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Submission + - DARPA is already working on designer organisms to terraform Mars (examiner.com)

Submitted by MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: Space visionaries dream of a time when human beings will not only settle Mars, but will terraform the Red Planet into something more Earth-like, with a breathable atmosphere, running water, and a functioning biosphere. Evidence exists that Mars was more or less Earth-like billions of years ago before the atmosphere leached away into space and the water became frozen under the ground and at the poles. Terraforming Mars is decades away from the beginning and probably centuries away from the end. But DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is already genetically engineering organisms that will help turn the Red Planet blue, according to a story in Motherboard.

Submission + - Stellar Rejuvenation: Some Exoplanets May Get Facelifts (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: Astronomers may have discovered an exoplanet that has found the elixir to planetary youth, knocking billions of years off its age. Until now, stellar rejuvenation has been pure conjecture, but after studying a white dwarf star called PG 0010+280, it turns out that one very interesting explanation for an excess in detected infrared radiation may be down to the presence of an exoplanet that was given a facelift. “When planets are young, they still glow with infrared light from their formation,” said Michael Jura of the University of California, Los Angeles, co-author of the study published in The Astrophysical Journal. “But as they get older and cooler, you can’t see them anymore. Rejuvenated planets would be visible again.” This rejuvenation happens when stellar material shedding from a dying red giant star falls onto an exoplanet, causing heating and making it appear younger.

Submission + - Protesters block effort to restart work on controversial Hawaii telescope (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: An attempt to restart construction on what would be one of the world’s largest telescopes was blocked yesterday, after state authorities escorting construction vehicles clashed with protesters blockading the road to the summit of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano. Officers from Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR), and construction workers for the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT), turned back from the summit shortly after noon Wednesday, citing concerns for public safety after finding the road blocked by boulders. The withdrawal followed several hours of clashes with Native Hawaiian protesters blockading the road, culminating in the arrests of 11 men and women, including several protest organizers. The protestors have said the $1.4 billion TMT would desecrate sacred land.

Submission + - Controversial trial of genetically modified wheat ends in disappointment (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: A genetically engineered wheat designed to scare away aphids has, in the end, just not proved scary enough. Researchers had hoped that the wheat modified to emit a warning pheromone would ward off aphids while also attracting their natural enemies, thereby allowing farmers to spray less insecticide. Despite promising signs in the laboratory, the field trial—which made headlines in 2012 after opponents of genetic modification (GM) threatened to obstruct it—failed to show any effect.

Submission + - Wi-Fi router's 'pregnant women' setting sparks vendor rivalry in China (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: When one Chinese technology vendor, Qihoo, launched a new Wi-Fi router with a safety setting for "pregnant women," a rival vendor took offense to the implication that their routers might be dangerous. Xiamo, which also sells Wi-Fi routers, took to its page on Chinese social media site Weibo to denounce Qihoo's pregnant women mode as a "marketing tactic," and clarify that "Wi-Fi usage is safe."

Zhou Hongyi, chief executive and president of Qihoo, acknowledged in a statement to the South China Morning Post that there is no evidence supporting claims that Wi-Fi routers pose a risk for birth defects. But he said the company is appealing to consumers' beliefs, whether they are supported by science or not.

"We are targeting people who are afraid of radiation," Hongyi said. "We aren't scientists. We haven't done many experiments to prove how much damage the radiation from Wi-Fi can cause. We leave the right of choice to our customers."

Submission + - LG won't allow bootloader unlocking on "previously released" G4 variants

Submitted by aka_bigred
aka_bigred writes: Recently, LG announced that they would offer an official process to unlock the bootloader on certain LG mobile phones. They've actually been saying this in various unofficial forms since mid 2014.

Unfortunately, the latest word in LG's own support forums paints a slightly less optimistic picture for the majority of customers who purchased their flagship G4 phone:

Currently, only LG G4 (H815) for the EU open market supports unlocking the bootloader and we have no plan to support bootloader unlock in previously launched models including VS986.

We regret to inform you that LG VS986 does not support it and apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused you.

A petition on Change.org has been created to let LG know how many of their customers want to unlock the bootloader on other variants of their flagship G4 phone.

An officially unlocked bootloader is the easiest way to enjoy 3rd party Android ROMs such as the wildly popular CyanogenMod, since phone owners no longer have cross their fingers an hope that an obscure security flaw will allow them to root & unlock the bootloader of their phone.

Submission + - Supreme Court Upholds Key Obamacare Subsidies

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Retuers repots that the US Supreme Court has ruled 6 — 3 in favor of the nationwide availability of tax subsidies that are crucial to the implementation of President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, handing a major victory to the president. It marked the second time in three years that the high court ruled against a major challenge to the law brought by conservatives seeking to gut it. "Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," wrote Chief Justice Roberts adding that nationwide availability of the credits is required to "avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid." The ruling will come as a major relief to Obama as he seeks to ensure that his legacy legislative achievement is implemented effectively and survives political and legal attacks before he leaves office in early 2017.

Justice Antonin Scalia took the relatively rare step of reading a summary of his dissenting opinion from the bench. "We really should start calling the law SCOTUScare," said Scalia referencing the court’s earlier decision upholding the constitutionality of the law. SCOTUS is the acronym for the Supreme Court of the United States.

Submission + - Reverse-engineering a Frame of Supreme Commander

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When Supreme Commander was released 8 years ago, it redefined the RTS genre with its real-time strategic zoom and its epic battles involving several thousands of units at once, while bringing a whole generation of PCs to their knees. Today an article revisits the process of rendering a frame of the game by reverse-engineering the API calls made to the GPU. All the techniques and algorithms are explained in detail, many of them still used in current video games.

Submission + - Interview: Ask Linus Torvalds a Question

Submitted by samzenpus
samzenpus writes: Linus Torvalds, the man behind the development of the Linux kernel, needs no introduction to Slashdot readers. Recently, we talked about his opinion on C++, and he talked about the future of Linux when he's gone. It's been a while since we sat down with Linus to ask him questions, so he's agreed to do it again and answer any you may have. Ask as many questions as you'd like, but please keep them to one per post.

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