Archive for March, 2013
Number Of Teens Expecting To Depend On Parents Into Adulthood Has Doubled Since 2011
March 30th, 2013Via: Consumerist: In what could be an indicator of either a massive drop in teens’ financial prospects or the fact that teens today are getting more realistic about their financial futures, a new survey shows that the percentage of teenagers who expect to remain dependent on mom and/or dad until at least age 27 has […]
U.S. Army Veteran Charged with Fighting with Al-Qaida in Syria
March 30th, 2013Harroun’s father: “I know he was doing some work for the CIA over there… I know for a fact that he was passing information on to the CIA.” Via: Washington Post: A U.S. Army veteran, who boasted on Facebook of his military adventures with Syrian rebels, was charged Thursday with firing rocket propelled grenades as […]
Canadian Researchers Claim Fuel Cell Breakthrough
March 30th, 2013Via: Vancouver Sun: Researchers at the University of Calgary say they’ve made a breakthrough that could make renewable energy much more practical and affordable. Their paper published in the journal Science says they’ve found a much easier and cheaper way to build an electrolyzer, which uses electricity to break up water into hydrogen and oxygen, […]
Egypt: Divers Caught Cutting Internet Cable
March 29th, 2013Via: Global Post: Egypt’s naval forces caught three scuba divers officials say were trying to cut an undersea internet cable in the Mediterranean on Wednesday. In a statement on his official Facebook page, Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said divers were arrested while “cutting the undersea cable” of Egypt’s main communications company, Telecom Egypt. “The armed […]
BionicOpter: Festo’s Giant Robotic Dragonfly
March 29th, 2013Via: Canadian Manufacturing: Building on the work of last year’s bionic creation, the Smart Bird, Festo announced that it will literally launch its latest creation, the BionicOpter, at Hannover Messe in April. With a wingspan of 63 cm and weighing in at 175 grams, the robotic dragonfly mimics all forms of flight as its natural […]
Wal-Mart May Get Customers to Deliver Packages to Online Buyers
March 29th, 2013Via: Reuters: Wal-Mart Stores Inc is considering a radical plan to have store customers deliver packages to online buyers, a new twist on speedier delivery services that the company hopes will enable it to better compete with Amazon.com Inc. Tapping customers to deliver goods would put the world’s largest retailer squarely in middle of a […]
Obama’s Crackdown on Whistleblowers and the NSA-SAIC-Trailblazer Fraud
March 29th, 2013Via: The Nation: In the annals of national security, the Obama administration will long be remembered for its unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers. Since 2009, it has employed the World War I–era Espionage Act a record six times to prosecute government officials suspected of leaking classified information. The latest example is John Kiriakou, a former CIA […]
Navy Wants Lasers on Marines’ Trucks to Shoot Down Drones
March 29th, 2013Via: Wired: If there was any doubt that the military has new confidence in its forthcoming laser arsenal, the Navy’s top geeks want to outfit Marines with a laser cannon to shoot small drones out of the sky. Specifically, the Office of Naval Research thinks that Marine air-ground task forces are too vulnerable to adversaries […]
Google Maps a Japanese Nuclear Ghost Town
March 29th, 2013Via: The Atlantic: Two years after the the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, and the following tsunami and nuclear disaster, a large area around the failed Fukushima nuclear plant is still considered an exclusion zone. Namie, a small city just north of the nuclear power plant, was evacuated shortly after the quake, […]
Location Data Can Uniquely Identify Cellphone Users
March 28th, 2013Via: Popular Science: Just a few data points from a location-tracking cellphone are enough to identify most people, a new study found. It doesn’t matter if those data are “anonymized” so they aren’t linked to any identifiers such as address or phone number. Just four random points are enough to put names to 95 percent […]