Model Airplanes

Last year, on October 21, your digital video recorder — or at least a DVR like yours — knocked Twitter off the internet. Someone used your DVR, along with millions of insecure webcams, routers, and other connected devices, to launch an attack that started a chain reaction, resulting in Twitter, Reddit, Netflix, and many sites going off the internet. You probably didn’t realize that your DVR had that kind of power. But it does.

All computers are hackable. This has as much to do with the computer market as it does with the technologies. We prefer our software full of features and inexpensive, at the expense of security and reliability. That your computer can affect the security of Twitter is a market failure. The industry is filled with market failures that, until now, have been largely ignorable. As computers continue to permeate our homes, cars, businesses, these market failures will no longer be tolerable. Our only solution will be regulation, and that regulation will be foisted on us by a government desperate to “do something” in the face of disaster.

In this article I want to outline the problems, both technical and political, and point to some regulatory solutions. Regulation might be a dirty word in today’s political climate, but security is the exception to our small-government bias. And as the threats posed by computers become greater and more catastrophic, regulation will be inevitable. So now’s the time to start thinking about it.

We also need to reverse the

Article source: http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/01/the-internet-of-things-dangerous-future-bruce-schneier.html

South Carolina, a state that turned out heavily in support of Donald Trump for president, could be one of the states hardest hit by a potential trade war with Mexico and Canada if the new president succeeds in a push to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement as he’s said he would, experts say.

Trump’s tough talk on trade ramped up during his transition period and escalated during his first week in office with his administration floating a proposal Thursday to place a 20 percent tax on Mexican goods entering the United States, which administration officials later said was only one option.

A move like that would almost certainly draw tariffs on U.S. goods shipped to Mexico in retribution, said Scott Baier, interim chair of Clemson University’s economics department and an adviser on international trade issues under President George W. Bush.

And that would damage one of South Carolina’s burgeoning sectors – exports to Mexico and Canada, which had grown 83 percent in the last 10 years to nearly $6.2 billion in 2015, equal to one-fifth

Article source: http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/2017/01/27/experts-trumps-trade-proposals-could-hit-south-carolina-hard/97160982/

No one wants the middle seat on an airplane. But the Colorado-based startup Molon Labe Designs may change your mind with an airline seat row that offers significantly more space for flyers—even those in the middle seat. It’s called the Side-Slip Seat.

Designed for flights three hours and under, each row of seats features a staggered design. The middle seat is set slightly lower and behind the aisle and window seats, a discrepancy that makes the backrest of the middle seat just under three inches wider than the standard 18 inches. This is an easy sell for flyers—even though there’s no extra legroom (that’s controlled by the airline), the middle seat is more spacious, and the staggered design means that there’s no need to fight over elbow room.

Great for flyers, but what about cash-strapped airlines whose business relies on cramming as many people onto a plane as possible? That’s where the second key design comes in. Because the middle seat is offset, the aisle seat can literally slide on top of it to make the aisle wider during boarding, easing the traffic jam that always occurs as people put bags in the overhead compartment and get settled. This means that airplanes could be boarded faster.

“We often joke we’re a stress reduction company. The entire design came out of my stress at flying,” says Molon Labe Designs founder Hank Scott. “But no one is going to buy a seat because it just makes

Article source: https://www.fastcodesign.com/3067612/wanderlust/this-redesigned-airplane-row-will-make-you-want-the-middle-seat

St. Francis of Assisi School kindergarten teacher Erika Zambo turned to a student and said, “I like your bones.” To another student, she asked, “Can I have your bones?”

The students took part in “The Structure and Function of the Human Body,” one of 24 interdisciplinary modules of Project Lead the Way-Launch that bring learning to life. The program empowers students to adopt a design-thinking mindset through activities, projects and problems that build upon each other.

Each Project Lead the Way-Launch module for kindergarten through fifth grade engages students in cross-disciplinary activities that spark a lifelong love of learning and build knowledge and skills in areas such as computer science, engineering and biomedical science. The modules help students to develop skills such as problem solving, critical and creative thinking, communication, collaboration and perseverance.

In the classroom, Zambo drew several life-size figures on paper taped to the floor. Teams of four or five students drew various essential parts of the body.

Article source: http://stlouisreview.com/article/2017-01-26/partnerships-help