More than 160 years ago, paleontologists found a partial fossil of a 70-million-year-old giant sea turtle, the only known example of its particular species. This week, they found the other half. Read more…
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Both Halves Of A Giant Sea Turtle Fossil Found 160 Years Apart
Two recently restored statues of Amenhotep III were recently unveiled in Luxor, Egypt, along with a carved alabaster head from another Amenhotep III statue. Chunks of these artifacts had lain about for centuries, but they’ve finally been restored to give us a sense of their former glory. Read more…
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These Absolutely Huge Pharaoh Statues Were Just Unveiled In Egypt
An anonymous reader writes “An article at FiveThirtyEight looks at the likelihood of various occupations being replaced by automation. It mentions President Obama’s proposed increase to the federal minimum wage, saying big leaps in automation could reshape that debate. ‘[The wage increase] from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour could make it worthwhile for employers to adopt emerging technologies to do the work of their low-wage workers. But can a robot really do a janitor’s job? Can software fully replace a fast-food worker? Economists have long considered these low-skilled, non-routine jobs as less vulnerable to technological replacement, but until now, quantitative estimates of a job’s vulnerability have been missing from the debate.’ Many minimum-wage jobs are reportedly at high risk, including restaurant workers, cashiers, and telemarketers. A study rated the probability of computerization within 20 years (PDF): 92% for retail salespeople, 97% for cashiers, and 94% for waitstaff. There are other jobs with a high likelihood, but they employ fewer people and generally have a higher pay rate: tax preparers (99%), freight workers (99%), and legal secretaries (98%).” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Job Automation and the Minimum Wage Debate
wiredmikey (1824622) writes “Microsoft warned on Monday of a remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2014-1761) in Microsoft Word 2010 that is being actively exploited in targeted attacks. If successfully exploited, an attacker could gain the same user rights as the current user, Microsoft said, noting that users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than accounts with administrative privileges. ‘The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted RTF file using an affected version of Microsoft Word, or previews or opens a specially crafted RTF email message in Microsoft Outlook while using Microsoft Word as the email viewer, ‘ Microsoft explained Microsoft did not share any details on the attacks that leveraged the vulnerability, but did credit Drew Hintz, Shane Huntley, and Matty Pellegrino of the Google Security Team for reporting it to Microsoft.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Microsoft Word Zero-Day Used In Targeted Attacks
It’s not too often these days that an iPhone still surprises you. We’ve more or less seen it all by now. Except, we haven’t. FireChat is a new app that takes advantage of a little-known iOS feature that makes it easy to set up and run a network even when there’s no cellular signal. Read more…
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This App Lets You Chat Even When You Have No Reception
For three years, the fate of Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Tower has hung in the balance. Originally conceived in the heady days of the 2000s, the project has gone through multiple false starts since 2008. Now reduced to a mere kilometer, the tower has finally been given a start-date for construction. Read more…
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They’re Finally Building the World’s New Tallest Tower
When this Jurassic plant was smothered in molten lava one hundred and eighty million years ago, it was almost instantly fossilised—in incredible cellular detail. Read more…
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Molten Lava Fossilized This Plant Down to Its Single Cells
schwit1 (797399) writes with this excerpt from the Washington Examiner: “A parking ticket, traffic citation or involvement in a minor fender-bender are enough to get a person’s name and other personal information logged into a massive, obscure federal database run by the U.S. military. The Law Enforcement Information Exchange, or LinX, has already amassed 506.3 million law enforcement records ranging from criminal histories and arrest reports to field information cards filled out by cops on the beat even when no crime has occurred.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Navy Database Tracks Civilians’ Parking Tickets, Fender-Benders
Criminals who inadvertently leave traces of their DNA at the crime scene now have something more to worry about. By isolating 24 genetic variants, researchers have developed a computer program that can construct surprisingly accurate 3D models of facial features. Read more…
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Now Police Can Reconstruct Your Face From DNA Evidence
Bitcoin is big money. When Mt. Gox went belly up , hundreds of millions in bitcoin up and disappeared. Now, the troubled exchange just happens to have stumbled into 200, 000 ‘coin it thought was lost , or roughly 116 million dollars. Read more…
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Mt. Gox Found Over $100 Million In Bitcoin In a Random Wallet