New Posts to Wired.co.uk - News on Mar 21, 2014:
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1) Information poses bigger bioterrorism threat than microbes
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/bioterrorism-threats
It is the spread of information rather than microbes that poses
the biggest bioterrorism threat today, concluded a panel of experts
at Chatham House today.
Biosafety is no longer simply about controlling substances and
microbes, but information, says Laurie Garrett who runs the Council
on Foreign Relation's Public Health Program. While we have become
pretty adept at controlling microbes, the flow of information is
way beyond our control. "The genie is out of the bottle here," she
says.
By: Katie Collins, Continue reading...
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2) Ourscreen lets you call the shots at selected cinemas
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/ourscreen-crowdsourced-cinema
Ever gone to the cinema with your friends only to find out the
film you wanted to see isn't showing anymore? Or perhaps you've
just wanted to eliminate all the hush-talkers and loud-eaters in a
screening? Well now you can, with your own screen. With
ourscreen.
Ourscreen is a concept ported over from the US where groups
of people can arrange to see a film at their local cinema that's
not on the regular listing. It functions in a similar way to
Groupon, in that a showing can be booked but is only confirmed once
a certain number of people buy in. The number is based on an
estimate you give, which also affects the ticket price. So if you
think you can draw a good crowd, you'll benefit from cheaper
tickets, but the threshold to confirm your booking will be
higher.
By: Chris Higgins, Continue reading...
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3) Does your ball hover and boomerang? This one does
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/hoverball
Ball games are a curiously human trait
(excluding seals, of course). People-ball interactions are
capable of eliciting play, teamwork and emotional bonding. This is
partly why Japanese inventor Jun Rekimoto of the University of
Tokyo believes balls should be considered the future of play and as
such, need a little upgrading.
Rekimoto worries that the joy of ball play can be
unfairly denied to the elderly, the disabled or children: "For
instance, the speed of balls could be too fast for small children,
senior people, or people with physical disabilities." He wishes to
widen the physical "vocabularies" of ball play with his HoverBall,
a ball that can hover, fly and be adapted to those who have a
special needs.
By: Nicholas Tufnell, Continue reading...
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4) Look at these amazing academic pages. Just look at them
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/academic-web-pages-of-awesomeness
This week, some internet archaeologist dug out Sergey
Brin's Stanford home page from when he was a Computer Science
Ph.D. The page, which dates from around 1998, understates:
"Currently I am at Google" and "research on the web seems to be
fashionable these days and I guess I'm no exception." It doesn't
mention that this was the Google he founded with Larry Page that
would later become the behemoth we know and love to hate now.
The most mesmerising element of this piece of internet history
is the profile picture that Brin has gone for: a fresh faced
monobrowed boy with a hypnotic melting effect applied to the torso.
Stop whatever you are doing now and just look at it. Do a
little digging and you can also find this gem.
Wired.co.uk thinks this is marvellous and should be heartily
encouraged. As a result, we've picked some of the best (by which we
mean GIF-tastic extravaganzas of [...]
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5) Gherkin chandeliers are dangerous and spectacular
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/bompas-and-parr-gherkin-chandelier
"We knew the time had come to create something wondrous with
pickles," Sam Bompas, one half of gin-cloud generating, wedding
cake-exploding culinary masters Bompas & Parr, tells
Wired.co.uk. The pickle has been overlooked for too long.
Bompas is relaying the story of how the Gherkin Chandelier -- a
gherkin-powered piece of lighting with an eerie glow akin to the
Grinch lit up at Christmas -- came to be.
"Thinking about the development still gives me goosebumps.
Risking death to explore an everyday sultan of savour!"
By: Liat Clark, Continue reading...
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6) This bug lures prey with its hairy legs
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/assassin-bugs-hairy-legs
Australia has something of a reputation for housing
the world's more peculiar animals and the Feather-legged Assassin
bug, which uses its own legs as bait, is no exception.
In a recent study conducted at Macquarie University,
it has been discovered that these brave little predators will trick
prey into attacking its hairy legs before performing evasive
manoeuvres, allowing the Assassin to turn the tide of battle and
destroy its attacker.
By: Nicholas Tufnell, Continue reading...
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7) Startup of the Week: CurrencyTransfer
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/startup-of-the-week-currency-transfer
CurrencyTransfer is a business foreign exchange price
comparison marketplace. International business payments can be
expensive and opaque, with hidden markups of up to five percent of
the value of transfers. CurrencyTransfer aims to bring transparency
and impartiality to the market, by getting currency specialists to
lifestream their tradable rates -- which are usually decided
'manually' over the phone depending on the client -- in a
transparent market. It was set up by computer scientist Stevan
Litobac, who was born in Sarajevo but fled to the UK when the
Bosnian war started, and Israeli-Brit Daniel Abrahams.
The pair have previously set up consumer-facing currency
marketplaces MyTravelMoney and MyCurrencyTransfer. Wired.co.uk
caught up with Abrahams.
By: Wired.co.uk, Continue reading...
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8) How to build a 1000mph car
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/bloodhound-ssc-1000mph-car
Human beings achieved many 'firsts' in the 20th century. We
climbed the planet's highest mountains, dived its deepest undersea
trench, flew over it faster than the speed of sound, and even
escaped it altogether in order to visit the moon.
Beyond visiting Mars, it may feel like there are no more
milestones left to reach. Yet people are still trying to push the
envelope, even if they have to travel a little farther to get
there.
Richard Noble is one such person. He's spearheading a project
called Bloodhound SSC that will visit uncharted territory on its
way to a new land speed record on the far side of 1,000mph. The
idea of a car capable of 1,000mph might sound ludicrous at first
blush, but consider Noble's credentials. The British businessman is
responsible for previous land speed records in 1983 and 1997, the
first of which came with him behind the wheel.
By: Jonathan M Gitlin, [...]
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9) Bear Simulator: 'Like a mini Skyrim but you're a bear'
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/bear-simulator
Bear Simulator is a Kickstarter designed to tackle the
horrible lack in the gaming industry when it comes to letting you
play games as a bear.
The game's TL;DR summary offers "It's like a mini Skyrim but
you're a bear".
By: Philippa Warr, Continue reading...
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10) Pay penance for your cheesy music taste with Guilty Pledgers
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/guilty-pledgers
Guilty Pledgers is a Spotify web app that lets you donate
money to charity each time you play a particularly cheesy song.
The fundraising app combines Spotify's song catalogue with Just
Giving's charity payments platform to allow individuals to offload
the guilt of playing naff tunes at a party.
Party hosts can sign in with Facebook, open up a playlist and
pick a preferred charity. Attendees can then visit the Guilty
Pledgers web app via their mobile and pledge a minimum of £2 in
order to add their preferred song to the party playlist.
By: Olivia Solon, Continue reading...
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11) Giant inflatable wind turbine to soar to 300 metres
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/altaeros-wind-turbine
Altaeros Energies is to carry out the first commercial
demonstration of a high altitude wind turbine, thanks to a
partnership with the Alaska Energy Authority.
The wind energy company was formed out of MIT, and has developed
a 10-metre-wide, helium filled inflatable wind turbine called the
Buoyant Airborne Turbine (BAT) that has been tested at altitudes of
more than 100 metres above ground. Wired.co.uk wrote about the
company's plans to provide an alternative do diesel generators
back in 2012, but Altaeros has now found a commercial partner to
take the technology to the next stage.
By: Olivia Solon, Continue reading...
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12) Microsoft makes token policy tweaks after email snooping
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/microsoft-blogger-policy
Journalists, bloggers and pretty much everyone worried about
their privacy on the internet drew breath earlier this week when it
emerged that Microsoft had trawled through a French blogger's
Hotmail account in order to search for emails it could use to press
charges against a former employee.
The employee had been accused of leaking code and screenshots of
Windows 8 to the blogger after they had met on a forum. After
Microsoft discovered evidence of the leaks, the ex-employee was
then arrested and charged.
By: Katie Collins, Continue reading...
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13) Microsoft to 'democratise' Xbox One game development
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/xbox-one-developers
Microsoft is hoping to democratise development when it comes to
getting games on the Xbox One.
Speaking about the company's ID@Xbox self-publishing
programme, corporate vice president Phil Harrison
told VentureBeat that over 250 developers have access to
the toolset and are working on games.
By: Philippa Warr, Continue reading...
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14) Turkish PM vows to 'wipe out' Twitter, fails
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/turkey-twitter-ban-futile
Turkey's Prime Minister has reengaged his war on Twitter by
ordering a ban on the social network in the days leading up to
municipal elections -- to little effect. Nevertheless, he says he
will "wipe out" the platform.
"The international community can say this, can say that. I don't
care at all. Everyone will see how powerful the Republic of Turkey
is," AFP reports Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is fighting
against the online publication of leaked documents that allude to
corruption in his inner circle, as saying.
By: Liat Clark, Continue reading...
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15) Pain-detecting computer can tell if you are pulling a sickie
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/emotient-computer-detects-pain-faking
You can tell when someone's faking a smile or pretending to be
in pain, right? Sure you can. But computer scientists think they
can build systems that do it even better. There's already a Google
Glass app in beta testing that claims to provide a real-time
readout of the emotional expressions of people in your field of
view. And a new study finds that the same technology can detect
fake expressions of pain with 85% accuracy -- far better than
people can, even with practice.
Granted, the study was done in a carefully controlled laboratory
setting, not a messy real-world situation like a dive bar
during last call, but the findings still look impressive.
By: Greg Miller, Continue reading...
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16) PlayStation's first original TV show is Powers
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/playstation-powers-series
Following in the footsteps of brands like Netflix, Sony will be
entering the world of original programming with an hour-long drama
called Powers.
Sony did actually confirm it was dipping its toes into the
original programming malarkey last year at E3 although it declined
to offer any specific information as to the nature of that
content.
By: Philippa Warr, Continue reading...
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17) The human nose knows more than 1 trillion scents
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/one-trillion-smells
Ask any man what the most sensitive organ on his body
is and he probably won't reply with "my nose", but he should,
because according to a new study from Rockefeller University in New
York City and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the human
nose can smell over 1 trillion different scents.
The team behind the research determined the resolution
of the human sense of smell by testing the capacity of humans to
discriminate odour mixtures with varying numbers of shared
components. It was previously thought that humans could detect
about 10,000 different odours, but the exact number had never been
empirically tested.
By: Nicholas Tufnell, Continue reading...
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18) How scientists kept the Big Bang echo discovery under wraps
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/bicep-discovery-secret
Great surprises in science don't just happen -- they're
engineered.
When researchers announced earlier this week that they might
have made what is essentially the scientific breakthrough of
the year -- echoes from the earliest fraction of a second
after the Big Bang known as primordial B-mode polarisations -- it
seemed to come out of left field. Similarly large announcements,
like the discovery of the Higgs boson, generally have followed
months of speculation, rumours, and even leaks.
It's standard practice for researchers to keep tight-lipped
about their results. No one wants to cavalierly mention
half-finished data to a colleague and give them the wrong
impression or worse, tip off a rival project. Yet scientists are
human, and humans love to gossip. In this world of science blogs
and Twitter, the BICEP2 collaboration maintaining secrecy
so well is almost unheard of.
The [...]
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19) Facebook's 'Hack' is here to shake up programming
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/facebook-hack-programming-language
Facebook engineers Bryan O'Sullivan, Julien Verlaguet, and Alok
Menghrajani spent the last few years building a programming
language unlike any other.
Working alongside a handful of others inside the social
networking giant, they fashioned a language that lets programmers
build complex websites and other software at great speed while
still ensuring that their software code is precisely organized and
relatively free of flaws -- a combination that few of today's
languages even approach. In typical Facebook fashion, the new
language is called Hack, and it already drives almost all of
the company's website -- a site that serves more than 1.2 billion
people across the globe.
By: Cade Metz, Continue reading...
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20) What we can learn from 1844's Post Office 'surveillance' scandal
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-03/21/post-office-espionage-scandal-1844
"No man's correspondence is safe. No man's confidence can be
deemed secure; the secrets of no family, of no individual, can be
guaranteed from reaching the ear of a Cabinet Minister".
So thundered The Times in 1844, with Britain
in the grip of scandal. An Italian radical -- Giuseppe
Mazzini -- had arrived in London a few years before, carrying
with him the (crazy) idea that the states of Italy should be
unified into a single country. Rattled, the British Government had
started to open his mail. They were found out; Mazzini complained;
furore ensued.
By: Carl Miller, Continue reading...
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