An anonymous reader writes: Chuck Finley checked out 2, 361 books from a Florida library in just nine months, increasing their total circulation by 3.9%. But he doesn’t exist. “The fictional character was concocted by two employees at the library, complete with a false address and driver’s license number, ” according to the Orlando Sentinel. The department overseeing the library acknowledges their general rule is “if something isn’t circulated in one to two years, it’s typically weeded out of circulation.” So the fake patron scheme was concocted by a library assistant working with the library’s branch supervisor, who “said he wanted to avoid having to later repurchase books purged from the shelf.” But according to the newspaper the branch supervisor “said the same thing is being done at other libraries, too.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Library Creates Fake Patron Records To Avoid Book-Purging
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Deutsche Welle: The truck that plowed into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12, came to a halt due an automatic braking system, according to German media reports on Wednesday. The automatic braking system potentially saved the lives of many more people in the recent terrorist attack. An investigation by newspaper “Suddeutsche Zeitung” and broadcasters “NDR” and “WDR” found the Scania R 450 semi-trailer stopped after between 70 and 80 meters (250 feet). The system was reportedly engaged after sensing a collision. Previous reports speculated that the truck had driven erratically and stopped due to the heroic actions of the truck’s Polish driver, who lay fatally wounded in the cabin. In 2012 the European Union adopted regulations requiring all new trucks exceeding 3, 500 kilograms be fitted with advanced emergency braking systems. The systems initially alert drivers and then take evasive action. The regulation was adopted to reduce the number of rear end collisions by trucks. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
The space laboratory that China launched earlier this week has an atomic clock in it which is more accurate than the best timepiece operated by America’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, according to Chinese engineers. The atomic called, dubbed CACS or Cold Atomic Clock in Space, will slow down by only one second in a billion years. In comparison, the NIST’s F2 atomic clock, which serves as the United States’ primary time and frequency standard, loses a second every 300 million years. From an RT report:”It is the world’s first cold atomic clock to operate in space… it will have military and civilian applications, ” said Professor Xu Zhen from the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, who was involved in the CACS project. An atomic clock uses vibrations of atoms to measure time, which are very consistent as long as the atoms are held at constant temperature. In fact, since 1967 the definition of second has been “9, 192, 631, 770 vibrations of a cesium-133 atom.” In a cold atomic clock, the atoms are cooled down with a laser to decrease the effect of atom movement on the measurements. CACS goes even further and eliminates the pull of Earth’s gravity by being based in orbit. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
I mean, if you want to get caught committing a crime, please do wear your Fitbit. That’s what a Florida woman learned when she told police she’d been assaulted in March — only to have them examine her Fitbit and discover that the truth was a lot uglier and more awkward. Read more…