Bring On the Boring Robots

malachiorion writes: After a successful 6-month pilot, Savioke’s ‘butler bots’ are heading to hotels around the country. These are not sexy, scary, or even technically impressive machines. But they were useful enough, over the course of their 2, 000 or so deliveries, to warrant a redesign, and a larger deployment starting in April. Savioke’s CEO had some interesting things to say about the pilot, including the fact that some 95 percent of guests gave the robot a 5-star review, and only the drunks seemed to take issue with it. Plus, as you might expect, everyone seemed to want to take a damn selfie with it. But as small as the stakes might appear, highly specialized bots like this one, which can only do one thing (in this case, bring up to 10 pounds of stuff from the lobby to someone’s door) are a better glimpse of our future than any talk of hyper-competent humanoids or similarly versatile machines. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Bring On the Boring Robots

Pixar Releases Free Version of RenderMan

jones_supa writes: A year ago, animation studio Pixar promised its RenderMan animation and rendering suite would eventually become free for non-commercial use. This was originally scheduled to happen in the SIGGRAPH 2014 computer graphics conference, but things got delayed. Nevertheless, today Pixar is releasing the free version into the wild. Free, non-commercial RenderMan can be used for research, education, evaluation, plug-in development, and any personal projects that do not generate commercial profits. This version is fully featured, without a watermark or any kind of artificial limits. Featuring Pixar’s new RIS technology, RenderMan delivers extremely fast global illumination and interactive shading and lighting for artists. The software is available for Mac, Linux, and Windows. In conjunction with the release, Pixar has also launched a new RenderMan Community site where users can exchange knowledge and resources, showcase their own work, share assets such as shaders and scripts, and learn about RenderMan from tutorials. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Pixar Releases Free Version of RenderMan

A Compound From Plants Could Replace Bitumen to Make Roads Greener

Construction teams around the world rely on bitumen—an incredibly sticky by-product of crude oil production—as the main binding agent for asphalt. But a team of scientists reckon that a compound found within plants could help replace it, making road-building a greener, more sustainable practice. Read more…

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A Compound From Plants Could Replace Bitumen to Make Roads Greener

Costa Rica Goes 75 Days Powering Itself Using Only Renewable Energy

An anonymous reader writes with news about an impressive renewable energy accomplishment in Costa Rica. Costa Rica has achieved a clean energy milestone by using 100 per cent renewable energy for a record 75 days in a row. The feat was achieved thanks to heavy rainfall, which powered four hydroelectric plants in the first three months of the year, the state-run Costa Rican Electricity Institute said. No fossil fuels have been burnt to generate electricity since December 2014, in the state which is renowned for its clean energy policies.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Costa Rica Goes 75 Days Powering Itself Using Only Renewable Energy

Hundreds Expelled, Many Arrested, For Cheating In India’s School Exams

Etherwalk writes Sources conflict, but it looks like as many as 300 people have been arrested for cheating in the Indian state of Bihar after the Hindustan Times published images of dozens of men climbing the walls of a test center to pass answers inside. 500-700+ students were expelled and police had been bribed to look the other way. Xinhau’s version of the story omits any reference to police bribery, while The ABC’s omits the fact that police fired guns into the air. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hundreds Expelled, Many Arrested, For Cheating In India’s School Exams

LightEater Malware Attack Places Millions of Unpatched BIOSes At Risk

Mark Wilson writes Two minutes is all it takes to completely destroy a computer. In a presentation entitled ‘How many million BIOSes would you like to infect?’ at security conference CanSecWest, security researchers Corey Kallenberg and Xeno Kovah revealed that even an unskilled person could use an implant called LightEater to infect a vulnerable system in mere moments. The attack could be used to render a computer unusable, but it could also be used to steal passwords and intercept encrypted data. The problem affects motherboards from companies including Gigabyte, Acer, MSI, HP and Asus. It is exacerbated by manufactures reusing code across multiple UEFI BIOSes and places home users, businesses and governments at risk. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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LightEater Malware Attack Places Millions of Unpatched BIOSes At Risk

OS X Users: 13 Characters of Assyrian Can Crash Your Chrome Tab

abhishekmdb writes No browsers are safe, as proved yesterday at Pwn2Own, but crashing one of them with just one line of special code is slightly different. A developer has discovered a hack in Google Chrome which can crash the Chrome tab on a Mac PC. The code is a 13-character special string which appears to be written in Assyrian script. Matt C has reported the bug to Google, who have marked the report as duplicate. This means that Google are aware of the problem and are reportedly working on it. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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OS X Users: 13 Characters of Assyrian Can Crash Your Chrome Tab

Arkansas Is Now the First State To Require That High Schools Teach Coding

SternisheFan writes Arkansas will be implementing a new law that requires public high schools to offer classes in computer science starting in the 2015-16 school year. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who signed the bill, believes it will provide “a workforce that’s sure to attract businesses and jobs” to the state. $5 million of the governor’s proposed budget will go towards this new program. For the districts incapable of of administering these classes due to lack of space or qualified teachers, the law has provisions for online courses to be offered through Virtual Arkansas. Although students will not be required to take computer science classes, the governor’s goal is to give students the opportunity if they “want to take it.” Presently, only one in 10 schools nationwide offer computer science classes. Not only will Arkansas teach these classes in every public high school and charter school serving upper grades, the courses will count towards the state’s math graduation requirement as a further incentive for students. Training programs for teacher preparation will be available, but with the majority of the infrastructure already primed, the execution of this new law should hopefully be painless and seamless. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Arkansas Is Now the First State To Require That High Schools Teach Coding

Scan Images Into Text with Google Keep’s OCR Feature

Chrome: If you’re a regular Google Keep user, you might have missed a (relatively) new feature in the app. If you paste an image into a note, Google lets you convert the image into editable text. Read more…

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Scan Images Into Text with Google Keep’s OCR Feature

This Lighter Works Like a Taser To Start Fires Without a Flame

If you need more than ten fingers to count the number of times you’ve burned yourself while trying to light a candle at the bottom of a tall glass container, the Illume ArcLighter will probably seem like the greatest invention since the wheel. Instead of a flame, it produces a glowing electric arc that can light everything from candles, to gas burners, to even kindling. Read more…

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This Lighter Works Like a Taser To Start Fires Without a Flame