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Aug 29, 2019

Tesla rolls out Key Fob security update for Model S to address risks of cloning

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, security, sustainability

As part of continuing efforts to ensure their vehicles are the safest cars on the road, Tesla’s “Bug Bounty” program gives awards to security researchers that uncover vulnerabilities in the company’s various product systems. Perhaps one of the most impressive parts of that program, however, is Tesla’s ability to remedy the flaws quickly. In the most recent example of their dedication to security, a Bug Bounty find from April this year is now being patched via an over-the-air (OTA) update in 2019.32.

Last year, a Tesla Model S key fob was hacked by a team led by Lennert Wouters of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium (KU Leuven). The security flaw enabled would-be car thieves to clone a fob in less than two seconds, after which the vehicle could be driven off. Tesla subsequently offered a multi-part fix: PIN to Drive, a software update, and a new fob. Wouters again found a very similar flaw in the new fob, but this time the fix only required an OTA update which patched both the vehicle software and the fob’s configuration via radio waves.

Aug 29, 2019

Startup offers ~$9,000 electric retrofits with Tesla batteries for fossil fuel-powered cars

Posted by in categories: energy, transportation

A French startup is trying to streamline electric conversion with Tesla batteries in order to offer a relatively cheap way to convert older fossil fuel-powered cars.

Therefs nothing new about electric conversions, but they are often really complicated, which also makes them really expensive.

Continue reading “Startup offers ~$9,000 electric retrofits with Tesla batteries for fossil fuel-powered cars” »

Aug 29, 2019

Elon Musk: Computers will surpass us ‘in every single way’

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, robotics/AI

Tesla CEO Elon Musk pointed to advances in artificial intelligence as evidence that we are smarter than computers in fewer and fewer realms.

Aug 29, 2019

Watch the expansion of the Cas A supernova remnant with your own eyes!

Posted by in category: cosmology

Wow. The Chandra X-ray Observatory just celebrated its 20th anniversary of being launched into space! It roared into orbit on board the Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999.

Continue reading “Watch the expansion of the Cas A supernova remnant with your own eyes!” »

Aug 29, 2019

Prof Ruth Itzhaki — University of Manchester — Viral Connections to Alzheimer’s — ideaXme Show — Ira Pastor

Posted by in categories: aging, bioengineering, biotech/medical, complex systems, DNA, genetics, health, life extension, neuroscience, science

Aug 29, 2019

RAADcity: Premier Anti-Aging Expo

Posted by in categories: futurism, life extension

Any chance of tooth regeneration, this year?


RAADcity: The marketplace of your future.

Aug 29, 2019

How China is still paying the price for squandering its chance to build a home-grown semiconductor industry

Posted by in category: futurism

This is the first in a series of in-depth articles examining China’s efforts to build a stronger, domestic semiconductor industry amid rising trade tensions with US.


After several decades and billions of dollars of investment, only 16 per cent of semiconductors used in China today are manufactured domestically.

Aug 29, 2019

Researchers develop low-power, low-cost network for 5G connectivity

Posted by in categories: energy, internet

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have developed a cheaper and more efficient method for Internet-of-Things devices to receive high-speed wireless connectivity.

With 75 billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices expected to be in place by 2025, a growing strain will be placed on requirements of wireless networks. Contemporary WiFi and won’t be enough to support the influx of IoT devices, the researchers highlighted in their new study.

Millimeter wave (mmWave), a that offers multi-gigahertz of unlicensed bandwidth—more than 200 times that allocated to today’s WiFi and cellular networks, can be used to address the looming issue. In fact, 5G networks are going to be powered by mmWave technology. However, the hardware required to use mmWave is expensive and power-hungry, which are significant deterrents to it being deployed in many IoT applications.

Aug 29, 2019

Water harvester wrings drinking water out of dry desert air

Posted by in categories: materials, sustainability

As vital as clean water is for human life, unfortunately it’s not always easy for people to get enough. Adding insult to injury, the stuff is basically always floating around us in the air, unreachable. Now, researchers from the University of California Berkeley have developed a device that can wring drinkable amounts of water out of even the driest air.

The team says this new water harvester can produce more than 1.3 L (5.4 US cups) of water per day per kilogram (2.2 lb) of a particular water-absorbing material. This can be done even at less than 40 percent relative humidity. That’s not a whole lot of water, but it is more than enough to keep a person alive, if a situation was that dire.

The harvester was put to the test over three days in the Mojave Desert. During that time, the device produced 0.7 L (3 cups) of water per kg of material, and even on the driest day the harvester managed to wring 200 ml (6 oz) of water out of air that had an extremely low relative humidity of just seven percent.

Aug 29, 2019

Meet the Indian scientist who wants to capture one of the universe’s smallest particles

Posted by in category: particle physics

Nobody can say for sure. Hundreds of years ago, atoms were thought to be the smallest particles in the universe. But since then, scientists like Indu invented tools such as particle detectors, accelerators, and colliders that can study them in great detail. Thanks to these tools, they have discovered a whole set of elementary particles, which are the smallest particles we know about today.

Quarks and gluons are two such elementary particles that combine to form protons and neutrons. These, along with electrons, make up atoms. Atoms constitute most of the matter that we know about—from trees and stones to animals and birds. But Indu was amazed to learn that there is a whole set of particles that exist but are not part of atoms at all. One such elementary particle is the neutrino, Indu’s absolute favourite! Neutrinos are everywhere. They whiz across the universe—from the sun and from elsewhere in outer space. Many of them reach us here on earth too. So, how common are they?

Tell you what. Snap your fingers right now. Done? In the amount of time it took you to do this, billions of neutrinos have passed through your thumb! Neutrinos may be tiny, but they are very important because our universe is full of them. Knowing the mass of a neutrino will help Indu understand the rate at which the universe is expanding.