Templer421 - Slashdot User

Submission + - How Big Tech Is Going After Your Health Care (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Templer421 on Tuesday December 26, 2017 @10:33PM

Templer421 writes: When Daniel Poston, a second-year medical student in Manhattan, opened the App Store on his iPhone a couple of weeks ago, he was astonished to see an app for a new heart study prominently featured.

People often learn about new research studies through in-person conversations with their doctors. But not only did this study, run by Stanford University, use a smartphone to recruit consumers, it was financed by Apple. And it involved using an app on the Apple Watch to try to identify irregular heart rhythms.

Intrigued, Mr. Poston, who already owned an Apple Watch, registered for the heart study right away. Then he took to Twitter to encourage others to do likewise — suggesting that it was part of a breakthrough in health care.

“It’s not inconceivable, by the time I graduate from medical school,” Mr. Poston said, “that the entire practice of medicine can be revolutionized by technology.”

Submission + - Pentagon Turns to High-Speed Traders to Fortify Markets Against Cyberattack (wsj.com)

Submitted by Templer421 on Sunday October 15, 2017 @03:30PM

Templer421 writes: Dozens of high-speed traders and others from Wall Street are helping the Pentagon study how hackers could unleash chaos in the U.S. financial system.

The Department of Defense’s research arm over the past year and a half has consulted executives at high-frequency trading firms and quantitative hedge funds, and people from exchanges and other financial companies, participants in the discussions said. Officials described the effort as an early-stage pilot project aimed at identifying market vulnerabilities.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, began the initiative before the revelations of attacks on Equifax Inc. and the Securities and Exchange Commission brought public scrutiny of risks to U.S. market infrastructure.

Submission + - Honolulu targets 'smartphone zombies' with crosswalk ban. (reuters.com)

Submitted by Templer421 on Saturday July 29, 2017 @03:24PM

Templer421 writes: (Reuters) — A ban on pedestrians looking at mobile phones or texting while crossing the street will take effect in Hawaii's largest city in late October, as Honolulu becomes the first major U.S. city to pass legislation aimed at reducing injuries and deaths from "distracted walking."

The ban comes as cities around the world grapple with how to protect phone-obsessed "smartphone zombies" from injuring themselves by stepping into traffic or running into stationary objects.

Submission + - Solar Energy's Dirty Little Secret, Discarded solar panels. (nationalreview.com)

Submitted by Templer421 on Thursday June 29, 2017 @03:08AM

Templer421 writes: Discarded solar panels are piling up all over the world, and they represent a major threat to the environment. A new study by Environmental Progress (EP) warns that toxic waste from used solar panels now poses a global environmental threat. The Berkeley-based group found that solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear-power plants. Discarded solar panels, which contain dangerous elements such as lead, chromium, and cadmium, are piling up around the world, and there’s been little done to mitigate their potential danger to the environment.

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