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Big fire in a factory in Berlin-Lichterfelde! The fire department warns of poison smoke! Adrian Wentzel, spokesman for the Berlin Fire Department and on site at the scene of the fire: "The building is now burning completely on four floors. Part of the building has already collapsed. We are only extinguishing the fire from the outside. The fire can no longer be brought under control from the inside." Diehl Metall is part of the German Diehl group of companies, and its subsidiary Diehl Defense (a partner of the German Armed Forces) also has a branch in the street. The company...

This is a slide show of many of my Iris varieties from my garden

This is an uncanny prediction in a movie about the coronavirus, even in names the virus properly

Biometric locks for phones are just getting more and more elaborate. Not content with fingerprints, some devices now offer facial recognition tech for accessing a device, and in the Samsung Galaxy S8's case, an iris scanner too. Despite Samsung stating that a user's irises are pretty much impossible to copy, a team of hackers has done just that. Using a bare-bones selection of equipment, researchers from the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) show in a video how they managed to bypass the scanner's protections and unlock the device. "We've had iris scanners that could be bypassed using a simple print-out," Linus...

A coronal mass ejection, or CME, surged off the side of the sun on May 9, 2014, and NASA's newest solar observatory caught it in extraordinary detail. This was the first CME observed by the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, which launched in June 2013 to peer into the lowest levels of the sun's atmosphere with better resolution than ever before. Watch the movie to see how a curtain of solar material erupts outward at speeds of 1.5 million miles per hour.

A coronal mass ejection, or CME, surged off the side of the sun on May 9, 2014, and NASA's newest solar observatory caught it in extraordinary detail. This was the first CME observed by the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, which launched in June 2013 to peer into the lowest levels of the sun's atmosphere with better resolution than ever before. Watch the movie to see how a curtain of solar material erupts outward at speeds of 1.5 million miles per hour.

We’ve known for a while that Intel’s Haswell processor would continue to drive GPU performance in a significant way. With Haswell, Intel will offer a higher end graphics configuration with more execution resources than before (GT3) as well as an even higher end offering that pairs this GPU with 128MB of embedded DRAM on the CPU package (GT3e). Intel’s performance target for the highest end configuration (GT3e) is designed to go up against NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 650M, a performance target it will hit and miss depending on the benchmark.  Regardless of whether or not it wins every benchmark against...

Remember when Apple’s voice recognition app Siri refused to give directions to abortion clinics? Well, Verizon’s Android application Iris has the same socially conservative politics. As Right Wing Watch and ThinkProgress report, little Iris also refuses to guide users toward abortion providers. But Iris goes one step further. While Siri simply refuses to give the information, Iris quotes the Bible to make her point. “Abortion is wrong. The Lord has said ‘You shall not murder,’ (Exodus 20:13). The life that is growing within the mother is a child, a baby. The Bible looks at the life in the womb as...

We've all seen and obsessively referenced Minority Report, Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's dystopian future, where the public is tracked everywhere they go, from shopping malls to work to mass transit to the privacy of their own homes. The technology is here. I've seen it myself. It's seen me, too, and scanned my irises. Biometrics R&D firm Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI) announced today that it is rolling out its iris scanning technology to create what it calls "the most secure city in the world." In a partnership with Leon -- one of the largest cities in Mexico, with...

Enlarge ImageMisidentified. An eye with iritis. Credit: Tariq Aslam/Moorfields Eye Hospital In the futuristic film Minority Report, an eye scanner gives actor Tom Cruise access to the secure police facility where he works. Even in today's world, eye scanners have begun cropping up in airports and at border patrols. Although the technology is billed as much more accurate than fingerprinting, scientists have worried about a potential flaw: If you have an eye infection--or an eye disease--will these scanners still recognize you as you? Scanners take a picture of the entire eye and then filter out everything but the iris,...

People with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor, according to new research. A team of scientists has tracked down a genetic mutation that leads to blue eyes. The mutation occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, so before then, there were no blue eyes. "Originally, we all had brown eyes," said Hans Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Copenhagen. The mutation affected the so-called OCA2 gene, which is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives color to our hair, eyes and skin. "A genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene...

Pantone, Inc., the global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for the design industries, selected PANTONE 18-3943 Blue Iris, a beautifully balanced blue-purple, as the color of the year for 2008. Combining the stable and calming aspects of blue with the mystical and spiritual qualities of purple, Blue Iris satisfies the need for reassurance in a complex world, while adding a hint of mystery and excitement. "From a color forecasting perspective, we have chosen PANTONE 18-3943 Blue Iris as the color of the year, as it best represents color direction in 2008 for fashion, cosmetics and home...

When a parent arrives to pick up their child at one of three grade schools in the Freehold Borough School District, they'll need to look into a camera that will take a digital image of their iris. That photo will establish positive identification to gain entrance into the school. Funding for the project, more than $369,000, was made possibly by a school safety grant through the National Institute of Justice, a research branch of the U.S. Department of Justice. "The idea is to improve school safety for the children," said Phil Meara, superintendent, Freehold Borough School District, on Monday. "We...

INTERNET EXCLUSIVE Scam fear over iris scans By CORINNE ABRAMS Sun OnlineTHE use of iris scans on ID cards could be scuppered by fraudsters using an optician's chemical that makes the iris disappear, an expert has claimed.  Ross Anderson, professor of Security Engineering at the University of Cambridge, revealed that criminals in Dubai used the chemical atropine to make their irises disappear and avoid detection by authorities.Prof Anderson said the biggest deployed experiment for biometric identifiers was in Dubai."What they want to do there is catch Pakistani prostitutes who have already been deported and who are coming in again under new...

The State Department is moving ahead with a plan to implant electronic identification chips in U.S. passports that will allow computer matching of facial characteristics, despite warnings that the technology is prone to a high rate of error. • Google Offers Post-IPO Scenario • 2004 Interactive Laptop Guide • Personal Tech Special Report • Today in Photos -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Search news on washingtonpost.com Missed Tech Tuesday? Running software updates can help plug gaping security holes. Plus, preview the anticipated Windows Service Pack 2. Federal researchers, academics, industry experts and some privacy advocates say the government should instead use more-reliable fingerprints to...