Teaching Drones to Fly in Formation | Danger Room | Wired.com

Teaching Drones to Fly in Formation | Danger Room | Wired.com: "Danger Room What’s Next in National Security
Teaching Drones to Fly in Formation"

In a clever bit of viral marketing, a few weeks ago Lockheed Martin released artwork on-line depicting the company’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter painted in the colors of the Air Force’s Thunderbirds aerobatics team, which in the real world flies F-16s. The delayed, over-budget F-35 is “not likely to appear in Thunderbird colors for at least another decade,” Steve Trimble noted.

Robot Delivers Packages Through Sewers | Autopia | Wired.com

Robot Delivers Packages Through Sewers | Autopia | Wired.com: "Robot Delivers Packages Through Sewers"

It’s 2020, and cities are so overcrowded that it’s impossible to deliver packages. UPS trucks have nowhere to double-park, and obnoxious bike messengers can’t even ride on pedestrian-jammed sidewalks. How, then, can important parcels reach their destinations in a squalid megalopolis of the future? Through the sewers, of course.

The brainchild of designer Phillip Hermes, the Urban Mole is a capsule that travels through existing networks of underground pipes in order to instantly transport packages as diverse as groceries, signed documents and any title that appears on Oprah’s Book Club. The Mole frees up above-ground roadways formore important matters, like mobilizing armies against the cyborgs that will inevitably plague our future cities.

U.S. Navy gets hybrid Destroyer | MNN - Mother Nature Network

U.S. Navy gets hybrid Destroyer | MNN - Mother Nature Network: "U.S. Navy gets hybrid Destroyer
A new USS Destroyer class, the DGG 51, boasts a hybrid-electric engine to conserve fuel on the high seas."

Photo: U.S. Navy Journalist 2nd Class Patrick Reilly

Many have been surprised by the "greening branches" of the U.S. military.

In May a report on climate change (PDF) was issued by the powerful MAB (Military Advisory Board), an organization of high-ranking U.S. military officials which not only acknowledged climate change (a dramatic about-face from the Bush years) but also detailed the many ways in which climate change could impact national security.

From iPhones to smart grids at Black Hat, Defcon | InSecurity Complex - CNET News

From iPhones to smart grids at Black Hat, Defcon | InSecurity Complex - CNET News: "Defcon brings together some of the top security experts from around the world, along with thousands of hacker wannabes whose pranks in previous years--hacking the elevators and ATMs and cementing the toilets, to name a few--have led to bans at certain hotels."

LIFE Goes Skateboarding - Photo Gallery, 10 Pictures - LIFE

LIFE Goes Skateboarding - Photo Gallery, 10 Pictures - LIFE: "LIFE Goes Skateboarding"

LIFE Classic

Homes for the Homeless? . NOW on PBS

Homes for the Homeless? . NOW on PBS: "Homes for the Homeless?
What to do with foreclosed houses—How about letting homeless families move in? An innovative idea that's also illegal."

Verizon offers wireless concessions to a skeptical Congress - Ars Technica

Verizon offers wireless concessions to a skeptical Congress - Ars Technica: "Verizon offers wireless concessions to a skeptical Congress

Comes Verizon with bright new ideas about exclusive handset deals and roaming that will appear to some as olive branches, and to others as ways to head off stronger laws from Congress."

No doubt about it—we've got a Congress and Federal Communications Commission that are far more skeptical of the wireless industry than they've been in the past. And if the average cell phone user hasn't sensed this, Verizon has. The mobile giant has been very pro-active of late on hot button issues like roaming and exclusive handset deals. Its CEO has been running around Washington, D.C. making announcements and floating policy recommendations that will appear to some as olive branches, but to others as bids to ward off stricter government scrutiny.

And it sure looks like said scrutiny is coming. Even before FCC Chair Julius Genachowski actually got his job, he promised a probe on the exclusive handset question

Transparent metal hints at nature of planets' cores - physics-math - 26 July 2009 - New Scientist

Transparent metal hints at nature of planets' cores - physics-math - 26 July 2009 - New Scientist: "Transparent aluminium, a sci-fi material brought to 20th century Earth by the crew of The Enterprise in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, turns out to exist after all - if you see in X-rays.

To create this exotic state of matter, researchers at the FLASH facility in Hamburg, Germany, took a thin piece of aluminium foil and blasted it with an X-ray laser that can generate about 10 million gigawatts of power per square centimetre.

At standard temperature and pressure, solid aluminium is a lattice of ions, with a sea of free electrons in between. The FLASH beam had enough energy to knock an electron out of each ion and set it free, while the photon"

U.S. Weighs Private Army to Protect Afghan Bases | Danger Room | Wired.com

U.S. Weighs Private Army to Protect Afghan Bases | Danger Room | Wired.com: "U.S. Weighs Private Army to Protect Afghan Bases"The U.S. military is mulling a plan to build a private army to protect bases throughout Afghanistan. On July 10, the Army issued a request for information from companies interested in bidding on an Afghanistan-wide security contract. While a formal solicitation has not been launched, the idea would be to provide security services for approximately 50 or more forward operating bases or command outposts throughout Afghanistan.

Could social media have stopped the Rwandan genocide?

Could social media have stopped the Rwandan genocide?: "Could social media have stopped the Rwandan genocide?"

This was a question British Prime Minister Gordon Brown reflected on recently:

“You cannot have Rwanda again because information would come out far more quickly about what is actually going on and the public opinion would grow to the point where action would need to be taken.”

Chris Williams had his own ideas, regarding Gordon’s thoughts on Rwanda. Thing is, Chris makes one point by missing another all together:

“We’d like to see him try Twittering that to people in Sudan, or Northern Sri Lanka, or Somalia.”

The point he missed is that of communications technology and infrastructure, something Sudan and Sri Lanka and Somalia probably don’t have much of.

Inhabitat » Bridge Homeless Shelter Cuts Neighborhood Crime by 18%

Inhabitat » Bridge Homeless Shelter Cuts Neighborhood Crime by 18%: "Bridge Homeless Shelter Cuts Neighborhood Crime by 18%
by Trey Farmer"

So much of the green design that we see here at Inhabitat is efficient and looks cool in renderings, but the human aspect of sustainability, and the real value of our built environment is too often a rarity. Not so in the case of this modern homeless shelter in Dallas, which recently won the AIA’s National 2009 Housing Award. Called The Bridge, the sleek shelter was designed by Overland Partners Architects in collaboration with CamargoCopeland Architects, and provides not only a visually striking addition to the neighborhood, but a safe haven for people to turn to when they have nowhere else to go. According to the press release, the shelter’s surrounding area has seen a crime reduction of 18%, which in itself is a testament to the power t

KAPOW! Comic Book Themes Come to iGoogle

KAPOW! Comic Book Themes Come to iGoogle: "KAPOW! Comic Book Themes Come to iGoogle"

First Look: Green Hornet’s Black Beauty Is a Killer Car | Underwire | Wired.com

First Look: Green Hornet’s Black Beauty Is a Killer Car | Underwire | Wired.com: "First Look: Green Hornet’s Black Beauty Is a Killer Car"

SAN DIEGO — When Seth Rogen storms onto the screen as Green Hornet next year, he’s going to be rolling in one killer ride.

The costumed crime-fighter’s car, known as the Black Beauty, boasts a sleek black paint job, tinted black windows, thin and wide black tires, and some subtle green accents. And then there’s the firepower: twin machine guns mounted on the hood, plus several mysterious nozzles jutting out of the car’s front and rear.

What it doesn’t have: door handles.

First Blood Diamonds, Now Blood Computers? - TIME

First Blood Diamonds, Now Blood Computers? - TIME: "First Blood Diamonds, Now Blood Computers?"

Men sift through buckets of dirt while looking for gold at an abandoned industrial mine in Mongbwalu, Congo

When a cloaking device really isn't cloaking - Ars Technica

When a cloaking device really isn't cloaking - Ars Technica

Science/AAAS

In Nature Photonics on Monday, a paper was published in which the authors claimed to have experimentally demonstrated a cloaking device that was effective at optical frequencies. I was excited; unfortunately, I was also busy, so I only managed to read the whole paper today. So, belatedly, I bring you the latest in cloaking research.

The research, performed at Cornell, makes use of transformation optics, which we have discussed before, but it is not cloaking as your local Star Trek fan club knows it. On the other hand, what the researchers are selling as cloaking could find a whole range of applications that don't involve invisibility at all.

YouTube - Defector warns of N Korea chemical threat - 24 Jul 09

YouTube - Defector warns of N Korea chemical threat - 24 Jul 09


Defector warns of N Korea chemical threat. While much of the world's attention has been on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, a defector is warning of a more imminent threat. He says that Pyongyang has a sophisticated chemical and biological weapons program - and that mentally disabled children are being used as human test subjects.

digg http://digg.com/d3yRjN

reddit http://www.reddit.com/tb/946xb

Russian Navy Declassifies Cold War Close Encounters | Danger Room | Wired.com

Russian Navy Declassifies Cold War Close Encounters | Danger Room | Wired.com: "Russian Navy Declassifies Cold War Close Encounters"

Great catch by Phil Ewing at Navy Times‘ Scoop Deck blog: the Russian navy has just declassified its records of Cold War UFO sightings. Turns out “50 percent of UFO encounters are connected with oceans. Fifteen [percent] more — with lakes. So UFOs tend to stick to the water,” one Russian officer explained.

Canada: We actually want to hear from public on copyright - Ars Technica

Canada: We actually want to hear from public on copyright - Ars Technica: "Canada: We actually want to hear from public on copyright

After a disastrous attempt to pass a copyright reform bill last year, the Canadian government is back. This time, though, it has launched town halls and a website to hear from the public before even drafting the law, and the public has a lot to say."

In 2008, the Canadian government discovered a new "third rail" of politics: copyright reform. Long considered a wonky subject of interest only to legislators and rightsholders, interest in copyright has exploded in recent years, and Canadians showed a keen interest in talking about term length, time shifting, DRM circumvention rules, format shifting, mashups, remixes, the public domain, and the levies that Canadians currently pay on things like blank CD-Rs.

When Bill C-61 was introduced in June 2008, though, it was instantly clear that consensus would be hard to find. Consumers wanted rights and flexibility, while copyright holders wanted... well, I'll let them explain it.

Twitter Blog: Enhancing Value for Customers and Businesses

Twitter Blog: Enhancing Value for Customers and Businesses: "Thursday, July 23, 2009
Enhancing Value for Customers and Businesses"
Many are seeing a wide variety of businesses using Twitter in interesting ways to create value for customers and consumers. As a result, we're often invited by businesses and organizations to talk about Twitter and how it can be used to better engage with customers. Twitter is still a small team so it made more sense to do some research and make it widely available rather than personally visit businesses big and small.

EFF's new lawsuit, and how the NSA is into social networking - Ars Technica

EFF's new lawsuit, and how the NSA is into social networking - Ars Technica: "EFF's new lawsuit, and how the NSA is into social networking

A new lawsuit from the EFF seeks to shed light on the mysterious 'Other Intelligence Activities' that the NSA was engaged in after 9/11, and that the DoJ eventually found to be illegal. Based Ars' reporting of the government's datamining efforts, we suggest that it probably looks a lot like social network crawling."

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adselwood/

The government could be building a giant map of social networks using Facebook and Twitter, scraping MySpace pages, or mining the metadata associated with cellular phone calls in order to look for communication patterns. On the other hand, all of that computer power that the NSA is aggregating at the datacenters that are coming online could just be for the limited purpose of snooping voice calls and e-mail coming into and out of the US, but such narrow use is unlikely.

What the NSA is doing with its massive and growing capabilities is still a secret, but it's probably an extension of DoD efforts at mapping social networks that extend back to the early part of the decade. A new EFF lawsuit filed this week could finally shed at least a little more light on the nature of these classified activities, so that we can know for sure whether some descendent of John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness program lives on at the NSA.

Earlier this month, the EFF filed a Freedom of Information Act request that sought to obtain the mandatory oversight records that agencies in-the-loop on these secret activities would have had to file

ROI Is a Number, Not “Awesome” | @NowSourcing.Com

ROI Is a Number, Not “Awesome” | @NowSourcing.Com: "“What kind of ROI can I expect to see from your services?”

“Oh, our ROI is AWESOME” was his response.

Um…no it isn’t. Last time I checked, ROI was a calculation where you take earnings minus cost divided by cost multiplied by 100 to get in percentage terms [((E-C)/C)*100], which I’m pretty sure leads to a number…not AWESOME! The analysis of how that number meets expected goals may lead to the label of “awesome” and high-fives all around, but ROI itself is simply a number."

Courtesy: BusinessInsider.com

You probably get them as much as I do:

Inventing Green: The Lost History of Alternative Energy in America « All You Need to Know About U.S. Energy Incentives in Two Graphs

Inventing Green: The Lost History of Alternative Energy in America « All You Need to Know About U.S. Energy Incentives in Two Graphs: "All You Need to Know About U.S. Energy Incentives in Two Graphs"

This excellent data comes to us courtesy of the paper, “A half century of US federal government energy incentives:
value, distribution, and policy implications” by economists Roger H. Bezdek and Robert Wendling of Management Information Services. Granted, renewable energy has gotten more backing since 2003, but the overall trends are still good.

Ringleader of High-Tech Pickpocket Gang Pleads Guilty | Threat Level | Wired.com

Ringleader of High-Tech Pickpocket Gang Pleads Guilty | Threat Level | Wired.com: "Ringleader of High-Tech Pickpocket Gang Pleads Guilty"

One of the ringleaders of a high-tech national pickpocket and identity theft gang that kept police around the country on their toes for at least two years pleaded guilty on Wednesday.

Clyde Austin Gray, Jr., 52, of Waldorf, Maryland, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud in a scheme that resulted in losses of at least $2.1 million from ten financial institutions. Nine other co-conspirators have been charged to date.

Gray, who also went by the names “Big Head” and “Poochie,” paid co-conspirators to help him steal the identities and bank-account information from victims around the country through pickpocketing and other means, including stealing checks from a Washington, D.C., charity-fundraising group and paying an employee at a D.C. medical office to steal the bank account information of patients. Some members of the ring allegedly traveled around the country to sporting events, such as the Final Four basketball games in Detroit in April, to pickpocket fans. The gang then used the information to cash checks through the victims’ bank accounts in several states.

According to authorities, there are 200-plus members of the Chicago-based gang, which went by the name “Cannon to the Wiz.” The origin of the name isn’t explained in court documents and a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Gray was charged, was unable to provide any additional information about the name.

Bright House Networks cable guys are trained spys

Bright House Networks cable guys are trained spys: "Bright House Networks cable guys are trained spys"

Bright House Networks, one of the largest cable TV companies in the U.S. is training their field service technicians to observe ’suspicious behaviour’ in people’s homes while they are installing or servicing customer’s cable connections. They are then to report this behaviour to the proper authorities as part of a neighborhood watch plan.

So what, in their eyes, is the definition of suspicious behaviour?

“…according to law enforcement and Homeland Security guidelines, suspicious behavior includes owning guns, being politically active, and having bumper stickers on your car.”

Honk If There’s A Natural Disaster | Autopia | Wired.com

Honk If There’s A Natural Disaster | Autopia | Wired.com: "Autopia Planes, Trains, Automobiles and the Future of Transportation
Honk If There’s A Natural Disaster"

Few things are more annoying than an endlessly honking horn. German scientists think that maddening sound is a great way to warn people of impending disasters.

The guys at the Fraunhofer Institute for Technological Trend Analysis are working on a way to use automobile horns to, in effect, crowdsource the network of emergency warning sirens that used to cover Germany. Such a system would cost next to nothing to adopt, they say, and could be introduced as early as next year.

Ion engine could one day power 39-day trips to Mars - space - 22 July 2009 - New Scientist

Ion engine could one day power 39-day trips to Mars - space - 22 July 2009 - New Scientist: "Ion engine could one day power 39-day trips to Mars"

The VASIMR ion engine could - if powered by an onboard nuclear reactor - take astronauts to Mars in just 39 days (Illustration: Ad Astra Rocket Company)

"Advertars" coming to the Xbox 360 - Ars Technica

"Advertars" coming to the Xbox 360 - Ars Technica: "'Advertars' coming to the Xbox 360

Advertars: they're MMO avatars created by advertisers, and they could be coming to the Xbox 360."

Microsoft has begun to increase the amount of advertising on the Xbox 360, including ads with sound and video on the dashboard. However, it turns out that the company has plans to make console advertising even more of a presence, based on an announcement to make advertiser-generated avatars for MMOs available to players.

US' total energy use dropped in 2008 - Ars Technica

US' total energy use dropped in 2008 - Ars Technica: "US' total energy use dropped in 2008

US total energy usage dropped in 2008 relative to 2007 but, with only two years of data contained in the report, no real conclusions can be drawn as to whether this is statistically significant trend."

Lawrence Berkeley National Labs

A report, issued by the Department of Energy and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, reports that the total amount of energy used by the United States dropped between 2007 and 2008. In 2008, the US used 99.2 quadrillion BTUs of energy, as compared to 101.5 quadrillion BTUs in 2007—a 2.7 percent drop in usage. In 2008, less fossil fuels were used, and more energy was derived from renewable resources such as solar, wind, and nuclear

Scramjets promise space travel for all - space - 22 July 2009 - New Scientist

Scramjets promise space travel for all - space - 22 July 2009 - New Scientist: "Gallery: Spaceplanes and scramjets: A 50-year history

ON A bright autumn morning five years ago, the space-flight community was turned on its head by a little teardrop-shaped spacecraft built in a small workshop in California's Mojave desert. The successful flight of SpaceShipOne on 29 September 2004, the first of two flights en route to winning the $10 million Ansari X prize, seemed to usher in a new era of space travel - one in which space flight would be affordable, frequent and, perhaps most importantly, accessible to all."

Business-class return to space, please (Image:NASA)

Microwave weapon will rain pain from the sky - tech - 23 July 2009 - New Scientist

Microwave weapon will rain pain from the sky - tech - 23 July 2009 - New Scientist: "Microwave weapon will rain pain from the sky"

Microwave weapons will get an upgrade (Image: Air Force Photo)

Pain from above (Image: Rex Features)

THE Pentagon's enthusiasm for non-lethal crowd-control weapons appears to have stepped up a gear with its decision to develop a microwave pain-infliction system that can be fired from an aircraft.

The device is an extension of its controversial Active Denial System, which uses microwaves to heat the surface of the skin, creating a painful sensation without burning that strongly motivates the target to flee. The ADS was unveiled in 2001, but it has not been deployed owing to legal issues and safety fears.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) in Quantico, Virginia, has now called for it to be upgraded

NYTimes.com Editors Don't Give a Damn About Web Traffic - New York Times - Gawker

NYTimes.com Editors Don't Give a Damn About Web Traffic - New York Times - Gawker: "NYTimes.com Editors Don't Give a Damn About Web Traffic"
(Edit, to draft, Top, Slurp)

Copy this whole post to another site

cancel

select site advertising consumerist deadspin defamer fleshbot gay fleshbot gawker gizmodo idolator io9 jalopnik jezebel kotaku lifehacker valleywag artists gawkershop

The Observer's Gillian Reagan wrote a piece on how the content is managed on at NYTimes.com. Reagan spoke to the Times executives who manage the paper's website, two guys whose view of the web is, well, interesting.

New advocacy group pushes OSS for the USA - Ars Technica

New advocacy group pushes OSS for the USA - Ars Technica: "New advocacy group pushes OSS for the USA

A diverse coalition of open source software vendors, universities, and nonprofit groups have come together to encourage broader adoption of open source software in government IT."

A group of commercial open source software vendors and various nonprofit advocacy organizations have joined forces to encourage broader use of open source software and open standards in government IT. The coalition, called Open Source for America (OSA), aims to educate government officials and promote procurement policies that give open source software solutions equal priority to proprietary competitors.

"Net neutrality" gets white hot as FCC drafts broadband plan - Ars Technica

"Net neutrality" gets white hot as FCC drafts broadband plan - Ars Technica: "'Net neutrality' gets white hot as FCC drafts broadband plan

Net neutrality has largely died down as an issue in Congress, but the war over the idea has resumed at the FCC as the agency drafts its national broadband plan. Is it just a new 'price control' or a precious part of the 'public interest'?"

The downside to opening up the US broadband plan to "public comment" is that, sooner or later, you're actually going to get some. The FCC's docket on this issue is stuffed with comments from individuals, most of which appear to be verbatim copies of a form letter, with the rest consisting of items like this:

One of the human current "owners" of the United States of America, I am outraged that Government regulatory agencies, including the FCC, continue to transfer OUR control of OUR airwaves and OUR communication over to for-profit corporations. If you don't start listening to the PEOPLE and OUR wants, rather than to special interests, soon there wont be an FCC. Its not your agency...its OURS, and you will run it OUR way, or else!

Physicalization looks for gold in the margins

Physicalization looks for gold in the margins - Ars Technica: "Physicalization looks for gold in the margins

Ars looks at the phenomenon of server physicalization and explains why sometimes it's cheaper to slap a few single-core CPUs on into a system and integrate them at the board and system level. Even so, you're almost always better off going virtual and multicore."

"Physicalization" is an awkward name for an approach to server consolidation that seeks to offer a hardware-based alternative to virtualization by cramming multiple, low-power processors into a small amount of rack space. These processors are invariably mobile processors, designed for power-sensitive mobile products, and server vendors are building very small, modular server nodes around them and packing them as densely as possible into rack units.

The Birthers: Who Are They and What Do They Want? - Birthers - Gawker

The Birthers: Who Are They and What Do They Want? - Birthers - Gawker: "The Birthers: Who Are They and What Do They Want?"
(Edit, to draft, un-top, Slurp)

Copy this whole post to another site

cancel

select site advertising consumerist deadspin defamer fleshbot gay fleshbot gawker gizmodo idolator io9 jalopnik jezebel kotaku lifehacker valleywag artists gawkershop

Liz Cheney and Lou Dobbs have recently defended the "birthers," the dumb group of internet psychos who think it's impossible that a black man could've been democratically elected president. Where did they come from and what do they actually believe?

Mich De L'Orme's Tumblr

Mich De L'Orme's Tumblr: "Mich De L'Orme's Tumblr"

Mich De Lorme's WordPress WeBlog

Mich De Lorme's WordPress WeBlog

Blog Mich De L'Orme @MichDeLorme.com

Blog dot Mich De L’Orme dot Com Http://Blog.MichDeLorme.Com @MichDeLorme.com.