Identilock biometric tech unlocks a gun in under a second

The American public is split virtually down the middle on the issue of gun control, but there’s very little dissent on the issue of gun safety. Everyone agrees that guns should be kept safely and securely, kept out of the hands of children, etc etc. Though this principle is nice in that everyone can get on board with it, it’s also a bit unhelpful in that it prescribes no specific solutions. In other words: what’s safe? Some people think putting your guns in a pad-locked box is safe, while others claim there’s nothing safer than having your firearms ready and available for use as protection.

But a Detroit start-up called Sentinl (because leaving out the second-last letter makes you hip) thinks that technology may finally be ready to provide a solution that will work for both sides: Biometric sensors. Now, this has been tried before in various forms, most notably as a push to bio-lock all police firearms to stop people from stealing them and shooting officers. None of these efforts came to much, however, because the firearms community opposed them, and because they did not offer the performance required by its customer base.
Could Sentinl’s Identilock technology have ended this cycle? The lock fits over the lower portion of standard handguns, making the trigger mechanism unreachable. The gun owner need only press their finger against the unlocking mechanism and it pops up. Sentinl claims Identilock can go from locked to open and usable in less than a second, and can store multiple biometric profiles, so several trusted individuals can all have access to the same weapon.

This technology has been around for a while, but mostly implemented in less direct ways. Fingerprint-coded lock boxes have been around for some time, but again, put the gun behind an additional time-sink if they’re needed. The Identilock claims to improve the safety of your gun without impeding your access to it in the slightest. It’s supposed to have a battery life of about a month if it’s just sitting there — but as of right now there are no details about what happens if you leave it on past its charge time. Finding an outlet so you can unlock your gun is quite a downside — though I suppose you could just make sure to keep it charged.

Omar Kiyani, Identilock’s inventor and founder of Sentinl, knows these issues intimately, having been shot in the head when he was 16 thanks to improper gun use. This is his attempt to use technology to help secure the many millions of firearms that exist in the United States today. It’s also his attempt at securing the Smart Tech Foundation‘s $1 million prize for innovations that improve gun safety. He’ll be competing against several other gun lock designs, but hopes that the extreme speed of the Identilock can win him a leg up.

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10 Tech Terms to Know in 2014

Farm Drones

That sound you hear is a swarm of drones, revving their tiny engines as they wait for the Federal Aviation Administration to update its rules on commercial UAV flight. The biggest beneficiaries may be farmers who hope to use cheap UAVs armed with cameras to monitor the health of their crops, employing aerial photography—digital and infrared—to fine-tune delivery of water, fertilizer, and other chemicals. To tap that hungry market, companies such as Indiana-based PrecisionHawk have developed simple plug-and-play sensors and data-processing software for use with their 3-pound GPS-guided Lancaster UAV. For now the FAA rules governing farm use are vague (no one has gotten into trouble yet), but the agency is expected to clarify things this year and issue final rules in 2015.

In-Memory Computing

In traditional computer architecture, there's memory (the 6 GB of RAM in your laptop that provides lightning-quick access to the data required to run your applications), and then there's storage (a 1 TB hard drive, slow and inefficient to access but spacious enough to archive your many files). The same dichotomy holds true for massive-data centers, which makes it hard to analyze big-data sets without the delays inherent in retrieving each piece of data from the clunky spinning disk where it's stored. But now that flash memory is relatively inexpensive and getting cheaper by the year, companies such as SAP and Oracle are experimenting with a radical alternative: stowing all your data right in memory. This in-memory computing offers dramatic increases in speed and, by some estimates, energy savings of up to 80 percent for big-data centers. With the release of Violin Memory's inexpensive in-memory storage cards, individual servers can now take advantage of those benefits too.

IPv6

In February 2011 the Internet officially ran out of IP addresses. You probably didn't notice, because new devices continue to connect to the Web via address-sharing work-arounds. But those are stopgap measures. It's time for a wholesale shift from the 32-bit, 4.3-billion-address IPv4 system developed in the 1970s to the 128-bit IPv6 and its mind-boggling 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses. To complete the change, every website and Internet provider has to buy in, updating equipment when necessary. At the moment only about 2 percent of Google's traffic arrives via IPv6. Will the world get its act together in time to avoid missed connections? Many holdouts are looking to Washington for the answer: The White House has mandated that all government servers switch to IPv6 by October.

Muon Tomography

Though very similar to computed tomography (better known as CT scanning), muon tomography offers one key advantage: Instead of assembling images with radioactive X-rays, it uses particles created naturally in the upper atmosphere by the cosmic rays that constantly bombard Earth. These particles, known as muons, penetrate much more deeply than X-rays, which means they can pass through shielding materials like lead—and that makes them perfect for detecting nuclear material hidden in shipping containers. Virginia-based Decision Sciences, working with Los Alamos National Lab, has developed the Multi-Mode Passive Detection System, which can scan a 40-foot shipping container in 30 seconds, looking for the telltale ways in which muons are deflected by uranium and plutonium. And before year's end, the company plans to introduce a software upgrade that will enable the device to detect conventional electronics and other contraband. It comes as no surprise that the departments of Defense and Homeland Security have already signed up to use the technology.

Personal-Data Auctions

In 2000 a public outcry forced Yahoo and eBay to cancel their plans to auction personal data collected from 200,000 people by a marketing company. Today that data is more accessible and more valuable than ever, but people still strive to protect it. Public sentiment may be changing, though. Last year an NYU student served up two months' worth of private data mined from his digital devices in a Kickstarter campaign. The stunt raised $2733 from 213 amused backers. Now startups such as Washington, D.C.–based Personal are betting that others will follow suit, lumping their online accounts together in one place for convenience and for profit. Once their data is collected, they can choose whether to part with chunks of it—in exchange for special deals and other enticements, that is.

Organ-On-A-Chip

Drugs that work well in a petri dish—or even in a mouse—often turn out to be ineffective or dangerous in humans. That's why researchers at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering set out to create computer chips capable of simulating the functions of real organs. The lung-on-a-chip has a membrane lined with human lung cells on one side and blood-vessel cells on the other. Air flows across the lung-cell side and a blood-like liquid flows across the other. The device even expands and contracts as it "breathes." Scientists are currently working with the Food and Drug Administration to test counter-radiation drugs on bone marrow, gut, and lung chips. The next step is bolder yet: a $37 million DARPA-funded plan to link various chips in what amounts to a whole-human-body-on-a-chip.

3D Counterfeiting

In February a series of 3D-printer patents will expire, clearing the way for a flood of cheap professional machines. That's good news for small manufacturing shops but bad news for companies that make highly desirable—and easily copied—objects such as jewelry and sunglasses. Rogue websites like thepiratebay.sx have already added sections to distribute the printing specs, pulled from pirated blueprints or 3D scans of the originals, for such objects. While designers wrestle with how to insert digital rights management codes in 3D-printer files, some experts predict that by 2018 companies will be losing $100 billion a year in intellectual property. The more immediate issue for everyone, though, is figuring out exactly what is protected by copyright (for creative work) and patent (for useful devices). A screw? No big deal. A replacement part for your car? That's trickier.

Semiautonomous Driving

We still have a way to go before cars pilot themselves to the office, but, little by little, technology is now assisting us with the driving. Ford, Audi, and Volvo have designed vehicles that can park themselves. GM's hands-free Super Cruise control will adjust the steering and the brakes to keep your car at a safe remove from the SUV ahead. The Direct Adaptive Steering system in Nissan's Infiniti Q50 uses circuits to sidestep the rack-and-pinion system, speeding up the response time between steering wheel and tires, maybe even paving the way for vehicles operated by joysticks. Cool? You bet, but advances like these also have the potential to make for safer roads, fewer bottlenecks, and, yes, hands idle enough for you to enjoy a donut with your coffee.

Bioprinting

Imagine taking an inkjet printer, filling it with bio-ink made from stem cells, and printing a new kidney for anyone who needs a transplant. The process is a little more complicated than that, of course, particularly when working with multiple cell types or tubular structures, but after years of research that incredible scenario is almost within our reach. San Diego–based Organovo, which unveiled the first commercial 3D bioprinter in 2009, expects to release functional human liver tissue in 2014 that drug companies can use for medical research. Scientists are also working on printable bone and wound-healing materials. It's still a big leap from there to a fully transplantable organ, but take heart: Now you don't have to be a science-fiction fan to believe it's possible.

Active Cyber Defense

Even the walls of classified military networks are vulnerable to hackers. So in 2012 DARPA launched an Active Cyber Defense program. Think preemptive strikes. Proponents aim to identify and disarm would-be attackers with, say, fake data. The startup CrowdStrike is bringing the same aggressive approach to the private sector, promising to use big-data analytics to monitor real-time activity in client networks. Some advocates are even pushing for changes in privacy laws for permission to hack into an adversary's network to retrieve or destroy stolen data.

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9 Top Tech Myths Debunked

Jailbreaking and Rooting are Illegal

Smartphone owners can jailbreak their iOS devices and root their Android phones to get around the restrictions of manufacturers and carriers. But is this ominous-sounding practice legal? The word itself—jailbreaking—makes it sound like the process is illegal. In actuality, it's more complicated: The technique both is and isn't illegal under U.S. copyright law. Last fall, when the Library of Congress updated the rules for 2013 through late 2015, it decided that you can legally jailbreak your smartphone (though you'll void your Apple warranty) but not necessarily your tablet, because, the Library says, "tablets" is an ill-defined category. What is definitely not legal is unlocking your phone. The Library's ruling prohibits tinkering with your device so it works on different cellular networks without your wireless carrier's permission, which is subject to as much as $2500 in fines, or even jail time. Legal questions aside, is jailbreaking worth the trouble? Nearly 7 million iOS users who cracked their devices using the latest jailbreak since it became available in February say yes. And as for the riskiness of jailbreaking an iPad, just consider: Despite the law, absolutely no one has (yet) been prosecuted or fined.

More Bars Equals Better Mobile Service

If your phone has five bars, you'll get the best wireless service performance, right? Well, no. Those bars indicate your signal strength to the nearest cellular tower, but if many other people are also connected to that tower, you can still experience dropped calls and poor speed due to the congestion caused by networks' limited capacities. For instance, it might take about a square block of people in Manhattan to overload a single cell tower, whereas in Wyoming, it would take a population spread over 15 square miles. And even if you capture some of that service, speed varies by network provider. According to wireless-coverage mapper RootMetrics, AT&T has the fastest LTE data network, followed by Verizon and then Sprint.

LED and LCD are Different Screen Technologies

This is more of a technicality, but "LED" screen is a bit of a misnomer. It is not a new kind of display, as some retailers might assert, but rather a type of LCD television. The only difference between a so-called LED TV and a regular LCD TV is the type of backlighting: Though both rely on LEDs to form the picture, LED displays also use light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to illuminate the display, whereas non-LED sets use fluorescent backlights. So which is better? That depends. LED-backlit LCDs come in two configurations: Some have a full array of LEDs behind the LCD, others have LEDs just on the edges. Edge-lit TVs tend to be thinner, while full LED-backlit screens can do tricks such as "local dimming" to increase contrast in dark sections of an image. Regardless, all LED sets have two distinct advantages over conventional fluorescent LCDs and plasmas: They are more energy-efficient, and they last longer. If you plan to keep your set for a while, go with LED.

It Doesn't Matter if You Keep Your Laptop Always Plugged In

Speaking of life spans, you might also have come across advice saying that if you have a lithium-ion battery in your laptop, you don't ever have to completely drain it the way you needed to with older nickel-metal-hydride laptop batteries. This is false if you want to get the most out of your battery. For one thing, if your plugged-in laptop gets hot while you use it and the battery is charged fully, all you're doing is exposing the battery to heat, which will make it age more quickly. Besides heat, the other extreme that shortens Li-ion battery life is high voltage—like the high voltage maintained by a charger—after the battery is full. Keep the battery just below a full charge by keeping it active, and when you do charge it for a long time, do it when the computer is off to avoid blasting it with extra heat. You need to be careful about charging only if your computer doesn't include battery-management software, as many made by Lenovo, Sony, and Samsung do. For computers that don't automatically optimize charging, the advice on how often to charge and discharge their batteries varies. Apple recommends getting battery juices flowing by using the computer unplugged from time to time—though not too many times, since Li-ion batteries have limited charge cycles (each cycle is from complete charge to complete discharge). No matter what, though, Li-ion batteries will eventually lose capacity; expect to get about two to three years of good charges.

Macs Don't Get Viruses

In the raging Mac-versus-PC debate you'll usually find at least one Apple loyalist claiming Macs are immune to viruses. Apple itself has contributed to this myth (remember that "I'm a Mac" ad in which the poor PC guy gets sick with a virus while Mac is unconcerned?), but after the Flashback virus crisis last summer, which affected around 250,000 Macs, Apple quietly changed its "virus-free" sales pitch on its Mac page from "It doesn't get PC viruses" to "It helps keep you safe." It's a subtle but significant change. While it's true PCs get more viruses and malware than Macs, that's mostly because attackers target the more widely used Windows operating system. Now that Apple computers are growing rapidly in market share, however, Mac users may need to be more cautious. So, do you need an antivirus program for OS X? Probably, though don't assume it will keep you entirely safe. No antivirus program will catch 100 percent of all viruses, and some antivirus software can cripple your system's performance. The first and foremost defense against malware is safe browsing habits. Still, unobtrusive software such as the free Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac Home Edition can give you peace of mind by protecting your not-so-invincible system.

The More megapixels a Camera Has, the Better the Pictures

New 18-megapixel cameras might make your 6-megapixel seem obsolete, but the emphasis on megapixels in the camera world reflects marketing spin as much as technological superiority. It's true that more megapixels means more detail in larger photos. That detail, though, depends not just on pixel count but also on the camera's sensor: The larger it is, the more light data it can pick up, and the more detailed your images will be. If you add megapixels without increasing the overall size of the sensor, you reduce the amount of light reaching each pixel. Your point-and-shoot camera may have 20 megapixels, but if its sensor is the size of a pinhead, your photos won't look so great. According to camera reviewer and self-proclaimed "Forrest Gump of photography" Ken Rockwell, "10 megapixels is more than enough for anything," and even just 6 will probably be good enough (most new cameras tend to come with at least 12). The goal, Rockwell says, is a sharp photo, not tons of pixels.

To Get the Best HD Experience, You Need Expensive Cables

You can spend $3 on an HDMI cable, or you can spend $2000. But when it comes to these cables, the you-get-what-you-pay-for maxim doesn't apply. Premium-cable manufacturers would have you believe gold-plated connectors and "high-density triple-layer metal-to-metal shielding" give you a better signal and, therefore, the ultimate picture and audio performance. But generic—and cheaper—cables will deliver the same picture and audio quality. Signal over an HDMI cable is digital; it either comes through or it doesn't. There are, however, some cases in which spending more is a good idea. For example, if you need a very long cable (more than 6 feet), skip the cheapest ones, since poorly made cables are more likely to impede the signal at longer distances. For the record, unless you don't care at all where your money goes, no one should spend two grand on a cable.

Emptying the Trash or Recycle Bin Permanently Deletes Files

It would make sense that deleting a file would actually delete it. But when you empty the Recycle Bin (Windows) or Trash (Mac), the data aren't erased, only the links to the complete files are. A computer told to delete a file won't actually remove it but will instead deallocate the space it takes up on the hard drive, opening that space up to be written again. That means bits of information still remain, and any snooping hacker could piece them together to rebuild what you thought was gone forever. To truly and permanently delete files, you have to instruct your computer to go a step beyond emptying the Trash or Recycle Bin. On a Mac, choose "secure empty Trash"; on a PC, you have to work in the command-line interface of Sdelete, a free program that allows you to totally wipe either all free space or only specific files. There is an upside: If you accidentally delete something and must get it back, in theory, you can.

Private/Incognito Browsing Protects Your Privacy

Here's one last downer. The "private browsing" feature of your browser isn't as private as it suggests. The setting tells your browser not to do its usual job of saving information about which pages you've visited or about what you've typed into forms. It does not, however, keep you anonymous. Websites, ad trackers, and your ISP can still record your visits, and files you download will still remain on your computer or mobile device. Even worse, a 2010 study by Stanford University found that some browser add-ons store information about your browsing even while in private mode. If you're wondering what you can do to stay anonymous online, you'll need to use a proxy server, such as Tor, so you appear to be somewhere and someone else as you surf, or a VPN, which can secure and encrypt your information. Also, get in the habit of clearing your browser's cookies cache and history every week or so.

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Car Mirror Bluetooth Dashcam GPS Speed Detector has more on-board tech than the Space Shuttle

OK so look, we’re cool with miniaturization. We understand that if there’s a way the factory can cram something extra into a product, they will. Because, well because they can.

But surely they’re running out of space? This Car Mirror Bluetooth Dashcam GPS Speed Detector is a case in point. Back in the day, peeps, a rear view mirror was just that. A mirror for looking behind you to make sure Smokey wasn’t on your tail, or that hulking Kenworth semi was friendly. But now?

Well it seems these things now have to ship with a full suite of software, a 5 inch screen, a front facing dash camera and rear facing wireless parking cam, and to top it off a full blown speed radar detector. And if you’ve got a spare bit of compatible satnav software lying around, you can install it on the device and you’ll also have a GPS navigation system running on your mirror. Yes mirror. Sigh.

The thing features a 500Mhz processor (remember when that was the most powerful desktop computer you could buy?), 128MB RAM, an FM transmitter, microSD slot, Bluetooth 2.1, microphone and speaker, MStar GPS chipset, an 800×600 capacitive touchscreen and two f 2.8mm video cameras.

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NASA’s cold fusion tech could put a nuclear reactor in every home, car, and plane

The cold fusion dream lives on: NASA is developing cheap, clean, low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) technology that could eventually see cars, planes, and homes powered by small, safe nuclear reactors.
When we think of nuclear power, there are usually just two options: fission and fusion. Fission, which creates huge amounts of heat by splitting larger atoms into smaller atoms, is what currently powers every nuclear reactor on Earth. Fusion is the opposite, creating vast amounts of energy by fusing atoms of hydrogen together, but we’re still many years away from large-scale, commercial fusion reactors.

LENR is absolutely nothing like either fission or fusion. Where fission and fusion are underpinned by strong nuclear force, LENR harnesses power from weak nuclear force — but capturing this energy is difficult. So far, NASA’s best effort involves a nickel lattice and hydrogen ions. The hydrogen ions are sucked into the nickel lattice, and then the lattice is oscillated at a very high frequency (between 5 and 30 terahertz). This oscillation excites the nickel’s electrons, which are forced into the hydrogen ions (protons), forming slow-moving neutrons. The nickel immediately absorbs these neutrons, making it unstable. To regain its stability, the nickel strips a neutron of its electron so that it becomes a proton — a reaction that turns the nickel into copper and creates a lot of energy in the process.

The key to LENR’s cleanliness and safety seems to be the slow-moving neutrons. Whereas fission creates fast neutrons (neutrons with energies over 1 megaelectron volt), LENR utilizes neutrons with an energy below 1eV — less than a millionth of the energy of a fast neutron. Whereas fast neutrons create one hell of a mess when they collide with the nuclei of other atoms, LENR’s slow neutrons don’t generate ionizing radiation or radioactive waste. It is because of this sedate gentility that LENR lends itself very well to vehicular and at-home nuclear reactors that provide both heat and electricity.
According to NASA, 1% of the world’s nickel production could meet the world’s energy needs, at a quarter of the cost of coal. NASA also mentions, almost as an aside, that the lattice could be formed of carbon instead of nickel, with the nuclear reaction turning carbon into nitrogen. “You’re not sequestering carbon, you’re totally removing carbon from the system,” says Joseph Zawodny, a NASA scientist involved with the work on LENR.

So why don’t we have LENR reactors yet? Just like fusion, it is proving hard to build a LENR system that produces more energy than the energy required to begin the reaction. In this case, NASA says that the 5-30THz frequency required to oscillate the nickel lattice is hard to efficiently produce. As we’ve reported over the last couple of years, though, strong advances are being made in the generation and control of terahertz radiation. Other labs outside of NASA are working on cold fusion and LENR, too: “Several labs have blown up studying LENR and windows have melted,” says NASA scientist Dennis Bushnell, proving that “when the conditions are ‘right’ prodigious amounts of energy can be produced and released.”
We think it’s still fairly safe to say that the immediate future of power generation, and meeting humanity’s burgeoning energy needs, lies in fission and fusion. But who knows: With LENR, maybe there’s hope for cold fusion yet.

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