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Submission + - NASA mission to find exoplanets grinds to a halt (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Just over four years after it was launched into orbit, NASA's Kepler space telescope has broken down. On 12 May, after tilting in an unexpected direction, it entered a protective safe mode and stopped collecting data. Efforts to get the spacecraft going again failed when a wheel critical for pointing the telescope refused to spin.
NASA isn't ready to give up on the mission, which launched in 2009 and was extended last year to 2016. Running on thrusters, Kepler has the fuel to stay in orbit for months or perhaps years as engineers try to fix the problem from 40 million miles away. But with two of its four reaction wheels now out of commission — the first stopped working last July — the spacecraft's search for planets around other stars is clearly in trouble.

Submission + - Larry Page: You Worry Too Much About Medical Privacy (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Yesterday, Larry Page revealed that he'd been suffering from a vocal cord ailment that impaired his ability to speak for more than a year. The positive feedback he got from opening up about it inspired him to tell attendees at Google I/O that we should all be less uptight about keeping our medical records private. As far as Page is concerned, pretty much the only legitimate reason for worry on this score is fear of being denied health insurance. "Maybe we should change the rules around insurance so that they have to insure people," he said, perhaps unaware that the Obamacare reforms kicking in next year do exactly that.

Submission + - Caffeine is the key to human cloning?

Submitted by PensacolaSlick
PensacolaSlick writes: For the first time, a team of scientists in Oregon have succeeded in creating compatible embryonic stem cells from the skin cells of an adult human, through a cloning process. The work paves the way for targeted gene therapy for patients needing tissue or organ repair. Though the article isn't crystal clear on whether the caffeine involved was solely imbibed by laboratory staff, or also used in the cloning process, the latter can be infered by similar research from a UK team: “It is remarkable that adding caffeine was the key that resulted in embryonic stem cell lines from all three [egg] donors.”

Submission + - Google removes ability to disable saving chat history on its servers

Submitted by JoeyRox
JoeyRox writes: The Google Talk Windows client has always supported the option of globally disabling the saving of chat history on Google's servers. Sadly Google just notified users this option is no longer supported and that all chats will now be archived on their servers by default unless the users opts-out on a per-conversation basis. What happened to do no evil? https://support.google.com/talk/answer/161925

Submission + - Google's House of Cards 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In The Design That Conquered Google, The New Yorker's Matt Buchanan reports that "cards" — modeled after real cards — are set to become one of the dominant ways in which Google presents certain types of information to users. The power of a card as a visual-organization metaphor, the secret of its infiltration, said Matias Duarte (lead designer of Android), is that "it makes very clear the atomic unity of things; it’s still flexible while creating a kind of regularity." Hey, maybe that Bill Atkinson was really on to something with that dadgum HyperCard software of his back in the '80s!

Submission + - Quad-core Android Phone Keeps Cool With Water Pipe (linuxgizmos.com)

Submitted by __aajbyc7391
__aajbyc7391 writes: NEC has announced an Android smartphone that uses a water-cooling system to keep its quad-core 1.7GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro system-on-chip (SOC) from overheating. The NEC Medias X 06E integrates a liquid cooling pipe near the SOC to cool off the 4.7-inch phone, which is being marketed at Japanese women. As reported first on The Verge, the phone is equipped with a water-filled heatpipe, as well as a graphite sheet that runs parallel to the motherboard, thereby drawing heat away from the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro SOC. Improved power management and hardware design have largely kept complaints about overheated smartphones to a minimum, but with more cores comes more heat. Consequently, reports of overheating on the new wave of quad-core phones have been on the rise, and it's likely to get worse as more and more cores are pressed into service.

Submission + - MS reads all your skype .. (h-online.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Anyone who uses Skype has consented to the company reading everything they write. The H's associates in Germany at heise Security have now discovered that the Microsoft subsidiary does in fact make use of this privilege in practice. Shortly after sending HTTPS URLs over the instant messaging service, those URLs receive an unannounced visit from Microsoft HQ in Redmond ..

In summary, The H and heise Security believe that, having consented to Microsoft using all data transmitted over the service pretty much however it likes, all Skype users should assume that this will actually happen and that the company is not going to reveal what exactly it gets up to with this data.

Submission + - Google demands Microsoft pull YouTube app for WP8 (engadget.com)

Submitted by exomondo
exomondo writes: Google has given Microsoft until May 22nd to pull their Windows Phone 8 YouTube app from the marketplace and disable it on customer devices. It not only includes a built-in ad blocker but also allows users to download videos and doesn't impose device-specific streaming restrictions outlined in the YouTube Terms Of Service.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What database to use to retrieve similar records

Submitted by pdubinsky
pdubinsky writes: I have to build a database with a table that takes data submitted by users. THe table needs names, addresses, phone numbers, zipcodes, the application where the user submitted the data and the like. But because the user may not enter data the same way for every app, I think that I need a database of some type that will allow retrieving data where the data similarities are somewhat fuzzy, ie. names maybe for the same person but may have minor spelling errors. Does anyone have a recommendation for a database system that can deal with this type of fuzziness?

Submission + - BBM on Android and iOS Make it the Next Big Social Network (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: BBM is spreading its wings coming to iOS and Android as well as creating Channels to help brands and celebrities engage with followers. While it may seem like a humble messaging app, should BBM grow as expected on iOS and Android it could become BlackBerry's most important asset as it attempts to remain relevant in the smartphone world.

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