STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[MIKA27]

Grand Theft Auto Officially Rated R18+ In Australia

Grand Theft Auto V won’t be banned in Australia! Oh joyous day!

The eagerly-anticipated next instalment in the the Grand Theft Auto series has scraped through the Classification Board unscathed this morning. The game will now carry an official R18+ rating for Drug Use.

Drug Use was classified as high-impact by the Classification Board in its review, whereas themes, violence, language, nudity and sex were all deemed to have a strong impact.

The game that Australia gets will also be the same version shipped internationally, too, as Rockstar Games showed off the original version to the Classification Board, rather than a version modified for questionable content.

Here’s the Classification Board’s verdict on GTA V.

[MIKA27]

Spiders May Have Personalities, and Some Are Bolder Than Others

Armed with branch cutters, pillowcases, and a vibrator, a team of scientists has discovered how social spiders in India assign chores within their colonies – and they say it has to do with spider personalities.

Big and bold? Go get that grasshopper! Slightly more timid? Maybe stay home, take care of the brood, and clean the nest or something.

“Bolder individuals were the ones that engaged in prey attack,” said Lena Grinsted, now a postdoc at the University of Sussex, and coauthor of the study describing the spiders that appeared July 30 inProceedings of the Royal Society B. ”We hypothesize that the ones who don’t participate in prey attack participate in brood care, but it’s something we haven’t tested yet.”

The researchers say their findings support the idea that spiders have personalities. Sure, they’re not as complex as human personalities, but they’re defined by behavior differences that are consistent over time and context. In this study, scientists tested whether the division of labor was related to personality in the social spiders Stegodyphus sarasinorum.

S. sarasinorum live in large colonies that can include more than 200 individuals. They like it hot and dry, and are found in shrubby areas in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

In addition to being among the relatively few social spider species, S. sarasinorum also display a curious trait called suicidal maternal care. It’s as cheerful as it sounds: After a few weeks of mothering, female spiders allow themselves to be cannibalized by their offspring. “They start kind of liquefying their body from inside,” Grinsted said. “The babies crawl on top of these females and start biting them and suck out the juices. The adult females sit still and let them do that.”

That particular drama plays out in S. Sarasinorumnests, which are sticky silk balls woven into trees and spiny shrubs. Radiating outward from the main residential area are two-dimensional webs used for prey capture. When an insect lands in the web, the whole apparatus vibrates, prompting several of the small, half-inch-long spiders to hurry out and claim their prize, which they drag back in for everyone to enjoy.

While in graduate school at Aarhus University, Grinsted and her colleagues began investigating how the spiders decide who gets to go out and hunt, and who stays home. So they trekked to Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh, India to find out. For two months, they studied how the spiders living in 18 different colonies distributed tasks.

First, the team cut the nests from trees and placed them in pillow cases for safekeeping. Then, they dissected the nests, characterizing the ages and sizes of the individuals inside. Forty spiders from each colony were chosen to participate in the next stage of the experiment, and the scientists marked individuals with three colored dots so they could tell them apart (the other spiders got to go home).

Next, scientists tested the lucky 40 on measures of boldness and aggression. To test boldness they mimicked an approaching avian predator by producing a puff of air with an ear-cleaning bulb. That causes spiders to freeze, but bolder spiders begin moving around again more quickly than the timid ones.

To test aggression the researchers gently poked spiders with a stick. Huddling, running, or walking away from the stick suggested that a spider might not be as aggressive than those who held their ground, lurched toward the stick, or raised a leg at it.

The team took each group of 40 spiders, put them in an artificial nest, and returned it to the trees. After the spiders had spun their capture webs, the researchers got to work pretending to be struggling insects – which should have been easy, but the prey capture simulations needed to be the same for each trial. So, they standardized the charade: Instead of an actual insect, they placed a dry leaf in the web. And instead of shaking the web by hand, they used a reproducible source of vibrations — a pink Minivibe Bubbles personal massager, from Fun Factory.

Using the pink vibrator, a metal wire, and a leaf, the team carefully simulated struggling insects for each colony once a day, for 10 days.

“It may sound funny, and it looked really funny, but it worked really well with the spiders,” Grinsted said. “One or two spiders would come out and attack the prey – very often the same few spiders.”

In most cases, the bolder, larger spiders hustled out of the nest first to see what was struggling in their web.

The result isn’t exceptionally surprising, but it is interesting that consistent individual differences are associated with different tasks said Leticia Aviles, who studies social spiders at the University of British Columbia. “Task specialization can then lead to more effective performance at the level of the group, as we have all probably experienced in human societies,” she said, noting that she’d like to learn about what the less bolder spiders are doing for the brood.

That spiders can have personalities itself isn’t surprising either; many animals do. But after generations of mating within a single colony, these spiders are highly inbred – they’re genetically very similar to one another. The high degree of relatedness suggests that as in humans, non-genetic factors play a large role in the development of spider personalities. What those ingredients are is still unknown – but these spiders could help scientists find out.

[MIKA27]

Fusion Energy Quest Faces Boundaries of Budget, Science

This target chamber at the U.S. National Ignition Facility was meant to be a corridor for almost limitless power from fusion energy. But the energy pumped in by the lasers still exceeds the energy created by the fusing hydrogen. Funding for continued research is uncertain.

A large banner hangs from the front of the stadium-size building that houses the world's most powerful array of lasers: "Bringing Star Power To Earth."

For the past four years, physicists at the National Ignition Facility, or NIF, in Livermore, California, have been trying to harness nuclear fusion, the same reaction that powers the sun and the stars. Supporters of the $3.5 billion facility believe that a successful outcome to the experiments could help usher in an era of nearly limitless energy. But the ambitious fusion research program at NIF now faces an uncertain future, both politically and scientifically.

On the political side, President Obama's proposed budget for fiscal year 2014 would reduce funding for fusion experiments at NIF by more than $60 million, putting it nearly 14 percent below the 2013 level. Key committees in both the House and Senate favor restoring part of NIF's funding, and a compromise will eventually emerge, but budget constraints aren't the only challenge facing NIF. Physicists working on the project expected to have succeeded in their quest for fusion energy by now. They're currently struggling to figure out what went wrong.

Tiny Stars, Big Lasers

There's an old joke about fusion: It's the energy source of the future, and always will be. Physicists have been pursuing the dream of controlling fusion energy for some 60 years now. Unlike nuclear fission, which releases energy when the nucleus of a heavy atom like uranium splits into two lighter nuclei, fusiongenerates energy when two separate light nuclei smash together to form a single, heavier nucleus. In fission, the energy comes from breaking the bonds of force that held the original heavy atom together; with fusion, the energy source is more esoteric—some of the mass from each of the two light nuclei is converted directly into energy when they fuse, in accordance with Einstein's iconic law, E=mc2.

Both fission and fusion release tremendous amounts of energy. One pound of enriched uranium used in a conventional nuclear power plant contains about as much energy as a million gallons of gasoline. Fusion yields even more energy—about three to four times as much as fission reactions. And while fission reactions generate waste that remains radioactive for millennia, fusion's byproducts become harmless within decades. Moreover, the world possesses a nearly infinite source of fusion fuel—the hydrogen atoms found in water.

Unfortunately for the world's energy needs, fusion presents far greater technical challenges than fission, which physicists mastered in the 1940s. It takes relatively little energy to split a nucleus—fission can even happen spontaneously. But for fusion to occur—that is, to force two nuclei to join—physicists must replicate the hellish temperatures and pressures found inside stars.

Scientists access the NIF target chamber using a service system lift. "I've dedicated my life to this," says Ed Moses, principal associate director. "I'm committed to understanding it."

Scientists access the NIF target chamber using a service system lift. "I've dedicated my life to this," says Ed Moses, principal associate director. "I'm committed to understanding it."

NIF seeks to do that with 192 giant lasers, which occupy a space as large as three football fields. Fired simultaneously, the laser beams blast a peppercorn-size speck of frozen hydrogen suspended in a 30-foot-wide target chamber with about 500 trillion watts of power—about 1,000 times the amount of energy used by the entire United States during that same few trillionths of a second.

(Because the lasers fire so briefly, NIF uses only about $20 of electricity for each burst.) Crushed to less than a thousandth of its original volume, the hydrogen becomes 100 times denser than lead and hotter than the center of a star; the nuclei fuse and release bursts of energy.

According to NIF's computer simulations, the fused hydrogen should generate more energy than the lasers put in—a process called ignition. Nature, unfortunately, has stubbornly refused to cooperate. There has been no ignition at the National Ignition Facility.

When physicists first turned on all the lasers at NIF in February 2009, they set a goal of reaching ignition by October 1, 2012. NIF's lasers routinely cause fusion, but the energy pumped in by the lasers still exceeds the energy created by the fusing hydrogen. The failure to meet that ignition deadline is the main reason the President, with the support of at least some in Congress, decided to cut NIF's budget.

"From a back-of-the-envelope calculation, the lasers do deposit enough energy onto the hydrogen pellet to do the job," said Robert Rosner, a physicist at the University of Chicago and the former director of Argonne National Laboratory. "The $64,000 question—actually a lot more than $64,000—is, why is the actual energy captured by the pellet in its implosion so much lower than that, by close to a factor of ten?"

Like a Leaky Piston

Ed Moses, the photon science principal associate director at NIF, says the researchers there are focusing on solving two critical problems. For ignition to occur, the hydrogen pellet must remain perfectly spherical as the lasers compress it. Using X-ray cameras to track the imploding hydrogen, physicists have found that the pellet deforms just as fusion starts. It assumes a lumpy, clover shape, a sign that the hydrogen is losing heat and pressure during its compression. "It's like a leaky piston, and the pressure doesn't keep going up," says Moses. The other problem concerns the thin plastic shell that encases the hydrogen fuel. Bits of it might be mixing with the hot imploding hydrogen, cooling it and squashing ignition.

The laser beams blast a peppercorn-size speck of frozen hydrogen with about 500 trillion watts of power—1,000 times the amount of energy used by the entire United States during that same few trillionths of a second.

"We have shown our ability to compress the diameter of the fuel to where it would ignite if it were round, which is something people would have found unbelievable a few years ago," says Moses. "What we haven't shown yet is that we can get the shape we need as we go in, and that we can prevent mixing."

A recent report by the National Research Council recommended that NIF be given three more years to solve its problems and determine whether the facility is even capable of achieving ignition. Some critics argue that NIF needs to adopt a fundamentally different research strategy, a critique endorsed by the report. David Hammer, a physicist at Cornell University, says the NIF team treated their fusion experiments like an engineering project, and assumed that they could achieve ignition if they tweaked the lasers just right from one "shot" to the next.

"It was misplaced confidence," said Hammer. "They would not accept that the different stages of the experiments were not well understood, and they went on to the next step anyway." The NIF researchers should have been more systematic, he said, starting at lower energies to make sure the computer predictions matched reality. "If they didn't get it right at some low level, then figure out what's wrong, because it's a lot easier to figure things out when you're not driving an experiment to its limits. And once you've understood it at say, half-energy, then you gradually build up and see how the experiment moves away from predictions of the computer code. I think if they had started a more science-oriented program in 2009, when the lasers were finished, they'd be a lot closer to ignition now."

NIF isn't the only fusion project competing for federal dollars. The United States is also investing in an international collaboration that plans to harness fusion using a completely different strategy from NIF's. Now under construction in France, ITER, short for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, will use powerful magnetic fields to compress a plasma—essentially hydrogen gas heated to such high temperatures that the electrons and protons in the hydrogen fly apart—until the protons fuse. The $20 billion project, which is scheduled to begin its first experiments in November 2020, aims to produce ten times the amount of energy needed to run it. But that 2020 deadline is likely to recede, given that President Obama's budget would cap future United States contributions to ITER at $225 million. The budget would also cut funds for a fusion laboratory at MIT, one of the three American projects conducting experiments related to ITER.

A final decision on NIF's funding is months away, as budget wrangling continues on Capitol Hill.

"Right now we're in the era of incremental government," said Representative Eric Swalwell, a Democrat, whose district includes the facility at Livermore. "We govern by crisis these days, which is really unfortunate, because while science is very unpredictable, when it comes to funding, scientists need certainty."

Nuclear Weapons and Getting to the World Series

Even with the proposed budget cuts, NIF will continue to operate for decades. Achieving ignition is only one aspect of the lab's mission. Its primary purpose—one that will most likely overshadow fusion research in the years ahead—is to enable the United States to maintain its stockpile of nuclear weapons. The country has observed a ban on explosive testing since 1992, and classified work at NIF tests components of nuclear weapons without the need to blow anything up. That aspect of NIF's research has broad bipartisan support, and the President's budget for 2014 would increase funding for the lab's weapons-testing program.

But ignition is the game-changing research that inspires most of the physicists who work at NIF.

"I've dedicated my life to this," said Moses. "I'm committed to understanding it. I think it's likely we'll work through all these issues. We have this three-year time line we've agreed to. If we're funded and can do our experiments, we think we can explore this phenomenon pretty completely in that time period. In sports, over a long season, some things go well, sometimes you boot the ball.

The question is, how do you get to the World Series? And that's what we're trying to do."

[Fuzz]

Why Your Phone Should Be Turned Off During Flight

It's not implausible that having your phone on can disrupt the systems on an aircraft. Imagine the electro-magnetic noise produced by 300+ PEDs in a confined space.

Besides, is it so hard to turn off your device for a few hours? There can't be anything that important to warrant having your phone on during a flight (extraordinary circumstances not withstanding) or not paying 5 minutes attention to listen to the inflight safety briefing.

[MIKA27]

It's not implausible that having your phone on can disrupt the systems on an aircraft. Imagine the electro-magnetic noise produced by 300+ PEDs in a confined space.

Besides, is it so hard to turn off your device for a few hours? There can't be anything that important to warrant having your phone on during a flight (extraordinary circumstances not withstanding) or not paying 5 minutes attention to listen to the inflight safety briefing.

Perhaps an episode of Air Crash investigations would be beneficial for "In-flight" entertainment...? That might have people thinking!?

[MIKA27]

Dell's $100 Android Computer Is Finally Shipping

You’d be forgiven for not knowing what Project Ophelia was from a bar of soap, but it’s actually something really special: it’s Dell’s $100 Android computer packed into a tiny, USB stick-sized package. It has been a pie-in-the-sky idea for some time now after its debut at CES, but according to new reports, it’s finally shipping out.

The Ophelia is a curious little gadget that reportedly connects to any HDMI port, turning the screen into a PC, media centre, or gaming console depending on how you’ve customised it.

BGR is reporting that beta testers are getting their hands on the gadget now, with a view to a public release later in the year.

Micro-computers have been particularly popular in recent years with the success of the Beagleboard and the Raspberry Pi solutions, while Android has been twisted and tweaked to appear on everything from TV sticks through to game consoles like the Ouya and NVIDIA Shield.

[MIKA27]

IPAD MINI RUGGED KEYBOARD CASE

Airbender Mini by New Trent is a new rugged keyboard case for the iPad mini. Great for the outdoors and taking along your adventurous trips. This thing transforms your iPad mini into a rugged mini laptop with a rubberized exterior making it water resistant, dirt proof and shock proof.

Plug covers keep the dust and debris out. It also features a chrome-finished aluminum arm that allows your iPad to rotate a full 360 degrees for viewing in both vertical and horizontal positions. All this for an amazing $39.95!

Also available for the iPad

[MIKA27]

MATCHCAP | WATERPROOF MATCH CASE

Exotac design high-quality and unique outdoor and urban gear, they are the creators of the popular Nanostriker firestarter.

The Matchcap is another essential tool for hikers and adventurers, the nearly indestructible waterproof match case is used for storing matches and other fire starting material. Made in USA from aircraft aluminum, the Matchcap features an integrated phosphorus striker into the threaded are of the capsule.

Get it in Europe here

Also: Nanostriker firestarter.

You can buy it from Wood and Metal, or you can get it from Amazon.

[MIKA27]

CT SCUDERIA WATCHES

CT Scuderia Watches represent Italian design at it´s best. The company was founded by Enrico Margaritelli, a third generation Italian watch-maker that as collaborated in the past with watch brands such as Fossil and Emporio Armani. The CT Scuderia watch collection is a perfect match for the world of elite sport-racing, the watches have a distinct feature of the crown and pushers positioned at 12 o’clock that also characterize the timepiece as a stop-watch. Its generous 46 mm size case can be separated from the strap and be used as a neck watch/stop-watch alone. Check out their website for the full collection.

[Fuzz]

Perhaps an episode of Air Crash investigations would be beneficial for "In-flight" entertainment...? That might have people thinking!?

Funny you should say that. When I was in the Enrich lounge in KLIA, I did see an episode of Air Crash Investigations. Found it odd at the time, but then again, I didn't think the staff knew it would be coming up on Astro (Malaysia's version of Foxtel).

[Fuzz]

IPAD MINI RUGGED KEYBOARD CASE

A chrome-finished aluminum rotating arm? Kinda defeats the purpose of a rugged, outdoor adventure case. Can you imagine how you'd feel if your shiny chrome finish got all scratched up?

[mazolaman]

Yeah, and it's not shaped like a bloody apple!

[MIKA27]

Funny you should say that. When I was in the Enrich lounge in KLIA, I did see an episode of Air Crash Investigations. Found it odd at the time, but then again, I didn't think the staff knew it would be coming up on Astro (Malaysia's version of Foxtel).

I recall flying to Chile with my family back in 2010.

My wife and kids went to sleep the night prior to the very early flight and I stayed up watching the TV as I couldn't sleep.

My favourite show comes on which is "Aircrash investigations", I watch it and am glad I would be catching a Quantas flight.... Guess what, I flew Quantas from Melbourne to Sydney, Sydney to Auckland but then, some issue came and they placed us on an Aerolineas Argentinian airline which LOOKED like a 1980's model plane complete with loose rattling compartments and straight away, I felt like I'd be in the very next episode of the show!

[MIKA27]

WSJ: Retina iPad Mini 'Likely' To Arrive This Year

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple suppliers have been gearing up their production lines in order to churn out a new iPad mini with a high-resolution display — and it could apparently arrive sometime this year.

According to “people familiar with the matter”, Apple has been working with LG, Sharp and Samsung to source high-res screens for the new device, which the newspaper claims will count as retina. The report points out that the screen size of the iPad mini will likely remain the same, just with higher pixel density.

Interestingly, the WSJ suggests that Apple was keen to only use screens from LG and Sharp, but decided to use Samsung too, to meet demand and allow it to launch the device in the fourth quarter of 2013. This new rumour runs counter to some that have been floating around, which have suggested that the next iteration of the iPad mini would still be lumbered with a low-res display.

Elsewhere, the WSJ’s report also suggests that Apple has been considering a range of colourful back covers for the new mini, instead of the current black or white. But it’s worth remembering that Apple flirts with a lot of ideas; not all of them come to fruition. So, while it may be the case that Apple is playing around with a jazzily coloured range of Retina iPad minis, it equally may not be planning to bring them to the market.

Google’s Nexus 7 laid down a rather large gauntlet last week though, with its high-res screen — and now Apple does need to compete. But regardless of the exact hardware, the WSJ also reports that the new tablet will arrive in the fourth quarter of this year — so there’s still time yet for us to find out more about what to expect.

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: This Electric Plane Could Be The First To Top 400km/h

While Boeing’s Dreamliner can’t seem to stop blowing batteries, there’s a new breed of light aircraft emerging that hope to use them rather than jet fuel. This e-plane, dubbed the Long-EZ, aims to be the fastest of them all.

Developed by Chip Yates, the electric Long-EZ is based on the Rutan Long-EZ, a homebuilt aricraft designed and sold by by Burt Rutan’s Rutan Aircraft Factory since 1976. There are roughly 700 such aircraft currently registered with the FAA.

The Long-EZ is nearly 5m long and almost 3m high with a wingspan of just over 8m. There’s enough room in the cockpit for a pilot and single passenger. Conventionally powered models use a 115HP Lycoming O-235 air-cooled flat-four engine, reach speeds of 300km/h and can cruise at 230km/h for about 3200km on 200 litres of jet fuel.

Yates’ Long-EZ however, forgoes the flat four and gas tank (and back seat) for an 450V, 600 amp (285HP) EnerDel battery with a custom software suite controlling the electrical system. This is a new, twice-as-powerful version of the battery he used last July to hit 202 MPH, breaking the previous e-plane speed record of 280km/h set by the Cri-Cri. The old battery kind of catastrophically failed as he set the record so hopes are high for the new system, and initial test flights with the new power pack have gone well. Yates has reportedly hit 280km/h at just 41 per cent throttle ahead of next month’s official record-setting attempt.

[Duxnutz]

Perhaps an episode of Air Crash investigations would be beneficial for "In-flight" entertainment...? That might have people thinking!?

There has been several cases of electronic interference in older airplanes where there has been such things as autopilots disconnecting, auto throttles disarming etc. The electrics in newer production aircraft I think are better shielded from interference but still the threat remains.

I'm more worried about such stuff as the Qantas 747 incident where galley water overflowed into the electrics downstairs and basically shorted a whole bunch of stuff out to where they were relying on stby battery power alone for the approach into Hong Kong i think. Interesting report.

[MIKA27]

A Real NASA Moon Camera Is On eBay Right Now

Ever wanted to take pictures like an astronaut? Now’s your chance. There’s an original Hasselblad 500EL Electric Camera kit on eBay right now. Just like the ones that were used on the lunar Apollo missions. If you act fast — and have a spare $US74,950 laying around — it could be yours.

The camera’s listed by camera dealer Setadel Studios and is the real deal, dating back to 1969. It spent the past couple of decades in a couple different private collections, but now it’s up for grabs, with the auction ending tomorrow. No bids yet!

The pack comes with everything you could need from lenses to promotional booklets, and the camera is both in working order and excellent condition. According to Setadel, less pristine versions have sold for over $US100,000, so this is technically a pretty good deal.

There’s only one catch: this camera wasn’t actually on the Moon. All the ones that were are still up there, because astronauts left them behind to make room for moon rocks. Still, it’d be an amazing gadget to own, even though you probably can’t afford it. But if you’d really kill to get it, now’s the time to get murderin’.

[MIKA27]

Monster Machines: This Helmet Gives Eurofighters X-Ray Vision

In conventional combat aircraft, the target generally needs to be in both the pilot’s field of vision and within the sights of the plane itself. That is, the plane needed to be pointed in the general direction of whatever you’re shooting at. But in the case of the new Eurofighter Typhoon, pilots can squeeze off a few Sidewinders at bogies incoming from any direction thanks to a super helmet that links their eyes to the plane’s electronic brain.

All those bumps on the back of the helmet are IR LED tracking lights. A three-sensor system above the pilot’s head follows the orientation of the LEDs, understanding it as the angle and direction the pilot is looking. Both the plane’s exterior sensors and weapon systems follow the pilot’s gaze in real-time, allowing him to spot, track, lock onto and fire upon incoming fighter craft and missiles using just his eyes and a few voice commands.

What’s more, information gathered by the plane’s external sensors along with vital performance data — speed, heading, altitude — can be projected directly onto the pilot’s visor. This appears as a 40-degree, fully overlapped, binocular display. Additional pertinent information from local command can also be piped in.

And then there’s the X-ray vision. It’s not as good as Superman’s but it’s still better than any other targeting system available today.

1. The Typhoon’s nose-mounted radar detects an enemy aircraft hidden from the pilots view by his fuselage.

2. The system alerts the pilot and projects an image of the enemy onto his visor as he tilts his head down to see it. This is accomplished using the head-tracking LEDs.

3. The pilot can then issue a voice command to engage the automated weapons system tracking.

4. And if another bogie appears over his shoulder while he’s closing in on the first target, the pilot simply has to look at the second enemy and issue the voice-command to track it. He can even prioritise between the targets before giving them both barrels.

“This is a major advance in terms of combat capability and is something that gives Typhoon pilots a significant advantage when it comes to air combat,” said Mark Bowman,Chief Test Pilot in a press statement.

The Eurofighter Typhoon is a twin-engine, canard-delta wing fighter jet developed by Germany, the UK, Italy and Spain over the past three decades and has been in service since 2003. The latest iteration of the plane, the €90 million Tranche 3, which features this new helmet system, is undergoing final testing and will begin rolling out to airfields across Europe (and some parts of the Middle East) later this year.

[MIKA27]

Microsoft Improves Xbox One's Graphics Powers

Well, Microsoft does seem to be listening to people. A sticking point for a lot of fans on the next-generation console has been that it’s less powerful than Sony’s PlayStation 4. In a podcast today though, Major Nelson talked with Xbox’s Marc Whitten about some changes to the Xbox One that will let it crank out better graphics.

The first improvement is a graphics driver Microsoft calls a “mono driver”, which is totally optimised for Xbox One. Most of the devs have already adopted it, according to Microsoft:

You start with the base DX driver and you take out all parts that don’t look like Xbox One and you add in everything that really, really optimises that experience. Almost all of our content partners have picked it up now.

The clockspeed on the processor has been ramped up from 800MHz to 853MHz, which is a nice little bump. The early analysis of the theoretical maxes of both systems already had the Xbox One in the same league as the PS4, but Whitten said that as they get out of theoretical territory and start actually using the machines, tweaks are being made to try to get the X1 where they want it.

As important as they are, differences in graphics between the two systems are probably not going to be an issue that causes most players to enjoy a game any less so long as devs optimise for framerate (and it’s hard to imagine them not).

Nelson and Whitten also talked a bit about the matchmaking and reputation systems, which will match you with people of like skill and trollishness, and from anywhere within the Xbox. There isn’t much new news on those fronts though. Basically, the internal beta is at full steam right now, and it seems like Microsoft is being openminded about how what the X1 needs to improve. For now, they’re definitely headed in the right direction.

[MIKA27]

Spend Your Next Holiday At A Victorian Fort In The Middle Of The Ocean

Spitbank Fort is one of those spots you read about in an Alexander Dumas novel. It’s a gritty, grey, Victorian-era fortress with a dark past and nothing but miles of water on all sides. And it’s the perfect place for a romantic weekend the next time you’re on the coast of England.

One of three forts built in the mid-19th century, Spitbank Fort once protected Portsmouth from Emperor Napoleon III’s navy, and remained an active military base through World War II. It suffered considerable air damage along with the neighbouring forts Horse Sand and No Man’s Land during the war, and was decommissioned soon after that.

After being sold by the Ministry of Defence, Spitbank changed hands several times before being taken over by the hospitality company that converted it into a cosy eight-bedroom luxury hotel after $US4.6 million worth of renovations. Based on these photos, that was money well spent. [Yatzer]

[MIKA27]

Sol Republic's New Bluetooth Speaker Is A Portable Party Machine

Motorola is teaming up with fashion-forward headphone purveyor Sol Republic on a co-branded Bluetooth speaker. The Deck is weird looking little thing, but it’s got a few features that make it stand out from the otherwise saturated cheap wireless speaker market.

Unlike most $200 Bluetooth speakers, this isn’t a little box with front-facing drivers. Instead, the drivers point up, which means you can circulate around the Deck and hear the music the same everywhere. Smart, if more than one person is going to listen to it, which is likely if you haul it it to the park with you. (It also lies flat so you can stick it in your back pocket.)

And Sol Republic really wants you to use the Deck with lots of people. It’s flashiest feature is called “heist mode,” which allows up to five people to connect so you can take turns playing songs. The other neat touch is that the Deck has different modes for indoor and outdoor playback. Indoors, it pushes out more bass, and outdoors, it diverts power from those low frequencies for a louder overall sound.

What else? The Deck pairs to Bluetooth via NFC. It’s also got a passive bass radiator port that helps the dinky-sized thing pump with a more convincing thud.

Sol Republic makes some of our favourite headphones on the more inexpensive side of the spectrum, so we expected big things from its first crack at a new type of product. We’ve spent some time with it, and so far, we can say that it sounds about as good as a quality $200 Bluetooth speaker. We’re definitely intrigued to see if we end up using heist mode or whether the heist is all hype.

[MIKA27]

The real Minority Report? Kent Constabulary tests computer program to predict crime

Initial results from trial suggest algorithms can help police

It's after 1pm, and Danny – a young man with a history of theft and shoplifting – is not best pleased to be roused with a knock on the door by the police.

No, he says, he wasn't up late last night and, no, he hasn't been in trouble. "I'm always being hassled by you lot," he tells Sergeant Dave Venus-Coppard before the officer takes his leave from the untidy hostel room.

Danny lives in one of the less salubrious areas of Chatham, Kent. Many of the houses in his road are owned by a charity that rehouses the troubled, the alcoholics and the drug users when they are moved on by other councils. Danny's road had appeared at the centre of a small box on Sgt Venus-Coppard's computer screen earlier that morning, representing one of 20 areas where crime was most likely to happen that day. The visit to Danny is part of a strategy to see that nothing does.

Kent is one of the testing grounds in Britain for predictive policing, a mingling of criminology, anthropology and mathematics designed to stop crimes before they take place. The technique was praised in a report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary that was largely critical of the ways in which forces have adopted technology.

In the sci-fi movie Minority Report, set in 2054, Tom Cruise plays a detective who prevents murders being committed after acting on the warnings of three mutated humans who predict when they will happen. The reality is rather more mundane for Sgt Venus-Coppard, who scours a computer map speckled with boxes that correspond to areas measuring 150 square metres; these shift according to the time of the day and developing crime patterns. When he comes on duty, he and his fellow officers are expected, when they are able, to spend 15 minutes inside the boxed areas.

The boxes are the result of analysts having tapped in crime statistics for the past five years and then applying an algorithm developed in California to assess where crime will happen the next day. In the face of 20 per cent budget cuts, it allows the force to focus its officers more effectively and "get the biggest bang for your buck", says Detective Chief Superintendent Jon Sutton, who is in charge of the project. The annual cost of £130,000 is the equivalent of a six-week undercover operation with 30 officers; and that, says the officer, is good value for money.

However, it relies on accurate crime statistics from a force that was criticised in June after inspectors found that one in 10 crimes had been wrongly recorded.

"The only information going into the analysis is information on reported crimes: where they occur, when they occur and what type of crime," said Jeff Brantingham, an anthropologist and co-founder of PredPol in the US.

"Violent crime is often portrayed on movies and television as random acts driven by the passion of the moment, but there's a lot more structure to it than people think.

"People go to certain pubs because they know they are going to get into scraps and the pub won't discourage that; so you end up with a cluster of assaults outside that pub at two in the morning."

Computer mapping is nothing new, but the program being used in Kent introduces the variable of human behaviour to give an indication of where the career burglar will strike next. The algorithm includes the burglar's inclination not to stray too far from home and, once he has identified rich pickings, to return in anticipation of similar success.

Early results are encouraging. Over a period of several months, officers found that the computer was 60 per cent more likely than its in-house analysts to predict where crime occurred. The adoption of predictive policing for burglaries, assaults and car crime has allowed analysts to focus on targeting individuals.

The head of analysis at Kent, Mark Johnson, said the system had provided surprising successes. One officer who was due to visit a victim of motorbike theft arrived early for the appointment and went to the nearby "box" for 15 minutes. He ended up spotting the stolen bike and arresting two people. Fire crews and community officers are also encouraged to drop in to the boxes, with analysis suggesting it has a disruptive effect for a couple of hours.

[MIKA27]

Special report: How my father's face turned up in Robert Capa's lost suitcase

The great war photographer was not one person but two. Their pictures of Spain's civil war, lost for decades, tell a heroic tale

In 2007 a long-lost suitcase, forgotten for over half a century in the house of a retired general in Mexico, was found to contain 4,000 photographs of the Spanish Civil War. Many of them were by Robert Capa, the most famous war photographer of the 20th century. The existence of the suitcase had been rumoured since it disappeared in 1940, at the time of the Nazi invasion of France, but the survival of its contents seemed unlikely. In terms of shock and drama, the discovery was to war photography what the finding of the tomb of Tutankhamun was to the study of ancient Egypt.

The thousands of images on 126 ageing rolls of film convey with stark immediacy the violence, suffering and destruction of the war in Spain between 1936 and 1939. But there is far more in these pictures than the melodrama of military combat. They portray the hopes and courage of people struggling against the odds to turn back fascism and military dictatorship in a ferocious conflict that gave a foretaste of what was to come in the Second World War. Photographs show Republican pro-government militiamen inching their way through buildings, shattered by shells and bombs, that look like the ruins of Stalingrad; soldiers advance half-crouched against incoming fire and later stagger back carrying the wounded on their shoulders; a woman nurses a baby during a land reform meeting in Estremadura a few months before the Nationalist military coup in 1936; three years later, militiamen mobilise for the final vain defence of Barcelona; and, finally, utter defeat, with pictures of despairing lines of refugees making their way across the Pyrenees to the grim half-life of internment camps in the south of France.

The negatives that arrived in New York from Mexico six years ago were in fact taken by three different and immensely able photographers: Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour (known as "Chim"). Of these, Capa is now by far the best known, his most famous pictures taken in the Spanish Civil War and at Omaha Beach during the D-Day landings. The three photographers were Jewish emigrants from Hungary, Germany and Poland, all more or less on the run from fascism and close to the Communist Party. They were highly politicised people who worked for small left-wing magazines and papers until the quality of their work attracted the attention of international publications.

The situation was more confusing than it appears, because Robert Capa did not exist except as a byline and was the collective nom de plume of two of the photographers: Andre Friedmann and Gerda Taro. Impoverished and ill-paid immigrants in Paris, they had the ingenious idea of offering photo agencies pictures from the supposedly famed American photographer Robert Capa, whom they had just invented. Taro (whose real name was Gerta Pohorylle and had been born in Stuttgart) and Friedmann, who came from Hungary, claimed to be Capa's sales representatives, but the excellent pictures were their own. American photographers had a high reputation in France, and Friedmann and Taro were able get three times more money for photographs by the mythical Capa than they would if they had operated under their own names.

The trick was almost too successful. After Taro was killed in the Battle of Brunete, west of Madrid, on 26 July 1937, her name was largely forgotten. Friedmann became so identified with Capa that people had come to assume it was his real name by the time he died stepping on a landmine in Indo-China in 1954. He famously advised photographers that "if your pictures aren't good enough, then you're not close enough". I am not entirely sure this is correct, but Capa, Taro and Chim (despite his English name he was a Polish Jew) were all killed in action. Two years after Capa's death, Chim was fatally wounded by Egyptian gunfire during the 1956 Suez crisis.

I only heard of the Mexican suitcase last year when a friend told me that he had seen a photograph of my father, Claud Cockburn, in an exhibition of the photos in Paris. I looked up the pictures and immediately found one of him, looking older than his 33 years, wearing a white shirt, round glasses and with his dark hair unruly and receding. Beside him is Fred Copeman, a former sailor in the Royal Navy who was briefly commander of the British battalion in the International Brigade. There is scrubland behind the two men and the caption says the picture was taken by Gerda Taro at Brunete in July 1937, just a few days before she was killed. There is nothing in the picture to show that Brunete, 15 miles west of Madrid, was one of the most savage battles of the civil war, in which the Republicans lost some 20,000 and the pro-Franco Nationalists 17,000 dead and wounded.

My father, who had joined the Communist Party in 1933, was in Spain as correspondent for The Week, his own newsletter which was a sort of early version of Private Eye, and The Daily Worker. By chance, he had been in Spain when General Francisco Franco and other Spanish generals launched their half-successful coup against the elected Republican government on 17 July 1936. (Having visited Spain only once before, Claud was unable to persuade people that his arrival there just as the Spanish army launched its putsch was neither amazing political foresight nor part of a fiendish Comintern plot.) He joined the Republican militia soon after and, though he had had only brief military training at school, commanded a platoon of heroic but untrained peasants. He later recorded his dismay as they charged Franco's Moorish gunners "holding rifles high above their heads with one hand and giving the clenched fist salute with the other. When they saw me dodging along, bent half-double and taking whatever cover there was, they thought the posture unworthy, despicable." Many were killed or wounded before he could persuade them that propaganda posters on the walls of Madrid should not be taken as tactical advice on how to storm an enemy position.

There is no picture of Taro and my father together but he was obviously attracted to the young photographer with her strawberry-blond hair, charm, good looks, bravery and political sophistication. By one account, to be near her he moved into the Casa de Alianz in Madrid, an expropriated villa often used by journalists, where she was staying. She was a self-confident 26-year-old briefly jailed in Germany for distributing anti-Nazi literature before fleeing to France on a fake passport. She and Friedmann were lovers but their relations may have been strained by the summer of 1937 when he went back to Paris to sell their photographs. He never saw her again.

In July Taro and my father went together to cover the Brunete offensive by the government forces, which was intended to relieve Nationalist military pressure on Madrid and Bilbao and persuade the rest of the world that Franco's victory was not inevitable. After his experiences in the anti-Franco militia, Claud found that the "makeshift, ramshackle quality of the Spanish War could be terrifying because it kept reminding me of the odds against our sort of forces being victorious over the trained troops of the other side." This is what happened at Brunete where Franco's Nationalists launched a devastating counter-offensive backed by the air power of Germany's Condor Legion. Claud and Taro reached the front on 22 July and were promptly strafed in a field by German aircraft. Capa's biographer Richard Whelan cites Claud saying that he and Taro came "around to the calculation that we had, this time, very little chance of getting out alive. She then stood up and began to take photographs of the planes, saying 'in case we do get out of this, we'll have something to show the Non-Intervention Committee'." The committee, on which many countries were represented, was meant to prevent both sides receiving military aid, but ignored massive German and Italian support for the Nationalists.

Taro and my father escaped machine-gun fire from the German aircraft, but he later recalled her saying that "when you think of all the fine people we both know who have been killed even in this one offensive, you get the feeling that it is somehow unfair to be alive". Later they went back to the Alianz in Madrid and she was planning to return to Paris on 26 July to meet up with Friedmann.

But at the last moment she decided on one more visit to the front, which by this stage was caving in under the weight of the Nationalist assaults. She went with a friend called Ted Allan, a young Canadian attached to a medical unit, but conditions had got so dangerous that their driver abandoned them short of Brunete and they had to walk the last part of the journey. They went to see the Republican commander, but he ordered them and other journalists to leave immediately because Franco's forces were about to attack. Ignoring his advice, they stayed, but the Republican troops began to panic and retreat pell-mell back down the road to Madrid. Taro jumped on to the running board of a car carrying wounded soldiers, but an out-of-control Republican tank accidentally side-swiped the vehicle, mortally wounding Taro, whose stomach was ripped open. She died in a hospital at El Escorial, her last words being, according to an American nurse: "Are my cameras smashed? They're new. Are they there all right?"

Her funeral in Paris was attended by tens of thousands and she was seen as a martyr for democracy and anti-fascist forces. The sculptor Alberto Giacometti was commissioned to design a memorial. But within two years the memories of the Spanish war were submerged by the even more awful carnage of the Second World War. It was forgotten that Capa had originally been two people.

American magazines, when they referred to Taro at all, said she had been Capa's wife. In fact, he had suggested marriage shortly before she was killed but she had refused. It was only with the discovery of the contents of the Mexican suitcase, one third of the pictures being hers, that her reputation began to revive.

How did the suitcase end up in the closet of a retired general in Mexico City? In October 1939 Robert Capa, as Friedmann was now known, sailed for New York, a wise move as a Jew who was a militant anti-fascist and close to the Communists. He left all the negatives in his studio in the care of his dark-room manager and fellow photographer, Imre "Csiki" Weiss. "When the Germans approached Paris," wrote Weiss, another Hungarian Jew, "I put all Bob's negatives in a rucksack and bicycled it to Bordeaux to try to get it on a ship to Mexico. I met a Chilean in the street and asked him to take my film packages to his consulate for safe keeping. He agreed." Weiss was interned in French Morocco but survived.

Other accounts of what happened differ, but whatever its exact itinerary the suitcase ended up in the possession of General Francisco Aguilar Gonzalez, the Mexican ambassador to Vichy in 1941-42. Mexico was one of the few countries to give visas to refugees from fascism, which may explain how Aguilar ended up in possession of the suitcase. It is not known who gave it to him and he may not have known what was in it or, if he did, did not consider the rolls of film important. The General died in Mexico City in 1971 and his effects went to a friend, who was the aunt of the Mexican film-maker Benjamin Tarver. When she died, he inherited the case and, after seeing an exhibition about the Spanish Civil War, he sought advice on what to do with the negatives. Word began to filter out in 1995 that they had survived, though, even then, it was another 12 years before they reached the International Center of Photography in New York, where they were fully examined and their worth recognised.

My father kept moving in and out of Spain during the rest of the war and ultimately escaped across the Pyrenees to France before the final collapse. He always believed that the odds were heavily stacked against the government, because Franco's forces had trained officers, cohesive command as well as the strong support of Hitler and Mussolini. The courage and commitment of the Republicans, even when backed by Soviet arms and advisers, were never going to counter-balance the fascist alliance. At the same time, he went on fighting very hard to avert defeat as a journalist and propagandist for the Republic, commenting later that intellectuals often become overly disillusioned or dispirited by mistakenly exaggerating the finality of any particular defeat or victory.

Others, more heroically, proved in Spain in the 1930s – and here he might have been thinking of Taro – that "when some people talk about dying for a cause they mean it".

The contents of the Mexican suitcase are in the hands of the International Center for Photography, in New York

[MIKA27]

Inca Child Sacrifice Victims Were Drugged

Mummy hair reveals that young victims were heavy users of coca and alcohol.

Three Inca mummies found near the lofty summit of Volcán Llullaillaco in Argentina were so well preserved that they put a human face on the ancient ritual of capacocha—which ended with their sacrifice.

Now the bodies of 13-year-old Llullaillaco Maiden and her younger companions Llullaillaco Boy and Lightning Girl have revealed that mind-altering substances played a part in their deaths and during the year-long series of ceremonial processes that prepared them for their final hours.

Under biochemical analysis, the Maiden's hair yielded a record of what she ate and drank during the last two years of her life. This evidence seems to support historical accounts of a few selected children taking part in a year of sacred ceremonies—marked in their hair by changes in food, coca, and alcohol consumption—that would ultimately lead to their sacrifice.

In Inca religious ideology, the authors note, coca and alcohol could induce altered states associated with the sacred. But the substances likely played a more pragmatic role as well, disorienting and sedating the young victims on the high mountainside to make them more accepting of their own grim fates.

Well-Preserved History

The Maiden and her young counterparts, found in 1999, exist in a remarkable state of natural preservation due to frigid conditions just below the mountain's 22,110-foot (6,739-meter) summit.

"In terms of mummies that are known around the world, in my opinion she has to be the best preserved of any of the mummies that I'm aware of," said forensic and archaeological expert Andrew Wilson, of the University of Bradford (U.K.). "She looks almost as if she's just fallen asleep."

It is this incredible level of preservation that made possible the kinds of technical analysis that, paired with the pristine condition of the artifacts and textiles arrayed in the tomb-like structure, allowed experts to re-create the events that took place in this thin air some 500 years ago.

"I suppose that's what makes this all the more chilling," Wilson added. "This isn't a desiccated mummy or a set of bones. This is a person; this is a child. And this data that we've generated in our studies is really pointing to some poignant messages about her final months and years."

Before the Final Day

Because hair grows about a centimeter a month and remains unchanged thereafter, the Maiden's long, braided locks contain a time line of markers that record her diet, including consumption of substances like coca and alcohol in the form of chicha, a fermented brew made from maize.

The markers show she appears to have been selected for sacrifice a year before her actual death, Wilson explained. During this period her life changed dramatically, as did her surging consumption of both coca and alcohol, which were then controlled substances not available for everyday use. "We suspect the Maiden was one of the acllas, or chosen women, selected around the time of puberty to live away from her familiar society under the guidance of priestesses," he said, noting that this practice is described in the accounts of Spaniards who chronicled information on such rites given to them by the Inca.

A previous DNA and chemical study, also led by Wilson, examined changes in the Maiden's diet and found marked improvements during the year before her death, including the consumption of elite foods like maize and animal protein, perhaps llama meat. Now it's clear that the Maiden's consumption of coca also rose heavily throughout the year before her death, spiking dramatically 12 months before her death and again 6 months before her death.

"These data fit with the suggestion that she was perhaps leading an ordinary or even peasant lifestyle up to that point, but a year before her death she's selected, effectively removed from that existence and the lifestyle that was familiar to her, and projected into a different existence," Wilson said. "And now we see a massive change in terms of the use of coca."

The Maiden consistently used coca at a high level during the last year of her life, but her alcohol consumption surged tellingly only in her last weeks.

"We're probably talking about the last six to eight weeks, which show that very altered existence, that she's either compliant in taking this or is being made to ingest such a large quantity of alcohol. Certainly in her final weeks she's again entering a different state, probably one in which these chemicals, the coca and the chicha alcohol, might be used in almost a controlling way in the final buildup to the culmination of this capacocha rite and her sacrifice."

On the day of the Maiden's death the drugs may have made her more docile, putting her in a stupor or perhaps even rendering her unconscious. That theory seems to be supported by her relaxed, seated position inside the tomb-like structure, and the fact that the artifacts around her were undisturbed as was the feathered headdress she wore as she drifted off to death. Chewed coca leaves were found in the mummy's mouth upon her discovery in 1999.

The younger children show lower levels of coca and alcohol use, perhaps due to their lesser status in the ritual itself, or to their differences in age and size. "Perhaps as an older child there was a greater need to bring the Maiden to that point of sedation," Wilson said.

And while other capacocha sites show evidence of violence, like cranial trauma, these children were left to slip off peacefully. "Either they got it right, in terms of perfecting the mechanisms of performing this type of sacrifice, or these children went much more quietly," Wilson explained.

State-Sanctioned Sacrifices

Kelly Knudson, an archaeological chemist at Arizona State University, wasn't involved with the research but said the exciting study shows how archaeological science can help us understand both the intimate details of human lives and larger ancient societies.

"Seeing increases in both the consumption of alcohol and coca is very interesting, both in terms of the capacocha sacrifices and their lives before they died, and also in terms of what it can tell us about Inca coercion and control," Knudson said.

The system of control that brought these children to a remote mountaintop at extreme altitude shows all the hallmarks of state support at the highest level, the study's authors suggest, and may have occurred as part of a military and political expansion of the Cuzco-based empire that took place just prior to the arrival of the Spanish.

"The sort of logistical support needed even today to work at this altitude is extensive," Wilson explained. "And here we're talking about evidence that points to the highest possible, imperial-level support. There are artifacts and clothes that are elite and refined products coming from effectively the four corners of the Inca Empire."

Such artifacts include figures made of spondylus shells, brought from the coast, and feathered headdresses from the Amazon Basin. Well-crafted statues of gold and silver, adorned with finely woven miniature clothing, were also available only to the highest levels of society. "I think the whole assemblage represents their status and also the symbolism that this was undertaken under the highest possible sanction," he added. Wilson and his co-authors suggest that such sacrifices may have been a highly stratified means to help exert social control over large areas of conquered territories.

(Last year a study published in PloS ONE showed that the Maiden was suffering from a lung infection at the time of the sacrifice.)

Evidence Supports Early Spanish Chronicles

Johan Reinhard, a National Geographic Society Explorer-in-Residence, discovered the mummies in 1999 with colleague Constanza Ceruti, of the Catholic University of Salta (Argentina).

Reinhard, a co-author of the new study, said he's particularly interested in how the findings compare to what's been written in the historical chronicles of such ceremonies, penned by early Spanish explorers to the New World. "They describe how these ceremonies took place, but they weren't firsthand accounts; no Spanish ever saw one of these personally," Reinhard said. "They depended on what the Inca had told them about what happened."

(In the mid-16th century, for example, Juan de Betanzos wrote of widespread child sacrifices, up to a thousand individuals, on the testimony of his wife—who had previously been married to none other than the Inca Emperor Atahualpa.)

Now the data appear to match the kinds of events described in the chronicles, Reinhard said. "All of a sudden you have this picture where you can almost see what they are going through. Increased attention is paid to them in terms of better food and coca, which was used in ceremonies and wasn't in very common use. This kind of increased attention paid to these children is exactly what you read in the chronicles."

For example, Reinhard said, it's not surprising to see an increase in coca consumption during the year before the death of a chosen child like the Maiden because of the tales told in the chronicles.

"They talk about pilgrimages going to Cuzco and a series of ceremonies during which these children would be sent from one place to another on long pilgrimages. I think it's also interesting that there is a six-month period associated with these largest spikes in coca use," he added. "It could be six months related to something else, but a hypothesis to throw out there is that this corroborates historical accounts that some of these Virgins of the Sun were taken to solstice ceremonies during the year before they were taken off to their deaths."

Today the mummies reside in the Museo de Arqueología de Alta Montaña(MAAM) in Salta, Argentina. The extent to which their physical remains may support historical and archaeological records is exciting, Wilson added, but it is also chilling that the children remain so recognizably human even in death.

"For me it's almost like the children are able to reach out to us to tell us their own stories," he said. "Hair, especially, is such a personal thing, and here it's able to provide some compelling evidence and tell us a very personal story even after five centuries."

[Fuzz]

Inca Child Sacrifice Victims Were Drugged

Mummy hair reveals that young victims were heavy users of coca and alcohol.

Very interesting read. To be honest though, if I knew I was gonna be whacked in a year's time, I'd be partying hard on booze and drugs too.