It now has released the Mark III X-racer to fly a virtual circuit against up to 10 other pilots.
SPACE.com — Rocket Racing League Unveils New Flying Hot Rod.
Armadillo Aerospace has several videos up showing their propulsion system in action.
This guy has gone all out – he’s mapped his Emotiv headset commands to Rovio commands, which are sent out via skype to the robot.
Emotiv Headset Controls Rovio Robot Via Brainwaves – Rovio emotiv hack – Gizmodo.
A pair of security researchers has discovered a number of new attack vectors that give them the ability to not only locate any GSM mobile handset anywhere in the world, but also find the name of the subscriber associated with virtually any cellular phone number, raising serious privacy and security concerns for customers of all of the major mobile providers.
via Researchers Hijack Cell Phone Data, GSM Locations | threatpost.
They use the caller ID database which is pretty much open to everyone, because all the providers need to get at it.
A student has studied openCV for his masters thesis and determined how face detection algorythms should work. By putting dark makeup around your eyes and cheekbones, you should be able to break the detection and make the system think you’re something else.
Reverse-engineering artist busts face detection tech • The Register.
Since the dykes were built in 1953, the low lands have been saved from flooding, but the water behind the dykes is stagnant, leading to ecological problems in those areas. There are now proposals to allow water through, creating tides in the sea estuaries. This will also allow tidal power to be generated.
nrc.nl – International – The tide has changed for Dutch dykes.
The cameras, which combine number plate reading technology with a global positioning satellite receiver, are similar to those used in roadworks.
The AA said it believed the new system could cover a network of streets as opposed to a straight line, and was “probably geared up to zones in residential areas.”
The Home Office is testing the cameras at two sites, one in Southwark, London, and the other A374 between Antony and Torpoint in Cornwall.
The `SpeedSpike’ system, which calculates average speed between any two points in the network, has been developed by PIPS Technology Ltd, an American-owned company with a base in Hampshire.
via New speed cameras trap motorists from space – Telegraph.
It’s unbelievable the amount of money it must cost to design and launch this system. The revenue must be huge, because the problem they’re designed to solve (speeding) doesn’t lead to many deaths or accidents.
The guy who got Linux running on the iPhone has managed to set up his iphone 2G to dual boot into iphone OS or Android. Android is still pretty alpha and he’s had to hack around a bit to handle the lack of buttons on the unit, but it works and he’s released all the stuff needed.
Linux on the iPhone: Android running on iPhone!.
Using the Google maps tool, you can see how many requests have been fielded by each government, as well as what kind of requests they have made.
Government requests directed to Google and YouTube.
The AIVD, the Dutch internal security police, have issued a warning that Dutch government and businesses are being spied on at an unprecedented rate, usually by trying to install trojans activated by email attachments. The spies are often foreign governments and China is being fingered specifically as a culprit.
AIVD: Nederland steeds vaker digitaal bespioneerd | Webwereld.
This is a comprehensive look at how to hack into Open EEG, Force Trainer, Mind Flex and Mind Set, in order to get some more output from them than the designers intended.
How to Hack Toy EEGs | Frontier Nerds.
Synergy is a system that allows you to control multiple computers (with multiple screens) with a single mouse and keyboard. It also supports clipboard sharing.
To install it, though, for Linux or Mac, all you had was command line. QSynergy gives you a GUI to set it up on Linux, Mac and Windows.
QSynergy — www.volker-lanz.de.
Synergy itself hasn’t been updated in a few years (since 2006, though it still works under windows 7), and since then a fork has come up called Synergy+ which has dived into the bugs and is an active project.
If you’re a birdwatcher, eBird is the site for you to go – huge maps of species and countries, you can follow the birds as they’re reported in by other eBirders.
Birding News and Features — eBird.
The Economist weighs in and says that extending copyright doesn’t increase creativity, it stifles it and Europe should think long and hard before going down the American way and extending it for perpituity.
Protecting creativity: Copyright and wrong | The Economist.
Scientists have found the first multicellular animals that apparently live entirely without oxygen. The creatures reside deep in one of the harshest environments on earth: the Mediterranean Ocean's L'Atalante basin, which contains salt brine so dense that it doesn't mix with the oxygen-containing waters above. Previous samples taken from the water and sediments in the basin showed that single-celled life was present, but a new study published this week in BMC Biology has identified multi-cellular animals that apparently live and reproduce in the sediments under the salt brine. Italian and Danish researchers describe three new species of tiny animals called Loricifera.
via ScienceShot: Animals That Live Without Oxygen – ScienceNOW.
Chinese doctors have used arsenic in the treatment of APL (leukemia) with cure rates of 90% since 1992 without the side-effects of chemo (hair loss, suppression of bone marrow function).
A paper from Shanghai shows that it works by targetting specific proteins that feed the cancer.
China scientists show how arsenic treats blood cancer | Reuters.
This is a powerboat which can go underwater, available in 3 versions allowing up to 5 people to cruise 500 miles on the surface at 40 knots or submerge to 1200 feet using an electric self-recharging engine at up to 3.7 knots.
We now have approximately 4,000 in the Federal Air Marshals Service, yet they have made an average of just 4.2 arrests a year since 2001. This comes out to an average of about one arrest a year per 1,000 employees.Now, let me make that clear. Their thousands of employees are not making one arrest per year each. They are averaging slightly over four arrests each year by the entire agency. In other words, we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest. Let me repeat that: we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest.
Now if they could take a look at what the TSA is doing too!
This is an interesting read:
It’s about the current EU antitrust complaint filed against Google – not by Microsoft, as it happens. It covers whitelisting of people and Google using its search engine results to push its own services, which is anti-competitive. Specifically two examples are mentioned: on line map services (where MapQuest lost out in searches to Google Maps, even when the term MapQuest was specifically used) and price comparison sites. This tactic could obviously be used to kill off any competitors in any market Google is in, especially if they are then whitelisted, whereby the competitor is not to found in the search engine at all any more, unless through paid exposure using AdWords.
So this is about anit-competitiveness and transparency.
Why the Google antitrust complaint is not about Microsoft • The Register.
The current (demissionary) minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin has made himself a total idiot by declaring a database into which he wants to put fingerprints of all the Netherlands ‘safe’. Hasn’t he learnt yet, when it comes to databases, there is no such thing as safe?!
Further, the data will be stored at a third, non-governmental database. Where it will be safe too.
Really.
Idiot.
Minister: database vingerafdrukken is veilig | Webwereld.
Hardly surprisingly, it turns out that the Electronische Patienten Database is unsafe and offers unfettered access to your private details to almost anyone and their dog.
Onderzoek: beveiliging EPD fundamenteel zwak | Webwereld.
Fortunately you can opt out here (PDF)
That’s how these misused things always start – anti-terrorlaws, jew extermination: no, we just want to do this one little thing. Once the mechanism is in there, well we might just as well increase its functionalities just a little bit – it’s there anyway!
Anyway, the EC wants to implement a technically totally unviable kiddy porn filter over the internet, globally please. Who’s to say it won’t stop midget porn (hey – if you dig it, whatever!) and then get used to stop, say, sites with liberal ideas?
EC stelt Europabreed kinderpornofilter voor | Webwereld.
