Atlas, The Next Generation
February 24th, 2016Via: Boston Dynamics (aka Google, aka Alphabet Inc):
A new version of Atlas, designed to operate outdoors and inside buildings. It is specialized for mobile manipulation. It is electrically powered and hydraulically actuated. It uses sensors in its body and legs to balance and LIDAR and stereo sensors in its head to avoid obstacles, assess the terrain, help with navigation and manipulate objects. This version of Atlas is about 5′ 9″ tall (about a head shorter than the DRC Atlas) and weighs 180 lbs.
Ground Delivery Drones Ready to Roll in England
February 23rd, 2016Via: USA Today:
“Ground drone” delivery robots that could easily be mistaken for toilet bowls on wheels are about to start rolling through London.
Starship Technologies CEO Ahti Heinla says the company’s fleet of “small, safe, practical, free from CO2 emissions, and best of all, earthbound” robots can deliver packages and groceries at a fraction of the cost of vehicles that require drivers.
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The ground drones are capable of carrying the equivalent of two grocery bags, and customers set the time for the delivery. They travel at a speed of about 4 miles an hour, the equivalent of a brisk walk or slow jog.
India: Ten Million Without Water in Delhi
February 22nd, 2016Via: BBC:
More than 10 million people in India’s capital are without water despite the army regaining control of its key water source after protests, officials say.
Keshav Chandra, head of Delhi’s water board, told the BBC it would take “three to four days” before normal supplies resumed to affected areas.
Jat community protesters demanding more government jobs seized the Munak canal, the city’s main water source on Friday.
Sixteen people have been killed and hundreds hurt in three days of riots.
Virtual Reality and Zuckerberg’s, “Rictus Grin”
February 22nd, 2016Har!
Via: The Verge:
The image above looks like concept art for a new dystopian sci-fi film. A billionaire superman with a rictus grin, striding straight past human drones, tethered to machines and blinded to reality by blinking plastic masks. Golden light shines down on the man as he strides past his subjects, cast in gloom, toward a stage where he will accept their adulation. Later that night, he will pore across his vast network and read their praise, heaped upon him in superlatives, as he drives what remains of humanity forward to his singular vision.
Except it’s not from a sci-fi movie — it’s from Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona, and the man is Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg. The picture trips all of our “horrible cyberpunk future” alarms, carefully put in place by everything from The Matrix to Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent. The former uses evil squid-bodied robots, the latter privileged human elites, but both works see humanity too distracted and preoccupied — by a full-scale replica of late-90s reality, or just sports on TV — to even be aware of the actions of those in charge. Zuckerberg’s picture acts this out: MWC attendees plugged into Samsung’s Gear VR headset literally can’t see the Facebook boss as he breezes past them.
Israeli Researchers Find Mobile Phones Cause Male Fertility Problems
February 22nd, 2016Via: Daily Mail:
Men who carry their mobile phone in a trouser pocket or talk on it for just an hour a day risk suffering with fertility problems, scientists warn.
Research shows that sperm count can also be reduced by talking on a phone that is charging, or even keeping it close by on a bedside table at night.
The quality of sperm among men in Western countries is steadily decreasing, and is considered the factor in 40 per cent of cases in which couples have difficulty conceiving a child.
Heat and electromagnetic activity which emanate from a mobile phone are thought to be ‘cook’ sperm, causing them to die.
The findings have led to a leading British fertility expert to warn men about the risks of being ‘addicted’ to mobile phones.
Israeli scientists monitored 106 men attending a fertility clinic for a year.
The study revealed that men who chatted on the phone for more than an hour daily were twice as likely to have low sperm quality as those who spoke for less than an hour, while those who talked on the phone as it charged were almost twice as likely to suffer problems.
It also found that 47 per cent of men who kept their phones within 20 inches of their groin had sperm levels that were seriously affected, compared with just 11 per cent of the general population.
The findings, published in Reproductive BioMedicine, support a long-feared link between dropping male fertility rates and the prevalence of mobile phones.
Professor Martha Dirnfeld, of the Technion University in Haifa, which carried out the study, said: ‘The [sperm] levels were down to a number that would make conception difficult.
‘If you are trying for a baby and it doesn’t happen within a year you might want to think of whether it could be your mobile phone habit that is to blame.’
Chinese Companies Buying Foreign Businesses
February 22nd, 2016Via: Business Insider:
Chinese companies have been buying up foreign businesses — including American ones — at a record rate, and it’s freaking out lawmakers.
There is General Electric’s sale of its appliance business to Qingdao-based Haier, Zoomlion’s bid for the heavy-lifting-equipment maker Terex Corporation, and ChemChina’s record-breaking deal for the Swiss seeds and pesticides group Syngenta, valued at $48 billion.
Most recently, a unit of the Chinese conglomerate HNA Group on Wednesday said it would buy the technology distributor Ingram Micro for $6 billion.
And the most contentious deal so far might be the Chinese-led investor group Chongqing Casin Enterprise’s bid for the Chicago Stock Exchange.
To date, there have been 102 Chinese outbound mergers-and-acquisitions deals announced this year, amounting to $81.6 billion in value, according to Dealogic. That’s up from 72 deals worth $11 billion in the same period last year.
Singapore Math and Zaner-Bloser Textbooks in New Zealand
February 21st, 2016We keep meeting homeschooling families who are having math and writing curricula issues in NZ, so here’s a quick post for anyone else going through this:
If you’re a homeschooling parent in New Zealand, you probably realize that getting quality materials here can be a challenge. Lots of us know that Singapore Math and Zaner-Bloser are the best math (or, “maths” as people say here) and writing programs, but they’re not readily available in NZ. Only one website here mentions Singapore Math products for sale and the few titles listed are always out of stock. Zaner-Bloser in NZ? Nothing. Zilch. Nada.
Here’s how we do it:
We order everything from Singapore Math and Zaner-Bloser in the U.S. and have it sent to our mail forwarder in the U.S., which then ships it to us in NZ. We use the YouShop service from NZ Post for this.
If you’re new to to Singapore Math, you’ll be presented with several different editions. In short: If you’re outside the U.S., chances are that you want the Standards Edition, which uses the metric system.
Happy Homeschooling in NZ!
America Is Now Fighting A Proxy War With Itself In Syria
February 20th, 2016Via: BuzzFeed:
American proxies are now at war with each other in Syria.
Officials with Syrian rebel battalions that receive covert backing from one arm of the U.S. government told BuzzFeed News that they recently began fighting rival rebels supported by another arm of the U.S. government.
The infighting between American proxies is the latest setback for the Obama administration’s Syria policy and lays bare its contradictions as violence in the country gets worse.
The confusion is playing out on the battlefield — with the U.S. effectively engaged in a proxy war with itself. “It’s very strange, and I cannot understand it,” said Ahmed Othman, the commander of the U.S.-backed rebel battalion Furqa al-Sultan Murad, who said he had come under attack from U.S.-backed Kurdish militants in Aleppo this week.
Furqa al-Sultan Murad receives weapons from the U.S. and its allies as part of a covert program, overseen by the CIA, that aids rebel groups struggling to overthrow the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, according to rebel officials and analysts tracking the conflict.
The Kurdish militants, on the other hand, receive weapons and support from the Pentagon as part of U.S. efforts to fight ISIS. Known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, they are the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s strategy against the extremists in Syria and coordinate regularly with U.S. airstrikes.
Beijing Is Banning All Foreign Media from Publishing Online in China
February 19th, 2016Via: Quartz:
In the latest sign that China’s long-touted “opening up” is reversing into a “closing down,” a Chinese ministry has issued new rules that ban any foreign-invested company from publishing anything online in China, effective next month.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s new rules (link in Chinese) could, if they were enforced as written, essentially shut down China as a market for foreign news outlets, publishers, gaming companies, information providers, and entertainment companies starting on March 10. Issued in conjunction with the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), they set strict new guidelines for what can be published online, and how that publisher should conduct business in China.
“Sino-foreign joint ventures, Sino-foreign cooperative ventures, and foreign business units shall not engage in online publishing services,” the rules state. Any publisher of online content, including “texts, pictures, maps, games, animations, audios, and videos,” will also be required to store their “necessary technical equipment, related servers, and storage devices” in China, the directive says.
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Quartz contacted the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology from Hong Kong asking for further clarification on how the rules would work, but the ministry said it could only reply to faxed questions that came from a reporter with a mainland press card.
Houston Man Arrested by Seven U.S. Marshals For Unpaid $1,500 Student Loan from 1987
February 19th, 2016Via: NY Daily News:
Seven U.S. Marshals armed with automatic weapons arrested a Texas man for not paying a $1,500 student loan from three decades ago, he claims.
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Aker said he was put in the back of a truck and placed in a cell at the federal building in downtown Houston. Later, he was brought to court, where a “prosecutor,” county clerk and judge were present. Aker said the prosecutor was actually a collection lawyer.
“Then I get a lecture (from the judge) about the United States and stealing from the government,” Aker said.
Aker told The News that he was ordered to pay $5,700 for the loan, including interest. However, Aker was also ordered to pay for the cost of the morning arrest — nearly $1,300. If he didn’t pay that amount by March 1, he said, he was told he would be arrested again.
The average student loan debt for 2015 graduates is approximately $35,000, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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Amazingly, U.S. Marshals are planning to serve up to 1,500 warrants to people who have not repaid their loans, according to Fox 26.
