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  1. ISS on Why Are Cells the Size They Are? Gravity May Be a Factor · · Score: 1

    This sounds like a perfect experiment for ISS. They mainly do biological experiments (it's not really a good platform for anything else), and this could be a neat result. CASIS (the ISS science institute) is always looking for new experiments and experimenters for the station.

  2. Re:Contribute it To Mainline on Valve Announces Linux-Based SteamOS · · Score: 1

    They probably will, as it benefits the ecosystem (i.e. chips designed to a kernel, kernel designed for a chip). Like Android and ChromeOS, though, patches will be slower than ideal, but still there. Google does it because they are in the long game and have an interest in keeping Linux current. It sounds like Valve are thinking the same thing.

    And I run Arch for a reason too, on an Arm Chromebook with Google's kernel patches.

  3. Re:Compelling evidence on 'Half' of 2012's Extreme Weather Impacted By Climate Change · · Score: 0

    'Cause y'know [b]Greenpeace[/b] are *totally* unbiased and *totally* free of preconceived political options.

    There was a time when environmental organisations actually cared about science. Nowadays, they just blindly campaign against fossil fuels (and nuclear) and ignore any connections between their claims and actual science. Especially when there are things caused by human impacts other than greenhouse gases, like an area flooding because half of it is covered in parking lots, but knee-jerk "environmental activists" claiming it is due to climate change, despite have not actaul rigous scientific evidence.

    Science is hard. Conspiracy theories and political defamation is easy. Thus Greenpeace and their ilk tend to favor that later...

  4. Re:Hope one of those megaprojects is to clean the on China's Secret Scientific Megaprojects · · Score: 1

    Well probably the Russians.

    For its bluster, the PLA is better thought of as a large, poorly manged investment company that happens to also have (poorly trained) soldiers and fighter jets. It hasn't really fought a war since 1949, and has very little anti-missile capability. The Russians would not give two chits about launching all the ICBMs at China if the PLA ever invaded.

  5. Re: STEM or VISA? on The STEM Crisis Is a Myth · · Score: 2

    That's the problem with grouping science and engineering together. A shortage of engineering jobs means the market is saturated. A shortage of science jobs means that Congress and the President cut the science budget again. The two are not nessisarily related.

  6. Re:WaPo article on Tucson as night-sky destination on Why We Need to Keep Our Night Skies Dark (Video) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Flagstaff, it should be noted, was the first official international dark sky city. Every time of year except for now (the two-month rainy season), you can almost guarantee a good night's viewing. The seeing is generally better than Tucson (we're at 7000 ft/2100 m, so less atmosphere), though it can really cool off at night (again, less atmosphere; low tonight is 52F/11C). The streetlights are fewer and low-pressure sodium, but the main light-pollution difference is that high power floodlights are banned.

    And yes, I am an astronomer here in Flagstaff.

  7. Work of speculative fiction on Dispatch From the Future: Uber To Purchase 2,500 Driverless Cars From Google · · Score: 4, Informative

    Unless TechCrunch has a time machine, this is a work of speculative fiction. The dateline of July 25, 2023 should be a dead giveaway, but since when did the Slashdot edittors ever RTFA?

  8. Re:Too little too late on Windows 8.1 RTM Trickling Out, With Start Menu and Boot-to-Desktop · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's *meant* to hold whatever I damn well want it to hold. Nothing more, nothing less. Anyone who says otherwise is a fascist pig.

    Come the revolution, "User Interface Designers" will first against the wall, I tell you...

  9. Re:Hubble resolution, at a price on Magellan II's Adaptive Optics Top Hubble's Resolution · · Score: 3, Informative

    Inside the optics. For optical/near-IR astronomy (i.e. roughly in the wavelengths that your eyes can see), atmospheric opacity only comes into play if there are clouds. You always want to look at objects higher in the sky (meaning through less atmosphere), but that's more because they have less distortion.

    Inside the telescope, you lose some light every time you have a reflective surface. A simple telescope might have three reflective surfaces at 0.9 reflectivity, and so no more 3/4 of the original light reaches the detector. A complex AO system typically has closer to ten mirrors, so no more than a third of the original light will reach the detector. And that's before you account for all the other losses, like scattered light and the parts of the distortion that deformable mirror in the AO system can't correct for. So at worst case, it might be only 10% of the original light making it to the detector.

    AO systems are great, especially for bright targets, but it always makes me cringe when people claim they are "better than Hubble". Space telescopes exist for reason...

  10. Hubble resolution, at a price on Magellan II's Adaptive Optics Top Hubble's Resolution · · Score: 5, Informative

    What they rarely mention in these sorts of press releases (everyone with AO system has a "better than Hubble" press release) is that the cost of getting to that resolution is losing most of the light along the way. It's not hard to beat HST with perfect atmospheric correction, as Hubble is only a 2.4 m aperture, and nearly every AO system is on a larger telescope. It's just that the correction is achieved by sufficient optical contortions that only a small fraction of the original light actually makes it to the detector.

    My personal experience is that even the largest and most sensitive AO system in the world (NIRC II on Keck II with laser guide star) still really struggles make an observation in 20 minutes that Hubble can do in 5 minutes. If anyone were to launch a >3 m aperture visual-band space telescope (NOT JWST, that's IR), it would blow all these AO systems out of the water.

  11. Re:Already have it.... on Internet Infrastructure for Everyone · · Score: 1

    Yes, as even the summary says, it's based on ChromeOS, which is in turn based on Gentoo Linux. But there is typically more software on a server than a kernel.

    The better question is whether they are just making a custom Gentoo Portage repository...

  12. Re:But...but... on Germany Produces Record-Breaking 5.1 Terawatt Hours of Solar Energy In One Month · · Score: 5, Funny

    With enough government subsidies, I'm sure you could build a profitable solar plant underground...

  13. Re:Who is getting ripped off here? on Instagram "Likes" Worth More Than Stolen Credit Cards · · Score: 4, Funny

    Who's the more foolish? The fool, or the fool who fake-follows him a 1000 times for $15?

  14. Importing textbook on Amazon Forbids Crossing State Lines With Rented Textbooks · · Score: 1

    And this is why I never had any compunction about buying the "non-US" (drastically cheaper) versions of standard textbooks. The whole industry is scam, driven by the silly ways we fund education grants and loans.

  15. Re:Yet the US media downplay the body count on Egyptian Security Forces Storm Pro-Morsi Camps Leaving Nearly 100 Dead · · Score: 4, Insightful

    NPR was reporting "at least a hundred dead" several hours ago. I think it's not the US media that is biased so much as you.

  16. Soviet laser tank on Royal Navy Deployed Laser Weapons During the Falklands War · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yeah, it was just designed to blind optical sensors (and eyeballs), but still: SOVIET LASER TANK.

  17. Relevance? on Bradley Manning and the 'Hacker Madness' Scare Tactic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What exactly is the relevance to the Manning case? He was convicted of releasing classified information, something it's pretty obvious he did. Regardless of what the information is or how he obtained it, the release of the information is what he was charged with and convicted of doing.

    This sounds like someone trying to hitch their own free software wagon to the pro-Manning/Wikileaks train.

  18. Cheap over touchscreen on Asus CEO On Windows RT: "We're Out." · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Samsung ARM Chromebook is still the best selling laptop on Amazon. The second best seller is the cheapest Windows (not RT) laptop from Dell. Windows RT devices do not appear on the list at all. It appears the market really doesn't care about touchscreens, but does care about price and battery life.

    http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computers-Accessories-Laptop/zgbs/pc/565108

  19. Which planets, exactly? on Nitrogen Fixing Bacteria That Can Colonize Most Plants Discovered · · Score: 3, Funny

    There are only four known objects with nitrogen atmospheres: Earth (already terraformed by microbes), Titan (surface temperature -220 C), Triton and Pluto (surface pressure ~10 microbars). The only two terraforming targets are Mars and (at a stretch) Venus, both of which have almost zero nitrogen in their atmospheres.

    This is either a critical research failure, or hyping up a somewhat boring discovery to a more exciting one, or both.

  20. Re:This is why we have a first amendment. on Judge Rules In Favor of Volkswagen and Silences Scientist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And now that is know that this specific vulnerability exists, it's relatively trivial for someone to repeat Garcia's work and publish it.

  21. Linux on ARM on Microsoft's Surface RT Was Doomed From Day One · · Score: 1

    I've been running a few proper Linux distributions on the ARM Chromebook for about half a year now, and I though I would have this problem. But, thanks to Open Source, pretty much everything in the Ubuntu and Arch Linux repositories is now complied for ARM v7, so it's really not an issue.

    On the other hand, the stock ARM Chromebook is popular (best selling laptop under $300) simply because you can't install legacy apps on ChromeOS anyway (without going into dev mode).

  22. Re:Empirical results differ on Landing On an Asteroid Might Cause an Avalanche · · Score: 1

    Yes, they are both rubble piles; nearly everything smaller than a few hundred kilometers across is. Eros is relatively large for NEA at 34 km on its long axis, while Itokawa is only 535 m on its long axis (about the size of the International Space Station). The regolith of both objects was very similar.

  23. Empirical results differ on Landing On an Asteroid Might Cause an Avalanche · · Score: 4, Informative

    NEAR-Shoemaker "landed" on Eros perfectly fine. Likewise Hayabusa "landed" on Itokawa perfectly fine. Neither saw any sort of "avalanche".

  24. Dongles on Apple Files Patent For New Proprietary Port · · Score: 3, Funny

    What is it with Apple engineers and 1000 different connectors? Do they have a dongle fetish?

  25. Re:Passports and Visas on Wikileaks Aiding Snowden - Chinese Social Media Divided - Relations Strained · · Score: 1

    They canceled his passport because he's a fugitive accused of a felony. In such a case, this is standard procedure in most countries (including the USA), and I'm not sure why it took them so long.