Deals of the Day (4-04-2016)

Deals of the Day (4-04-2016)

Amazon makes some of the most popular (and best reviewed) eBook readers on the market, and with prices starting at about $80, they’re pretty affordable too. But they can always be cheaper, right? Right now Amazon is offering $30 off the price of its Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite, and Kindle Voyage eReaders. The only catch? The […]

Deals of the Day (4-04-2016) is a post from: Liliputing

Deals of the Day (4-04-2016)

Amazon makes some of the most popular (and best reviewed) eBook readers on the market, and with prices starting at about $80, they’re pretty affordable too. But they can always be cheaper, right? Right now Amazon is offering $30 off the price of its Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite, and Kindle Voyage eReaders. The only catch? The […]

Deals of the Day (4-04-2016) is a post from: Liliputing

Judge calls Uber algorithm “genius,” green-lights surge-pricing lawsuit

Advancement of technology, judge rules, “need not leave antitrust law behind.”

(credit: Oran Viriyincy)

A federal judge is allowing surge-pricing litigation to move forward against Uber's cofounder, Travis Kalanick. The federal judge presiding over the suit, which alleges Uber's technology unlawfully coordinates fares and surge-pricing fares, agreed that Uber's algorithm was "genius."

"Defendant argues, however, that plaintiff's alleged conspiracy is 'wildly implausible' and 'physically impossible,' since it involves agreement 'among hundreds of thousands of independent transportation providers all across the United States.' Yet as plaintiff's counsel pointed out at oral argument, the capacity to orchestrate such an agreement is the 'genius' of Mr. Kalanick and his company, which, through the magic of smartphone technology, can invite hundreds of thousands of drivers in far-flung locations to agree to Uber’s terms," US District Judge Jed Rakoff of Manhattan ruled (PDF) Thursday. "The advancement of technological means for the orchestration of large-scale price-fixing conspiracies need not leave antitrust law behind."

Trial is set tentatively for November. Rakoff has yet to rule on whether the lawsuit (PDF) could grow to represent millions of US Uber passengers in a nationwide class-action lawsuit. For the moment, Rakoff's ruling allows the antitrust case of a Connecticut passenger to proceed. Uber also faces regulatory challenges and lawsuits about the classification of its drivers as contractors and not employees.

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BenQ F55 smartphone packs a 4K display

BenQ F55 smartphone packs a 4K display

The smartphone screen resolution arms race has led to a growing number of phones with 2560 x 1440 pixel displays. But there aren’t a lot of phones that go much further than that. Last year Sony introduced the Xperia Z5 Premium with a 4K display, but it’s not available in the United States. Now it looks like BenQ […]

BenQ F55 smartphone packs a 4K display is a post from: Liliputing

BenQ F55 smartphone packs a 4K display

The smartphone screen resolution arms race has led to a growing number of phones with 2560 x 1440 pixel displays. But there aren’t a lot of phones that go much further than that. Last year Sony introduced the Xperia Z5 Premium with a 4K display, but it’s not available in the United States. Now it looks like BenQ […]

BenQ F55 smartphone packs a 4K display is a post from: Liliputing

World’s most powerful X-ray laser to get a major upgrade

Hardware will be 10,000 times brighter and fire up to a million pulses a second.

The experimental setups can be very complex, with imaging equipment, other sensors, sample handling hardware, and more all accessing the site where the beam comes through. (credit: John Timmer)

Today, the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is starting construction on a second X-ray laser that will be even brighter and more intense than its first. The new hardware, based on a superconducting linear accelerator (or linac), will replace about a third of the length of the original accelerator and leave the facility's existing X-ray laser intact.

The SLAC facility is a linear electron accelerator that was originally built to characterize the W and Z bosons. After the frontier of high-energy physics shifted to CERN, the hardware was repurposed to create an extremely powerful X-ray laser.

When charged particles are forced to move along a curved path, they lose energy in the form of radiation. If they're moving at sufficiently high energies, that radiation takes the form of X-rays. At SLAC, an X-ray laser is generated by accelerating electrons and then forcing them through a series of carefully space magnets (called undulators or wigglers) that cause the particles to curve back and forth. The end result of all the radiation they emit is an intense beam of X-rays that can be used for a variety of imaging applications.

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Functional skin—complete with hair and oil glands—grown in lab

Mouse studies pave the way for implantable skin grafts to treat burns and skin diseases.

Transplantation of the bioengineered, 3D tissue using mouse iPS cells labeled with GFP. (credit: Takashi Tsuji, RIKEN)

For the first time, researchers have coaxed a primordial ball of cells into a multi-layered, transplantable patch of skin, sporting hair follicles and functioning glands.

The mouse-based study, published in Science Advances, brings scientists closer to pulling off the feat in humans, which would provide synthetic skin grafts that could treat burn victims and patients with various skin diseases. “We are coming ever closer to the dream of being able to recreate actual organs in the lab for transplantation and also believe that tissue grown through this method could be used as an alternative to animal testing of chemicals,” lead researcher Takashi Tsuji, of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Japan, said in a statement.

Researchers have been getting better and better and recreating tissues in lab—but for skin, they had gotten stuck at making simplified versions. Fully functioning skin includes three layers: the epidermis, an outermost protective layer that is mostly waterproof; the elastic dermis layer that gives skin flexibility as well as housing oil and sweat glands, hair follicles, nerve endings, and blood vessels; and the subcutaneous fatty layer that provides padding and insulation.

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WiFi: Brocade kauft Ruckus Wireless für 1,2 Milliarden US-Dollar

Brocade übernimmt den führenden Hersteller von WiFi-Ausstattung Ruckus Wireless. Der Hersteller von professionellen Hotspots baut seine Geräte für Indoor und Outdoor. (WLAN, PC-Hardware)

Brocade übernimmt den führenden Hersteller von WiFi-Ausstattung Ruckus Wireless. Der Hersteller von professionellen Hotspots baut seine Geräte für Indoor und Outdoor. (WLAN, PC-Hardware)

Hot lithium-air battery preserves its electrodes

Heat and salt slows oxidation, leaves electrodes cleaner.

A worker moves crates for batteries on an assembly line at the A123 Systems lithium ion automotive battery manufacturing plant... but maybe someday will move on to lithium-oxygen? (credit: Getty Images)

Battery research is a fraught area to report on. In the lab, researchers manage to show something spectacular, like high current density or excellent recharge characteristics. But the part where the battery catches fire and destroys the lab is left out when the story makes the popular press. I am guilty of this myself, and I'm about to do it again. (Not really.)

Lithium-oxygen batteries are very promising, but most current iterations manage to destroy themselves after a few charge/discharge cycles. A recent publication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society shows some progress in overcoming the problems associated with lithium-oxygen batteries.

Why lithium-oxygen?

We all love our lithium ion batteries. Even though they are the best that we have, they still suck pretty hard. To put it in perspective, lithium ion batteries top out at about 200mAh/g, so you need a very heavy battery to get much energy. Lithium-oxygen, on the other hand, promises 1675mAh/g, a very respectable energy density.

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Quadro M5500: Die erste Mobile-Workstation-GPU für Virtual Reality

Nvidias neue Workstation-Grafikeinheit Quadro M5500 entspricht der Geforce GTX 980 für Notebooks und ist damit flott genug für Head-mounted Displays wie das Oculus Rift oder HTCs Vive. (Grafikhardware, Nvidia)

Nvidias neue Workstation-Grafikeinheit Quadro M5500 entspricht der Geforce GTX 980 für Notebooks und ist damit flott genug für Head-mounted Displays wie das Oculus Rift oder HTCs Vive. (Grafikhardware, Nvidia)

FCC’s “nutrition labels” for broadband show speed, caps, and hidden fees

New labels will help ISPs comply with net neutrality transparency rules.

The Federal Communications Commission today unveiled new broadband labels modeled after the nutrition labels commonly seen on food products. Home Internet service providers and mobile carriers are being urged to use the labels to give consumers details such as prices (including hidden fees tacked onto the base price), data caps, overage charges, speed, latency, packet loss, and so on.

ISPs aren't required to use these labels. But they are required to make more specific disclosures as part of transparency requirements in the FCC's net neutrality order, which reclassified Internet providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. The FCC recommends that ISPs use these labels to comply with the disclosure rules and says use of the labels will act as a "safe harbor" for demonstrating compliance. However, ISPs can come up with their own format if they still make all the required disclosures in "an accurate, understandable, and easy-to-find manner," the FCC said today.

The labels were approved unanimously by the FCC's Consumer Advisory Committee, a group with both consumer advocates and industry representatives. ISPs on the committee include CenturyLink, Verizon, and T-Mobile USA. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the primary lobby group for the cable industry, is also on the committee.

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Top Silk Road 2.0 admin “DoctorClu” pleads guilty, could face 8 years in prison

Brian Farell told feds: “You’re not going to find much of a bigger fish than me.”

(credit: Judit Klein)

Last week, a federal judge in Washington formally accepted the guilty plea of Brian Farrell, the 28-year-old who had been accused in 2015 of being the right-hand man to the head of Silk Road 2.0, the copycat website inspired by the infamous Tor-enabled drug website.

In a 2015 press release, the Department of Justice said that SR2 had generated approximately $8 million per month since it began in November 2013.

Farrell pleaded guilty in March 2016 to one count of distribution of heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine last month, which carries a minimum sentence of five years in prison. He will also be required to forfeit items that were seized at his arrest in Bellevue, Washington, which included $3,900 in silver bullion bars, $35,000 in cash, and "various computer media." Both Farrell’s lawyers and prosecutors have agreed to a sentence of eight years, but the judge is allowed to impose a harsher sentence if he chooses. (By comparison, Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted of running the original Silk Road, was sentenced in 2015 to a dual life sentence.)

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