Study shows that companies have rejected 1 in 10 people between ages 16 and 34 because of something the person shared on social media. [Read more]
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Facebookers, beware: That silly update can cost you a job
kkleiner writes “Planetary Resources, the company that set its sights on mining asteroids, has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $1M to crowdsource the world’s first publicly accessible space telescope. In an interview, co-founder and co-chairman Peter Diamandis stated that the ARKYD 100 telescope is a means of ‘extending the optic nerve of humanity.’ The company hopes that the campaign, which is supported by Richard Branson, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and Seth Green, will make an orbiting telescope available to the public to help schools and museums in their educational efforts to inspire great enthusiasm in space.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Planetary Resources To Build Crowdfunded Public Space Telescope
Taking a page out of the book of other social networks , Facebook is now making it possible to verify celebs and other high-profile people and companies. The feature, which consists of a small blue checkmark sitting next to their name, extends to Pages and Profiles of popular individuals and businesses, as a way to limit the confusion a reader may experience when trying to filter between real and fake accounts. It appears that Facebook is taking upon itself the duty of deciding who to verify, but it’s still a good way to ensure that your favorite Engadget Facebook Page is manned by — you know — actual Engadget editors (nudge nudge, Mark!). Filed under: Software , Mobile , Facebook Comments Source: Facebook
Stylish and bullet proof! What’s not to like? This new blue dress by Japanese company Spiber is woven from synthetic spider silk, which is five times stronger than steel, more flexible than nylon, and is extremely lightweight. The electric-blue dress was created from a material Spiber calls Qmonos (from kumonosu , or “spider web,” in Japanese). The high-collared cocktail dress, on display at the Roppongi Hills complex in Tokyo, was created to demonstrate the technology behind Qmonos. The territorial nature of spiders makes them difficult to farm like silkworms. So instead, Spiber developed a technology that uses synthesized genes and coaxes bacteria to produce fibroin , the structural protein in spider silk. Spiber then uses technology it developed to culture the microbes efficiently and weave the fibroin into fabric. Apart from clothing, Qmonos could potentially be be used to make film, gels, sponges, artificial blood vessels, and nanofibers. Tim Hornyak of CNET has the scoop: Link
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Spider Silk Dress
MarkWhittington writes, quoting himself: “PETA is incensed over an article in the Huffington Post that details that organization’s unsettling practice of euthanizing animals in a Virginia facility that many have assumed is a no kill shelter. According to the New York Post, PETA wants to sue some of the people who have left comments on the article. The problem is that, following the practice of many on the Internet, many of the comments are under assumed names or are anonymous. PETA is attempting to discover the true identities of their critics so that it can sue them for defamation.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
First time accepted submitter aravenwood writes “The New York Times and the Times of Israel report today that artificial intelligence and a network of 100 computers in a basement in Tel Aviv University are being used to match 320,000 fragments of documents dating as far back as the 9th century in an attempt to reassemble the original documents. Since the trove of documents from the Jewish community of Cairo was discovered in 1896 only about 4000 of them have been pieced together, and the hope is that the new technique, which involves taking photographs of the fragments and using image recognition and other algorithms to match the language, spacing, and handwriting style of the text along with the shape of the fragment to other fragments could revolutionize not only the study of this trove documents, which has been split up into 67 different collections around the world since it’s discovery, but also how humanities disciplines study documents like these. They expect to make 12 billion comparisons of different fragments before the project is completed — they have already perform 2.8 billion. Among the documents, some dating from 950, was the discovery of letters by Moses Maimonides and that Cairene Jews were involved in the import of flax, linen, and sheep cheese from Sicily.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Computer Network Piecing Together a Jigsaw of Ancient Jewish Lore
In 2008, Better Place partnered with Renault to build an electric car and create a system of battery swapping stations, but the concept never gained momentum. [Read more]
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Electric car startup Better Place liquidating after $850 million investment
Madonna of the Microscope (2013) by Chris Shaw Madonna of the Particle (2013) Artist Chris Shaw , whom you may know from his rock poster art, has a new art series centered on the Madonna icon , which is currently on exhibit at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He wrote: I’m not sure exactly where my fascination with Madonnas was born, but I’ve loved Icons of all kinds for a very long time. As an artist I’m intrigued with the the way icons present their ideas — an easily understood, blunt central image juxtaposed with deep symbolism and cryptic geometric foundations. Icons also have a reason for existing, they are conveyers of information. The modern icons I create also convey information, it could be a scientific concept, a political statement, or a pop-culture reference. Regardless, each icon has a story and a reason for existing. In this body of work I use the Madonna as the vehicle to literally carry the ideas I’ve chosen to portray. The titles are straight forward. However, underlying and obfuscated by the image is a rigid geometric base, over which the Madonna icon is constructed. The geometry within this base is a riddle to decipher as are many of the symbols within. I’ve mainly learned about hidden geometry and symbolism in art by deconstructing an artworks composition, then researching what I find, something I like to do for fun. Golden ratios, spirals, and fibonacci sequences are easily found in many types of art, but especially deeply woven into icons. How and why this geometric language was used fascinates me, it ultimately led to creating my own icons with their own meanings. View more of Chris’ Madonnas of Science (and other pop culture Madonnas) over at his website and blog: Link Madonna of the Dark Matter (2013) Madonna of the Magnet (2013) Madonna of Evolution (Simian Vanitas)
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Madonnas of Science
MojoKid writes “As with any major CPU microarchitecture launch, one can expect the usual 10~15% performance gains, but Intel apparently has put its efficiency focus into overdrive. Haswell should provide 2x the graphics performance, and it’s designed to be as power efficient as possible. In addition, the company has further gone on to state that Haswell should enable a 50% battery-life increase over last year’s Ivy Bridge. There are a couple of reasons why Haswell is so energy-efficient versus the previous generation, but the major reason is moving the CPU voltage regulator off of the motherboard and into the CPU package, creating a Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator, or FIVR. This is a far more efficient design and with the use of ‘enhanced’ tri-gate transistors, current leakage has been reduced by about 2x — 3x versus Ivy Bridge.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Intel Claims Haswell Architecture Offers 50% Longer Battery Life vs. Ivy Bridge
An anonymous reader writes “A California user of Verizon’s FiOS fiber-optic internet service put his unlimited data plan to the test. Over the month of March, he totaled over 77 terabytes of internet traffic, which finally prompted a call from a Verizon employee to see what he was doing. The user had switched to a 300Mbps/65Mbps plan in January, and averaged 50 terabytes of traffic per month afterward. ‘An IT professional who manages a test lab for an Internet storage company, [the user] has been providing friends and family a personal VPN, video streaming, and peer-to-peer file service—running a rack of seven servers with 209TB of raw storage in his house.’ The Verizon employee who contacted him said he was violating the service agreement. “Basically he said that my bandwidth usage was excessive (like 30,000 percent higher than their average customer),” [the user] said. ‘[He] wanted to know WTF I was doing. I told him I have a full rack and run servers, and then he said, “Well, that’s against our ToS.” And he said I would need to switch to the business service or I would be disconnected in July. It wasn’t a super long call.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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FiOS User Finds Limit of ‘Unlimited’ Data Plan: 77 TB/Month