This time, 36% of people tested still do not realise that Google Adwords are ads.
Furthermore, about a quarter of people don’t know that Google had any advertising at all. And this despite the yellow text box proclaiming ‘ads’.
via 36% of people still don't realise that Google Adwords are ads | Econsultancy.
It’s creepy to see how well it translates words on your screen…
Word Lens, The Real-Time Translation App, is Now Free.
This looks like a major new release of the search algorythm
Google Begins Rolling Out Panda 4.0 Now.
As well as getting it from sunlight, it also grows on trees…
A study, Sustainable Mallee Jet Fuel, commissioned by Airbus and undertaken at the Future Farm Industries Cooperative Research Centre, found that carbon emissions from jet fuel sourced entirely from mallee crops would emit 40 per cent less carbon than those using petroleum-based jet fuel.
It proposes using the mallee – a family of eucalypts that has a low-growing multi-stem growth habit – as the source of the oil to act as feed-stock for the jet fuel.
Fuel for jets DOES grow on trees • The Register.
Flagship is a real-time strategy game set on a galactic scale, played from a first person perspective. Command your fleet from the bridge of your ship, explore the stars and expand your territory.
via Welcome to flagshipgame.com.
If you have an eBay account, it’s time to change your password. The company released a statement today saying their internal and customer databases were compromised earlier this year, and starting today they’ll prompt everyone to change their passwords.
Attackers made off with names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, and of course, encrypted passwords. eBay explained that financial info like credit card numbers and other sensitive data (like PayPal accounts) are kept in a separate encrypted database which wasn’t compromised. They also said they’ve found no evidence of unauthorized access or activity by registered eBay users—which is code for "we don’t think anyone’s used these passwords yet." According to the statement, intruders compromised employee accounts first, and used their access to get the data they really wanted. They discovered the breach about two weeks ago, but the actual attack took place back in late February and early March.
via eBay Hacked, Change Your Passwords Now.
In November 2013:
There have been local reports of a mini helicopter drone dropping 250 grams worth of what is thought to be cocaine onto a Brazilian prison. According to Brazilian news source Globo, the prison, Centro de Detenção Provisória 1 is 60 miles north of São José dos Campos and currently holds 1,605 prisoners.
São Paulo’s secretary of Corrections claims that at 10am on 7th March, the drone dropped the package onto the prison yard. The prisoners are said to have crowded around the parcel making it impossible for prison officers to gain access to the mysterious load until later that day when a search of each individual cell had to be carried out.
Drone drops supposed cocaine package into São Paulo Prison | euronews, world news.
Now, May 2014:
A Lithuanian self-made drone detained in Russia’s westernmost Kaliningrad region last week was used for smuggling cigarettes into Russia, Oleg Dzhurayev, the press service chief of the Kaliningrad border department of the Russian Federal Security service, told ITAR-TASS on Wednesday.
A Russian-Lithuanian criminal group used the self-made drone aircraft for illegally smuggling cigarettes across the Lithuanian border into Russia. Dzhurayev said huge boxes with cigarettes had been found inside the drone when the border guards detained the aircraft on Lithuania’s border with Russia. He did not rule out the drone could have been used for other purposes, including unlawful actions in Russia’s territory.
Lithuanian drone detained in Russia last week was used for cigarette smuggling
Bradley Manning of WikiLeaks fame is now a woman, which raises special problems for the US Military.
“The soldier has asked for hormone therapy and to be able to live as a woman.
The request was the first ever made by a transgender military inmate and set up a dilemma for the Defense Department: How to treat a soldier for a diagnosed disorder without violating long-standing military policy. Transgender people are not allowed to serve in the U.S. military and the Defense Department does not provide such treatment, but Manning can’t be discharged from the service while serving her 35-year prison sentence. […]
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel last month gave the Army approval to try to work out a transfer plan with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which does provide such treatment”
So it’s a breakout from military prison to go to a civil one…
Pentagon OKs Manning Transfer for Gender Treatment | Military.com.
Very quickly! Will it only be a few decades until it’s gone?
Raspberry Pi case
The case is crafted out of seven unique layers with a transparent top and base. Each layer is laser cut from colourful high-quality cast acrylic and once stacked they securely contain a Raspberry Pi while leaving the primary ports, including the CSI camera port, accessible.
This will allow you to easily convert video’s to common presets, such as for tablets and phones, without having to puzzle over the handbrake options
Smallx264 | Free software downloads at SourceForge.net.
“if a player wins over her opponent in one play, her probability of repeating the same action in the next play is considerably higher than her probabilities of shifting actions.”
On the other hand, if a player loses two or more times in a row, he or she will not play the same sign, but will instead play whichever sign would have beaten the one that had just allowed his or her opponent to win
Science Has Finally Figured Out How to Win Rock-Paper-Scissors.
With the first ever production of synthesized “solar” jet fuel, the EU-funded SOLAR-JET project has successfully demonstrated the entire production chain for renewable kerosene obtained directly from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide (CO2), therein potentially revolutionizing the future of aviation. This process has also the potential to produce any other type of fuel for transport applications, such as diesel, gasoline or pure hydrogen in a more sustainable way.
via SOLAR-JET – News & Events.
If you have over 3000 daily visits, you have to register. You remove anonymity and you have to keep all your data in Russia for at least 6 months.
This after a few laws that ban 4 words from being used in the arts and allow the state to shut down websites – promptly used to silence state critics.
Well done freedom!
Russia Quietly Tightens Reins on Web With ‘Bloggers Law’ – NYTimes.com.
The Dutch courts have decided that re-using publically available data is illegal in accordance with the database laws. This means that Gaspedaal, a website that aggregates second hand car data from a number of other websites (and is therefore the most used car searching site!) is no longer allowed to aggregate the data from sites that tell it not to.
Goes to show you how out of touch from reality judges really are.
Gaspedaal mag geen advertenties meer doorplaatsen – Emerce.
Unfortunately only for iphone, hopefully someone will build an Android version some time!
OK, it only pulls 1cm objects and wouldn’t work in space, but still…
Physics – A Macroscopic Tractor Beam with Acoustic Waves.
Basically wet sand in front of huge sleds.
Scientists Discovered the Egyptian Secret to Moving Huge Pyramid Stones.
Using a dataset of about 2.3 million images from Flickr, we demonstrate that we can reliably predict the normalized view count of images with a rank correlation of 0.81 using both image content and social cues. In this paper, we show the importance of image cues such as color, gradients, deep learning features and the set of objects present, as well as the importance of various social cues such as number of friends or number of photos uploaded that lead to high or low popularity of images.
via What makes an image popular?.
The page also has a demo tool where you can upload your photo for a score.
This takes a DVB-C cable and streams it over your entire house, to all devices with much ease and low cost. Really nice, but unfortunately not CI+ certified.
Welcome to SiliconDust | SiliconDust – HDHomeRun®.