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US will test expanded drone use in 10 states
The US government is making good on its promise to expand the use of drones. The Department of Transportation has named the 10 projects that will participate in its Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Pilot Program, and they represent a wide swath of the country. Most of them are municipal or state government bodies, including the cities of Reno and San Diego, Memphis' County Airport Authority and the Transportation Departments for Kansas, North Carolina and North Dakota. However, the rest are notable: the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma will be part of the program, as will the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and Virginia Tech.
Your Facebook check-in won't help North Dakota protestors
There's a new viral message making its way through your Facebook friends' status updates today. The copy-paste chain letter message claims that police in Morton County, North Dakota are using Facebook check-ins to target demonstrators and disrupt protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline, while also calling on everyone to check in at the location "to overwhelm and confuse" law enforcement officials. Unfortunately for everyone at home, the rumor is false and status-update-based activism will do little to actually support the protestors' cause.
Anti-pipeline activists claim Facebook censored their live video
Facebook has long had a tough time walking a fine line when it comes to political material, and the pressure isn't about to let up any time soon. Unicorn Riot maintains that Facebook censored their live stream of a protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, deleting the Livestream.com link shortly before two of its reporters were caught up in a mass arrest. Comments and posts popped up security alerts when they contained the link, and Facebook's debugger insisted that the web address ran afoul of "community standards."
ICYMI: Lightest building material, eco-bikini and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-6370{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-6370, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-6370{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-6370").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: Boeing says it has produced the lightest material structure and the video demonstrates it by balancing a portion of its metal structure on top of a dandelion. A prototype for a swimming suit also acts as a water cleaner, absorbing pollutants with super-hydrophobic carbon-based material. And Makerarm combines everything we love about 3D printers with all kinds of other use cases because its robotic arm can be outfitted with many other tool heads.
North Dakota cops will be first in nation to use weaponized drones
North Dakota's Bill 1328 was supposed to be cut and dry. "In my opinion there should be a nice, red line: drones should not be weaponized. Period," Rep. Rick Becker (R-Bismarck), the bill's original sponsor, told a committee hearing back in March, per The Daily Beast. That was going to happen too, at least until an industry lobbying firm got involved. Now, law enforcement agencies in North Dakota are legally allowed to arm their UAVs with any manner of weapons, so long as they aren't "lethal".
FAA-approved drones report for duty on North Dakota farms
North Dakota will soon get a glimpse of a future where farmers can monitor their crops using small, flying drones. That's because the US Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has given the state the go-ahead to start using its unmanned aerial systems (UAS) test site. It's the first one to become operation among the six commercial UAS testing program sites chosen by Congress in 2013. The state's Department of Commerce will hold two rounds of flight tests using Draganflyer X4ES drones not only to monitor crops, but also to test soil quality. These are relatively small, helicopter-like machines, which measure 36.25 inches in length and width and are equipped with Sony cameras.
Verizon finally introduces iPhone to areas with no AT&T coverage
Up until yesterday, mobile phone customers in vast parts of Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, and Nebraska had no way to get an iPhone. Why? There simply wasn't any AT&T coverage in these areas, so the customers -- who were mostly on Verizon -- had no access to the popular smartphone. The addition of Verizon as a U.S. carrier opened up doors for a lot of potential iPhone owners, and it appears that many formerly iPhone-less Verizon customers are now embracing the Apple mobile phone. According to an AP news report carried in the Huffington Post, many Verizon stores opened early yesterday in flyover country and were greeted by enthusiastic groups of buyers. While crowds weren't huge -- most Verizon store managers chalked that up to the freezing temperatures in most of this part of the country -- the stores reported brisk sales of the iPhone 4 during the day and many expected to run out of stock by the weekend. The AP report cited a 20 year-old woman in Fargo, North Dakota who said her Android-based Verizon phone had been the "next best thing in Fargo." The young woman blew her paycheck on the iPhone and said that she had been waiting "so long" for the iPhone to actually arrive in frigid Fargo. Welcome to the world of iPhone, Fargo!
Sprint losing on-network coverage in parts of Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming
If you're in the magnificent boondocks of North America and you're on Sprint, you're going to have to start to be a little more careful with your voice and data usage -- in fact, if you live in parts of North Dakota, Wyoming, or Montana, you might be forced to consider a carrier change on news that some swaths of on-network footprint are changing to roaming coverage on March 1st. The move is said to be a result of Verizon's divestiture of certain ex-Alltel markets to AT&T, and it means that if you're on Sprint and you use more than 800 voice minutes (or half your plan) in the new roaming areas in a month, the carrier's liable to suspend you; similarly, you won't be able to exceed 300MB of data. Certain device and plan features don't work in roaming areas, either -- Sprint details them on its FAQ page about the change -- so if you live in those parts, you might need to look at moving to greener pastures. [Thanks, Kenneth L.]
Cable One / Hoak Media strike retrans deal, get ABC and NBC back on the air
For Cable One users up in Fargo, North Dakota, you've been dealing without two of your badly-needed locals in high-def for some time now. Thankfully, the torture has come to an end, as both the cable carrier and Hoak Media Corporation have come to terms on a retransmission deal. The exact outlay wasn't disclosed, but Scott Geston, general manager for Cable One, was quoted as saying that it was "beneficial to both parties." At any rate, you folks now have your ABC and NBC back, so you should probably take the opportunity to resume your life as usual.
North Dakota students show off Mars spacesuit prototype
We had assumed that with all the robots being developed for deployment to Mars, the human astronauts would mostly be lounging around inside the comfort of their robot-built habitats and ordering drinks from their robot bartenders, but yesterday's unveiling of a prototype spacesuit for navigating the Martian terrain proves that manned missions might not be as cushy as we anticipated. The 50-pound suit (which they somehow got The Office's Steve Carell to model) was designed by students from five North Dakota colleges in a collaborative project funded by a $100,000 NASA grant, and includes at least three innovative technologies for which patents have been filed. Among the slew of sensors and communications gear designed for the harsh, low-gravity environment are oxygen and carbon dioxide detectors, GPS system, full suite of health monitors, shoulder mounted CCD cam, Bluetooth server to coordinate all the data, and a high-power transmitter for beaming info back to the mothership -- though curiously, there's no mention of an onboard weapons system that would be crucial for encounters with the occasional hostile Martian. Also, as the AP helpfully notes, even with all the research and design that went into this project, the forty-odd students seemed to neglect a key feature of any good full-body suit, which is an "escape hatch" for when the astronauts need to "jettison their waste."[Via futurismic and abc]
