Feed Roundup

garymortimer writes "Geologists have long used seismology on the bottom of the ocean or have been throwing dynamite from snowmobiles when they look for oil. But now researchers at Centre for Integrated Petroleum Research, a joint venture between the University of Bergen and Uni Research, have found a new preferred method – using drones to map new oil reserves from the air. ... The group’s main task is to create digital maps in 3D of potential oil fields. Using laser scanners, infrared sensors and digital cameras, the researchers create realistic, virtual models. ... Pictures shot with the help of a drone complement the images from low-level terrain that the researchers already have in hand. The end result is more precise and complete 3D models."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

garymortimer writes "Geologists have long used seismology on the bottom of the ocean or have been throwing dynamite from snowmobiles when they look for oil. But now researchers at Centre for Integrated Petroleum Research, a joint venture between the University of Bergen and Uni Research, have found a new preferred method – using drones to map new oil reserves from the air. ... The group’s main task is to create digital maps in 3D of potential oil fields. Using laser scanners, infrared sensors and digital cameras, the researchers create realistic, virtual models. ... Pictures shot with the help of a drone complement the images from low-level terrain that the researchers already have in hand. The end result is more precise and complete 3D models."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

garymortimer writes "Geologists have long used seismology on the bottom of the ocean or have been throwing dynamite from snowmobiles when they look for oil. But now researchers at Centre for Integrated Petroleum Research, a joint venture between the University of Bergen and Uni Research, have found a new preferred method – using drones to map new oil reserves from the air. ... The group’s main task is to create digital maps in 3D of potential oil fields. Using laser scanners, infrared sensors and digital cameras, the researchers create realistic, virtual models. ... Pictures shot with the help of a drone complement the images from low-level terrain that the researchers already have in hand. The end result is more precise and complete 3D models."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

garymortimer writes "Geologists have long used seismology on the bottom of the ocean or have been throwing dynamite from snowmobiles when they look for oil. But now researchers at Centre for Integrated Petroleum Research, a joint venture between the University of Bergen and Uni Research, have found a new preferred method – using drones to map new oil reserves from the air. ... The group’s main task is to create digital maps in 3D of potential oil fields. Using laser scanners, infrared sensors and digital cameras, the researchers create realistic, virtual models. ... Pictures shot with the help of a drone complement the images from low-level terrain that the researchers already have in hand. The end result is more precise and complete 3D models."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

garymortimer writes "Geologists have long used seismology on the bottom of the ocean or have been throwing dynamite from snowmobiles when they look for oil. But now researchers at Centre for Integrated Petroleum Research, a joint venture between the University of Bergen and Uni Research, have found a new preferred method – using drones to map new oil reserves from the air. ... The group’s main task is to create digital maps in 3D of potential oil fields. Using laser scanners, infrared sensors and digital cameras, the researchers create realistic, virtual models. ... Pictures shot with the help of a drone complement the images from low-level terrain that the researchers already have in hand. The end result is more precise and complete 3D models."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samsung's flagship phone won't work with the first iteration of the company's NFC tags, hence the need for TecTiles 2. [Read more]    

We examine the features that Apple's next software refresh desperately needs, and the ones that Apple is unlikely to bother with. [Read more]    

Writes Trevor Timm at the Freedom of the Press Foundation blog: "The law certainly wouldn't help the AP, and national security journalists, the only reporters that get subpoenaed by the federal government, would be at *more* risk of being forced to give up their sources in some situations, not less."     

New research is suggesting that the rise of the Mongolian Empire might have been linked to natural variation in the climate cycle.     

Taiwan's Next Media Animation -- basically, news-of-the-weird, made weirder with instant machinima-esque videos -- weighs in on the allegation that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford was caught on video smoking crack.

Crack smoking Toronto mayor Rob Ford caught on tape!     

Mighty award against it abruptly slashed to $172,500

Yahoo! has said that a Mexican appeals court threw out a $2.75bn ruling against it and Yahoo! Mexico over contracts in the country.…

The startup is launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund manufacturing of the first generation augmented reality glasses for app developers. [Read more]    

National Geographic calls Ethiopia's Danakil Depression "the cruelest place on Earth." It's a desert wasteland, where temperatures can push past 120 F, where ancient and current lava flows impede movement, and where water is so scarce that that people build rock domes over the top of volcanic vents to trap and condense steam.

It's also a place where Ethiopian men and boys regularly travel in order to cut slabs of salt off of the surface of the Earth and haul them back to civilization. Salt flats like this occur when entire bodies of water totally evaporate. In the Danakil Depression, you'll also find salt towers and other formations caused by evaporation off of volcanic geysers and hot springs.

The photo above was taken by Reuters photographer Siegfried Modola, who traveled with a group of salt miners into the desert and then followed their haul all the way back to the marketplace. You can see his full slideshow of images online. I chose this one because it gives you a view of the salt as it's found on the ground, and the neat, rectangular blocks the merchants cut it into for shipping.

The spot is a favorite of photographers. I'd also recommend checking out the photos and story put together by Christina Feldt, who posted about the Danakil salt flats earlier this year.

    

"They met, an unlikely pair, in Times Square last Saturday night," begins the New Jersey Star-Ledger's account of how Caleb Lawrence McGillvary, better known as "Kai the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker," is alleged to have met, had consensual sex with, then killed a 73-year-old man who was a partner in a New Jersey law firm.

Kai became an internet celebrity earlier this year after a video went viral, which made him out to be a vigilante hero for using his trusty hatchet to "suh-mash" open the head of a mentally ill man who was trying to attack a woman. But today, Kai was captured by Philadelphia Police at the Greyhound Bus station in Philadelphia today and arrested for Joseph Galfy's murder.

"Their rendezvous," reports the Star-Ledger, "[was] spent in and around Joseph Galfy Jr.’s ranch-style house on Starlite Drive in Clark, would last about 24 hours, until sometime Sunday evening when, authorities said, their encounter turned violent after a sexual tryst."

In a Facebook entry posted Tuesday, one day after Galfy's bludgeoned body was found by police, "Caleb Kai Lawrence Yodhehwawheh" wrote that he was drugged and sexually assaulted.

"what would you do if you woke up with a groggy head, metallic taste in your mouth, in a strangers house ... and started wretching, realizing that someone had drugged (and) raped ... you? what would you do?" his Facebook post read.

Previously on Boing Boing:

"Internet celebrity "Kai the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker" sought in New Jersey man's murder"

    

A "60 Minutes" report this Sunday will look at the new ways this technology is being used that even has one of its inventors calling it too intrusive. Here's a preview. [Read more]    

In a fascinating installment of the IEEE Techwise podcast [MP3], Rice University Computational Engineering prof Moshe Vardi discusses the possibility that robots will obviate human labor faster than new jobs are created, leaving us with no jobs. This needn't be a bad thing -- it might mean finally realizing the age of leisure we've been promised since the first glimmers of the industrial revolution -- but if market economies can't figure out how to equitably distribute the fruits of automation, it might end up with an even bigger, even more hopeless underclass.

I think the issue of machine intelligence and jobs deserves some serious discussion. I don’t know that we will reach a definite conclusion, and it’s not clear how easy it will be to agree on desired actions, but I think the topic is important enough that it deserves discussion. And right now I would say it’s mostly being discussed by economists, by labor economists. It has to also be discussed by the people that produce the technology, because one of the questions we could ask is, you know, there is a concept that, for example, that people have started talking about, which is that we are using, we are creating technology that has no friction, okay? Creating many things that are just too easy to do.

Many of these ideas came up in this Boing Boing post from January, which also touches on Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy, a book that Vardi mentions in his interview.

The Job Market of 2045 (via /.)     

Sprint hopes an infusion of customers and bandwidth will bolster its Midwestern network. [Read more]    

alancronin sends this excerpt from ZDNet: "... the trend that brutally undercut BlackBerry phones during the past five years — the 'bring your own device' movement — is now driving significant sales of BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES), the company's backend software. 'Our customers have been asking, "Can you just take what you've done on BlackBerry and put it on iOS and Android?"' said Pete Devenyi, BlackBerry's SVP of Enterprise Software. ... Secure Work Space will be an app in the Apple App Store and Google Play, pending approval from Apple and Google, respectively. It will include secure email, calendar, contacts, tasks, and document editing. It won't allow data leakage including copy and paste between Secure Work Space and the rest of the device. IT will be able to remotely wipe everything in the Secure Work Space without affecting any of the other apps or data on the person's device, in a BYOD scenario."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Netbook with removable screen, anyone?

HP is to follow its Windows 8-based tablet keyboard combo, the Envy x2, with an Android Jelly Bean version - the computer giant’s take on Asus’ popular Transformer series.…

The Osiris-Rex spacecraft has been approved for development, and NASA plans to send it to meet up with asteroid Bennu within the next five years. [Read more]