David Lidsky's Blog, page 3389
December 2, 2013
FAA Reminds Us: The U.S. Has Approved One Commercial Drone Operator, And It's Not Amazon
The Federal Aviation Administration says it will establish drone regulations and standards in the coming years.
After Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed the online retailer's plans to deliver packages via drone on 60 Minutes, the Federal Aviation Administration released a statement Monday regarding the use of unmanned aircraft systems. The agency doesn't mention Amazon by name, but the timing--a day after the 60 Minutes segment aired--suggests the FAA is reacting to the company's news.
A Text Message Designed To Stop Texting And Driving
A new PSA by TextsWreck aims to stop texting and driving with a text--full of tiny cartoon cars, puppies, fire, and ghosts.
Texting and driving is a modern plague that kills 11 teenagers every day and causes 1.6 million crashes a year. That merely typing LOL or TTYL can result in injuries and death is probably the darkest and most absurd side effect of our nationwide phone addiction. So far, 39 states and D.C. have outlawed all texting behind the wheel, but it's a tough law to reinforce.
Black Friday Saw A Huge Surge In Bitcoin Transactions
Nov. 29 marks BitPay's busiest day yet.
During last year's inaugural Bitcoin Black Friday, BitPay--hailed as the PayPal for Bitcoin--processed 99 transactions. This year, the system experienced a nearly 6300% surge, processing 6,296 transactions Friday and making Nov. 29 BitPay's busiest day yet.
With This Take-Home Kit, You Could Find The World's Next Lifesaving Antibiotic
Two scientists are tapping the power of the crowd to do what Big Pharma won't.
We're on the brink of a "post-antibiotic era"--one where people routinely get horribly sick and die from surgery, childbirth, or simple infections. The culprit is evolution; specifically, bacteria that mutate to survive the overabundant presence of antibiotics. Not helping matters is the fact that 80% of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are administered to livestock.
Why We Hate
Psychologists studying intergroup conflict are trying to understand the atrocities humans are capable of committing. Is evolution to blame?
Why do humans do such terrible things to each other? What makes us capable of torture, war, and genocide? These kinds of questions aren't just broad, rhetorical inquiries for Sabina Cehajic-Clancy, a Bosnian psychologist who studies the science of conflict between different groups of people. In a recent story for the Chronicle of Higher Education, writer Tom Bartlett explores the science of hatred through Cehajic-Clancy's work, which mainly covers the ethnic cleansing of Muslims that occurred during her childhood in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early '90s.
Turning Vacant New York City Office Space Into A Fun Pop-Up Hotel
Older office buildings in Manhattan are having trouble finding tenants. Piling in eager tourists for the night could be the perfect solution.
Could a former law firm or accounting office be the perfect place to send out of town guests for a night? The architecture collective Pink Cloud thinks so, and is on a quest to transform vacant skyscrapers into pop-up hotels.
This Stealth Camera Produces 3-D Images In Near Darkness
One million photons are worth a thousand words.
Researchers at MIT have created a computational algorithm that allows them to assemble 3-D black-and-white images from individual photons in conditions that resemble total darkness to the human eye.
There Is A 30-Foot-Tall Eyeball In Downtown Dallas
But why's it there? Giant eyes are awesome, that's why.
Take a pleasant stroll through the gardens of Dallas's five-star Joule Hotel, and you will quickly perambulate upon a very odd sight: a 30-foot-tall eyeball that is just sort of hanging out. It might look like it just popped out of the ocular socket of a colossus the size of the Burj Khalifa, but in actuality, it's a sculpture, created by Chicago-based multimedia artist Tony Tasset. But how did it end up in downtown Dallas?
NPR Is Tracing The Life Of A T-Shirt, From Cotton Plant To Store Shelf
A new NPR series follows the life of a T-shirt as it's made to shed light on the global economics of modern manufacturing.
Look down: Chances are, a good part of the outfit you're wearing is made of cotton. You probably know the cotton in your shirt or pants began as a plant, but can you list every single step it had to take before it reached your department store's shelf? That's the objective of a new series produced by NPR's Planet Money.
December 1, 2013
In A Few Years, Your Amazon Prime Deliveries Might Arrive Via Octocopter
Drone delivery may be headed your way--as long as your order weighs less than five pounds.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos appeared on CBS' 60 Minutes this evening to reveal the company's ambitious autonomous drone delivery scheme--even though the tech probably won't reach your doorstep for at least "four or five years."
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