Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes "Former Google employee, Gmail creator, and FriendFeed founder Paul Buchheit has come right out and said what many people are thinking (or hoping for). On his FriendFeed page, Buchheit made a post titled 'Prediction: ChromeOS will be killed next year (or "merged" with Android).' In it, he bluntly says that Google's netbook-centric Chrome OS is as good as dead. 'Yeah, I was thinking, "is this too obvious to even state?", but then I see people taking ChromeOS seriously, and Google is even shipping devices for some reason,' Buchheit writes. 'Because ChromeOS has no purpose that isn't better served by Android (perhaps with a few mods to support a non-touch display).'"

Several readers including carpenter37 let us know that FriendFeed has sold itself to Facebook. Nobody who knows is talking about the terms of the deal. Here is Facebook's announcement, and here is FriendFeed's, which elaborates: "As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle." FriendFeed was founded in 2007 by four ex-Googlers, including Paul Buchheit — the engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google's "Don't be evil" motto — and Bret Taylor, a former group product manager who launched Google Maps.

fyc writes "A new study from NASA's Ames Research Center has suggested that the collision of Earth and a Mars-sized object that created the Moon may also have resulted in the creation of tiny moonlets on Earth's Lagrangian points. 'Once captured, the Trojan satellites likely remained in their orbits for up to 100 million years, Lissauer and co-author John Chambers of the Carnegie Institution of Washington say. Then, gravitational tugs from the planets would have triggered changes in the Earth's orbit, ultimately causing the moons to become unmoored and drift away or crash into the Moon or Earth.'" The longest-lasting of such Trojans could have persisted for a billion years. They would have been a few tens of kilometers in diameter and would have appeared in the sky like bright stars.

fyc brings us some information from Universe Today about what happened to Soyuz TMA-11 when it re-entered the atmosphere late last week. Reports indicate that a failure of explosive bolts to separate the Soyuz modules delayed the re-entry and oriented the capsule so the hatch was taking most of the heat, rather than the heat shields. CNN reports that the crew was in 'severe danger.' They experienced forces of up to 8.2 gravities. NASA officials have voiced their approval of how Russia handled the crisis. They expect to rely heavily on Soyuz spacecraft once the shuttles are retired in 2010.

fyc writes "It seems that the educational MMORPG NASA's proposing will no longer have a budget of $3 million. Instead, any prospective development partner is being asked to create and maintain the MMORPG for free under a 'non-reimbursable Space Act Agreement'. It won't be a one-sided agreement, though. From NASA's RFP: 'In exchange for a collaborator's investment to create and manage a NASA-based MMO game for fun and to enhance STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics], NASA will consider negotiating brand placement, limited exclusivity and other opportunities.'"