...will he ever win?

Gizmag: Metabolic “breathalyzer” could diagnose disease from our breath

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 06:58:11 +0000

Scientists – and dogs – have known for some time that our breath can reveal much more about us than our estimated blood alcohol content. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison believe that “breathalyzer”-like technology they currently have under development could be used to diagnose a wide range of diseases, such as diabetes, cancer and infections. Such technology, which relies on the fact that many diseases alter the body’s metabolism in distinctive ways, would provide a non-invasive method of detecting disease even before typical symptoms appear... Continue Reading Metabolic “breathalyzer” could diagnose disease from our breath

Section: Health and Wellbeing

Tags: Breath, Detection, Disease, Non-invasive, University of Wisconsin

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Gizmag: Ferrari launches 2012 Formula One tilt with F2012

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 06:48:38 +0000

With the northern Italian town of Maranello draped in snow, Ferrari Scuderia's launch of its 2012 F1 contender - the F2012 - had to rely on the internet. It may not have had the same pizzaz, but the show did go on. Along with repositioned radiators, the most obvious change is to the rear, where exhaust flows, both engine, radiator as well as aerodynamic air flows have been impacted by the new regulations that stipulate the exhausts must now exit within a very tight space at the rear of the car in order to minimize their aerodynamic influence... Continue Reading Ferrari launches 2012 Formula One tilt with F2012

Section: Automotive

Tags: F1, F2012, Ferrari, Pirelli, Racing

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Gizmag: Pureflame lets you hang a fireplace on your wall

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:55:25 +0000

At this time of year, many of us living in the upper reaches of the Northern Hemisphere start wishing that we had a fireplace in our home. Unfortunately, installing a fireplace and chimney in a house that doesn't already have them is quite an involved and expensive process. Here's a solution in the form of a functioning fireplace that you simply hang on the wall like a picture - it's made by a company called Pureflame... Continue Reading Pureflame lets you hang a fireplace on your wall

Section: Around The Home

Tags: Fire, Heat, Wall-mounted

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Gizmag: Stanford system could allow EVs to recharge from the road, while moving

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:46:55 +0000

The greatest obstacle standing in the way of electric-vehicle adoption - besides crafty, deceitful right wingers - is limited range. Electric vehicles can only travel 100 miles (161 km) on their best day. Because of the lack of electric charging stations and the amount of time involved in charging a battery, they just can't go as far as gas vehicles. A team of researchers at Stanford University recently made an important discovery in wireless charging technology. Their work could one day help solve the limited-range dilemma. .. Continue Reading Stanford system could allow EVs to recharge from the road, while moving

Section: Automotive

Tags: Electric Vehicles, Stanford University, Wireless, Wireless Charging

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Ars Technica: Raspberry Pi's $35 Linux computer on track to launch later this month

segphault@arstechnica.com (Ryan Paul) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:45:39 +0000

The first model of the Raspberry Pi Foundation's low-cost Linux computer will likely be available for purchase later this month. The organization announced today that manufacturing on the first batch is set to complete on February 20.

The $35 computer, which is a bare board the size of a deck of playing cards, has a 700MHz ARM11 CPU and 256MB of RAM. A second model with lower specs will eventually be released for $25. According to a statement issued today by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the $35 model will probably be available for purchase by the end of the month unless there are additional production delays.

We reported on the Raspberry Pi computer last month when manufacturing was set to begin. Completion of the first batch was delayed because the manufacturer had difficulty sourcing a component. The issue was resolved and production resumed.

In addition to announcing the expected ate of completion for the first batch, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has also announced the availability of technical documentation from Broadcom with details about the SoC used in the Raspberry Pi board. The document is available for download as a PDF file.

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Ars Technica: ITC lawyers argue that Barnes & Noble didn't infringe Microsoft's patents

peter.bright@arstechnica.com (Peter Bright) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:30:15 +0000

Barnes & Noble received a boost in its patent infringement case against Microsoft after staff attorneys at the US International Trade Commission recommended that ITC Judge Theodore Essex find that the book company had not infringed on three Microsoft patents, reports Bloomberg.

Microsoft brought the case against Barnes & Noble in March of last year, claiming that the NOOK and NOOK Color tablets infringed on five patents. In the run up to the eventual hearings, Redmond dropped two of the patents from the case, with three remaining.

Essex discarded Barnes & Noble's affirmative defense in which the company alleged that Microsoft's attempt to assert patents against Android was a breach of antitrust law, leaving subsequent discussion to revolve around the validity and applicability of Microsoft's patents. The ITC lawyers, acting as an independent third party and giving their own assessment of the evidence presented, argue that there is no infringement case to answer.

After Essex has reviewed the relevant evidence presented by Microsoft, Barnes & Noble, and the ITC's own lawyers, he is expected to release his findings on April 27th. This initial determination will then be reviewed by an ITC panel, which will make the final decision on the case's outcome.

The software giant is downplaying the significance of the ITC lawyers' position. In a statement, a company representative said, "This was a preliminary argument by the Office of Unfair Import Investigations ('OUII') staff attorney, which was filed before the presentation of the evidence at the hearing has occurred. The OUII staff may change its position after the hearing. Additionally, the administrative law judge will hear the evidence and arguments at the hearing and will come to his own conclusion."

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Ars Technica: Google to strip Chrome of SSL revocation checking

dan.goodin@arstechnica.com (Dan Goodin) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:15:27 +0000

Google's Chrome browser will stop relying on a decades-old method for ensuring secure sockets layer certificates are valid after one of the company's top engineers compared it to seat belts that break when they are needed most.

The browser will stop querying CRL, or certificate revocation lists, and databases that rely on OCSP, or online certificate status protocol, Google researcher Adam Langley said in a blog post published on Sunday. He said the services, which browsers are supposed to query before trusting a credential for an SSL-protected address, don't make end users safer because Chrome and most other browsers establish the connection even when the services aren't able to ensure a certificate hasn't been tampered with.

"So soft-fail revocation checks are like a seat-belt that snaps when you crash," Langley wrote. "Even though it works 99% of the time, it's worthless because it only works when you don't need it."

SSL critics have long complained that the revocation checks are mostly useless. Attackers who have the ability to spoof the websites and certificates of Gmail and other trusted websites typically have the ability to replace warnings that the credential is no longer valid with a response that says the server is temporarily down. Indeed, Moxie Marlinspike's SSL Strip hacking tool automatically supplies such messages, effectively bypassing the measure.

"While the benefits of online revocation checking are hard to find, the costs are clear: online revocation checks are slow and compromise privacy," Langley added. That's because the checks add a median time of 300 milliseconds and a mean of almost 1 second to page loads, making many websites reluctant to use SSL. Marlinspike and others have also complained that the services allow certificate authorities to compile logs of user IP addresses and the sites they visit over time.

Chrome will instead rely on its automatic update mechanism to maintain a list of certificates that have been revoked for security reasons. Langley called on certificate authorities to provide a list of revoked certificates that Google bots can automatically fetch. The time frame for the Chrome changes to go into effect are "on the order of months," a Google spokesman said.

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Groklaw: Oracle v. Google - Google Denied Writ of Mandamus on Lindholm Email

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:00:00 +0000

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit earlier today denied Google's petition for a writ of mandamus to overturn the district court's ruling that the Lindholm email was not privileged. Maybe, just maybe, Google will now throw in the towel on trying to protect the Lindholm email.

In an opinion which cast little doubt as to the law or the facts in this instance, a three-judge panel of the Federal Circuit found the claim of privilege to be totally undermined by the content of the email, the instructions that gave rise to the email (as stated in the body of the email), and the fact that the addressees of the email were not legal counsel to Google.

Linux Weekly News: Canonical pulls the plug on Kubuntu

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:46:07 +0000

Kubuntu lead developer Jonathan Riddell has sent out an announcement that Canonical will no longer be funding work on the KDE-based Kubuntu distribution. "The practical changes are I won't be able to work on KDE bits in my work time after 12.04 and there won't be paid support for versions after 12.04. This is a rational business decision, Kubuntu has not been a business success after 7 years of trying, and it is unrealistic to expect it to continue to have financial resources put into it."

Ars Technica: LibreOffice developer shows prototype Android and HTML5 ports

segphault@arstechnica.com (Ryan Paul) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:30:47 +0000

The Document Foundation (TDF) announced plans last year to create mobile and cloud versions of LibreOffice. A preliminary iOS porting effort that was undertaken earlier in 2011 demonstrated the viability of the project and showed that the open source office suite could have a future beyond the desktop.

In a presentation this week at the FOSDEM conference, SUSE developer Michael Meeks shed some light on the current status of the porting project. The presentation slides, which he published on his blog, offer insight into some of the underlying technical details and the rationale for some of the high-level design decisions.

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Ars Technica: Canonical ending support for Kubuntu, reassigning lead developer

segphault@arstechnica.com (Ryan Paul) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:18:22 +0000

Jonathan Riddell, the lead developer of the Kubuntu project, announced today that his work on the KDE-based Ubuntu variant will no longer be funded by Canonical after the upcoming 12.04 release. Kubuntu will be developed entirely by volunteers, much like other community-maintained variants of Ubuntu.

Riddell will continue to be employed by Canonical, but working on Kubuntu will be confined to his free time. In order for the Kubuntu project to continue operating, Riddell says that community members will have to take a more active role in doing unpopular tasks such as ISO testing.

"The practical changes are I won't be able to work on KDE bits in my work time after 12.04 and there won't be paid support for versions after 12.04," he wrote. "This is a rational business decision, Kubuntu has not been a business success after 7 years of trying, and it is unrealistic to expect it to continue to have financial resources put into it."

Riddell and the Kubuntu team have done extraordinary work over the years to make Kubuntu a competitive Linux distribution. The quality and maturity of the distro have risen sharply over the past few years—it now rivals the best KDE distributions and has displaced openSUSE as our preferred environment for KDE testing. Although Kubuntu has managed to attract an audience, it has never been a commercially successful product for Canonical.

KDE's underlying Qt toolkit was recently added to the default Ubuntu installation. There are a lot of areas where Qt's integration with the rest of the Ubuntu environment could potentially be improved. It makes sense for Canonical to work on making Qt a first-class citizen in Ubuntu rather than funding a KDE variant of the distribution.

Kubuntu users who want to join the development effort and participate in testing and maintaining the distribution can learn more about how to get involved at the project's website.

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EFF News: PlayStation 3 "Other OS" Saga Shows: Jailbreaking Is Not a Crime

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:49:16 +0000

Every three years, the Copyright Office reviews requests for exemptions to the "anti-circumvention" rules in the DMCA. EFF has successfully lobbied for a number of exemptions in the past, and we're working to renew and expand those exemptions now. You can get behind our efforts by signing on today to letters of support: the filmmaker Kirby Ferguson is telling the Copyright Office why video ripping is so important to filmmakers and video artists, and the game system hacker bunnie Huang is addressing why we need to keep jailbreaking legal for all devices.

If you still aren't sure why jailbreaking is important, one prime example of the problem is the Sony PlayStation 3. That game system initially shipped with the ability to install Linux and other Unix derivatives. As a result, not only did hobbyists use PS3s as homebrew computers, but Unix-based PS3s were also linked in labs to make affordable supercomputers.

However, in April 2010, Sony’s mandatory firmware update -- version 3.21 -- removed the ability to install "Other OS" -- meaning no more Linux on your PlayStation. To add legal muscle to its firmware, Sony sued several security researchers for publishing information about security holes that would allow users to run Linux on their machines again. Claiming that the research violated the DMCA, Sony asked the court to impound all "circumvention devices" -- which it defines to include not only the defendants' computers, but also all "instructions," i.e., their research and findings.

This means you can set your PlayStation on fire, but you can’t run Linux on hardware you own. To illustrate how ludicrous this is, we made a video illustrating what an owner can do with a PlayStation -- and what Sony contends they can’t.

Privacy info. This embed will serve content from youtube.com

Help us legalize Linux on the PS3, and protect innovative uses of personal devices by signing on to bunnie's letter to the Copyright Office or by submitting your own comment today.

Gizmag: VITAband is a cash/I.D. combo you wear on your wrist

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:33:48 +0000

There’s one thing that everyone should have on their person when they venture off on solo outdoor activities – their I.D. That way, should they end up injured and unable to communicate, first responders will know who they are, and who to contact. While the various cards kept in one’s wallet are a good form of identification, a lot of people don’t want to lug a bulky wallet around in their pocket while doing things like running or rock-climbing. That’s where the VITAband comes in. Not only does the waterproof bracelet provide a link to its wearer’s full Emergency Response Profile, but it also allows them to make cash-free purchases... Continue Reading VITAband is a cash/I.D. combo you wear on your wrist

Section: Outdoors

Tags: Bracelet, Credit Card, Emergencies, Identification, Payment Technology, Visa

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Ars Technica: The officer who arrested Carlos Miller

timothy.lee@arstechnica.com (Timothy B. Lee) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:50:00 +0000

A Miami journalist has recovered video of police officers arresting him after it was deleted from his camera. The man was covering a police effort to evict Occupy Miami protestors. He plans to file a complaint with the police department and with the United States Department of Justice.

On January 31, Miami police evicted Occupy Miami protesters from their downtown campsite. On hand to cover the action was photojournalist Carlos Miller. Along with protestors and other journalists, he was pushed down the street by a line of police in riot gear. He tried to circle around the block to return to his car, but he found his path blocked by a second line of police officers.

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Ars Technica: Law firm that defended Marine still smarting from Anonymous attack

dan.goodin@arstechnica.com (Dan Goodin) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:26:00 +0000

The website of a law firm that represented a US Marine accused of leading a massacre that killed 24 Iraqi civilians remained inaccessible on Monday, three days after hackers with Anonymous took credit for an attack that compromised the site and exposed almost 3GB of confidential e-mails.

The breach of Puckett & Faraj came to light on Friday when Russian news site RT.com reported it was defaced to protest the firm's successful defense of Marine Sgt. Frank Wuterich. He was recently convicted on reduced charges of dereliction of duty in what was once a manslaughter case involving the death of 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq.

"As part of our ongoing efforts to expose the corruption of the court systems and the brutality of US imperialism, we want to bring attention to USMC Sgt. Frank Wuterich who along with his squad murdered dozens of unarmed civilians during the Iraqi Occupation," a message left on the firm's vandalized homepage read. "Can you believe this scumbag had his charges reduced to involuntary manslaughter and got away with only a pay cut?"

Anonymous members claimed to have retrieved gigabytes worth of confidential e-mails sent by the firm's employees, and as proof, they posted messages online that purportedly came from employees responding to their discovery of the breach.

"This may completely destroy the Law Firm," an employee named Marcy Atwood wrote in an email.

It has been a busy few days for hackers affiliated with Anonymous. Recently, hundreds of law enforcement officers in Texas saw their names and addresses published. And websites for police in Salt Lake City and Boston have been defaced. A conference call between FBI agents and their counterparts in the UK was also leaked late last week.

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Gizmag: Antenna-less RFID tags designed to work where others don't – on metal objects

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:13:16 +0000

Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are definitely a handy way of tracking shipments. Instead of simply crossing their fingers and hoping for the best, importers and exporters can check the location and condition of shipped items in real time, by remotely accessing the data being transmitted by RFID tags attached to those items. Unfortunately, many such tags don't work on metal objects such as shipping containers or oil drums, as the metal interferes with the functioning of the tags' antennas. A new tag developed at North Dakota State University gets around that limitation, however - it uses the metal object as its antenna. .. Continue Reading Antenna-less RFID tags designed to work where others don't – on metal objects

Section: Electronics

Tags: North Dakota State University, RFID, Shipping, Tracking

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Ars Technica: Apple rules top three smartphone spots but loses new users to Android

chris.foresman@arstechnica.com (Chris Foresman) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:05:00 +0000

Apple continues to hold the title for some of the top-selling smartphone models, with the iPhone 4S being the best selling handset in the US last quarter, according to a new report by market research firm NPD. But while the iPhone has repeatedly made Apple the top smartphone vendor in the US, Android still appears to be attracting more new users.

Apple had three iPhone models available for sale in the fourth quarter of 2011: the just-released iPhone 4S, the iPhone 4, which Apple continues to sell as a lower-cost entry-level model, and the nearly three-year-old iPhone 3GS, which AT&T still offers as essentially a $0 bargain smartphone. Collectively, all iPhones sold accounted for 43 percent of smartphone sales in the US for the quarter.

According to NPD analyst Ross Rubin, Apple sold nearly two iPhone 4S models for every iPhone 4 sold, and five iPhone 4S models for every iPhone 3GS sold. And despite the large disparity in numbers, the iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, and iPhone 3GS ended up being the top three smartphones sold in the US.

But even with the top Android smartphone (Samsung Galaxy SII) being outsold more than five to one in the US, Android handsets in aggregate still accounted for 48 percent of US smartphone sales last quarter, accord to NPD's data. Perhaps more alarming for Apple, users buying their first smartphones chose an Android device 57 percent of the time, and an iOS device just 34 percent of the time.

While Android has been criticized for its platform fragmentation and the complexity it presents to users, the platform's wide carrier support, growing app selection, and variety of models available from several vendors attracts a generally wider audience. Particularly in the US, Rubin noted, Android is the only choice for users who want to take advantage of LTE networks from Verizon and AT&T or Sprint's WiMAX network.

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Hack a Day: leds

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:49:45 +0000

Around this time last year, [KopfKopfKopfAffe] was enlisted as a set designer and was told to build some sort of light effects for electronic music parties. The budget for the project wasn’t much at 200 Euros, but he did manage to build decent 5×5 RGB LED matrix that is fully controllable by a computer.

[KopfKopfKopfAffe] didn’t have the time or money to wait for manufactured PCBs, so a bunch of perfboard was placed in a CNC mill with a pen to act as a plotter. All the lines that needed soldered were drawn on by the mill, a feat that probably saved hours of looking at the design before committing solder to iron.

A total of five boards were constructed, each one capable of controlling five RGB LEDs. Each board can be dasiy-chained with an RS-232 serial connection for further expansion. The only thing that’s needed to control the matrix is 17 bits that includes an address and RGB color data for each LED. The system only cost about 10 Euros per node, but we think that could be significantly reduced by leaving out the Molex and DB-9 connectors. [Kopf] project turned out very nice, check it out after the break.

Filed under: led hacks

Ars Technica: DRM server transition to make some Ubisoft games unplayable starting tomorrow

kyle.orland@arstechnica.com (Kyle Orland) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:22:00 +0000

While DRM schemes are designed to make sure only legitimate purchasers can play a game, the opposite will be true starting tomorrow for some Ubisoft titles. That's when a planned server migration will temporarily disable the DRM servers for some of the company's Mac and PC titles, making it so only pirates with cracked, DRM-free versions of the games will be able to play.

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Gizmag: Cook-Air delivers 1,100 degrees of meat-searing, wood-smoking grill top

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:13:48 +0000

Outdoor chefs that are looking for a little extra searing power may want to consider the Cook-Air grill, which calls itself the world's most powerful portable BBQ. The Cook-Air gives you more than 1,000ºF and the equivalent of 65,000 BTUs of wood-fire power. Its small, portable design lets you take it nearly anywhere - from the backyard to the campground to the weekend tailgate. .. Continue Reading Cook-Air delivers 1,100 degrees of meat-searing, wood-smoking grill top

Section: Outdoors

Tags: Camping, Cooking, Food, grill, outdoor, Portable

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Gizmag: Child creates molecule that could be used for energy storage or explosives

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:04:01 +0000

I don't know about other people, but when I was a child, I was inventing things such as a musical instrument made out of a folded piece of cardboard and some rubber bands. Ten year-old Clara Lazen, however, has done something a little more noteworthy. The fifth-grader from Kansas City, Missouri, built a model of a molecule that is new to science. If the molecule itself were to actually be created, it could possibly be used for energy storage, or in explosives... Continue Reading Child creates molecule that could be used for energy storage or explosives

Section: Good Thinking

Tags: Education, Energy, Explosives, Molecules, Storage

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Hack a Day: scavenger

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:49:43 +0000

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.

Filed under: arduino hacks

Gizmag: Pentax Ricoh and Marc Newson create new K-01 camera with world's thinnest interchangeable lens

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:18:09 +0000

Pentax Ricoh and acclaimed designer Marc Newson have joined forces to create a new 16 megapixel mirrorless camera and a new pancake lens that's claimed to be the world's thinnest interchangeable lens. The Pentax K-01 interchangeable lens camera (pronounced "kay zero one") is also said to be compatible with over 25 million previously-produced Pentax K-mount lenses... Continue Reading Pentax Ricoh and Marc Newson create new K-01 camera with world's thinnest interchangeable lens

Section: Digital Cameras

Tags: Interchangeable lens, Lenses, Mirrorless, PENTAX, Pentax Ricoh, Ricoh

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Linux Weekly News: Mueller: Apple's iterative approach to FRAND abuse is not for the faint of heart

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:16:16 +0000

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)."

Linux Weekly News: Stable kernels 3.0.20 and 3.2.5

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:01:22 +0000

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.

Ars Technica: From your couch, Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking

sj.arstechnica@gmail.com (Scott K. Johnson) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:00:58 +0000

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.

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Ars Technica: NimbleBit's Tiny Tower (left) and Zynga's Dream Heights (right) might seem pretty similar, but as far as copyright law goes, they're probably legally distinct

kyle.orland@arstechnica.com (Kyle Orland) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:52:00 +0000

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.

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Hack a Day: Ogre

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:49:41 +0000

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.

Filed under: Kinect hacks, Medical hacks

Bruce Schneier: The Failure of Two-Factor Authentication

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:23:27 +0000

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: Siri is designed to work whether you are holding an iPhone 4S close to your head or at arm's length.

chris.foresman@arstechnica.com (Chris Foresman) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:15:00 +0000

Siri, Apple's widely advertised voice-activated "intelligent assistant," has so far been limited to the latest iPhone 4S hardware after Apple's acquisition. Though observers have come up with various reasons for the restriction, a newly revealed piece of the puzzle suggests the issue is related to hardware after all. According to recent SEC filings from technology start-up Audience, Apple incorporated an improved version of its background noise filtering technology directly into the A5 processor used in the iPhone 4S—technology that improves Siri's speech recognition capabilities.

Siri was originally a third-party app for the iPhone that ran on devices as old as the iPhone 3GS. Apple later bought the company behind Siri, and integrated the tech directly into iOS 5, which was released to the public in October of 2011. Siri is now only available on the iPhone 4S, however, and Apple subsequently pulled the old app from the App Store when the 4S was released.

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Gizmag: Dramatic "Safety Sphere" concept provides all-round protection for motorcyclists

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:14:41 +0000

Airbags for motorcyclists, whether built into the vehicle (a la Honda) or the rider's apparel (like the D-Air, Spidi and Hit-Air), are not a new idea. But Canadian inventor Rejean Neron's Safety Sphere concept has to be the most, well, all-encompassing of those we've seen. Described as an "inflatable crash garment for non-enclosed vehicle riders", Safety Sphere isn't so much built into the rider's suit as it is the rider's suit. In the event of an accident, the intended results are nothing if not dramatic, as the CG video promo ably illustrates... Continue Reading Dramatic "Safety Sphere" concept provides all-round protection for motorcyclists

Section: Motorcycles

Tags: Airbags, Concept, Motorcycles, Safety

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Ars Technica: Bis(imino)pyridine iron dinitrogen complexes used to replace precious metal catalysts

zeotherm@gmail.com (Matt Ford) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:00:25 +0000

Homogeneous catalysis, in which the catalyst is mixed directly in with the reaction components, sees widespread use in industrial settings. The catalysts themselves are often complex organometallic compounds that contain a precious metal atom/ion—platinum, rhodium, palladium, rhenium—at their molecular center.

From an engineering standpoint, a reactor for a homogeneously catalyzed reaction can often be described as a catalyst recovery system first, reactor second. The high cost of these precious metals means that recovery and reuse of the catalyst is essential to making the reactions economic.

A report published in last week's edition of Science discusses the work of a team of chemists who are looking at ways of obviating the need for the precious metals, replacing them with their more ordinary relatives. The paper focuses on chemistry that is important to the silicone industry.

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Hack a Day: electronic-temperature-candle

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:49:38 +0000

[William] developed this temperature candle as a tool to help keep babies safe as they sleep. It seems that ambient temperature has an effect on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). This device is meant to alert you when room temperature is outside of the recommended envelope.

The board hosts an eight-pin PIC microcontroller (12F683P), a temperature sensor, RGB LED, and a push button. The round PCB is the same size as a votive candle, which is nice except that you’re going to have to drill a hole in your candle holder to accommodate that barrel jack.

The temperature sensor is read by the microcontroller and used to determine the color of the LED. Red is hot, blue is cold, and just right is somewhere in between. But if you’d rather know the exact current temperature you can press the button and it’ll blink out the Celsius reading using blue for 10 degree increments (three blinks is 30 degrees, etc.) and red for single degrees. Don’t miss the demo of the candle in the video after the break.

Filed under: Microcontrollers

Linux Weekly News: Security advisories for Monday

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:49:30 +0000

Debian has updated cacti (fixes a regression in the previous update), xen-qemu-dm (code execution), and apache2 (multiple vulnerabilities).

Fedora has updated bip (F16; F15: code execution).

Oracle has updated php OL6; OL5; OL4: denial of service/remote code execution), ghostscript (OL6; OL5; OL4: multiple vulnerabilities), and OL5: php53 (remote code execution).

SUSE has updated kernel (multiple vulnerabilities).

Ubuntu has updated firefox (multiple vulnerabilities), mozvoikko (multiple vulnerabilities), and ubufox & webfav (multiple vulnerabilities).

Gizmag: Update Twitter in Morse Code with the Tworsekey

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:30:52 +0000

Urgent messages sent using Morse Code via radio waves or by electrical telegraphy are, by necessity, quite short - after all, you don't want to spend all day dotting and dashing your way through War and Peace. These days, of course, if you want to send the latest piece of gossip or news to those near and dear there are quite a few quicker options - from email to instant messaging and Facebook to Twitter. For users of the latter networking platform who are looking for a novel way to merge the old with the new, Martin Kaltenbrummer's open source Tworsekey Morse Code interface can deliver messages direct to the Twitter API via Ethernet LAN... Continue Reading Update Twitter in Morse Code with the Tworsekey

Section: Electronics

Tags: Arduino, Input Device, Open Source, Retro, Twitter

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Hack a Day: speeding-up-mac-mini-hard-disk

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:49:49 +0000

[Andrew] was left wanting by the slow hard drive in his 2011 Mac Mini. He set out to add a 10,000 RPM drive and we think he did a great job of pulling it off. Luckily he also took the time to document the process so you can try it yourself.

As with a lot of Apple products, a big part of this hack is just getting the darn thing apart without breaking something. Once that’s done, you’re got to do a little bit of interface hacking. To save space Apple uses a non-standard SATA breakout cable so [Andrew] starts by ordering a second hard drive cable from the company. He then soldered a thin wire connecting 12V from the motherboard to the 12V pin on a SATA connector. From there it’s just a matter of altering the original hard drive sled to make room for the 500 GB WD Velociraptor drive. It fits below the original and serves as additional space instead of as a replacement.

Filed under: macs hacks

Linux Journal: Creating a vDSO: the Colonel's Other Chicken

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:43:22 +0000

A vDSO (virtual dynamic shared object) is an alternative to the somewhat cycle-expensive system call interface that the GNU/Linux kernel provides. But, before I explain how to cook up your own vDSO, in this brief jaunt down operating system lane, I cover some basics of vDSOs, what they are and why they are useful. more>>

Ars Technica: A screenshot of "Cut the Birds," a strange mishmash knockoff of Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja

jacqui@arstechnica.com (Jacqui Cheng) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:36:00 +0000

Apple has begun to take action against iPhone app ripoffs that have been crudding up the App Store. Over the weekend, the company removed a number of apps that bear a striking similarity to ones that are already popular among iOS users—the list includes Angry Ninja Birds, Plant vs. Zombie, and Temple Jump, which correlate to the popular titles Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies, and Temple Run (hat tip to Gamasutra). The move is encouraging to developers who have been struggling with knockoffs attempting to steal their business on the App Store, but there's plenty left to do if Apple wants to show it's serious about tackling the problem once and for all.

Apps attempting to clone—or at least ride the popularity wave of—other apps has been a problem for iOS developers for years now. Ars first started covering the phenomenon in early 2009, but examples continue to pop up on both the mobile App Store as well as the Mac App Store.

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Ars Technica: You get five more

nate@arstechnica.com (Nate Anderson) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:25:00 +0000

Whatever happened to the "six strikes" system that was to help civilize the American Internet?

Three years ago, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) gave up its mass litigation strategy of targeting tens of thousands of alleged file-swappers. Instead, the group announced that it would pursue a "graduated response" system in partnership with Interent providers. Infringement notices would be sent on to subscribers, who would be hit with increasing penalties as the notices stacked up.

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Gizmag: What the schools of the future could look like

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:11:47 +0000

Here at Gizmag we are always keeping an eye on innovative solutions for schooling and education. We've covered the solar powered mobile computer classroom project and the AIRchitecture flying classrooms of the future, but now we're excited about these proposals from architects all over the world, who recently submitted their ideas for what schools of the future could look like... Continue Reading What the schools of the future could look like

Section: Good Thinking

Tags: Architecture, Competition, Education, Learning, School, Sustainable

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Linux Weekly News: Five open source hardware projects that could change the world (The H)

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:49:34 +0000

Here's a lengthy survey of open hardware projects in The H. "The price/performance of a general purpose computer built using FPGAs wouldn't be great when compared with commodity gear, but the technology excels in many niche and specialist applications, such as in areas of computing that make use of dedicated hardware to bring high performance to tasks such as signal processing, encryption and networking. Since you can program many hardware paths in an FPGA they are well suited to jobs that can be broken down and processed in parallel, and some of the more powerful devices pack millions of logic blocks and have a transistor count well into the billions, with a blisteringly fast serial bandwidth that is measured in terabits/second."

Gizmag: Nissan's Invitation Concept car

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:34:18 +0000

Nissan's next mainstream B-segment contender will be previewed at the upcoming Geneva Auto Show, in the form of the Invitation Concept. The sleek hatchback will hit showrooms in 2013... Continue Reading Nissan's Invitation Concept car

Section: Automotive

Tags: Concept Cars, Geneva Motor Show 2012, Invitation, Nissan

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Gizmag: Scientists map Milky Way's magnetic field in highest resolution yet

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:27:44 +0000

A team of scientists led by the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) has produced the highest resolution map of the Milky Way's magnetic field ever produced. The map pools over 41,000 measurements from across 26 projects. "The resulting database is equivalent to peppering the entire sky with sources separated by an angular distance of two full moons," said Dr. Tracy Clarke of the Naval Research Laboratory... Continue Reading Scientists map Milky Way's magnetic field in highest resolution yet

Section: Science and Education

Tags: Astronomy, Physics

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GoRobotics.net: How Do I Choose Appropriate Sensors?

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:08:45 +0000

For a robot to react to its environment, it must first obtain information about its surroundings. Robots are not limited to just sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. Robots can not only sense but give accurate values for a variety of environmental factors that humans are otherwise unaware of or incapable of doing.

Measure Distance

Contact (when an object is touched) and Proximity (object is close)
Ultrasonic Range Finders (variable distances)
Infrared and laser (used for a specific distance or range)
Accelerometers (distance based on initial position, integrated twice),
IMU‘s (distance based on initial position and includes rotation)
Encoders and Disks (location based on number of evolutions of the wheel)
Linear Potentiometer (location along slider)
Resistive band (location along a band)
Stretch and Bend Sensors (distance stretched or related)

Measure Rotation

Potentiometer (usually 0 to 300 degrees)
Gyroscope (angle based on initial value)
IMU‘s (angle based on initial value and includes possible linear acceleration)
Encoders and Disks (angle based on number of fractional turns)
Stretch and Bend Sensors (moving closer or farther – use geometry)

Measure Environmental Conditions

Light Sensor (specific color, intensity or range)
Sound sensor (specific decibel reading or range)
Thermal Sensors (specific temperature or temperature range)
Infrared (used to measure temperature)
Temperature and Humidity (range of values)
Cameras and Vision Sensors (measure depth, color, proximity and object type)
Barometric Sensor (measure pressure)

Measure Orientation and Position

Compass (orientation with respect to earth’s magnetic field)
Accelerometers (distance based on initial position, integrated twice),
IMU‘s (distance based on initial position and includes rotation)
Gyroscope (angle based on initial value)
Stretch and Bend Sensors (orientation of specific parts)
Localization and GPS (fixed sensors locate an object in 3D space)

Miscellaneous

Current and Voltage Sensors (range of values)
Magnetic Sensors (intensity of magnetic field)
Vibration (specific value or range of values))
Stretch and Bend Sensors (object warping or changing shape/position)

Ars Technica: Torrent search engine BTJunkie voluntarily shuts down

editor@wired.com (WIRED UK) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:38:00 +0000

Torrent search engine BTjunkie is the latest file-sharing service to fall on its sword in the wake of the Megaupload sting. Junkie, one of the largest BitTorrent indexes, decided to shut down voluntarily.

A statement on the website reads, "This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we've decided to voluntarily shut down. We've been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it's time to move on. It's been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best!"

The site was never directly targeted by copyright holders, an unnamed BTJunkie founder told TorrentFreak. However, the site was reported to the US Trade Representative (USTR) in 2011, the RIAA and MPAA listed the torrent index as a 'rogue' site, and Google censored the search term.

Despite avoiding legal attention so far, the site's founder told TorrentFreak that the legal action against file-sharing sites Megaupload and The Pirate Bay played an important role in its closure.

Online storage locker Megaupload was seized and shut down by the US Department of Justice in January 2012, for allegedly breaching copyright infringement law. The site's staff members were arrested and founder Kim Dotcom was recently been denied bail.

Meanwhile, the founders of The Pirate Bay were arrested for copyright infringement in 2009. This month, the supreme court of Sweden made the ruling final, and announced that the founders will not be able to appeal their months-long prison sentences or combined fines of 46 million kronor (around $6.83 million).

In response to Megaupload's shutdown, a raft of popular Web lockers have neutered the ability to share files with others. FileSonic, FileServe and Uploaded.to all cut off file-sharing in the days after Megaupload was seized.

The Pirate Bay, on the other hand, moved its domain name from .org to the Swedish .se. A Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak that this was to prevent US authorities from seizing the popular domain.

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Ars Technica: Verizon, Redbox team up to build video streaming, DVD service

jon.brodkin@arstechnica.com (Jon Brodkin) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:17:00 +0000

Verizon and Redbox are developing a new video service to compete against Netflix, which will combine Redbox's kiosk DVD and Blu-Ray rental service with streaming and downloadable video content made possible by Verizon's network.

Verizon and Coinstar (Redbox's parent company) announced the partnership today with a press release and press conference, saying a subscription service "and more" will become available in the second half of 2012. Details were limited due to "competitive reasons."

The joint venture will apparently not include DVDs through the US Postal Service, as Netflix offers. Redbox has kiosks at 29,000 locations nationwide, including grocery stores, convenience stores, drug stores, and at some Wal-Mart stores. "By offering instantly available online and mobile content with immediate access to physical media through rental kiosks, Verizon and Redbox will be uniquely positioned to deliver the best of both worlds—digital and physical—to consumers across the country," the companies said.

Verizon owns 65 percent of the new joint venture, which is also described in an SEC filing, with Redbox owning the other 35 percent. While Netflix is struggling after a shaky 2011, Verizon and Redbox will still have their work cut out for them. No mention of specific content was made, but Verizon said it will use its "industry-wide relationships with entertainment content providers" to ensure a good selection of movies online.

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Linux Weekly News: "Open Advice" from 42 free software contributors

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:12:10 +0000

"Open Advice" is a new book consisting of essays from some 42 community authors; it is available in print form or downloadable under the CC-BY-SA license. "This book is the answer to 'What would you have liked to know when you started contributing?'. The authors give insights into the many different talents it takes to make a successful software project, coding of course but also design, translation, marketing and other skills. We are here to give you a head start if you are new. And if you have been contributing for a while already, we are here to give you some insight into other areas and projects."

Hack a Day: Untitled

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:01:47 +0000

[Patrick] decided to make a computer controlled etch-a-sketch. While the idea is not that new, there is always a different way to accomplish a goal. An Arduino is used to control a pair of stepper motors which were sourced for pretty cheap, and even came with their own driver. Next a stand was mocked up using foam board, which helps determine where all the parts should live.

Next was a way to attach the steppers to the knobs, gears would be used and a collet meant for model airplanes was sourced to make the mechanical connection between gear and shaft. With everything set in place via foam board and paper printouts, it is off to get some thin plywood. The plywood is sent though a laser cutter creating most of the stand and gears. Now its all software, a program was whipped up for OSX which converts low res pictures into squiggly lines perfect for the etch-a-sketch to draw on its screen.

The results are quite impressive, join us after the break for a quick video.

Filed under: arduino hacks, news, toy hacks

The Daily WTF: CodeSOD: Dirty Code

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Ever since being hired, Adam had spent most of his time working on new projects.

He was aware that there was an "old system" running out there and would someday be shut down and his efforts were to help this come about, but he never had the opportunity to cross paths with it. Based on what he had heard though, this was a very, very good thing.

However, once Adam had earned a reputation of his own of being a good problem solver, he was soon asked to peek at the "old" (ok, current) system and see how it worked. You know, the in lieu of a functional design document, he received the order "Just make it work like it does now".

In the one source file he was on, Adam quickly found the following which he considered to probably be the finest bit of coding he had ever seen.

//These fucking wankers wanted it unfucked 
private bool un-fuck(int fuck-v) {
   if (fuck-v == 1)
   {
    return true;
   }
   else
   {
    return false;
   }
}

And it didn't stop there. After a quick search he found 20 shits, 25 fucks, 15 bollocks, and 8 assholes in the rest of the code. The swear words were found mostly in the comments, but he did find some cases where the arrangement of variables and function names made for some rather "interesting" business logic.

This of course left Adam with a small dilemma - how does one document something that is not safe for work?

Cool Tools: Wind Chimes: Design and Construction

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:40:32 +0000

Make your own. Not those tinny flea market varieties, but large striking sonorous chimes tuned in all manner of unusual styles. (Listen to samples on the book’s website or included CD). There are several dozen unusual ways to tune the chimes. All tunings are fairly mathematical, which is the core of this book, but not difficult to execute with hardware-store tubing. My son and I used this short but very explicit manual to create a large copper pipe one that emits a lovely melody in the breeze. The bigger the better. (The bigger the more wind they need, too.) This guide is a very practical way to experience the math of music and the beauty of alternative music systems.

Setting up the hanging strings at the correct spacing.

Our copper chime hanging in the cherry tree.

-- KK

Wind Chimes: Design and Construction
Bart Hopkin
2005, 68 pages
$15

Available from Amazon

Sample Excerpts:

Groklaw: Oracle v. Google - Still Waiting on the Revised Cockburn Report

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:40:00 +0000

Although Dr. Cockburn's third attempt at a damages report was due to be filed last Friday, February 3rd, it has yet to show up on the electronic docket. That is most likely due to its length and the possibility that Oracle will seek to redact portions of the filing. In the meantime, Judge Alsup has issued a clarifying order with respect to the trial briefs on the issue of copyright. (710 [PDF; Text]) The judge basically instructs the parties to not interpret the law for him but to set out the relevant passages so he may draw his own conclusions. In addition, he wants the parties to make clear where they agree on the underlying law.

We also have the transcript of the July 21 Daubert hearing on the first Cockburn damages report. (Text of Document 231) You will recall that it was at the conclusion of this hearing that Judge Alsup ordered Oracle and Dr. Cockburn to go back and try again with something closer to a more reasonable assessment of damages. (Damages Report - Try Again, Oracle) We now get a better insight into the arguments set forth by Google in attacking the original report.

Gizmag: New bonsai 100 bhp Hybrid Synergy Drive for Toyota Yaris

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:21:47 +0000

The littlest Toyota, the Yaris, is about to become hybridized too, and the engineering job to reduce the size of its Hybrid Synergy Drive system for the diminutive car is worth a look. The system uses a new 1.5-litre Atkinson cycle petrol engine that weighs 16.5kg less and is 10 per cent more compact than the 1.8-litre unit used in the Prius and Auris. Likewise, other major components such as the electric motor, power control unit and transaxle were also made lighter and smaller, but the power has remained robust at 99 bhp (74 kW) - most importantly, the hybrid Yaris will go on sale mid-year with very low fuel consumption, emissions, and ownership costs... Continue Reading New bonsai 100 bhp Hybrid Synergy Drive for Toyota Yaris

Section: Automotive

Tags: Hybrid, Prius, Toyota, Yaris

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Hack a Day: Untitled

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:01:43 +0000

[hackitbuildit], from instructables, has brought us a a DIY windows 8 tablet. To make the tablet, an old laptop is used that meets the minimum requirements of windows 8 preview, a touch screen conversion kit, and of course the software itself. The laptop is first prepared by removing the casing around the screen, and if you just go by the pictures it kind of looks like he is ripping it apart! Though if you look at the video screws are being removed.

The screen is flipped around and laid on the keyboard with a couple spacers between them, as many laptops use the keyboard area as heat sinking. The touch screen is installed, and some wood strips are hot-glued to the outside to fill in the gap between the screen and base. With a little paint you’re left with a large, but functional windows 8 tablet to get started developing for.

Filed under: laptops hacks

Ars Technica: "Winter landscape with skaters" by Hendrick Avercamp

sj.arstechnica@gmail.com (Scott K. Johnson) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:00:17 +0000

I’m not a big guy. It doesn’t take a tremendous shove to send me crashing to the floor. But what does it take to knock the Earth’s climate off balance? In the case of the Little Ice Age, a recent 400-year cold snap, a new study suggests a few well-timed volcanic eruptions might have done the trick.

Major glacial periods are controlled by the Earth's orbit. Summer temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere have been on a slow decline for the last 8,000 years as the orbital precession cycle pushed summer closer to aphelion, the point in Earth’s orbit where it’s farthest from the Sun. That’s just the first few steps on the road that would eventually lead us down from the peak of our current interglacial and into the next glacial period. But there have been bumps along this road, the most familiar of them being the "Little Ice Age."

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Gizmag: Spring-loaded Recoil Winder aims to end cable management misery

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:43:10 +0000

A new Kickstarter product to address that First Worldiest of First World problems, errant electronics cables, is off to a flying start. Since launching the project page, the Recoil Winder family of spring-loaded, self-winding cable holders has attracted five times the starting goal of US$10,000, and with 19 days to go. Seeing a Winder in action, it isn't hard to see why. The spring-loaded mechanism appears to be very quick and easy to use, and the result is so neat it's hard to watch one in action without imagining a future free of boxes, drawers and cupboards full of entwined masses of seemingly self-tangling cables... Continue Reading Spring-loaded Recoil Winder aims to end cable management misery

Section: Good Thinking

Tags: Cable, Kickstarter, Storage

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Gizmag: Honda's 1000cc MotoGP contender unveiled

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:37:30 +0000

Honda's much-awaited 1000cc MotoGP contender, the RC213V, was unveiled at a Repsol Honda news conference last week prior to three days of official testing at the Sepang circuit in Malaysia. The RC213V replaces its 800cc predecessor, the 2011 championship-winning RC212V, with much riding on the shoulders of Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa for the new season... Continue Reading Honda's 1000cc MotoGP contender unveiled

Section: Motorcycles

Tags: Casey Stoner, Dani Pedrosa, Honda, MotoGP, RC213V, Repsol

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Gizmag: Cryoscope gives users a feel for tomorrow's weather

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:25:59 +0000

Given that touch is generally the best way to determine how hot or cold something is - as long as it's not too hot or cold - Rob Godshaw has come up with a device that could provide a more immediately understandable representation of tomorrow's weather than the traditional abstract number coupled with simplified symbols seen on the nightly news. His invention is an aluminum cube called the Cryoscope that adds some haptic feedback to the daily weather forecast by letting users physically feel tomorrow's temperature - at least in their fingertips... Continue Reading Cryoscope gives users a feel for tomorrow's weather

Section: Good Thinking

Tags: Haptics, Temperature, Weather

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Sparkfun: According to Pete - February Edition

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:00:00 +0000

If you're not familiar with our video series "According to Pete,"this is a monthly video where Pete Dokter, the SparkFun Director of Engineering, visits various engineering topics and answers user submitted questions. In this month's video, our Pete talks a bit about OpAmps, LEDs, and answers a few other questions. Check it out:

There you have it! As always, feel free to leave any additional comments, questions, or suggestions in the comments below. We are always looking for more fodder for the "According to Pete"video series, so questions you might want answered in the future are welcome as well. Cheers!

Sparkfun: Dungeons and Dragons Dice Gauntlet

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Today we have a very cool tutorial from our e-textiles guru Dia. This tutorial has kinda already made the rounds on the interwebs (such as on Gizmodo), but we wanted to mention it here because, well, it's pretty awesome. Check it out:

What you see above is a Dungeon and Dragons bracer that is equipped with a 7-segment display. When the wearer shakes his/her arm, it will randomly display the numbers 1 and 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 20, or 100. So, essentially, it could replace all the dice you'd need to play D&D. The project uses a bunch of LilyPad components, namely:

This is a very cool (and super nerdy) project that we really like. It shows an awesome way to apply e-textile technology to a useful project. Check out Dia's full-tutorial for more information and to learn how to build your own!

bldgblog: How to dismantle your door: A Man Escaped (1956)

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Manaugh) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 03:19:00 +0000

[Image: From A Man Escaped (1956), courtesy of the Criterion Collection].

Breaking Out and Breaking In: A Distributed Film Fest of Prison Breaks and Bank Heists—co-sponsored by BLDGBLOG, Filmmaker Magazine, and Studio-X NYC—continued last week with Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped (1956). Spoilers ahead!

Bresson's film tells the story of Fontaine—a French prisoner held by Nazis in a prison in occupied Lyon—and it operates through the "close scrutiny of salient details," in Roger Ebert's words. Fontaine himself becomes an avid student of the prison interior, always looking askance for points of weakness. This has the effect of explicitly foregrounding the space of confinement in which Fontaine is held, including, as we'll see, the objects in the cell with him, deemphasizing characterization in favor of an intense focus on architectural setting. Ebert continues:

In this way, we watch Fontaine examine his cell. We know it as well as he does. We see how he stands on a shelf to look out a high, barred window. We see how the food plates enter and leave, and how the guards can see him through a peep hole. We see the routine as prisoners are marched to morning wash-up.

Amongst these daily routines, we also watch Fontaine slip a note into a fellow prisoner's pocket. What does the note say? "The exit route from the building and how to dismantle your door," Fontaine whispers.

[Image: From A Man Escaped (1956), courtesy of the Criterion Collection].

As usual, I want to focus only on specific spatial details, in keeping with the premise of Breaking Out and Breaking In, so I'll just make two quick points.

1) Breaking out, in A Man Escaped, occurs through the strategic dismantling and reassembly of all designed objects that aren't architecture. Blankets are cut down to strips then rewoven into rope, finally wrapped and strengthened with wire from the bedframe. The hinges of a small cupboard door are bent and refashioned into grappling hooks. A mere spoon—then another—is sharpened to a chisel with which to cut through the soft wood of the cell door.

It's as if the tools of escape are, in fact, already hidden all around us, disguised as the overlooked equipment of everyday life—the mundane bits of furniture, clothing, and internal ornament that, provided we teach ourselves how to reassemble them, will lead to an unparalleled state of post-architectural liberation. Put another way, the limits of architecture are exposed by everything normally stored inside it.

[Image: From A Man Escaped (1956), courtesy of the Criterion Collection].

2) The other obvious detail is the film's overriding non-visual dimension—that is to say, the sound design of solitary confinement.

From the coded coughs of fellow inmates to the banister-tapping approach of a particular guard, and from the reciprocated wall-knocks passed prisoner to prisoner to the soundscape of the final escape itself—with the other-worldly grinding gears of a patrol bicycle and the marching feet on gravel that betray a guard who the escapees might not otherwise have seen—the prison is more an acoustic environment than a visual one. Even the timing of Fontaine and his last-minute assistant, as they scamper across the prison rooftop, is coincident with the passing of a nearby train, using the sonic effects of urban infrastructure as camouflage for their actions.

They thus navigate from ring to ring, passing steadily outward, carrying reconstructed ropes made from bedding and forcibly recurved grappling hooks, arming the building's contents against the building itself, disguised by the sounds of a city into which they successfully disappear.

(Earlier: A Prison Camp is for Escaping. Up next: watch Cool Hand Luke on Monday, February 6; for the complete Breaking Out and Breaking In schedule, click here).

bldgblog: Making Planning Popular

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Manaugh) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 02:19:00 +0000

[Image: Making Planning Popular on display at the RCA in London].

For those of you near London, you have one more day to see David Knight's Making Planning Popular on display in a group show called GRIST at the Royal College of Art. I'm a huge fan of Knight's work—an ongoing research project on the strange terrains both encouraged and required by local planning ordinances—and he's thus become a regular referent here on the blog.

[Image: The manifesto from Making Planning Popular].

Specifically, Making Planning Popular "aims to encourage greater popular knowledge of how the built environment is, or could be, produced." Accordingly, "David is showing a manifesto, recent articles and essays, and a series of case studies chosen from his growing database of arcane, marginalized, or forgotten planning practices. This work will in time form a popular history of planning"—publishers, take note!—"one in which such practises are brought back to life to explore their relevance to today’s environment, in the belief that putting planning knowledge back into popular culture will lead to a more democratic built environment."

[Images: Excerpts from David Knight's "growing database of arcane, marginalized, or forgotten planning practices," part of Making Planning Popular].

Above are some examples of these case studies; but stop by the RCA before the end of the day on Monday, February 6, to see more. Here's a map.

Gizmag: New "Super-Earth" discovered only 22 light years away

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 02:00:46 +0000

An international team of scientists led by Professors Guillem Anglada-Escudé and Paul Butler from the Carnegie Institution for Science in the U.S. has discovered a potentially habitable Super-Earth that's "just" 22 light years away. The new Super-Earth has a mass that is 4.5 times larger than that of our planet and it revolves around its parent star in 28 days - a star that is significantly smaller than ours. This remarkable new discovery suggests that habitable planets could exist in a wider variety of environments than previously believed. .. Continue Reading New "Super-Earth" discovered only 22 light years away

Section: Research Watch

Tags: Carnegie Mellon, Exoplanet, NASA, Planet, Space, Super-Earth

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Ars Technica: A license to link? Lowe's has one

nate@arstechnica.com (Nate Anderson) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 02:00:15 +0000

In the course of building a large framed mirror last month—a process which cemented my belief that doing pro-quality wood staining is a black art best left to necromancers—I visited the website for hardware giant Lowe's. While exploring the site, I came across something peculiar: a short Lowe's "customer care" statement on how other website operators can link to Lowe's.

I know what you're thinking: “there are instructions for this?” Indeed there are; Lowe's has actually drafted three separate legal agreements to cover the practice. Two cover situations in which the linking site might use Lowe's images and marks, and for which some kind of license deal makes more sense. The third says only, "If you're linking to Lowes.com, but not using our mark(s)/logo(s) on your site, download the Version A link agreement."

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Gizmag: SpaceX Dragon's ultimate mission is Mars colonization

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:15:27 +0000

The private spaceflight company SpaceX declared that 2012 would be the "Year of the Dragon" - a play on the current cycle of the Chinese calendar and the upcoming tests of SpaceX's Dragon space capsule. For a time, it seemed as if SpaceX was regretting that slogan. Dragon was chosen as one of five competitors for NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) contest to develop a cargo/passenger craft to service the International Space Station. The Dragon program had enjoyed considerable success and was scheduled to be the first private spacecraft to visit and, if all went well, dock with the International Space Station (ISS). Unfortunately, with the need for more testing of the Dragon capsule delaying the launch from its original February 7, 2012 date to late March or even into April, it looked as though the Year of the Dragon was starting a bit late. .. Continue Reading SpaceX Dragon's ultimate mission is Mars colonization

Section: Aero Gizmo

Tags: NASA, Space, Space Travel, Spacecraft, SpaceX

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bldgblog: Object Cancers

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Manaugh) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:09:00 +0000

There was a lot of talk last week about the emergence of "physibles," or downloadable data sets hosted on the Pirate Bay that would allow (potentially copyrighted) objects to be reproduced at home by 3D printers. The idea is that we won't just share music files or movie torrents, but actual physical objects; I could thus print an IKEA table or a Quistgaard peppermill at home, without ever purchasing an original object.

[Image: A printer known as the Replicator].

Bruce Sterling wrote about just such a scenario in his 2008 novella Kiosk, suggesting that a new "poetry of commerce" would arise in the form of infinitely repeatable, unregulated surrogate objects churned out by desktop factories.

Among many other things about this story, what caught my attention was the specific detail that you could scan any object you happen to have on hand; you could then upload that dataset to a kind of eBay of physibles; and, finally, someone on the other side of the earth—or sitting right next to you—could print out their own "pirate" version. As New Scientist writes, however, we might soon soon see a corporate response in the form of what might be called physible rights management—based on, even repeating, certain aspects of the misguided digital rights management (DRM) policies associated with MP3s. This would mean, for instance, "placing a marker on objects that a 3D scanner could detect and which would stop it operating" (though such marks, the article quickly points out, can simply be covered over with tape or otherwise occluded); in fact, we read, a similar such system is "already used to prevent banknotes from being photocopied." The article then mentions other forms of watermarks and "marking algorithms," detectable only by machines, that could be inscribed onto object surfaces, like invisible hieroglyphs of protection, so as to interfere with those objects' being scanned.

The corporate response to the robot-readable world, mentioned earlier, is thus a kind of robot-blocking world.

In any case, what seems more provocative here, on the level of design, would be to appropriate this protective stance and reuse it in the design of future objects, but emphasizing the other end: to allow for the scanning of any object designed or manufactured, but to insert, in the form of watermarks, small glitches that would only become visible upon reprinting.

We could call these object cancers: bulbous, oddly textured, and other dramatically misshapen errors that only appear in 3D-reprinted objects. Chairs with tumors, mutant silverware, misbegotten watches—as if the offspring of industrial reproducibility is a molten world of Dalí-like surrealism.

[Image: Misprinted objects by Zeitguised and Matt Frodsham].

Put another way, the inadvertent side-effect of the attempted corporate control over objects would be an artistic potlatch of object errors: object cancers deliberately reprinted, shared, and collected for their monstrous and unexpected originality.

Gizmag: MIT envisions DIY solar cells made from grass clippings

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:58:14 +0000

Research scientist Andreas Mershin has a dream to bring inexpensive solar power to the masses, especially those in developing countries. After years of research, he and his team at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, along with University of Tennessee biochemist Barry Bruce, have worked out a process that extracts functional photosynthetic molecules from common yard and agricultural waste. If all goes well, in a few years it should be possible to gather up a pile of grass clippings, mix it with a blend of cheap chemicals, paint it on your roof and begin producing electricity. Talk about redefining green power plants!.. Continue Reading MIT envisions DIY solar cells made from grass clippings

Section: Research Watch

Tags: MIT, Nanotechnology, Nanowires, Photosynthesis, Photovoltaic, Solar Cell, Titanium dioxide, University of Tennessee

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Gizmag: Universal Earphones detect left and right ear placement

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:46:33 +0000

The L and R labels on your headphones serve a purpose, and it isn't just about fit. The audio source - whether it's a receiver, PC or MP3 player - sends left- and right-channel sounds to the appropriate earbud. While it might seem minor, this can be a difference between a disjointed experience listening to music, movies and other video, to a fuller experience that connects sight (in the case of video) and sound - with sound coming from the direction it's intended. There's no chance of a mix-up with the Universal Earphones being developed by Igarashi Design Interfaces Project in Tokyo - the headphones decide for themselves which ear they are in, and send sound to the each channel accordingly... Continue Reading Universal Earphones detect left and right ear placement

Section: Music

Tags: Earphones, Headphones, MP3, Music

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Gizmag: MicroOLED introduces 5.4 million pixel camera display

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:57 +0000

Digital camera technology has just taken a huge leap forward with the development of a microdisplay panel that's millions of pixels beyond what is currently used in the highly detailed electronic viewfinders of Fujifilm's most recent X-series cameras (X-S1/X-Pro1), and more than double the panels in Sony's latest alpha and NEX cameras. MicroOLED's new bright and detailed, low power OLED panel has been viewed by a number of industry pundits as the final nail in the coffin of the optical viewfinder... Continue Reading MicroOLED introduces 5.4 million pixel camera display

Section: Digital Cameras

Tags: Cameras, Night Vision, OLED, Viewfinder

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Ars Technica: Some photos just don't need to see the light of the next day.

jacqui@arstechnica.com (Jacqui Cheng) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Facebook is still working on deleting photos from its servers in a timely manner nearly three years after Ars first brought attention to the topic. The company admitted on Friday that its older systems for storing uploaded content "did not always delete images from content delivery networks in a reasonable period of time even though they were immediately removed from the site," but said it's currently finishing up a newer system that makes the process much quicker. In the meantime, photos that users thought they "deleted" from the social network months or even years ago remain accessible via direct link.

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Hack a Day: headphones

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 23:44:58 +0000

[Dan] had been wanting a pair of Bluetooth headphones for quite a while. Most of the reviews for wireless headphones in the $50-$80 range complained of tinny sound and dropped bass. Nevertheless, he stumbled upon a $20 pair of headphones with similar reviews and realized that he could switch out the driver and make a decent pair of cans.

The donor drivers came from a pair of Sennheiser HD 540 headphones. These are very respectable headphone speakers that cost about what you would expect for pro audio gear. To to get Bluetooth working with the Sennheisers, [Dan] removed the PCB and battery enclosure and attached them to the headband with velcro.

For his build, he had to cut the cable on the Sennheisers and solder them to the Bluetooth board. There was never any danger of ruining a good pair of headphones, though. If he screwed up he was only out a headphone cable. Now [Dan] has a nice pair of Bluetooth headphones that can reproduce bass. Not a bad deal for a $20 pair of headphones.

Filed under: digital audio hacks

bldgblog: Landscape Architecture for Machines

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Manaugh) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 23:30:00 +0000

One of the more interesting sub-conversations at last fall's Art + Environment Conference at the Nevada Museum of Art revolved around the question of whether or not the future of landscape architecture would be for humans at all—and not for autonomous or semi-autonomous machine systems that will have their own optical, textural, and haptic needs from the design of built space. As highway signage networks are adapted to assist with orienting driverless cars, for instance, we will see continent-spanning pieces of infrastructure designed not for human aesthetic needs but so that they more efficiently correspond to the instrumentation packages of machines.

We touched on this a few weeks ago here on BLDGBLOG with the idea of sentient geotextiles guiding unmanned aerial vehicles, and London-based design firm BERG refers to this as the rise of the robot-readable world. I was thus interested to see that Timo Arnall from BERG has assembled a short video archive asking, "How do robots see the world? How do they extract meaning from our streets, cities, media and from us?" Arnall's compilation reveals the framing geometries—a kind of entoptic graphic language native to machines—and directional refocusings deployed by these inhuman users of designed landscapes. Future gardens optimized for autonomous robot navigation.

Hack a Day: pianer

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:45:04 +0000

At Hack a Day, we don’t throw the term genius around lightly. We’re obligated to bestow that title on [Don Gilmore] for his amazingly simple self-tuning piano. To appreciate [Don]‘s build, you need to realize that just because a piano has 88 keys, that doesn’t mean it has 88 strings. Treble notes have three strings per key while tenor and bass notes have one or two strings each. This usually comes out to more than 200 strings per piano, and [Don] can bring them all up to tune in under a minute.

[Don]‘s system needs to perform two functions. The first one is sustaining the strings so the computer can ‘hear’ the strings. He does this with a magnetic sustainer that is a lot like an E-Bow. To bring the strings up to the right pitch, there are small heaters underneath the pin block. Running a little bit of current through these heaters allows [Don] to decrease the tension of each string and lower the pitch.

This tech reminds us of the Gibson Robot Guitar, a self-tuning guitar that does it’s trick with motors in the tuners. The Gibson didn’t do well on the sales floor, given that everybody and their mom can tune a guitar. Pianos, though, are another story. [Don] is looking for investors to bring his idea to market, and we hope to see it on the floor of a music shop sometime in the future.

Yes, an REO Speedwagon reference. Only slightly ashamed, if you’re wondering.

Filed under: musical hacks

Ars Technica: Microsoft publishes fancy-pants heterogeneous parallel GPGPU C++ AMP specification

peter.bright@arstechnica.com (Peter Bright) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:00:30 +0000

Microsoft has published the specification for C++ AMP (Accelerated Massive Parallelism), its new system for heterogeneous parallel processing in C++. When Microsoft first announced C++ AMP in June last year, it said that it wanted to make the AMP specification open to all.

AMP has been developed by Microsoft with input from AMD and NVIDIA. Microsoft's implementation allows AMP programs to use both the main CPU and Direct3D video cards (via the company's DirectCompute API), though the specification should also permit OpenGL/OpenCL-based implementations.

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Ars Technica: A-2-3-2

kyle.orland@arstechnica.com (Kyle Orland) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Digital forms of Solitaire have been included with Windows since it reached version 3.0, and they may well represent the most widely played video game series this side of Angry Birds, enjoyed by bored cubicle workers and bored, procrastinating students alike. While most serious gamers probably wouldn't put these games top ten picks of all time, you'd be hard-pressed to find a single PC owner that hasn't put in at least a few hours on a machine that has nothing else available.

Plants vs. Zombies and Peggle maker Popcap is targeting this familiar genre with its latest Facebook time-waster, Solitaire Blitz, a supremely addictive and well-crafted offering that adds just the right amount of tension to the zen autonomy of mindlessly clicking cards.

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Hack a Day: printr

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:00:58 +0000

After a few months of eager waiting, [Brook Drumm] has finally released the files for his paradigm-shifting 3D printer, the Printrbot. If you didn’t order one of these during the Kickstarter, you can now print your own set of parts.

[Brook] gave his Printrbot to the world last November with the promise of being extremely cheap, extremely easy to build, and having a relatively high print quality. The simplicity of the Printrbot was amazing, which probably led to the Printrbot getting $830k worth of funding on the initial Kickstarter. Although the files for the 3D printed parts are out in the wild now, there still aren’t any instructions on how to build it apart from a Flickr slideshow.

[Brook] promised to release the files for the Printrbot much earlier, but we’re guessing he’s been busy printing and assembling the 1200 Printrbots that were claimed in his Kickstarter. While we’re on the subject of cheap 3D printers, [Richard Sum], the English gent behind the SUMPOD sent in a link of one of his $600 printers milling MDF and extruding for seven hours straight. We’re on the cusp of Star Trek-style replicators here, people.

Filed under: cnc hacks

Ars Technica: HH Gregg advertisement

timothy.lee@arstechnica.com (Timothy B. Lee) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:00:20 +0000

Every year in late January or early February, two teams take to the field to play a football game that's watched by tens of millions of Americans. And every year, businesses launch ad campaigns to sell a variety of products—televisions, pizzas, soda—in conjunction with the game. And the overwhelming majority of these businesses avoid calling it the "Super Bowl."

Why? They're afraid of getting sued by the National Football League, which holds the trademark for the term and polices it aggressively. The NFL takes the position that no one is allowed to use the phrase "Super Bowl" in an advertisement without writing the NFL a big check first. Every year, the league sends cease-and-desist letters to businesses that stray too close to the line.

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Hack a Day: car

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 15:00:55 +0000

If you’ve ever wanted your own self-driving car, this is your chance. [Sebastian Thrun], co-lecturer (along with the great [Peter Norvig]) of the Stanford AI class is opening up a new class that will teach everyone who enrolls how to program a self-driving car in seven weeks.

The robotic car class is being taught alongside a CS 101 “intro to programming” course. If you don’t know the difference between an interpreter and a compiler, this is the class for you. You’ll learn how to make a search engine from scratch in seven weeks. The “Building a Search Engine” class is taught by [Thrun] and [David Evans], a professor from the University of Virginia. The driverless car course is taught solely by [Thrun], who helped win the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge with his robot car.

In case you’re wondering if this is going to be another one-time deal like the online AI class, don’t worry. [Thrun] resigned as a tenured professor at Stanford to concentrate on teaching over the Internet. He’s still staying at Stanford as an associate professor but now he’s spending his time on his online university, Udacity. It looks like he might have his hands full with his new project; so far, classes on the theory of computation, operating systems, distributed systems, and computer security are all planned for 2012.

Filed under: classic hacks, robots hacks, Software Development

Ars Technica: The line to get in to Macworld|iWorld 2012 on Saturday was out the door and up the block until after 12pm.

jacqui@arstechnica.com (Jacqui Cheng) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:00:00 +0000

This week, we wrapped up our coverage of the 2012 Macworld|iWorld conference in San Francisco just as Apple issued an update to Final Cut Pro X and gave the AirPort Utility an iOS makeover. Additionally, Tim Cook offered some strong words in response to doubts about Apple's attitude toward worker conditions in China, Neil Young recounted stories about Steve Jobs working towards higher-quality music downloads, and more. Need a recap? You're in the right place.

Rethinking iPhone UI and getting things done with Clear to-do app: Realmac is set to launch an iPhone to-do list app in a few weeks that breaks list making and maintaining down to the barest essentials, eschewing some common iPhone UI elements to make the app as simple as humanly possible.

LandingZone to ease docking for MacBook Air: A new Cupertino startup is launching a clever, well-designed docking solution for Apple's MacBook Air. The first version is set to begin shipping by March, but a planned Thunderbolt-equipped version is on hold pending licensing approval from Intel.

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Hack a Day: halo

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 20:01:34 +0000

Apparently, there’s some sort of sporting event being televised this weekend that has been historically used as an excuse to buy a big-screen TV. [Joel] wanted a huge-screen TV on the cheap, so he converted an overhead projector to something he can use with his XBox.

Using a bare LCD panel with an overhead projector is a decades-old hack we’ve covered before. The basic idea is fairly simple, but we’ve never seen anything that could be considered a semi-permanent build. [Joel] started his project by picking up a surplus overhead projector for $25 and routing a cutting board to mount the LCD in. The bulb in the projector added a lot of heat, so three small fans are used to blow air between the projector glass and the LCD display.

[Joel] started off looking at the LumenLab DIY projector project, but considered that to be a terrible amount of work with a fairly high initial investment. If you don’t count the few LCDs [Joel] burned through while building his project, his projector was built for under $100. We’re loving the result and are sure it will be much appreciated at [Joel]‘s LAN parties.

Filed under: peripherals hacks, video hacks

Hack a Day: upb

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 19:01:12 +0000

[Arpad] has spent quite a bit of time reverse-engineering a home automation system, and, as he is quick to point out, presents the information learned for informational purposes only. He’s really done his homework (and documented it well), looking into the US patent application, and figuring out how the protocol works.

If you’re wondering how someone is able to send a signal over an AC sine wave, at least one technique is the proprietary [Universal Powerline Bus]. This works by sending precisely times pulses in conjunction with the wave that would exist normally. Given the correct software on the other end, this can then be decoded and used for whatever data transfer is necessary.

Although as engineers and technologists, we certainly don’t condone stealing patents, part of point of one is that others are allowed to learn your secrets in exchange for some legal protection. [Arpad]‘s motivation in doing this is that the technology is only widely available in the US with our puny 120 VAC 60Hz power. With this knowledge, he’s been able to transfer it to work with European 230 VAC 50Hz.

Filed under: home hacks

Ars Technica: Week in Gaming: Misleading game trailers, Online Passes and cat MMOs

kyle.orland@arstechnica.com (Kyle Orland) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 19:00:00 +0000

This week, an animated trailer for an imaginary Zelda game got us wondering why exactly games often can't live up to the thrilling scenes we're shown in pre-release videos. We also looked at the slow redefinition of what an Online Pass can be used for, examined the legality of blocking used games sales, and spent a massively-multiplayer hour as a cat.

Madden NFL and Tecmo Bowl both agree that the Giants are going to win the Super Bowl this weekend. Personally, I'm rooting for stadium collapse.

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Hack a Day: automated-recycling-sorter

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:01:47 +0000

[Yuhin Wu] wrote in to let us know about the Automated Recycling Sorter that was built with a group of classmates at the University of Toronto. They entered it the school’s student design contest and we’re happy to report that it took first place.

The angled sled has been designed to separate glass, plastic, and metal containers. The first sorting happens at the intake area. A set of moment arms are used to weed out the glass bottles. Since there are several of them in a row, a larger and heavier plastic container will not be falsely sorted and the same goes for smaller glass bottles.

With the glass out of the mix the team goes on to separate metal and plastic. An Arduino was used for this purpose. It senses an electrical disturbance caused by a metal can passing through the chute and actuates a trap door to sort it. Plastic has no effect on this sensor and slides past the trap to its own sorting bin.

Don’t miss both demo videos which we’ve included after the break.

Filed under: green hacks

Ars Technica: Week in tech: acting out over ACTA, Firefox 10, and a new KDE tablet

editors@arstechnica.com (Ars Staff) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Kindle Fire dwarfs other Android tablets in market share after just three months: After three months, the Kindle Fire has an equal share of the Android tablet market with the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and has already outstripped the Motorola Xoom, Asus Transformer, and Acer Iconia Tab.

Firefox 10 arrives with new dev tools and full-screen API: Mozilla has released version 10 of the Firefox Web browser. The update includes improved development tools and a new API for displaying page elements in fullscreen mode.

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Hack a Day: routers

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:01:39 +0000

Have you ever seen an LED display made out of routers? [Sean] took eight Netgear routers and made an 8×4 display out of them. Because that wasn’t cool enough, a very small version of Conway’s Game of Life was added to the build.

Each router is running a copy of OpenWrt, a Linux distro meant for limited hardware. Instead of an 802.11 protocol, each router runs the B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced mesh protocol. This protocol allows each router to communicate with all the other routers.

Instead of each router receiving data from a master, the routers calculate each step in the Game of Life independently. Once the routers communicate their initial states, each router is responsible for displaying its four LEDs for each new generation. In the video after the break, you can see [Sean]‘s routers calculating random Game of Life boards. Sadly, we didn’t notice a GoL oscillator being randomly generated, but with a 4×8 play field even a Glider wouldn’t last very long.

Filed under: led hacks, misc hacks

Ars Technica: Week in science, with unusual amounts of insanity

jtimmer@arstechnica.com (John Timmer) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 15:00:00 +0000

It was a crazy week for science. Normally, when we say that, we mean there was a lot of important news going on; this week, some of the actual stories involved a fair degree of nuttiness. These included an overt attempt to inject religion into science classes and a theory that attempts to explain everything without even bothering to deal with most of the fundamental particles identified by physics. Still, there was some good science, including a very selective graphene membrane and some bacteria engineered to turn seaweed into biofuels.

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Hack a Day: ru2.4.12

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:00:43 +0000

Another week has come and gone and that means that it is time for our week in review. These are the top posts that have been viewed at Hackaday in the past week.

Coming in at first place is a post about a project by [Red Jones] and [Brian Kast] of Sandia labs. Ethical issues aside, this is a pretty cool project. They have developed a bullet that can be shot out of a smooth-bore gun that can hit within eight inches of a target one kilometer away. That is pretty amazing. It does this magic with an 8-bit processor. This takes the microcontroller wars to a whole new level. Are they using Microchip, Atmel or (gasp) something else?

In second place is a follow up post to our post asking how to control three LEDs with three switches, all in series. That post, although it was posted in December 2011 came in at number three. Getting back on topic though, this week’s post shows how he did it! Not only that, but it shows the extent that he went to when making it. There is footage through the eyepiece of a microscope showing him building one!

Want to use LiPo batteries in your next project but are afraid to use them? Here is a post where [Paul] shows off a circuit that he built that can charge LiPo batteries using a MCP7813 chip from Microchip.

Finally, rounding out the five is a post about a blog that was taken down but luckily not before the IEEE made a copy of it. This blog was made by a robot operator working at the Fukushima nuclear plant and detailed their ongoing cleanup operations there.

Filed under: Weekly roundup

Gizmag: Mercedes new commercial van - the Citan

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:23:28 +0000

Mercedes-Benz is to launch a new urban delivery van later this year named the Citan (“city” and “titan”) - the little brother to the Sprinter and Vito. The Citan will be first seen at the IAA Commercial Vehicle Show in Hanover in September. The new van will be available with petrol, diesel and electric drivetrains, and with panelvan, crewbus and mixed use bodies, and in a variety of lengths and weights. My bet is that there's an ideal base for a small campervan there too. .. Continue Reading Mercedes new commercial van - the Citan

Section: Automotive

Tags: Campervan, Citan, Electric Vehicles, Mercedes, Mercedes-benz

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Ars Technica: Kelihos botnet remains very much dead after all

dan.goodin@arstechnica.com (Dan Goodin) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:55:39 +0000

A spam botnet brought down four months ago, which was once capable of pumping out almost four billion spam messages a day, remains very much dead, two of the companies behind the takedown said.

That determination, announced late Friday by Microsoft and Kaspersky Lab representatives, contradicted published reports, including one from Ars, that claimed the network of infected computers had been resurrected. There's no evidence that control of Kelihos, which also went by the name Hlux, has returned to the control of its creators, the companies said.

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Ars Technica: LibreOffice stats: 400 total contributors, thousands of code commits every month

segphault@arstechnica.com (Ryan Paul) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:40:28 +0000

The Document Foundation (TDF), which launched in 2010 to develop LibreOffice, has published statistics that illustrate the project's rapid growth. Approximately 400 total developers have contributed code to the project. The number of contributors who are active each month generally ranges from 50 to over 100.

LibreOffice is a community-driven fork of the OpenOffice.org (OOo) office suite. The project started after Oracle's acquisition of Sun with the aim of offering a better governance model and a more inclusive environment than OOo. LibreOffice quickly attracted the support of the major Linux distributors and a large number of independent developers.

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Gizmag: Hybrid fiber optic cable carries data and power

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:37:15 +0000

When you want to isolate communications between two devices or locations, a fiber optic link is one of the best ways to go. Under some circumstances, however, you might also want to isolate the transmission of power – in situations where traditional copper wire might prove unsafe or impractical, for instance. That’s why researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are developing a power-over-fiber (PoF) communications cable. It carries not only data, but also optical power... Continue Reading Hybrid fiber optic cable carries data and power

Section: Electronics

Tags: Communications, Data Transfer, Electronics, Fiber Optic, Power, Sandia Labs

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Groklaw: Oracle v. Google - The Copyright Issues

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:00:00 +0000

Today is the due date for Dr. Cockburn's third attempt at a damages report on behalf of Oracle, and just to make sure Oracle knows what needs to be submitted, Judge Alsup has issue a reminder order. (709 [PDF; Text]) The judge wants to see not only the report but also all of the related reports and studies that support it.

To recap what this third report is to address if Oracle wants to argue these points on damages:

Ars Technica: Indiana backing away from bill allowing creation "science" into classrooms

jtimmer@arstechnica.com (John Timmer) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:20:00 +0000

Earlier this week, we reported on efforts by an Indiana state legislator who was interested in getting creationism inserted into the state's science classrooms. He managed to get a modified bill, one that was less sectarian but still overtly promoted religion, passed by the state's Senate. Yesterday, however, the leader of the Indiana House voiced unease about having the state wade into an area that the Supreme Court has declared an unconstitutional promotion of religion.

Many similar bills are introduced in state legislatures each year and, in cases where their sponsors speak to the press, they tend to reveal a great deal of ignorance regarding both science and the law. In terms of science, they tend to misunderstand the meaning of the term "theory," think that there are multiple scientific explanations for life's diversity, or suggest evolution is a theory for life's origin. The Indiana bill's sponsor, Dennis Kruse, appears to get all of these wrong.

When it comes to the legal issues, many of the sponsors of these bills seem to be blissfully unaware of precedents, including Supreme Court decisions, that have determined that teaching creationism is an unconstitutional promotion of religion. Here, Kruse is an exception: he is aware of the precedents, but is hoping his bill will prompt a lawsuit that will get the Supreme Court to turn its back on its own precedents. The House Speaker, however, has now said challenging Supreme Court decisions is "someplace we don't need to go," suggesting he will not bring the bill up for a vote.

ScienceInsider, in covering this decision, suggested national media attention to the bill had made it politically toxic. That, in turn, suggests that continued coverage of similar bills can play a vital role in promoting accurate science education.

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Bruce Schneier: Friday Squid Blogging: Clothing that Keeps an Exercise Journal

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:18:41 +0000

It's called Squid.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.

Gizmag: Head patch measures blood flow in stroke patients' brains

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:18:24 +0000

Approximately one third of stroke patients experience another stroke while they’re still in the hospital. Nurses therefore keep a close eye on them, and arrange for them to be taken for tests if a subsequent stroke is suspected. Unfortunately these tests can be invasive, and in some cases are even potentially harmful to the patient. A new device being developed at the Mayo Clinic in Florida, however, could watch for strokes simply by shining light onto a patient’s forehead... Continue Reading Head patch measures blood flow in stroke patients' brains

Section: Health and Wellbeing

Tags: Bloodstream, Brain, Infrared, Mayo Clinic, Strokes

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Ars Technica: FDA whistleblowers say government retaliated with spyware

jon.brodkin@arstechnica.com (Jon Brodkin) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:46:00 +0000

A group of former FDA scientists who spoke out against the agency's allegedly flawed device-approval process are suing the feds for intercepting Gmail and Yahoo Mail messages by installing spy programs on their work computers. Although the computers were owned by the government, the plaintiffs say they were explicitly granted the right to use them for personal purposes.

Back in January 2009, nine scientists known as the "FDA Nine" anonymously wrote to the leader of then President-elect Barack Obama's transition team "pleading with him to restructure the agency," the Wall Street Journal reported at the time. Among other things, the Food and Drug Administration scientists complained that the agency approved devices in a flawed process that ignored science, and was driven by political lobbying.

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Ars Technica: Apple updates iBooks Author EULA to clarify restriction on format, not content

chris.foresman@arstechnica.com (Chris Foresman) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:35:00 +0000

Apple updated iBooks Author to version 1.0.1 on Friday afternoon, the only change being an update to the software's controversial end user license agreement. The updated EULA now specifically only applies distribution restrictions to the interactive .ibooks format files generated by the app.

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Gizmag: South Korea opens a Kinect-powered theme park

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:30:14 +0000

New media entertainment company, d'strict, is pushing the concept of virtual reality to a new level with the "Live Park 4D World Tour," a new theme park that recently opened in South Korea. The park is comprised of 65 different attractions over a 10,000 sq. foot (929 sq m) space, which houses several large interactive displays as well as some installation art pieces. Visitors wear RFID wristbands that allow the displays to identify them, while Kinect sensors detect their movements, voices, and faces. Many of the attractions center around having users create an avatar of themselves that they can interact with and take on a virtual adventure, which is portrayed using 3D video, holograms, and augmented reality technology. .. Continue Reading South Korea opens a Kinect-powered theme park

Section: Games

Tags: Augmented Reality, Kinect, RFID, Theme Parks, Virtual Reality

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Hack a Day: office-game-show-buzzer

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:25:02 +0000

The sales team in [Chuck’s] office is a pretty competitive bunch as you might expect, and they decided that they wanted a system which would allow them to challenge one another during their weekly meetings. The competition involves answering questions posed by their manager, but hand raising only works for so long – they needed a definitive way to tell who “buzzed in” to answer a question first.

Since [Chuck] only had a short bit of time and a tiny budget to work on, he opted to find the easiest solution to the problem, which was an Arduino-based game show buzzer system. The game display is built from an Arduino, some LEDs and an Altoids tin, while the buzzer pushbuttons were salvaged from an old radio broadcast console.

Now, when a question is posed, the salesman can buzz in to answer, knowing that only the quickest person’s button click will be registered. When it’s time for another question, the host simply clicks his buzzer to reset the console.

While it’s not quite as fancy as this game buzzer system we featured a while back, [Chuck] says it does the job perfectly and was cheap to boot.

Continue reading to see a short video of the office game buzzer system in action.

Filed under: arduino hacks

Gizmag: Buhel Speakgoggle lets you talk through your nose bones

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:09:55 +0000

Traditionally just big, goofy optics designed to protect your eyes from cold, snow and bright light, ski goggles have taken all kinds of new roles over the past few winters. Some goggles track your speed and vertical and some capture video. The Buhel Speakgoggle provides a seamless, vibration-based communications mechanism to keep you in touch with your crew. .. Continue Reading Buhel Speakgoggle lets you talk through your nose bones

Section: Sports

Tags: Bluetooth, Buhel, goggles, Mobile Phone, Skiing, Snowboard

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Gizmag: Humpback whales inspire better helicopter rotor blades

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:59:14 +0000

Oh, those humpback whales and their weird fins. First, they inspired more efficient wind turbines. Next, their unique qualities were copied by undersea turbines used to harness tidal flow energy. Now, they’ve led to rotor blades that allow helicopters to be more maneuverable. It all comes down to bumps along their leading edge, known as tubercles... Continue Reading Humpback whales inspire better helicopter rotor blades

Section: Aero Gizmo

Tags: Aerodynamics, Aircraft, Biomimicry, Helicopters, Whale

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Bruce Schneier: The Problems of Too Much Information Sharing

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:49:54 +0000

Funny. Fake, but funny.

Edited to add (2/3): The rest of the story.

Cool Tools: Cool Tools Library

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:30:35 +0000

In the past we've highlighted an astonishing array of useful books that covered topics ranging from bioremediation to underground home building to fermentation. These books are tools because they not only help us learn but also put knowledge to use.

Help us fortify our library of useful books by submitting your favorite text for a particular subject including an explanation of why you think it's essential. We want to feature that dog-eared book that you wouldn't lend to a friend for fear you wouldn't get it back. It can be the best beginner's guide, or a slightly more advanced technical manual detailing materials or techniques. If you can, please include scans of pages that we can use to illustrate the book's content. This has been done before but never with any insight or explanation of what makes the book useful or cool.

What's the essential book for carpenters? Metalsmiths? Landscape designers? Tailors or seamstresses? What about information design? Or sous vide? Tanning or taxidermy? Home brewing? Car repair? Bicycle frame building? The list goes on and on.

Every trade and hobby has their own bible, and we want to identify and collect them all in one place so that others may benefit.

Submit your recommendation (or request) here, post it in the comments below, or feel free to email it to editor@cool-tools.org.

-- Oliver Hulland

Sample Excerpts:

Examples of the kind of books we're looking for:
The only fly fishing guide you'll ever need: The Curtis Creek Manifesto
The mushroom forager's bible: Mushrooms Demystified
The best book on breadmaking: The Bread Baker's Apprentice
The essential cook book: How to Cook Everything
The ultimate bike repair manual: Barnett's Manual

FSF Blogs: Stop ACTA in Europe, February 11th

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:26:39 +0000

Last week we told you of the ongoing move in Europe against ACTA — now coordinated protests are taking place across Europe on February 11th, and here's how you can get involved.

Read 'Signed, not sealed' and contact your country's Members of the European Parliment

Get involved!

Join the ACTA group on reddit where protests are being organized.
Read Stop ACTA in German or Stop ACTA in English.
Check out the ACTA Protest wiki for information on starting or joining a protest in your area.

If you're not in Europe, please help spread the word to people who are. Defeating it in Europe is the first step to ending it once and for all.

For a refresher on why ACTA threatens free software, see http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/acta and the impact of ACTA on medicines.

Thank you for speaking up against ACTA,

Matt, Josh and John

Hack a Day: lcd-screen-coffee-table

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:25:05 +0000

This coffee table is a real show-piece. It’s got a smoky glass surface that is hiding the LCD screen within. But what fun would it be if it could only play video? The rest of the enclosure houses all the parts necessary to make this living room centerpiece into a computer.

After the break you can see a video showing off each step of the build process. It starts by ridding the screen of its enclosure, and using what’s left to determine the size of the wood frame for the table. With the display firmly in place [Nate] sets to work position, mounting, and developing cooling solutions for the motherboard and the rest of the bits. He does nice work and ends up with a table that we’d be proud to feature in our homes.

Now he’s got a lot of computing power and a huge display, but isn’t something missing? How hard do you think it would be to add touch sensitive input to this? We’re wondering if the overlays used to make those Android touchscreens could be mounted on the underside of the glass?

Build log photos:

Short demo:

[Thanks Mathew]

Filed under: home hacks, pcs hacks

Ars Technica: Study of deadly flu sparks debate amidst fears of new pandemic

jtimmer@arstechnica.com (John Timmer) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:12:00 +0000

The 2009 flu pandemic, although not especially deadly, revealed just how quickly a new influenza virus could elude surveillance and spread internationally. It also left health experts eying the disease that many fear could cause the next pandemic: H5N1, the avian flu. According to World Health Organization standards, that virus is phenomenally deadly, killing about half the people that contract it. So far, however, almost all the known cases came from people who were in direct contact with poultry; the flu doesn't seem to spread among mammals.

The great unanswered question was whether we could continue to rely on H5N1's limited transmission. Recently, some researchers set out to answer that question, and came up with a disturbing answer: it was relatively easy to evolve a form of H5N1 that spread in ferrets, another mammalian species, without it losing any of its virulence. Two labs identified the exact mutations that enabled this new host range, and were preparing to publish their results in Science and/or Nature. At that point, the US government's National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) responded by requesting that the journals delay publication and limit the content released. That, in turn, prompted the viral research community to put a two-month hold on further research.

That's where things stood on February 2, when the New York Academy of Sciences hosted a panel discussion on H5N1 and other dual-use research (research that has both public benefit and weapons applications). The panel included two members of the NSABB, representatives from both Science and Nature, a number of virus researchers, a public health expert, and a member of the Defense Department, and they spent two hours in a lively and sometimes contentious discussion of how to handle our current situation.

Read the comments on this post

Linux Weekly News: The end of LinuxDevices?

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:57:13 +0000

LinuxDevices.com is carrying a brief note from the "outgoing editor-in-chief" stating that the site's owner has been acquired. "At this point, the future of LinuxDevices.com is uncertain. What we can say for sure is that it has been a pleasure serving our readers -- the best in the business."

Linux Weekly News: Slackware updates

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:52:27 +0000

Slackware has been silent for some time (noted in this comment thread). Although we haven't seen any advisories in the LWN mailbox, the changelogs are showing some new updates. Slackware users should update their systems.

Ars Technica: Kim Dotcom testifying in court Thursday

timothy.lee@arstechnica.com (Timothy B. Lee) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:35:48 +0000

Megaupload boss Kim Dotcom (read our in-depth profile) was denied bail on Thursday by a New Zealand court. Dotcom insisted that he had no desire to flee the country and merely wanted to be with his pregnant wife and their three young children. But US attorneys argued the Dotcom posed a severe flight risk, and the court rejected Dotcom's bail request.

In court testimony, Dotcom described the dramatic raid on his home by law enforcement. Dotcom told the court that he didn't know the people invading his home were police officers, so he fled to a secure "panic room." Once he realized they were police officers, he decided to stay where he was rather than risk surprising officers and getting shot.

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Ars Technica: Refurbished Motorola Xooms came with private data from previous owners

casey.johnston@arstechnica.com (Casey Johnston) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:26:00 +0000

Motorola facilitated the sale of a bunch of refurbished Xoom tablets with former owners' data still on them, the company announced in a press release Friday. The Xooms were part of a deal on flash sale site woot.com last fall, and of the thousands sold, 100 were shipped out to new owners with information the previous owners had left on them, including passwords, account information, photos, and documents.

The Motorola Xoom captured a narrow share of the market following its launch in February 2011, ending with about 9 percent as of November 2011. A number of the tablets appear to have been returned, as Woot.com held sales of refurbished Xoom units.

Of the 6,200 tablets sold, Motorola announced, 100 were not fully scrubbed of data left on them by previous owners. By way of apology, Motorola is offering any customers who bought and returned the tablet from a number of retailers (Amazon.com, Best Buy, BJ’s Wholesale, eBay, Office Max, Radio Shack, Sam’s Club, or Staples) between March and October 2011 two years of membership to Experian's Protect My ID credit monitoring service.

Though the company is trying to make good, it can't be blamed entirely—we shudder at the thought of sending a device into the depths of customer service returns without wiping it via the easily accessible "factory reset" option in Android settings. Might any of our dear readers have been affected by this event, either by returning a Xoom or buying one from Woot?

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EFF News: This Week in Censorship: Arrested Bloggers in Vietnam, Google's New Censorship Policy, and China Blocks Tibetan-Language Blogs

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:23:12 +0000

Paulus Le Son, a blogger detained in Vietnam since August 2011

Arrests of Dissident Bloggers Continue in Vietnam

As we have previously covered, the Vietnamese government continues to crack down on bloggers and writers who have spoken out against the Communist regime. Alternative news site, Vietnam Redemptorist News, has been targeted by the state and several of their active contributors have been arrested. Paulus Le Son, 26, is one of the most active bloggers who was arrested without a warrant.

Vietnam is increasingly applying vague national security laws to silence free speech and political opposition. He is one of 17 bloggers who have been arrested since August 2011. Charged with “subversion” and “activities aimed at overthrowing the people’s administration”, there is a campaign to release him and the others who have been detained

EFF stands with the Committee to Project Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and Front Line in calling for the immediate release of all arrested bloggers.

Google Quietly Releases Country-by-Country Take Downs For Blogger

Most of the blogosphere’s attention has been focused on Twitter’s new censorship policies released last week, but Google has quietly unveiled its new policies for its blogging interface, Blogger. The changes reflect a compromise similar to Twitter's, allowing them to target their response to content removal requests by certain states. Over the coming weeks, Google will redirect users to a country-code top-level domain, or “ccTLD”, which corresponds to the user’s current location based upon their IP address. Google also provides users a way to get around these blocks by entering a formatted No Country Redirect or “NCR” URL.

These moves come after pressure from countries like India that are cracking down on social media sites for content deemed “inappropriate”. On Blogger’s FAQ they explain why it has come to this:

Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law. By utilizing ccTLDs, content removals can be managed on a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers. Content removed due to a specific country’s law will only be removed from the relevant ccTLD.

As these companies enter new countries, they become subject to local laws. Given that they say they already respond to valid and applicable court orders that could effect global access to certain content, it is in some ways an improvement to limit censorship to the region in which it applies. Google’s policy changes are similar to Twitter’s, which we reacted to last week:

For now, the overall effect is less censorship rather than more censorship, since they used to take things down for all users. But people have voiced concerns that "if you build it, they will come,"--if you build a tool for state-by-state censorship, states will start to use it. We should remain vigilant against this outcome.

The lasting consequences of this new policy cannot be foreseen, in the meantime we will be keeping a close eye on Chilling Effects to track government requests to censor content on Blogger.

China Shuts Down Tibetan Blogs

The Chinese government shut down several independent Tibetan-language blogs on Wednesday. This occurred amid heightened tensions in the decades-long conflict between the minority group and the government. While some of the take-downs leave no explanation, there was one notice by the Chinese state on AmdoTibet, whose blog has been the only page of the site has been taken down. It reads:

Due to some of the blog users not publishing in accordance with the goal of this site, the blog has temporarily been shut down, we hope that blog users will have understanding!

We condemn the Chinese government’s heavy-handed censorship policies, and demand them to stop silencing the Tibetan voice in their country.

Related Issues:

Free Speech

Bloggers' Rights

International

Linux Weekly News: Stable kernels 3.0.19, 3.2.3 and 2.6.32.56

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:21:49 +0000

Greg KH has released stable kernels 3.0.19, 3.2.3 and 2.6.32.56. All of them have important fixes across the board.

Update 3.2.4 has now been released to address a compilation problem in 3.2.3.

Ars Technica: ACTA on the edge in Europe? Poland suspends ratification, Greece gets hacked

peter.bright@arstechnica.com (Peter Bright) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:20:00 +0000

Anger at last month's decision by the European Union and 22 of its member states to sign the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has led to widespread protests, hacked Web sites, and legislators backing away from the treaty.

The anti-ACTA protests that saw Polish politicians don Guy Fawkes masks in parliament have borne fruit. After experiencing a considerable backlash in Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has suspended ratification of the controversial agreement, acknowledging that the consultation surrounding it was inadequate and that he approached it from a "20th century perspective."

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Ars Technica: If you need 1.4 million of these for some reason, THQ's got a warehouse that it'll probably sell you dirt cheap.

kyle.orland@arstechnica.com (Kyle Orland) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:55:00 +0000

Back in the long-ago days of the 2010 holiday season, it looked like THQ had a hit on its hands with its out-of-left-field uDraw Game Tablet, a slate-like controller that used a stylus to let players draw on the TV. The company sold 1.7 million of them to Wii owners by early 2011, beating expectations and leading some to speculate that the uDraw might be the biggest game control revolution this side of the Kinect.

Buoyed by the initial success, THQ quickly cranked out uDraw tablets for the Xbox 360 and PS3, and got to work licensing new compatible software from big, family-friendly brands like Kung Fu Panda, Spongebob Squarepants, and Disney Princesses. But that expansion now looks like a colossal mistake, as excess uDraw inventory was a major factor in the huge financial loss reported for the company's recent 2011 holiday quarter.

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Gizmag: Pacemakers of tomorrow could be powered by the beating of the heart

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:49:31 +0000

A heart-powered pacemaker may sound counter-intuitive, but in essence this is precisely what aerospace engineers from the University of Michigan are proposing. The engineers have come up with a prototype powered by vibrations in the chest cavity - vibrations which are caused mainly by the beating of the heart... Continue Reading Pacemakers of tomorrow could be powered by the beating of the heart

Section: Health and Wellbeing

Tags: Heart, Pacemaker, University of Michigan

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Gizmag: Creators of the ADzero bamboo mobile phone set sights on 2012 release

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:39:19 +0000

An intriguing bamboo mobile phone named ADzero is set to launch in the UK before the year is out following a positive response to the design, which was originally intended for the Chinese market. Though the intention is that the phone will run Android, relatively little is known about the phone itself. ADzero's Jerry Lao indicated to Gizmag that the designers are leaving all hardware options on the table until production is ready to roll... Continue Reading Creators of the ADzero bamboo mobile phone set sights on 2012 release

Section: Mobile Technology

Tags: Bamboo, Mobile Phone

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Linux Weekly News: Friday's security updates

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:34:11 +0000

CentOS has updated ghostscript (C6; C5; C4: multiple vulnerabilities), php (C6; C5; C4: remote code execution), and C5: php53 (remote code execution).

Debian has updated iceweasel (multiple vulnerabilities), iceape (multiple vulnerabilities), and php5 (remote code execution).

Mandriva has updated mozilla (multiple vulnerabilities).

Red Hat has updated RHEL5: php53 (remote code execution), RHEL4,5,6: php (remote code execution), ghostscript (RHEL5,6; RHEL4: multiple vulnerabilities), and RHEL5.6: freetype (code execution).

Scientific Linux has updated SL5: php53 (remote code execution), SL4,5,6: php (remote code execution), and ghostscript (SL5,6; SL4: multiple vulnerabilities).

Ars Technica: iPhone, iPad injunction lifted in Germany, but Apple still faces iCloud action

jacqui@arstechnica.com (Jacqui Cheng) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:05:00 +0000

Apple will be able to sell its iPad 2 with 3G, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 4 via its online store in Germany after all, thanks to a temporary extension courtesy of a German court. As noted by the BBC, an appeals court lifted the ban on certain iOS devices just after Apple was forced to remove them from its German online store earlier on Friday. Still, not all is going Apple's way, as a Mannheim Regional Court also ruled on Friday that Apple had infringed upon a patent owned by Motorola that allows devices to sync e-mail across devices wirelessly, which may spell out changes for iCloud users in Germany.

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Hack a Day: salvage-rf-controller-module-from-xbox-360

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:01:13 +0000

If you’re one of the hordes whose Xbox 360 died the fiery death associated with the RRoD you may be wondering what to do with that multi-hundred dollar door stop you’re left with. Why not salvage the parts for other uses? If you’ve ever wanted to use your wireless controller with a computer here’s a way to pull out the RF module and reuse it.

The concept is simple enough, there’s a daughter-board in the Xbox 360 which hosts the RF module for wireless controller connectivity. Once you extract it from the carcass of the beast, you just need to find a way to read and push the data to your computer. Any USB enabled microcontroller will do, in this case an Arduino nano was chosen for the task. A bit of level converting was necessary to interface with the device, but nothing too involved.

It sounds like at first there was an issue with syncing a controller with the hacked module, but as you can see in the clip after the break that problem has been solved.

[via Build Lounge]

Filed under: xbox hacks

Bruce Schneier: VeriSign Hacked, Successfully and Repeatedly, in 2010

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:49:08 +0000

Reuters discovered the information:

The VeriSign attacks were revealed in a quarterly U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing in October that followed new guidelines on reporting security breaches to investors. It was the most striking disclosure to emerge in a review by Reuters of more than 2,000 documents mentioning breach risks since the SEC guidance was published.

The company, unsurprisingly, is saying nothing.

VeriSign declined multiple interview requests, and senior employees said privately that they had not been given any more details than were in the filing. One said it was impossible to tell if the breach was the result of a concerted effort by a national power, though that was a possibility. "It's an ugly, slim sliver of facts. It's not enough," he said.

The problem for all of us, naturally, is if the certificate system was hacked, allowing the bad guys to forge certificates. (This has, of course, happened before.)

Are we finally ready to accept that the certificate system is completely broken?

Ars Technica: Anonymous pokes fate bear, leaks FBI conference call about Anonymous

nate@arstechnica.com (Nate Anderson) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:36:00 +0000

Anonymous has begun taunting its police pursuers in ever-more aggressive ways, upping the ante today by releasing an internal FBI conference call in which agents from across the country and police in the UK share status updates on their investigations of the group—and reveal that major new action is coming soon.

Much of the call is taken up by a UK investigator from the Metropolitan Police who comes across as eager to curry favor with the FBI. The biggest way this is being done? UK investigators are intentionally trying to delay the court cases against Ryan Cleary and Jake "Topiary" Davis, two UK Anons arrested last year, for up to eight weeks as a favor to the FBI's New York field office.

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Ars Technica: How to watch the Super Bowl on the biggest and littlest screens

jon.brodkin@arstechnica.com (Jon Brodkin) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:05:00 +0000

For the first time, the NFL is providing live streaming video of the Super Bowl, both on Web browsers and through a smartphone application. Now you'll have any number of viewing options and combinations: sit in front of an HDTV with a laptop or tablet to gain DVR controls and extra camera angles not available on the main NBC feed. If you can't get to a TV or browser (or if someone is blocking your view at the local watering hole) just whip out your smartphone and watch the game in miniature—assuming you're a Verizon customer and have a network connection that's fast enough.

As a Massachusetts resident and Patriots fan, I will likely be too nervous and anxiety-ridden to operate any type of technology once the Super Bowl starts around 6:30 PM ET Sunday. But if you're a huuuugggeeee fan who can't get enough coverage, your best bet is probably sitting on the couch with a laptop or tablet, as the NFL says the live stream will be available in tablet browsers, which likely means both the iPad and Android tablets.

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Hack a Day: dog-pod-grid-quadcopters

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:01:16 +0000

What’s better than one amazingly acrobatic quadcopter? How about a swarm of acrobatic micro-quadcopters? It’s not a rhetorical question, but an experimental reality. A team at the University of Pennsylvania are showing off their latest round of hovering robots which can move in formation and alter their orientation as a swarm.

You may remember us salivating over the unbelievable stunts the team pulled off with a single ’copter back in 2010. That device needed a sophisticated camera installation to give provide feedback, and this uses the same framework. But we don’t that detracts from the achievement; it’s simply a future hurdle for the project.

The video after the break shows some of the stunts the slew of whirring devices are capable of. Watching them move as a grid, and even landing simultaneously, we can’t help but think of the Dog Pod Grid from Neal Stephenson’s book The Diamond Age. It was used as a protection system, keeping unwanted flying intruders out. Doesn’t sound so far-fetched any more, does it?

http://hackaday.com/2010/05/28/quadcopter-acrobatics-like-nothing-weve-seen/

Filed under: robots hacks

Ars Technica: Ars and nature.com at the American Museum of Natural History: good stuff

jtimmer@arstechnica.com (John Timmer) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:48:00 +0000

For nearly a year now, Ars has worked with nature.com to organize a monthly panel discussion called Science Online NYC. We're pleased to announce that, in February, we'll also be working with the American Museum of Natural History to organize a special program entitled "Beyond a Trend: Enhancing Science Communication with Social Media," which will be part of the global Social Media Week.

The panel will discuss how people who have communicated science in traditional outlets—from journalists to the museum staff—have adopted social media to reach the public more effectively. It will feature author Carl Zimmer, journalist Matt Danzico, the Story Collider's Ben Lillie, and the education staff of the AMNH. All of them have used new forms of media to reach audience that otherwise might not have paid attention to what's happening in the world of science. (The contents of Zimmer's latest book were actually crowdsourced through various forms of social media.)

The panel will be moderated by Jennifer Kingston, science editor from The New York Times, and past Science Online NYC events have featured a very active discussion with the audience. The event will take place at the AMNH at 6pm on Thursday, February 16th, and will be followed by a reception at its Hall of Minerals and Gems. You can sign up at the announcement page linked above. If you’re not in NYC, the event will also be live-streamed via the Social Media Week website and you can follow tweets and join in the discussion online via the hashtags #SoNYC and #SMWScience.

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Hack a Day: electronic-wire-stripper

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:01:10 +0000

Agonize no more over stripping the insulation off of tiny wires like those used in ribbon cables. For years we’ve used razor blades to do this, as the tiniest wires don’t have a slot on our trusty wire strippers. But often we cut all the way though the conductor (or many of the strands) when doing so. [Bjbsquared] came up with this design that will alert you when you’ve hit the conductor.

It uses the two metal razor blades as electrodes in the LED circuit. When anything metal connects the two, the LED will be illuminated. This way you know you’ve cut far enough, and should be able to tug the insulation off of the wire. This image only shows half of the printed unit, a second piece covers up the inner workings, and helps keep stray fingers away from the edges of the blades.

Overkill? We don’t think so, and we hope everyone will agree this is a wonderful design.

[via Reddit and Gizmodo]

Filed under: tool hacks

Gizmag: Meet Geminoid-F, Professor Ishiguro's latest uncanny android

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:38:59 +0000

Visitors to Tokyo's Shinjuku ward my find themselves figuratively transported to the uncanny valley, if they take a stroll past Takashimaya department store, that is. Until Valentine's Day, a prominent display window there will play glassy prison cell to the impressive and unnerving Geminoid-F android. Geminoid-F is so strikingly lifelike in appearance, yet so thoroughly inhuman in many respects (head and eye movement among them), that it can only be the work of that master of the uncanny, Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro... Continue Reading Meet Geminoid-F, Professor Ishiguro's latest uncanny android

Section: Robotics

Tags: Humanoid, Japan, Robots

Related Articles:

Ars Technica: Debugging a Node.js app in Komodo IDE 7

segphault@arstechnica.com (Ryan Paul) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:33:00 +0000

ActiveState has released a major new version of the Komodo integrated development environment (IDE). The update, which is called Komodo 7, introduces several useful new features and support for additional programming languages.

Komodo is a high-end commercial development tool for programmers who work with scripting languages such as Python and Ruby. It's especially well-suited for developing large-scale Web applications. It supports code completion and breakpoint debugging for a relatively broad number of programming languages.

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Cool Tools: Safeglides Tap-In Felt Furniture Pads

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:23:06 +0000

When you get sick and tired of reapplying those adhesive felt furniture feet to all your furniture every time they come off (go ahead, look under something; a lot of them are coming off or missing aren't they?), you can get these improved ones that I found a few years ago.

The round metal rivet hammers easily into the end of the leg with a tack hammer, and the metal part doesn't break like the kind with the single skinny nail in the center. (And the adhesive kind, as you no doubt have noticed, do not stay properly attached for very long at all.) I have never had one of these fail yet.

This vendor has them for a good price; they have a $25 minimum, which means you have to order about 80. However, you can also get them at Amazon.

-- Charles Kiblinger

Safeglides Tap-In Felt Furniture Pad
$8 for pack of 16

Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Highland Woodworking

Sample Excerpts:

Ars Technica: Mozilla developing Web push notification system for Firefox

segphault@arstechnica.com (Ryan Paul) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:14:00 +0000

Mozilla is developing a push notification system for the Firefox Web browser. It will allow users to receive notifications from websites without having to keep those sites open in their browser. The system will also be able to relay push notifications to mobile devices.

The project is part of Mozilla's broader effort to ensure that the Web is a competitive platform that can match the capabilities of native applications. Introducing support for push notifications will help to close the gap, because the feature is one of the major advantages that native mobile clients have historically offered over the browser for accessing Web services.

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The Daily WTF: Error'd: amp, #039 and a0B30000004la04EAA&

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

"I saw this on my way home from work," Daniel Moore writes, "thank goodness CVS is doing something about Maryland's crippling shortage of whooping cough!"

"While trying to learn Open Bravo," writes Otmane Malih, "I learned that there are countries I've never heard of."

"My university has a site license of Mathematica for all Mathematics and Physics students," Simon Hollingshead wrote, "when trying to view some information about the license key, I got this message. Not to worry, it can go in my binder named 'Error messages from various websites'."

"Woah, bad password," wrote Micah, "that's cool man."

"Now that's a lot of readme," writes Frank de Weger.

"I was filling out a satisfaction survey after buying a new car," writes Jeremy Hutchinson, "even the optional questions required an answer."

"This is from a well-known vendor of libraries," writes Adrian Edmonds, "what to do next is a bit of a puzzle."

"This Mongolian ATM had a rather unique way to notify that it could not print a receipt," writes Matthew Asquith.

Hack a Day: kitchen-timer-has-nintendo-sounds

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:01:07 +0000

[Alan] was unimpressed by the cheap ticking egg timers that grace many of our kitchens. He decided this was an execllent opportunity to ply his skills with microcontrollers. He built this kitchen timer complete with an enclosure and audible alarm.

The device is Arduino based, which makes driving the graphic LCD quite easy thanks the libraries associated with that platform. As you can see above, his user interface makes use of virtual buttons – three tactile switches whose function is listed at the top of the display.

But we think the alarm sound really earns this a place in his kitchen. He used the same hardware as that that Super Mario Bros. Toilet project to play classic video game sounds when your soufflé needs come out of the oven. We haven’t come across them ourselves, but apparently there’s a line of key chains for sale in Japan (yes, we need to plan a trip there!) that have the tunes programmed into them. They’re easy to crack open and it beats dealing with a speaker and amp circuit.

Filed under: cooking hacks

Gizmag: A compact five-seat people carrier based on the Fiat 500

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:35:15 +0000

The Fiat 500 dynasty is expanding once more. Recent additions include the Abarth and Cabrio versions, and now the 500L (the L stands for Large) is something completely different again. It's a compact five-seat people carrier, combining the passenger space of an MPV with the feel of a small SUV on the road and the restrained dimensions and efficiency of a B segment car. The 500L will debut at the Geneva Motor Show in March and will hit European markets in late 2012, with a choice of two petrol engines and the 1.3 liter MultiJet II turbodiesel engine... Continue Reading A compact five-seat people carrier based on the Fiat 500

Section: Automotive

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Gizmag: Mitsubishi develops ultra-high-speed elevator technology

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:23:59 +0000

Due to the number of stairs that needed to be climbed to reach the top, buildings of over six storys were a rarity until the 19th century when the development of passenger elevators - along with advances in building materials and techniques - enabled the construction of taller and taller buildings. As skyscrapers continue to reach ever higher, elevators are required to carry more people further, faster. Mitsubishi already has the first problem licked with the development of elevators able to carry 80 people at once. Now it has tackled speed with technologies that enable ultra-high-speed elevators to travel at more than 60 km/h (37 mph or 1,000 meters a minute). .. Continue Reading Mitsubishi develops ultra-high-speed elevator technology

Section: Good Thinking

Tags: Elevator, Mitsubishi

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Gizmag: McLaren the first of the big F1 launches

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:21:03 +0000

The Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F1 team combines the strong driver pairing of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton for the third year running in 2012, along with a substantially revised car to meet the FIA's rule changes. The most noticeable change between last year and the new MP4-27 is at the rear, where tighter rear carbon-fiber composite body shaping has been designed to meet the new-for-2012 exhaust rules, whilst smoothing airflow to and from the coolant and oil radiators... Continue Reading McLaren the first of the big F1 launches

Section: Automotive

Tags: F1, McLaren, Mercedes, Pirelli, Racing

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