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Businesses

Facebook To Go Public On Friday, May 18 182

Posted by samzenpus from the for-real-this-time dept.
redletterdave writes "The IPO on everyone's minds for the past few years — and possibly the biggest one in history — is upon us: Facebook will finally make its Wall Street debut on Friday, May 18, 2012. Sources also say Facebook will begin its IPO roadshow on Monday, May 7, and will eventually list its shares on the Nasdaq (not NYSE) with the ticker symbol 'FB.' Facebook looks to raise anywhere from $5 billion to $10 billion during its roadshow to achieve a $100 billion valuation, which would make it one of the biggest IPOs of all-time."
Shark

Finally, a Shark With a Laser Attached To Its Head 139

Posted by samzenpus from the it's-about-time dept.
Freshly Exhumed writes in with a Wired story about a nerd/super-villian dream come true. "Marine biologist-cum-TV personality Luke Tipple attached a 50-milliwatt green laser to a lemon shark off the coast of the Bahamas in late April. The escapade was sponsored by Wicked Lasers, a consumer-focused laser manufacturer based in Hong Kong that produces some of the most brilliant — and potentially dangerous — handheld lasers in the world. 'This was definitely a world first,' Tipple told Wired. 'Initially, I told them no. I thought it was a frivolous stunt. But then I considered that it would give us an opportunity to test our clips and attachments, and whatever is attached to that clip, I really don't care. It was a low-powered laser that couldn't be dangerous to anyone, and there's actually useful applications in having a laser attached to the animal.'"
Businesses

IBM Offers Retirement With Job Guarantee Through 2013 192

Posted by samzenpus from the out-to-pasture dept.
dcblogs writes "IBM is offering employees who are nearing retirement — and may be worried about a layoff — a one-time voluntary program that would ensure their employment through Dec. 31, 2013. The program, described in a letter addressed to IBM managers, 'offers participants 70% of their pay for working 60% of their schedule.' Participating employees would receive 'the same benefits they do today, most at a full-time level, including health benefits and 401(k) Plus Plan automatic company contributions.' In 2006, IBM employed about 127,000 in U.S. The Alliance@IBM, a CWA local, now estimates the U.S. workforce at around 95,000. How far IBM will go in cutting is up for debate, including one radical estimate."
Government

Twitter Leaked Obama's Visit To Afghanistan 177

Posted by samzenpus from the was-that-a-secret? dept.
hypnosec writes "When you're the President of the United States, sometimes certain activities you're involved in can be hard to keep secret — and yesterday was no exception, after Twitter let it slip that Obama was secretly in Kabul. On Tuesday, the White House released a fabricated itinerary — consisting of all-day meetings in the Oval Office to cover up the fact that Obama was secretly flying to Afghanistan. Whilst only a few US journalists were aware of this event, by mid-morning, a lot more people were suddenly in on the revelation courtesy of Twitter. The first tweet to let the virtual cat out of the bag was Afghanistan news site TOLOnews which reported: 'United States President Barack Obama has arrived in Kabul to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai.'"
Robotics

MA Hackerspace Building Rideable Hexapod 55

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the thus-began-the-hexapod-wars dept.
New submitter schlesingerj writes in with news about a six legged robot "The Artisans Asylum hackerspace in Somerville, MA is building a monster rideable hexapod named 'Stompy', with fully articulated legs (18 hydraulics actuators in total), powered by a humongous propane forklift engine. This is being built as a class, lead by a team of expert roboticists with an impressive background, including DEKA, Boston Dynamics and Barret Technologies and is expected to be finished by the end of the summer. I for one welcome our new robot overlords."
GNU is Not Unix

GNU Media Goblin 0.3.0 Released 43

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the zuckerburg-is-goblin-food dept.
A mere year since the Mediagoblin photo/video sharing project was started, the project has hit version 0.3.0. Release highlights include: a rewrite of the database from MongoDB to SQL (via SQLAlchemy, making it much easier to install), audio support (using the HTML5 <audio> tag), a first take on a mobile interface, and smarter video buffering. Not content to sit idle, the developers are starting work on Salmon protocol support to federate with software like Diaspora in the next release.
Education

MIT And Harvard Start New Online Education Partnership 60

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the students-everywhere-rejoice-as-blackboard-dies dept.
New submitter Lluc writes "MIT and Harvard have started a new online education partnership called edX, an 'open-source technology platform to deliver online courses.' They plan to offer classes starting in Fall 2012. Perhaps this nonprofit venture is a better method for online education than Udacity, the startup created by Stanford professors after their wildly successful free online course offerings." Fellow new submitter alexander_686 sent in a link to the edX FAQ, and adds: "Harvard and MIT are launching edX with 60 million dollars to offer 'low fee' online classes. No word yet on classes offered or who will be teaching. No college credit but certificates will be offered. ... I hope low cost means low cost. (Under $25). I have really enjoyed the Stanford University free online classes."
Hardware Hacking

Sigrok: An Open Source Logic Analyzer 42

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the scoping-out-some-hot-signals dept.
Uwe Hermann today announced the availability of sigrok, one of the first Open Source logic analyzers. Tired of being tied to Windows and proprietary software with limited features, in late 2010 he began work on flosslogic, which, after discovering Bert Vermeulen was also working on similar software, became sigrok. From the article: "Thus, the goal was to write a portable, GPL'd, software that can talk to many different logic analyzers via modules/plugins, supports many input/output formats, and many different protocol decoders. ... Currently supported hardware includes: Saleae Logic, CWAV USBee SX, Openbench Logic Sniffer (OLS), ZEROPLUS Logic Cube LAP-C, ASIX Sigma/Sigma2, ChronoVu LA8, and others." Their wiki has a list of supported protocols as well. You can grab the source over at SourceForge.
Science

Oldest Intact Red Blood Cells Found on Iceman 104

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the next-on-discovery-cloning-the-iceman dept.
sciencehabit writes "A team of researchers has zoomed in on two spots on the body of the Iceman, a mummified, 5300-year-old hunter found frozen in the Alps in 1991: a shoulder wound found with an embedded arrowhead and a hand lesion resembling a stab wound. The scientists used atomic force microscopy, a visualization method with resolution of less than a nanometer, to scan the wounds for blood residue. They discovered red blood cells — the oldest in the world to be found intact — as well as fibrin, a protein needed for blood to clot. The presence of fibrin indicates that the Iceman, nicknamed Ötzi, didn't die immediately after being wounded."
The Internet

Sony Put Video Service on Hold Due to Comcast Data Caps 348

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the last-mile-conflict-of-interest dept.
suraj.sun writes with more fallout from Comcast's bandwidth caps that give preference to their own video services. From the article: "An executive from Sony said Monday that concerns about Comcast's discriminatory data cap are giving the firm second thoughts about launching an Internet video service, that would compete with cable and satellite TV services. In March,Comcast announced that video streamed to the Xbox from Comcast's own video service would be exempted from the cable giant's 250 GB monthly bandwidth cap. 'These guys have the pipe and the bandwidth,' he said. 'If they start capping things, it gets difficult.' Sony isn't the first Comcast rival to complain about the bandwidth cap. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has also blasted Comcast's discriminatory bandwidth cap as a violation of network neutrality. Comcast controls more than 20 percent of the residential broadband market, which means that Comcast effectively controls access to one-fifth of any American Internet video service's potential customers."
IOS

Apple Blocks iOS Apps Using Dropbox SDK 356

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the protection-racket dept.
Barence writes with an excerpt from PC Pro: "Dropbox's latest SDK has incurred the wrath of Apple, because users who don't have the Dropbox app installed on their iPhone/iPad are instead pushed to Dropbox's website via the Safari browser. Here, they can click a link to the desktop version of the service, which allows them to buy extra Dropbox storage without Apple taking its usual 30% cut." Reportedly, Dropbox is attempting to strike a deal to resolve the problem.
Microsoft

German Court Grants Motorola Xbox and Windows 7 Sales Ban 163

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the google-subsidiaries-may-do-infinte-evil dept.
First time accepted submitter Celexi writes "In a surprising move, Motorola Mobility (which is to be taken over by Google), has won an injunction preventing the distribution of Windows 7 and the Xbox in Germany until Microsoft starts paying royalty fees for the patents Microsoft is said to be infringing (two patents used to display H.264 video). The ruling is suspended as of now because of a restraining order, the effect in the rest of the EU and U.S. if the ban is enforced if the restraining order is lifted, is unclear." This could go into effect as soon as May 7th, pending the result of the next U.S. case hearing.
Censorship

Pakistani Court Rules On Internet Censorship: Unconstitutional 79

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the us-declares-freedom-causes-terrorism dept.
Fluffeh writes "It looks like some Pakistanis are taking on 'the man.' With plans laid by the Pakistani Government that could sink up to fifty million websites that it isn't a fan of, Pakistanis took the matter to court — which ruled that such action by the government was unconstitutional. Reporters without Borders was however a little more skeptical 'The high court's ruling, if respected, would make it impossible for the government to introduce any nationwide website filtering system. While welcoming the ruling, which penalizes the lack of transparency in the PTA's past website blocking, Reporters Without Borders calls for vigilance because the PTA could try to circumvent it by devising a constitutional procedure based on the anti-blasphemy law and national security provisions. '"
Transportation

Electric Airplane Ready For Production 239

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the nuclear-powered-planes-out-next-month dept.
MrSeb writes with news about a production ready electric-hybrid airplane. From the article: "... The four-passenger carbon fiber aircraft isn't really an electric plane but more of a plug-in hybrid plane, much like the Chevrolet Volt. Whatever it is, the Volta Volare aeronautics company of Portland, Oregon says the plane can travel 300 miles on battery power, then a 1.5-liter gasoline engine engages and extends the plane's range to 1,000 miles. The company sees the plane being attractive for its low cost of operation and its environmental friendliness. Aviation gasoline is typically leaded fuel, which has been gone from motor vehicle fuel since the 1980s. On a 200-mile trip in a comparable four-passenger gas-engine private plane, you'd burn $80 worth of avgas, while the electricity to carry the GT4 200 miles would cost only $20 — nice savings, but perhaps a little inconsequential when the plane itself is expected to cost around $500,000. Testing begins this spring on the Volta Volare GT4."
Businesses

Mandriva Not Shuttering Its Doors, Yet 97

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the making-gnu-easy-since-before-it-was-cool dept.
An anonymous reader writes, quoting OS News: "In his usual man-of-a-few-words manner today, Jean-Manuel Croset, Mandriva COO, announced that enough funds have been secured to allow Mandriva to keep its doors open and continue development." From the announcement: "The strategy review started two weeks ago will now actively be finalized and the corresponding decisions taken mid of May."

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