Not only can you move this hand, you can feel pressure in the fingertips too!
Swedish cyborg gets haptic hand • The Register.
Swedish cyborg gets haptic hand
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PowerGenix NiZn rechargeable AA batteries
Apparently these batteries last around twice as long as other rechargeable batteries and aren’t as insanely expensive.
PowerGenix NiZn rechargeable AA batteries: finally, some cells worth buying.
Framed for child porn
Turns out that there is malware out there that downloads kiddie porn to your PC without you knowing – until the police pay you a friendly visit. Fortunately the download rate is something like 40 sites per minute, which is humanly impossible, but try explaining that away!
AP IMPACT: Framed for child porn — by a PC virus by AP: Yahoo! Tech.
Dassault Rafale
This is a very comprehensive flight test review of the Rafale.
FLIGHT TEST: Dassault Rafale – Rampant Rafale.
Fighter pilots face a dismal future
The U.S. Air Force has a morale problem with its combat pilots. The issue is lack of action for the pilots. That, plus the increased use of unmanned aircraft, and the very real prospect that the age of the manned combat aircraft may be coming to an end.
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htmoral/articles/20091102.aspx
Unreal Development Kit
Epic Games has released the Unreal engine for free! You can develop your own game using the Unreal engine and do with it whatever you like. This should cut down massively on game development costs and because it’s such a huge platform, should give you loads of possibilities.
UDK – Unreal Development Kit – Epic Games.
US Navy Swarm UAVs
The U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) recently demonstrated autonomous operations by multiple “swarms” of unmanned air and ground vehicles, unattended ground sensors, video cameras and other devices linked together in an intelligent network powered by EdgeFrontier platform technologies from Augusta Systems, Inc.
via NAVAIR And Augusta Demo Operations Of Multiple Swarms Of UAVs And Sensors.
Basically using one operator to control a fleet of aircraft.
The RAF did tests on swarm UAV operations from an airborne controller in a Tornado in 2007 using QinetiQ technology called Autonomy
I wonder if they were using the fluid dynamics model to control these swarms?
Booming business, steal and sell to governments
An interesting article – if you have bank customer information, which you’ve stolen from a bank, governments will pay you for that information.
If you’re a spy you’d be shot for it. It’s not right that the Dutch government is using tax payers money on criminally attained information to find people who have foreign cash assets. In a court of law, evidence obtained this way is also not allowed and for good reason.
Booming business, steal and sell to governments « Frederik Van Lierde.
OBDII and iMFD Data Logging
Any car built this century has an OBDII interface. This allows mechanics to plug in their laptop and get real time engine data. Lots of information about the running of the car. Nowadays there are quite a few USB / Bluetooth OBD-II connectors, which allow streaming of this data to your laptop, Garmin navigation system or iPod / iPhone.
PLX Devices Inc. sells the PLX Logger Software, as well as devices to show the data on.
ODBCOM has software going for only $85,-
Scantool sells software as well as displays. The software goes for $120,-
Its dashcommand software ($40) allows you to create custom skins and settings for your own digital dashboard
Auterra has the DynoScan Windows software going – including a google earth interace
It also sells a display unit
Then there’s PCMScan by Palmer
All these tools have different featuresets and support different cars…
The Space Elevator Games
They are on now, and the first teams are already succesful, being able to climb 899m at 3.9 m/s!
The game is to get a robot up a line being held by a helicopter in flight. The robot is powered by just a laser beam.
NASA Space Elevator
Japan is committed, now NASA has 3 teams qualified to try to get their laser powered robot to climb a cable hanging from a helicopter one km in the air.
Elevator to space? They’re really trying :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Nation.
Open a Bottle of Wine with Your Shoe – Drinks – Lifehacker
GSM Palm Pre unlocked
This means you can use your Pre outside the O2 network by using a special SIM card produced by Rebel.
GSM Palm Pre unlocked with a little Rebel assistance.
Why computers suck at maths
This article explores why computers can’t do floating point maths, which is what makes Excel and all those online calculators such lousy mathematicians – basically because computers are binary, they can’t calculate anything after a decimal point, so the workaround is to put the number including the decimal point in a register of a certain size (say 32 bits) and reserve a few parts of the register for the decimal. Should the number you need to calculate become too big for the register, you run into trouble with rounding errors, which can compound. It then shows how nasty compound errors can become by citing the example of why a Patriot missle battery missed a Scud attack, resulting in the deaths of 24 people.
Why computers suck at maths | News | TechRadar UK.
DTIC
DTIC Online Access Controlled is the central facility for the acquisition, storage, retrieval and dissemination of scientific and technical information supporting the Research and Engineering needs of the Department of Defense. Maintained by the Defense Technical Information Center DTIC, a recognized leader in information and knowledge management. This site provides access to DTIC’s collections, online subscriptions, R&E Resources and more.
via DTIC Logon.
Dutch Hacker informs Jailbroken iPhones that they’re insecure
Fantastic – this guy port scans the T-Mobile range and finds the jailbroken iphones on the network, then SSH’s in using the default password and blips a message to the iphone telling the user the iphone has been hacked. Users can find out how to close the hole by visiting a website and paying EUR. 5,- using Paypal. He states that users don’t have to pay and he won’t do anything bad to them, so it isn’t exactly ransom.
What’s the hole? Most idiots who jailbreak fail to change the default root password. Duh!
Airport 3D scanners may rip your DNA to shreds
Terraherz waves, used to make x-ray type machines that can look through clothes and walls and more are also being deployed in airport scanners that look through your clothes. It turns out that under certain circumstances, they can resonate with your DNA, thus destroying it. Lovely.
Slashdot Science Story | How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA.
Immerz – Kor-fx
The Kor-fx plugs into your audio jack, drapes around your shoulders and makes gaming and movie watching more immersive by vibrating directly into your chest cavity. You can tell where sounds are coming from more accurately and you can play with lower volume levels.
A Physics Rebel Shakes Up the Video Game World, Literally | Xconomy.
Parents not allowed to watch their children play – UK
2 council run adventure playgrounds in Watford are off limits to parents. Only “play workers” are allowed to supervise the children playing there. For some reason, the local council thinks it’s not appropriate for parents to be in the same area as playing 5 – 15 year olds.
Let’s fuel the paedophile paranoia some more shall we?!
Brave New World arrives In Watford • The Register.
UK adopts French 3 strikes law
Looks like the British are blithely going where the French couldn’t go by adopting a 3 strikes rule for illegal filesharers. First you get warning letters and then you get disconnected from the internet.
Not only does this mean that basically your internet connection will be monitored for this kind (and what other?) behaviour, but also that people will be forced to switch to encrypted internet connections, making police and MI5 work much more difficult.
Windows 7 Shortcut keys
This is a huge and useful list:
The full list of keyboard shortcuts includes:
- Win+Home: Clear all but the active window.
- Win+Space: All windows become transparent so you can see through to the desktop.
- Win+Up arrow: Maximize the active window.
- Shift+Win+Up arrow: Maximize the active window vertically.
- Win+Down arrow: Minimize the window/Restore the window if it’s maximized.
- Win+Left/Right arrows: Dock the window to each side of the monitor.
- Shift+Win+Left/Right arrows: Move the window to the monitor on the left or right.
You can also interact with windows by dragging them with the mouse:
- Drag window to the top: Maximize
- Drag window left/right: Dock the window to fill half of the screen.
- Shake window back/forth: Minimize everything but the current window.
- Double-Click Top Window Border (edge): Maximize window vertically.
Taskbar Shortcuts
In Windows 7, using the Windows key along with the numbers 1-9 will let you interact with the applications pinned to the taskbar in those positions – for example, the Windows key + 4 combination would launch Outlook in this example, or Win+Alt+4 can be used to get quick access to the Outlook Jump List from the keyboard.
You can use any of these shortcut combinations to launch the applications in their respective position on the taskbar, or more:
- Win+number (1-9): Starts the application pinned to the taskbar in that position, or switches to that program.
- Shift+Win+number (1-9): Starts a new instance of the application pinned to the taskbar in that position.
- Ctrl+Win+number (1-9): Cycles through open windows for the application pinned to the taskbar in that position.
- Alt+Win+number (1-9): Opens the Jump List for the application pinned to the taskbar.
- Win+T: Focus and scroll through items on the taskbar.
- Win+B: Focuses the System Tray icons
In addition, you can interact with the taskbar using your mouse and a modifier key:
- Shift+Click on a taskbar button: Open a program or quickly open another instance of a program.
- Ctrl+Shift+Click on a taskbar button: Open a program as an administrator.
- Shift+Right-click on a taskbar button: Show the window menu for the program (like XP does).
- Shift+Right-click on a grouped taskbar button: Show the window menu for the group.
- Ctrl+Click on a grouped taskbar button: Cycle through the windows of the group.
More Useful Hotkeys You Should Know
The new hotkey goodness didn’t stop with the taskbar and moving windows around—one of the best new hotkeys in Windows 7 is the fact that you can create a new folder with a hotkey. Just open up any Windows Explorer window, hit the Ctrl+Shift+N shortcut key sequence, and you’ll be rewarded with a shiny “New Folder” ready for you to rename.
Here’s a few more interesting hotkeys for you:
- Ctrl+Shift+N: Creates a new folder in Windows Explorer.
- Alt+Up: Goes up a folder level in Windows Explorer.
- Alt+P: Toggles the preview pane in Windows Explorer.
- Shift+Right-Click on a file: Adds Copy as Path, which copies the path of a file to the clipboard.
- Shift+Right-Click on a file: Adds extra hidden items to the Send To menu.
- Shift+Right-Click on a folder: Adds Command Prompt Here, which lets you easily open a command prompt in that folder.
- Win+P: Adjust presentation settings for your display.
- Win+(+/-): Zoom in/out.
- Win+G: Cycle between the Windows Gadgets on your screen.
The Master List of New Windows 7 Shortcuts – Windows – Lifehacker.
Fixing stuff goes faster with AR
Using Augmented Reality goggles, powered on an Android platform, marines are able to maintain their vehicles 46% faster than using a laptop with technical manuals.
The AR system provides label names to each object, shows a 3D model of the tool you need and gives instructions for specifica tasks overlaid on the camera view of what you are looking at.
Technology Review: Faster Maintenance with Augmented Reality.
Clean Smells Promote Moral Behavior
These guys put some people through some basic trust experiments and it turns out that people who are in a recently windex-ed room behave far more morally and are much less likely to exploit other people.
Clean Smells Promote Moral Behavior, Study Suggests.
Evolving swarm intelligence in robots
The Lausanne university in Switserland has moved from the software to the reality: they’ve managed to get robots to evolve and learn behaviours, as well as the behaviour to decieve and cooperate through communication (flashing lights) and movement. It’ s a very interesting experiment, showing that robots are getting smarter every day and are now showing some very very lifelike traits.
Darwin’s Robots | h+ Magazine.
Ninite
Ninite looks great: you select the apps you want from a whole great list of them, it then gives you a custom installer to save and that then goes and downloads and installs all the applications you selected.
Ninite Easy PC Setup and Multiple App Installer – Great For Win7 Upgrades.