Open-Source CT Scanner

This article first appeared in MAKE Volume 38, on page 112.
By far the most interesting class I’ve ever taken was advanced brain imaging in graduate school, which introduced me to what I believe are some of the most amazing machines humans have ever built: the magnetic resonance imager (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) scanner. These are volumetric 3D scanners that allow you to scan not only the surface of an object, but also see inside that object. And I really wanted to build one.
These scanners are fantastically expensive, and usually only found in hospitals. As a Canadian living abroad, I recently had my first real contact with the U.S. health care system, and it was a very uncomfortable experience. Without belaboring the point, universal health care is very important to me. It’s something that many consider a basic human right, and most people in the developed world, except for the U.S., have access to it. After seeing the cost for my CT scan, I decided it was time to try to build an open source desktop CT scanner for small objects, and to do it for much less than the cost of a single scan.

Mechanically, this prototype scanner is very similar to the first generation of CT scanners, and it’s almost entirely laser cut. An object is placed on a moving table that goes through the center of a rotating ring. Inside the ring there’s a very low intensity x-ray source, and on the other side a detector. An Arduino Uno with a custom shield controls four stepper motors and interfaces with the detector. For safety I’m using a radioisotope x-ray source that’s barely above background levels, so every photon counts, and I’ve only just recalibrated the detector. I’m expecting the first images with a few more weekends of work.
I confess that I laughed and started to feel like Doc Brown when the “only” thing my CT scanner needed was something radioactive, but with luck projects like this will mature into desktop scanners for the maker community, and perhaps even medical scanners for impoverished countries, where they’re most needed.

Bungie fires Halo composer Martin O'Donnell (update)

Halo series and Destiny composer Marty O'Donnell was fired by Bungie's board of directors last week, the composer revealed via his personal Twitter account tonight.
O'Donnell composed music for Oni, as well as the Myth and Halo series. He joined Bungie in 2000 as audio director after working on Myth 2, Oni and Halo: Combat Evolved's scores on a contract basis with his company TotalAudio. During his time at Bungie, O'Donnell directed voice talent and sound design for the Halo trilogy, Halo: Reach and Halo 3: ODST. He often collaborated with TotalAudio partner and now in-house audio design lead at Bungie, Mike Salvatori.
O'Donnell, Salvatori and Paul McCartney recently worked together to create the soundtrack for Bungie's new shooter, Destiny. O'Donnell said McCartney was drawn to the project by an interest in interactive music. The three also produced a symphonic and choral prequel suite for Destiny called Music of the Spheres, which premiered during game music concert performance Video Games Live last July.

The early draft of the score, O'Donnell explained, was largely written without any idea of what the game looked or played like. When he was finished, he jokingly said, "I dumped 50 minutes of music on [the development team and said 'Deal with that. Make a game as good as that."

He said his goal as audio director for Bungie, working on Destiny, was that every sound in the game would be created from scratch.
We have reached out to Bungie for comment and clarification.
Update: Titled "There are those who said this day would never come...," Bungie posted the following statement regarding O'Donnell's termination on its official website:
"For more than a decade, Marty O'Donnell filled our worlds with unforgettable sounds and soundtracks, and left an indelible mark on our fans. Today, as friends, we say goodbye. We know that wherever his journey takes him, he will always have a bright and hopeful future.
We wish him luck in all his future endeavors."

How to Help Rebuild the Iconic GoldenEye in Half-Life 2

What comes to mind when you think of the first great multiplayer shooter? Call of Duty? Halo? Counter-Strike? Fantastic games to be sure, but for many, the champ always will be GoldenEye 007, the 1997 Nintendo 64 adaptation of the 1995 James Bond flick starring Pierce Brosnan. And here’s your chance to enjoy a classic with a modern twist.
Beyond hosting a well designed and executed single-player campaign—one relatively faithful to the movie, too—GoldenEye 007 was significant for introducing multiplayer shooters to console gamers. Before GoldenEye, the options were slim. PC gaming wasn’t nearly as popular as it is today (and the internet even less so), and the N64 was the first console with four controller ports. GoldenEye was among the first games to take advantage of them.
Still, time has not been kind to the first king of console split-screen. Aside from its rudimentary 3D graphics, the game’s wonky single-stick control scheme is exceptionally difficult for anyone accustomed to the modern twin-stick system of games like Halo and Call of Duty. So how do players looking for an N64 nostalgia-hit get their fix?
Mods.
For nearly a decade, Half-Life 2 has provided a modding platform for myriad projects. GoldenEye: Source is a total-conversion mod that aims to rebuild the original GoldenEye 007 multiplayer in Half-Life 2′s Source engine. With the mod, players can once again experience everything from the tight, twisted corridors of “The Library” to the calamitous bullet-spray of the RC-P90—with updated graphics, a re-imagined soundtrack, and, of course, a modernized control scheme.
The project has been around for quite a while itself — the team originally began work in 2005, later launching out of the beta phase in 2009. Since then, it has continued to gain support, with more than a dozen professional and hobbyist game designers lending their efforts. And now, you can help too.
Last week, one of the project’s managing directors — known by the handle “killermonkey” — announced that GoldenEye: Source was officially going open source. The current version (v 4.2.4) of the entire project’s code base has been uploaded to GitHub, and is available for anyone — anyone with the know-how, at least — to download and assist working on.
The current goals of the project lie mainly in bug-fixing, as a multitude erupted from the transition to Source SDK 2013, the most recent version of Valve’s Source engine and developer tools. Major revisions of code and feature additions are still being handled by the official GoldenEye: Source team, but modders interested in helping out can use GitHub’s pull requests and issue tracker to assist with bug fixing and issue reporting.

Sony to sell all its Square Enix shares

Sony announced it's selling its entire stake of 9.52 million shares in Square Enix, with the PlayStation company booking a gain of 4.8 billion yen (around $47 million) in the current fiscal quarter. At the time of writing, Sony is the third-largest shareholder in Square Enix with an sizable equity of 8.2 percent.

Sony says it's agreed to sell the shares to SMBC Nikko Securities Inc, one of Japan's leading financial security companies; the sale price will be disclosed tomorrow. We'll learn more of the reasons behind the sale when Sony announces its full-year financial results on May 14.

While the PS4 is doing better than expected, Sony's financial troubles of late have seen the company enact numerous changes to its operations. Following the sale of its Tokyo offices and several thousands of layoffs, earlier this year Sony announced plans to sell off its Vaio PC business and overhaul its TV arm into its own subsidiary. Those moves will result in a further 5,000 layoffs over the next year or so.

Richard Garriott wants you to port this proto-RPG teletype game

Richard Garriott kicked off a contest today to challenge gamers to port his first game, a 1977 role playing title built for a teletype machine, into something that can be played inside his upcoming latest game: Shroud of the Avatar.

Two winners and two runners-up will receive backer pledges for Shroud of the Avatar. All entries, though, will remain the property of Garriott.
In 1977, Garriott's father told his son that if he could create a working role-playing game, he would split the cost of an Apple 2 computer with him.
"That's what motivated me to make sure D&D #1 worked so well," Garriott said.
The game was created to run on the teletype machine at Clear Creek High School, in Houston, Texas, he said.
"No teacher in the school knew how to use it," he said. "So I had the classroom to myself one period every day. It counted toward my foreign language credit."
Garriott programmed the machine by typing the basic code into a terminal onto paper tape spools. Those strips of paper were then read into a second terminal that was connected to an offsite PDP-11, a 16-bit minicomputer, via a modem.
"When the game started it would print out a 10-by-10 grid around you the player," he said. "When you typed E for east, you would have to wait for 20 seconds for it to reprint the new map around you.
"So you had to think about the real-time mental state of the player and feed them at a pace to keep them engaged. When you are doing these things on paper, it's much more methodical in the sense of strategy. Instead of reacting impulsively, you're already forced to wait 20 seconds, spending another five examining your surroundings is not a big sacrifice."
The game used ASCII characters as graphics for the dungeon, the player, and the treasures and monsters a player encountered in the game. Asterisks were the walls, spaces were corridors and rooms, $ denoted a chest, U an up ladder, D a downladder, for instance.
"It still looked like tile graphics," Garriott said.
The end result was one of the first computer role-playing games ever created. It was also the game that both launched Garriott's eventual career and the Ultima series.
Over the proceeding years, Garriott went on to create D&D #2 through D&D #28. He later rewrote D&D #28 for the Apple 2 as D&D #28b. That game was later packaged in ziplock bags and sold in a computer store as Akalabeth.
Garriott said he came up with the idea for the contest after visiting a large barn he owns which is packed with all of the design documents he used to create every game he ever made.
"I have one copy of ever game in there," he said. "One version of ever piece of marketing material for all of those games for all of the countries it was published in."
But that original game, the very first of his role-playing titles, hasn't been played since the retirement of the teletype in 1979, when Garriott made the final printout of the game's code. And that's why Garriott is doing this contest.
"The goal would be to see it run again, to resurrect this game that is arguable amongst the first," he said.
The contest will reward the creator of the best Unity port of his game and the best plug-in browser port. The winners will receive a Citizen level pledge reward, valued at $550, for Shroud of the Avatar. The runners-up in both types will receive a $165 Collector level pledge. You can grab the original code and check out the full rules and deadline over on the game's website.
Garriott said he's excited to see how people set about porting the game, though he doubts anyone will fall back on the original mechanic of requiring players to print out the map every time a move is made.
"That would be great and a little funny too," he said. "It would force you back into the old school ways of playing it, but it would also chew on paper in a way that exceeded even the original."
 

Five Car Technologies That Will Forever Change How We Drive

Ten years from now, cars may still look and drive just like the cars on the road today. But in between that time and now, we’re likely to see some major changes in automotive technologies being integrated into 2015 models and beyond, redefining the relationship between car and driver beyond hand on wheel, foot to pedal… even relieving us of these current driving responsibilities.

BMW i8 LCD Key Fob
BMW’s future-forward i8 sports car is already poised to be something special, with a checklist of fuel efficiency and connectivity technologies engineered from the ground up. But it might be one of the smallest components accompanying the i8 which may turn the most heads. If these leaked images are to be believed, BMW is upgrading the standard remote key fob into a data display unit connected to the i8′s recharging and fuel system, alongside macro-programming for comfort and access use, upgrading car keys from purely mechanical to informational.

Audi Online Traffic Light Information System
As long as there are drivers, there will always be those who risk speeding through signal lights. Audi’s icon-based Online Traffic Light Information System purports to take the guesswork out of the equation for would-be Speed Racers, serving up seemingly precognitive data for drivers to hit green lights more regularly while connected wirelessly with a city’s traffic-light network system. There’s even an engine-revving inducing countdown feature displayed while drivers are waiting at a red light, making getting stuck at a red light a little more bearable.

Microsoft Windows in the Car / Apple CarPlay
Both technology giants are vying for the hearts and minds of our biggest mobile device: our cars. Drivers will soon say goodbye to clunky and slow user GUIs with menus turning slower than grandparents looking through restaurant options. Swipe, touch, and tap is quickly being adopted as the same tactile language of vehicle technology as that used already with phones, tablets, and computers, though simplified for safer driver use, with many of the same recognizable apps and services powering car console’s as our mobile screens. Questions and concerns about road safety still remain (and rightfully so, in this age of texting while driving). For now, most drivers would likely be content with more responsive menu systems for basic cabin and audio system controls.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIPBKNwARac
LED Laser Headlights
First there was Xenon bulbs, then LED headlamp technology, and now cars might soon be lighting up the roads with super bright and energy efficient laser beams of white light. Three times brighter than already bright LED headlights, yet 30% more energy efficient, BMW’s laser headlamp will boost hi-beam distances up to 1,800 feet while relying upon LEDs for regular driving. Concerns about blinding oncoming traffic is being addressed with a camera system which automatically adjusts beam power and direction downward, sensitive enough to recognize cyclists. Also, check out these laser beam lights debuted at CES by Audi.
Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Systems
V2V stands for “Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Systems”. Get used to hearing about it, as nothing will change the public’s relationship with cars in the next few years more than this developing technology. Improving human reflexes and hazard assessment by allowing nearby vehicles to exchange speed and distance information at up to 10 times per second, haptic feedback notifies drivers through the car seat about collision-avoidance and other nearby roadside hazards. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration predicts integrating V2V will reduce annual car accidents by 80%, with goals for mandatory manufacturer integration planned for 2017.

Facebook Seeks to Clean Up News Feeds by Targeting Like-Baiting Posts

In an effort to tidy up users' News Feeds, Facebook is targeting brand Pages that explicitly ask for likes, shares, and comments to promote their posts.

When brands post to Facebook, it's very common, and almost expected at this point, for them to ask for likes, shares, and comments to promote their products. This is a well-known practice, and it's been going on for years. But the social media giant is planning to crack down on these calls to action, calling the practice "like-baiting." Now, if a business or website asks for likes, shares, or comments, it will be much less likely that Facebook will show the post in users' News Feeds.
Facebook has been severely limiting exposure for businesses that are trying to reach out to their customer base through Facebook organically. Asking for likes, shares, and comments meant that those organic posts or images that businesses were sharing could potentially reach a larger audience without the company having to pay for it. After all, whenever someone shares something it can show up on a Facebook page and in the News Feeds of friends. But while Facebook says it is responding to user requests, the fact is that now if businesses want exposure on the social network, they are going to have to pay for it.
According to Facebook, users report that like-baiting stories are on average 15 percent less relevant than other stories that have a similar number of likes, comments, and shares. So the social network is cracking down on the practice because it feels it leads to a less enjoyable user experience, as it edges out content people do care about.
Facebook does say that their goal is not to impact pages that are "genuinely trying to encourage discussion among their fans," but rather to focus on Pages that frequently post explicitly asking for likes, comments, and shares.
The company is also looking at reducing the amount of recirculated content that's visible on the News Feed. It's not that uncommon for some viral content to go viral again every few months, and Facebook finds that this repeated visibility is less relevant to the users and users are more likely to complain about it. Additionally, some Pages share the same content over and over again, such as sharing the same news story for their business or the same event information. In their testing, Facebook found that reducing this frequently recirculated content causes users to hide 10 percent fewer stories from Pages overall.
Facebook is also adding tools to catch spammy links that are being shared through the site. Often, posts use inaccurate language or formatting in order to confuse users into clicking a link. However, how Facebook is planning to flag these links could end up labeling great content as being spammy simply because it's not being shared or liked often. So to prevent this from happening, it's likely that businesses will encourage users to share and like their posts, despite Facebook changing their algorithm to catch exactly this behavior.
All in all, Facebook is clearly trying to reduce the footprint of businesses in Pages even further, to encourage those businesses to advertise to get the reach they need.
So what should business marketers do in Pages do in order to not get caught up in the new changes?
Don't Ask for Likes, Comments, or Shares
Unfortunately this is currently a habit for a lot of businesses, but doing so will reduce that content's exposure significantly. However, expect to see companies searching for new, creative ways to encourage likes and shares without explicitly asking for them.
Don't Repeatedly Share the Same Content
This can be hard for marketers or businesses trying to promote an event. It may require them to create new content, even if they want to promote the same thing, so that it won't be seen as sharing the same content over and over.
Don't Use Misleading Links
Ensure links go to exactly the content that marketers and businesses are saying they will. Facebook specifically cites Pages that are sending users to a page full of ads instead of a photo gallery, for instance. So make sure links are not spamming and are accurate.