Breaking down the AS2 business jet
These features allow the AS2 to achieve efficient, quiet supersonic flight.
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Raspberry Pi releases an OS to breathe new life into old PCs
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has released an experimental version of its Linux-based Pixel OS for Windows and Mac PCs. The OS, originally designed to run only on the Raspberry Pi hobby board, comes with the Chromium web browser and a suite of productivity and coding tools. "We asked ourselves one simple question: If we like Pixel so much, why ask people to buy Raspberry Pi hardware in order to run it?" founder Eben Upton wrote in a blog post.
Built on top of Debian, the OS is light enough to run most old machines, provided you have at least 512MB of RAM. "Because we’re using the venerable i386 architecture variant it should run even on vintage machines like my ThinkPad X40 (above)," Upton said.
It’s easy to try out, but Upton urges you back up machines that may have valuable data. After downloading the image, you burn it either to a DVD or USB stick, then enable booting of those devices. You can normally do that by tweaking your PC’s BIOS or by holding the "C" key down when you boot up a Mac.
From there, it’ll run the OS with no need to install anything. If you booted on a USB stick, you’ll get the option to run "with persistence," meaning any changes or files will stick for the next session. If you’d rather just play around and start fresh next time, you can run without persistence or reset it. As mentioned, you get a full suite of apps and a browser, but unlike with the Pi version, there’s no Minecraft or Wolfram Mathematica because of licensing issues.
There are plenty of lightweight Linux distros for older PCs (including Debian itself), or you could use Neverware, which turns your old laptop into a Chromebook. However, the Pi Foundation supplies a lot of useful Linux apps with Pixel, and aims to make it as easy to use as possible. By porting it to desktop machines, Upton also feels "we can more easily see where [the operating system’s] weak points are and work to fix them [on the Pi]."
The group thinks it could be a perfect for schools (where the Raspberry Pi already has a big foothold) to help students learn programming and various apps. The idea is that they can learn at school, then using the persistent boot option, continue working at home with exactly the same setup.
As mentioned, the Pixel OS is still in the experimental stages, and doesn’t run on all machines. On his own modern Mac, Upton said, "the machine fails to identify the image as bootable." They’ll be releasing more updates going forward, but if you’re interested in giving it a try, you can hit announce post to find it.
Source: Raspberry Pi
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Less stressful than a taxi: We ride in Hyundai’s Autonomous Ioniq Electric
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Green,Hyundai,First Ride,Sedan,Autonomous,Electric
Our autonomous test run proved rather uneventful. And that’s a very good thing.
Continue reading Less stressful than a taxi: We ride in Hyundai’s Autonomous Ioniq Electric
Less stressful than a taxi: We ride in Hyundai’s Autonomous Ioniq Electric originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 20 Dec 2016 18:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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ICYMI: Hydroponics on a grand scale
Today on In Case You Missed It: Sundrop Farms in Australia produces tomatoes from using solar power and seawater, no soil, pesticides or groundwater involved. You can watch the video of the facility here or the CNN story here. The story about the weather study using man-made ice storms is described here.
If you’re interested in the bird-inspired drone design, that’s here, and the meat pie into the stratosphere is here. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
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LG’s Full HD laser projector is bright enough for daytime use
LG has unveiled a compact laser projector that, depending on the price, could appeal to a lot of folks. The LG ProBeam features 1080p (Full HD) resolution and 2,000 lumens of brightness, making it a viable home theater option. The laser system (LG didn’t say which kind, exactly) should provide a sharp, accurate picture, and nearly maintenance-free light source. At the same time, it weighs just 4.6 pounds and has a table-friendly form factor, making it portable and easy to use in small rooms.
Furthering its appeal as a projector-on-the-go, the ProBeam can transmit audio to any Bluetooth speaker using its Sound Sync Adjustment tech, eliminating the need for any wiring. It also supports wireless mirroring via Miracast, letting you project a movie from your smartphone. That’ll make it much easier to set up in a small apartment, for instance, or let you "stream TV shows on a camping trip," as LG puts it.
To help you set things up quickly, the device has four corner and auto keystone features, in case your setup is off kilter from the projection wall. To make the ProBeam useful as a regular TV, it comes with LG’s webOS Smart TV platform and Magic remote, giving you easy access to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or BBC’s iPlayer in the UK, to name a few services.
It sounds like a nice option, but as I mentioned, all depends on the price — if it’s well under $1,000, it may end up being the hit that LG’s hoping for. Hopefully, we’ll get a look at it during CES 2017 starting January 3rd in Las Vegas, where it’ll be on display in LG’s booth.
Source: LG
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Say hello to Waymo’s new self-driving Chrysler minivans
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Waymo (née Google’s self-driving car) will use a fleet of 100 modified Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans as research vehicles.
Waymo -
The Pacificas are topped with LIDAR sensors, among other new appendages.
Waymo -
The fleet is under construction right now and should be on the road in early 2017.
Waymo
Last week we learned that Google’s car project is not dead. It just has a new name. Now called Waymo, the company expects to eventually move into the autonomous-mobility ride-sharing market. Today, we got our first look at the new Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans that will complement Waymo’s fleet of Lexus SUVs and other test machines.
Pacificas make sense for Waymo. Although the research vehicles don’t need to be hybrids, the fact that they are drive-by-wire is obviously crucial. And their capacious cargo volume should come in handy for carrying technicians and extra equipment.
According to Waymo’s CEO John Krafcik, some early prototypes of the self-driving minivans have already completed plenty of miles at Google’s test track in California. They’ve also gobbled up miles in Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ facilities in Michigan and Arizona. The bulk of the fleet is currently being equipped, and Krafcik expects them to be racking up miles on the public roads early in the new year.
Listing image by Waymo
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Russian ‘methbot’ fraud steals $180 million in online ads
Russian cybercriminals have built a new high-tech fraud enterprise: Showing real ads to fake people.
The fraud has siphoned more than $180 million from the online ad industry, according to researchers.
Dubbed “Methbot,” it is a new twist in an increasingly complex world of online crime, according to White Ops, the cybersecurity firm that discovered the operation.
“This is a very advanced cyber operation on a scale no one’s seen before,” said Eddie Schwartz, White Ops chief operating officer.
Methbot, so nicknamed because the fake browser refers to itself as the “methbrowser,” operates as a sham intermediary advertising ring: Companies would pay millions to run expensive video ads. Then they would deliver those ads to what appeared to be major websites. In reality, criminals had created more than 250,000 counterfeit web pages no real person was visiting.
White Ops first spotted the criminal operation in October, and it is making up to $5 million per day — by generating up to 300 million fake “video impressions” daily.
In the past, hackers have figured out how to deliver malvertising (viruses through ads) and how to fake clicks on ads. But this is another level.
According to White Ops, criminals acquired massive blocks of IP addresses — 500,000 of them — from two of the world’s five major internet registries. Then they configured them so that they appeared to be located all over the United States.
They built custom software so that computers (at those legitimate data centers) acted like real people viewing those ads. These “people” even appeared to have Facebook accounts (they didn’t), so that premium ads were served.
Hackers fooled ad fraud blockers because they figured out how to build software that mimicked a real person who only surfed during the daytime — using the Google Chrome web browser on a Macbook laptop.
“The Methbot is a beautiful simulacrum of a real browser. It’s gotten better over time. And by better, I mean, a more perfect life-like copy,” said White Ops CEO Michael Tiffany.
That’s why it wasn’t caught for two months.
“This is the kind theft in which nothing has gone missing,” Tiffany said.
However, media experts noted that the additional fake 300 million “views” now existing in the advertising marketplace does put significant pressure on media companies who are competing over an audience that doesn’t really exist.
White Ops said its researchers traced back Methbot’s creators to individual hackers in Russia, but the firm would not release additional details on the record.
Traditionally, doing so could prevent FBI agents from setting up sting operations to arrest them when traveling abroad.
White Ops said it’s going public with this information — including technical details of the criminal enterprise — in an attempt to coordinate an industrywide effort to stop it.
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