Airlines make a killing by charging fees for everything from checked bags to seat changes. A new bill—The Forbidding Airlines from Imposing Ridiculous (FAIR) Fees Act—aims to keep these fees in check. Read more…
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A New Bill Wants to Put an End to Ridiculous Airline Fees
Scientists at SLAC decided it was time to upgrade some of their kit, and the result is the laboratory’s most powerful laser system ever. The device will create temperatures up to millions of degrees and pressures approaching 2 trillion pounds per square inch. Read more…
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SLAC’s Upgraded 200-Terawatt Laser Creates Pressures of 2 Trillion PSI
New submitter kaizendojo sends a report from the Associated Press indicating the FBI has a small fleet of planes that fly across the U.S. carrying surveillance equipment. The planes are registered with fictitious companies to hide their association with the U.S. government. The FBI says they’re only used for investigations that are “specific” and “ongoing, ” but they’re often used without getting permission from a judge beforehand. “Some of the aircraft can also be equipped with technology that can identify thousands of people below through the cellphones they carry, even if they’re not making a call or in public. Officials said that practice, which mimics cell towers and gets phones to reveal basic subscriber information, is rare.” The AP identified at least 50 FBI-controlled planes, which have done over 100 flights since late April. The AP adds that they’ve seen the planes “orbiting large, enclosed buildings for extended periods where aerial photography would be less effective than electronic signals collection.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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FBI Is Behind Mysterious Flights Over US Cities
Amanda Parker writes In-flight internet service Gogo has defended its use of a fake Google SSL certificates as a means of throttling video streaming, adding that it was not invading its customer’s privacy in doing so. The rebuttal comes after Google security researcher Adrienne Porter Felt posted a screenshot of the phoney certificate to Twitter. From the article: “The image clearly shows that Gogo signed the certificate, not Google, thus misleading customers and opening the door to malware on users’ devices. It also serves as a way to throttle data and limit traffic on its networks. ‘Gogo takes our customer’s privacy very seriously and we are committed to bringing the best Internet experience to the sky, ‘ CTO Anand Chari said in a Monday statement.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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In-Flight Service Gogo Uses Fake SSL Certificates To Throttle Streaming
For those who like to really spoil their eyes, Dell’s new 27-inch monitor services them a whopping resolution of 5120×2880 . That works out to 14.7 million pixels in total, and 218 PPI. That’s just a hair shy of the 15-inch MacBook Pro’s 220 PPI, on a display that’s nearly twice the diagonal lenth. Wowza. Read more…
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Dell’s 27-Inch 5K Monitor Is Like Filet Mignon For Your Eyeballs
Nobumichi Asai has used projection mapping to put CGI onto cars, docks, building and more. His latest canvas? A real, live human face. Read more…
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Watch How "Electronic Makeup" Completely Transforms This Model’s Face
Two researchers from a Beijing University have found a way to create 3D X-Ray images of some of the smallest blood vessels in the heart — by filling it with liquid metal . Read more…
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This Is What a Heart Injected With Liquid Metal Looks Like
linuxwrangler (582055) writes Job interviews missed, work and wedding plans disrupted, children unable to fly home with their adoptive parents. All this disruption is due to a outage involving the passport and visa processing database at the U.S. State Department. The problems have been ongoing since July 19 and the best estimate for repair is “soon.” The system “crashed shortly after maintenance.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Passport Database Outage Leaves Thousands Stranded
Wondering how good video streaming is for your ISP compared to others in your area? Google’s new video quality report can show you. Read more…
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YouTube Video Quality Report Pits Your ISP Against Others
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