Well, this is embarrassing. Remember how a Harvard team found the first direct evidence of cosmic inflation right after the Big Bang ? Well, now it’s published its findings—and it’s backtracking on its original claims. Read more…
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Big Bang Discovery Researchers Backtrack on Original Claims
If you’re wondering when home automation might tip into the Walmart-level mainstream, here’s a sign: Archos’ Smart Home starter kit is now on sale. Along with two cameras, two movement tags and two weather tags, they’re throwing in a controlling tablet, all for $250 — or $25 each for the cameras and sensors. Archos says they’re the first to use the Bluetooth Smart tech in connected homes and engineered it to work at double the normal distance (65 instead of 32 feet) and with up to 13 devices. That’ll permit it to take a photo when a movement-tagged door is opened, for instance, using its scenario editor and the Tasker Android app. Archos also has controllable plug sockets, alarm sirens, motion-detectors and even a pet tracker planned for the future. The kit should hit its online shop soon, but fair warning — Archos is known for low-priced, but not exactly high-end goods. Filed under: Household Comments Source: Archos
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Super cheap Smart Home kit brings automation to the masses
If we were ever asked to ride an electric motorcycle, our first instinct would be to make NYEEEEAWWWW noises to compensate for the vehicle’s silent engine . That’s precisely why we’re not employed by the Los Angeles police department , which has just bought an electric motorcycle for stealth operations. The department has only ordered one of the vehicles so far, purely as a test of its potential, but given that it produces no emissions and can be charged for less than a dollar, shouldn’t displease the force’s bean-counters. Of course, the lack of a tailpipe also makes this ideal for activity within buildings, so expect police chases in the near future to be a lot more exciting than the average freeway dash. Unfortunately for everyone else, the Zero MMX in question isn’t available on general sale, since it’s tailored for special forces units and police departments. That’s just as well, since it’s capable of fording rivers of depths up to three feet, goes from 0-to-60 in under five seconds and has a top speed of 88 miles per hour. In fact, this electric superbike only has one real flaw: it’ll only run for two hours before you need to plug it in again. Perhaps, if you’re planning to do a crime in Los Angeles, you should be to go get a full tank of gas before you begin. Filed under: Transportation Comments Via: Wired Source: PRNewsWire
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LAPD embraces the clean and silent electric motorcycle
Tomorrow is launch day in Canada and the U.S. for the Surface Pro 3, and to make sure the device has as smooth a launch as possible, Microsoft has released a set of updates for the tablet-hybrid. The updates include a slurry of performance boosts, as well as a fix for a power button issue that was annoying some. If you have a review device, the code should be live for you now. Otherwise, you… Read More
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Microsoft Updates The Surface Pro 3 Ahead Of Its Release Tomorrow
KentuckyFC (1144503) writes “One of the goals of neuroscience is to understand how brains process information and generate appropriate behaviour. A technique that is revolutionising this work is optogenetics–the ability to insert genes into neurons that fluoresce when the neuron is active. That works well on the level of single neurons but the density of neurons in a brain is so high that it has been impossible to tell them apart when they fluoresce. Now researchers have solved this problem and proved it by filming the activity in the entire brain of a nematode worm for the first time and making the video available. Their solution comes in two parts. The first is to ensure that the inserted genes only fluoresce in the nuclei of the neurons. This makes it much easier to tell individual neurons in the brain apart. The second is a new techniques that scans the entire volume of the brain at a rate of 80 frames per second, fast enough to register all the neuronal activity within it. The researchers say their new technique should allow bigger brains to be filmed in the near future opening up the potential to study how various creatures process information and trigger an appropriate response for the first time.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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First Movie of an Entire Brain’s Neuronal Activity
Apple will reportedly launch its smartwatch as early as October, after kicking off production in July, according to a new report from Reuters. The smartwatch will have a 2.5-inch screen, according to the news organization’s sources, which will arch up from the band and be “slightly rectangular, ” and it’ll feature touchscreen controls and wireless charging. Read More
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Apple’s Smartwatch Said To Debut In October With A 2.5-Inch Screen And Wireless Charging
harrymcc (1641347) writes “In June 1967, a weekly newspaper called Computerworld launched. Almost exactly 47 years later, it’s calling it quits in print form to focus on its website and other digital editions. The move isn’t the least bit surprising, but it’s also the end of an era–and I can’ t think of any computing publication which had a longer run. Over at Technologizer, I shared some thoughts on what Computerworld meant to the world, to its publisher, IDG, and to me.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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After 47 Years, Computerworld Ceases Print Publication
alphadogg writes A Chinese electronics vendor accused of selling signal jammers to U.S. consumers could end up leading the market in one dubious measure: the largest fine ever imposed by the Federal Communications Commission. The agency wants to fine CTS Technology $34, 912, 500 for allegedly marketing 285 models of jammers over more than two years. CTS boldly—and falsely—claimed that some of its jammers were approved by the FCC, according to the agency’s enforcement action released Thursday. Conveniently, CTS’ product detail pages also include a button to “report suspicious activity.” The proposed fine, which would be bigger than any the FCC has levied for anti-competitive behavior, or a wardrobe malfunction, comes from adding up the maximum fines for each model of jammer the company allegedly sold in the U.S. The agency also ordered CTS, based in Shenzhen, China, to stop marketing illegal jammers to U.S. consumers and identify the buyer of each jammer it sold in the U.S. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Chinese Vendor Could Pay $34.9M FCC Fine In Signal-Jammer Sting
An anonymous reader writes Mark Karpeles doesn’t seem to understand how much anger and trouble the $400 million Mt. Gox fiasco caused his customers. According to Wired: “After a long absence, the Mt Gox CEO has returned to Twitter with a bizarre string of tone-deaf tweets that were either written by a Turing test chat bot, or by a man completely oblivious to the economic chaos he has wrought. His first message after losing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins? ‘What would we do without busybox?’—a reference to a slimmed-down Linux operating system used on devices such as routers. He’s also Tweeted about a noodle dish called yakisoba and Japanese transportation systems.” Andreas Antonopoulos, the CSO with Blockchain says, “He continues to be oblivious about his own failure and the pain he has caused others. He is confirming that he is a self-absorbed narcissist with an inflated sense of self-confidence who has no remorse.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Mt. Gox CEO Returns To Twitter, Enrages Burned Investors
An alarming number of servers containing motherboards manufactured by Supermicro continue to expose administrator passwords despite the release of an update that patches the critical vulnerability, an advisory published Thursday warned. The threat resides in the baseboard management controller (BMC), a motherboard component that allows administrators to monitor the physical status of large fleets of servers, including their temperatures, disk and memory performance, and fan speeds. Unpatched BMCs in Supermicro motherboards contain a binary file that stores remote login passwords in clear text. Vulnerable systems can be detected by performing an Internet scan on port 49152. A recent query on the Shodan search engine indicated there are 31,964 machines still vulnerable, a number that may not include many virtual machines used in shared hosting environments. “This means at the point of this writing, there are 31,964 systems that have their passwords available on the open market,” wrote Zachary Wikholm, a senior security engineer with the Carinet Security Incident Response Team. “It gets a bit scarier when you review some of the password statistics. Out of those passwords, 3,296 are the default combination. Since I’m not comfortable providing too much password information, I will just say that there exists a subset of this data that either contains or just was ‘password.'” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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At least 32,000 servers broadcast admin passwords in the clear, advisory warns