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Google stands up for Gmail users, requires cops to get a warrant

"American government agencies (including federal, state, and local authorities) made over 8,400 requests for nearly 15,000 accounts—far exceeding India, the next largest country in terms of information requests. It's unclear how many of the subpoenas or warrants Google complied with—the company has only said it complied in part or in full to 88 percent of total requests from American authorities. While relatively few tech companies publicly disclose how many government requests they get, Google appears to be one of the few e-mail providers that is challenging law enforcement agencies to produce a warrant to access users’ e-mail." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingGoogle stands up for Gmail users, requires cops to get a warrant

Google’s Trillion-Dollar Driverless Car — Part 2: The Ripple Effects

"The fact is that a driverless car would slash hundreds of billions of dollars of annual revenue, or even trillions, from all sorts of entities: car makers, parts suppliers, car dealers, auto insurers, auto financiers, body shops, emergency rooms, health insurers, medical practices, personal-injury lawyers, government taxing authorities, road-construction companies, parking-lot operators, oil companies, owners of urban real estate, and on and on and on. At the same time, the driverless car will create enormously lucrative business opportunities to serve new customer needs. I’ll turn first to the revenue that is in peril and then examine the opportunities." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingGoogle’s Trillion-Dollar Driverless Car — Part 2: The Ripple Effects

Law-enforcer misuse of driver database soars

"Florida's driver-and-vehicle database, the system that can help law enforcement identify victims of fatal crashes and decipher the identity of a suspect, can be a useful tool for cops. But at least 74 law enforcers were suspected of misusing D.A.V.I.D. in 2012, a nearly 400 percent increase from 2011, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Officers who needlessly pull information or photographs from D.A.V.I.D. that would otherwise be private could face criminal charges, sanctions or disciplinary action. And yet the temptation of looking up a relative, a celebrity's address or a romantic interest is too great for some law enforcers." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingLaw-enforcer misuse of driver database soars

DNA database not so anonymous on the Internet: study

"As more and more of our personal data — and those of the people we know and are related to — gets posted online, the anonymity promised by the remove of a computer screen gets more and more elusive. That’s what a team of scientists uncovered when they started playing Sherlock with a batch of genetic data posted online for researchers to use. The data was anonymous: the participants’ names were not published. But using the information that was provided, including age and where they live, along with freely available Internet resources, the researchers were able to identify nearly 50 of the individuals in the genomic database." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingDNA database not so anonymous on the Internet: study

Why Bitcoin is the banking industry’s newest, biggest threat

"Bitcoin’s big advantage is that it is essentially the cold, hard cash of the Internet. Instead of bills, Bitcoin’s software keeps a public ledger of every transaction among users. If a buyer and seller are running the software on their computers, they can directly exchange Bitcoins, anonymously and with no taxes or bank fees. Others can pay a company to process the payment. Bitcoin accounts are listed simply as a string of letters and numbers with no names attached, giving a level of anonymity impossible with debit and credit cards or even PayPal accounts." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingWhy Bitcoin is the banking industry’s newest, biggest threat

European Space Agency ponders asteroid-smashing mission

"The proposed mission, called AIDA (for 'Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment'), would consist of a pair of spacecraft (sadly, not named Armageddon and Deep Impact) flung at the near-Earth asteroid 65803 Didymos. Didymos is actually a binary object consisting of a large primary mass and much smaller secondary satellite mass. The idea with the AIDA mission, which would take place near the end of 2022, is to accelerate a small kinetic impactor spacecraft to a relative velocity of 6.25 kilometers per second and crash it into the secondary Didymos mass. A second spacecraft would hold off a short distance away and measure the orbital deflection." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingEuropean Space Agency ponders asteroid-smashing mission

Company plans to mine asteroids with ‘FireFlies’ spacecraft

"A US company said Tuesday it plans to send a fleet of spacecraft into the solar system to mine asteroids for metals and other materials in the hopes of furthering exploration of the final frontier. In a first step, the company plans to send 'asteroid-prospecting spacecraft' into the solar system, with the first — 55-pound (25-kilogram) 'FireFlies' — to be launched in 2015 on journeys of two to six months." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCompany plans to mine asteroids with ‘FireFlies’ spacecraft

Dutch architect to build house with 3D printer

"A Dutch architect has designed a house 'with no beginning or end' to be built using the world’s largest 3D printer, harnessing technology that may one day be used to print houses on the moon. Janjaap Ruijssenaars, 39, of Universe Architecture in Amsterdam, wants to print a Mobius strip-shaped building with around 1,100 square metres (12,000 square feet) of floor space using the massive D-Shape printer. The printer, designed by Italian Enrico Dini, can print up to almost a six-metre-by-six-metre square (20-foot-by-20-foot), using a computer to add layers 5-10 mm (a quarter to half an inch) thick." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingDutch architect to build house with 3D printer

British scientists announce breakthrough in turning DNA into data storage

"Scientists in Britain on Wednesday announced a breakthrough in the quest to turn DNA into a revolutionary form of data storage. A speck of man-made DNA can hold mountains of data that can be freeze-dried, shipped and stored, potentially for thousands of years, they said. The contents are 'read' by sequencing the DNA — as is routinely done today, in genetic fingerprinting and so on — and turning it back into computer code. To prove their concept, the team encoded an MP3 recording of Martin Luther King’s 'I Have A Dream' speech; a digital photo of their lab; a PDF; a file of all of Shakespeare’s sonnets; and a document that describes the data storage technique." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBritish scientists announce breakthrough in turning DNA into data storage

3-D Printing Revolution: Printing Human Hearts

"Creating a solid, three-dimensional object from a printer sounds like science fiction but it’s very real. 3-D printing has created prosthetic legs, racing-car parts, customized mobile phones and more. 'These were experimental technologies for decades and now they’re commercial,' says Josh Brown, vice president of Fusion Analytics. 'And the applications essentially cut across every vertical from health care to defense to aerospace to manufacturing to oil and gas. There is nothing that’s not going to benefit from some of these newly commercialized 3-D technologies.'" Continue reading →

Continue Reading3-D Printing Revolution: Printing Human Hearts