Sam's Blog: October 2011

Monday, October 31, 2011

BMW 3 Series gets 'full-color' heads-up display

BMW 3 Series gets 'full-color' heads-up display:

If you've been hankering for some HUD action in your next auto, you'll have one more choice come next spring: the all-new 2012 BMW 3 Series. The launch will mark the first time a heads-up display has made it into Bavaria's volume seller, after debuting as an optional extra eons ago on its 5 Series. Since then, HUDs of limited hues have permeated München's high-end, splaying speed and navigation directions in the line of sight of road-going elites everywhere. However, this iteration is "full-color," which besides pleasing ROY G. BIV fans, makes it "more intuitive," as the company reasons it'll aid drivers in recognizing crucial alerts faster. That, or we're really just a generation away from über cool AR wizardry and movies on our windscreens. Of course, no word on when the 3's brethren will get the technicolor treatment, but we're betting it won't be long, given that's the dash of a 6 Series you see above. PR, per usual, is after the break.
Continue reading BMW 3 Series gets 'full-color' heads-up display

BMW 3 Series gets 'full-color' heads-up display originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Nov 2011 02:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ASUS says Transformer Prime will arrive on Honeycomb, ICS coming later

ASUS says Transformer Prime will arrive on Honeycomb, ICS coming later:

Well, we already knew the original Transformer would be getting an Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade sometime in the near future, and now ASUS Germany has confirmed that the quad-cored Prime and the Eee Pad Slider will also get a taste of Android's latest OS. No semblance of a datum for release just yet, but the triumvirate of Transformers will join the upgrade queue behind ASUS' other Android offering, the Padfone.

ASUS says Transformer Prime will arrive on Honeycomb, ICS coming later originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 09:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tabletblog.de (Translated) | source

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Insulate Windows With Bubble Wrap for a Reusable Storm Window [Winter]

Insulate Windows With Bubble Wrap for a Reusable Storm Window [Winter]:

Click here to read Insulate Windows With Bubble Wrap for a Reusable Storm Window

With winter around the corner for half the world, it's time to start thinking about getting your home ready for the colder weather. It turns out bubble wrap is a great insulator, and Instructables user kc8hps has a guide for creating a reusable storm window out of it. More »

What Kind of Buddhist was Steve Jobs, Really?

What Kind of Buddhist was Steve Jobs, Really?:

Kobun Chino Otogawa, Steve Jobs' Zen teacher. Courtesy kobun-sama.org.

At PLOS, Steve Silberman goes in depth into the influence that Steve's Buddhist teachers had on Apple's mission and its products.

"I found myself in a unique position to write it, since I knew Jobs' teacher Kobun Chino, and studied at Zen Center around the same time that Steve did," Silberman tells Boing Boing. "I include a quote from a never-published interview with Steve at the end."

As a young seeker in the ’70s, Jobs didn’t just dabble in Zen, appropriating its elliptical aesthetic as a kind of exotic cologne. He turns out to have been a serious, diligent practitioner who undertook lengthy meditation retreats at Tassajara — the first Zen monastery in America, located at the end of a twisting dirt road in the mountains above Carmel — spending weeks on end “facing the wall,” as Zen students say, to observe the activity of his own mind.

Why would a former phone phreak who perseverated over the design of motherboards be interested in doing that? Using the mind to watch the mind, and ultimately to change how the mind works, is known in cognitive psychology as metacognition. Beneath the poetic cultural trappings of Buddhism, what intensive meditation offers to long-term practitioners is a kind of metacognitive hack of the human operating system (a metaphor that probably crossed Jobs’ mind at some point.) Sitting zazen offered Jobs a practical technique for upgrading the motherboard in his head.

Read the full article here.

Samsung to offer flexible displays in 2012, challenges Nokia to a twist contest

Samsung to offer flexible displays in 2012, challenges Nokia to a twist contest:

Flexible displays? Samsung's got 'em, too. A few days after Nokia showed off its Kinetic Device prototype under the blue lights of Nokia World, Samsung made mention of its own plans to unleash some bendy mobile devices on the world. A spokesperson for the company was scarce on details, but noted that the flexible displays are targeted for 2012. The technology, which was showcased at this year's CES, will initially be incorporated into handsets, with tablets following down the road.
Continue reading Samsung to offer flexible displays in 2012, challenges Nokia to a twist contest

Samsung to offer flexible displays in 2012, challenges Nokia to a twist contest originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 Oct 2011 07:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fish Evolve Immunity To Toxic Sludge

Fish Evolve Immunity To Toxic Sludge:
RedEaredSlider writes "Fish in the Hudson River and the harbor in New Bedford, Mass., have evolved resistance to PCBs. In the Hudson, a species of tomcod has evolved a way for a very specific protein to simply not bind to PCBs, nearly eliminating the toxicity. In New Bedford, the Atlantic killifish has proteins that bind to the toxin (just as they do in mammals) but the fish aren't affected despite high levels of PCBs in their cells. Why the killifish survive is a mystery."

Panasonic Lumix GX1 Micro Four Thirds camera surfaces in leaked photos

Panasonic Lumix GX1 Micro Four Thirds camera surfaces in leaked photos:

Panasonic just launched a whole new series of Micro Four Thirds lenses a couple of months ago, and it looks like it might soon also have a new Micro Four Thirds camera to take advantage of them. That photo you see above recently turned up on the Mobile01 forums with a bundle of others, showing a hereto unannounced Panasonic Lumix GX1 MFT camera, which looks like it could be a true successor to the GF1 (as opposed to the GF2 and GF3 that moved in a less pro-minded direction). Rumored specs remain a bit light, but the camera apparently has a touchscreen display 'round back, which will likely see a fair bit of use unless you opt for an external EVF. It's also suggested that the camera will be launching soon -- on November 8th -- although that's obviously yet to be confirmed.

[Thanks, Amin]

Panasonic Lumix GX1 Micro Four Thirds camera surfaces in leaked photos originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mu-43.com | source

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iPhone 4S Has Been Jailbroken, Hack Enables Siri on iPhone 4

iPhone 4S Has Been Jailbroken, Hack Enables Siri on iPhone 4:

Diggester writes "Unless their chipset has already been exploited and jailbroken on a previous device, it takes a lot of time for the iOS jailbreaking community to jailbreak for a new iOS device. The iPhone 4S and iPad 2, both of which are based on a still (bootrom) unexploited dual-core A5 chip, haven't received a jailbreak for iOS 5 yet, but it appears that they'll be getting one soon as a certain eminent iPhone hacker has let us know that the iPhone 4s has already been jailbroken with a jailbreak for iPad 2 in the works." In related news, Hackers have succeeded in bringing a limited port of Apple's new Siri voice assistant feature onto jailbroken versions of the iPhone 4 and the fourth-generation iPod touch.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Accelerometer-based keylogger in your phone guesses your PC keyboard typing from your body's motions

Accelerometer-based keylogger in your phone guesses your PC keyboard typing from your body's motions:

A Georgia Tech team has built a working app for latest-generation mobile phones that uses the built-in accelerometer to guess which words you're typing on your PC's keyboard, by measuring the movements of your body as you type.

The technique works through probability and by detecting pairs of keystrokes, rather than individual keys (which still is too difficult to accomplish reliably, Traynor said). It models “keyboard events” in pairs, then determines whether the pair of keys pressed is on the left versus right side of the keyboard, and whether they are close together or far apart. After the system has determined these characteristics for each pair of keys depressed, it compares the results against a preloaded dictionary, each word of which has been broken down along similar measurements (i.e., are the letters left/right, near/far on a standard QWERTY keyboard). Finally, the technique only works reliably on words of three or more letters.

For example, take the word “canoe,” which when typed breaks down into four keystroke pairs: “C-A, A-N, N-O and O-E.” Those pairs then translate into the detection system’s code as follows: Left-Left-Near, Left-Right-Far, Right-Right-Far and Right-Left-Far, or LLN-LRF-RRF-RLF. This code is then compared to the preloaded dictionary and yields “canoe” as the statistically probable typed word. Working with dictionaries comprising about 58,000 words, the system reached word-recovery rates as high as 80 percent.

(via /.)

(Image: Keyboard, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from bull3t's photostream)

eFun announces aPen A5 Smart Pen for all of your iPad / iPhone writing needs

eFun announces aPen A5 Smart Pen for all of your iPad / iPhone writing needs:

Want to write on your tablet without all of the requisite finger grease? How about a stylus? Too pedestrian? What about a Smart Pen? Better yet, what about the aPen A5 Smart Pen? eFun's peripheral includes a stylus and a receiver that hooks into your iPad or iPhone's 30 pin connector, digitizing your handwriting or drawings via a number of compatible apps, including the company's own free Studio Basic Light. The A5 is set, broadly, for a release some time in 2012, and should run you around $99 whenever it actually hits the market.

Gallery: eFun aPen hands-on