Google has a serial-killer-grade stash of knowledge about its users. This is not news, but to really ram the point home, Google is releasing a tool that lets you go back through history, and retroactively follow your every move. Read more…
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Google Maps Timeline Lets You Stalk Yourself
Areas of Southern California saw rare summer thunderstorms this weekend, with rainfall that broke July records all over the state. So much rainfall, in fact, that flash flooding dislodged a bridge and collapsed a section of the 10 Freeway—the major east-west freeway that links Los Angeles and Phoenix. Read more…
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Heavy Rains Destroy Major Freeway Bridge In Southern California
MarkWhittington writes: The quest for cheap access to space, to make space travel as inexpensive as air travel, has eluded engineers, government policy makers, and business entrepreneurs from before the beginning of the space age. It has become axiomatic, almost to the point of being a cliché, that the true space age will not begin until launch costs come down significantly. Forbes reported about a company called Escape Dynamics that has a unique approach to the problem. The company proposes to launch payloads into low Earth orbit on beams of microwaves. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Company Aims To Launch Spacecraft On Beams of Microwaves
If you’re one of those quaint people who still uses ‘physical media’ to install new versions of operating systems, Windows 10 could have a big shock in store for you: USB drives replacing the clunky old reinstallation DVDs of yore. Read more…
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Windows 10 Will Kill The Installation DVD, Finally
Forget the Like button: Facebook wants you to hit the Buy button instead. Buzzfeed reports that Zuckerberg & C0. is testing new, miniature e-commerce sites that are embedded within the Facebook pages of retailers. Read more…
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Facebook’s Testing Online Shops Embedded Into Business Pages
ckwu writes: A new transparent-paper device can generate electrical power from a user’s touch. The paper energy-harvester could be used to make disposable, self-powered touch screens that fold; interactive light-up books; touch-sensitive skin for prosthetics; and security systems for art and documents, according to the researchers. The device is made out of nanopaper, a tangled mat made of nanometers-wide cellulose fibers that is transparent and smooth like plastic. The researchers deposit carbon nanotubes on the nanopaper to make a pair of electrodes, and then sandwich a polyethylene film in between. The generator works via electrostatic induction. Pressing one side of the device causes a change in the charge balance between the nanotube electrodes, resulting in a flow of current through the device. Releasing the pressure causes electrons to flow back, so repeated pressing and releasing creates continuous current. The researchers demonstrated that the generator could produce enough power when pressed to light up a small liquid-crystal display. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Transparent Paper Produces Power With Just a Touch
the_newsbeagle writes: Robert Woo was paralyzed in 2007 when a construction crane dropped a load of steel on him. Yesterday, he put on the newest “exoskeleton, ” essentially a pair of smart robotic legs, and strolled out into a busy Manhattan sidewalk. He was demoing the ReWalk 6.0, a $77, 000 device that he plans to buy for home use. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Paralyzed Man Hits the Streets of NYC In a New Exoskeleton
Pocket is one of our favorite services for saving articles to read later , but the iOS app was missing a killer feature Android users have had for a while: Text-to-Speech. That changes today with an update for the Pocket app on iPhones and iPads. http://lifehacker.com/how-to-use-poc… Read more…
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Pocket on iOS Finally Lets You Listen to Articles with Text-to-Speech
In the future, hopping on a plane from LA to Honolulu might take a minute longer than it does today. You probably won’t miss that lost moment, but the airline industry will: The tiny additional flight time could amount to thousands of extra hours and millions of dollars of additional jet fuel each year. Read more…
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Why Airplane Flights Are Taking Slightly Longer Every Year
If you’ve connected to a Wi-Fi network, your computer usually saves that password so you don’t have to enter it in every time. But sometimes you forget that password. To figure out what it is, Digital Inspiration points out that all you need to do is enter in a simple command in the command line. Read more…
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Find the Wi-Fi Password for Your Current Network with the Command Line