Self-Balancing eniCycle is Like a Segway for the Circus – Enicycle – Gizmodo
The eniCycle’s electric-powered 1000 watt motor kicks into gear as you lean forward—similar to riding a Segway. The gyroscopes help you stay upright while measuring your vertical angle 100 times a second.
“Help” is the operative word there — there’s not much the thing can do it you lean too far or start to go over sideways. But still pretty damn cool.
Security Engineering – A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems
My goal in making the first edition freely available five years after publication was twofold. First, I wanted to reach the widest possible audience, especially among poor students. Second, I am a pragmatic libertarian on free culture and free software issues; I think that many publishers (especially of music and software) are too defensive of copyright. (My colleague David MacKay found that putting his book on coding theory online actually helped its sales. Book publishers are getting the message faster than the music or software folks.) I expect to put the whole second edition online too in a few years.
Ross Anderson is a brilliant guy. Enough said.
The Invisible Flash That Takes Clear Pictures at Night – dark flash – Gizmodo
. First, they modified the flashbulb to emit light in a wider spectrum and filter out visible light. Then, they removed the UV and IR filters normally present in camera sensors. This apparently results in making everyone in photos look like a Yugoslavian mafia goon’s mug shot. Or maybe just a normal infrared image:
Then, an algorithm adds color: The two scientist make the camera take another photo immediately after the first one, this time without the dark flash. That photo results in the usual grainy picture, but the resulting color information gets combined with the first image to get the image you see at the beginning of the article.
Roadside Dope Tester Promises To Make You Even More Paranoid – Dope tester – Gizmodo
The cartridge has two components: a sample collector for gathering saliva and a measurement chamber containing magnetic nanoparticles. The particles are coated with ligands that bind to one of five different drug groups.
After 90 seconds, the device delivers its verdict on a color-coded readout.
But officer, I was sucking on a $20 bill and it was contaminated with cocaine…
FAQ – TinEye
TinEye is a reverse image search engine. You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions. TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks.
Draganfly X4 UAV: Tiny, Camera-Packing, UFO-Looking ‘Copter Is Cheaper Than Ever – Draganfly x4 – Gizmodo
Like the X6—featured in Giz Gallery 2008—the X4 is a carbon fiber-bodied UAV with four carbon fiber rotating blades. The 680-gram (with battery) copter is capable of using a still/video camera (in this case, a Panasonic Lumix point-and-shoot), an infrared camera and a low-light camera, all of which can be controlled from the ground. The X4 also features three accelerometers, three gyroscopes, three magnetometers and a barometric pressure sensor, and the controller is based on an OLED touchscreen. The X4 only has four motors to the X6’s six, but that comes at a big boon to the pricey ‘copter: The X6 checked in at about $15,000, and the X4 should be more like $10,000.
Genome Sequencing Gets 99.9833% Price Cut – Human genome – Gizmodo
it chops the fundamental units of DNA, the bases, into short strands, slaps them onto a specially treated glass plate, and proceeds to read the sequences.
After these steps are completed, a series of computers will assemble all the DNA strands into a genome while comparing it to previously compiled genomes. According to an algorithm used by the team, this sequencing process results in genomes which are about 95% complete. (This is on par with previous sequencing technology.)