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China has also done extensive development of its own drones and they (unlike the stuff Iran shows off) look pretty convincingly real (actually this one seems like it would owe its origins to some chinese hacking efforts)
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/zhuhai/

DRM is properly thought of as Digital Restrictions Management, instead of Digital Rights Management. A good example of a previous DRM that implemented something like this is the limited edition DVD like disks that were being several years back. They were pushed by Disney and called Flexplay and only made for a couple years.

Remember DRM is all about restricting how something is used, even if that restriction requires the destruction of the devices. Many tamper resistant crypto chips will self destruct instead of letting a user access their data without restriction.

Ok buddy. Not like this already happened. OH WAIT YEAH IT DID moron http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/drone-virus-kept-quiet/

...when every minor misdemeanor or even purely civil matter becomes a federal felony.
The legal response to progress must not be "harsher punishments for every new generation" to consider computers (including cellphones these days) evil because "even" organized crime uses them, and to treat everyone else (who inevitably has to use them as part of one's daily life as well) like a mobster too - until the whole world becomes a "prison planet". Good to see a DA (possibly unintentionally) acknowledge the real issue in the midst of fearmongering.
Cf. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/02/aarons-law-amending-the-cfaa/

>> Never drop context, which in this case is the 3000+ deaths of September 11, 2001.

According to numerous reports (you can google them) civilian (children included) deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan is 100k. Let's say it's 20 thousand.
However.. it's important to notice:

>> (The United States doesn’t officially keep body counts — at least not for United States-caused civilian deaths.)
(from: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/06/afghanistan-iraq-wars-killed-132000-civilians-report-says/)

Now, you can go ahead and talk about torture too. People that are doing all these things over there, are more guilty then al-qaeda or whatever the name is will ever be. When it comes to crimes against humanity. Sorry.

It also hasn't been flown in combat because a growing number of F-22 pilots refuse to fly them. Apparently being able to breathe is pretty critical.

The F-22 hasn't been flown because we haven't been involved in a conflict where air superiority was a requirement of the mission. If/when that happens, like in a conflict with Russia, China, Iran, or...who knows, Germany could go all batshit crazy again and start invading other countries, the F-22 will be used.

As for the F-35, it's not flying combat sorties yet, because it's still in the testing phase. In another couple years, once it's ready, it will more than fulfill the roles it's intended to fulfill.

Of course it will -- because it's operating specs keep getting downgraded to match the capabilities of the plane. When the specs get reduced to "Must park on runway with its nose pointed in the general direction of the enemy", then it will be in full compliance with its required specs.

If the current operating specs were put out to bid today, what would the proposals look like?

unless you are a very experienced with meditation you likely have very little control over your own brain chemistry. Even someone who knows how to alter their brainwaves would need the desire to do so, which depression removes.

You have no more control over depression than you do over Diabetes, they are both caused by chemical imbalances in your body. I don't know if you are aware of this, but your brain is a lot more complex than your pancreas. Maybe you should just will yourself to make more insulin!

Hate to be the one to tell you, but free will is a myth, your decisions are made long before you rationalize them, and you can't just choose to change your mood. You may refocus your attention when you feel sad, but that is a trained response, like a dog chasing a toy. Someone without that training just won't have that reaction, and they cannot "choose" to make their brains do something, anymore than you can choose to be depressed for months and commit suicide.

I'm not sure "ignore the failed attempts" is the right thing to do here. It SHOULD BE, in an ideal world, but there's more than one case where persistent hackers get to reset an account, not by guessing the password, but by social engineering the support people from Apple, Amazon or whatnot.

It's a little unnerving, but I have no idea what exactly a user can do to prevent such things from happening to one.

for google to circumvent the new cookie policy just like they did last year with safari (which has the same cookie defaults that firefox will have).

ref: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/02/google-safari-browser-cookie/

Hey now, if the FBI can track you legally without a warrant, why should the car companies not have that power? (Yes, I know that SCOTUS took a similar case, but all they had to say about it was that the FBI couldn't trespass onto your property to install the device. If you, say, park your car on the street, it's fair game.)

It's only news because it's a rich person and his boat. When they utilize the new Homeland Security policy allowing them to seize any electronic device at the border without suspicion, and decide to hold on to your IPad or cellphone it will most certainly be your problem. And you will have enabled it to be so because you are so cavalier about a person's rights, so long as they have a different amount of wealth as you.

Isnt it fascinating that it's abhorent to violate a poor person's rights, but its chiche to promote violating the rights of the wealthy?

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/10/aclu-assails-10/

Actually, according to this article in Wired the PS4 will be able to do it both ways. Publishers have the option of "registering" their games. Guess which they'll do? This is just a marketing ploy for Sony to be able to say "We aren't disabling used games, the publishers are!

The technique used is almost certainly a form of spread-spectrum transmission, making its interception by an ordinary receiver unable to listen in or conventional triangulation useless.

Um, spread spectrum can still be detected and the location of its source triangulated. It does complicate things somewhat when it's hopping from frequency to frequency, but it hardly makes it impossible.

Ultimately, if a stealth plane wants to remain truly stealthy, it also needs to observe radio silence. There are things they can do to make their transmissions less obvious (including using spread spectrum), but ultimately none of these technique are completely effective.

I used to be in your shoes. Then this happened down the road. Interestingly enough, with the NSA in town fiber connections are now pretty standard out in the 'country'.

Antivirus? lol...that is so 1980's... http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/03/antivirus/

It amazes me when people are treated like criminals or animals and they don't become infuriated, or even react.

Who says that? You're marketing fodder, something that can be collected and used as data for monetary gain. Are you that Naive to assume that everybody out there wants to be your friend and just give you stuff for free? Free Services, step right up, get your Free Services, get your Free software right here. Yes, there are a *few* who have good intentions however there's a lot of folks out there making a buck on every click, every preference and every search you do. You use a credit card, the banks, the vendor, the credit card company are all tracking you. You buy an airline ticket, the same thing happens + the airline + the government and anybody else they'll sell your information to.

http://www.budgettravel.com/blog/a-rare-peek-at-homeland-securitys-files-on-travelers,10313/
http://money.cnn.com/2011/07/06/pf/banks_sell_shopping_data/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/

Do you drive a car? If so your government is probably selling your information to dealerships, insurance companies and others.

http://blog.newsok.com/politics/2010/04/05/oklahoma-brings-in-millions-by-selling-personal-data/

Did you download that free app on your phone? It's tracking you.

http://redtape.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/16/16530607-a-shock-in-the-dark-flashlight-app-tracks-your-location?lite

If you think that's treating you like a criminal then we're all criminals.

That has what to do with this?

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/02/creepy-graph-searchers/

Now you can have pedophiles stalk your kids all with the neat, new graph search!

The point is, you don't get something for nothing. Not in this day and age when every innocuous thing you do is tracked, mined and analyzed 100 different ways. In the case of Ubuntu, they're just following the crowd.

Except for that one time they "had" to invest $150 million in Apple ...

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/08/dayintech_0806/

I hope that eventually we get to the point where full sight can be restored for all blind individuals. However, there are many reasons for blindness and this one will probably only help with those caused by problems with the by the retina (at least in the near term, long term all of this research will be tremendously valuable). It seems like the Argus II is still in the general size, shape, motion category, but even that would be a tremendous gain to someone that has lost their sight. I read this article http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/11/blind-vision-implant/ a couple of years ago. It talks about trying to go beyond capturing general size, shape, and motion in visual prosthetic by recoding the information to a more natural state. If the interface with the brain can be figured out, all kinds of possibilities will open up. Geordi Laforge's visor may be closer than we think.

They showed what would almost certainly happen in reality, under a given set of circumstances.

Except that it didn't, and they lied.

That's what Tesla said, but the judges ruled otherwise.

It's worth reading the New York Times article author's response to the accusations which was written before Elon Musk's new blog post with the data. And also remember when this all happened before? I'm not sure who to believe, but I'm not sure why everybody thinks the NYT reporter is blatantly lying but Musk wouldn't fudge the numbers a little. I think some of Musk's response is weak and still dances around some major issues that the reporter had with the car. All the graphs he posted are shown in miles instead of time, which hides some of the problems that the reporter talked about, like going to bed with with a 90 mile charge and waking up and finding the battery with 25 miles.

No, they did not.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/04/top-gear-responds-to-teslas-lawsuit/
1. We never said that the Teslaâ(TM)s true range is only 55 miles, as opposed to their own claim of 211 [Autopia: Actually, Tesla claims 245 for the Roadster], or that it had actually ran out of charge. In the film our actual words were: âoeWe calculated that on our track it would run out after 55 miles.â The first point here is that the track is where we do our tests of sports cars and supercars, as has happened ever since Top Gear existed. This is where cars are driven fast and hard, and since Tesla calls its roadster âoeThe Supercar. Redefinedâ it seemed pretty logical to us that the right test was a track test. The second point is that the figure of 55 miles came not from our heads, but from Teslaâ(TM)s boffins in California. They looked at the data from that car and calculated that, driven hard on our track, it would have a range of 55 miles.

Reputable? Top Gear? Are you high? Have your seen the India special? I love the show, but it is fake as hell.

Tesla might be exaggerating the milage that is no reason others should be going to the other extreme.

Top Gear admitted the whole thing was staged.

No, they ABSOLUTELY DID NOT. The only thing they said was staged were a couple of shots for dramatic effect. The BBC stood by the review, re-airing it in full and even successfully defending it in two separate lawsuits.

That's exactly the kind of unmitigated bullshit that Elon Musk has been spreading for years, and is spreading now about this NYTimes reviewer.

There is also a loud and large lobby of pro-wind, pro-solar and pro-electric car types out there furiously personally attacking anyone daring to give a bad review to any electric car. And Elon Musk is leading the charge (no pun intended). He did the same thing with Top Gear when they gave an earlier model a bad review. Basically, if you give a Tesla a bad review, you can expect to get immediately and heavily personally attacked by the the Tesla CEO and everyone out there who thinks that the all-electric car is the solution to all our problems.

I wouldn't review a Tesla if they paid me. I would as soon write a book criticizing Scientology.

The NYT writer lied. It's over for that story. But the damage is done.

He was told to do certain things. Instead, he:
-Turned the heat up.
-Speeded, consistently. Over 80 mph at some point.
-Didn't stay at the supercharger long enough, almost every time - and lied about it.
-Pulled away for 60+ mile trip even though he knew it only had a charge for less than 40 miles left.
-Circled a supercharger station, for some reason.
-Lied about the car going dead. It did not.

Broder should lose his job. Read it, please!
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/02/tesla-logs-nytimes/

Tesla Driving Logs Contradict New York Times Claims

Data released by Tesla Motors late Wednesday night directly contradicts a damning review of the automakerâ(TM)s Model S sedan by the New York Times.

The data, pulled directly from the electric sedanâ(TM)s on-board computer, claims that New York Times reporter John M. Broder never ran out of energy during his extended drive of the Model S, despite his account to the contrary. ...

While EULAs can be problematic, Microsoft's antics here are much more serious.

Read over the details analysis by a real lawyer of Bilbo's Contract with the Dwarves. That is an item sold as merchandise with the new Hobbit film. The lawyer brings up that in most court systems contracts are not valid if they ask one of the parties to engage in or are written to cover illegal acts. The huge contract is written carefully to avoid outright saying the Dwarves are hiring a Hobbit to steal for them just because of this.

IANAL, but this appears to me to be a problem for Microsoft. Is Microsoft is requiring these terms as part of support contracts for which they are receiving money? Is this first-sale-is-final-sale contract? Is this forced bundling contract? Are they doing this under or outside the terms of the court rulings about their prior monopoly activity? If this is in fact an illegal practice in the jurisdiction those contracts are written could Microsoft be writing contracts obligating someone to perform an illegal act?

It is probably a good bet that only a Judge in a civil court will settle any of those questions. Assuming he can get his Microsoft Office to install on his PC to open his docket files.

This is not legal advise. Consult your lawyer before applying. Do not pass Redmond. Do not collect 200 Debian CDs. Some itchiness and soreness is normal. Contact a doctor if it persists past four hours.

The NYT and Musk are both missing the point. EVs aren't well suited to road trips, and it doesn't matter because that kind of driving represents a tiny fraction of the driving we humans do. (Save your personal anecdotes to the contrary--they have no bearing on the facts.)

EVs can accomplish long distance travel if you're patient and determined, and Tesla's supercharger network has dramatically lowered the bar, but it still sucks, and fixating on it ignores all the aspects of EVs that are so much better than the alternatives.

Chelsea says it better than I can.

You beat me to it.

For those who do not recall: "An English court has once again told Tesla Motors to take a hike and dismissed the automaker’s latest libel charge against the BBC, producer of the wildly popular (and equally irreverent) program Top Gear.

Tesla Motors sued the BBC in March, arguing Jeremy Clarkson and his Top Gear cohorts defamed the company by claiming the Roadster achieved a paltry 55 miles of range on the show’s test track. That is significantly less than the 200 miles or more Tesla claims for the car." ( http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/02/tesla-vs-top-gear/ )

Also interesting: "Tesla Motors' Devastating Design Problem"

Quote: "When a Tesla battery does reach total discharge, it cannot be recovered and must be entirely replaced. Unlike a normal car battery, the best-case replacement cost of the Tesla battery is currently at least $32,000, not including labor and taxes that can add thousands more to the cost." ( http://jalopnik.com/5887265/tesla-motors-devastating-design-problem )

Not yet the time to buy one ... :)

CC.

No, but North Korea's nuclear device yields are getting bigger:

Here’s How Geology Shows North Korea’s Nukes Are Getting Bigger

oops we misunderstood the report - but they have "weapons of mass-destruction1!!!!!"

Oops yourself. They did have WMDs - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Chemical_Weapons_Recovered
Then our friends at wiki leaks - http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/wikileaks-show-wmd-hunt-continued-in-iraq-with-surprising-results/
The majority of our debt has nothing to do with Iraq. It has everything to do with Obama and the Dems not passing a budget since BUSH WAS IN OFFICE! That's because when you cannot pass a budget they do a continuation of the last one that was passed - that included the 1 trillion bailout. That would seem to indicate that he's spent more money than all of the previous presidents combined. At least number wise. Don't blame the Republicans, the Dems controlled the house and Senate Obama's first two years and they couldn't pass a budget either. They didn't want to.
BTW - let's dispel another myth - China holds all of our debt. In fact they don't. The Japanese hold almost as much or by now probably more than the Chinese.

The kid gloves are off. They're handing out actual jail time for people hacking phones/email for nude pics of Scarlett Johansson. If they find him/her, this dude's going to end up in gitmo over some addresses and phone numbers.

Are you sure we are on the same page?

I thought there was a kickstarter for nude pictures of certain celebrities?

The kid gloves are off. They're handing out actual jail time for people hacking phones/email for nude pics of Scarlett Johansson. If they find him/her, this dude's going to end up in gitmo over some addresses and phone numbers.

Please stop calling guessing your password and/or security question a "hack". That's like calling me finding the key to your front door hidden under your fake rock "picking your lock". Or like guessing the combination to your safe is "cracking" the safe. It's not, it's an educated guess which only works when stupid people use stupid passwords and put real information in their stupid security questions.

If the government isn't going to be reading them, then I assume we can cease construction of the huge new NSA data center in Utah?

The kid gloves are off. They're handing out actual jail time for people hacking phones/email for nude pics of Scarlett Johansson. If they find him/her, this dude's going to end up in gitmo over some addresses and phone numbers.

Could be worse. He could have shared a song or movie. Ever the serial rapist/murderers get chills when you tell them you're in for that.

The kid gloves are off. They're handing out actual jail time for people hacking phones/email for nude pics of Scarlett Johansson. If they find him/her, this dude's going to end up in gitmo over some addresses and phone numbers.

I rent ebooks...

FTFY.

And, oddly enough, I still pay a full purchase price for that rental service (sometimes higher than the cost of a paper copy)

Precisely why I have a standing ban on ebooks. That is, until I can get my automatic book scanner built

Well it's not so far fetched as you think. They talk about it themselves:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/

Meanwhile, over in Building 5300, the NSA succeeded in building an even faster supercomputer. “They made a big breakthrough,” says another former senior intelligence official, who helped oversee the program. The NSA’s machine was likely similar to the unclassified Jaguar, but it was much faster out of the gate, modified specifically for cryptanalysis and targeted against one or more specific algorithms, like the AES. In other words, they were moving from the research and development phase to actually attacking extremely difficult encryption systems. The code-breaking effort was up and running.

The breakthrough was enormous, says the former official, and soon afterward the agency pulled the shade down tight on the project, even within the intelligence community and Congress. “Only the chairman and vice chairman and the two staff directors of each intelligence committee were told about it,” he says. The reason? “They were thinking that this computing breakthrough was going to give them the ability to crack current public encryption.”

Start buying more tinfoil!

This is another good example of abusive DMCA take down requests circumventing due process. RIAA and MPAA abuse the law to suppress our creativity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk862BbjWx4
  and are destroying our cultural heritage.
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2001/11/48625?currentPage=all
To top it off, their outdated business model unfairly reimburses the artists for their hard work.
http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/
Copyright needs to be reformed. Some changes that I'd like to see are:

  * Abolish the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
  * Intellectual property should be taxed like real property. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-weaver20feb20,0,1675278.story It is an asset with a value, right? If you no longer make enough to pay your taxes on it, it goes to the state.
  * Copyrights are supposed to be an incentive to create. One that lasts unto your grandchildren are a dis-incentive, because not only are you not creating any more once you are dead, neither are your descendants. Copyright should last half a working lifetime (20 years), so that you have to get off your ass and make new stuff.
  * Someone who makes copies without permission should pay a fine, but it should be at the regular royalty rate for the item x copies made. So upload a song, it's iTunes price x number of downloads, with perhaps a factor of 3 penalty to discourage doing it, not $150,000 per copy.

If you feel the same way, you can make a difference by donating to the EFF
https://supporters.eff.org/donate
or at least signing this petition urging reform.
http://www.fightforthefuture.org/fixcopyright

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."
-Abraham Lincoln

And another one, found by searching for military and blimps, also found in gizmag and wired, is a dedicated blimp site article about the army preparing and training for using a huge/mammoth spy blimp, an LEMV = US Army's massive Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle:

also http://www.gizmag.com/lemv-first-flight/22675/
and http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/massive-spy-blimp : Army Readies Its Mammoth Spy Blimp for First Flight ...
There wass also an auxilliary naval air field north of La Jolla in Del Mar that also was used for blimps: http://www.militarymuseum.org/NAAFDelMar.html

Yes. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/internet-a-human-right/

Actually, he cut it short because it WAS working well

False. This is the Wired article wherein his assistant, Marsha Defillipo states:

By part four, only 46 percent of the people who downloaded the book paid for it, DeFillipo said.

As I always say when these stories come up, and routinely get modded down, people are lazy and cheap. If they can get something for nothing, they will, regardless if it hurts the person producing the work. They feel they are entitled to take someone else's work without compensation and will use every excuse and twist of language to justify their actions.

Bwuahahahaha.... that was ... oh... wait... you are serious?

Windows 8 will succeed not because it's any good, but because it has to - MS has a lot riding on this one, more than on ME or Vista or the other dogs. They will spend billions to make it successful, but it doesn't stand a chance at beating competition that is actually somewhat good.

You can buy market share. But you can't buy being good.

They really will spend billions. The esimates are that M$ will flush over $1.5 billion in marketing Vista 8. Some estimates are a little higher. Whether that is enough to overcome the suckiness and buy some market share still remains to be seen. So far it's not doing well on the desktop and is still a no-show in the tablet space. And what they are about to try with Dell might tip the hands of the other OEMs over to Android/Linux or GNU/Linux

This seems to be only about "work produced for the school", meaning papers for class, lesson plans and the like. It doesn't seem as though they plan to lay claim to your Great American Novel (TM) if you plan on writing one while enrolled or employed there.

For the pupils at least, that claim also likely has no standing, notwithstanding any delusional beliefs to the contrary of the board.

As per analysis of the contract in the Hobbit

All contracts require some consideration from all parties to the contract. Consideration, in the contract sense, means a bargained-for performance or promise. Restatement (Second) of Contracts 71(1). Basically, this is something of value given or promised as part of the agreement. This can be anything that the parties agree is valuable; the classic example is a single peppercorn. Whitney v. Stearns, 16 Me. 394, 397 (1839).

That means, the school has to explicitly give the pupils something in exchange for their copyright. 'Teaching' can't be it, since they are obliged to do that anyway.

How about they get an A?

This seems to be only about "work produced for the school", meaning papers for class, lesson plans and the like. It doesn't seem as though they plan to lay claim to your Great American Novel (TM) if you plan on writing one while enrolled or employed there.

For the pupils at least, that claim also likely has no standing, notwithstanding any delusional beliefs to the contrary of the board.

As per analysis of the contract in the Hobbit

All contracts require some consideration from all parties to the contract. Consideration, in the contract sense, means a bargained-for performance or promise. Restatement (Second) of Contracts 71(1). Basically, this is something of value given or promised as part of the agreement. This can be anything that the parties agree is valuable; the classic example is a single peppercorn. Whitney v. Stearns, 16 Me. 394, 397 (1839).

That means, the school has to explicitly give the pupils something in exchange for their copyright. 'Teaching' can't be it, since they are obliged to do that anyway.

Didn't some Fiskers blow up with the flooding in Hurricane Sandy? So now you want to put these on an airplane as a critical part of the electrical system.

You're expecting a flood inside an jet liner?

Didn't some Fiskers blow up with the flooding in Hurricane Sandy? So now you want to put these on an airplane as a critical part of the electrical system. Flawed thinking. Go back to a stable design and look for the 200lbs of weight savings elsewhere. Hire thinner flight attendants or don't fly fat people around.

But searching for "5-d torus interconnect" gets you nothing on wikipedia. Here's the 2-dimensional version explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torus_interconnect
and the K computer by Fujitsu at Riken uses a 6-d (six dimensional) torus network. So how does the 5-d torus interconnect lead to the 2**19 + 2**20 cores or possibly 2**17+2**18 cpus? I'm not seeing it in my head clearly. Off to a paper-napkin to sketch it out!
.
Each core connects 5-dimensionally going forward or back in each dimension gives 10 interconnects from one core to the 10 5-dimensional neighbors one distance away. But the number of cores is divisible only by twos and a three (factor number of cores = 3 * 2^19) so I'm not seeing the construct...

OK, I see where your confusion stems from. This was a direct follow-up to the Slashdot story just 3 days ago. In *that* linked article, the IP issues and ethics are pretty clearly spelled out.

What Coulton did definitely deserved a follow-up, but as editor, timothy was negligent for not linking to the original story to make the association clear.

Three cheers for our new digital heros.

...Apparently though its not Apple who are pretty much been anti-consumer for some time with EFF and others trying to keep the option of jailbreaking legal (Its still illegal on your iPad)

This is back from 2010 http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/feds-ok-iphone-jailbreaking/ [wired.com] The PDF about Apples responce and basically jailbreaking does this,

"Crashes & instability
Malfunctioning & safety
Invasion of privacy
Exposing children to age-inappropriate content
Viruses & malware
Inability to update software
Cellular network impact
Piracy of developers’ applications
Instability of developers’ applications
Increased support burden
Developer relationships
The Apple/iPhone brand
Limitation on ability to innovate"

It also says your breaking Licence agreements and copyright infringement too as well as well as DMCA anti-circumvention

Boycott Apple products...Its not like there are mass of better value alternatives, that support this.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/01/dung-beetle-astronomy/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21150721

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982212015072

African dung beetles orient to the starry sky to move along straight paths The beetles do not orientate to the individual stars, but to the Milky Way Summary When the moon is absent from the night sky, stars remain as celestial visual cues. Nonetheless, only birds [1,2], seals [3], and humans [4] are known to use stars for orientation. African ball-rolling dung beetles exploit the sun, the moon, and the celestial polarization pattern to move along straight paths, away from the intense competition at the dung pile [5,6,7,8,9]. Even on clear moonless nights, many beetles still manage to orientate along straight paths [5]. This led us to hypothesize that dung beetles exploit the starry sky for orientation, a feat that has, to our knowledge, never been demonstrated in an insect. Here, we show that dung beetles transport their dung balls along straight paths under a starlit sky but lose this ability under overcast conditions. In a planetarium, the beetles orientate equally well when rolling under a full starlit sky as when only the Milky Way is present. The use of this bidirectional celestial cue for orientation has been proposed for vertebrates [10], spiders [11], and insects [5,12], but never proven. This finding represents the first convincing demonstration for the use of the starry sky for orientation in insects and provides the first documented use of the Milky Way for orientation in the animal kingdom.

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982212015072