Coral sex is a wonder to behold. On a summer night, always around a full moon, corals somehow all know to release billions of sperm and eggs into the sea, turning the water into a pink miasma of sex. This spawning relies on precise environmental cues, which could get scrambled in climate change. That’s why researchers are trying to get them to spawn in the lab. Read more…
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Look At These Beautiful Little Corals Grown Like Popsicles In A Lab
House numbers on Google Street View can turn up as blobby, blurry things, so its engineers built a pretty crazy neural network to decipher them. Except this algorithm also turns out to be very very good at deciphering other blobby, blurry texts—like CAPTCHAs, which it cracks with 99 percent accuracy . Take that, human. Read more…
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Google Street View Accidentally Made an Algorithm That Cracks CAPTCHAs
As anyone who’s driven through Middle America knows, it feels like there’s very few places in the U.S. that don’t have at least a few inhabitants. But as a map by cartographer Nik Freeman proves, there are still some amber waves of grain and fruited plains that remain. Emphasis on some. Read more…
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Here’s a Map of the 47 Percent of America Where No One Lives
Among the other new features in Windows 8.1’s latest update , Microsoft has also added a small rundown of what’s taking up space in your home folder and Recycle Bin. Read more…
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See Which Folders Are Taking Up Space in Windows 8.1 Settings
In Compton last year, police began quietly testing a system that allowed them to do something incredible: Watch every car and person in real time as they ebbed and flowed around the city. Every assault, every purse snatched, every car speeding away was on record—all thanks to an Ohio company that monitors cities from the air. Read more…
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Police Are Testing a "Live Google Earth" To Watch Crime As It Happens
An anonymous reader writes “The Associated Press reports that Pacific Gas & Electric Co. has put up a $250, 000 reward for ‘information leading to an arrest and conviction in a startling attack mounted nearly a year ago on telephone lines and the power grid in Silicon Valley.’ Besides cutting power lines, the attackers also cut AT&T fiber-optic phone lines, thereby denying some people access to 911, and fired shots into a PB&E substation, knocking out 17 transformers in Silicon Valley and causing $15 million in damage. As of this post, the perpetrators are still unidentified and continue to elude the FBI. Meanwhile, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Thursday was brought before the Senate Energy Committee to explain why the FERC disseminated via insecure media a sensitive document describing where all the nation’s power grids are particularly sensitive to a physical attack. FERC responded with assurances that databases are currently being scrubbed and procedures being implemented to safeguard critical data.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
NFC, or Near-Field Communication , is useful for all sorts of things , but you can also use it to lock or unlock your PC when you sit down to work. The Electrodog Show , over at Instructables, shows us how do set it up. Read more…
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Use NFC Tags to Unlock Your Computer
Over the next three years, the U.S. Army will be filling its brand new cyber warfare institute at West Point with the best and brightest hackers it can find. Not just hackers, however: the institute will bring together psychologists, lawyers, mathematicians—anyone who can help the country win the inevitable cyber war and save America. Read more…
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U.S. Army Compares New Hacker School To "The Birth Of The Air Force"
You’ve probably heard about the ambitious, almost impossible-sounding project to fly a solar-powered plane around the world without refueling . But now, about a year before the voyage is scheduled to begin, you get your first look at the plane itself. It’s unlike any plane you’ve seen before. Read more…
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This Plane Will Circle the World Using Only the Power of the Sun
Jeremiah Cornelius writes: “The U.S. Navy’s new railgun technology, developed by General Atomics, uses the Lorentz force in a type of linear, electric motor to hurl a 23-pound projectile at speeds exceeding Mach 7 — in excess of 5, 000 mph. The weapon has a range of 100 miles and doesn’t require explosive warheads. ‘The electromagnetic railgun represents an incredible new offensive capability for the U.S. Navy, ‘ says Rear Adm. Bryant Fuller, the Navy’s chief engineer. ‘This capability will allow us to effectively counter a wide range of threats at a relatively low cost, while keeping our ships and sailors safer by removing the need to carry as many high-explosive weapons.’ Sea trials begin aboard an experimental Navy catamaran, the USNS Millinocket, in 2016.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Navy Debuts New Railgun That Launches Shells at Mach 7