Monthly Archives: April 2013

Mark Zuckerberg Launches Political Campaign Group

"The 28-year-old billionaire is forming a political campaign group that is expected to focus initially on liberalising the US immigration and visa system. Work on the group will reunite him with Joe Green, his room-mate at Harvard University, who also went on to be a successful technology entrepreneur. His new campaign group is to be fronted by Jon Lerner and Rob Jesmer, political consultants from the Right wing of the Republican party. Rob Jesmer was the campaign manager for John Cornyn for US Senate; the John McCain Presidential campaign and the Southeast Regional Political Director, RNC; Chief of Staff, Congressman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.)" Continue reading →

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These Startups Are Betting Everything on Bitcoin

"BitInstant is just one of several Bitcoin startups attracting funding from established venture firms and investors at a valuation in the millions. Coinsetter, a New York startup working on a foreign exchange trading platform for Bitcoins, recently raised $500,000 led by Tribeca Venture Partners and SecondMarket at a valuation that we hear is in the 'low single-digit millions.' Coinbase, a startup that provides a digital wallet for Bitcoin transactions, has raised $600,000 to date from Y Combinator, IDG Ventures and others. (Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twins who had a disputed role in the founding of Facebook, are also big Bitcoin investors.)" Continue reading →

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Scientists discover earthquakes can create new ‘economic-grade gold deposits’

"Solid gold can be deposited in Earth’s crust 'almost instantaneously' during earthquakes, said a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience. The gold is formed when a tremor splits open a fluid-filled cavity in the Earth’s crust, causing a sudden drop in pressure. This, in turn, causes the fluid to expand rapidly and evaporate, and any gold particles that had been dissolved in it to 'precipitate almost immediately', said a Nature press release. The researchers said much of the world’s known gold was derived from quarts veins that were formed during geological periods of mountain building as long as three billion years ago." Continue reading →

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iPhone app tracks route of cab ride so you can see if cabby took you for a ride

"It’s the oldest trick in a crooked cabby’s playbook — and it’s about to become obsolete. Taxi Turvi keeps hacks honest by tracking their route with GPS technology, then checks it at the end of the journey to see if there was a shorter, cheaper way to go. The free app — the brainchild of a former NYC resident whose Southern accent made her a frequent victim of the trick — was launched two weeks ago. To use it, riders simply press 'start' at the beginning of their trip. Then, at the end of the ride, they hit 'stop' — and the app displays the route that was taken in a red line. The shortest route on the same map is overlaid in a blue line." Continue reading →

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NYC Taxi Medallions Sell for $1.1 Million

"More regulation madness. In New York City, Taxi prices are so out of line with what free market rates would be that corporations are now willing to pay over $1 million to own a taxi and collect the fares, which is what the ownership of a medallion allows. In a free market, even allowing for registration with the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission, the cost would be the registration fee ($100?) and that would be it. Below is the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission report for February, which shows 4 corporate taxi medallions were sold for $1,000,000 and 2 sold for $1,100,000." Continue reading →

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Entrepreneurs crowdsource traffic tips to help drivers out of jams in newly car-dense cities

"If you own a mobile phone and spend sunup to sundown watching the traffic pass in Ghana’s capital, then Iddrisu Mohammed wants you to be his spy. With an iPad in his hands and two phones in his pants pockets, Mohammed crisscrosses Accra on foot, looking for people to become informants for Jamless, a recently launched traffic information service that hopes to restore a little sanity to the capital’s hectic commute. 'What Jamless will do is give you the traffic situation in any part of Accra that you are and give you alternate routes to use if the place is jammed,' said Mohammed, who is the company’s informant manager." Continue reading →

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The End of the Battery – Getting All Charged Up over Supercapacitors

"'Is this for real?' Doug was referring to an article in the recent issue of Nature Communications on a novel way to mass-produce so-called superconductors on the super-cheap – using no more equipment than the average home CD/DVD burner. Hacked together by a group of research scientists at UCLA, the ingenious technique is a way of producing layers of microscopically nuanced lattices called graphene, an essential component of many superconductor designs. It holds the promise of rapidly dropping prices for what was until now a very expensive process." Continue reading →

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Google Introduces Way to Manage Your Data Beyond the Grave

"Death is Nature’s way of telling you it’s time to get off the Internet. But when you finally shuffle off this mortal coil, you leave something behind: all your email and other digital assets. That’s a huge problem not only for the deceased—once you’re on the wrong side of the Great Beyond, there’s no way to delete those incriminating messages—but also any relatives who might want to access your (former) life. And it’s a problem Google’s seeking to solve with the new Inactive Account Manager." Continue reading →

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Hacking an Airplane With Only an Android Phone

"So it looks like someone could hack a jetliner. With an Android smartphone. Awesome. At the Hack In The Box conference in Amsterdam, security consultant Hugo Teso demonstrated PlaneSploit, an app he developed that can take control of certain systems aboard an airplane and cause it to change direction or just crash itself into the ground. Hugo’s no terrorist, mind you. He developed the app to point out the glaring, frightening, insane security holes in most planes’ onboard flight systems. His demonstration was done in a simulated environment, but the methods and effects, he says, are exactly the same as what could happen with a real plane." Continue reading →

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