There will be no Flash for Android 4.1 devices, unless your manufacturer allready packaged it with the device. It won’t be available from the Google Play store either.
An Update on Flash Player and Android « Adobe AIR and Adobe Flash Player Team Blog.
It turns out that most people can’t tell the difference in sound quality above 160 kbps. So having a raw CD doesn’t make the sound ‘better’.
Concluding the Great MP3 Bitrate Experiment.
A group of researchers led by Professor Todd Humphreys from the University of Texas at Austin Radionavigation Laboratory recently succeeded in raising the eyebrows of the US government. With just around $1,000 in parts, Humphreys’ team took control of an unmanned aerial vehicle operated by the US Department of Homeland Security.
They used the same technique the Iranians claimed to have used to force the US’ latest and greatest stealth UAV to land on their territory: spoofing the GPS signal of the drone, lending a lot of credibility to that claim.
Texas college hacks government drone — RT.
Using lasers, they guide lightning to their targets:
“For very powerful and high intensity laser pulses, the air can act like a lens, keeping the light in a small-diameter filament,” said Fischer. “We use an ultra-short-pulse laser of modest energy to make a laser beam so intense that it focuses on itself in air and stays focused in a filament.”
To put the energy output in perspective, a big filament light bulb uses 100 watts. The optical amplifier output is 50 billion watts of optical power, Fischer said.
“If a laser beam is intense enough, its electro-magnetic field is strong enough to rip electrons off of air molecules, creating plasma,” said Fischer. “This plasma is located along the path of the laser beam, so we can direct it wherever we want by moving a mirror.”
“Air is composed of neutral molecules and is an insulator,” Fischer said. When lightning from a thunderstorm leaps from cloud to ground, it behaves just as any other sources of electrical energy and follows the path of least resistance.
“The plasma channel conducts electricity way better than un-ionized air, so if we set up the laser so that the filament comes near a high voltage source, the electrical energy will travel down the filament,” Fischer elaborated.
A target, an enemy vehicle or even some types of unexploded ordnance, would be a better conductor than the ground it sits on. Since the voltage drop across the target would be the same as the voltage drop across the same distance of ground, current flows through the target. In the case of unexploded ordnance, it would detonate, explained Fischer.
Picatinny engineers set phasers to 'fry' | Article | The United States Army.
These will only set you back around $100,- and will run quietly, much less noise than a fan system.
The Flynano is a one man electric amphibious aircraft that costs only EUR 32.000,- and a trailer costs EUR 5.300,-. It files from moderate water and wind states and goes 140 kph. Very basic but looks like fun.
Here is a theory that says that some fraud perpetrators are not actually evil, but they don’t see that they are being evil, depending on the frame of mind they are put into.
Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things : NPR.
Apparently they profile tourists and then force them to open their email on their own PC (which means basically you’re giving them your email login through a keylogger) and they look into it.
If you disagree you’re hiding something and not allowed into the country.
Besides using profiling, which is innefective, it’s a huge invasion of privacy. Not even the USA goes this far.
Israel steps up email border checks | The Australian.
The world of robotic pets is a large and varied one. The central place for finding out about them is here:
ElectronicPets.org – The Complete Database of Interactive and Robotic Pets.
There are a few that stand out, however:
Wowwee, makers of the robosapien have two lines that are very interesting:
The Alive baby animals are beatifully made and have a pretty wide range of functions.
Alive animals also come in ‘mini’ versions which are don’t have as many features but are still very cute. Watch out when buying though!
They also have a Perfect Puppy line (as well as many others) which are very cuddly.
Keepon is my favorite, he’s a dancing robot. The professional version costs $30,000 but there’s a smaller version available for around GBP 40,-
One of the most intelligent learning and evolving robots is PLEO rb (which stands for reborn). Unfortunately it’s insanely expensive ($469)
The fuel nozzle drip retainer is a simple yet innovative way of saving millions of litres of fuel on a global scale. Anyone who has pumped fuel before has noticed the drops that fall to the ground after you’ve removed the nozzle from the vehicle. We’ve designed a method of retaining these drops, which initiates a recycling process whereby the next customer in line receives the fuel that would have been otherwise wasted. These drops may not seem like a significant amount, however when taken into account globally, these drops amount to approximately half a billion litres of fuel that falls to the ground and is evaporated into our atmosphere every year. Our drip retainer mesh design utilizes a combination of pressure differentials and surface tension to retain fuel within the spout.
Peter Jennings is an inventor who has built loads of stuff for the Go Pro Hero camera’s, such as a programmable time lapse controller, panoramic mounts, external power using the back door of the casing and DIY wireless remote controllers. Very worth looking at the hacks he has if you own a Go-Pro.
GoPro Camera Tips and Techniques.