There’s no doubting that the cause of renewable energy is a noble one. But, ethics aside, it also gives birth to the occasional technical marvel. Altaeros Energies, a company from Massachusetts (with MIT and Harvard blood in its veins) has created one such curiosity. The prototype is a wind-turbine that doesn’t just languish on a hill-top, cutting a line in the horizon. No, this one has a helium-filled outer-section which allows it to deploy itself to 1,000 feet, where it can benefit from stronger, more consistent winds and gives nearly twice the power yields of its land bound brethren. That’s all very nice, but we just thought it looked dang cool in action.

Helium-filled floating wind turbine, renewable energy with style originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 22 Apr 2012 13:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Helium-filled floating wind turbine, renewable energy with style

suraj.sun writes with these snippets from an article at Ars Technica: “Hacker group Anonymous and the People’s Liberation Front have created a data-sharing site called AnonPaste.tk, meant to host pastes of code and other messages without any moderation or censorship of the information posted. The new site, which uses a free .tk web address, allows users to set a time for the paste to expire. It claims that data is encrypted and decrypted in the browser using 256 bit AES, so the server doesn’t see any of the information included in the paste.The site says it’s taking donations in the form of WePay or BitCoins. … AnonPaste is built using open-source software called ZeroBin, created by French developer Sebastien Sauvage. According to Infoweek Sauvage has experience in creating online authentication systems for French banks, suggesting the creator knows a thing or two about encryption of data. Still, on the software’s information page, Sauvage reminds potential users that ZeroBin software can not protect against potential Javascript attacks. ‘Users still have to trust the server regarding the respect of their privacy,’ he says. ‘ZeroBin won’t protect the users against malicious servers.'”

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Anonymous, People's Liberation Front Build Anonymous Data-Sharing Site

peetm writes “Twin brothers from England face US civil charges for allegedly defrauding investors out of $1.2m (£745,000) through a bogus stock-picking robot. The twins; Alexander and Thomas Hunter; were just 16 years old when they devised the scam — which fooled around 75,000 people, according to U.S. officials.”

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Link:
US Charges English Twins Over $1.2m 'Stock Robot' Fraud

New submitter seb42 writes “Pixel Qi announces new screens that can match or exceed the image quality of the screen in the iPad3, with a very low power mode that runs at a full 100X power reduction from the peak power consumed by the iPad3 screen. Hope the Google tablet has this tech.” The claims are pretty bold, and specific: “We have a new architecture that matches the resolution of the ipad3 screen, and its full image quality including matching or exceeding contrast, color saturation, the viewing angle and so forth with massive power savings.”

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Link:
Pixel Qi Says Next-Gen Displays Meet or Beat iPad 3 Screen Quality

mspohr writes with this excerpt from Democracy Now!: “National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney reveals he believes domestic surveillance has become more expansive under President Obama than President George W. Bush. He estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion ‘transactions’ — phone calls, emails and other forms of data — from Americans. This likely includes copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States. Binney talks about Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and challenges NSA Director Keith Alexander’s assertion that the NSA is not intercepting information about U.S. citizens.” The parts about National Security Letters in particular are chilling, even though the issue is not new.

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Whistleblower: NSA Has All of Your Email

coondoggie writes “DARPA’s experimental Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV-2), lost significant portions of its outer skin and became uncontrollable after three minutes of sustained Mach 20 speed last August. That was the conclusion of an independent engineering review board investigating the cause of what DARPA calls a ‘flight anomaly’ in the second test flight of the HTV-2. Quoting the report: ‘The resulting gaps created strong, impulsive shock waves around the vehicle as it traveled nearly 13,000 miles per hour, causing the vehicle to roll abruptly. Based on knowledge gained from the first flight in 2010 and incorporated into the second flight, the vehicle’s aerodynamic stability allowed it to right itself successfully after several shockwave-induced rolls. Eventually, however, the severity of the continued disturbances finally exceeded the vehicle’s ability to recover.'”

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Hypersonic Test Aircraft Peeled Apart After 3 Minutes of Sustained Mach 20 Speed

Think
that DNA is the only molecule that can encode genetic material? Think
again.

Philipp Holliger of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and his team
has created a man-made genetic material called the XNA (as science fiction
fans worldwide all ponder, what could possibly go wrong?):

Holliger’s team focused on six XNAs (xeno-nucleic acids). DNA and
RNA are made of a sugar, a phosphate and a base. The XNAs had different
sugars, and in some of them the sugars are replaced with completely
different molecules.

A key hurdle for the team was to create enzymes that could copy
a gene from a DNA molecule to an XNA molecule, and other enzymes that
could copy it back into DNA.

They started with enzymes that do this in DNA only. Over the years
the team made incremental tweaks until they produced enzymes that could
work on XNAs.

Once they had created these enzymes, they were able to store information
in each of the XNAs, copy it to DNA, and copy it back into a new XNA.
In effect, the first XNA passed its information on to the new one –
albeit in a roundabout way. “The cycle we have is a bit like a
retrovirus, which cycles between RNA and DNA,” Holliger says.

This is the first time artificial molecules have been made to pass
genes on to their descendants. Because the XNAs can do this, they are
capable of evolution.

“The immediate question is whether these XNAs can be introduced
into cells,” says Farren Isaacs of Yale University in New Haven,
Connecticut. Once the XNAs were installed, they could replicate and
evolve on their own. “That would be remarkable.”

Link

Link:
Move Over DNA – Here Comes XNA!

Sparrowvsrevolution writes “Security firm Dr. Web released new statistics Friday showing that the process of eliminating Flashback from Macs is proceeding far slower than expected: On Friday the security firm, which first spotted the Mac botnet earlier this month, released new data showing that 610,000 active infected machines were counted Wednesday and 566,000 were counted Thursday. That’s a slim decrease from the peak of 650,000 to 700,000 machines infected with the malware when Apple released its cleanup tool for the trojan late last week. Earlier in the week, Symantec reported that only 140,000 machines remained infected, but admitted Friday that an error in its measurement caused it to underestimate the remaining infections, and it now agrees with Dr. Web’s much more pessimistic numbers.”

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A Week After Apple's Fix, Flashback Still Infects Half a Million Macs

It seems that Power Matt just got a bit more, er, powerful. The Wireless Power Consortium announced today that it’s improved the Qi inductive-charging standard to “include longer range magnetic resonance wireless charging.” Effectively, this means charging stations that are up to spec will be able to transmit up to 5 watts of power from distances of 40mm (up from 5mm, previously) to Qi-enabled devices. The WPC says it’s ideal for pushing power through the likes tables and counter tops, and that it currently has 12 types of compatible transmitters ready for action. All in all, it certainly seems like a solid step for finally getting rid of all that cable clutter at your workstation — especially if it’ll rid users of those less-than-pretty looking charging bases. Maybe a last-minute add-on to your Uppleva, IKEA?

Continue reading WPC updates Qi standard, increases inductive charging distance to 40mm

WPC updates Qi standard, increases inductive charging distance to 40mm originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WPC updates Qi standard, increases inductive charging distance to 40mm

If the standard options on the Cadillac XTS or ATS sedan just aren’t enough to get you to pull the trigger, perhaps this will. GM and some fellow researchers are road testing Super Cruise self-driving technology in hopes of making those grueling road trips a bit easier on the ol’ chauffeur. Capable of auto steering, braking and lane centering on the open road “under certain optimal conditions,” the system is meant for highway use in both free-flowing and bumper-to-bumper traffic. Super Cruise implements a mixture of radar, ultrasonic sensors, cameras and GPS info. However, when “reliable data” can’t be gathered by the system, you’ll have no choice but to take the wheel yourself. Although the basics of the new tech have already been implemented on the 2013 Cadillac XTS and ATS autos as a piece of the Driver Assist Package, the full rollout could happen by the middle of the decade. For a look at Super Cruise in action, hit the video just past the break.

Continue reading Cadillac road tests self-driving Super Cruise tech, could hit highways by mid-decade

Cadillac road tests self-driving Super Cruise tech, could hit highways by mid-decade originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cadillac road tests self-driving Super Cruise tech, could hit highways by mid-decade