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ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition – “The latest development from AMD – the ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition graphics card – could become one of the hottest gadgets of the year. The card, pictured above, takes the September 2009 HD 5870 “Cypress” GPU and equips it with six Mini DisplayPort outputs courtesy of ATI Eyefinity technology, allowing the user to connect six displays to a single card…”
Designer Reverse-Engineers Face-Detection Tech to Develop Camouflage Makeup – “Face-recognition technology is already helping surveillance cameras pick out individual faces of suspects, and even smartphone apps may soon allow you to ID strangers on the street. Future lovers who want a bit more privacy could soon paint on anti-face-recognition camo that protects against such electronic eye intrusions…” See also: CV Dazzle Makeup
Introducing the pill that snitches on you – “It’s getting harder and harder to hide from your doctor. Researchers at the University of Florida today unveiled the tattletale pills, standard pill capsules that come with microchips and digestible antennas to alert caregivers, family members, etc., when the pill has been ingested…”
New ‘Smart’ Roof Reads the Thermometer, Saves Energy in Hot and Cold Climates – “Top a building with a light-colored “cool roof,” and it reflects sunlight, cutting air conditioning bills in summer, but increasing winter heating costs. Choose black shingles, and the roof soaks up sunlight to cut winter heating costs but makes the roof bake in the summer sun. One or the other. You can’t have it both ways…”
Armed With Information, People Make Poor Choices, Study Finds – “When faced with a choice that could yield either short-term satisfaction or longer-term benefits, people with complete information about the options generally go for the quick reward, according to new research from University of Texas at Austin psychologists…”
Sony Deletes Feature On PS3′s; You Don’t Own What You Thought You Bought – “It used to be when you bought a product, you owned it. Simple, right? And once you owned it, you could do what you want with it? But, lately, thanks to digital products and an always connected world, many companies have changed things around — so the products you thought you owned, you actually rent. But, it can go even further than that, where a product you thought you owned can be irrevocably changed without your permission, long after you bought it. Take, for example, the recent story of Sony deleting a feature on the PS3 that let users (not owners, apparently) install other operating systems, such as Linux. It’s going away. Sony announced that when the next PS3 firmware upgrade comes along, it’ll wipe out this feature, whether you used it or not. The only way to avoid that is not to upgrade, but that will also greatly limit what you can do with your PS3…”
Office technology: Productivity boost or time sink? – ” That mini-tower by your desk, that tablet by your bedside, the netbook you use on the commuter train, the 3G smartphone that’s always within reach — they’re powerful, essential tools of the office, right? They do for white-collar productivity what the assembly line did for factory productivity — isn’t that obvious? Well, maybe. Or maybe not…”
The iPad: Apple’s Next Gold Rush
Dangerous Science (A look at Chemistry sets, old and new)
The Doctor Will Google You Now – “According to a recent essay in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry, the practice is not all that unusual, even among those doctors who focus on your mental health. Often, doctors are compelled by the need to find a particular piece of information. Other times, it’s simple curiosity…”
Virgin’s ‘Flying Submarine’ – “Not content with conquering the air with Virgin Airlines and space with Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson is now making a play for the deep blue sea with an ‘underwater plane’…”
More rats for NY City – “The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is slashing the number of pest control aides in an effort to save $1.5 million. 57 out of 84 full-time pest control aide positions will get the axe…”
Apple’s iPad: By the numbers – “A pared-down look at Apple’s buzz-heavy, soon-to-be-released tablet computer”
Don’t Worry About What The iPad Costs, You Can’t Afford The Apps – “One of the cool things about the iPhone ecosystem is there are nearly 17 quintillion apps available for it, and although many of these are crap, the good ones frequently cost only a dollar or two. Even the premium-priced “productivity” apps–things like note pads and to-do lists–rarely cross the $10 threshhold, which means you can load up your iPhone or Touch with a lot of cool stuff on a modest software budget. But if a leaked video of the iPad app store is accurate, you can expect to pay 200-500% more for simple things like 99-cent games, and PC-level prices for more robust apps, on your fancy new iPad…”
No app can replace city’s need for vibrant libraries – ” But if Steve Jobs has seen the future — as he has seen it so many times before — then the future is not a library but a digital bookshelf from which one purchases an e-book and reads it on a 9.56-inch by 7.47-inch multi-touch screen…”
Microsoft runs fuzzing botnet, finds 1,800 Office bugs – “Microsoft uncovered more than 1,800 bugs in Office 2010 by tapping into the unused computing horsepower of idling PCs, a company security engineer said today…”
A grand unified theory of AI – “The probabilistic approach has been responsible for most of the recent progress in artificial intelligence, such as voice recognition systems, or the system that recommends movies to Netflix subscribers. But Noah Goodman, an MIT research scientist whose department is Brain and Cognitive Sciences but whose lab is Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, thinks that AI gave up too much when it gave up rules. By combining the old rule-based systems with insights from the new probabilistic systems, Goodman has found a way to model thought that could have broad implications for both AI and cognitive science…”
Lifestyle Creep: Are You Living Beyond Your Means? – “I was a victim of lifestyle creep, which is a fancy name for keeping up with the Joneses. Lifestyle creep is the enemy of savings. It turns luxuries into necessities. And it’s a fact of life in a wealthy culture. “We get tons of messages all the time that tell us that what we have is not enough,” says Ken Robinson, a certified financial planner in Cleveland and author of Don’t Make a Budget…”
Decriminalizing pot would devastate cartels – “One step forward: California voters will get a chance in November to decide if the state should legalize marijuana. Two steps backward: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told authorities in Mexico that the United States was looking at anything that worked to fight the drug cartels killing Mexicans daily — but responded “no” when asked if anything included legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana…”
Who Funds Contrariness on Climate Change? – “Greenpeace is accusing one of the nation’s largest conglomerates of sowing confusion around scientific assertions behind climate change, a broadside that comes amid waning public engagement on human-caused emissions…”
People Eat Fish That Eat Fish That Eat Plastic – “The scientists told the nonprofit online news site that about 5-10 percent of the fish they studied –”mainly small swimmers common in the deep ocean, like lanternfish and hatchetfish” had consumed the tiny plastic particles. Those fish, in turn, are eaten by bigger, commercially fished species…”
Is Marriage Toxic to Women? Part II Massive Meta-Analysis Says Marriage Reduces Depression – “In Part II of this five-part series, (yeah, I know I said 4 part) we’ll look at whether marriage is toxic to women’s mental health. Specifically, we’ll look closely at depression because it affects about 20 million adults in the U.S. alone and is therefore one of our most common diseases. The bad news here is that women are twice as likely as men to suffer from depression. Depression has been widely studied and has been found to correlate very highly with other markers of mental distress so it’s a good thing to look at when we consider general psychological well-being….”
Why You Should Never Pay More Than $10 For HDMI Cables – “You’ve probably guessed that gold-plated cables for your home theater are entirely unnecessary. Still, there must be some small quality difference for all that price, right? Mint.com’s blog lays out the answer: No, not at all…”
The human genome at ten – “Nearly a decade on from the completion of the draft sequence of the human genome, researchers should work with the same intensity and focus to apply the results to health….”
Jamie Oliver shows kids what’s in a chicken nugget – “I’ll be the first to admit that I do, in fact, let my kids eat McDonald’s every now and again. It is certainly not often, but it does happen, and they (of course) love it — or at least they did … until I showed them this video. In the clip, Jamie Oliver, host of the new series Food Revolution, shows kids exactly what’s in your average chicken nugget. That, in and of itself is gruesome. But the truly appalling bit is when the kids actually want to eat it when he’s finished cooking. Take a look…”
FedEx Rolls Out Its First All-Electric Van in USA – “FedEx Corp. today announced the expansion of its alternative-energy vehicle fleet with the first all-electric FedEx parcel delivery trucks in the United States. Four purpose-built electric trucks–optimized for electric operation from the wheels up–are slated to hit the road in the Los Angeles area starting in June 2010, joining more than 1,800 alternative-energy vehicles already in service for FedEx around the world.”
Solving crimes with Google Earth – “Google Earth, the computer program that allows Internet users to zoom in on virtually any neighborhood or street on the planet, may have solved its first crime…”
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