NASA

NASA Funded Study States People Could Be On the Moon By 2021 For $10 Billion 248

Posted by samzenpus from the to-the-moon dept.
MarkWhittington writes: The Houston Chronicle reported that NextGen Space LLC has released the results of a study that suggests that if the United States were to choose to do space in some new and creative ways, American moon boots could be on the lunar surface by 2021. The cost from the authorization to the first crewed lunar landing would be just $10 billion. The study was partly funded by NASA and was reviewed by the space agency and commercial space experts.
Youtube

There Is No "Next Great Copyright Act", Remain Calm 93

Posted by samzenpus from the don't-believe-everything-you-hear dept.
Lirodon writes: A YouTube video has gone viral, particularly around the art community (and the subsection of the art community populated by the same type of people who tend to spread these around to begin with), making bold claims that a revision to U.S. copyright law is being considered, with a particular focus on orphan works. Among other things, this video claims that it would require all works to be registered with a for-profit registry to be protected, that unregistered works would be "orphaned" and be usable by "good faith infringers" and allow others to make derivative works that they would own entirely. Thankfully, this is all just hyperbole proliferated by a misinterpretation of a report on orphan works by the U.S. Copyright Office, as Graphic Policy explains.
Technology

Bringing Back the Magic In Metamaterials 83

Posted by samzenpus from the making-things-better dept.
Charliemopps writes: Though it's 30 years late, transparent aluminum, as predicted in the 1986 film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, may finally be here. There have been many attempts to create transparent metals in the past few years, and some have been somewhat successful, if only for a few femtoseconds. But now, by modifying metals like silver and aluminum at the subwavelength scale, researchers are developing "Meta-Materials" that cause light to interact with these metals in new and interesting ways. One of their more promising goals is to create a "perfect lens" which would allow an everyday person to view things as small as a virus with the naked eye.
Businesses

Why Certifications Are Necessary (Even If Aggravating To Earn) 213

Posted by samzenpus from the eat-your-broccoli dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes: Whether or not certifications have value is a back-and-forth argument that's been going on since before Novell launched its CNE program in the 1990s. Developer David Bolton recently incited some discussion of his own when he wrote an article for Dice in which he claimed that certifications aren't worth the time and money. But there's a lot of evidence that certifications can add as much as 16 percent to a tech professional's base pay; in addition a lot of tech companies use resume-screening software that weeds out any resumes that don't feature certain acronyms. There's also the argument that the cost, difficulty, and annoyance of earning a certification is actually the best reason to go through it, especially if you're looking for a job; it broadcasts that you're serious enough about the technology to invest a serious chunk of your life in it. But others might not agree with that assessment, arguing that all a certification proves is that you're good at taking tests, not necessarily knowing a technology inside and out.
Space

Elon Musk: Faulty Strut May Have Led To Falcon 9 Launch Failure 220

Posted by samzenpus from the finding-the-cause dept.
garyisabusyguy writes: This Forbes article provides the best analysis of the loss of the last Falcon 9 mission based on information released by Elon Musk to reporters. Highlights include:
  • 1. Sound triangulation led them to identify a strut holding helium tank as root cause where the falling helium tank pinched a line causing overpressure in the LOX tank.
  • 2. The failure occurred at 2,000 pounds of force, and the struts were rated at 10,000 pounds of force. They initially dismissed this as a cause until sounds triangulation pointed back to the strut
  • 3. Further testing of struts in stock found one that failed at 2,000 pounds of force, with further analysis identifying poor grain structure in the metal, which caused weakness
  • 4. It will be months before the next launch while SpaceX goes over procurement and QA processes all struts and bolts, and re-assesses any "near misses" with Air Force and NASA
  • 5. Next launch will include failure mode software, which will allow recovery of the Dragon module during loss of the launch vehicle since they determined that it could have saved the Dragon module in this lost mission

.
Music

Grooveshark Co-founder Josh Greenberg Dead At 28 173

Posted by samzenpus from the rest-in-peace dept.
alphadogg writes: The tech startup world has been shaken today by news that 28-year-old Josh Greenberg, co-founder of recently defunct music sharing service Grooveshark, was found dead on Sunday in the Florida apartment he shared with his girlfriend. No foul play is suspected, but the local medical examiner is conducting an autopsy, according to the Gainesville Sun. Grooveshark was shut down in April after the company was threatened with legal action and possibly hundreds of millions in damages by several big music labels.
Security

How Developers Can Rebuild Trust On the Internet 65

Posted by samzenpus from the trust-me dept.
snydeq writes: Public keys, trusted hardware, block chains — InfoWorld's Peter Wayner discusses tech tools developers should be investigating to help secure the Internet for all. 'The Internet is a pit of epistemological chaos. As Peter Steiner posited — and millions of chuckles peer-reviewed — in his famous New Yorker cartoon, there's no way to know if you're swapping packets with a dog or the bank that claims to safeguard your money,' Wayner writes. 'We may not be able to wave a wand and make the Internet perfect, but we can certainly add features to improve trust on the Internet. To that end, we offer the following nine ideas for bolstering a stronger sense of assurance that our data, privacy, and communications are secure.'
Microsoft

Microsoft Officially Releases Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 4.6 132

Posted by samzenpus from the check-it-out dept.
rjmarvin writes: Microsoft has announced RTM of Visual Studio 2015, the latest version of its flagship IDE, along with the release of .NET 4.6. The release includes a new set of DevOps services featuring the Build vNext cross-platform build service, the IntelliTest automated unit testing tool, and a Dev/Test service delivered both via the cloud in Visual Studio Online and on-premises through Team Foundation Server. Soma Somasegar, corporate vice president of the developer division at Microsoft, highlighted three main themes Microsoft focused on with VS 2015 in an interview with SD Times: developer productivity, "a holistic set of DevOps services" and giving developers choices when it comes to tooling toward the goal of building Universal Windows Apps for Windows 10. VS 2015 and .NET 4.6 are available here.
Security

Netragard Ends Exploit Acquisition Program After Hacking Team Breach 48

Posted by samzenpus from the Netragard-Ends-Exploit-Acquisition-Program dept.
Trailrunner7 writes: After the fallout from the HackingTeam breach, Netragard, a company that buys and sells exploits, has decided to shut down its exploit acquisition program. Leaked documents show that Natragard was selling exploits to the Italian maker of intrusion and surveillance software. In addition, documents further showed that the company sold its products to a variety of oppressive regimes, including Egypt and Ethiopia. A company statement reads in part: "We’ve decided to terminate our Exploit Acquisition Program (again). Our motivation for termination revolves around ethics, politics, and our primary business focus. The HackingTeam breach proved that we could not sufficiently vet the ethics and intentions of new buyers. HackingTeam unbeknownst to us until after their breach was clearly selling their technology to questionable parties, including but not limited to parties known for human rights violations. While it is not a vendors responsibility to control what a buyer does with the acquired product, HackingTeam’s exposed customer list is unacceptable to us. The ethics of that are appalling and we want nothing to do with it."
United Kingdom

UK Government Releases Rules To Get Self-Driving Cars Onto Public Roads 157

Posted by samzenpus from the keep-your-eyes-on-the-road-your-hands-upon-the-wheel dept.
rippeltippel writes: Ars Technica UK reports that the UK government has released the rules to get self-driving cars onto public roads. As the article reports, drivers will be required to have "a high level of knowledge about the technology used" (i.e. they'll be techies) and — most notably — will have to mimic the act of driving, to avoid confusing other drivers. The original PDF can be viewed here.
Operating Systems

Ask Slashdot: How Often Do You Update Your OS? 319

Posted by Soulskill from the whenever-i-accidentally-reboot dept.
An anonymous reader writes: A couple friends of mine have been having a debate recently. One is constantly updating all of his operating systems (desktop, phone, and otherwise), often as soon as a new patch is available. He tries betas and nightlies. He has a different ROM on his phone every other week. The other friend is much more conservative with his updates. Once his systems are running smoothly, he wants to leave them alone for as long as possible. He'll do some serious security updates, but he's extremely wary of anything involving major UI changes or functionality differences. What's your preference? Are you constantly tweaking? Waiting for the early adopters to work out the kinks? How does your preference change between work machines and personal machines?
The Military

Report: US Military Is Wasting Millions On Satellite Comms 154

Posted by Soulskill from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Fast information exchange is the key to a powerful military, and satellites have been an incredible boon to the commanders of modern fighting forces. But a new report from the Government Accountability Office says the U.S. military is vastly overpaying for its satellite communications, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. They say the Department of Defense "has become increasingly reliant on commercial SATCOM to support ongoing U.S. military operations." You see, every part of the DoD is required to go through the Defense Information Systems Agency when procuring SATCOM equipment. The problem is that this process is incredibly slow, and fraught with red tape. Because of this, many in the military skip DISA and go straight to commercial providers — at a steep markup. The GAO estimates that this cost taxpayers around $45 million extra in a single year.
Software

Apple Watch Still Waiting On App Developers 213

Posted by Soulskill from the maybe-they-need-new-watches dept.
An anonymous reader writes: It's been almost three months since the Apple Watch launched, and the tiny device hasn't taken people's wrists by storm. That's not to say it's a failure — experts estimate Apple has sold between three and five million of them, and we may get more detailed sales information during their earnings call, tomorrow. But many major app developers are still missing from the Watch's catalog, and Apple doesn't have a good way of roping them into the new section of its ecosystem. "I don't know if we could get it all in there in a way that feels good and works well," said a Facebook executive. "Why would you look at a small picture when you can look at a large one on your phone?" said Snapchat's CEO. The app rush that hit phones and tablets is dampened for the Watch. For now, all Apple can do is improve their development toolkit and hope coders can figure out useful new wrist-based interactions.
Space

Stephen Hawking and Russian Billionaire Start $100 Million Search For Aliens 208

Posted by Soulskill from the are-you-there-aliens-it's-me-stephen dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Stephen Hawking is joining forces with Russian billionaire Yuri Milner to start a $100 million effort to search the skies for signs of alien life. The initiative is called Breakthrough Listen, which will pay for large amounts of access to the Green Bank Telescope and the Parkes Telescope to scan the skies for signals over the next 10 years. They say the search will be 50 times more sensitive than previous attempts, cover 10 times more of the sky, and scan a greater portion of the radio spectrum 100x faster. They add, "All data will be open to the public. This will likely constitute the largest amount of scientific data ever made available to the public. The Breakthrough Listen team will use and develop the most powerful software for sifting and searching this flood of data. All software will be open source." The project is also supported by Frank Drake, Ann Druyan, and Lord Martin Rees.
Privacy

Affair Site Hackers Threaten Release of All User Data Unless It Closes 446

Posted by Soulskill from the cards-on-the-table dept.
heretic108 writes: According to KrebsOnSecurity, the infamous Ashley Madison affairs hookup website has been hacked by a group calling itself The Impact Team. This group is demanding the immediate and permanent shutdown of Ashley Madison, as well as similar sites Cougar Life and Established Man, owned by the same company: Avid Life Media. If the sites aren't shut down, the hackers are threatening to publicly release personal data for 37 million users. ALM has confirmed that a hack took place, and the hackers posted snippets of account data, as well as bank and salary information from the company itself.
Graphics

AMD Catalyst Linux Driver Performs Wildly Different Based On Program's Name 114

Posted by Soulskill from the a-rose-by-any-other-name-would-still-render-as-fast dept.
An anonymous reader writes: In past years the AMD Catalyst Linux driver has yielded better performance if naming the executable "doom3.x86" or "compiz" (among other choices), but these days this application profile concept is made more absurd with more games coming to Linux but AMD not maintaining well their Linux application profile database. The latest example is by getting ~40% better performance by renaming Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on Linux. If renaming the "csgo_linux" binary to "hl2_linux" for Half-Life 2 within Steam, the frame-rates suddenly increase across the board, this is with the latest Catalyst 15.7 Linux driver while CS:GO has been on Linux for nearly one year. Should driver developers re-evaluate their optimization practices for Linux?
Space

Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo's Re-entry Tech: the Feather 62

Posted by samzenpus from the you-got-to-know-when-to-fold-them dept.
Dutch Gun writes: When most people think about rocket science, they think of the challenge of getting a spacecraft into space. However, the problem of safely re-entering the atmosphere is a daunting challenge as well. Virgin Galactic introduces us to the concept of "the feather," their term for the combination of fixed-wing and capsule based solutions both used by spaceships in the past, and explain how they believe this hybrid approach to be a superior solution. SpaceShipTwo folds its wings in the initial decent, acting a bit like a badminton shuttlecock, when a capsule decent has the most advantages. In the latter part of the decent, the wings are extended, giving the vehicle the advantages of a glider-like landing.
Power

Your Body, the Battery: Powering Gadgets From Human "Biofuel" 67

Posted by samzenpus from the power-up dept.
An anonymous reader writes: This article takes a look at the future of electronic devices powered by the human body. From the electric voltage in mammal ears called the endocochlear potential, to body heat, and muscle motion, there are a number of exciting new areas of energy research being explored. Ars reports: "Staying alive guzzles energy. In order to keep us ticking, our bodies need to burn between 2,000 and 2,500 calories per day, which is conveniently enough to power a modestly used smart phone. So if just a fraction of that energy could be siphoned, our bodies could in theory be used to run any number of electronic devices, from medical implants to electronic contact lenses—all without a battery in sight. Recently, researchers have taken important strides toward unlocking this electric potential."
United States

New Molecular Transistor Can Control Single Electrons 46

Posted by samzenpus from the getting-small dept.
Eloking writes: An international team of scientists has been able to create a microscopic transistor made up of one single molecule and a number of atoms. Gizmag reports: "Researchers from Germany, Japan and the United States have managed to create a tiny, reliable transistor assembled from a single molecule and a dozen additional atoms. The transistor reportedly operates so precisely that it can control the flow of single electrons, paving the way for the next generation of nanomaterials and miniaturized electronics." The team that conducted the research included teams from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the NTT Basic Research Laboratories in Japan.
Security

Hacking Team and Boeing Subsidiary Envisioned Drones Deploying Spyware 79

Posted by samzenpus from the making-a-plan dept.
Advocatus Diaboli writes: Email conversations posted on WikiLeaks reveal that Boeing and Hacking Team want drones to carry devices that inject spyware into target computers through WiFi networks. The Intercept reports: "The plan is described in internal emails from the Italian company Hacking Team, which makes off-the-shelf software that can remotely infect a suspect's computer or smartphone, accessing files and recording calls, chats, emails and more. A hacker attacked the Milan-based firm earlier this month and released hundreds of gigabytes of company information online. Among the emails is a recap of a meeting in June of this year, which gives a "roadmap" of projects that Hacking Team's engineers have underway. On the list: Develop a way to infect computers via drone. One engineer is assigned the task of developing a "mini" infection device, which could be "ruggedized" and "transportable by drone (!)" the write-up notes enthusiastically in Italian. The request appears to have originated with a query from the Washington-based Insitu, which makes a range of unmanned systems, including the small ScanEagle surveillance drone, which has long been used by the militaries of the U.S. and other countries. Insitu also markets its drones for law enforcement."

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