Here's a guide on how to make a very low cost GPS tracking device useful for monitoring your own car, your loved ones, or anyone else for that mater so long as you can slip this device into their bag or car.
MIT is working on software that analyzes the surfaces in photos to see if the light patterns all match in order to detect fakes.
Many fraudulent images are created by combining parts of two or more photographs into a single image. When the parts are combined, the combination can sometimes be spotted by variations in the lighting conditions within the image. An observant person might notice such variations, Johnson says; however, "people are pretty insensitive to lighting."
Another technique is to check the grain of the photo for irregularities. When an object is placed within a photo, the new object will have differing grain from the original (though there are ways to reduce and eliminate this).
If you're wondering why this matters, check out these examples of how fake photos can be drastically harmful:
A British company has developed a camera that can see through clothes, but unlike Backscatter, it doesn't provide pornographic photos of the target.
Depending on the material, the signature of the wave is different, so that explosives can be distinguished from a block of clay and cocaine is different from a bag of flour.
It shoots some rays at the target and reads the response. It's more like a sonar device than a camera and it if works, this will be not only more effective at detecting threats, but also much better for personal privacy.
Real exciting sounding huh? Well, check out the video and you'll be amazed how well this thing gets around. After slipping as badly as it does, it still manages to stay upright and keep going. That is really a breakthrough in robotic science!
While very funny and an ironic twist on the ultrasonic ringtone idea, it has some legitimate drawbacks that are leading some to call for the devices to be banned.
The £500 Mosquito device has been installed at some 3,500 locations across the country since it first went on sale in January 2006. It emits an irritating, high-pitched sound that can only be heard by children and young people up into their early twenties, forcing them to move on.
This is so very cool. I believe memory is the keystone of intelligence and it's what makes your life worthwhile. After all, what is the point of living if you can't remember anything?
The man, who has not been identified, was also tested on his ability to learn lists of paired objects. After three weeks of continuous hypothalamic stimulation, his performance on two learning tests was significantly improved. He was also much more likely to remember a list of unrelated paired objects with the electrodes turned on than when turned off.
For what sounds like a scam if ever there was one, MissingMoney.com appears to be legitimate. The team over at Lifehacker have had a rush of successes listed in their comments after their first post of this service and having tried it myself, I was actually able to find an unclaimed rebate in my name!
For once, someone's using public record to actually help people and that's a good thing.
So I entered my name, found a record with one of my old addresses and clicked the link they gave me. It led to Washington State's web-based unclaimed funds service.
I had to create an account, but that was a simple process. There was a point where they ask for a SSN, but they give you the option of providing it offline (which I thought was a nice touch).
Afterward, they asked me to submit any kind of record that shows that I lived at that address (which I did) and it was a done deal. In theory, I should get my money in a while. I will update this page at that time.
Of course, if you do this, make sure that you're not providing sensitive documents as proof.
Update 1 - I checked for just about everyone I know, but it seems they're not hooked into every state yet. I just forwarded my friends and family to their local state's unclaimed property page for now, but if missing money manages to complete this service, it will be very valuable to people who have moved a lot.
Update 2 - According to the state unclaimed property site, my family has almost 10 claims! A few are for over $50 too. This is fun! I wonder how soon missing money will be hooked into all the states?
Update 3 - Got my rebate. It's for just over $30. Pretty neat.
I've always thought this could be done though I figured it would have to involve a light electric field and a fabric of some kind. Either way, it's going to make it pretty easy for military types to sneak around at night now itsn't it?
From the, "that's freaking brilliant!" department, someone figured out that there's a phone tone that means "vacant circuit", or in layman's terms, there's no phone here. When an automated dialer gets that, they erase the phone number from their records so they don't waste their valuable time and money (as if ours wasn't). So what he did was download the tone from the Internet and put it as the first thing on his answering machine.
As long as you don't belong to a school system or work for someone who uses auto-dialers, this is pretty cool.
Information about the coming USB 3 format is now available. Of course it's far faster than the previous version (about 10 times as fast), but the important nugget is that the connector is backwards compatible with USB1 and 2. That means that you can plug USB 3 devices into older systems and you can plug your old devices into USB 3 solts. That's pretty cool.
This story of a couple who shined a green laser into the cockpit of a police helicopter is interesting. According to the article, they were just having fun flashing them into the sky like giant light-sabers (which sounds pretty fun to me). Unfortunately, it hit the cockpit of the helicopter which must have diffused and spread the light (or else this couple has some killer aim to be able to hit the retina of a helicopter pilot at 500 feet).
If you believe that life exists out there, it's easy to see why programs like SETI have been created to try and gather evidence. Now there's an effort called "Active SETI" that's no longer content to wait for signs of life, it's broadcasting signals directly to other stars that are likely to contain similar lifeforms to us.
Rather than sound paranoid, this is very sound advice. If you drugged and blindfolded and were then released somewhere that sounded like a city, would the first thing you did be to yell, "hey, hey! I'm over here! HELLLLLOOOOO!!!"
You could be in any part of any city in the world. This is a stupid action to take.
It's a little light on content at the moment, but I think this has potential. If you can't remember what something is called, you can hunt it down visually via connections to other pictures that are related or part of it.
They may have found a way to modify regular skin cells into working like stem cells. Having another source that is easier to get, far more plentiful, and lacks those nasty moral issues would make the technology thrive. Let's hope for the best.
They mention the McAffee SiteAdvisor software that tries to alert you if you're on a site that probably isn't what you intended, but I offer this simple tool instead: Google. Set Google to your homepage and from now on, whenever you would normally type a site name into the address bar, hit the "home" button and type it into Google's search box instead.
If you mispelled it, Google will correct it and the first or second link will probably be the page you meant.
Personally, I'm blogging about this article just for this line alone:
Even at the low end, however, image is everything. The gPC is built using tiny components, but put inside a full-size case because research indicates that Wal-Mart shoppers are so unsophisticated they equate physical size with capability.
A type of home energy production, this is similar to standard wind turbines in that it produces electricity from wind, but it can be mounted very low to the ground and spins no matter what direction the wind is blowing (even up). This is pretty cool if it works as well as it seems.
I second the commentor on the article who suggested that these could be mounted on lampposts all over the city to generate power.
You will be amazed by how much you can learn about a person if you only pay attention to the signals they give off. Read this book to learn the language.
