Robotics

Robotics Researcher Starts Campaign To Ban Development of Sexbots 536

Posted by Soulskill from the when-technology-gets-weird dept.
Earthquake Retrofit writes: A robotics ethicist from the UK's De Montfort University has started a campaign to ban the development and use of sex robots. "She believes that they reinforce traditional stereotypes of women and the view that a relationship need be nothing more than physical." The campaign was spurred by news that some companies claim to be fairly far along in development of such technology. One company even plans to start selling them later this year. The campaign's goals and concerns include "We propose that the development of sex robots will further reduce human empathy that can only be developed by an experience of mutual relationship," and, "We challenge the view that the development of adults and child sex robots will have a positive benefit to society, but instead further reinforce power relations of inequality and violence."
HP

HP To Jettison Up To 30,000 Jobs As Part of Spinoff 273

Posted by Soulskill from the what-does-career-load-letter-even-mean dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Hewlett-Packard says its upcoming spinoff of its technology divisions focused on software, consulting and data analysis will eliminate up to 30,000 jobs. The cuts announced Tuesday will be within the newly formed Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which is splitting from the Palo Alto, California company's personal computer and printing operation. "The new reductions amount to about 10 percent of the new company's workforce, and will save about $2.7 billion in annual operating costs." The split is scheduled to be completed by the end of next month. "The head of the group, Mike Nefkens, outlined a plan under which it is cutting jobs in what he called 'high-cost countries' and moving them to low-cost countries. He said that by the end of HP Enterprise’s fiscal year 2018, only 40 percent of the group’s work force will be located in high-cost countries."
Open Source

The Era of Open Source Cars 31

Posted by Soulskill from the it-was-the-era-of-open,-it-was-the-era-of-closed dept.
An anonymous reader writes: An article at Ars Technica details how open source is slowly but surely working its way into the automotive manufacturing industry. A company named StreetScooter is flattening the design process, having designers and engineers work directly with suppliers right from the get-go. Another company, Local Motors, has built an open source community that's 50,000-strong, whose members include everybody from hobbyists to industrial engineers. Even the existing auto-giants are getting in on it: Ford has created OpenXC, a platform that is attempting to standardize how to get data out of a car's computer. The article concludes, "These various automotive open source advocates come at the topic from different backgrounds and with different approaches, but they can all recognize we've entered an era for open source cars that simply didn't exist before."
Transportation

Porsche Unveils Its First Electric Car 213

Posted by Soulskill from the even-the-bandwagon-is-electric-these-days dept.
An anonymous reader writes: German automaker Porsche has made its first foray into electric vehicles. On Monday at the Frankfurt Auto Show, it unveiled a concept car called the Porsche Mission E. Its 800-volt drive system can take the car from 0 to 100km/h in 3.5 seconds. The high-voltage charging system lets it gain 80% of its battery capacity back within 15 minutes. They claim a driving range of 500km on a single battery charge. Porsche said the car was not a response to the Tesla Model S, but the two will likely be direct competitors when the Mission E goes into full production. That will happen "within the next five years."
Moon

India Mulls Using Nuclear Power For Its Chandrayaan-2 Mission To the Moon 93

Posted by samzenpus from the to-infinty-and-beyond dept.
MarkWhittington writes: India is preparing its second mission to the moon, the Chandrayaan-2, as Space Insider noted. The mission will consist or an orbiter, a lander, and a rover. It will be launched on an Indian-built Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) in late 2017 or early 2018. Defense Daily reported that officials at the Indian Space Research Organization are mulling making the lunar mission nuclear powered, presumably with plutonium-fueled radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs). RTGs use the heat of the decaying fuel to create electricity. Both the American and the Soviet space programs have used RTGs in their various spacecraft, the most recent one being the New Horizons space probe that recently flew past Pluto.
Medicine

Cancer Patient Receives 3D-Printed Titanium Sternum and Ribs 38

Posted by samzenpus from the we-can-rebuild-him dept.
An anonymous reader writes: A Spanish cancer patient diagnosed with chest wall sarcoma has received the world's first 3D printed titanium sternum and rib cage. Anatomics, an Australian medical device company, designed and manufactured the metal rib cage. Cnet reports: "Once printed, finished and polished, the implant was couriered to the Salamanca University Hospital, where it was implanted into the patient's chest. It has now been two weeks since the surgery, and the patient has been discharged is recovering well."
Power

Flash From the Past: Why an Apparent Israeli Nuclear Test In 1979 Matters Today 441

Posted by samzenpus from the doomed-to-repeat dept.
Lasrick writes: Stanford's Leonard Weiss writes about growing evidence that Israel and South Africa cooperated on nuclear weapons testing in the 1970s, and in fact conducted a test: "On September 22, 1979, a US satellite code-named Vela 6911, which was designed to look for clandestine atmospheric nuclear tests and had been in operation for more than 10 years, recorded a double flash in an area where the South Atlantic meets the Indian Ocean, off the coast of South Africa. The detection immediately triggered a series of steps in which analysts at national labs in the United States informed their superiors that the recorded signal had all the earmarks of a nuclear test... The event has been a subject of controversy ever since, but is now recognized by most analysts as the detection of an Israeli nuclear test with South African logistical cooperation." Weiss goes through the history of the investigation and new evidence that has come to light, and relates it to the rhetoric surrounding Iran's nuclear energy program and the recent agreement Iran struck with the P5+1, as well as to efforts for a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East. Terrific cloak-and-dagger read with plenty of technical details.
Printer

Epson's 'Empty' Professional-Grade Cartridges Can Have 20 Per Cent of Their Ink Remaining 268

Posted by Soulskill from the called-out dept.
sandbagger writes: Printer ink is expensive, so it's important that when a printer tells you a cartridge is running dry, the cartridge is actually running dry. Unfortunately, that's not always the case. The folks over at Bellevue Fine Art in Seattle recently decided to find out exactly how much ink their high-end Epson 9900 printer wastes. A professional grade 700ml cartridge will have 120-150ml remaining when "empty," and a 350ml cartidge will have 60-80ml remaining when "empty." For this studio, the difference amounts to hundreds of dollars worth of ink every month.
Power

Purdue 'HUSH' Tool Promises 16% Battery Life Gain For Wasteful Android Phones 80

Posted by Soulskill from the turns-off-NSA-eavesdropper dept.
MojoKid writes: Researchers from Purdue University have developed a software tool for Android smartphones that purportedly slows down battery drain when handsets enter a sleep state. With the software tool installed, the researchers claim that smartphone battery life can be extended by nearly 16 percent. Called "HUSH," the software solution was developed in response to what the researchers say is the first large-scale study of smartphone energy drain occurring from everyday use by consumers. According to their research, apps drain 28.9 percent of battery power while the screen is turned off. HUSH dynamically identifies app background activities that it deems aren't useful to the user experience on a per-app basis and suppresses those apps when the screen is turned off.
Robotics

Can High-Tech Academia Survive Silicon Valley's Talent Binge? 137

Posted by Soulskill from the all-your-experts-are-belong-to-us dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this year, Carnegie Mellon had one of the most capable robotics research centers in the world. Then, Uber hired away dozens of workers in a frantic push to jump start development of autonomous driving technology, which left CMU reeling. Now the NY Times asks whether such high-tech labs can continue to exist; Silicon Valley seems ready to flood such organizations with money whenever a vital new technology is almost ripe. "Carnegie Mellon's experience is a familiar one in the world of high-tech research. As a field matures, universities can wake up one day to find money flooding the premises; suddenly they're in a talent war with deep-pocketed firms from Silicon Valley. The impacts are also intellectual. When researchers leave for industry, their expertise winks off the map; they usually can't publish what they discover — or even talk about it over drinks with former colleagues. ... [Also], the intellectual register of their work changes. No more exploring hard, ''basic'' problems out of deep curiosity; they need to solve problems that will make their employers money."
Power

Million-Square-Foot Data Center Being Built In Dallas 40

Posted by Soulskill from the go-big-or-go-home dept.
1sockchuck writes: RagingWire has begun building a 1 million square foot data center campus in the Telecom Corridor north of Dallas. Data centers have been growing in scale for years, but this project reflects the extent to which massive amounts of computing power are being concentrated in regional hubs. This super-sizing of data center campuses allows cloud platforms (and the data center providers that serve them) to rapidly add server capacity and electric power.
Input Devices

Using a Smartphone As a Virtual Reality Controller 13

Posted by Soulskill from the don't-drop-it dept.
New submitter mutherhacker writes: A group from Osaka University in Japan and McMaster University in Canada have presented a method to control a virtual 3D object using a smartphone [video]. The method was primarily designed for presentations but also applies to virtual reality using a head mounted display, gaming or even quadrocopter control. There is an open paper online as well as a git repository for both the client and the server. The client smartphone communicates with the main computer over the network with TUIO for touch and Google protocol buffers for orientation sensor data.
Math

The Handheld Analog Computer That Made the Atomic Bomb 45

Posted by timothy from the been-a-good-year-for-the-war-buffs dept.
szczys writes: When the physicists and mathematicians of the Manhattan Project began their work they needed to establish which substance was most likely to sustain vigorous fission. This is not trivial math, and the solution of course is to use an advanced computer. If only they had one available. The best computer of the time was a targeting calculation machine that was out of service while being moved from one installation to another. The unlikely fill-in was a simple yet ingenious analog computer called the FERMIAC. When rolled along a piece of paper it calculated neutron collisions with simple markings — doing its small part to forever change the world without a battery, transistor, or tube.
Hardware

Xerox PARC Creates Self-Destructing Chip 96

Posted by samzenpus from the here-today-gone-tomorrow dept.
angry tapir writes: Engineers at Xerox PARC have developed a chip that will self-destruct upon command, providing a potentially revolutionary tool for high-security applications. The chip, developed as part of DARPA's vanishing programmable resources project, could be used to store data such as encryption keys and, on command, shatter into thousands of pieces so small, reconstruction is impossible.
Robotics

Morphological Computation: The Hidden Superpower of Soft-Bodied Robots 51

Posted by samzenpus from the going-soft dept.
Hallie Siegel writes: Ever wonder why most robots are built with hard bodies? It's because they are easier to control that way. But now researchers are embracing the complexities of soft bodies, by using their complex dynamics as an asset for solving some of the control computation, instead of using digital computation to solve it. Not surprisingly, many soft robots are inspired by nature. Researcher Helmut Hauser talks about his research in 'morphological computation', including OCTOPUS, a bio-inspired robotic silicon arm.
Open Source

Ask Slashdot: Synchronizing Sound With Video, Using Open Source? 103

Posted by timothy from the speed-of-sound-vs-speed-of-light dept.
An anonymous reader writes: I have a decent video camera, but it lacks a terminal for using an external mic. However, I have a comparatively good audio recorder. What I'd like to do is "automagically" synchronize sound recorded on the audio recorder with video taken on the video camera, using Free / Open Source software on Linux, so I can dump in the files from each, hit "Go," and in the end I get my video, synched with the separately recorded audio, in some sane file format. This seems simple, but maybe it isn't: the 800-pound gorilla in the room is PluralEyes, which evidently lots of people pay $200 for --and which doesn't have a Linux version. Partly this is that I'm cheap, partly it's that I like open source software for being open source, and partly it's that I already use Linux as my usual desktop, and resent needing to switch OS to do what seems intuitively to be a simple task. (It seems like something VLC would do, considering its Swiss-Army-Knife approach, but after pulling down all the menus I could find, I don't think that's the case.) I don't see this feature in any of the Open Source video editing programs, so as a fallback question for anyone who's using LiVES, KDEnlive, or other free/Free option, do you have a useful workflow for synching up externally recorded sound? I'd be happy even to find a simple solution that's merely gratis rather than Free, as long as it runs on Ubuntu.
Data Storage

The Install Size of Every PS4 and Xbox One Game 106

Posted by timothy from the expands-to-fill-the-space-allotted dept.
SlappingOysters writes: One of the biggest challenges for gamers during this generation of consoles is ensuring you have enough hard drive space to hold the latest blockbuster. Given that every game needs to be installed in order to be played, and games often weigh in at over 40GB, the 500GB of storage that comes as standard doesn't stretch far. Finder.com has provided a handy resource, listing the install sizes for every PlayStation 4 game (460 and counting) and every Xbox One game (290 and counting). The list is searchable, and can be ordered.
Hardware

Alienware's X51 R3, Revamped With Skylake and Maxwell, Tested and Torn Down 18

Posted by samzenpus from the running-the-numbers dept.
MojoKid writes: Alienware has been relatively quiet for the past 18 months or so with respect to their X51 small form factor gaming systems. However, Intel's recent Skylake processor launch and NVIDIA's further optimizations in their Maxwell GPU architecture have given the company a fresh suite of technology to work with to enhance performance and reduce power consumption. As such, the Alienware X51 was given a complete overhaul of the lastest technologies, all of which play very well with the tighter power budgets and thermal constraints of this class of machine. Alienware calls their new machine simply the X51 R3, as it's the third revision of the product. One of the more unique design changes that Alienware made was to the graphics riser card which plugs into a X20 PCI Express slot on the motherboard. This is a rather unique approach to design efficiency which allows the Samsung NVMe M.2 gumstick Solid State Drive in this machine to ride along shotgun with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960, on the side of a custom riser card. Performance-wise the machine is capable of strong standard compute performance on the desktop and in the latest game titles it's able to offer up playable frame rates up through 1440p resolution with high image quality settings. Not bad for a console-sized small form factor PC, actually.
Hardware

Plug In an Ethernet Cable, Take Your Datacenter Offline 150

Posted by samzenpus from the not-a-feature dept.
New submitter jddj writes: The Next Web reports on a hilarious design failure built into Cisco's 3650 and 3850 Series switches, which TNW terms "A Network Engineer's Worst Nightmare". By plugging in a hooded Ethernet cable, you...well, you'll just have to see the picture and laugh. They write: "The cables, which are sometimes accidentally used in datacenters, feature a protective boot that sticks out over the top to ensure the release tab isn’t accidentally pressed or broken off, rendering the cable useless. That boot would hit the reset button which happened to be positioned directly above port one of the Cisco switch, which causes the device to quietly reset to factory settings."
Education

Ask Slashdot: Cheapest Functional Computer For Students? 508

Posted by Soulskill from the race-to-the-bottom dept.
An anonymous reader writes: I've started a second career, teaching English at a High School in a middle class area. While the large majority of students have a computer and internet access at home, about 10-15% do not. I assign papers that must be typed, I have papers turned in online, and I plan to freely refer to texts, videos, and other resources that are available online. This gives an extra disadvantage to students that may be from the poorer end of the strata, and also means extra inefficiency for me, as I have to make allowances for students who don't have a computer available at home.

Right now, I have to tell them to either use school computers during the day, or to pick up a $170 laptop (more than enough — I administer the class using such a laptop). However, I was surprised at the lack of a super-cheap option for students. I'd love to see something for $20 that any student could afford easily, or perhaps I could just gift to a few students. I feel like something in this price range could be sufficiently powerful for basic word processing, youtube videos, and internet searches (internet access is a separate issue). But looking over my options I see:

1) The very cheapest Chromebooks are also in the $170 range.
2) Android Sticks have been around for a while, and do cost in the $20 range, but don't seem to have matured into a generally usable technology. Surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be a community effort to easily turn these Android sticks into Ubuntu/Mint sticks.
3) Students can't be assumed to have the technical know-how to fix up a Salvation Army computer (I wouldn't mind helping out a bit, but I don't want to turn into tech support)
4) A Raspberry Pi costs $70 once you include a case/power supply/etc, and students would receive a big bag of parts.
5) Cheap Windows Tablets have glitches, and don't have an HDMI out.
6) There isn't a good solution to using a cell phone as a desktop computer.

Are any of my assumptions wrong? Are there any other options I'm not considering?

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