Month: December 2015

Birds 1 – Drones 0

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Over the past year, we have seen many drone-cam videos of birds of prey attacking UAVs, sometimes knocking them down. This week, a falcon in Dubai took a drone down as prey, reported The National.

The drone was flying above Jumeirah park when it was taken down by the raptor, whizzed to the ground and crashed. The bird followed it down, and was seen by park-goers guarding its prey.

A man who was concerned about what had happened went to investigate the garden into which it had crashed. The falcon was perched nearby, and after the two exchanged stares, the falcon flew over to perch on the drone.

The man, one Lukas Franciszek, posted the photo he took to social media.

The falcon flew away, and the owner is not yet known, although the bird was tagged.

It is suspected that the falcon may have associated the drone with food. Drones are used to train falcons: they lure birds in the air with dangling bundles of meat and feathers. After a bird tears this bundle off, it is typically rewarded as part of its training.

By Mike Weins

Bangkok Police’s New Year’s Gift: Traffic Fines Reduced To 100 Baht

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Bangkok Metropolitan Police have announced a “New Years Gift” to the city: traffic tickets will be reduced to just 100 baht starting today.

The gift has a serious side: the metro police are dealing with a massive backlog of unpaid traffic tickets. Because the repercussions associated with not paying these tickets are usually insignificant, many people simply leave them unpaid.

The gift doesn’t extend to all offenders, however. Traffic crimes that affect other people are not included in the deal. These crimes include DUIs, illegal parking, and driving on sidewalks.

However, crimes such as not wearing a helmet on a motorbike or not wearing a seatbelt in a car are eligible, so long as the fine was originally for less than 1,000 baht.

The traffic fine promotion will end Jan. 15, 2016, after which time all traffic fines will return to their regular rates.

By Andy Stern

Polish Mass Political Assassination Plotter Sentenced

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Brunon Kwiexien
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For plotting to blow up an in-session Parliament, Polish former university professor Brunon Kwiexien has been sentenced to 13 years prison.

On Monday a Polish court handed down the sentence to the former Krakow University of Agriculture chemistry professor.

Kwiecien, 48, an unaffiliated nationalist, cited as motives for the crime, planned in 2012, a belief that his country was headed in the wrong direction and the issue of what he referred to as foreigners holding government positions.

Kwiecien did not deny his plans when arrested.

When the police were tipped off, they found four tonnes of explosives in a car which Kwiecien planned to use to kill the president, prime minister and others during a hearing on the budget.

By Andy Stern

How To Stop Facebook Posts From Showing Up On Your Wall

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Sometimes on Facebook people may find themselves getting posts on their wall they do not want. Why does this happen? Facebook’s algorithm (a computer formula that “thinks”) has noticed the posts you have engaged with (liked, commented, etc.) and they have thought it in your interest to show you more posts from the same source, or similar posts. Often you get to see lots of new, interesting things tailored to your interests, which can be seen as a benefit. Sometimes, however, you wind up with something you don’t want on your wall.

What to understand: the person who posted that post that has showed up on your wall did not put it on your wall or ask for it to be put on your wall. They had nothing to do with the post showing up on your wall. They were going about their regular business, posting to their wall, and the algorithm thought it would be something you would like, so Facebook showed it to you.

How to stop posts from showing up on your wall:

Go to your wall, and find a post you don’t want to see more of. Click the down-arrow in the top-right corner, and select “Hide post.” Facebook will then erase that post from your wall. Then click “See less from [name here].” Facebook will show you less posts from them from then on. You can also “unfollow” the person or “fanpage” using the same dropdown menu.

hide facebook post (1)
Click “Hide post”
hide facebook post (2)
Click “See less”

NOTE: After making this tutorial, we went back and clicked “undo” on the example Now This post, because we still want Now This posts on our wall.

NOTE: Do not click “Report post” — unless the post itself is doing something wrong (if it’s hateful or offensive). Remember, the person who made that post did nothing to for their post to be shown on your wall. They were just going along with their business, posting it to their wall. Clicking “report” is for actually offensive content, and if you could be guilty of abusing Facebook tools if you report a post that Facebook investigates and sees is a perfectly OK post.

Another thing you can do, if you’re seeing posts from a Facebook “fanpage” you don’t like, is you can go to that page and “unlike” it. Click “Liked” and click “Unlike this page.”

unlike page (1)
Click “Liked”
unlike page (2)
Click “Unlike this page”

NOTE: No matter what, you will still see some posts on your wall you do not ask for. This is because Facebook has advertisements. Without at least some advertisements, there would be no Facebook, because Facebooks costs are high. (Once, Facebook talked about an idea of charging users $2 per month for no-ads use, but people were not happy with the idea.)

 

Facebook Open Sources Its AI Server

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Facebook’s AI hardware is now, like its software, open source, joining a broad movement towards outsourcing the world’s artificial intelligence intelligence. Facebook also stated it hoped independent AI technicians would develop deep learning tech superior to what the company currently uses, and that it would buy this technology.

The tech giant has developed deep learning technology, which it uses for Facebook-related functions like identifying faces in pictures and curating news feeds, but can also apply to a wide range of computing tasks.

Through the Open Compute Project, Facebook’s custom hardware designs — a GPU-based server called “Big Sur” — will join Google’s and others’ open source deep learning designs. The hope is that more workers will devote themselves to these projects and become familiar with using the technology.

Deep learning technology involves building computers that function similar to the neural networks of animal brains. The computers store masses of data, form neural networks between the data, and draw inferences from the data based on need.

Yann LeCun, head of the Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence Research lab, commented on the move to make the company’s AI open source, “This is a way of saying, ‘Look, here is what we use, here is what we need. If you make hardware better than this, we’ll probably buy it from you.'”

By Andy Stern

Canada Selling Bottled Air To China

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A Canadian company is now selling bottled air to China, and supplies are selling out.

Vitality Air, and Edmonton-based company, is bottling air from Banff and Lake Louise, world-famous Canadian vacation destinations. The hand-bottled air is then shipped around the world.

For around $13 per bottle, Chinese are buying stocks out.

“We shipped a sample of 500 [bottles] to China,” Vitality Air co-founder Moses Lam said this week. “They sold out within a week-and-a-half.”

The company already has sold 1,000 of their next shipment of 4,000 bottles to China as well.

The air is being sold in orders of 10 bottles, according to the company, which markets their product on China’s eBay equivalent, Taobao.

India has also started to buy Vitality’s air.

The company is having a hard time keeping up with demand since starting selling online last June, due to the hand-bottling involved in their product.

Each bottle contains 3 liters of air, which equates to approximately 80 breaths. In a relaxed state, breathing steadily, it would take 4 minutes to breathe the air contained in one can, although consumers may prefer to draw out their enjoyment by sipping at the air over a longer period of time.

By Andy Stern

Tokyo Launches Drone Squad

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The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department announced a new policing initiative this week to combat illegal drone operation in metropolitan areas.

The police drones will monitor no-fly zones, enforcing Japan’s drone legislation. Upon finding illegal activity, the drone squad will seek for the drone operator and order the drones to be grounded.

If the squad is not able to remove the drone from the air using this method, 10-foot long drone enforcers will be dispatched to collect the offending drones with large nets.

Japan also recently amended its Civil Aeronautics Law to limit the airspace of drones to 500 feet from the ground. Also, now in densely populated areas, all drones over 300 grams are banned.

The police force also has drone terrorism in mind in pursuing the program. The metropolitan police bureau recently told national media that such attacks were a possibility, and that the force hoped to defend Japan against any such scenario.

The potential for a serious attack in Japan was highlighted earlier this year, when an activist flew a drone carrying radioactive sand to the top of the office building of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The act was a protest against nuclear power, the man said, and no one was injured by the symbolic action.

The new drone squad will consist of dozens of trained officers and will begin operations later this month, according to police officials.

By Andy Stern

New $7 Million XPrize Competition Aims To Explore Oceans

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On Monday, the XPrize Foundation announced its latest competition: the $7 Million Shell Ocean Discovery XPrize, which aims to map the ocean floor in high resolution, and find sources of pollution autonomously. Teams will test their technologies in two rounds at two separate undisclosed locations, mapping a 500 square kilometer area of ocean floor in high resolution at depths of 2, and 4 kilometers; winners will receive a grand prize of $4 million.

An additional $1 million will be awarded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to teams that have technology capable of “sniffing out” specified objects through biological and chemical signals. Xprize claims that such technology could also help us learn about our own history, and find medical advancements to currently fatal diseases.

The competition was designed to create better maps, and expand our present knowledge of the oceans, as they are currently 95% unexplored, and remain as one of Earth’s last mysteries. We have mapped the moon, Venus, and Mars, all in much higher resolution than our own oceans. It is also estimated that two thirds of species in the ocean remain to be discovered.

Each of the 25 teams will try to create new, relatively low cost technology that can map the ocean floor, and identify archaeological, Biological, and geological features. Each team must prove their robotics can function efficiently at a depth of 2 and 4 kilometers, where there is no sunlight, high pressure, and temperatures below freezing. A bonus $1 million will go to any team that can make technology that can track chemical and biological signatures to find objects. Such technology could lead to many other discoveries and inventions, as well as helping to find sources of human-caused pollution and slow global warming.

Unlike land, the sea floor can’t be mapped in high resolution by satellite, since radar waves don’t pass through water. Satellites rely on precisely measuring the height of the ocean, and when enough data is collected, scientists can calculate the differences in the ocean surface caused by the landscape below the surface. This technology has given us a full map of the ocean to a resolution of 5 kilometers, which allows us to see the largest features, such as ocean trenches; leaving us with plenty of room for discovery under the water that covers two-thirds of our planet. We’ve mapped the entire surface of the moon at a resolution of 7 meters, and most of Mars and Venus at 100 meters.

XPrize is hopeful that the competition will usher a new era of ocean exploration, and help to better humanity through future innovation from it. The competition is the third of five multi-million dollar ocean based challenges to be created by 2020. The 10 year XPrize Ocean Initiative was created to address critical challenges in ocean exploration and technology; with the goal to make the oceans “healthy, valued, and understood”.

By Tony Simpson

Sources: The Verge | Ocean Discovery Overview

New World’s Largest Crochet Quilt

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How big is the world’s largest crochet blanket?

Crochet Queens, an Indian group, is set to needle past the current South African world record-holders’ 3,377 square meter (11,080 foot) quilt by combining the forces of their 1,800 members.

Mother India’s Crochet Queens team, composed of crocheters aged 8 through 85, is ready to earn a place in the Guinness World Record book by assembling a 5,000 square meter (16,404 foot) quilt from one square meter parts.

The team’s members live in diverse locations around the world. They mailed their square meter parts to Chennai, India to be knitted together. The parts were displayed at Durbar Hall Ground in Kochi this week.

The project started out as an online campaign, but interest grew globally. Even now, any woman can join to group so long as she can crochet three one-meter squares (one one-meter square is expected of younger members), according to Mother India’s.

By Tamara Fifer

 

Leonardo DiCaprio Expresses Fear Of Chinooks

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Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who filmed the historical adventure picture ‘The Revenant’ in Alberta and British Columbia this year, recently commented on his northern experience at a Q&A, expressing grave concern over the weather phenomena known as the “Chinook.”

“We were in Calgary,” said DiCaprio, “and the locals were saying, ‘This has never happened in our province ever.’ We would come and there would be eight feet of snow, and then all of a sudden a warm gust of wind would come.”

DiCaprio has become somewhat of an expert on environment matters in recent years, producing the climate change documentary “The 11th Hour” in 2007. Reportedly, the actor is now working on another climate change documentary. However, many Canadians were surprised that the actor would refer to what in Canada is commonly known as a Chinook, a warm breeze felt during colder weather, as a sign of impending disaster.

DiCaprio stated:

“[I]t was scary. I’ve never experienced something so firsthand that was so dramatic. You see the fragility of nature and how easily things can be completely transformed with just a few degrees difference. It’s terrifying, and it’s what people are talking about all over the world. And it’s simply just going to get worse.”

Despite what may be an unusual cause of concern, 2015 was the warmest year on record, and the cast of the film had to relocate to a glacier in Argentina to find a snowy location — the snow at their Canadian location melted in August, forcing the unexpected move.

By Andy Stern
Photo: 20th Century Fox

BC Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of Trinity Western’s Law School

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CHILLIWACK, British Columbia — In the latest of the trials over Trinity Western University’s planned law school, a B.C. Supreme Court judge has found in favor of the school, rejecting the Law Society of BC’s rejection of TWU.

The Law Society had not properly maintained its discretion when it went back on its initial approval of Trinity Western’s law school after holding a referendum among its disapproving members, B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson found.

“I conclude that the benchers permitted a non-binding vote of the LSBC membership to supplant their judgment,” said Hinkson.

“In so doing, the benchers disabled their discretion under the [Legal Profession Act] by binding themselves to a fixed blanket policy set by LSBC members. The benchers thereby wrongfully fettered their discretion.”

The matter at issue is Trinity Western’s “Community Covenant,” which all staff and students must sign. The covenant is a pledge that an individual will maintain the teachings of the Bible and refrain from sex outside traditional marriage.

The Langley, B.C.-based school — Canada’s largest Christian university with 4,000 students — applied for and received permission from the British Columbia Law Society in 2013.

Afterwards, responding to the disapproval of its members — B.C. lawyers — the LSBC held a referendum. After finding that 74 percent of its members wanted to deny graduates of Trinity Western to practice, the Law Society changed its decision and withdrew its approval.

Hinkson concluded that, besides allowing their discretion to be clouded by popular sentiment, the Law Society had infringed on the freedom of religion guaranteed by the nation’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Hinkson ordered the Law Society to return to its original decision to allow Trinity Western’s graduates to practice law in B.C.

Provincial courts across Canada have been hearing Trinity Western’s case — some are finding for the school, some against. It is expected that the matter will proceed to the Supreme Court of Canada to be settled.

Watch Earth Live From The International Space Station

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This is ISS’s HDEV (High Definition Earth Viewing) experiment —  a live HD stream from several cameras mounted to the External Payload Facility of the European Space Agency’s Columbus module, and has been broadcasting since April 30, 2014.

To protect the cameras, they are encased in pressurized, temperature-controlled housing.

Viewing notes: A black screen is normal when the ISS is flying above parts of the Earth with no lights on the night side of the Earth (it orbits every 92 minutes, so in 30 minutes it will likely be over day again), and there is no sound to the stream. Although the black night view might not be interesting, I recommend you wait — when you see the crescent of the Earth and the red glow of the Sun appear, it is spectacular.

There is also (rare) down-time — meaning there has been a loss of signal with the Earth or that HDEV is not operating: at these times, viewers will see a gray slate or previously recorded video. The live stream frequently switches between cameras — while the cameras switch, viewers will see a grey slate, then a black slate, before seeing the new camera angle.

In the meantime — and relatedly — you can watch the course of ISS live on this other page. It will show you where the ISS is right now, superimposed over the Google Earth map, and you can watch it’s trail accumulate (it travels at 27,600 km/h [17,100 mp/h]).

If you see something great on the live stream, take a screenshot and post it in the comments!

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