impact of such injunctions on Apple's business will force Apple to grant them a license to all of its non-standards-related patents (such as its multitouch inventions) as part of a broader settlement. In other words, they want to use FRAND patents to reach a state of 'mutually assured destruction', in which the notion of intellectual property would become meaningless between large players that have a critical mass of patents (it would merely serve to exclude new entrants without large patent portfolios)."
The 3.0.20 and 3.2.5 stable kernel updates have been released. They are single-patch updates containing the fix to the ASPM-related problem that would significantly increase power consumption on some systems. This patch has been treated with some care: it seems to work, but nobody really knows if it might cause behavioral problems on some obscure hardware. That said, at this point, it seems safe enough to have found its way into a stable update.
A few weeks ago, Stephen Hawking celebrated his 70th birthday. The famous cosmologist (who is probably more widely known than any other living scientist) has written several popular books including A Brief History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell, and most recently, The Grand Design. A documentary series he created for the Discovery Channel in 2010, titled Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking, was recently released on Blu-ray, and Discovery sent us a copy of the set to check it out. Hawking hosts the program, but Benedict Cumberbatch (who played Hawking in a 2004 BBC movie) does the majority of the narration as Hawking’s inner voice.
The three-part series starts off with an episode on the tantalizing possibility of life elsewhere in the Universe. It covers the usual ground (looking for water and the right temperature range to make it liquid) before moving on to more speculative endeavors. There are some enjoyable (and fairly well-animated) attempts to imagine strange forms of animal life, but the program also allows that evolution might hit upon similar structures to those that arose on Earth.
The idea of copying a successful game concept and profiting off of your own version is practically as old as the game industry itself—just look at the countless Pong clones released in the wake of the Atari original (which itself may have been copied from another source... but that's another story). The idea of game copying has gained added attention in recent weeks, though, as some high-profile social game companies have released games some say are a little too similar to their existing inspirations.
Tiny Tower maker NimbleBit and Bingo Blitz maker Buffalo Studios both took issue with overly familiar titles recently released by Zynga, making their complaints known through large infographics that show near-identical side-by-side screenshots. But Triple Town developer Spry Fox went a step further, actually filing a lawsuit (PDF) against Yeti Town developer 6waves Lolapps, saying the latter company "unabashedly" cloned its popular social game. The lawsuit takes the matter away from the nebulous moral and ethical questions of what constitutes an "original" game idea to the codified legal realm of guilt and innocence. Yet the nature of copyright law as it applies to games, and the existing case law in the area, suggests Spry Fox has an uphill battle in protecting Triple Town in court.
Nearly everyone has heard of phantom limb syndrome. It occurs sometimes after a limb is amputated, but the mind of the patient still thinks that the limb is attached. Generally regarded as a mix-up in the wiring of the damaged nerves, a phantom limb can be very painful. [Ben] has been working on a way to alleviate some of the pain and frustration associated with a phantom limb and fortunately for us he went for a Kinect, VR goggles, and gyroscope build.
Today, most therapies for phantom limb syndrome use a Ramachandran Mirror Box. The theory behind the mirror box is pretty simple – if someone recently lost a hand, just insert one hand in one side of the box and the arm stump on the other side. Looking into the box from the side with the good hand will trick the patient’s brain into thinking the amputated hand is still there. It’s a good therapy that has been very successful, but [Ben] thought he could do something that is a little more immersive.
[Ben]‘s project uses a Kinect and VR goggles to put the patient in a virtual environment. With the help of a few gyroscopes, the patient gets a virtual representation of their whole self projected into their goggles. The technique isn’t terribly different from VR phobia treatment, although there’s much more electronics and math involved in [Ben]‘s build. The first test subject said his pain was going down, so it looks like he might have a success on his hand (no pun intended).
Check out the demos of [Ben]‘s treatment plan after the break.
In 2005, I wrote an essay called "The Failure of Two-Factor Authentication," where I predicted that attackers would get around multi-factor authentication systems with tools that attack the transactions in real time: man-in-the-middle attacks and Trojan attacks against the client endpoint.
This BBC article describes exactly that:
After logging in to the bank's real site, account holders are being tricked by the offer of training in a new "upgraded security system".Money is then moved out of the account but this is hidden from the user.
[...]
Called a Man in the Browser (MitB) attack, the malware lives in the web browser and can get between the user and the website, altering what is seen and changing details of what is being entered.
The solution is to authenticate the transaction, not the person.
EDITED TO ADD (2/6): Another link.
Ars Technica
Bruce Schneier
Cool Tools
Debian Package a Day
EFF News
FSF Blogs
FSF News
Gizmag
GoRobotics.net
Groklaw
Hack a Day
Linux Journal
Linux Weekly News
Optimus Project
Robot Magazine
Sparkfun
Surj
The Daily WTF
Ubuntu Fridge
bldgblog
penguin.swf
robots.net
Last updated:
February 07, 2012 08:42 AM
All times are UTC. Isn't that just super?
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