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Fitbit designer calls Project Ara the “IKEA chair” of smartphones

Magnets, how do they work? Google’s eventual, modular Project Ara smartphone will answer that question and more once its first “millions of units” ship in 2015’s first half. Project Ara To some extent, Gadi Amit, the tech-design guru who owns New Deal Design and helms the team behind devices like Fitbit, is letting go. His latest project forced him to. It’s called Project Ara , a smartphone concept that began as a Motorola product before Google bought the company. Project Ara strays from Amit’s string of simple, elegant, self-contained products. This phone is not like a fitness band or a more efficient camera; it doesn’t solve a single, immediate goal and then step out of the way. Rather, Project Ara demands experimentation and customization, forcing everyone outside of the Project Ara team to become the phone’s designers. In Amit’s eyes, especially in the modern phone era, that has become the point. The mission, even. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Fitbit designer calls Project Ara the “IKEA chair” of smartphones

High School senior charged with hacking report-card system

A high school senior in Miami has been arrested on charges claiming he illegally accessed his school’s online report card system and changed grades for him and at least four other students, according to a published report. Jose Bautista, 18, appeared in court Friday, according to WFOR . He reportedly faces charges of intellectual property offense, modifying programs, and an offense against computer users. The student allegedly approached fellow students and asked if they wanted him to change their grades. The principal of Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School, the school Bautista attended, said the student gave a written confession detailing the hacking. Bautista’s bond was set at $20,000. He is under house arrest with a GPS monitor. It’s unclear if he will be allowed to graduate or if the other students involved will face any punishment. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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High School senior charged with hacking report-card system

Scientists say young blood transfusions reverse aging

Two separate teams of scientists have announced that blood transfusions from young individuals make older individuals younger, fixing their hearts and curing aging brains. Speaking to the New York Times, Harvard Medical School’s professor of neurology Rudolph Tanzi, “these findings could be a game changer.” Read more…

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Scientists say young blood transfusions reverse aging

Study: Some E-Cigs Put Out Tobacco-Like Levels of Carcinogens

An upcoming study in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research says that some tank-style e-cigarettes emit cancer-causing formaldehyde in their vapor at levels similar to traditional tobacco cigarettes. The New York Times , which revealed the findings ahead of publication, says a second study confirms the results. Read more…

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Study: Some E-Cigs Put Out Tobacco-Like Levels of Carcinogens

Google Drive to lose document editing, prompt downloads of Docs and Sheets apps

Looks like the new Docs and Sheets apps were harbingers of changes for Google Drive. The good folks at Android Police parsed Drive’s new, currently unreleased version and discovered that it no longer has document or sheet editing capabilities. Should you try to make changes, the app prompts you to download the appropriate app to do so. Choose not to download and attempt to open a file, and you’ll be greeted by a view-only mode. While users may be a bit miffed at being force-fed a pair of new apps, it may prove beneficial. Separating the doc editing and cloud storage components will (presumably) let Google streamline the experience for each and give you option to download only the apps you need. Filed under: Mobile , Google Comments Source: Android Police

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Google Drive to lose document editing, prompt downloads of Docs and Sheets apps

Some Users Find Swype Keyboard App Makes 4000+ Location Requests Per Day

New submitter postglock (917809) writes “Swype is a popular third-party keyboard for Android phones (and also available for Windows phones and other platforms). It’s currently the second-most-popular paid keyboard in Google Play (behind SwiftKey), and the 17th highest of all paid apps. Recently, users have discovered that it’s been accessing location data extremely frequently, making almost 4000 requests per day, or 2.5 requests per minute. The developers claim that this is to facilitate implementation of ‘regional dialects, ‘ but cannot explain why such frequent polling is required, or why this still occurs if the regional function is disabled. Some custom ROMs such as Cyanogenmod can block this tracking, but most users would be unaware that such tracking is even occurring.” Readers in the linked thread don’t all seem to see the same thing; if you are a Swype user, do you see thousands of location requests, none, or something in between? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Some Users Find Swype Keyboard App Makes 4000+ Location Requests Per Day

Meet Ununseptium, Best Contender Yet For Element 117

From Motherboard comes this description of what may turns out to be the newest entry on the periodic table, newly synthesized element 117, created by researchers at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research of Darmstadt, Germany, and described in results published this week in Physical Review Letters. From the article: “Element 117 has been temporarily given the very literal name ununseptium (one-one-seven in Latin), and will only honored with a real name once the the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics and Chemistry (IUPAPC) confirms its synthesis at the GSI accelerator. Ununseptium is 40 percent heavier than lead, making it on par with the heaviest atoms ever observed. … Its properties seem to confirm that the existence of the so-called “island of stability”—a theory suggesting that the half-lives of superheavy isotopes will lengthen as their atomic numbers increase further away from uranium. Any element with an atomic number greater than 103 is considered superheavy (or in the ‘transactinide class, ‘ if you prefer the scientific jargon). Transactinides can only be observed artificially in a laboratory, and synthesizing them is no easy task.” Note: that “real name” process isn’t a mere formality; just a few years ago, another attempt to synthesize a 117th element looked promising enough to be declared done, but could not be confirmed with the IUPAPC’s tests. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Meet Ununseptium, Best Contender Yet For Element 117

This is NASA’s new Z-2 spacesuit

The follow-up to NASA’s rather Toy Story -esque Z-1 spacesuit was decided this week, thanks to an online poll . Three options were up for the task of being the next cover layer that will protect the Z-2, and after garnering 63 percent of the vote, the “Technology” option will be part of the agency’s new threads. An unadvertised underlying theme continues as renders of this suit certainly have a bit of a Tron aesthetic . Now, NASA engineers will move on to vacuum chamber, Neutral Buoyancy Lab, and rocky Martian surface tests which are all expected to commence this fall. There’s plenty of features that make this an improvement over previous models, so let’s take a closer look at the details. NASA says that the biggest improvement for Z-2 suit is its hard composite upper torso, which will offer the increased durability needed for Extravehicular Activity (EVA). Luminex wire and light-emitting patches allows for easy identification of crew members. For increased mobility, collapsing pleats allow the suit to fold, catering to an astronaut’s activity. There’s also exposed rotating bearings and abrasion resistant panels along the torso of the suit to further improve wear, protection and mobility. As mentioned, the testing phase — which includes buoyancy trials — is slated to begin this fall. One of Time Magazine’s Best Invention’s of 2012, the Z-1 suit was the first to use 3D scans for sizing, a suit-port with a hard upper torso structure and, at the time, the most resizable space wear that had be developed. [All images courtesy of NASA] Filed under: Science Comments Source: NASA

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This is NASA’s new Z-2 spacesuit

SanDisk Announces 4TB SSD, Plans For 8TB Next Year

Lucas123 (935744) writes “SanDisk has announced what it’s calling the world’s highest capacity 2.5-in SAS SSD, the 4TB Optimus MAX line. The flash drive uses eMLC (enterprise multi-level cell) NAND built with 19nm process technology. The company said it plans on doubling the capacity of its SAS SSDs every one to two years and expects to release an 8TB model next year, dwarfing anything hard disk drives can ever offer over the same amount of time. he Optimus MAX SAS SSD is capable of up to 400 MBps sequential reads and writes and up to 75, 000 random I/Os per second (IOPS) for both reads and writes, the company said.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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SanDisk Announces 4TB SSD, Plans For 8TB Next Year

Maryland police to live-tweet prostitution sting

Elvert Barnes/Flickr Maryland’s Prince George’s Police Department (PGPD), which covers part of the Washington, DC metropolitan area, announced on various social media platforms that it will be live-tweeting a prostitution sting operation “sometime next week.” What could possibly go wrong? Despite a headline that reads as if it were written by The Onion —or perhaps its latest viral media parody spinoff Clickhole —the PGPD explains that its decision to employ this “unprecedented social media tactic” stems from the desire to shame prostitutes and others involved in “the oldest profession” and to let them know that “this type of criminal behavior is not welcome in Prince George’s County.” According to information provided on their Blogger, Twitter, and Facebook accounts, the PGPD will be documenting the planned takedown with frequent updates during the arrests, tweeting photos and arrestee information. The planned takedown in Maryland will target johns, not prostitutes themselves, and will be set up using online ads, according to the department. The PGPD elaborated: Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Maryland police to live-tweet prostitution sting