Archive for June, 2012
Curiosity’s Seven Minutes of Terror
June 23rd, 2012Via: JPL / YouTube: Team members share the challenges of Curiosity’s final minutes to landing on the surface of Mars.
Proposed HTTP Status Code for Censored Websites: 451
June 22nd, 2012Via: Guardian: Ray Bradbury’s fiction looks set to enter the structure of the internet, after a software developer has proposed a new HTTP status code inspired by Fahrenheit 451. Tim Bray, a fan of Bradbury’s writing, is recommending to the Internet Engineering Task Force, which governs such choices, that when access to a website is […]
The Case Against Autonomous Killing Machines
June 22nd, 2012Via: io9: In his conversation with io9, Wallach seemed frustrated that some people see this issue as something that’s too futuristic to care about. “We’re at a potential inflection point in the development of autonomous weaponry,” he said. “That inflection point won’t last for a long period of time, and if we wait too long, […]
Android App Steals Contactless Credit Card Data
June 21st, 2012Via: SC Magazine: A German penetration tester has posted to the Google store an Android application capable of siphoning credit card data from contactless bank cards. The app, dubbed paycardreader, will skim card numbers and expiry dates, along with transactions and merchant IDs, and was successfully tested against a German PayPass Mastercard. Developer Thomas Skora, […]
IDair’s New Fingerprint Reader Captures Prints from 6 Meters Away
June 21st, 2012Via: Huntsville Times: Forget the key card to your office building? Just wave your hand at the door, and you’re in. “You don’t have to stop at a station. Nobody checks your ID. You just walk through,” explains Clemson-educated physicist Joel Burcham of his new Huntsville company called IDair. IDair makes a machine that Burcham […]
Reddit Cofounder Says Site Was Built By Horde of Fake Accounts
June 21st, 2012Have you ever wondered how Reddit’s shit-for-brains Hive Mind formed? Read on. Via: Slashdot: “How, exactly, did Reddit get so big? Well, according to Reddit cofounder Steve Huffman, in the early days the Reddit crew just faked it ’til they made it.’ In a video for Udacity, Huffman describes how the first Redditors populated the […]
Credit Suisse Cut 3 Levels As Moody’s Downgrades Biggest Banks
June 21st, 2012Via: Bloomberg: Credit Suisse Group AG’s credit rating was cut three levels by Moody’s Investors Service, Morgan Stanley was reduced two levels and 13 other banks were downgraded in moves that may shake up competition among Wall Street’s biggest firms. Credit Suisse, the second-largest Swiss bank, received the maximum reduction that Moody’s said in February […]
Baby Soaps and Shampoos Trigger Positive Results on Pot Tests
June 21st, 2012[???] Via: Time: Commonly used baby soaps and shampoos, including products from Johnson & Johnson, Aveeno and CVS, can trigger a positive result on newborns’ marijuana screening tests, according to a recent study. A minute amount of the cleansing products in a urine sample — just 0.1 milliliters or less — was found to cause […]
Larry Ellison Buys Most of Lanai
June 21st, 2012Via: AP: Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison has reached a deal to buy 98 percent of the island of Lanai from its current owner, Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie said Wednesday. The land’s owner, Castle & Cooke Inc., filed a transfer application with the state’s public utilities commission, which regulates utilities on the island that serve […]
‘My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine.’
June 21st, 2012The pickers are being replaced by robots. Instead of people walking around and picking products (as described in the piece below), robots pick up the racks and deliver them to a queue where a handful of remaining human workers box up the orders. The main player in this type of automation is Kiva Systems, and […]
