Monthly Archives: January 2013

Google’s Trillion-Dollar Driverless Car — Part 2: The Ripple Effects

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Google’s Trillion-Dollar Driverless Car — Part 2: The Ripple Effects

“The fact is that a driverless car would slash hundreds of billions of dollars of annual revenue, or even trillions, from all sorts of entities: car makers, parts suppliers, car dealers, auto insurers, auto financiers, body shops, emergency rooms, health insurers, medical practices, personal-injury lawyers, government taxing authorities, road-construction companies, parking-lot operators, oil companies, owners of urban real estate, and on and on and on.  At the same time, the driverless car will create enormously lucrative business opportunities to serve new customer needs.  I’ll turn first to the revenue that is in peril and then examine the opportunities.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/01/24/googles-trillion-dollar-driverless-car-part-2-the-ripple-effects/

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Law-enforcer misuse of driver database soars

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“Florida’s driver-and-vehicle database, the system that can help law enforcement identify victims of fatal crashes and decipher the identity of a suspect, can be a useful tool for cops.  But at least 74 law enforcers were suspected of misusing D.A.V.I.D. in 2012, a nearly 400 percent increase from 2011, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.  Officers who needlessly pull information or photographs from D.A.V.I.D. that would otherwise be private could face criminal charges, sanctions or disciplinary action.  And yet the temptation of looking up a relative, a celebrity’s address or a romantic interest is too great for some law enforcers.”

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/os-law-enforcement-access-databases-20130119,0,2787899,full.story

 

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DNA database not so anonymous on the Internet: study

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“As more and more of our personal data — and those of the people we know and are related to — gets posted online, the anonymity promised by the remove of a computer screen gets more and more elusive.  That’s what a team of scientists uncovered when they started playing Sherlock with a batch of genetic data posted online for researchers to use.  The data was anonymous: the participants’ names were not published.  But using the information that was provided, including age and where they live, along with freely available Internet resources, the researchers were able to identify nearly 50 of the individuals in the genomic database.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/18/dna-database-not-so-anonymous-on-the-internet-study/

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Why Bitcoin is the banking industry’s newest, biggest threat

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“Bitcoin’s big advantage is that it is essentially the cold, hard cash of the Internet. Instead of bills, Bitcoin’s software keeps a public ledger of every transaction among users. If a buyer and seller are running the software on their computers, they can directly exchange Bitcoins, anonymously and with no taxes or bank fees. Others can pay a company to process the payment. Bitcoin accounts are listed simply as a string of letters and numbers with no names attached, giving a level of anonymity impossible with debit and credit cards or even PayPal accounts.”

http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/01/02/why-bitcoin-is-the-banking-industrys-newest-biggest-threat/

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European Space Agency ponders asteroid-smashing mission

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“The proposed mission, called AIDA (for ‘Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment’), would consist of a pair of spacecraft (sadly, not named Armageddon and Deep Impact) flung at the near-Earth asteroid 65803 Didymos. Didymos is actually a binary object consisting of a large primary mass and much smaller secondary satellite mass. The idea with the AIDA mission, which would take place near the end of 2022, is to accelerate a small kinetic impactor spacecraft to a relative velocity of 6.25 kilometers per second and crash it into the secondary Didymos mass. A second spacecraft would hold off a short distance away and measure the orbital deflection.”

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/01/european-space-agency-ponders-asteroid-smashing-mission/

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Company plans to mine asteroids with ‘FireFlies’ spacecraft

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“A US company said Tuesday it plans to send a fleet of spacecraft into the solar system to mine asteroids for metals and other materials in the hopes of furthering exploration of the final frontier.  In a first step, the company plans to send ‘asteroid-prospecting spacecraft’ into the solar system, with the first — 55-pound (25-kilogram) ‘FireFlies’ — to be launched in 2015 on journeys of two to six months.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/22/company-plans-to-mine-asteroids-with-first-fireflies-spacecraft/

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Dutch architect to build house with 3D printer

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“A Dutch architect has designed a house ‘with no beginning or end’ to be built using the world’s largest 3D printer, harnessing technology that may one day be used to print houses on the moon.  Janjaap Ruijssenaars, 39, of Universe Architecture in Amsterdam, wants to print a Mobius strip-shaped building with around 1,100 square metres (12,000 square feet) of floor space using the massive D-Shape printer.  The printer, designed by Italian Enrico Dini, can print up to almost a six-metre-by-six-metre square (20-foot-by-20-foot), using a computer to add layers 5-10 mm (a quarter to half an inch) thick.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/23/dutch-architect-to-build-house-with-3d-printer/

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British scientists announce breakthrough in turning DNA into data storage

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“Scientists in Britain on Wednesday announced a breakthrough in the quest to turn DNA into a revolutionary form of data storage.  A speck of man-made DNA can hold mountains of data that can be freeze-dried, shipped and stored, potentially for thousands of years, they said.  The contents are ‘read’ by sequencing the DNA — as is routinely done today, in genetic fingerprinting and so on — and turning it back into computer code.  To prove their concept, the team encoded an MP3 recording of Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech; a digital photo of their lab; a PDF; a file of all of Shakespeare’s sonnets; and a document that describes the data storage technique.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/23/british-scientists-announce-breakthrough-in-turning-dna-into-data-storage/

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3-D Printing Revolution: Printing Human Hearts

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3-D Printing Revolution: Printing Human Hearts

“Creating a solid, three-dimensional object from a printer sounds like science fiction but it’s very real. 3-D printing has created prosthetic legs, racing-car parts, customized mobile phones and more.  ‘These were experimental technologies for decades and now they’re commercial,’ says Josh Brown, vice president of Fusion Analytics. ‘And the applications essentially cut across every vertical from health care to defense to aerospace to manufacturing to oil and gas. There is nothing that’s not going to benefit from some of these newly commercialized 3-D technologies.'”

http://libertycrier.com/tech/3-d-printing-revolution-printing-human-hearts/

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Thousands of armed protestors gather at state capitols in pro-assault rifle rallies across the country

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“The size of crowds at each location varied – from dozens of people in South Dakota to 2,000 in New York. Large crowds also turned out in Connecticut, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Washington state.  Some demonstrators in Olympia, Wash., Phoenix, Salem, Ore., and Salt Lake City came with holstered handguns or rifles on their backs. At the Kentucky Capitol in Frankfort, attendees gave a special round of applause for ‘the ladies that are packin’.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2265174/Gunning-change-Thousands-armed-protestors-gather-state-capitols-pro-assault-rifle-rallies-country.html

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