Archive for the 'Technology' Category
A New Way to Make Laser-Like Beams Using 250x Less Power
June 7th, 2014Via: University of Michigan: With precarious particles called polaritons that straddle the worlds of light and matter, University of Michigan researchers have demonstrated a new, practical and potentially more efficient way to make a coherent laser-like beam. They have made what’s believed to be the first polariton laser that is fueled by electrical current as […]
Dawn of a Robot Revolution
June 6th, 2014Via: Financial Times: At the Automatica robot and automation fair in Munich this week the organisers devoted a whole section to so-called “service robots” for the first time. Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for manufacturing, engineering and automation demonstrated a Care-O-Bot that sweeps office floors and empties waste paper bins. Pal Robotics showed Stockbot, which […]
Vodafone Reveals Direct Access by Governments to Customer Data
June 6th, 2014Via: New York Times: A number of countries have direct access to the communication network run by the British telecom company Vodafone. The revelation comes in a privacy report released on Friday by Vodafone, the world’s second-largest carrier behind China Mobile, that included information about how governments regularly requested data about the company’s users. Vodafone […]
After Texting Girlfriend Too Much In The Dark, Chinese Man Suffers Detached Retina
June 5th, 2014Via: MedicalDaily: A 26-year-old man from China suffered a detached retina after hours of texting his girlfriend in the dark, using his cell phone messaging app, WeChat. He was required to undergo emergency surgery after his eyesight became plagued with sudden flashes and he discovered his left eye’s retina had become detached. Retinal detachment — […]
Overseas Processing Centre 1 (OPC-1)
June 5th, 2014Via: Register: Above-top-secret details of Britain’s covert surveillance programme – including the location of a clandestine British base tapping undersea cables in the Middle East – have so far remained secret, despite being leaked by fugitive NSA sysadmin Edward Snowden. Government pressure has meant that some media organisations, despite being in possession of these facts, […]
Seattle Hikes Minimum Wage to $15 Per Hour
June 3rd, 2014Researchers Carl Freyand and Michael Osborne recently tried to figure out the likelihood that automation will replace humans in a wide variety of jobs: According to our estimate, 47 percent of total US employment is in the high risk category, meaning that associated occupations are potentially automatable over some unspecified number of years, perhaps a […]
LAPD Adds Drones to Arsenal, Says They’ll Be Used Sparingly
May 31st, 2014*wink* Via: Los Angeles Times: The Los Angeles Police Department has acquired some eyes in the sky. On Friday, the department announced that it had acquired two “unmanned aerial vehicles” as gifts from the Seattle Police Department. The Draganflyer X6 aircraft, which resemble small helicopters, are each about 3 feet wide and equipped with a […]
German Foreign Intelligence Agency Wants to Access Social Media Sites in Real Time
May 31st, 2014Via: Deutsche Welle: German media has reported that the country’s foreign intelligence agency wants to access social media in real time. The agency reportedly wants to expand digital operations out of fear of falling behind other countries.
NSA Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images
May 31st, 2014Via: New York Times: The National Security Agency is harvesting huge numbers of images of people from communications that it intercepts through its global surveillance operations for use in sophisticated facial recognition programs, according to top-secret documents. The spy agency’s reliance on facial recognition technology has grown significantly over the last four years as the […]
TrueCrypt Developers Abruptly Quit
May 29th, 2014truecrypt.ch has been established for those who want to continue TrueCrypt’s open source development. Via: Krebs on Security: The anonymous developers responsible for building and maintaining the free whole-disk encryption suite TrueCrypt apparently threw in the towel this week, shuttering the TrueCrypt site and warning users that the product is no longer secure now that […]
