An anonymous reader writes "Indie Kickstarter-funded short HENRi stars a sci-fi legend in a role very much like HAL-9000 — with a twist. Wired writes: 'If it sounds a little bit like 2001: The Later Years, then here's the real twist: HENRi, the ship/body, is voiced Dr. Dave Bowman himself, Keir Dullea.' In a making-of video for the film, Dullea says, 'I guess you could say the character of HENRi was a sane version of HAL.' The film itself utilizes a mixture of the old and the new — combining live-action sequences with puppetry, quarter-scale miniatures, and modern CGI. The official trailer has just been released."

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An anonymous reader writes "Indie Kickstarter-funded short HENRi stars a sci-fi legend in a role very much like HAL-9000 — with a twist. Wired writes: 'If it sounds a little bit like 2001: The Later Years, then here's the real twist: HENRi, the ship/body, is voiced Dr. Dave Bowman himself, Keir Dullea.' In a making-of video for the film, Dullea says, 'I guess you could say the character of HENRi was a sane version of HAL.' The film itself utilizes a mixture of the old and the new — combining live-action sequences with puppetry, quarter-scale miniatures, and modern CGI. The official trailer has just been released."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Indie Kickstarter-funded short HENRi stars a sci-fi legend in a role very much like HAL-9000 — with a twist. Wired writes: 'If it sounds a little bit like 2001: The Later Years, then here's the real twist: HENRi, the ship/body, is voiced Dr. Dave Bowman himself, Keir Dullea.' In a making-of video for the film, Dullea says, 'I guess you could say the character of HENRi was a sane version of HAL.' The film itself utilizes a mixture of the old and the new — combining live-action sequences with puppetry, quarter-scale miniatures, and modern CGI. The official trailer has just been released."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Indie Kickstarter-funded short HENRi stars a sci-fi legend in a role very much like HAL-9000 — with a twist. Wired writes: 'If it sounds a little bit like 2001: The Later Years, then here's the real twist: HENRi, the ship/body, is voiced Dr. Dave Bowman himself, Keir Dullea.' In a making-of video for the film, Dullea says, 'I guess you could say the character of HENRi was a sane version of HAL.' The film itself utilizes a mixture of the old and the new — combining live-action sequences with puppetry, quarter-scale miniatures, and modern CGI. The official trailer has just been released."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The new Copyright Alert System, a.k.a. the 'Six Strikes' policy, went into effect on Monday. Comcast and Verizon activated it today. Ars Technica asked them and other participating ISPs to see the copyright alerts that will be sent to customers who have been identified as infringing. Comcast was the only one to grant their request, saying that a "small number" of the alerts have already been sent out. The alerts will be served to users in the form of in-browser popups. They explain what triggered the alert and ask the user to sign in and confirm they received the alert. (Not admitting guilt, but at least closing off the legal defense of "I didn't know.") The article points out that the alerts also reference an email sent to the Comcast email address associated with the account, something many users not be aware of. The first two notices are just notices. Alert #5 indicates a "Mitigation Measure" is about to be applied, and that users will be required to call Comcast's Security Assurance group and to be lectured on copyright infringement. The article outlines some of the CAS's failings, such as being unable to detect infringement through a VPN, and disregarding fair use. Comcast said, "We will never use account termination as a mitigation measure under the CAS. We have designed the pop-up browser alerts not to interfere with any essential services obtained over the Internet." Comcast also assures subscribers that their privacy is being protected, but obvious that's only to a point. According to TorrentFreak, "Comcast can be asked to hand over IP-addresses of persistent infringers, and the ISP acknowledges that copyright holders can then obtain a subpoena to reveal the personal details of the account holder for legal action."

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Dawn Sumner helps interpret the visual data that Curiosity rover sees with its cameras. In this interview, she reveals why Curiosity s first images of Mount Sharp made her cry.

An anonymous reader writes "While speaking at the TED Conference in California earlier today, Sergey Brin seemingly tried to set the stage for a world where using Google Glass is as normal as using a smartphone. What's more, Brin went so far as to say that using smartphones is 'emasculating.' Brin said that smartphone users often seclude themselves in their own private virtual worlds. 'Is this the way you're meant to interact with other people,' Brin asked. Are people in the future destined to communicate via just walking around, looking down, and 'rubbing a featureless piece of glass,' Brin asked rhetorically. 'It's kind of emasculating. Is this what you're meant to do with your body?' Is wearing futuristic glasses any better?" Another reader sends in an article that also muses on our psychological connection to our devices. Or, as he puts it, the "increasingly weird and perhaps overly intimate relationship we have with our gadgets; the fist we touch when awake, the last at night. Our minds have become bookended by glass."

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Starch-based IV fluids used by the NHS to treat seriously ill patients are causing unnecessary deaths, according to a new Cochrane systematic review by researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

The walls of the body's major artery -- the aorta -- are already thickened in babies born to mums who are overweight or obese, finds a small study.

Every one degree fall in outside air temperature during the winter corresponds to a drop in ambulance response time of more than one percent, reveals new research.

A new systematic review has raised doubts as to the effectiveness of "red flag" indicators at both identifying and excluding cancer in patients with lower back pain. The authors of the review concluded that most individual red flags were poor at diagnosing spinal malignancies and call for further studies focused on combinations of red flags.

Protection of marine areas from fishing increases density and biomass of fish and invertebrates (such as lobster and scallops), finds a systematic review. The success of a protected area was also dependent on its size and on how it was managed, however even partial protection provides significant ecological benefits.

A research team from Sweden has developed a technique for quick, simple and cost-effective mapping of worldwide urban growth and its environmental impact.

The perennial stress-buster – a deep breath – could become stress-detector, claims a team of researchers.

An anonymous reader writes "MIT has posted a letter to campus newspaper The Tech providing a timeline of last weekend's 'gunman' hoax. On Saturday morning, Cambridge, MA police were contacted via Internet relay by a tipster who claimed that a someone wearing armor and carrying a 'really big gun' was in Building 7 at MIT (the Massachusetts Ave. entrance to the Infinite Corridor) and was heading towards the office of MIT President Rafael Reif. The call continued for 18 minutes, with the caller eventually claiming that the gunman was seeking to avenge the suicide of Aaron Swartz, who was being prosecuting for alleged illegal downloads of millions of journal articles using MIT's computer network. The caller also identified the gunman an MIT staff member, who has since been questioned by police and cleared. MIT has been criticized for waiting 1.5 hours before sending a campus-wide alert after the call was received."

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Last Thursday, we discussed news that millionaire Dennis Tito was planning a private mission to Mars in 2018, but details were sparse. Now, reader RocketAcademy writes that Tito has provided more information about the tip, and that he intends the mission to be manned: "Dennis Tito, the first citizen space explorer to visit the International Space Station, has created the Inspiration Mars Foundation to raise funds for an even more dramatic mission: a human flyby of the planet Mars. Tito, a former JPL rocket scientist who later founded the investment firm Wilshire Associates, proposes to send two Americans — a man and a woman — on a 501-day roundtrip mission which would launch on January 5, 2018. Technical details of the mission can be found in a feasibility analysis (PDF), which Tito is scheduled to present at the IEEE Aerospace Conference in March. Former NASA flight surgeon Dr. Jonathon Clark, who is developing innovative ways of dealing with radiation exposure during the mission, called the flight 'an Apollo 8 moment for the next generation.'"

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A Google Nexus One, with an Android operating system, is the heart of a 30cm cubesat. The mini satellite was launched from India on February 25th, 2013. The University of Surrey's Surrey Space Centre breaks down the STRaND-1 mission.

An anonymous reader writes "Develop reports on comments from Blake Jorgensen, Electronic Arts' Chief Financial Officer, speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference. As you may have guessed from the name of the conference, the business aspect of EA was the topic. Jorgensen said, 'The next and much bigger piece [of the business] is microtransactions within games. ... We're building into all of our games the ability to pay for things along the way, either to get to a higher level to buy a new character, to buy a truck, a gun, whatever it might be, and consumers are enjoying and embracing that way of the business.' This is particularly distressing given EA's recent implementation of microtransations in Dead Space 3, where you can spend money to improve your weaponry."

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puddingebola writes "The Guardian reports that hackers have been targeting officials from over 20 European governments with a new piece of malware called 'MiniDuke.' 'The cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab, which discovered MiniDuke, said the attackers had servers based in Panama and Turkey – but an examination of the code revealed no further clues about its origin (PDF). Goverments targeted include those of Ireland, Romania, Portugal, Belgium and the Czech Republic. The malware also compromised the computers of a prominent research foundation in Hungary, two thinktanks, and an unnamed healthcare provider in the US.' Eugene Kaspersky says it's an unusual piece of malware because it's reminiscent of attacks from two decades ago. 'I remember this style of malicious programming from the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s. I wonder if these types of malware writers, who have been in hibernation for more than a decade, have suddenly awoken and joined the sophisticated group of threat actors active in the cyber world.' The computers were corrupted through an Adobe PDF attachment to an email."

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Entrepreneur Keller Rinaudo says the Romo, a $150 robot with that needs your iPhone for its head, could finally make home robots ubiquitous. He spoke at the TED conference Tuesday.