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Technical (News/Activism)

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  • AMD Rolls Out "Warsaw" Opteron CPUs With 12 and 16 Cores

    01/23/2014 9:35:14 PM PST · by smokingfrog · 20 replies
    Tom's Hardware ^ | 1-22-14 | Marcus Yam
     AMD today released two new Opteron chips based off the company's "Piledriver" core. Part of the 6300 series codenamed "Warsaw", the 6370P packs 16 cores and the 6338P has 12 cores. Both of these new processors are fully socket and software compatible with the existing AMD Opteron 6300 Series. AMD boasts that the new Opterons are ideal for the Open 3.0 Open Compute Platform, complex compute needs of data analysis, xSQL and traditional databases, citing reasons of power efficiency and cost effectiveness. Specifically, these Warsaw parts have a TDP of 99 W. As far as cost effectiveness, the 16 core...
  • Bugs in Google Chrome let websites listen to your conversations

    01/22/2014 8:43:31 PM PST · by null and void · 26 replies
    Daily Caller ^ | 2:14 PM 01/22/2014 | Giuseppe Macri
    Google’s popular Chrome search engine might be doing more than helping you find websites — it might be helping websites find and listen to you through the microphone in your computer. TalAter.com reports the search engine’s voice recognition functionality can be compromised by websites that allow Chrome users to navigate their site via voice. The problem is once you give Chrome permission, the websites you’ve visited retain that permission — even if you’re not on the site, allowing them to tap into your computer’s onboard microphone and listen in at any time. Any site operator that chooses to adopt Chrome’s...
  • World’s ATMs still running Windows XP—and wildly out of date

    01/17/2014 9:43:17 PM PST · by Olog-hai · 84 replies
    Fox News ^ | January 17, 2014
    Nearly all of the ATMs in the world are running the Windows XP operating system, introduced by Microsoft 13 years ago—and incredibly out of date, as any tech enthusiast will tell you. On April 8, Microsoft will officially end the tech support for the aging OS, which was replaced by Windows Vista in 2007, Windows 7 in 2009, Windows 8 in 2012 and Windows 8.1 in 2013. […] If an ATM isn’t upgraded, it will continue to function, experts said. Withdrawals, deposits, and other transactions will work as they did before. But the machines will be more vulnerable to cyber...
  • Mobile phones powered by WIND TURBINES: 'Micro-windmills' could be fitted to our phones

    01/15/2014 10:48:13 AM PST · by smokingfrog · 50 replies
    Daily Mail UK ^ | 1-14-14 | Victoria Woollaston
    Forget hand-cranked chargers and solar-powered cases, the latest way to solve the ever-present problem of a dying phone battery is by using thin air. Researchers from Texas have developed a miniscule ‘micro-windmill’ that is just 1.8mm wide and can transform wind energy into electricity. The team behind the design claim hundreds of the nickel devices could be fitted to a phone case, for example, and users could charge their phone simply by waving it in the air. - - - - The technology was built by micro-engineering experts at the University of Texas Arlington (UTA). Each windmill is made of...
  • Former 82nd Airborne Soldier receives helmet that saved his life

    01/08/2014 7:33:15 AM PST · by Londo Molari · 9 replies
    PEO SOLDIER LIVE ^ | 6-January-2014 | ddawson
    SAN ANTONIO – When Chance Darby received the helmet that saved his life in Afghanistan, he said it successfully stopped an enemy rifle bullet but left him with two big headaches. One headache lasted a few days after the impact from a high-velocity round. The other lasted several weeks as he tried to keep the news of the incident from his mother, Lynlee Darby, and his then-fiancée and now wife, Cheryl. Chance proposed to Cheryl shortly before deploying to Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division. On May 31, 2012, Taliban ambushed his platoon while it was dismantling an improvised explosive...
  • Ford C-Max Solar Energi concept

    01/02/2014 8:42:55 AM PST · by taildragger · 17 replies
    Ford Motor Company ^ | 1/2/2014 | Ford Website reposted
    Video At: http://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America/US/2014/01/CMAX-solar.mov/jcr:content/renditions/cq5dam.video.firefoxhq.ogg
  • HTML Sandbox 2014

    01/01/2014 8:01:39 AM PST · by ShadowAce · 195 replies
    Free Republic | 01 January 2014 | FR
    It's time for a new HTML reference so you can make your posts look cool. HTML means Hyper Text Markup Language. It's a set of simple commands used to format the text of your posts, add images, or links, or change the appearance. URL is Uniform Resource Locator. It's the name of the page or the picture that you see, the www.http:// stuff. You'll need to use the URL to make links and post pictures. Quotation Marks Quotes have to be used around the URLs for web pages and images on Free Republic. Some systems do not require this. Ours...
  • The Innovation Story of the Year

    12/31/2013 8:25:23 AM PST · by shove_it · 11 replies
    Ink.com ^ | 13 Nov 2013 | LEIGH BUCHANAN
    Until this morning I’d never heard of Odon. Then I read this article in the New York Times about a 59-year-old Argentine car mechanic who invented a mechanism for safely extracting babies stuck in the birth canal. The device involves a plastic bag, which is inflated around the baby’s head and can then be used to pull the baby out, potentially causing less damage than forceps or suction cups. The World Health Organization has endorsed the device. Becton Dickenson licensed it for production. The idea came to Odon in a dream after he viewed a Youtube video about extracting...
  • Google's drive into robotics should concern us all

    12/29/2013 5:08:15 PM PST · by SamAdams76 · 44 replies
    The Guardian ^ | December 28, 2013 | John Naughton
    You may not have noticed it, but over the past year Google has bought eight robotics companies. Its most recent acquisition is an outfit called Boston Dynamics, which makes the nearest thing to a mechanical mule that you are ever likely to see. It's called Big Dog and it walks, runs, climbs and carries heavy loads. It's the size of a large dog or small mule – about 3ft long, 2ft 6in tall, weighs 240lbs, has four legs that are articulated like an animal's, runs at 4mph, climbs slopes up to 35 degrees, walks across rubble, climbs muddy hiking trails,...
  • From Algae to Oil In Just One Hour

    12/25/2013 3:51:31 AM PST · by neverdem · 124 replies
    The American Interest ^ | December 23, 2012 | Walter Russell Mead & Staff
    Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are pioneering a process that produces oil from algae in just one hour. Wet algae goes in, heat and pressure is applied, and crude oil comes out. From the PNNL itself: “It’s a bit like using a pressure cooker, only the pressures and temperatures we use are much higher,” said [Douglas Elliott, the laboratory fellow who led the PNNL team's research]. “In a sense, we are duplicating the process in the Earth that converted algae into oil over the course of millions of years. We’re just doing it much, much faster.” The...
  • 21st century bird watching: Drone guide

    12/24/2013 5:34:42 PM PST · by MarkBsnr · 9 replies
    The Daily Mail ^ | 24 December 2013 | SARAH GRIFFITHS
    These days drones are used for everything from farming to surveying remote regions to waging war. So it makes sense that one Dutch designer has penned the Drone Survival Guide, which like bird watching charts, shows the various shapes and sizes of flying objects by their silhouettes... Dutch designer Ruben Pater has penned the Drone Survival Guide, which like bird watching charts, shows the various shapes and sizes of flying objects by their silhouettes The majority of the drones selected for the chart are from NATO member countries, including the UK, France, Germany, U.S. and Canada... The RAF's Reaper unmanned...
  • A Deep Look At The 3D Revolution - Where Printing Money Is A Reality

    12/20/2013 8:16:00 AM PST · by shove_it · 15 replies
    SeekingAlpha ^ | 19 Dec 2013
    Welcome to the deepest dive into the 3D printing sector, what the different business models are all about, and how a fair value for shares can be calculated in this hot technology space. It is important to understand the difference between all of the companies involved in this area in order to separate the firms with real potential from the pretenders that are simply riding the coattails of the others. In recent weeks, we have witnessed several companies' stock prices soar by being mentioned as players in this technology, even with no real products or revenue to show. We need...
  • Breakthrough study overturns theory of 'junk DNA' in genome

    12/15/2013 5:16:23 PM PST · by Dark Knight · 62 replies
    The Guardian ^ | Alok Jha
    Long stretches of DNA previously dismissed as "junk" are in fact crucial to the way our genome works, an international team of researchers said on Wednesday.
  • NSA review to leave spying programs largely unchanged, reports say

    12/13/2013 2:51:40 PM PST · by kobald · 11 replies
    The Guardian ^ | December 13, 2013 | Spencer Ackerman
    A participant in a White House-sponsored review of surveillance activities described as “shameful” an apparent decision to leave most of the National Security Agency’s controversial bulk spying intact. Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open Technology Institute, said Friday that the review panel he advised is at risk of missing an opportunity to restore confidence in US surveillance practices. “The review group was searching for ways to make the most modest pivot necessary to continue business as usual,” Meinrath said... According to the leaks, the review group will recommend that bulk collection of every American’s phone call data continue, possibly by...
  • Using 3-D Printing to Explain Theoretical Physics

    12/10/2013 12:11:27 PM PST · by null and void · 11 replies
    Scientific Computing ^ | 12/09/2013 - 3:55am | Institute of Physics
    Dr. Tim Evans with his 3D-printed model of a forest fire. (Source: Imperial College London) Students may soon be able to reach out and touch some of the theoretical concepts they are taught in their physics classes thanks to a novel idea devised by a group of researchers from Imperial College London. In a new study published in the journal EPL, the researchers have successfully demonstrated how complex theoretical physics can be transformed into a physical object using a 3-D printer. In just eight hours and at the cost of around 15 euros, they were able to use a commercially...
  • MICROSOFT DEVELOPING 'SMART BRA' TO REDUCE EMOTIONAL OVEREATING

    12/06/2013 10:46:25 PM PST · by shove_it · 22 replies
    Breitbart/Drudge ^ | 6 Dec 2013
    REDMOND, Wash., Dec. 5 (UPI) -- Microsoft is working on a smart bra with sensors to monitor a wearer's mood and trigger a smartphone app to reduce emotional overeating, U.S. researchers said. Alerts from the wearable technology would be constantly refined by user feedback, enabling the bra to improve its ability to read a specific person's feelings, InformationWeek reported Thursday. Microsoft researchers worked with the University of Rochester and Britain's University of Southampton on the project, attempting to associate emotions with poor eating habits and to determine whether wearable devices can help reduce the resulting weight gains. A wearable smart...
  • ‘Spooky action’ builds a wormhole between ‘entangled’ particles

    12/04/2013 8:21:43 AM PST · by Red Badger · 85 replies
    http://www.washington.edu ^ | December 3, 2013 | Vince Stricherz
    Quantum entanglement, a perplexing phenomenon of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein once referred to as “spooky action at a distance,” could be even spookier than Einstein perceived. Physicists at the University of Washington and Stony Brook University in New York believe the phenomenon might be intrinsically linked with wormholes, hypothetical features of space-time that in popular science fiction can provide a much-faster-than-light shortcut from one part of the universe to another. But here’s the catch: One couldn’t actually travel, or even communicate, through these wormholes, said Andreas Karch, a UW physics professor. Quantum entanglement occurs when a pair or a...
  • Germans want greater state internet control

    12/04/2013 12:55:52 AM PST · by Olog-hai · 11 replies
    TheLocal.de ^ | 04 Dec 2013 08:13 GMT+01:00 | (DPA/The Local)
    More than half of Germans want greater state control over websites, but about the same share are worried about surveillance of their own online activity, a survey on Tuesday revealed. Many users are concerned about the threats they face online, above all from computer viruses (72 percent), surveillance of their browsing activity (57 percent) and the misuse of personal data (50 percent), the survey conducted by the Allensbach Institute for the German Institute for Trust and Security in the Internet showed. But in a seeming contradiction, a considerable majority (61 percent) also believed there should be greater state controls on...
  • UPDATE 1-India's Mars mission enters second stage; outpaces space rival China

    12/02/2013 8:23:42 AM PST · by James C. Bennett · 6 replies
    Reuters ^ | Dec 1, 2013 | Reuters
    NEW DELHI, Dec 1 (Reuters) - India's first mission to Mars left Earth's orbit early on Sunday, clearing a critical hurdle in its journey to the red planet and overtaking the efforts in space of rival Asian giant China. China's Mars probe rode piggyback on a Russian spacecraft that failed to leave Earth's orbit in November 2011. The spacecraft crumbled in the atmosphere and its fragments fell into the Pacific Ocean. India's mission showcases the country's cheap technology, encouraging hopes it could capture more of the $304-billion global space market, which includes launching satellites for other countries. India's low-cost Mars...
  • Cisco’s disastrous quarter shows NSA spying could freeze US companies out of a trillion$ opportunity

    11/26/2013 9:57:52 AM PST · by kobald · 9 replies
    Quartz ^ | November 14, 2013 | Christopher Mims
    Cisco announced two important things in today’s earnings report: The first is that the company is aggressively moving into the Internet of Things—the effort to connect just about every object on earth to the internet—by rolling out new technologies. The second is that Cisco has seen a huge drop-off in demand for its hardware in emerging markets, which the company blames on fears about the NSA using American hardware to spy on the rest of the world. Cisco chief executive John Chambers said on the company’s earnings call that he believes other American technology companies will be similarly affected. Cisco...