HAPPINESS REMAINS A MOVING TARGET UNTIL YOU WANT WHAT YOU HAVE

When I was a kid, all I wanted was an “Illumastorm” from Radio Shack. An Illumastorm is a glass sphere that has a low-powered, glass-coated Tesla coil at the center. When you turn it on, static electricity jumps from the tip of the coil to the inside surface of the glass, illuminating a tracer gas along the way, creating a miniature spectacle of dancing-glowing veins that look like magenta and purple plasma. If you touch the sphere, the increase in conductivity at that point draws all the electricity into one focused beam that paves a bluish-white path through the gas.

I walked by that thing with the envy of a man who likes to sail walking through an elite marine or yacht club for the first time. If only I had that sphere of power, I could dominate my first grade class’s “show and tell.” The only thing that could out-do the Illumastorm in Show & Tell would have been an Apple PowerBook (this was 1991). My dream came true on a cold Christmas Eve night at my grandmother’s house near Denver. The device quelled my need for a new toy for quite some time. That is, until I walked by a desktop PC for sale at the mall. The magnificent machine had a color screen — something I had seen in movies like “Sneakers” with Robert Redford, but never in real life. The rows of new computers with color monitors had tropical bird screensavers. I can’t remember ever peeing in my pants, but if I ever have, that might have been the day. My dad probably said something to me like, “…maybe when they get down to around $3,000. $3,999 is too much for something that will be outdated in a few years. Again, my dream eventually came true. I came home from swim practice, after a long day of grammar and addition, to my dad unpacking a killer new desktop in his office. A thing of beauty, it had 8mb of RAM and a 32Mhz processor. Our Prodigy Online dial-up subscription gave us a generous 100 minutes per month of access to the world. In 1992. I sent my first email, the content of which was probably similar to Alexander Graham Bell’s first “…can you come here” phone call.

Like most Americans, especially addicts, my appetite for that next new thing or experience drove my decision making in a lot of ways, some of which motivated me to achieve a lot for my age. It also got me into a world of financial trouble that may haunt me for the next 10 years. But I choose to believe that life experiences like waking up on a plane to Las Vegas not remembering how I got there were a crucial stage of the formative part of my writing career. Only God can explain how I escaped my 20′s without a single bump or bruise, and a criminal record that amounts to two unpaid New York City parking tickets. Those orange envelopes for parking two inches too close to a fire hydrant must have been a divine reminder to leave Manhattan driving to the men in yellow taxis.

If I could have any thing on Earth, it would be a studio apartment in Brooklyn. Then I’d be happy, right? No?

The first time someone suggested to me that happiness is wanting what you have, I was a bit miffed. Pfft. How could I learn to want the next to nothing I have? As much as I loathe admitting defeat — that people are right, I’ve hit a strange turning point in the depths of this dreary treatment center. It’s a revelation that I can indeed be happy without stuff. Well, let’s say I can be happy with the bare essentials. For me, those include clothing, food, and a web hosting subscription so I can write, even in hard times when no one else will publish me. The blog is my canvas and the pen, my paintbrush.

By telling the stories many are afraid to tell, I have found a source of peace and comfort, and a sense that my life does have value and meaning. I’ve been given more chances than I deserve, and the only way to pay them back is to provide hope to others, that they too may emerge from the shadows of sadness and rediscover joy.

Today, a young woman in our spirituality group was moved to tears by our instructor’s gospel rendition of “Amazing Grace.” The sun shined through the thin purple curtains of the fireside room as a feral can wandered through the field of snow outside, and we sat silently, absorbing the classic melody, wanting what we had, just that moment.

Editor’s Note: The following post was handwritten by Kirk Klocke at Keystone Treatment Center in Canton, S.D. and transcribed, edited, and published by Cassie Rodenberg, an independent journalist in New York City who covers addiction, poverty, and other dark things happening in rough urban neighborhoods. Ms. Rodenberg publishes “The White Noise,” a Scientific American blog that focuses on the scientific, medical and social implications of addiction

‘OMG, IT’S THE CRYSTALS!’ – HOW COUNSELORS USE A PRISM TO INTRODUCE INTELLIGENT AGNOSTICS TO FAITH

Being smart makes drug and alcohol addiction recovery harder. In the course of hundreds of hours spent with others in the recovery community, I have yet to meet a doctor, lawyer, or successful business professional whose substance abuse issue has landed them in jail. The wrinkly brown bags, park benches, shady payphones, foam cups filled with jingling coins, and cardboard signs that make up the pop culture perception of alcoholism are a far cry from the majority of reality. That is, approximately ten percent of the U.S. population with the heritable neurological disease of addiction.

Smart people use their intelligence to stay out of trouble and hide the problem, and that often works for years, or even decades before health and social consequences force them into a treatment setting. I’ve never had a consequence, therefore I don’t have a problem, they think. But the keen intellect that lands them recognition as the smartest person in the room at school and work, and occasionally gets them in trouble for seeming impatient and arrogant in small groups keeps them out of settings where a herd mentality is the status quo. You simply don’t see many physicists, neurosurgeons, investment bankers, or award-winning authors at church. Nobel laureate Winston Churchill got away with drinking from morning ‘til night his entire life, until a series of strokes led to his death. Alcoholic hypertension is a huge risk factor for strokes. It must have been stress and exhaustion, say some historians, enabling his lifestyle post mortem. Because how could such a good person be an alcoholic?

The idea programmed into us by religion from an early age that all human behavior falls into a dichotomy of good and evil is what brings many intelligent people to their knees with depression and substance abuse issues later in life. Priests, superstitiously denied marriage and sex, have their own dedicated national treatment center in Rochester, Minnesota called Guest House. As our adult personalities develop, we tire of the religious right’s cult mentality that we are bad and God doesn’t love us if don’t do X, Y, and Z every week. I heard from a Pastor this week that many people go to church because they think they will be seen by the community as a “better” person, and that in turn will be good for their business’ bottom line.

The late behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner once led a famous study that suggested that even pigeons are superstitious. The birds he studied danced around, bobbed their heads, spun in circles, and exhibited all kinds of other food seeking rituals. The miracle always happened: Food came, eventually. He related that phenomenon to superstitious human behavior. Superstition, he theorized, was actually beneficial to a population’s survival. Many human and animal rituals, such as sacrificing lambs, are clearly nonsense. But an evidence based look at other religious traditions like the kiss of peace, not eating shellfish, not eating pork, and alcohol abstinence shows that many customs arose from a public health crisis. Those traditions use God to address herd immunity to viruses, food allergies, parasites, and cirrhotic hepatitis, respectively.

As intelligent people, we don’t need God to tell us to cook our pork thoroughly, to not try shellfish for the first time in a remote area hours away from an epi-pen, and to not drink every day. But what gets us into trouble is the thought that we don’t need the emotional support of other people in conjunction with at least an abstract belief that human life isn’t pointless. At first, alcohol is a terrific thought-numbing sedative that brings us “Type-I” alcohol dependent (the non-violent variety) folks out of our shell for a while, then puts us to sleep. Predictably, though, our tolerance increases over the years, and e 2940 eventually the amount we have to drink to get that affect becomes harmful to our health.

When we reach that point, recovery depends on finding something besides the chemical to relieve our uncertainty, fear, anxiety, and low self esteem. Simply put, there are only three things besides chemicals to this aim: 1.) Other people, 2.) Some sort of belief system, no matter how abstract, that we can draw upon to feel life has a purpose and that we’re something more than just deer waiting to get hit by a truck, and 3.) Physical activity. Exercise allows us to access our bodies’ natural painkillers and makes us look and feel better, increasing self esteem. That’s really it.

I know where to find numbers one and three, but like a lot of other people in my shoes, number two was and still is a tough one. Sometimes we do things just because we do them, said Dr. Q in one of our sessions. Doing things just because annoys me. I grew up asking why to everything. In some cases, knowing why isn’t helpful. Do I need to know that kissing is a mutual subconscious evaluation of the complementarity of a prospective partners’ major histocompatibility complex, thus the viability of their potential offspring? Probably not. What I really need to do is just go for it when the opportunity presents itself.

The place where I attended my initial course of addiction treatment advertised itself as a non-12-step program that does not accept court ordered patients. They were clearly seeking a higher socioeconomic class of people, both in terms of education and access to health insurance or self pay.

They snuck the concept of faith into our group in a clever and very accessible way. The window of our group room had a clear rubber suction cup stuck to it. From it a crystal prism hung from a piece of nylon fishing line. Depending on the time of day, sun rays coming through the window traveled through the prism and were split into rainbow colors. As our discussions progressed, those thumbnail sized rainbows traveled the room, slowly making their way across the walls, our foreheads, chests and hands. Once and awhile someone said something profound about their life, and a cloud in the sky would just happen to move away from the sun, painting the room with rainbows. “Oh, my God, it’s the Crystals,” our counselor John said in a sort of ghost hunter meets PBS narrator sort of voice. Oooh yeahhh, Crystals, our group was quickly into it after a couple days.

One day a woman brought in a letter from the IRS that she was afraid to open. So afraid, that she had let it sit unopened on her kitchen table in Boston while she drank red wine. We discussed the letter and her fear as a group. What was the worst it could be? What was the best it could be? Even if it’s the worst possible news it could be, then what? And so forth. The suspense was killing all of us. Having had financial trouble myself, my heart was pounding. I was literally scared for her to open the envelope.

But finally she did. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but it was not nearly as bad as she had imagined it would be. We gave credit to the Crystals.

The people in my group included a successful investor from Malibu who used to manage the Air Force’s finances, a man my age with a double MBA/J.D. degree who went on to practice law, a college professor, an insurance coder, a Master’s-level librarian, and an inspector who worked at a state environmental agency. This was not a church going group. But by using a simple decoration and an ‘OMG, It’s the Crystals’ narrative, we had invented a sort of religion.

In essence, they cleverly taught us how and why religion is important and useful to religious people. We learned how to begin developing our own concept of faith, so that we have a tool to deal with the anxiety of not being able to explain or fix inevitable things that happen in life – job loss, illness, separation, death. If I can’t explain or fix this uncomfortable circumstance, then I must attribute it to all that in the universe that I can’t see and don’t know. Whatever your brand of Crystals – For Atul Gawande, it’s healing patients, for Robin Williams it’s making people laugh, and for me it’s touching people’s lives with storytelling – find them and have them. And that rainbow will eventually cross your path.

SILENT HYBRID MOTORCYCLES THAT PENTAGON WILL USE FOR STEALTH RAIDS IN FUTURE

Special Forces teams are all about silently penetrating remote areas and executing complex, lightning-fast raids. Now DARPA is developing a new vehicle to soundlessly race commandoes to their missions: stealthy, hybrid-powered motorcycles.

The idea is to develop a hybrid power system that relies on both electric and gas power, allowing special ops to go off-road and zip past enemy forces with the silence of an electric engine, while also being able to handle extended missions and higher speeds with a supplemental gas tank.

In February, DARPA awarded Logos Technologies a $100,000, six-month Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract for a preliminary design to see just how viable the project is.

“Quieted, all-wheel-drive capability at extended range in a lightweight, rugged, single-track vehicle could support the successful operations of U.S. expeditionary and special forces in extreme terrain conditions and contested environments,” said Wade Pulliam, manager of advanced concepts at Logos Technologies, in a statement. “With a growing need to operate small units far from logistical support, the military may increasingly rely on adaptable, efficient technologies like this hybrid-electric motorcycle.”

Although still in the research phase, Logos plans to fit its quieted, multifuel hybrid-electric power system with an all-electric bike from San Francisco-based manufacturer BRD Motorcycles — a seven year old company that specializes in electric motorcycles.

For its base platform, the project relies on an existing (and what BRD calls “barely legal”) racing bike, the RedShift MX, a 250-pound all-electric moto that retails for $15,000.

“The team is excited to have such a mature, capable system from which to build, allowing an accelerated development cycle that could not be achieved otherwise,” said Pulliam.

As it stands now, the RedShift MX has a two hour range, but will be extended with a gas tank the size of which will be determined by the military in the research period. The focus on the electric element suggests that DARPA is more concerned with the stealthiness of the motorcycle than it is efficiency. And although the Redshift MX can reach a maximum speed of 80 mph, it’s hard to imagine that speed would be necessary on the rough terrain military missions would require.

The military has been trying to figure out how to implement a silent motorcycle team for some time. Last year, Zero Motorcycles was awarded a contract to develop a similar electric motorcycle for Special Operations that boasted keyless ignition, blackout capabilities and replaceable battery packs that run for about two hours.

PENTAGON’S SUPERPOWERED AUTOPILOT WILL DO THE WORK OF 5 CREW MEMBERS

Image: DARPA

Some think that the Defense Department couldn’t possibly reduce its forces as much as it claims it will. After all, who would fly the planes?

Now DARPA has an answer. The Pentagon’s research arm is developing a sophisticated, drop-in autopilot that can replace as many as five crew members of a military aircraft, and turn the pilot into a high-level “mission supervisor” issuing commands through a touch screen.

The Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) program is a tailorable, removable kit that will assist in all phases of aircraft flight — even dealing with emergency system failures in-flight. The  agency says the system will reduce pilot workload, augment mission performance and improve aircraft safety.

“Our goal is to design and develop a full-time automated assistant that could be rapidly adapted to help operate diverse aircraft through an easy-to-use operator interface,” said Daniel Patt, DARPA program manager, in a statement. “These capabilities could help transform the role of pilot from a systems operator to a mission supervisor directing intermeshed, trusted, reliable systems at a high level.”

DARPA says it plans to build on the advances in autopilot technology over the past 50 years and develop a highly adaptable automated system that can move from aircraft to aircraft and execute missions from takeoff to landing — all from a simple touch and voice recognition interface.

Allowing ALIAS to handle lower-level flight maintenance tasks would free human operators to focus on mission-level tasks, according to DARPA.

In outlining the Pentagon’s budget in February, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel expressed his intent to shrink the department’s budget to pre-World War II levels by reducing personnel and expensive equipment costs in preference for cost-saving technology.

“We are repositioning to focus on the strategic challenges and opportunities that will define our future; new technologies, new centers of power, and a world that is growing more volatile, more unpredictable, and in some instances more threatening to the United States,” saidHagel.

ORWELLIAN BIG BROTHER IS A REALITY: GOVERNMENT IN YOUR INTERNET

From the Snowden leaks to the recent passage of the Brazilian government “Marco Civil da Internet”, a set of legislation designed to enforce net neutrality, freedom of expression and privacy, there is no mistaking that this is a critical time for the internet and it’s digital citizens.

Cloud and hosting providers need to pay close attention to developing legislation and technologies to address the privacy and security needs of its customers in this fast changing environment.

Shortly after the NSA’s PRISM program was first reported, Forrester Research predicted that US cloud providers could lose up to $180 billion in business over the next three years due to concerns around the scope of surveillance the program enabled.

In a March Ted Talk Snowden said, “The best way to understand PRISM, because there has been a little bit of controversy, is to first talk about what prism isn’t. Much of the debate in the US has been about meta data. They’ve said ‘it’s just meta data, it’s just meta data’ and they’re talking about a specific legal authority called section 215 of the Patriot Act. That allows sort of a warrantless wiretapping, mass surveillance of the entire country’s sort of phone records, things like that…PRISM is about content, it’s a program through which the government could compel corporate America, it could sort of deputize corporate America to do it’s dirty work for the NSA.”

Some companies initially resisted compliance, challenging the NSA in court, but they all lost. Later after the Snowden revelations, a new ruling forced the declassifying of the 2008 Prism decision.

“It was never tried by an open court, they were tried only by a secret court,” Snowden said. “And something that we’ve seen…15 federal judges have reviewed these programs and found them to be lawful, but what they don’t tell you is those are secret judges in a secret court based on secret interpretations of law that’s considered 34,000 warrant requests over 33 years, and in 33 years only rejected 11 government requests. These aren’t the people that we want deciding what the role of corporate America in a free and open internet should be.”

Although the NSA continually tries to explain the measures and secrets as an important part of national security and characterizes its data collection as “only meta data”, it’s having a hard time spinning the Snowden revelations in its favor. Even late night political comedians are picking up on this topic. John Oliver addressed NSA policies Sunday in an interview with former NSA agency chief Keith Alexander which resulted in a funny yet powerful commentary on the organization.

In a blog post Monday, the NSA again addressed its policies in relation to internet security and the Heartbleed vulnerability. It explained some of its thinking on keeping threats secret.

“But there are legitimate pros and cons to the decision to disclose, and the trade-offs between prompt disclosure and withholding knowledge of some vulnerabilities for a limited time can have significant consequences,” Michael Daniel, special assistant to the president and cybersecurity coordinator said. “Disclosing a vulnerability can mean that we forego an opportunity to collect crucial intelligence that could thwart a terrorist attack stop the theft of our nation’s intellectual property, or even discover more dangerous vulnerabilities that are being used by hackers or other adversaries to exploit our networks.”

Discussion and news on privacy, net neutrality and data sovereignty happens daily. Multi- stakeholder governance as a means to address keeping governments out of the internet or at least equally represented is a hot topic. At the two day NetMundail conference last week,  guidelines were discussed for future internet governance.

As the discussion continues to evolve it’s important for cloud and web hosting providers to stay informed of the issues and new legislation so they can best serve their customers in whatever part of the globe they happen to be. As cloud servicesbecome more prevalent and are hosted in multiple countries, service providers may be facing more restrictions based on where data is physically stored and which country has domain over the data.

The WHIR interviewed  Jelle Frank van der Zwet of Interxion at World Hosting Days in Germany. When asked about the need for data centers in foreign countries, he had this to say, “If you want to do business in Germany, you must have a data center and infrastructure in Germany. That goes for Amazon, that goes for any cloud provider, small or large if you want to do business in Germany I recommend you have your infrastructure in Germany. I would say the same for France.”

His comment in the context of the greater discussion about data sovereignty and NSA backdoor access into United States based company’s data underscores the importance of where data is hosted in relation to local laws and policies, a growing concern among cloud and hosting providers. For example, the US Supreme Court ruled Friday that a government search warrant will require American companies providing internet, email, and online storage services to hand over data stored anywhere in the world.

This could have serious implications for American companies interested in doing business outside of American soil. In July, German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich told reporters in Berlin that “whoever fears their communication is being intercepted in any way should use services that don’t go through American servers.”

The search warrant ruling last week confirms that the US can legally access data residing outside the country.

There are several opportunities to learn more about security, privacy and data policies. The internet and specialty technology publications such as the WHIR are a great source. However, there are also many industry events that give companies and concerned individuals the opportunity to contribute and get more involved in discussions around these issues.

HostingCon 2014 has several panels exploring these issues and more. Join the i2c panels on June 17 to learn more about post-Snowden issues and the future role of the United States in internet governance.

PILOTLESS BLACK HAWK HELICOPTER IS REAL IN NEAR FUTURE

A pilotless version of the world-famous Black Hawk helicopter is in development, and is almost ready to start doing battle. It’s being made by defence contractor Sikorsky to help the US military reduce its troop numbers and costs.

The lack of a pilot has obvious benefits. Not only will it reduce casualties, it’ll also save troops from having to go on tedious resupply missions when they could be better used elsewhere.

“The ability for the pilot to leave the cockpit for potentially dull and dangerous missions significantly reduces crew limitations and increases Black Hawk flight operations,” maker Sikorsky said in a statement.

But that doesn’t mean it would be without a pilot at all times. Rather, the pilot could take control for more complex missions.

The technology has been in development since 2007. The helicopter could be deployed as early as next year.

“Imagine a vehicle that can double the productivity of the Black Hawk in Iraq and Afghanistan by flying with, at times, a single pilot instead of two, decreasing the workload, decreasing the risk, and at times when the mission is really dull and really dangerous, go it all the way to fully unmanned,” Chris van Buten, Sikorsky’s innovation vice president, said in a statement.

SANDISK TARGETS ENTERPRISE CUSTOMERS WITH ITS WORLD’S FIRST 4 TB 2.5 INCH SSD

Flash-based solid state drives (SSDs) have historically been the poor cousins to platter-based HDDs in terms of storage capacity, making them a poorer option for enterprise applications. But SanDisk is looking to change things with its new Optimus MAX SSD, the world’s first 2.5-inch Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) SSD packing 4 TB of storage capacity.

Touting the new drive as the first true replacement for legacy mission-critical data center SAS HDDs, SanDisk claims the 4 TB Optimus MAX SSD allows enterprises to maintain their current SAS storage infrastructures, while providing improved, cost-effective performance, and generating less heat and consuming less power than HDDs.

Just exactly how cost effective the new drive is remains to be seen as SanDisk hasn’t revealed pricing details, but it is claiming sequential read/write speeds of up to 400/400 MB/s and random read/write speeds of up to 75,000/15,000 Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) for the drive via its SAS 6 Gb/s interface.

Although the thought of slotting a 4 TB SSD into your laptop might sound appealing, SanDisk is targeting the drive at read-intensive applications with typical workloads made up of a read/write ratio of 90/10. This includes data warehousing, media streaming, web servers, video on demand (VOD), and web-based applications.

“Customers have been looking for a way to transition their data centers from HDDs to NAND flash, but have been forced to decide between cost and performance, or give up important functionality,” says John Scaramuzzo, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Storage Solutions at SanDisk. “We believe that the Optimus MAX will be a disruptive force within the storage industry, catalyzing many organizations to make the switch from their HDD-prominent data center infrastructures to SSDs.”

DARWIN’S HISTORICALLY SIGNIFICANT MARINE CHRONOMETER

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In an age where accurate time measurement is taken for granted, the upcoming auction of an 1825marine chronometer highlights just how far science has advanced in the last 200 years.

The invention of the marine chronometer directly resulted from the UK “Longitude Act” of 1714 that offered £20,000 reward (£2.6 million in today’s money) for developing a means by which longitude could be accurately and economically measured at sea.

The resultant invention of the Chronometer helped Britain establish not only the naval, but also mercantile advantage that allowed it to dominate the oceans until the early 20th century.

The marine chronometer heading for the auction block on July 9 has certainly witnessed its fair share of history in fulfilling that critical scientific role, having accompanied Charles Darwin on his epic five-year second voyage (1831-1836) to South America and the Galapagos Islands, the North American Boundary Expedition (1843-1846) which established the border between the USA and Canada and the 1857 survey of the Australian coastline which saw the naming of Darwin and the Fitzroy River.

The previously unrecorded marine chronometer is dated 1825 and signed by William Edward Frodsham. It was one of 22 chronometers aboard HMS Beagle (the ship which carried Darwin on his second voyage and also mapped Australia’s coastline). Until now, only two other recorded chronometers from HMS Beagle are known to have survived, and are in the British Museum.

Given its stellar provenance, the chronometer seems ridiculously cheap if it does fall within its expected price range of £30,000-50,000.

LENOVO UNVEILS ITS N-SERIES CHROMEBOOKS

Lenovo unveiled two new Chromebooks, including a very flexible model that can turn into a free standing touch screen laptop.

The new Lenovo N-series comes in two flavours, the more traditional N20 and the more flexible N20P. Both laptops come with the latest version of Google’s Chrome OS installed. They also feature Celeron processors, and come with the same 720p 11.6-inch screen, 4GB RAM and 16GB internal SSD. They also come with 100GB of Google Drive space, Bluetooth 4.02, HDMI, card reader, two USB ports and an eight hour battery life. Specs wise, that’s roughly the same as the Acer 720 – currently considered to be the best Chromebook available. Do a barrel roll Where Lenovo’s new range sets itself apart from the competition though is the N20P’s hyperflexibility. Most laptops screens can rotate around 120 degrees from closed. The Lenovo N20P can rotate 300 degrees. That means it can essentially flip itself over and use its keyboard base as a stand. The N20P also comes with a ten-point touch screen. According to Lenovo, the N20 will be available in the US in July, while the N20P will land one month later in August. There’s no word on UK launch dates yet, but we’ll let you know when we find out. Both will be available through Lenovo’s website for $279 (£165) and $329 (£195) respectively.

US GOVERNMENT MISTAKENLY SENDS STUDENT A $350K DRONE

This isn’t your average AR drone, instead it has a range of around 15 miles and the ability to stay in the air for over three hours, costs £200k mindThe US Government has mistakenly sent a student parts of a $350,000 drone or UAV.

Having initially ordered a weightlifting bench the student was surprised to find that as well as the necessary equipment for improving his upper body strength he’d also been sent most of the parts needed for a military-grade unmanned aerial drone.

Resisting what must have been the obvious urge to become the next General Jumbo the student contacted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, alerting them to the whereabouts of their high-tech flying machine.

This was of course after they posted their findings to reddit asking for any advice on what to do with what was almost certainly not an accessory for the weightlifting bench.

Initially intended for a wildlife sanctuary the Puma AE UAS drone was being sent to help monitor wildlife on the sanctuary however the drone has also been used by the US Army as a recon UAV.

With a range of over 15 miles and a battery life that gives it well over three hours of flying time the Puma puts consumer drones to shame, unsurprising really when you consider the difference in cost.

CREE AIMS TO MAKE FLUORESCENT TUBES OBSOLETE WITH LED T8 SERIES

Fluorescent lights aren’t on the top of many people’s favorites list. Ever since they were introduced at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, they’ve been notorious for their cold, bluish light that is the definition of “uncomplimentary” and accompanied by flickering and a telltale buzz. Cree, Inc. is aiming to relegate fluorescent tubes to the pages of history with its new T8 series of LED tubes that promise LED-level energy savings and greatly improved light quality.

LEDs have proven a useful alternatives to both incandescents and fluorescents when it comes to bulbs with their durability, economy, and promise of better light, but when it comes to tubes, LEDs haven’t quite made the grade. It’s easy enough to shape an LED to match a fluorescent tube, but the color leaves much to be desired and they aren’t as bright as they need to be.

The Cree T8 is a new series of tubes designed to replace conventional fluorescents. According to Cree, the T8 is capable of putting out 2,100 lumens per tube for 21 watts of power, or 3,800 lumens for a two-tube fixture. In part, this is due to the oval shape of the tubes which is designed to avoid wasting light illuminating the inside of the fixture.

With a 30 percent energy savings, Cree says that the tubes will pay for themselves within three years. It has a near-universal driver compatibility and the company claims that the T8 has the industry’s best color quality, capable of covering both the 3,500 K and 4,000 K color temperature ranges.

Cree is claiming a 50,000-hour lifetime for the T8, which is also dimmable and compatible with over 90 percent of electronic ballasts (that is, the circuitry used to regulate fluorescent tubes), including instant start, programmed start, and rapid start ballasts.

“Similar to what we’ve achieved with the Cree LED Bulb in the residential market, the Cree LED T8 Series is revolutionizing the commercial lighting market with a product that saves energy, delivers superior light quality and is universally compatible with nearly all existing fluorescent T8 ballasts,” says Chuck Swoboda, Cree Chairman and CEO. “There’s no reason to install another linear fluorescent tube again.”

The Cree T8 is available in the US and Canada for a suggested retail price of US$30.

The video below introduces the T8 series of LED tubes.

SONY’S NEW MAGNETIC TAPE TECHNOLOGY ENABLES 185 TB

One of the joys of old science fiction movies is watching the giant reel-to-reel tape drives spin around as they serve computers less powerful than a modern wristwatch. But magnetic tape isn’t just something found in oldUFO episodes; it’s a key component in modern digital systems required to keep modern online systems reliable. At the INTERMAG Europe 2014 international magnetics conference in Dresden, Sony announced a new breakthrough in magnetic tape technology that keeps the medium relevant by allowing a tape cartridge to carry 74 times the data of a conventional data tape, or the equivalent of 3,700 Blu-ray discs.

Tapes were the backbone of computer memory storage from the 1950s until the late 1980s. They’re familiar to early home computer users in the form of the humble audio cassette that saved them from having to laboriously type in a program every time they wanted to run it. In everyday life, tapes were replaced so universally by hard discs, flash drives and optical media including CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays that it often comes as a surprise to learn that magnetic tape is still widely used as back up memory for servers and databases. Because, while discs may be fast and flexible, tape still has the advantage of being very stable and using much less power than hard disc drives, so tape is anything but yesterday’s technology.

Sony’s breakthrough, which pushes past the previous record set in 2010 by a factor of five, produces a recording density of 146 Gb per square inch. This results in a cartridge capable of holding 185 TB. Conventional tapes fall well short of this by comparison with a density of 2 Gb per square inch and a maximum capacity of 2.5 TB.

To achieve this density, Sony uses a new “sputter” technique to deposit fine nano-grain magnetic particles on a soft polymer underlayer less than 5 micrometers thick. These particles are much smaller than those found in conventional tapes, which are tens of nanometers wide. The fineness of the particles already improves the storage capacity of the material, but the tricky bit was getting particles to line up in an orderly fashion instead of landing at random on the underlayer.

This uniformity was achieved by using an electrostatic discharge to force argon ions into the target material, which forms it into a thin, uniform layer. It involves having the magnetic particles of both the same average size (about 7.7 nanometers) and lined up in the same direction. In addition, the polymer underlayer has been re-engineered to make it much smoother, so the particles lie more evenly. The result is a tape material that Sony boasts has the world’s highest recording density by area.

Sony says that it is currently working on commercializing the new tape material, as well as improving the sputter technique to achieve even greater recording densities.

“VANHAWKS VALOUR” WORLD’S FIRST SMART BIKE?

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A Concept smart bike that connects to your smartphone and transmits information from an array of sensors has made its way onto Kickstarter Designed by startup Vanhawks, the Valour is a smartbike aiming to maximise your safety and provide metrics on how you’re peddling. Unlike other smart bikes, the Vanhawks Valour is not an electric bike. In fact, it’s a carbon fibre framed road bike. However, it’s stuffed with a variety of sensors, including an accelerometer, magnetometer and a speed sensor. It can connect with any device that runs iOS,Android or Pebble according to its makers. It’ll piggyback off those devices to provide turn-by-turn instructions to the rider in the form of LED indicators on the handlebars. According to Vanhawk, these LED indicators will provide riders with valuable information. Like routes that avoid steep hills. “A year ago, we set out to create a fundamentally new kind of bike,” the company said on its website. “We believed there had to be a way to improve a technology that hadn’t been re-thought in 120 years. “Bikes are one of the funnest, most efficient and most environmentally sound forms of transportation. That’s why we care about them so much. “Over the last 300+ days, we’ve poured our hearts into re-thinking urban commuting from the ground up. It took countless nights, thousands of engineering decisions and R&D with some of the world’s most advanced production partners to finally make it here.” It’s currently a Kickstarter project – the company is hoping to raise CAD$100,000 (£55,000) to get the wheels in motion. So to speak.

KOHLER TOUCHLESS TOILET LETS YOU ONLY ‘WAVE TO FLUSH’

The Japanese might have been the first to bring technology to the toilet, but even the most advanced throne requires you to touch it.

In an age where high-end hotels have touch-less taps, soap dispensers and even doors,  why do we still have to touch the toilet itself? Well, those days may soon be over.

Toilet-maker Kohler has developed the world’s first touch-less toilet, which uses electromagnetism to activate the flush when you wave your hand over the sensor.

“Unlike a beam-based sensor, in which a beam of light is broken to trigger the actuation, the Kohler Touchless flush utilizes emerging sensing technology, which projects an electromagnetic field that is both extremely accurate and reliable,” says Kohler.

“This type of sensor detects the user in the projected field and initiates the flush.”

The company will be bringing the technology to many of its upcoming models and releasing it as a $99 standalone kit that you can attach to your own toilet.

It’ll work with most single-flush models although if you have a dual-flush toilet, you’re out of luck. There’s no word yet on UK availability but we’ll keep our fingers, and legs, crossed.

SKY , CITYFIBRE AND TALKTALK ANNOUNCE 1 GBPS BROADBAND FOR CITIES IN UK

Broadband speeds in the UK currently max out at about 300 Mbps, provided by British Telecom. Sky

and TalkTalk have now announced that they intend to bring 1 Gbps speeds to UK cities. The roll-out will begin in York next year, before moving to other locations.

Working with CityFibre, Sky and TalkTalk have created a new company that will build the infrastructure for providing ultra-fast broadband. The new venture is aiming to create a “state of the art, city-wide, pure fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network.” Once the network is built, Sky and TalkTalk will retail competing services over the infrastructure.

At 1 Gbps per second, the services will be significantly faster than the fastest fiber optic speeds available in the UK today and will match those offered by Google Fiber in the US. Sky says that the fiber optic roll-out in York will be the first time that ultra-fast broadband has been deployed in the UK on a city-wide basis. Fujitsu will be employed to deploy the network.

“This announcement makes York the digital infrastructure capital of the UK,” said James Alexander, leader of the City of York council. “Gaining ultra fast broadband across the city is a huge boost for our economy, providing significant new opportunities for businesses based here and better quality and value to our residents.”

The services are expected to go live in York from 2015, with a subsequent roll-out planned for two more, yet to be named, cities.

MINK 3D PRINTER LETS YOU CREATE YOUR OWN CUSTOMIZED COLOR MAKEUP

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Finding the exact shade of lipstick or eye shadow you have in mind can be tough, which is why Grace Choi, a Harvard Business School alumni, came up with the Mink – a 3D printer that lets you print out

makeup in any color you fancy. Whether it’s the color of a fruit, your friend’s purse or a sunset, transforming that color into any kind of makeup is simply a matter of choosing it and hitting print.

The Mink 3D printer uses the same FDA-approved substrates and ingredients used by popular makeup brands. To print color-specific makeup, a user just needs to pick a color, be it from an image found online, a photo they’ve clicked, or a color they’ve selected in image editing software like Paint or Photoshop. All the software needs is the hex code of the chosen color (easily obtained with a color picker) and Mink is ready to print.

Instead of being restricted to a limited color palette, users will be able to print (and wear) makeup in any color in the world, from the comfort of their own homes, according to Choi. “It can take any image and instantly transform it into a wearable color cosmetic, turning any phone, laptop or camera into an endless beauty aisle,” she says. “You can take a picture of your friend’s lipstick and just print it out.”

Choi 3D printed a light pink eye shadow when she presented Mink at theTechCrunch Disrupt 2014 conference in New York. While Mink can currently print powder-based makeups, Choi plans to expand its capabilities to print things like lip gloss and cream.

The 3D makeup printer is targeted at users in the 13-21 age group and will retail for less than US$200 when it’s launched later this year.

Check out the video of her presentation below.