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Cooking with Watson: Indian turmeric paella
'Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson' is a collaboration between IBM and the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. Once a week, as part of an ongoing series, we'll be preparing one recipe from the book until we've made all of them. Wish us luck. So, here's a question: Is it still a paella if it doesn't involve olive oil or saffron, and doesn't generally represent the flavors of Spain? At what point does it become a pilaf or, since this particular recipe is brimming with spices from the Indian subcontinent, a biryani? Really the only discernible quality that this Indian turmeric paella has that screams "paella" is the presence of socarrat -- the toasty, browned rice that sits at the bottom of the pan. Oh, and the presentation. And so, here we go again, Watson and his human interpreters from the Institute for Culinary education take a seemingly familiar dish and, with a little computer-generated nudge, create something wholly unfamiliar.
Cooking with Watson: Austrian asparagus and pigs' feet croquettes
'Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson' is a collaboration between IBM and the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. Once a week, as part of an ongoing series, we'll be preparing one recipe from the book until we've made all of them. Wish us luck. "Austrian grilled asparagus." That should be simple. Let's see... Pigs' feet? Sous vide? Croquettes? Mustard "foam"? Damn it Watson! Well, if the carrot pearls from last week weren't sufficiently weird for you, fear not. This week's recipe is the sort of thing that would send most casual cooks running for the hills. And to make matters worse, the title lulls you into a false sense of security. The first two steps in this recipe, that's theoretically for grilled asparagus, are to brine two pigs' feet overnight, then to cook them in a 162-degree water bath (sous vide) for 24 hours. Yes, 24 hours. Between the eight-plus-hour brine and the 24-hour cook, this is already the most time-intensive dish I've ever made.
Cooking with Watson: Turkish Bruschetta with carrot pearls
'Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson' is a collaboration between IBM and the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. Once a week, as part of an ongoing series, we'll be preparing one recipe from the book until we've made all of them. Wish us luck. Let's get a couple of things straight: Watson, the IBM supercomputer famous for spanking Ken Jennings on Jeopardy, did not really write these recipes in the purest sense of the word. Rather, IBM trained it by feeding it a giant database of recipes, studies on what flavors and smells people find pleasant and information on the chemical compounds found inside ingredients. Using this, Watson is able to suggest dishes with surprising flavor combinations. From there the computer passes the baton to a human being, in this case James Briscione and Michael Laiskonis from the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), who use the ingredient lists and style suggestions as inspiration for new dishes.
DHS seeks bids for access to license-plate tracking systems
The Department of Homeland Security wants access to data about when and where suspects have traveled, and it could get that information from a license-plate tracking system. According to The Washington Post, the DHS first sought a private company that gathers location data in February last year. But it soon pulled back because of the backlash from advocates of privacy and civil liberties who pointed out that access to a commercial tracking system would allow field officers to pinpoint the location of millions of citizens who commute everyday. Now, a year later, the DHS is back with a new solicitation – that this time it says can both meet its goal and protect citizen privacy.
Trove introduces the Ice Sage
It's that time of year again when the days are shorter, the weather is colder, and a disproportionate number of songs playing everywhere you go relate to ice crystals covering the ground. (Unless you live south of the equator, in which case you're just wondering what we're on about.) To accompany the winter weather, voxelbox MMORPG Trove has introduced its newest class, the Ice Sage. You can probably guess what that one's all about; the name is not exactly a mystery. Ice Sages chill enemies with their basic attacks and avoid slipping on icy surfaces. They can also summon icicles, absorb attacks, and create a deep freeze in their immediate area to freeze and damage enemies. If that sounds cooler than being cool, you can pick the class up in the in-game store now.
Silk Road 2.0 was just the first: police seize more Tor-shielded darknet sites
Yesterday's takeover of Silk Road 2.0 was just the tip of the iceberg apparently, as the FBI and European law enforcement organizations have announced a "global action" against similar darknet marketplaces. "Operation Onymous" resulted in 17 arrests total, the removal of 410 hidden services that allegedly offered illegal drugs and weapons for sale, as well as the seizure of more than $1 million Bitcoins in, $250,000 in cash and drugs. Troels Oerting of the European Cybercrime Center told Wired that his staff hadn't had time to assemble a full list of takedowns, but it includes Cloud 9, Hydra, Pandora, Cannabis Road and more. The Telegraph reports six Britons accused of helping run Silk Road 2.0 are among those arrested, while the BBC has word of two arrested in Ireland. Like both iterations of Silk Road, the sites were using Tor to anonymize access, but were still exposed. Details of how the service was pierced have not been revealed (we have an idea), but The Wall Street Journal quotes Eurojust spokesman Ulf Bergstrom saying "You're not anonymous anymore when you're using Tor."
NASA's Messenger captures first photos of ice on Mercury
It's easy to assume, that finding ice on the first rock from the sun, would be like finding a snowflake in a furnace (it can reach 800 degrees Fahrenheit after all). But, you'd be wrong. And NASA's long had radar and photographic proof (just nothing in the visual range) that water ice did exist on the planet. Now, we have the first optical evidence -- after pictures snapped by the NASA's Messenger spacecraft managed to snag enough sunlight inside the 70 mile-wide, permanently-shadowed Prokofiev crater on the north pole of the planet for a photo. The images might not look like much to the untrained eye (though still wonderfully otherworldly), but they provide those that know with enough information to suggest that the ice deposits are relatively recent (and not from when the planet was being formed). No doubt, more revelations will come as the images get scrutinized fruther, and Messenger continues the good work.
Japan is building a huge 'ice wall' to block Fukushima's fallout water
No one can blame Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) for the earthquake and tsunami that wrecked its Fukushima nuclear plant in 2011. Since then, however, the company has been accused of having a "weak sense of crisis" in responding to the accident's many knock-on effects. This includes the leakage of contaminated groundwater that passes under the damaged plant and into the Pacific Ocean -- something that is happening right now at a rate of 400 tons per day. This week, after more than a year of back and forth, TEPCO has finally managed to get the Japanese nuclear regulator's approval to create a massive wall of frozen soil to hold the groundwater back.
Scientists prove dwarf planet Ceres contains water
Scientists have long thought that the dwarf planet Ceres might hold some form of water, but they've only had indirect evidence at best -- until today, that is. An ESA-led team has used signal fluctiations to confirm that the asteroid belt planetoid is spewing water vapor from two points on its surface, creating both ice and a rudimentary atmosphere. It isn't clear what's producing the vapor, although researchers believe that geysers, thawing or icy volcanoes may be responsible. Whatever is behind Ceres' behavior, the discovery could improve our understanding of how water reached Earth. We'll get a much clearer picture of what's happening in early 2015, when NASA's Dawn probe swings by to map the mini-planet's water activity in greater detail. [Image credit: ESA/ATG medialab/Küppers et al.]
Google Glass wearer removed from AMC theater under suspicion of recording
Despite the many uses for Google Glass, this new class of wearable devices is inevitably meeting some growing pains (pictured above is 7'3" Indiana Pacers center Roy Hibbert, a Glass wearer who has experienced some growing pains) as the world gets used to them. One wearer successfully fought a traffic ticket recently and now another early adopter suffered the "embarrassing" experience of being removed from a movie theater for bringing the accessory. In a story originally posted on The Gadgeteer, the unnamed individual stopped by the AMC Easton 30 in Columbus to watch Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, wearing Google Glass attached to his prescription lenses, something he says he'd done before without any trouble. Where the story takes a twist however, is when officers moved in an hour into the movie, yanked the Glass from his face, and brought the man and his wife to separate interrogation rooms for over three hours. Apparently unfamiliar with the device and already on alert for piracy at that theater -- most pirates using this technique bring camouflaged hand-held cameras -- it took quite some time before they eventually (with the owner's permission/at the owner's insistence) plugged Glass into a computer, reviewed the stored images and determined he had not been recording the movie. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Khaalid Wells confirmed the January 18th incident calling it a "brief interview." AMC released a statement to Engadget (available in full after the break) which says theater owners contact the MPAA when suspected recording takes place, in this case prompting an investigation and resulting in contact with Homeland Security. AMC feels like wearing devices with recording capabilities "is not appropriate at the movie theatre," a position that will be hard to hold as movie viewers arrive with their Glass, Gear and other camera-equipped wearable tech, and sticks out here because they were attached to prescription lenses. The initial rollout of camera-equipped phones led to similar awkward interactions, although being arrested certainly takes things to another level. The wearer reports his Glass was returned, undamaged, but at last update he'd received only a few free movie passes for his troubles.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: Apple's new headquarters, rocket-powered bike and bees that detect cancer
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. A flying saucer is set to land in Silicon Valley! This week, the Cupertino City Council gave a big thumbs-up to Apple's new $5 billion headquarters. The circular building is designed by Foster + Partners, and it looks like a futuristic wonderland for tech workers. Lego bricks are mighty popular in the design world, but can you imagine an entire house that snaps together? That's the basic idea behind Eric Schimelpfening's WikiHouse, which can be customized to fit a user's needs and created using a 3D printer. In other green architecture news, starchitect Zaha Hadid shared images of her proposed Qatar World Cup stadium, which will use passive design to cool itself. Architect Sou Fujimoto released plans for a complex in Doha that uses the mist from interior waterfalls to provide relief from the region's intense heat. The world-famous Swedish Ice Hotel is one structure that doesn't need to worry about keeping cool. Quite the contrary: Swedish law requires that the owners of the structure, which is made from ice, install fire alarms to comply with national building regulations.
EVE Online plans major mining and industry revamp for Odyssey
Details of EVE Online's exploration-focused Odyssey expansion have been floating around since PAX East, but it seems the company saved some pretty huge changes to reveal at this year's tenth anniversary Fanfest. In two massive devblogs accompanying today's EVE Online Keynote speech, CCP Fozzie discussed plans to overhaul EVE's entire resource distribution system. Everything from asteroid and ice mining to moon harvesting and nullsec industry will be affected by the revamp. Miners will find their ice belts have been moved from static locations to hidden exploration sites that have to be scanned down, but to compensate it will now mine at double the normal rate. Normal asteroid mining in lowsec and nullsec is also due for a buff with the addition of large quantities of low-end minerals. Hidden asteroid belts will no longer need to be probed down but can be quickly located with the new Discovery scanner, and to top it off there'll even be new high quality ore sites that can only be found in prime areas of nullsec. Outpost industrial infrastructure is due for an update with new purchaseable upgrade paths expanding factory, office and research lab capabilities to the same level as fully-fledged empire stations. Lastly, moon minerals are finally being addressed with a redistribution of rare materials and several new reaction paths to bypass current bottlenecks. A lot of value will be moved from Technetium back to rarer materials like Thulium, Neodymium, Promethium and Dysprosium, and new supplies of all four will be distributed randomly into moons across the universe. Re-scan all of your nearby moons when Odyssey lands because it could suddenly be worth a fortune! Whether you're a die-hard fan of internet spaceships or just a gawker on the sidelines, EVE Fanfest is the EVE Online event of the year (and the key source of new DUST 514 and World of Darkness scoops!). Follow Massively's Brendan Drain as he reports back on this year's Fanfest starpower, scheming, and spoilers from exotic Reykjavik, Iceland.
ACLU: court document shows how invasive cell phone searches can be
The American Civil Liberties Union stumbled upon a document submitted to the court during a drug investigation headed up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The document lists the data that ICE officials were able to pull off an iPhone, and it's striking how much information that one small device can hold. According to the report, ICE snagged the iPhone from a suspect's bedroom during a drug bust and subjected the phone to one data extraction session. During that sweep, officials were able to obtain the following personal information: call activity for 104 calls phone book directory information for 18 contacts stored voicemails and text messages photos and videos details from 37 installed apps eight different passwords 659 geolocation points, including 227 cell towers and 403 WiFi networks with which the cell phone had previously connected. As pointed out by the ACLU, analysis of this data provides information on every nook and cranny of the suspect's life and is a wealth of information that was not available to police before smartphones became prevalent. Warrants were obtained in this particular investigation, but the ACLU notes that warrants aren't always needed to search a cell phone. And with portable cell phone forensic machines more readily available to law enforcement, the contents of your phone are only a keypress away. In the end the best way to keep your phone away from prying eyes (government, thieves or curious friends) is to use a strong passcode and disk encryption if that option is available on your phone. You can read more about cell phone searches and this case in the ACLU article.
Opera hits 300 million users, promptly moves to WebKit
Opera is celebrating the news that it's hit the 300 million monthly user milestone with a big announcement. It's going to dump Presto, the current Opera rendering engine, in favor of WebKit. The company gave the impression that it's exhausted after swimming against the tide of an internet designed to work for Chrome and Safari for so long. Instead, the firm will devote its considerable resources toward "innovation and polish" on its browser products. Opera's already hinted at its future by demonstrating Ice, its WebKit-based experiment for iOS and Android devices, which it'll be showing off in more detail at MWC later this month.
Opera's WebKit-based Ice web browser coming to Android and iOS in February
Opera has been in the mobile web browser game for some time now, but it looks like it's set to soon shake things up considerably. As detailed in an internal video obtained by Pocket-lint, the company has been working on an all-new mobile browser dubbed "Ice," which ditches the company's own Presto engine in favor of WebKit (bringing it in line with the likes of Safari and Chrome). What's more, Ice looks to fully embrace a touch interface optimized for smartphones and tablets, with gestures replacing buttons and icons on a central home screen replacing tabs. You can apparently look for it to land on both Android and iOS sometime in February, with a new desktop version of Opera set to follow in March (details on it are comparatively light). Head on past the break for some highlights from the video.
Ice Computer demos modular xPC with working 9.7-inch xPad tablet, we go hands-on at CES (video)
We've seen plenty of Ice Computer at various trade shows in recent years, most recently at Computex in Taipei, but the company has yet to ship a product. Under most circumstances, we'd label its flagship xPC as vaporware, but there does seem to be progress, which gives us some hope that the modular computer solution will finally be available sometime this year. The company is targeting a ship date in late summer, with a production version expected at Computex in June. In the meantime, Ice Computer reps have made the trip out to CES to demo the first functional xPad tablet, which is one of several platforms for the xPC, a smartphone-sized device that contains a complete computer and slides into desktop or home theater components (xDock), laptops (xTop) and the xPad we saw today. The 9.7-inch tablet is a less polished version of the ASUS PadFone Station, but it's expected to be very affordable, at just $200 (plus another $200 for the xPC). There's a 1,366 x 768-pixel capacitive touchscreen, a front-facing camera and a battery that Ice expects will keep the duo running for six to eight hours. All of the other components fit within the xPC, which slides into the xPad's rear. The version we saw today was running Windows 8, and the experience seemed solid enough, though it's clear that the company's prototypes still have a long way to go before they're ready for a final nod of approval. We're excited to see a working prototype, though, and we've been promised a more complete version this summer in Taipei. In the meantime, though, you can check out the current xPC and xPad prototypes in our hands-on after the break.
Alpine introduces INE-W927-HD AV and navigation system, Pandora, Sirius and more on a 7-inch touchscreen
Got car, need entertainment. Enter Alpine's INE-W927HD mouthful of a new audio, video and navigation system. The device comes with a 7-inch touchscreen, built-in HD Radio receiver plus Bluetooth. There's also access to the popular Pandora and SiriusXM services, as well as playlist support for iOS and Android audio streaming. Alpine's heritage in this space comes through in the form of an "iPersonalize" system that tunes the sound up based on various factors including vehicle type, number of speakers and even upholstery material. How much for such options? that's $1,200 when it launches sometime this month.
Pioneer breaks the road trip monotony with three new in-dash multimedia DVD receivers at CES
While Pioneer may have just announced a bevy of navigation-based goodies, it's also introduced some straight-up in-car entertainment. Three new multimedia and DVD receivers to be precise. The AVH-X6500DVD, AVH-X7500BT and AVH-X8500BHS feature MIXTRAX virtual DJ software, AppRadio mode, USB and smartphone connectivity plus internet radio, high resolution touch screens and Pandora. The AVH-X8500BHS and AVH-X7500BT benefit from "enhanced" iPhone 5 connectivity, and Bluetooth, with the former also having support for SiriusXM and HD Radio. To navigate your way around, all three have motorised 7-inch WVGA displays, along with EQ gesture control and detachable faces. For $450 you can get the AVH-X6500DVD, $500 will snag you the AVH-X7500BT, while you'll need to lay down $650 if you fancy a bit of the AVH-X8500BHS, all of which are available in March. Tune in to the full PR after the break.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency planning to test BB10
Thorsten Heins' tearful late-night calls to the head of the US Customs and Enforcement Agency (ICE) seems to have done the trick. While the well-named bureau won't confirm if BlackBerry 10 has convinced it to abandon its well-publicized switch to the iPhone, it has admitted that it'll test RIM's new offering when it launches next year. Perhaps those forgetful G-Persons had their heads turned when they saw how deeply Evernote was baked into the new operating system.
NASA finds new evidence of ice in Mercury's polar craters
While the Mars Curiosity rover has garnered most of our space-gazing attention lately, another of NASA's spacecraft has made quite a momentous discovery on an entirely different planet. The Messenger space probe (which stands for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging) has found new evidence for ice on Mercury, which is surprising given its proximity to the sun. Thanks to a subtly tilted axis, many of the planet's polar craters never see the light of day, and can dip to temperatures as low as minus 370 Fahrenheit. Indeed, scientists claim there's 100 billion to 1 trillion tons of ice on Mercury -- David Lawrence, a Messenger participating scientist, said that "if spread over an area the size of Washington, D.C., [the ice] would be more than two miles thick." The Messenger, which only started orbiting Mercury last year, helped confirm scientists' conclusions by capturing detailed images of the planet's surface, measuring the craters' reflectivity and utilizing a neutron spectrometer that discovered the presence of excess hydrogen. Scientists even found slightly warmer regions on Mercury that might be temperate enough for, well, a colony: "People joke about it, but it's not so crazy, really," said David A. Paige, a UCLA professor quoted in the New York Times. Of course, this is assuming we don't boil or freeze to death on our way there. For more information about the find, check out the press release below.