Topic: ROBOT - on August 3, 2016 at 5:21:00 PM CEST
Hackable, educational walking bot can add a Raspberry Pi
Robotical’s hackable, Cortex-M4 based “Marty” educational robot has flexible legs, and can be upgraded with an onboard Raspberry Pi. A startup called Robotical is seeking funds on Indiegogo for a 3D printable, mostly open source, walking robot called Marty. The WiFi-controlled bipedal bot has a 180MHz Cortex-M4 MCU, and is primarily designed to teach kids about programming using Scratch. It can also be programmed with Python or C++, and you can upgrade it with a Linux-driven Raspberry Pi or other small SBC.
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Topic: CARS - on August 3, 2016 at 5:20:00 PM CEST
Investment-Manager wettet auf Untergang von Tesla
Mark B. Spiegel nennt den Elektroautobauer ein "schreckliches Unternehmen" Der Investment-Manager Mark B. Spiegel hat in einem Interview mit der Süddeutschen Zeitung erneut gegen Tesla Stimmung gemacht. Spiegel ist für seine Skepsis gegenüber Tesla bekannt, er gilt als Elon Musks Börsen-Nemesis. Mit sogenannten Leerverkäufen wettet er an der Börse auf den Untergang des Unternehmens – er hat also ein finanzielles Interesse daran, Tesla schlecht zu reden. Interessant sind seine Gedanken dennoch. Spiegel bezeichnet Tesla-Chef Elon Musk als"Lügner" und attestiert Tesla ein Kakerlaken-Problem: Damit meint er, dass man, wenn man eine Kakerlake sieht, davon ausgehen kann, dass es viele weitere gibt.
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Topic: CARS - on August 2, 2016 at 4:19:00 PM CEST
Aristotle at the Gigafactory: Why Physics Is a Philosophy
On Friday, in Storey County, Nevada, a woman at Tesla’s Gigafactory inauguration hollered, “Beam me up, Elon!” Elon Musk, the electric car company’s chief executive officer, had just taken the stage along with J.B. Straubel, Tesla’s chief technical officer. “Okay, we’re working on that one,” Musk gamely replied before saying: “Alright—welcome everyone to the Gigafactory launch party! I hope you’re having a good time.”
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Topic: History - on August 2, 2016 at 3:41:00 PM CEST
The Alarming Aesthetics of Jazz Age Perm Machines
The perm may be the unofficial hairstyle of the '80s, but the perming process originated many decades earlier—and involved machines that resembled medieval torture devices rather than sleek salon appliances. “Science has pronounced straight hair to be freakish,” declared a haircare ad in a 1922 issue of Harper's Bazaar. “Just think of the great improvement a permanent wave makes in appearance. Close your eyes and imagine fairy fingers transforming your lank strands into lovely, lasting curls, as natural looking as if you were born with them.”
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Topic: CARS - on August 2, 2016 at 3:38:00 PM CEST
The Jeep Hackers Are Back to Prove Car Hacking Can Get Much Worse
Almost exactly a year ago, Chrysler announced a recall for 1.4 million vehicles after a pair of hackers demonstrated to WIRED that they could remotely hijack a Jeep’s digital systems over the Internet. For Chrysler, the fix was embarrassing and costly. But now those two researchers have returned with work that asks Chrysler and the automotive industry to imagine an alternate reality, one where instead of reporting their research to the automaker so it could be fixed, they had kept working on it in secret—the way malicious hackers would have. In doing so, they’ve developed a new hack that offers a sobering lesson: It could have been—and still could be—much worse.
wired.com Achtung Canvas-Fingerprinting
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Topic: SCIENCE - on August 2, 2016 at 3:37:00 PM CEST
MIT made a movie screen that brings 3D to all seats – without the glasses
Seeing 3D movies in theaters isn’t my preferred choice for a bunch of reasons, but the glasses definitely rank among its most annoying features. The cheap plastic things always have to ride atop my existing, actual vision glasses, for one, and they also always seem to be scratched or otherwise marked up. Which is why news that MIT has developed a glasses-less 3D display tech suitable for use in movie theater settings – even if it’s only a prototype – is so welcome.
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Topic: DRUGS - on August 2, 2016 at 3:34:00 PM CEST
A ketamine-themed musical is coming to New York
In the last ten years, ketamine has become intrinsically linked with nightlife, while also being developed as a drug to aid depression and PTSD. Now, it’s the subject of a new musical debuting in Brooklyn, New York, later this month. Ketamine: The Musical will open 17-19 August at House of Yes, an art space and club in Bushwick, Brooklyn. It’s been described as “an immersive, participatory, psychoactive and dissociative spectacle”.
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Topic: DRUGS - on August 2, 2016 at 3:29:00 PM CEST
More American high school students smoke pot than binge drink
In 2014, 44.1 million Americans reported using illicit drugs over the past year. One tragic result of the widespread use of drugs and alcohol is its impact on youth. In the United States alone, 7% of youth aged 12–13 took an illicit substance in the past year, while 5.6% reported drinking alcohol. Early use of drugs or alcohol has been linked to a several times greater risk of developing substance dependence, as the majority of Americans aged 18–30 admitted for substance abuse treatment initiated alcohol or drug use before the age of 18.
The use of alcohol and illicit drugs by teenagers and youth is a serious issue. With a problem this widespread, we wanted to find out where youth drinking and drug use is most prominent. So, we compared data from the United States and European nations to find out just how many high school students are engaging in binge drinking and marijuana use. Read on to learn more about patterns of youth drinking and drug use around the globe.
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Topic: DRUGS - on August 1, 2016 at 4:46:00 PM CEST
Is cannabis really getting stronger?
Cannabis continues to be the world’s favourite illicit drug with around 147m people using it annually. However, there are fears that the drug is becoming increasingly potent and that it could pose a public health risk. But how reliable is the evidence? And is it really getting stronger? The debate about cannabis potency and harm is long running. In the UK, where there are 2m annual users, it predates the 2004 downgrading of cannabis classification from class B to class C. But this episode demonstrated some of the issues with estimating the harms of the drug. Research conducted at the time highlighted how the relative harms of cannabis compared with other class B substances was one of the factors behind the decision to reclassify. However, critics accused the government of ignoring emerging evidence that cannabis was becoming more potent and that it represented a serious public health problem.
rawstory.com Achtung Canvas-Fingerprinting
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Topic: SECURITY - on August 1, 2016 at 4:45:00 PM CEST
Chaos Computer Club: "Das Darknet macht keine Waffen"
Nur eine Plattform für Kriminelle? Nach dem Amoklauf in München warnt der Chaos Computer Club vor der Verteufelung des anonymen Internets.
SZ: Der Amokläufer von München hat sich seine Waffe im Darknet besorgt. Warum warnt der Chaos Computer Club dennoch davor, den anonymen Bereich des Internets zu verteufeln?
Falk Garbsch: Ich bin mit dem Begriff Darknet nicht glücklich. Es geht um ein Tor-Netzwerk, über das sich ein User anonymisiert im Netz bewegen kann. Er kann sich damit vor der Totalüberwachung durch die NSA schützen. Bei der Revolutionsbewegung in Ägypten haben Tor-Netzwerke eine wichtige Rolle gespielt, damit die Menschen frei kommunizieren konnten.
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Topic: WEB - on August 1, 2016 at 4:42:00 PM CEST
When the Internet Came to Everest
It was morning on May 10. I was in a teahouse in Dingboche, a remote Nepalese village about a two-day trek from the Mt. Everest base camp, sipping instant coffee, watching the sun rise from behind snow-crested Himalayan peaks, and trawling my Facebook feed using the Everest Link Wi-Fi network.
My guide Bishnu checked the day’s weather forecast on his smartphone. Although there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, he told me there was snow expected later in the afternoon. I was skeptical, but he said it would be best to leave sooner rather than later.
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Topic: AUSTRIA - on August 1, 2016 at 4:40:00 PM CEST
Austrian Mint sells 41 tonnes of gold coins and gold bars in 2015
Earlier this year, the director of marketing and sales at the Austrian Mint confirmed to Bloomberg in an interview that the Mint’s combined gold bar and gold coin sales in 2015 had totalled 1.32 million troy ounces, a 45% increase on 2014, while the Mint’s silver sales in 2015 had reached 7.3 million ounces, a figure 58% higher than in 2014. Since Münze Österreich, or the Austrian Mint in English, only publishes its annual report in July of each year, we had to wait a few months to see the granular details behind these sales numbers. Now that the Austrian Mint’s 2015 Annual Report has been published, the detailed sales figures are as follows.
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