China: Ten Recycled Concrete Houses 3D-Printed in 24 Hours [???]

April 28th, 2014

😯

Via: International Business Times:

A Chinese construction firm based in Shanghai has succeeded in building 10 houses each measuring 200 square metres in 24 hours by using an enormous 3D printer.

The houses are all eco-friendly and constructed from 3D-printed building blocks made from layers of recycled construction waste and glass fibre and mixed with cement.

Each home costs less than ÂŁ3,000 to build.

WinSun Decoration Design Engineering spent 20 million Yuan (ÂŁ1.9m) and 12 years to develop a 3D printer 6.6 metres tall, 10 metres wide and 150 metres long.


Critical Flaw Allows Attackers to Take Control of Windows XP Systems

April 27th, 2014

I thought we would see something like this within a week of XP’s 8 April end of life date. It took a bit longer.

I’m pretty sure that I won’t post any more about this issue. It just worries me to see so many of you continuing to visit Cryptogon on browsers (especially MS Internet Explorer/Exploder) running on Windows XP.

Via: Computer World:

Microsoft on Saturday told customers that cyber-criminals are exploiting an unpatched and critical vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) using “drive-by” attacks.

“Microsoft is aware of limited, targeted attacks that attempt to exploit a vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 9, Internet Explorer 10, and Internet Explorer 11,” the company said in a security advisory.

According to Microsoft, the attacks have been launched against IE users tricked into visiting malicious websites. Such attacks, dubbed “drive-bys,” are among the most dangerous because a vulnerable browser can be hacked as soon as its user surfs to the URL.

All currently-supported versions of IE are at risk, Microsoft said, including 2001’s IE6, which still receives patches on Windows Server 2003. The same browser will not be repaired on Windows XP, as the operating system was retired from patch support on April 8.


The Desperate Hustle as a Way of Life

April 27th, 2014

Via: City Paper:

Here is the future: nobody gets any job security. Nobody gets a fair wage while they have a job. Nobody gets a retirement fund or even any guarantee they’ll be able to eat tomorrow. And almost everyone is doing everything they can just to get by—and paying some substantial portion of their earnings to a pimp or “platform” which controls the business they are in. And ain’t life a grand adventure? Isn’t it all so fun?

Welcome to the Sharing Economy.

This is the model of the new economy, where anyone with a car ought to be a Lyft contractor (your fare pays what he or she thinks is right but the company is tweeting out “we’ve slashed prices 20 percent”) and anyone with a house or apartment is renting it out on Air BnB and crashing at their boyfriend’s parents’ place.

All of this came about by design. The world is arranged according to the people who arrange things—the people who make money by this arrangement. We’re in our fourth decade of this. The Times reported this week that the American middle class has been surpassed by Canada’s.

And it’s much worse than the New York Times imagines. As Dean Baker points out, the middle classes in most other countries have increased their incomes while getting longer vacations. In the U.S.A.? Not so much.

But this life of hustle—the idea that everything you do, every day, needs to turn a profit or you starve—is familiar to anyone who lives or grew up in an inner city. In Salon today, D. Watkins points to the junkies putting on a fight-show for crack, and the lady who runs the candy/cig shop out of her second floor window, lowering the product down in a pencil box tied to a rope of shoelaces. You’ve seen the guys moving “loosies” and the guys selling the bags from the food pantry.

They are fucked. And we are them.


The Antibiotics that Could Kill You

April 26th, 2014

Via: CNN:

In 2010, Americans were prescribed 258 million courses of antibiotics, a rate of 833 per thousand people. Such massive usage, billions of doses, has been going on year after year.

We have few clues about the consequences of our cumulative exposures. We do know that widespread antibiotic treatments make us more susceptible to invaders by selecting for resistant bacteria.

These risks are now well-known, but I want to lay out a new concern: that antibiotic use over the years has been depleting the pool of our friendly bacteria — in each of us — and this is lowering our resistance to infections. In today’s hyperconnected globe, that means that we are at high risk of future plagues that could spread without natural boundaries from person to person and that we could not stop. I call this “antibiotic winter.”

To explain: In the early 1950’s, scientists conducted experiments to determine whether our resident microbes — the huge number of bacteria that live in and on our bodies, now called our “microbiome” — help in fending off invading bacteria. They fed mice a species of a typical invader, disease-causing salmonella. It took about 100,000 organisms to infect half of the normal mice. But when they first gave mice an antibiotic, which kills both good and bad bacteria, and then several days later gave them salmonella, it took only three organisms to infect them. This isn’t a 10 or 20% difference; it’s a 30,000-fold difference.

That was in mice, but what about humans? In 1985, Chicago faced a massive outbreak of salmonella. At least 160,000 people became ill and several died from drinking contaminated milk. The health department asked victims of the outbreak and unaffected persons, “Have you received antibiotics in the month prior to becoming ill?” People who said yes were five times more likely to become ill than those who drank the milk but hadn’t recently received antibiotics.

People carry a small number of highly abundant bacterial species and a large number of much less common ones. For example, you may carry trillions of Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron in your colon and only a thousand cells, or fewer, belonging to many other species. We are not sure how many rare species any of us has. If you had only 50 cells of a particular type, it would be difficult to detect them against the background of trillions of others.

When you take a broad-spectrum antibiotic, which is the kind most commonly prescribed, it may be that rare microbes occasionally get wiped out entirely. And once the population hits zero, there is no bouncing back. For your body, that species is now extinct. My worry is that some of these critical residential organisms — what I consider “contingency” species — may disappear altogether.

Research Credit: ottilie


Firearms Applications Surge, Swamp Registration System

April 26th, 2014

Via: USA Today:

A record surge in recent firearms production and transactions have swamped the federal government’s automated registration system for select weapons, including machine guns.

In a notice earlier this month to the firearms industry, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it was temporarily suspending parts of its computerized system to shore up capacity in part to process the required registration and transfer of National Firearms Act covered weapons, which also include silencers, short-barreled shotguns, short-barreled rifles and some explosive devices.

Between 2005 and 2013, firearms act-related applications “skyrocketed by more than 380%” to nearly 200,000, according to the April 16 memo issued by ATF Deputy Assistant Director Marvin Richardson. The surge has contributed to a backlog of more than 70,000 applications.

Richardson’s memo states that the ATF is “immediately” hiring 15 people to assist with the application processing and deploying 15 current employees to the task.


‘Preparing For The Worst With Luxury Bunkers’

April 26th, 2014

I like the waterslide.

Via: CBS:

Preparing for the worst by setting yourself up with only the best.

As CBS 2’s Maurice DuBois reported Thursday, luxurious kitchens, swimming pools, even gyms are being added to bunkers built just in case of an emergency.

Bomb shelters were a common site in backyards in the Cold War 1950s.

But as one bunker promotional video shows, today’s backyard survival bunker looks more like a five-star resort, equipped with everything from an indoor pool and state of the art movie theater, to a dog run and even an interactive classroom — all underground.


Japan’s Plan for Centimeter-Resolution GPS

April 26th, 2014

Via: IEEE:

A stranger to Tokyo could easily get lost in its urban canyons. And GPS navigation, stymied by low resolution and a blocked view of the sky, might not be much help. But that won’t be the case after 2018. Engineers at Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Electric Corp. report that they’re on track to start up the first commercial, nationwide, centimeter-scale satellite positioning technology. As well as spot-on navigation, the technology will also usher in a variety of innovative new applications, its proponents say.

Named Quazi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), it is designed to augment Japan’s use of the U.S.-operated Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite service. By precisely correcting GPS signal errors, QZSS can provide more accurate and reliable positioning, navigation, and timing services.

Today’s GPS receivers track the distance to four or more GPS satellites to calculate the receiver’s position. But because of the various errors inherent in the GPS system, location can be off by several meters. In using the data from QZSS to correct the measured distance from each satellite, the accuracy of the calculated position is narrowed down to the centimeter scale.

This centimeter-scale precision promises to usher in a number of creative, or at least greatly improved, applications beyond car and personal navigation. Besides pointing out obvious uses like mapping and land surveying, Sam Pullen, a senior research engineer in the department of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford, says precision farming and autonomous tractor operations will be big applications. “Unmanned aerial vehicles and autonomous vehicles in general,” he adds, “will also find centimeter-level positioning valuable in maintaining and assuring separation from other vehicles and fixed obstacles.”


Stereotype That People Renouncing U.S. Citizenship Are Wealthy Tax Dodgers Is Ridiculous

April 26th, 2014

Is this fairly standard with members of the American diaspora around the world now?

When you encounter a group of Americans abroad, are they talking about the U.S. in terms that range from total disappointment to quivering, tear inducing horror?

I’m Now a New Zealand Citizen

Via: AP:

Decisions to renounce “are driven by a whole range of emotional considerations. … You’ve got anger, you’ve got fear, you’ve got a strong sense of indignation,” said John Richardson, a Toronto lawyer who advises people on expatriation. “For many of these people, this is not a tax issue at all.”


Trina Has Independent Certification of Solar Technology with Conversion Efficiency of 24.4%

April 25th, 2014

No prices or release date have been indicated, but, “Currently in pilot production,” sounds a lot more promising than most radical developments in this area, which seem to be perpetually five to twenty years away.

Make no mistake about it, 24.4% is a big deal—if the price is right.

Via: Trina Solar Press Release:

Trina Solar Limited, a global leader in photovoltaic (PV) modules, solutions and services, today announced that its State Key Laboratory of PV Science and Technology has developed a new high-efficiency Honey Ultra solar module.

Trina Solar’s Honey Ultra monocrystalline silicon module reached a new record of 326.3W, which has been independently certified by TUV Rheinland, a leading authoritative certification institution. This result sets a new world record for p-type monocrystalline silicon modules. The monocrystalline silicon module is composed of 60 high-efficiency Honey Ultra monocrystalline silicon cells of 156mm x 156mm, fabricated with a technology developed by Trina Solar and currently in pilot production.

Honey Ultra marks the second generation of Trina Solar’s Honey module technology and this new high-efficiency record significantly extends the previous milestone of 284.7W attained by Trina Solar’s first generation of Honey modules.

The module integrates core technologies including back surface passivation technology and low-resistance connection technology, each of which have been researched and developed by Trina Solar.

This new Honey Ultra module marks a key milestone for Trina Solar’s State Key Laboratory of PV Science and Technology since its accreditation in November 2013 and follows the Company’s development of a new Interdigitated Back Contact (“IBC”) cell capable of delivering an industry-leading efficiency of 24.4%.

This demonstrates Trina Solar’s world-class monocrystalline silicon module and that the technology behind these high-efficiency modules is suitable for rapid roll-out to large-scale production.


Pentagon: Russian Warplanes Violate Ukraine’s Airspace

April 25th, 2014

Via: USA Today:

Russian warplanes have entered Ukrainian airspace several times in the last 24 hours, the Pentagon announced Friday.

U.S. officials called on Russia to cease the operations, said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman.

“We call upon the Russians to take immediate steps to de-escalate the situation,” Warren said.

Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with his Russian counterpart on Thursday, but details of their conversation were not released. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has tried, without success, to contact Russia’s defense minister.

Ukraine’s air defenses are old but still potent enough, under the right circumstances, to take down Russian aircraft, said Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution. In fact, drawing fire might be Russia’s intent by entering Ukraine’s airspace.

“I don’t put a deliberate provocation, in order to create a pretext for response and invasion, past Putin at this point,” O’Hanlon said.

The U.S. response to such a move, O’Hanlon said, would be limited, perhaps the sale of arms or sharing intelligence.

The violation of Ukraine’s airspace follows war games that Russian troops began near the border. About 40,000 Russian troops have massed there, according to the Pentagon. Last month, Russian troops seized key facilities on the Crimean peninsula and annexed it.


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