Deal: Pick up the Roxon Waterproof Bluetooth Speaker for 50% off

If you’ve ever tried listening to music while swimming in the pool, you’d know it can be quite the hassle. The last thing you need is for a splash of water to hit your music player while you’re trying to enjoy yourself. So why not invest in a device that will solve that problem? The Roxon Waterproof Bluetooth Speaker will offer you 12 hours of high quality music playback on a single charge, and is currently 50% off in the AA Deals Store.

The Roxon Speaker comes with all of the features we’ve come to expect from other Bluetooth speakers. It has Bluetooth 4.0 wireless connectivity, a built-in mic for hands-free calling, and boasts a 2000mAh battery that will let you listen all day long. And thanks to the BASS boost technology and IPX4 rating, you can listen to super high quality music without worrying about getting the device wet.

The Android Authority Deals Store is currently selling this speaker for just $39, which is a massive 50% off the suggested retail price. If you’re interested, head to the link below.

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White House to announce it’s buying 50,000 police body cams

According to The Hill, President Obama is reportedly set to announce a nationwide body camera program on Monday. This pilot project will purchase 50,000 body-worn police cameras at a cost of $20 million and distribute them to law enforcement agencies in a dozen cities. Over the following two years, that figure will balloon to $75 million as the program expands to additional agencies and police departments.

As Attorney General Loretta Lynch explained in a statement

This body-worn camera pilot program is a vital part of the Justice Department’s comprehensive efforts to equip law enforcement agencies throughout the country with the tools, support and training they need to tackle the 21st century challenges we face. Body-worn cameras hold tremendous promise for enhancing transparency, promoting accountability and advancing public safety for law enforcement officers and the communities they serve.

As such, this proposed federal project will help augment locally-proposed body-cam programs in cities like Baltimore, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The body cam project is part of a larger, $263 million program announced back in December. That larger effort aims to improve police training, expand community outreach and overhaul the distribution of military-grade equipment and vehicles to local agencies over the next three years (sorry Los Angeles Unified School District, that means no more Bearcats for you).

[image credit: Associated Press]

Filed under: Wearables, Internet

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Source: The Hill

Vertical farms, smart ceilings and national pride at the world fair

Expo Milano is a makeshift city studded with spectacular pavilions. In an attempt to outshine each other at the world fair, which opens today, 143 countries brought in their A-list teams of architects, innovators and culinary experts to design their temporary buildings. The UK built a beehive structure that’s straight out of a sci-fi movie. China has an elaborate floating roof. Italy used air-purifying cement for its palazzo. And while the US pavilion isn’t an architectural extravaganza, it’s a didactic display with a giant automated vertical farm that’s the first of its kind and size.

The State Department supports the country’s participation in the world fair in Milan, but it doesn’t fund it. A team including Dorothy Hamilton, founder of the International Culinary Center, James Biber of Biber Architects and the James Beard Foundation raised about $60 million in private donations for the US pavilion. The structure takes up 35,000 square feet of the expo site, which spans a whopping 11.8 million square feet. The site is laid out like ancient Rome, with two wide avenues, Cardo and Decumano, which intersect at a piazza. What makes this year’s event particularly significant is its solution-seeking theme: “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life.” Underneath the flashy displays and shiny facades, the structures are meant to be sustainable solutions for the impending food crisis.

After months of preparation and construction, the pavilions that have now taken shape represent national identities. The American interpretation of a sustainable future is focused on vertical farming. It’s indicative of the country’s emphasis on food security and the need to combat food wastage that amounts to an estimated $165 billion a year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Growing a variety of vegetables locally in soil-less, artificially lit vertical farms is expected to become more viable than dedicating large swaths of land to single-crop farms that are expensive and inefficient.

Biber, the architect of the pavilion, steered clear of the opaque, often tented experiences at historical world expos. Instead, he created a porous pavilion with a 7,200-square-foot green wall on one side and a mesh wall on the other. The plant-filled façade is an active vertical farm that will be harvested every day for the duration of the exhibit from May through October. It’s a prototype with motorized panels that are programmed to open and close for a dynamic waving motion. The crops are systematically planted and spaced like a grid so the pavilion is open and airy at all times.

Unlike conventional vertical farms where greenhouse-style racks of plants are stacked one atop another under LEDs that emulate natural light, the wall on the side of the pavilion is made of ZipGrow towers. It’s a unique vertical plant-growing mechanism that has an in-built irrigation system. It’s also scalable so it maximizes the output in minimum space — these towers can be set up in a kitchen, on a fence or even in a warehouse for personal and communal sharing of produce.

Initially, Susannah Drake, a landscape architect and principal of dlandstudio, who helped shape the vertical farm, was dismissive of the large green wall. It seemed like a trendy, unsustainable idea. But within the context of the theme, “the project had the potential to convey both history of American farming and diet but also a legacy of innovation,” she says. “This new technology enables highly productive farming in an era when acquisition and maintenance of large tracts of land is unattainable for young farmers. The green wall suggests an entrepreneurial approach to farming that is at the heart of what it means to be American.”

While the green exterior alludes to the future of American farming, a “food truck nation” just outside the pavilion showcases the present culinary tastes. A corral of chef-run food trucks brings the country’s street food traditions together — BBQ hamburgers, lobster rolls and even kale salads. Inside the pavilion, Biber’s design evokes the warmth of a quintessential American experience: the boardwalk. “The idea that a street would run through the entire pavilion felt right,” he says. “It touched on the American fascination for the road.” Visitors can stroll on a long, planked pedestrian path that’s made entirely of repurposed wood from Coney Island, which was ravaged by Hurricane Sandy.

Along the way, as the visitors pause to interact with installations or break away to participate in events on the floor below, they’re protected from the searing sun by 10,000 square feet of SmartGlass panels on the roof. The heat-blocking glass technology that’s widely used in luxury cars and aircraft switches between clear and opaque through an automated control system. The roof also doubles as a screen. “Every piece is a pixel,” says Biber. “We can play with it like a piano and program it to be active.” Each one of the 312 panels, with programmed images, patterns and words, are synced to a touchscreen tablet so visitors can manipulate the ceiling. The entire roof requires as little power as six 100W lightbulbs.

Vertical farming isn’t as easy on energy consumption, though. Its viability has been heavily questioned over the last few years. Even so, they’ve been cropping up in labs and dedicated city sites. “Vertical farming will play a role in the energy future. But, not in the way that’s outlined right now,” says Nate Storey, CEO of Bright Agrotech, the Wyoming-based company that created the ZipGrow towers. “When people hear vertical farms, they think of a $6 trillion skyscraper producing food that can easily be produced in a field 50 miles away. In that context, it makes zero sense.”

Proponents like Storey believe there are energy-efficient ways to bring consumers close to the produce. Biber sees that potential too, but he isn’t entirely convinced yet. “As an architect, I think the economic climate for certain things doesn’t exist early on,” he says. “Technology makes it cheaper and then it becomes the only reasonable thing to do. So it may be that the economics get to the point that transportation of food gets so expensive that growing it locally makes sense. I’m just not sure yet.”

Storey, on the other hand, believes vertical farm walls like the one at the Expo are inevitable. “The meaning of the wall in Milan may not be clear for a number of years because modern indoor agriculture is still an industry in its infancy,” he says. “We’re chipping away at the energy problem. Will it be a full-scale replacement for farming? No. But, we’re feeding people and increasing the building’s efficiency. We’re reducing the cost of transportation of food in the urban environments and getting people closer to the source. It’s less romantic than a $6 trillion project, but it’s still meaningful, nonetheless.”

[Image credit: Saverio Lombardi Vallauri]

Filed under: Science

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FBI dumps 5,000 redacted pages on its cellphone-tracking device

It’s no secret that local law enforcement offices around the US are using a tool called Stingray to track cellphone locations without the approval of a judge. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from MuckRock’s Alex Richardson, the FBI released thousands of pages of heavily-redacted documents, emails and more concerning the project, including one titled “Cellphone Tracking for Dummies.” The super secret Stingray device is provided to local authorities by the FBI, creating fake cell towers that force nearby handsets to connect to it — even those belonging to folks other than a suspect. And as you might expect, in addition to tracking, it also reveals the identity of the phone’s owner. Included in the collection is loads of correspondence between the Bureau, Boeing, the Harris Corporation and local law enforcement. Those two middle companies, by the way, are manufacturers of the tech.

Many of the pages are nearly blank, but despite not offering much on the surface, those who’ve fought for any shred of info on the program say it’s a big victory. For instance, there’s the massive volume of PowerPoint slides and other materials related to training so how big the project is. These indicate that not only was the FBI training a lot of agents to use the device, but that it was also passing on its knowledge to state and local departments around the US. Rather than divulge any info on Stingray in court, the agency forces local law enforcement to drop cases that would require them to reveal how the system is used to collect evidence. What’s more, the use of the cellphone-tracking tech without a warrant was already ruled unconstitutional in a few states.

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[Image credit: Kent Nishimura/The Denver Post via Getty Images]

Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Mobile

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Via: Motherboard

Source: Muckrock

Verizon awards 1GB bonus data to prepaid customers who opt for auto pay

Verizon has announced that they are launching a special bonus for prepaid customers to entice them to enroll in auto pay. Verizon is providing an additional 1GB of data to customers who sign up for auto pay. The additional block of data will be available after the first successful auto pay is made and according to Verizon will continue on a monthly basis as long as the customer stays enrolled. Verizon has extended the offer to their current customers who are already enrolled in auto pay.

Verizon offers a couple prepaid plans. For $45 per month users can get 1 GB of data, so this new offer will double the amount of data they have available. Users could also get a 2.5 GB per month plan for $60 and with this latest bonus, they would have access to 3.5 GB of data per month.

If you are a Verizon prepaid customer or may be thinking about signing up, hit the source link for more information on this latest deal and how to get a prepaid plan.

source: Verizon

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