An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple is taking delivery this month of the first batch of carbon-free aluminum produced by a Montreal-based venture, helping move the iPhone maker closer to its greenhouse-gas reduction goal. Elysis, a joint venture between Rio Tinto Group and Alcoa Corp. backed by Apple, uses new technology that emits pure oxygen when producing aluminum….
Tag: watches
Turn any object into a robot using this program and a 3D printer
A computer program watches people perform a task – like opening and closing a window – then designs a machine that can be 3D-printed to do the job itself Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2224607-turn-any-object-into-a-robot-using-this-program-and-a-3d-printer/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Come to know the Pleiades, or 7 Sisters
At this time of year, for all of us around the globe, the Pleiades star cluster culminates – reaches its highest point in the sky – around midnight. Source: https://earthsky.org/tonight/november-is-the-month-of-the-pleiades…
Video: Proba-2 watches Mercury transit
ESA’s Proba-2 had a ring-side seat for the transit of Mercury on 11 November 2019. Proba-2 monitors the sun from Earth orbit and was able to spot Mercury’s transit as a small black disc—seen here moving from left to right across the face of the sun. Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-11-video-proba-mercury-transit.html…
Buying Fitbit Won’t Save Google’s Failing Wear OS
David Ruddock of AndroidPolice technology blog tries to make sense of last week’s $2.1 billion acquisition of Fitbit by Google. He argues that Fitbit’s offerings — hardware, software, engineering talent, or even patent wall — can’t save Google’s wearable operating system Wear OS. From his column: Hardware is what Google is after, with a blog post cleatly stating its acquisition of…
‘Ban All Watches From Exams To Stop Cheating’
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: All watches should be banned from exam halls to discourage cheating, says an inquiry into the extent of malpractice in exams taken by pupils across the UK. Smart watches, connected to the internet, are already banned from use by students taking public exams. But the review, commissioned by exam boards, says it…
The Plan To Use Fitbit Data To Stop Mass Shootings Is One of the Scariest Proposals Yet
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Last week, the Washington Post reported that the White House had been briefed on a plan to create an agency called HARPA, a healthcare counterpart to the Pentagon’s research and development arm DARPA. Among other initiatives, this new agency would reportedly collect volunteer data from a suite of smart devices, including Apple Watches,…
Apple’s AWDL Protocol Plagued By Flaws That Enable Tracking and MitM Attacks
Apple Wireless Direct Link (AWDL), a protocol installed on over 1.2 billion Apple devices, contains vulnerabilities that enable attackers to track users, crash devices, or intercept files transferred between devices via man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks. From a report: These are the findings of a research project that started last year at the Technical University of Darmstadt, in Germany, and has recently concluded,…
Using smart watches to monitor your heart could do more harm than good
Fitness trackers like the Apple Watch now allow you to detect heart conditions such as atrial fibrillation. That’s not always a good thing, says doctor Margaret McCartney Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24332394-700-using-smart-watches-to-monitor-your-heart-could-do-more-harm-than-good/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Poll: Americans Want NASA To Focus More On Asteroid Impacts, Less On Getting To Mars
An anonymous reader writes: Americans are less interested in NASA sending humans to the moon or Mars than they are in the U.S. space agency focusing on potential asteroid impacts and using robots for space exploration. That’s according to a poll by The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released Thursday, one month before the 50th anniversary…