19761996
submission
olsmeister writes:
Netflix may be known for offering some of our favorite TV and movie streams, but the company is about to step up its game and begin offering original content. Netflix has allegedly outbid a number of major cable networks for a new drama series produced by and starring Kevin Spacey called House of Cards, and may be about to close a deal at more than $100 million, according to a report on Deadline.com.
19724736
submission
olsmeister writes:
A U.S.-led research team claims they have discovered the remains of what might be the mythical city in a swamp in southern Spain, according to Reuters. They theorize a massive tsunami sent the city to its watery grave thousands of years ago.
The site is 60 miles inland in an area of mud flats. The distance from the coast could be evidence of the tremendous destruction tsunamis can bring.
"This is the power of tsunamis," head research Richard Freund told Reuters. "It is just so hard to understand that it can wipe out 60 miles inland, and that's pretty much what we're talking about."
The team used ground-penetrating satellite images to discover the ruins buried in the swampy earth. The marshland, known as Dona Ana Park, is where the team believes they have pinpointed the ancient city.
19589162
submission
olsmeister writes:
Dr. Richard Hoover of the NASA Marshall Splace Flight Center claims to have discovered fossilized life inside of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. Many, however, dispute the idea, claiming that the meteorites in question have been on earth for too long and have been contaminated by terrestrial microbes. Dr. Hoover may be a bit biased, however, having just co-authored a book on the subject.
19467690
submission
olsmeister writes:
A Massachusetts based company has developed a form of cyanobacteria that can take water, sunlight, and CO2, and turn it into diesel fuel. Not only that, but they claim they can do it efficiently and at $30 per barrel. They say they can be operating commercially in 2 years.
19349174
submission
olsmeister writes:
About a year from now, the Smithsonian will have an exhibit called The Art of Video Games to explore the 40 year evolution of video games as an artistic medium. Between now and April 7th, they are allowing the public to vote on games that they feel are innovative or visually spectacular. Results will be announced in May.
19347220
submission
olsmeister writes:
Amazon today announced that it will allow streaming of movies and TV shows to Prime customers at no additional charge, in a move aimed squarely at competing with Netflix. Amazon's selection doesn't seem to stack up that well yet, but it has a cheaper yearly price and free shipping on purchases to boot. Let the competition begin.
19229116
submission
olsmeister writes:
Two researchers at Duke University have devised a way to use metamaterials to greatly improve the efficiency of inductive chargers. The article can be found here, and a PDF of the original paper can be found here.
19001772
submission
olsmeister writes:
Verizon announced Thursday that it will begin throttling data for the top 5% of its data users on their unlimited plan. Once a limit is reached, speeds would be throttled for the remainder of the billing period as well as the next billing period as well.
Also, they will be introducing new image and video compression that will reduce the size of that data but result in lower quality.
18591480
submission
olsmeister writes:
Verizon seems to have used the highly publicized announcement that they will be carrying the iPhone 4 to reduce attention to a change they are making to their upgrade policy: the end of their New Every Two worry free upgrade program. This will increase the amount of the cost of new smartphones that consumers are responsible for, and will mean better profit margins for Verizon on these products.
18571176
submission
olsmeister writes:
The European Space Agency has released information on the first science results from the Planck Observatory. This includes the Early Release Compact Source Catalogue, providing new images of galaxy superclusters, as well as data on what is currently the coldest known objects in the universe, star forming areas in the Milky Way known as cold cores with temperatures as low as 7 Kelvins.
18186686
submission
olsmeister writes:
The new rules provide fewer protections for mobile broadband subscribers and may lead to a fractured Internet, critics said. The new rules, a compromise championed by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, would bar wireline-based broadband providers — but not mobile broadband providers — from "unreasonable discrimination" against Web traffic, prompting some consumer groups to call the rules "fake" net neutrality.
Genachowski's plan, approved after more than seven years of debate about whether net neutrality rules are needed, also contains several loopholes for broadband providers, critics said, including an exception for managed services separate from the public Internet.
But Genachowski defended the rules as "strong and balanced."
17551272
submission
olsmeister writes:
For 18 minutes this past April, 15% of the world's internet traffic was routed through servers in China. This includes traffic from both .gov and .mil US TLD's. Is this related to the recent hacking of gmail accounts that appear to have originated in China? Probably not ... but the moral of the story is, if you're sending sensitive information across the net, make sure it is encrypted.
14670508
submission
olsmeister writes:
It appears the White House would like to make it easier for the FBI to obtain records of a person's internet activities without a court order to do so, via the use of an NSL. While they have been able to this this for a long time, this may expand the type of information able to be gathered without a court order to include things like web browsing histories.
14625198
submission
olsmeister writes:
New data offer evidence that the heft of the Higgs particle lies somewhere in the low end of the range being probed by particle colliders on two continents. The results also hint that the particle's mass may be consistent with supersymmetry, a theory that gives every particle in the standard model of physics a much heavier partner.
11099302
submission
olsmeister writes:
The most women in space ever at the same time. Cue jokes now:
