The ruling could cost BP billions of dollars. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier found that BP acted recklessly and was mostly responsible for the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.
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The ruling could cost BP billions of dollars. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier found that BP acted recklessly and was mostly responsible for the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.
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Propane, the gas that fuels your barbecue (and perhaps one day your car), may soon have a new, renewable source.
Researchers in Finland and England developed a genetic process that puts E. coli bacteria to work producing the flammable compound. They altered the bacterium’s metabolism so that it it churns out propane gas.
Propane is itself considered an environmentally friendly fuel under the Clean Air Act, because it breaks down into carbon dioxide and water when it burns. However, until now the gas has been produced only as a byproduct of the refining and processing of other compounds such as natural gas and petroleum, both of which are fossil fuels with serious environmental downsides.
This is not the first push for renewable methods of producing hydrocarbon energy. In May, researchers with the US Navy flew a model airplane with kerosene derived from sunlight and seawater.
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Sometimes people are hard to read. Why not leave all that work to a computer? Perhaps you could use this experimental app that works in Google Glass. Aim Glass’s camera at a person’s face and the app reads the human’s facial expression and tells you to what extent the person is feeling happy, sad, angry, or surprised. As a bonus, the app guesses the person’s age and gender. Evaluating whether you want to hit on that person is still up to you.
Kidding aside, an app like this could help people with conditions, such as autism, that makes it hard for them to read emotions. The app is supposed to work entirely on Google Glass’ CPU, so it doesn’t need to send the images Glass records to the cloud. That means the app could work when the glasses don’t have a data connection, which is nice. It could also keep the images the glasses record for the app more secure—the images are supposed to stay on the device and never enter the cloud.
A video demo of the software shows a prototype of the app on a laptop. The app, and the demos, all come from Fraunhofer, a German applied research institute.
Over the past few years, engineers working for several universities and companies have tried to make emotion-reading algorithms. Some are already on the market. Usually, the idea is that such algorithms could go into software for marketing departments (How is this new ad making viewers feel?), or into adaptive computer games (How is this level making players feel?). It’s also a step toward loading the ability to read people’s emotions into robots. It would certainly behoove a customer service robot, for example, to be able to sense frustration and confusion in people’s faces.
Making a face-reading algorithm for private individuals to use is an unusual, but not unheard-of, idea. The market for this may not be large at present—in addition to needing the software, potential buyers have to be able to afford Google Glass—but perhaps what’s especially useful here is knowing that this kind of computing can be miniaturized to something as small and light as Google Glass. That means it could show up anywhere.
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Make all the "Dear Friend" email scam jokes that you want—Nigeria now has one of the most sophisticated government-issued ID systems in the world. A new nationwide card that rolls out this week collects biometric information to prevent fraud and includes a debit card feature backed by MasterCard.
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Did you bust your Nexus 5 smartphone
? Don’t sweat it—users are saying that the Play Store will send you a brand-new (refurbished) handset for free, no matter how you broke yours. Google hasn’t confirmed the offer just yet, but it seems legit.
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Selling a computer, smartphone, or tablet should be as easy as wiping all your personal data off of it and handing it over to the buyer, but sometimes there are little hidden authentication things you might forget about. From iTunes to the Kindle app, here’s everything you need to deauthenticate before you sell your device.
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Google Cardboard’s smartphone VR
is a cool trick, but Samsung has just announced a rig that shows just how legit smartphone virtual reality can be. Gear VR is like an Oculus Rift with a brain you can fit in your pocket, and it’s pretty incredible.
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