Happy Sunday fellow Gizmodo readers. Lots of techy tech stuff happened this week. Google let us see the brave new Nexus future and Apple had a few new toys to showcase before 2014 wraps up. But in between and among these big events, lots of great stories filtered through the web. Here are great long form pieces from The Star , Vox , Nautilus , and MIT Technology Review worthy of your undivided attention. Read more…
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To Save Modern Medicine, Scientists Hunt for New Antibiotics
Apple has long sold Bose headphones and speakers in its retail stores, including in the time since it acquired Bose-competitor Beats Audio, and despite the lawsuit filed by Bose against Apple alleging patent violations on the part of Beats. That’s come to an end this week, though: Apple’s dropped Bose merchandise both in its retail locations and online, despite recent news that the two companies have settled the patent suit. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Despite Patent Settlement, Apple Pulls Bose Merchandise From Its Stores
colinneagle points out this article about how the Marines are using a Microsoft Kinect to build maps. A military contractor has come up with something that has the U.S. Marine Corps interested. The Augmented Reality Sand Table is currently being developed by the Army Research Laboratory and was on display at the Modern Day Marine Expo that recently took place on Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. The set-up is simple: a table-sized sandbox is rigged with a Microsoft Kinect video game motion sensor and an off-the-shelf projector. Using existing software, the sensor detects features in the sand and projects a realistic topographical map that corresponds to the layout, which can change in real time as observers move the sand around in the box. The setup can also project maps from Google Earth or other mapping and GPS systems, enabling units to visualize the exact terrain they’ll be covering for exercises or operations. Eventually, they hope to add visual cues to help troops shape the sandbox to match the topography of a specified map. Eventually, the designers of the sandbox hope to involve remote bases or even international partners in conducting joint training and operations exercises. Future possibilities include large-scale models that could project over a gymnasium floor for a battalion briefing, and a smartphone version that could use a pocket-sized projector to turn any patch of dirt into an operational 3-D map. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Marines Put Microsoft Kinect To Work For 3D Mapping
Bootleg websites, usually tucked away in some shady digital corner filled with pornographic pop up ads and potentially malignant viruses, are a permanent fixture on the internet. Offering up tons of illegally free content, these sites’ creators are the reason why publishing execs toss and turn in their sleep. Read more…
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This Is What Happens When a Bootleg Website Falls
Since 2011, Honolulu’s been busy building a $5.2 billion solution to help alleviate the mind-blowing traffic congestion that’s come to define life on Oahu’s South Shore. The Honolulu Rail Transit Project is a 20-mile, 21-station elevated train—and it will be the first completely driverless rail system in the U.S. Read more…
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The First Driverless Transit System in the U.S. Starts Rolling in 2017
Parking sucks, and that’s why there are plenty of apps to help your car find a vacant spot. Trouble is, those solutions tend to require expensive sensors to be installed in each and every one of those potentially open spots. A new app called PocketParker instead leverages the power of passive, portable sensors—the ones already installed your smartphone. Read more…
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This New Parking App Can Find Empty Spaces, No Sensors Required
The songbook of the damned—or at least of the employed. “For thirty-seven years,” reads the opening passage in the book, “the gatherings and conventions of our IBM workers have expressed in happy songs the fine spirit of loyal cooperation and good fellowship which has promoted the signal success of our great IBM Corporation in its truly International Service for the betterment of business and benefit to mankind.” That’s a hell of a mouthful, but it’s only the opening volley in the war on self-respect and decency that is the 1937 edition of Songs of the IBM , a booklet of corporate ditties first published in 1927 on the order of IBM company founder Thomas Watson, Sr. The 1937 edition of the songbook is a 54-page monument to glassey-eyed corporate inhumanity, with every page overflowing with trite praise to The Company and Its Men. The booklet reads like a terribly parody of a hymnal—one that praises not the traditional Christian trinity but the new corporate triumvirate of IBM the father, Watson the son, and American entrepreneurship as the holy spirit: Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Tripping through IBM’s astonishingly insane 1937 corporate songbook
If you’re feeling nostalgic for the shows of your childhood, Nick Reboot streams shows like Rocko’s Modern Life, Are You Afraid of the Dark, and Hey Arnold! 24 hours a day, for free. Read more…
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Nick Reboot Streams Old Nickelodeon Shows 24 Hours a Day
harrymcc (1641347) writes “In June 1967, a weekly newspaper called Computerworld launched. Almost exactly 47 years later, it’s calling it quits in print form to focus on its website and other digital editions. The move isn’t the least bit surprising, but it’s also the end of an era–and I can’ t think of any computing publication which had a longer run. Over at Technologizer, I shared some thoughts on what Computerworld meant to the world, to its publisher, IDG, and to me.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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After 47 Years, Computerworld Ceases Print Publication
redletterdave writes: “‘Project Xanadu, ‘ designed by hypertext inventor Ted Nelson to let users build documents that automatically embed the sources they’re linking back to and show the visible connections between parallel webpages, was released in late April at a Chapman University event. Thing is, development on Xanadu began in 1960 — that’s 54 years ago — making it the most delayed software in history. ‘At its simplest, Xanadu lets users build documents that seamlessly embed the sources which they are linking back to, creating, in Nelson’s words, “an entire form of literature where links do not break as versions change; where documents may be closely compared side by side and closely annotated; where it is possible to see the origins of every quotation; and in which there is a valid copyright system – a literary, legal and business arrangement – for frictionless, non-negotiated quotation at any time and in any amount.” The version released on the internet, named OpenXanadu, is a simple document created using quoted sections from eight other works, including the King James Bible and the Wikipedia page on Steady State Theory.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Xanadu Software Released After 54 Years In the Making