20131231

20131228

Tagged sharks send auto-tweets when swimming too close to shore

http://www.slashgear.com/tagged-sharks-send-auto-tweets-when-swimming-too-close-to-shore-27310206/

20131101

1 Million to Ban the Lion Trade

South African lions are being slaughtered for their bones to make sex potions and other bogus remedies. President Zuma could ban the trade if he's shown it is hurting South Africa's image as a tourist destination. 

20130804

2008 - 2013 MINI Cooper R56 Review

After 5 years of owning a MINI Cooper R56, it is high time that I wrote a review about this quite small but extraordinary car.
Some objective facts:
Pros Cons
Superb driving experience Restricted storage space
Excellent service and after sales support Limited rear passenger space
Above the average passenger cabin material quality Not impressive passenger cabin materials
Unlimited accessories and extras to choose from
Superior build quality
Details that impress
It was a warm winter day in the onset of March 2008 that I decided to fulfill one of my dreams and buy a Mini, so I browsed to the appropriate site and designed my dream car that contained the following components (I might have forgotten something):
  • MINI Cooper 1.6
  • 16" 6-Star Twin Spoke Alloys
  • Roof in body colour
  • Automatic Gearbox
  • Auto transmission Sport leather steering wheel with gearshift paddles
  • Multi-function controls for wheel
  • Run-flat tyres
  • Alarm system
  • Sport seats
  • Interior World Carbon Black
  • Foglights
  • Xenon Headlights
  • Radio BOOST CD
  • Bluetooth hands free fuction with USB audio
  • White Indicator Lenses
Since a "buy now" option was not available in the site, I printed my made-to-measure car and went to a MINI dealer, where I placed the order. The car was ready in about 2.5 months.
Some minor design flaws and shortcomings have appeared during these years, but were repaired free of charge:
  • a minor defect in one of the rear seat-belt buckles
  • creaking sounds in the right door
Some of the stuff that one might enjoy:
  • Gearshift paddles
    • gearing down before turning or accelerating, formula style, is all a boy could wish for
  • Start-stop button for the engine
    • combine that with the gearshift paddles and you'll get the feeling ;D
  • Bluetooth speakerphone and USB
    • one could argue that this could be purchased separately; the proper integration with the wheel control buttons though, is priceless ;)
  • Smart key
    • No need to keep track of when and what needs to be serviced or changed
  • After sales service
    • After visiting an authorized service provider, a BMW representative contacts the owner and queries about service and pricing satisfaction
  • Interior design
    • Awesome
  • Hydraulic piston to hold the car's hood
    • Hood support rods are so passe :P
  • Run-flat tyres
    • The difference between "FUCK man, I have a flat tire" and "I have a flat tyre"
After five years of owning a Mini, I am more than happy for having one.

20130428

Uruguay scientists genetically modify sheeps to glow in the dark

The article states "However, most of these scientists aren't just modifying these animals for fun. They believe that research on these genetically modified animals can help scientists better understand diseases and how diseases develop, not just for animals, but for humans as well."

In other words, these animals are being modified just for fun :P

20130409

Why aren't you buying HTC phones?

http://osnews.com/story/26934/Why_aren_t_you_buying_HTC_phones_
People tend to go along with the stream and the trends. They are also more prone to buy stuff from well known and established brands. Moreover, the species has a natural inclination to mimicking.

This is a nice reference to the second track of the second studio (Iowa) album from slipknot ;)

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20130331

BBC E-mail: Why do single birds dance?

** Why do single birds dance? **
Scientists have investigated whether young and unpaired adult cranes are playing around when they put on a show.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/nature/21944173

20130330

03/25/13 PHD comic: 'I in Team'

 
 

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via PHD Comics on 3/27/13

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham
www.phdcomics.com
Click on the title below to read the comic
title: "I in Team" - originally published 3/25/2013

For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE!


 
 

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20130323

When being better doesn't equal victory: Samsung's curious overshadowing of HTC

When being better doesn't equal victory: Samsung's curious overshadowing of HTC
http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/15/samsung-htc-design-marketing-battle/

In a lot of things, being the best generally leads to victory. Usain Bolt is the fastest man in the London Olympics? He wins the gold. A hosting company has the best recorded uptime? It takes home an award. Google launches the fastest consumer broadband available in the US? Boom, victory.

But every so often, life throws us a curveball. For every 1972 Dolphins team, there's a pack of believers from NC State eager to do something crazy in 1983. And in more germane terms, there's presently no rhyme or reason why HTC has continually outgunned Samsung in terms of design prowess, yet continues to bleed cash while its Korean rival mints it. Actually, there is a reason. It's called marketing.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung

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Europe and Russia teaming up for mission to Mars

Europe and Russia teaming up for mission to Mars
http://feeds.slashgear.com/~r/slashgear/~3/-EmssVMhm9U/

NASA may have already landed several rovers on the surface of Mars, but that isn't stopping other countries from trying it themselves. The European Space Agency (ESA) and Roscosmos have signed a deal to launch an orbiter in 2016 that will orbit the Red Planet, as well as plans to put a rover on Mars in 2018 as part of the ExoMars program.

As a part of the deal, the Russians will be providing the rockets for both missions in 2016 and 2018, while the Europeans will be providing the orbiter and the rover. The orbiter will study the chemical composition of the atmosphere of Mars. For the 2018 mission, the Europeans will provide the carrier and the ExoMars rover, which will be tasked with the mission to look for signs of life on the Red Planet.

However, what's perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of this proposed rover is that it will be able to dig up samples from as deep as 6.5 feet beneath the surface of Mars, which will be the deepest that any rover has ever dug. The ESA says that, by doing this, the rover will be able to collect samples "that have been shielded from the harsh conditions of the surface, where radiation and oxidants can destroy organic materials."

NASA actually pulled out of the ExoMars program last year, but while they're no longer a part of it, the ESA said that NASA will still contribute to the project by providing some communications software, as well as engineering support during the missions. Other details haven't yet been discussed, but we're excited nonetheless.

[via Space.com]

Story Timeline

Scientists uncover massive river on Mars Opportunity rover begins 10th year on surface of Mars MIT professor develops form-fitting space suit, is dreaming of Mars Curiosity rover bores into Mars for the first time NASA: Mars Curiosity rover now analyzing drilled rock Dennis Tito announces plans to send married couple on a private Mars flyby mission Buried flood channels discovered on Mars Mars Curiosity rover finds evidence of habitable life on Mars

Europe and Russia teaming up for mission to Mars is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

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20130319

CyanogenMod developers will not support Galaxy S4

hm.. doesn't cyanogen himself work for samsung? (yeap, he does, according to this: http://www.slashgear.com/cyanogen-hired-by-samsung-will-continue-work-on-cyanogenmod-for-android-16171941/)

samsung. gtp.

 
 

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via OSNews by donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) on 3/19/13

"With the Samsung Galaxy S4 presumably coming soon, many are excited about the possibility of running a more stock Android-based experience, like CyanogenMod, on the hardware. It looks like that's going to be a slower transition than many were hoping, as the current Samsung CM maintainers have said that they have no plans to support the device." If you like custom ROMs, don't buy Samsung. As simple as that.

 
 

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Engineers win the Queen Elizabeth prize for creating the internet

http://feeds.slashgear.com/~r/slashgear/~3/FqteSq2zYpE/

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20130318

Στην Αγία Έδρα ο Οικουμενικός Πατριάρχης για την ενθρόνιση του Φραγκίσκου

cool

 
 

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Ιστορική χαρακτηρίζεται η παρουσία του Οικουμενικού Πατριάρχη Βαρθολομαίου Α' στην επίσημη τελετή ενθρόνισης του Πάπα Φραγκίσκου Α'. Είναι η πρώτη φορά μετά το Σχίσμα των δύο Εκκλησιών, τον 11ο αιώνα, που Οικουμενικός Πατριάρχης θα παρίσταται σε αυτό το γεγονός.


 
 

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20130314

Google to shutdown Google Reader

WTF.

 
 

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via OSNews by donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) on 3/13/13

"We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months." This makes me very, very sad. Any good alternatives - alternatives with Windows Phone and Metro applications, that is?

 
 

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20130313

Facebook 'likes' predict personality

obviously. was research (i.e. precious university funding) necessary for that? i at least hope this was an undergraduate thesis :P

 
 

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via BBC News - Home on 3/11/13

Research suggests that highly personal information can be gleaned from things users choose to like on Facebook.

 
 

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20130308

03/06/13 PHD comic: 'We need to talk.'

 
 

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via PHD Comics on 3/7/13

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham
www.phdcomics.com
Click on the title below to read the comic
title: "We need to talk." - originally published 3/6/2013

For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE!


 
 

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20130303

Embedded Developers Prefer Linux, Love Android

reasonable. also, considering that many of the in-house/custom system are linux-based, the linux share is far above the estimated 50% :)

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via Slashdot: Linux by Soulskill on 3/3/13

DeviceGuru writes "In a recent EE Times 2013 Embedded Market study, Android was the OS of choice for future embedded projects among 16 percent of the survey's participants, second only to 'in-house/custom' (at 28 percent). But if a spectrum of disparate approaches can be lumped together as a single option, why not aggregate the various shades of Linux to see how they compare? Parsing the EE Times data that way makes it abundantly clear that Linux truly dominates the embedded market."

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Inspiration Mars ship using human waste as a radiation shield: no really, it...

Thank god for our 5h17 :P

 
 

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via Engadget RSS Feed by Jon Fingas on 3/3/13

Inspiration Mars mission will use human waste for radiation shielding no really, it works

Dennis Tito is planning an ambitious private flyby of Mars for 2018 that will carry all kinds of logistical challenges during its proposed 501-day span, not the least of which is shielding the crew from radiation without consuming valuable resources. The team's solution is a clever one, if not especially pretty: human waste. While the walls of the Inspiration Mars spacecraft will initially be lined with water-filled bags to guard against cosmic rays, their contents will be gradually replaced with er, byproduct that will be dehydrated through the bag (possibly using polyethylene) to reclaim and purify water for drinking. As water-based materials are better at stopping radiation than metal, the approach theoretically represents the best of all worlds with less bulk, a simpler life support system and maximum room for supplies. If the Inspiration Mars group can keep the bags working at high efficiency in space, it won't have to worry about its travelers' safety; their comfort with being surrounded by their own waste may be another matter.

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Source: New Scientist


 
 

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20130228

Brain linked rats pave way for Gibson-esque meat crowd-computer

Nothing is smarted than the swarm :P

 
 

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via SlashGear by Chris Davies on 2/28/13

Technology that allows a direct link between the brains of two rats, allowing the behaviors of one animal to shape those of the other – even if they were thousands of miles apart – could pave the way to cognitive crowd-sourcing, researchers suggest. The experiment, in which microelectrodes a 1/100th the thickness of a human hair were inserted into the parts of the rats' brains which handle motor information, saw one rat rewarded for hitting a specific lever in its cage, and then remotely tutoring its counterpart to select the correct lever in its independent cage by direct stimulation of its motor cortex.

pinky_and_the_brain_rats

The system basically learnt from the electrical activity in the part of the "encoder" rat's brain, as it figured out which of the levers in its cage to press, and then stimulated the "decoder" rat's brain with the same impulses. Although the second rat did eventually figure out which was the right lever on each test, however, demonstrating a roughly 70-percent success ratio, it wasn't an instantaneous process.

Instead, it took scientists around 45 days – with the rats practicing for an hour each day – before the decoder animal became proficient. That appeared to be a sudden switch in understanding, however, rather than a gradual familiarity: "there is a moment in time when … it clicks" Professor Miguel Nicolelis of the Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina, where the research took place, said of the process.

brain-linked_rats

"Suddenly, the [decoder] animal realizes 'Oops! The solution is in my head. It's coming to me' and he gets it right" the scientist says. To help that process along, the encoder rat was denied a treat whenever the decoder rat picked the wrong lever, a feedback system that encouraged sharper thoughts from the tutoring animal.

Although the current system uses a pair of rats – at times linking Duke University with a counterpart lab in Brazil – the scientists are already working on a version which will combine the thoughts of multiple animals. "You could actually have millions of brains tackling the same problem and sharing a solution" Nicolelis suggests, opening the door to a crowd-sourced problem solving engine of sorts.

"It is important to stress that the topology of BTBI [Brain-to-Brain Interface] does not need to be restricted to one encoder and one decoder subjects. Instead, we have already proposed that, in theory, channel accuracy can be increased if instead of a dyad a whole grid of multiple reciprocally interconnected brains are employed. Such a computing structure could define the first example of an organic computer capable of solving heuristic problems that would be deemed non-computable by a general Turing-machine" Professor Miguel Nicolelis, Duke University Medical Center, North Carolina

Nicolelis and his team also predict that one day – albeit a day several decades off – humans will be able to communicate and learn in this fashion, though it will take some clever cabling to actually make it practical. Currently, the microelectrodes require direct contact with points within the brain; while non-invasive brain monitoring equipment exists, it's insufficiently precise for these purposes.

According to Nicolelis, the next stage of the research is to work on the crowd-crunching potential of the system, and measure its potential for computation in comparison to more traditional systems.

[via BBC]


Brain linked rats pave way for Gibson-esque meat crowd-computer is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

 
 

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02/27/13 PHD comic: 'The Out-Of-Office Reply'

 
 

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via PHD Comics on 2/28/13

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham
www.phdcomics.com
Click on the title below to read the comic
title: "The Out-Of-Office Reply" - originally published 2/27/2013

For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE!


 
 

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Terminator Sparrows?

 
 

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via Slashdot: Hardware by Soulskill on 2/26/13

AstroPhilosopher writes "In a move not far removed from the model T-101, U.S. researchers have succeeded in re-animating a dead sparrow. Duke scientists were studying male behavior aggression among sparrows. They cleverly decided to insert miniaturized robotics into an empty sparrow carcass and operate it like a puppet (abstract). It worked; they noticed wing movements were a primary sign of aggression. Fortunately the living won out this time. The experiment stopped after the real sparrows tore off the robosparrow's head. But there's always a newer model on the assembly-line. Good luck sparrows." Bad Horse has not yet made a decision on the researchers' application.

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Far right Golden Dawn launches child indoctrination courses

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/euronews/en/home/~3/uri3W4SoPO0/story01.htm
It has begun. Abandon ship.
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20130226

Vulcan tops vote to name Pluto moons

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21588327#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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Linus Torvalds Explodes at Red Hat Developer

 
 

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via Slashdot: Linux by samzenpus on 2/25/13

sfcrazy writes "Quite a lot of people raised their eyebrows the way ex-Red Hat developer Matthew Garrett made Microsoft the 'universal' control of any desktops PCs running with UEFI secure boot. Though the intentions of Garrett were clear — to enable GNU/Linux to be able to run Linux on Windows 8 certified PCs with secure boot; it was clearly putting Microsoft in a very powerful position. Linus, while a supporter of secure boot, exploded at Garrett and Howells when they proposed its inclusion in the kernel. Linus responded: 'Guys, this is not a d*#@-sucking contest. If you want to parse PE binaries, go right ahead. If Red Hat wants to deep-throat Microsoft, that's *your* issue. That has nothing what-so-ever to do with the kernel I maintain. It's trivial for you guys to have a signing machine that parses the PE binary, verifies the signatures, and signs the resulting keys with your own key. You already wrote the code, for chissake, it's in that f*cking pull request.'"

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20130223

Why speaking English can make you poor

Interesting article. Far fetched, but interesting nonetheless :P

Greek has similar structure for the future as English. Do you think that the language could be the reason for the fiscal burdens of the people living in Greece?

Or maybe, one could argue that the basis of the whole Western civilization, having been forged by languages that make strong use of the future tense (Greek-Roman-Italian-French-British), is disconnection from the future and focus on the issues at hand.

 
 

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via BBC News - Home on 2/22/13

Why speaking English makes you poor

 
 

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20130222

VIDEO: Deepest undersea vents discovered

 
 

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via BBC News - Home on 2/21/13

UK scientists exploring the ocean floor in the Caribbean have discovered an "astounding" set of hydrothermal vents, the deepest anywhere in the world.

 
 

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Quadrocopters Throwing and Catching an Inverted Pendulum

 
 

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via Slashdot: Hardware by Soulskill on 2/22/13

derGoldstein writes "We've seen some very impressive aerobatics performed by quadrocopters before, but this is getting ridiculous. Robohub points to the latest advancement from the Flying Machine Arena, which developed algorithms that allow quadrocopters to juggle an inverted pendulum. One of the researchers working on it said, 'We started off with some back-of-the-envelope calculations, wondering whether it would even be physically possible to throw and catch a pendulum. This told us that achieving this maneuver would really push the dynamic capabilities of the system. As it turned out, it is probably the most challenging task we've had our quadrocopters do. With significantly less than one second to measure the pendulum flight and get the catching vehicle in place, it's the combination of mathematical models with real-time trajectory generation, optimal control, and learning from previous iterations that allowed us to implement this.'"

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Sony announces PlayStation 4

http://osnews.com/story/26802/Sony_announces_PlayStation_4

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