Investigators can’t make you give up your work phone’s passcode

American law enforcement might have free rein to make you unlock a phone using your fingerprint, but personal passcodes? Nope. A Pennsylvania-based federal judge has ruled that the Securities and Exchange Commission can’t make two former Capital One employees hand over the passcodes for their old work-supplied smartphones to prove that they’re guilty of insider trading. While the US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment doesn’t protect people from self-incrimination using corporate records, both devices were locked with codes that only their owners knew. That’s personal information still covered by constitutional protections, according to the court.

The judge also didn’t buy the SEC’s attempt to lean on a Fifth Amendment exemption which allows searches when investigators know where evidence is. The Commission merely had a hunch that there might be proof of wrongdoing on the phones, the court found, not a clear connection indication that something was hidden. As it stands, there’s no way to show that the accused remember their passcodes — they could be lying, or they could simply have forgotten.

The ruling could set an important precedent in an era where many phones have a mixture of personal and professional data, especially those using office-friendly tech like Android for Work. The decision draws an effective line in the sand: just because you’re using a company-issued phone doesn’t mean that everything involving that phone is up for grabs. This won’t save you if your employer has the passcode on file, but it could prevent officials from obtaining data that isn’t actually relevant to a case.

[Image credit: Getty Images]

Source: Wall Street Journal

Hospital makerspace lets nurses build their own tools

Makerspaces are great for bringing your gadget ideas to life, but they’re not usually much help to nurses who may want to invent (or improvise) tools needed to take care of their patients. That’s where the University of Texas’ new, permanent MakerHealth Space might just save the day. Nurses and other workers at the school’s John Sealy Hospital now have a dedicated area with 3D printers, laser cutters and other equipment that lets them create or modify devices (say, a pill bottle sensor) without leaving work. The facility sterilizes and reviews every product before it’s put into service, so you shouldn’t have to worry about a risky tool ruining your hospital stay.

This isn’t the first makerspace anywhere in a hospital — MakerNurse has a few mobile stations. It’s the first permanent medical location in the US, however, and it raises the possibility that more businesses could benefit from on-site makerspaces. Rather than wait for your company to buy or develop the gadgets you need to tackle a problem, you could quickly whip up a solution that gets the job done.

Source: MakerNurse

NASA preps Orion heat shield for its first flight aboard the SLS

The Orion capsule’s heat shield survived its test flight back in December just fine. In fact, Orion Program Manager Mark Kirasich says it “met every expectation” during reentry, enduring temperatures that reached 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Thanks to the data NASA gathered from the same test, though, its engineers were able to come to the conclusion that the heat shield used for that flight won’t make it through Orion’s first mission with the Space Launch System scheduled to happen in 2018. The multi-purpose vehicle will travel farther during the Exploration Mission 1 three years from now. As such, it’s bound to encounter colder temperatures and to travel faster — and hence, face even worse heat — upon reentry.

The engineers’ answer to the problem is to redesign the fiberglass honeycomb layer placed on top of the heat shield’s titanium/carbon fiber body to make it even stronger. That covering (comprised of 320,000 cells) is meant to disintegrate upon reentry, but it should still be tough enough to protect the capsule and its future passengers on their way home from deep space missions. The good news is that the heat shield isn’t one solid structure, and different parts can be manufactured in different places at once. This method won’t only save NASA some precious, precious money, but will also shorten the heat shield’s manufacturing process by two months.

[Image credit: Lockheed Martin]

Source: NASA

Moto X Pure International Giveaway

Welcome to the Sunday Giveaway, the place where we giveaway a new Android phone or tablet each and every Sunday.

A big congratulations to last week’s winner of the Galaxy Note 5 Giveaway: Nishant P. from India.

This week we are giving away (1) Moto X Pure Unlocked Smartphone!

See also: Motorola Moto X Pure Edition (Moto X Style) review8558539

Join Now!

Moto X Pure (2015) International Giveaway
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Terms & Conditions

• The giveaway is an international giveaway (Except when we can not ship to your Country.)
• If we can not ship to your country, you will be compensated with an online gift card of equal MSRP value to the prize.
• We are not responsible for lost shipments.
• You must be age of majority in your Country of residence.
• We are not responsible for any duties, import taxes that you may incur.
• Only 1 entry per person, do not enter multiple email addresses. We will verify all winners and if we detect multiple email addresses by the same person you will not be eligible to win.
• We reserve all rights to make any changes to this giveaway.
• This giveaway is operated by Android Authority.
• The prize will ship when it is available to purchase.

Elon Musk hopes to conquer electric car range limits by 2020

Range anxiety may keep you from driving an electric car right now, but Tesla chief Elon Musk doesn’t expect that to be a problem for very long. When grilled about driving distances in a Danish interview, Musk revealed that he expects the battery technology to improve at a rate of 5 to 10 percent per year, which could lead to some massive range gains in a relatively short space of time. The CEO notes that people have already driven the Model S up to 500 miles on a charge at slow speeds, and that this could extend to over 600 miles as soon as 2016, and a whopping 746 miles by 2020. While it’s doubtful that you’d get these figures blazing down the highway, Treehugger‘s back-of-the-napkin math suggests that this should still lead to a realistic range of 382 to 483 miles. That’s enough for many city-to-city trips, and it doesn’t account for lighter materials or other efficiency refinements.

Musk is also unsurprisingly bullish on the notion of self-driving cars. He believes that there will be fully autonomous vehicles (that is, capable of driving anywhere) around 2018. That’s a surprisingly short span of time, especially when prototype designs still have plenty of flaws. However, the executive doesn’t see robotic vehicles flooding the roads right away. He believes that cautious regulators won’t permit self-driving cars on their roads for another 1 to 3 years after that, and some regions will be more welcoming of autonomy than others. You may well get a hands-free ride around town in the next few years — just don’t mark a date on your calendar.

[Image credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images]

Via: Treehugger, SlashGear

Source: Sahil Malik (YouTube)