Slashdot Mirror

First time accepted submitter Parham90 writes "After the Iranian post-election events that led to massive riots and break-outs through the world, the Iranian government started blocking all social websites, including Facebook, Youtube, Orkut, MySpace and Twitter. The Iranians, however, started using VPN (virtual private network) connections to bypass censorship. Since Thursday, September 30, 2011, all VPN ports have however been blocked, in the first attempt to start what the Iranian government calls the 'National Internet.'"

Local ID10T writes with this excerpt from The Blaze: "In a case explicitly decided to set a precedent, the California Appellate court has determined police officers can rifle through your cellphone during a traffic violation stop. ... Florida and Georgia are among the states that give no protection to a phone during a search. In particular, Florida law treats a smartphone as a 'container' for the purposes of a search, similar to say a cardboard box open on the passenger seat, despite the thousands of personal emails, contacts, and photos a phone can carry stretching back years. But after initially striking down cell phone snooping, California has now joined the list of states that allow cops to go through your phone without a warrant." Interesting additional commentary, too, from UCSD law professor Shaun Martin.

Stirling Newberry writes with word that Dan Shechtman of Israel's Technion has won the Nobel prize in chemistry for his discovery of quasicrystals, and provides a short description of why quasicrystals are exciting: "Quasicrystals fill space completely, but do not repeat, even though they show self-similar patterns, the way pi has order, but doesn't repeat. That is, they tessellate in an ordered way, but do not have repeating cells. In art, Girih tiles showed the essential property of being able to cover an infinite space, without repeating. In mathematics, Hao Wang came up with a set of tiles that any Turing Machine could be represented by, and conjectured that they would eventually always repeat. He turned out to be wrong, and over the next decades, tiles that did not repeat, but showed order, were discovered, most famously, though not first, by Penrose. Physically, when x-rays diffract, that is are scattered, from a crystal, they form a discrete lattice. Quasicrystals also have an ordered diffraction pattern, and it tiles the way ordered non-repeating tiles do. Quasicrystal patterns were known before Shechtman labelled them. So why care? Because crystals have only certain symmetries, and that determines their physical properties. Quasicrystals can have different symmetries, and do not bind regularly, and so different physical properties – which means new kinds of materials. Some examples: highly ductile steel, and, in something that is a bit of a by-word among people who study them, cooking utensils."

brindafella writes "Thirteen years ago, two teams of astronomers and physicists independently made the same stark discovery: Not only is the universe expanding like a vast inflating balloon, but its expansion is speeding up. The two teams have now been recognized with the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. Half of the prize will go to Saul Perlmutter of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, who led the Supernova Cosmology Project. The other half will be shared by Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, who led the High-z Supernova Search Team, and Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, who worked on High-z. In essence, they proved that Einstein's 'biggest mistake' (the cosmological constant, to create a 'stable universe') was actually a clever theoretical prediction that there was something else happening — dark energy."

First time accepted submitter Gastrobot writes "Stanford University is offering some computer science classes for free. This has been discussed here twice before. The classes begin on Oct. 10th. At this point in time I'm aware of Stanford offering an Intro to Databases course, an Intro to AI course, and a Machine Learning course."

jones_supa writes "It turns out that you can still get a legacy PCI graphics card with a modern GPU. In this case it's a Nvidia Geforce GT 520 card provided by Zotac. Both the PCI and PCIe x1 variants feature a GT 520 graphics chip with 48 stream processors, 512MB of DDR3 memory, a 810MHz core clock speed, a 1333MHz memory speed, and a 64-bit memory interface."

First time accepted submitter Core Condor writes "According to Australian technologist Nik Cubrilovic: 'Logging out of Facebook is not enough.' He added, Even after you are logged out, Facebook is able to track your browser's page every time you visit a website. He wrote in his blog: 'With my browser logged out of Facebook, whenever I visit any page with a Facebook like button, or share button, or any other widget, the information, including my account ID, is still being sent to Facebook.' After explaining the cookies behavior he also suggested a way to fix the tracking problem: 'The only solution to Facebook not knowing who you are is to delete all Facebook cookies.'"

plopez gets in his first Slashdot submission with this question, writing: "I am wrapping up an MS. In the past I have had problems getting copies of others' work, due to lack of copyright notices on their thesis or dissertation. I don't want that happen to me. I know the joke is 'No one will ever read your thesis,' but in the slim chance it is useful to others I don't want them to be required to hunt me down for a release. Basically I want to say: 'Copyright is released as long as this work or excerpts is properly attributed. Also, any published excerpts cannot be copyrighted by other parties, nor can the original work in its entirety.' Is this good enough? I don't want to encumber legitimate uses of the work but I also don't want some pirate coming along and stealing it out of public domain. Is public domain good enough? Or does it allow the work to be restricted by commercial interests? I know of copyleft, but copyleft is a family of copyright notices and I am unsure which one is right for my intent. Please help."

New submitter therealobsideus tips news that DISH Network has seized upon the uncertainty surrounding Netflix by taking the opportunity to roll out a Blockbuster-branded service for streaming movies and TV shows as well as renting media through the mail. Quoting Mashable: "The service, Dish Network with BlockBuster Movie Pass, is not a direct Netflix competitor per se. Instead, it’s a $10 monthly add-on for existing Dish Network subscribers that will offer them access to DVD and Blu-ray — as well as video game — rentals by mail, along with access to streaming movies and TV shows. It will debut on Oct. 1 and be accompanied by a big advertising campaign. In other words, this is a mashup of BlockBuster’s existing mail and online services with Dish Network’s current video-on-demand service. For Dish Network subscribers, this is a great deal. But we’re scratching our heads to find the value for everyone else. Dish does say it has plans to offer services for non-Dish Network subscribers."

intellitech writes "Puzzling results from Cern, home of the LHC, have confounded physicists — because it appears subatomic particles have exceeded the speed of light. Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away seemed to show up a few billionths of a second early. The results will soon be online to draw closer scrutiny to a result that, if true, would upend a century of physics. The lab's research director called it 'an apparently unbelievable result.'" Also on the AP wire, as carried by PhysOrg, which similarly emphasizes that the data are preliminary. Update: 09/22 20:43 GMT by T : Reader Curunir_wolf adds a link to the experiment itself, the Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus, or OPERA, which "was developed to study the phenomenon of neutrino transmutation (neutrinos changing from one type to another. The speed of the neutrinos, of course, was an entirely unexpected observation."

MrCrassic writes "Looks like HP needed yet another remodeling, as they are tapping Meg Whitman to take Leo Apotheker's chair by this afternoon. From the All Things D article: 'Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is poised to be named CEO of Hewlett-Packard later today after the markets are closed, said multiple sources close to the situation. The full board of HP, which is meeting today in Silicon Valley, has not officially voted on move and the situation could certainly change, but sources said it is nearly a done deal.' Cringely got this one right."

Doofus writes "A recent article in the Washington Post, A future for drones: Automated killing, describes the steady progress the military is making toward fully autonomous networks of targeting and killing machines. Does this (concern|scare|disgust) any of you? Quoting: 'After 20 minutes, one of the aircraft, carrying a computer that processed images from an onboard camera, zeroed in on the tarp and contacted the second plane, which flew nearby and used its own sensors to examine the colorful object. Then one of the aircraft signaled to an unmanned car on the ground so it could take a final, close-up look. Target confirmed. This successful exercise in autonomous robotics could presage the future of the American way of war: a day when drones hunt, identify and kill the enemy based on calculations made by software, not decisions made by humans. Imagine aerial "Terminators," minus beefcake and time travel.' The article goes on to discuss the dangers of surrendering to fully autonomous killing, concerns about the potential for 'atrocities,' and the nature of what we call 'common sense.'"

mask.of.sanity writes "An Italian security researcher, Luigi Auriemma, has disclosed a laundry list of unpatched vulnerabilities and detailed proof-of-concept exploits that allow hackers to completely compromise major industrial control systems. The attacks work against six SCADA systems, including one manufactured by U.S. giant Rockwell Automation. The researcher published step-by-step exploits that allowed attackers to execute full remote compromises and denial of service attacks. Auriemma appeared unrepentant for the disclosures in a post on his website."

First time accepted submitter jonez450 writes "Times are tough in the advertising business. But PCMag publisher Ziff Davis has come up with a new plan to gain a competitive edge: Paying other tech sites $1 CPM to place tracking code on their sites in return for data about their users via JavaScript. The company is also offering free content in return, but the 'private' Ziff Davis Tech Co-Op doesn't want anyone to know what they are up to." Update: 09/15 13:32 GMT by T : Reader jbrodkin writes in with an appreciated correction: "Ziff Davis doesn't publish PC World. they do something called PC Mag. as a former IDG employee, I can tell you there is a difference ;-)" Story has been updated to reflect -- thanks.

The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers using a sensitive spectrograph have just announced the existence of 50 more planets orbiting nearby Sun-like stars. The important things to note: 1) Sixteen of them are super-Earths, and 2) 40% of all Sun-like stars appear to have at least one planet with less mass than Saturn."

kruhft writes "It seems that Cleverbot, the chatbot so ready to admit that it was a unicorn during a discussion with itself, has passed the Turing test. This past Sunday, the 1334 votes from a Turing test held at the Techniche festival in Guwahati, India were released. They revealed that Cleverbot was voted to be human 59.3% of the time. Real humans did only slightly better and were assumed to be humans 63.3% of the time." As the Wikipedia link above points out, though, there's no single, simple "Turing Test," per se — many systems have successfully convinced humans over the years. Perhaps Cleverbot would consent to taking part in a Slashdot interview, to be extra-convincing.

We hear all the time that household energy consumption is rising, both in the U.S. and around the world. That's been true in the big picture for several decades at least, but reader captainkoloth, with his first accepted submission, points to an Associated Press article with some encouraging news on this front: the rate of growth in U.S. household energy use, and household energy use itself, is expected to decline slightly over the next 10 years. Take it for what you will, but that conclusion is drawn by the Electric Power Research Institute, "a nonprofit group funded by the utility industry."

brindafella links to a series of articles published yesterday in the journal Science "on Australopithecus sediba, explaining that skeletons found in the Malapa cave in the World Heritage listed 'Cradle of Civilisation' push back to 1.97 million years the oldest known tool-using, ape-like pre-humans." As is typical, the full Science articles are paywalled, but the abstracts are interesting. (If you're a university student — or, in some cases, an alumni club member — you may have full journal access and not even realize it.) NPR has a nice article on the find as well.

First time accepted submitter shortyadamk writes "I just started a new job where I will have to visit many high school science classes and have the students participate in 1-3 day projects regarding sustainable energy and environmental sciences (in order to promote the regional universities' programs). I've looked at a number of the boxed projects available online and many of them are solar projects; my biggest issue with that is that we are in rural Alaska and much of the time I'll be visiting classes will be in the winter (when we have very little sunlight — and even if we did it would be too cold to go and play in). I'm curious if anyone has any ideas or suggestions for demonstrations and projects that can be done in the classroom and do not require sunlight. One other catch is that the project has to be small enough to fit in a suitcase or plastic tote; we don't have any roads connecting the villages so I will have to fly the project from school to school with me."

hasanabbas1987 writes "Want to catch a glimpse of the closest supernova astronomers have discovered in the last 25 years? All you need to do is get yourself a small telescope or a pair of binoculars (some DSLRs would do just fine as well). Astronomers think that they may have found the supernova within hours of its initial explosion on August 24. Generally, supernovas are around 1 billion light years away but this one is only 21 million light years away. The supernova is in the Pinwheel Galaxy and you can see it within the Big Dipper."

Scarred Intellect writes "After attending DigiPen Institute of Technology and deciding that I liked the idea of programming more than programming itself (I still do enjoy it a bit); after getting my AA at a community college with no direction; after much tinkering with engines growing up; after 4 years of service in the US Marine Corps infantry; I have finally decided what I want to do when I grow up: mechanical engineering. The reason is simple: I believe our automobiles can be a lot better (in terms of engine/propulsion) than they are now. Better technology exists, and there's more technology to develop for them. I've taken an intense interest in biodiesel and other clean, alternative energy methods (fuel cells being one of my favorites — second is solar, with wind being last). I figure mechanical engineering will give me a broad understanding of the more specific engineering disciplines. My uncle, also a mechanical engineer, suggested I get a second major in computer science to complement ME. It sounds like a good idea to me; I could mate mechanical processes with computer controls pretty effectively. It should take me 3 to 4 years to complete. What do you think? Is ME + CS a good option, or would ME work better with something else? I'll almost definitely have a math minor coming out of this."

First time accepted submitter sjwaste writes "Slashdot posts a fair number of physics stories. Many of us, myself included, don't have the background to understand them. So I'd like to ask the Slashdot math/physics community to construct a curriculum that gets me, an average college grad with two semesters of chemistry, one of calculus, and maybe 2-3 applied statistics courses, all the way to understanding the mathematics of general relativity. What would I need to learn, in what order, and what texts should I use? Before I get killed here, I know this isn't a weekend project, but it seems like it could be fun to do in my spare time for the next ... decade."

HairyNevus writes "A recent survey of pulsars has revealed a fascinating discovery of a millisecond pulsar in system PSR J17191438 that has stripped a nearby white dwarf star down to its very core. Although no longer visible, is still has the mass of Jupiter. The remaining core rotates its neutron star companion with a period of just under 2 hours, indicating extremely close proximity. Given this distance, scientists have calculated that the substance of the core must be very compact, and, without building up the point, they conclude it is made of diamond. One thing I found misleading about the article is that it refers to the core as having 'the size of Jupiter' and 'the mass of Jupiter.' Given their different densities (diamond vs. mostly helium), it would seem clear that their size (i.e. volume) differs."

clm1970 writes "Researcher Simon Baron-Cohen has put forth the theory that 'how we mate and marry' could explain the increase in rates of Autism Spectrum Disorders, particularly Asperger's. When two technically minded people marry and have children, so the provocative theory goes, they are more apt to produce a child who crosses the line into mild autism."

thatpythonguy writes "Addison-Wesley publishers has released The Python Standard Library By Example, another Python book that strategically fits in between programming cookbooks and library reference manuals. It brings the Python standard library that much closer to Python programmers and helps make them more proficient in their trade." Read below for Ahmed's first Slashdot review. The Python Standard Library by Example author Doug Hellmann pages 1344 publisher Addison-Wesley Professional rating 8 of 10 reviewer Ahmed Al-Saadi ISBN 978-0-321-76734-9 summary A unique guide to the Python standard library that is between a cookbook and a reference manual There has been an explosion in the availability of published titles for the Python programming language in the past few years. This has been driven by the rising popularity of this multi-paradigm language that has proven useful in domains spanning web, games, graphics, financial, science, automation and others. Many large and small corporations, universities and governmental organizations are using Python in their respective fields with seeming success.

One of the main reasons for the success of Python is the quality, breadth, and depth of its standard library. Unfortunately, this library is not documented sufficiently in titles that serve as introductory or reference material due to the nature of introductory texts that deal with the basics; on the other hand, reference texts are often too concise and lack sufficient examples. The title at hand is a library-centric tutorial/reference that can be a great tool when you need to learn how to solve certain problems using Python.

The book addresses itself to intermediate Python programmers and covers versions 2.7 and 3.x of the language. Although an experienced programmer coming from another language can learn a lot about Python by reading this book, I personally favor the traditional top-down, gradual method of learning a new language which involves an introductory, tutorial-style, and verbose introductory book. However, realizing that others might not like my cup of tea, I can envision, for example, someone familiar with socket programming picking up this book and writing a network application without prior Python experience. He or she might still need to look up language features on the way, but that should not be too hard as the language is easy to understand and there is a rich library of on-line (and printed) content for basic language constructs.

This title comes in a hefty 1300-plus-page, soft-cover book (or eBook) that is organized around thematic grouping of library modules. The groups are: text, data structures, algorithms, dates and times, mathematics, file system, data persistence and exchange, data compression and archiving, cryptography, processes and threads, networking, the Internet, email, application building blocks, internationalization and localization, developer tools, runtime features, language tools, modules and packages.

Each group contains the relevant modules from the standard library. For example, the text group contains the string, textwrap, re and difflib modules. Each of these modules is briefly described first and then its use is demonstrated in various ways under an appropriate heading. For example, the socket module (networking group) has sections covering addressing, TCP/IP client/Server, UDP clients/servers, UNIX domain sockets and multicast, among others. The code is written in such a way as to focus on the topic being discussed while not overlooking good practices such as wrapping a socket connection call with a try/finally block to ensure that the connection is closed in case of error.

A more advanced module, that is also described in the networking group, is SocketServer. This is a higher-level (on top of the socket layer) facility that enables the creation of network servers (e.g., HTTP or AMQP). It is nice to see that the book demonstrates the creation of an echo server using this module while incorporating more advanced topics such as threading and asynchronous I/O which are necessities in real-life, production code.

Although the content covers quite a bit of ground that surpasses many other sources in terms of coverage, the Python standard library is so vast that any one-volume book attempting to provide comprehensive coverage will necessarily fail! Nonetheless, you will find at the end of each section pointers to other material such as on-line resources, RFCs, and related books that can be used for a deeper study of the relevant topics.

I think that the text could use some typographical features to enhance the clarity of the content. These include highlighting the code using indents or an alternative font to set it apart from the text that surrounds it as I found it hard to visually distinguish the two. The code should also have the name of the file at the top of the listing so that when that name is used subsequently to invoke the code, it would be easy to reference the file contents. Also,I find the general typesetting not as pleasing nor as easy to read as titles from certain other publishers. This latter point is somewhat subjective and, in any case, does not detract from the utility of the content.

Despite the caveat above, I have to say that I like this class of documentation that is between a cookbook and a reference manual. I find it useful that the examples are not so terse nor overly verbose. I also appreciate the quality of the code and the references for further readings. I think that this book fills a void that will make many Python programmers more proficient.

Ahmed Al-Saadi is the Principal Software Consultant for Solea Research, a software consultancy and development company based in Montreal, Canada. He spends his free time writing, contemplating software architecture and playing his Flamenco guitar."

You can purchase The Python Standard Library by Example from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

ProgramadorPerdido writes "I have been a developer for 25 years. I learned Basic, VB, C, FoxPro, Cobol, and Assembler, but the languages I used the most were Pascal and Delphi. I then concentrated on a now-non-mainstream language for 11 years, as it was used at work. One day I had the chance to move into Project Management and so I did for the last 2 years. Now, at almost 40 years old, I'm at a crossroad. On one side I realized developing is the thing I like best, while on the other side, the languages I'm most proficient with are not that hot on the market. So I came here looking for any advice on how to advance my career. Should I try to learn web development (html, xhtml, css, php, python, ruby)? Should I learn Java and/or C#? Or am I too old to learn and work a new language? Should I go back to PM work even if I do not like it that much? Any similar experiences?"

chefwear writes "I am thinking of donating retired computers to a local charity for kids. What OS do you think would be best for this? From reading tips regarding the donation of computers, it's widely recommended to keep with the currently installed OS (which is Windows XP in this case). Since XP will be unsupported in about two years, I'm not sure I would be setting the little ones up for success. Would anyone suggest donating a computer with a Linux distro like Ubuntu to a local charity for kids?"

mask.of.sanity writes "An Aussie network engineer has published a guide to building a serial cable connector that allows access to a secret kernel debugger hidden within Apple iOS. The debugger was a dormant iOS feature carried over from Apple OS, and seems to serves no function other than to allow hackers to build better exploits. The cable needs an external power source and a jailbroken device to access the debugger." We've mentioned Pollock's serial adapter kit before, modulo the kernel debugging abilities.

GusGous writes "South African newspaper Beeld reports that the first person known to be arrested for jailbreaking the Playstation 3 was arrested in Parktown, Johannesburg today. This raid was conducted by the South African Police Service's Commercial Crime Unit, after receiving criminal complaints from the South African Federation Against Copyright Theft (SAFACT). Members of the police were assisted by the South African Revenue Service (SARS) Computer Forensics Lab. The police confiscated goods of around R100 000 (14000 USD)." See also this story in Afrikaans; Google translation.

snoop.daub writes "Dr. Tom Murphy, professor of astrophysics at UCSD, has a new blog called 'Do The Math,' and the first few posts are doozies. In the first, he shows the impossibility of continued exponential growth in energy use. Even if a new, 'free' energy source is developed, thermodynamic limits on efficiency mean that the heat associated with converting this energy into useful work will increase the temperature of the earth to unbearable levels within 300 years. In the second, he extends the argument to economic growth. The timescales there are faster, only 50-100 years. Fascinating stuff. Time to stop breeding, folks, or to get our butts into space."

kruhft writes "I was recently doing some research into Genetic Programming and found a library through a blog post that looks to be useful. After looking over the code and license, I found that this was the first piece of code I had seen that was protected by a patent, issued on June 19, 1990. I read that patents last for 20 years, meaning that the patent that this code refers to is expired. Is there any way for me to be sure that using this code is safe from any patent troll attacks if I choose to use it? Would rewriting the code keep me from violating any other patents that the author might have regarding the use of such an algorithm? Does the code pass into the public domain after the patent expires?" Note to Chrome users: the above link ("a library") works for me in Firefox, but not in Chrome on Linux; YMMV.

mutetab writes "I recently wrote a Chrome extension called MuteTab that helps you narrow down which tab is making a sound by detecting which tabs contain plugins, HTML5 audio/video, and Java applets. It also gives you a right click menu that will mute tabs (via Javascript APIs when available, otherwise hiding them like FlashBlock does) and can automatically mute background tabs. Be sure to read the FAQ writeup to learn about some ways we can improve detecting which tab has sound and mute it." This really seems like stuff that should be a built in browser preference: like maybe an option to only allow audio out of the visible tab.

jampola writes "The Hacker News is reporting that Android password data is being stored as plain text in its SQlite database. Hackers News says that 'The password for email accounts is stored into the SQLite DB which in turn stores it on the phone's file system in plain text. Encrypting or at least transforming the password would be desirable.' I'm sure most would agree encrypted password data in at least SHA or MD5 would be kind of a good idea!"

sajjadG writes "After experimenting on 24 adults, a research team at the University of California, Berkeley has determined that viewing content on a stereo 3D display hurts your eyes and your brain. This can supposedly cause visual discomfort, fatigue, and headaches According to the article, 3D content viewed over a short distance (like with desktops and smartphones) is more visually uncomfortable when the stereo content is placed in front of the screen. In a movie theater, it's the opposite: Stereo content that is placed behind the screen causes more discomfort than scenes that jump out at you. With the explosion of 3D-capable gadgetry such as televisions and mobile phones, understanding just what this kind of technology is doing to our bodies may help us better use it in the future. The only problem is that technology tends to far outpace research, and until we get a better handle on its effects, we're more or less walking blindly into a 3D world."

JustinRLynn writes "A recent Google+ Post by Linus Torvalds indicates that version 3.0 of the Linux kernel will have to wait due to the discovery of a 'subtle pathname lookup bug.' Linus indicates, 'We have a patch, we understand the problem, and it looks ObviouslyCorrect(tm), but I don't think I want to release 3.0 just a couple of hours after applying it.'"

Barbara, not Barbie writes "Not content with making it hard for people to export their Facebook contacts to Google+, Facebook has now banned all ads from app developer Michael Lee Johnson, who ran an ad saying 'Add Michael to Google+.' Facebook sent him the following message: 'Your account has been disabled. All of your adverts have been stopped and should not be run again on the site under any circumstances. Generally, we disable an account if too many of its adverts violate our Terms of Use or Advertising guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions.'"

hasanabbas1987 writes "Casey Putsch, the famous car restorer, puts a new meaning to the word 'Fanboy' as he builds a Batmobile and powers it with a Boeing turboshaft engine taken from a drone helicopter. According to Casey this is the only one of its kind and even Bruce Wayne would've been proud of his work. Internal mods include an iPad in the dashboard which serves as an avionics system and GPS coordinates."

Narmacil writes "U.S. Team RoMeLa has swept Robocup 2011, winning first place in both the kid size and teen size divisions. (Video) CHARLI, America's first full size autonomous humanoid, managed to also make the high score record for the teen size division. DARWIN, the kid-sized robot, beat the Darmstadt Dribblers, the previous world champs, and continued on to the finals to win out." There must be joy in Blacksburg today.

The Bad Astronomer writes "A webcam mounted at the CFHT observatory in Hawaii caught a strange, expanding halo of light on the night of June 22. Announced on the Starship Asterisk forum, readers quickly honed in on the likely culprit: the terminal charge from the third stage of a Minuteman III missile. Very similar to the Norway Spiral of 2009, and scientific sleuthing at its best!"

dartttt writes "Robert Pelloni and his team are working to develop an indie handheld gaming console, the 'nD,' which will run a number of indie games. The device will support 2D games only, and will run a custom-developed, embedded Linux firmware. It will have its own Game Store, which will allow users to download games. The SDK will be released soon, and is based on open source gaming standard SDL. Developers are being told that they can actually start making and compiling games on Windows, Mac and Linux using a 320x240 resolution."

damn_registrars writes "Using rare isotope ratios, a geology team at CalTech has determined body temperatures of sauropod dinosaurs. Their work finds temperatures that are roughly in line with modern mammals for body temperature. However, as the authors point out, this does not on its own confirm dinosaurs to be entirely warm-blooded, as they may have kept these temperatures by sheer mass. The peer-reviewed paper is available online in PNAS. You can also get the article free through pubmed."

bejiitas_wrath writes "Ars Technica has an interesting story about the history of the videophone in Science Fiction. Star Trek has always depicted the video calling when hailing ships and planets, but even the 1935 movie The Tunnel depicted video calling from one continent to another and even video calling from airplanes! And huge public video screens showing the news and current events. Now we can use Skype to call one another over the Internet and video call with mobile `phones, but the video quality is nowhere near the quality shown in the film 2001 or the aforementioned Transatlantic Tunnel film."

unreadepitaph writes "Looks like after Stephen Conroy's web filter went down in flames he went quietly behind the backs of Australians and struck a deal with Telstra and Optus to start filtering an undisclosed blacklist of sites from organization within and external to Australia. From the article: 'Electronic Frontiers Association board member Colin Jacobs also expressed concern at the scheme, saying the Government and internet providers needed to be more upfront about websites being blocked and offer an appeals process for website owners who felt URLs had been blocked unfairly. "There is a question about where the links are coming from and I'd like to know the answer to that," Mr Jacobs said."

teleyinex writes "The annual conference of the Open Knowledge Foundation will be held in Berlin. There will be different lectures about open data, open science, open access, etc. and different free workshops where hackers, volunteers, designers, etc. can participate learning new tools, or helping scientists to develop new prototypes for their research projects."

Deathspawner writes "In an unusual move, Advanced Micro Devices has issued a press release rejecting its endorsement for the industry recognized benchmark SYSmark 2012. Developed by BAPCo and backed by industry heavyweights such as Dell, Intel and Hewlett-Packard, AMD has stated that BAPCo both has tuned SYSmark to create bias in favor of its competitor, and that its benchmarks are not relevant for the audience it targets. Also noted is a complete lack of heterogeneous CPU+GPU testing. Techgage tears apart AMD's claims to see if they are valid, while also evaluating the overall usefulness of SYSmark and the impact it can have on consumers."

dutchwhizzman writes "Bittorrent and uTorrent have been sued for using certain techniques in their clients and the bittorrent protocol. From the article it appears technologies are being used that were submitted in a 1999 patent that was subsequently approved in 2007. This itself is not uncommon, but given the technologies involved, HTTP could very well be prior art, or it could violate at least part of the same protocol."

DaneM writes "An enterprising teenage boy named Taylor Wilson, 17, has created a homemade, hand-held nuclear bomb detector. It utilizes a small fusion reactor that he made when he was 14, and detects nuclear materials by shooting neutrons at closed containers and exciting any nuclear materials inside — which, in turn, causes more radiation to be produced, and is detected by the device. This may provide a simpler, more effective alternative to searching containers visually, one-at-a-time. No information is given about how safe such a practice is. Taylor also has some choice things to say about how science is, in fact, very cool."

Antipater writes "Researchers at Wake Forest University have created a brain implant that can imitate signals through the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory retention. Rats implanted with the device were able to remember information even after their hippocampus was shut down, reports the New York Times. Though still in its infancy, this technology could hopefully be used to help treat dementia or stroke victims."

AndyAndyAndyAndy sends in this excerpt from a Reuters report: "Brand owners will soon be able to operate their own parts of the Web — such as .apple, .coke or .marlboro — if the biggest shake-up yet in how Internet domains are awarded is approved. After years of preparation and wrangling, ICANN, the body that coordinates Internet names, is expected to approve the move at a special board meeting in Singapore on Monday. ... The move is seen as a big opportunity for brands to gain more control over their online presence and send visitors more directly to parts of their sites — and a danger for those who fail to take advantage."

drmacinyasha writes "Today Lookout disclosed a new form of Android malware found in Chinese markets which attacks third-party firmwares (ROMs). By using permissions granted to apps which are signed with the same private keys as the ROM itself, an app can update itself or install and uninstall other apps without user interaction. Most third-party ROMs use the private keys included in the Android Open Source Project, making them vulnerable to this attack. Last month's release of CyanogenMod 7.0.3 (and all subsequent builds) included an "important security fix" which a team member confirmed protects users against this vulnerability by preventing applications signed with the platform key to be installed to user or app-controlled storage."