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NASA

Submission + - Astronaut Loses Shuttle Slot after Bike Accident

Submitted by
Pickens
Pickens writes: "The Guardian reports that It takes 20 months of intense, dangerous training to go into space on the space shuttle with prospective astronauts flying T-34 aeroplanes, scuba diving, achieving weightlessness inside plunging jumbo jets and undergoing survival exercises in the wilderness so it comes as a disappointment and surprise that lead spacewalker Tim Kopra is being put off the mission after breaking his hip after falling off his bicycle. "It was obviously a disappointment for Tim to not be available for this upcoming launch window, but he understands very well that we have to be prepared to fly," says chief astronaut Peggy Whitson. Astronauts training for flight aren't permitted to do certain high-risk activities like sky diving, snow skiing or motorcycle riding, but routine exercise such as cycling isn't restricted. Kopra, who has made one previous journey into space, could rejoin the crew if the Discovery flight is delayed until Nasa's next launch opportunity in April. Discovery's launch has already been on hold since November due to work to repair cracks in its fuel tank. The mission will involve two spacewalks to repair an ammonia pump and perform other work on the space station."
Transportation

Submission + - Road Train Completes First Trials in Sweden

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "BBC reports that technology that links vehicles into "road trains" that can travel as a semi-autonomous convoy has undergone its first real world tests with trials held on Volvo's test track in Sweden slaving a single car to a truck to test the platooning system and researchers believe platoons of cars could be traveling on Europe's roads within a decade cutting fuel use, boosting safety and may even reducing congestion. SARTRE researchers say that around 80% of accidents on the road are due to human error so using professional lead drivers to take the strain on long journeys could, they say, see road accidents fall. They also predict fuel efficiency could improve by as much as 20% if "vehicle platooning" takes off, with obvious benefits for the environment. A video of the trial shows the test car traveling behind a truck and then handing over control to that leading vehicle with commands to steer, speed up and slow down all coming from the driver of the lead vehicle while the driver of the test car is seen taking his hands off the wheel, reading a newspaper and sipping coffee as the journey proceeds. "An automated system is likely to make it safer as it takes away driver error but it would have to be 100% reliable," says John Franklin "This kind of system would also require a complete change in motoring culture for drivers to hand over control,.""
Businesses

Submission + - Are You a Secret Apple Stockholder?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "If you're like most Americans, you probably figure the news about Steve Jobs and Apple doesn't affect you directly, however the WSJ reports that you may not know it, but you are probably a secret Apple stockholder. And maybe a big one. Few stocks are as widely held in regular mutual funds as well as in hedge funds and few affect the performance of so many retirement portfolios. An astonishing 4,100 mutual funds hold stock in Apple compared to just 3,630 for Exxon and J&J and 3,200 for P&G, although the figure for Microsoft is even higher at almost 4,800. So investors are paying attention to Apple as the stock is a major wheelhouse playing an outsized role in many major stock market indexes and investors' portfolios and if Apple stumbles, that could spill over and cause investors to question other stocks. "Apple is a cult stock," says Ken Winans of Winans International. "Cult stocks are always a dangerous animal.""
Music

Submission + - Sony, Universal to Beat Piracy with 'Instant Pop' 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Guardian reports that Britain's two biggest record labels, Sony and Universal, plan to beat music piracy by making new singles available for sale on the day they first hit the airwaves hoping the effort will encourage young people to buy songs they can listen to immediately rather than copying from radio broadcasts online. Songs used to receive up to six weeks radio airplay before they were released for sale, a practice known as "setting up" a record. "What we were finding under the old system was the searches for songs on Google or iTunes were peaking two weeks before they actually became available to buy, meaning that the public was bored of — or had already pirated — new singles," says David Joseph. Sony, which will start the "on air, on sale" policy simultaneously with Universal next month, agreed that the old approach was no longer relevant in an age where, according to a spokesman for the music major, "people want instant gratification"."
United States

Submission + - Peace Corps Volunteers Remember Sargent Shriver

Submitted by
Peace Corps Online
Peace Corps Online writes: "Sargent Shriver, the Kennedy in-law who became the founding director of the Peace Corps, the architect of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty, the United States ambassador to France, the Democratic candidate for vice president in 1972, and President of Special Olympics, died today at 95. As the Peace Corps' Founding Director Shriver laid the foundations for the most lasting accomplishment of the Kennedy presidency. As the Peace Corps approaches its 50th anniversary this year, more than 200,000 Americans have served as volunteers in 139 countries. Shriver spoke to returned volunteers at the Peace Vigil at Lincoln Memorial in September, 2001 for the Peace Corps 40th a week after 911. "The challenge I believe is simple — simple to express but difficult to fulfill. That challenge is expressed in these words: PCV's — stay as you are. Be servants of peace. Work at home as you have worked abroad. Humbly, persistently, intelligently. Weep with those who are sorrowful, Care for those who are sick. Serve your wives, serve your husbands, serve your families, serve your neighbors, serve your cities, serve the poor, join others who also serve," said Shriver. "Serve, Serve, Serve. That's the answer, that's the objective, that's the challenge.""
Programming

Submission + - How Facebook Ships Code

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "yeegay has a very interesting article about how Facebook develops and releases software that he has gathered from talking with friends at the company. The two largest teams at Facebook are Engineering and Ops, with roughly 400-500 team members each, together making up about 50% of the company. All engineers go through 4 to 6 week “Boot Camp” training where they learn the Facebook system by fixing bugs. After boot camp, all engineers get access to live DB and any engineer can modify any part of Facebook's code base and check-in at-will so that engineers can modify specs mid-process, re-order work projects, and inject new feature ideas anytime. Then arguments about whether or not a feature idea is worth doing or not generally get resolved by spending a week implementing it and then testing it on a sample of users, e.g., 1% of Nevada users. "All changes are reviewed by at least one person, and the system is easy for anyone else to look at and review your code even if you don’t invite them to," writes yeegay. "It would take intentionally malicious behavior to get un-reviewed code in.” What is interesting for a compnay this size is that there is no official QA group at Facebook but almost every employee is dogfooding the product every day: many times a day and every employee is using a version of the site that includes all the changes that are next in line to go out. All employees are strongly encouraged to report any bugs they see and these are very quickly actioned upon. Facebook has about 60,000 servers with the smallest level comprising only 6 servers and there are nine levels for pushing out new code. For new code the ops team observes those 6 servers at level 1 to make sure that they are behaving correctly before rolling forward to the next level. If a release is causing any issues (e.g., throwing errors, etc.) then the push is halted, the engineer who committed the offending changeset is paged to fix the problem, and then the release starts over again at level 1."
Communications

Submission + - Riled Robocall Recipient Takes Robo-Revenge

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Washington Post reports that Maryland resident Aaron Titus jumped out of bed in a panic at 433 am last week awakened by a ringing phone thinking maybe something terrible had happened. Answering the phone halfway into the second ring, Titus, a privacy officer at a company that offers software to help keep personal information on your computer secure and private, listened in disbelief to an automated caller tell him that it was a snow day and school would open two hours late. In other words, he and his family could sleep. Sometime later in the day, the 31-year-old father made a decision that might well bring amused satisfaction to like-minded parents everywhere. Titus found a robocall company online, taped a message and listed every phone number he could find for nine school board members so at 430 the next morning phones began ringing with 29 seconds of automated, mocking objection: "This is a Prince George's County School District parent, calling to thank you for the robocall yesterday at 4:30 in the morning. I decided to return the favor.'' School board member Edward Burroughs III said he had not personally gotten one of Titus's robocall rebukes, but considered it "very clever." The robocall, Burroughs concluded, made a point. "It's certainly something that I welcome all parents to do — communicate with us, by any means necessary." However a complaint has allegedly been filed against Titus with the Virginia State Bar, where Titus is admitted as an attorney because beginning September 1, 2009, prerecorded commercial telemarketing calls to consumers – commonly known as robocalls are prohibited, unless the telemarketer has obtained permission in writing from consumers who want to receive such calls."
Earth

Submission + - Superstorm is Latest Threat to California

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "In December, an atmospheric river threw a series of wet storms at California, breaking rainfall records in many areas across the state but now the Sacramento Bee reports that scientists say that "superstorms" have hit California at least six times in the past 2 millenia and that the state got a relatively tame taste of the phenomenon in December. "This storm, with essentially the same probability as a major earthquake, is potentially four to five times more damaging," says Lucy Jones, USGS chief scientist on the study. "That's not something that is in the public consciousness." A two-year study by the US Geological Survey builds on a new understanding of so-called atmospheric rivers, a focusing of high-powered winds that drag a fire hose of tropical moisture across the Pacific Ocean, pointed directly at California for days on end and potentially causing $1 trillion in damages statewide — five times worse than a massive earthquake, which likely would affect only one region. "For a lot of people in California, we don't think of ourselves as being this flood-prone," says urban planner Laurie Johnson. "It's just too difficult to comprehend.""
Communications

Submission + - Riled Reciept Retaliates with Robocall Revenge 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Washington Post reports that Virginia resident Aaron Titus jumped out of bed in a panic at 433 am awakened by a ringing phone thinking maybe something terrible had happened. In a blurry rush, Titus answered the phone halfway into the second ring, listening in disbelief to an automated caller tell him what he already knew: It was a snow day. School would open two hours late. In other words, he and his family could sleep. Sometime later in the day, the 31-year-old father, a lawyer who knows a thing or two about technology, made a decision that might well bring amused satisfaction to like-minded parents everywhere. He found a robocall company online, taped a message and listed every phone number he could find for nine school board members so at 430 the next morning phones began ringing with 29 seconds of automated, mocking objection: "This is a Prince George's County School District parent, calling to thank you for the robocall yesterday at 4:30 in the morning. I decided to return the favor. While I know the school district wanted to ensure I drop my child off two hours late on a snow day, I already knew that before I went to bed. I hope this call demonstrates why a 4:30 a.m. call does more to annoy than to inform.'' School board member Edward Burroughs III said he had not personally gotten one of Titus's robocall rebukes, but considered it "very clever." The robocall, he concluded, made a point. "It's certainly something that I welcome all parents to do — communicate with us, by any means necessary.""
United States

Submission + - US Scraps Virtual Fence along Mexican Border

Submitted by
Pickens
Pickens writes: "The Arizona Republic reports that the federal government has officially cancelled its multibillion-dollar plan to build a virtual fence along the border with Mexico as Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano disclosed in a congressional briefing that the program known as SBInet was costing too much and achieving too little. "SBInet cannot meet its original objective of providing a single, integrated border-security technology solution," says Napolitano. Boeing was hired in 2006 to develop the system under a three-year federal contract with cost projections for full build-out as high as $8 billion but efforts were plagued by delays, glitches, budget increases and congressional criticism. Napolitano has ordered Customs and Border Protection to launch a more modest and geographically tailored effort using SBInet funds and existing technology such as mobile-surveillance systems, unmanned aircraft, thermal-imaging devices and remote-video surveillance with proven elements of SBInet including stationary radar and infrared-sensor towers. SBInet cost nearly $1 billion for development along 53 miles of Arizona border. Homeland Security says its new plan can enhance security along the remaining 323 miles of Arizona border at a total cost of less than $750 million."
Crime

Submission + - Your Most Dangerous Possession? Your Smartphone 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "CNN reports that now that smartphones double as wallets and bank accounts — allowing users to manage their finances, transfer money, make payments, deposit checks and swipe their phones as credit cards — smartphones have become very lucrative scores for thieves and with 30% of phone subscribers owning iPhones, BlackBerrys and Droids, there are a lot of people at risk. "It's crazy the amount of information on that phone — it's like carrying a mini-computer around with you, except that more people know the settings on their computer than they do on their phones at this point," says Nikki Junker, a victim advisor at the Identity Theft Resource Center. "People are incredibly at risk as technology improves." Storing a password and keeping your phone locked is a good start, but it's not going to protect you from professional fraudsters. "Don't think that having an initial password set on your phone can stop people from getting in there," says Junker. "It's a very low level of protection — you can even find 30-second videos on how to crack smartphone passwords on YouTube.""
Government

JFK Library Launches Largest Presidential Online Archive 69

Posted by Soulskill from the like-wikileaks-but-a-few-decades-after-people-care dept.
Lucas123 writes "The JFK Library launched what it is calling the largest presidential online archive, offering the public 117TB of data related to John F. Kennedy's presidency. The four-year project digitized a plethora of analog material including 200,000 pages of documents; 300 reels of audio tape containing more than 1,245 individual recordings of telephone calls, speeches and meetings; 300 museum artifacts; 72 reels of film; and 1,500 photos. 'As young people increasingly rely on the Internet as their primary source for information, it is our hope that the library's online archive will allow a new generation to learn about this important chapter in American history,' said Carolyn Kennedy, the wife of the late John F. Kennedy, Jr., who was on hand at the opening of the archive."
NASA

Submission + - NASA Names Backup Commander for Giffords's Husband

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Washington Post reports that NASA has named Astronaut Rick Sturckow as backup commander for the Space Shuttle Endeavour's forthcoming mission to the International Space Station, a trip scheduled to be led by Mark Kelly, husband of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, wounded in the Tucson shooting. Kelly, a Naval captain who lives in Houston and trains at NASA's Johnson Space Center there, quickly flew to Tucson Saturday to be with his wife who is making significant progress in her recovery. Kelly remains commander of the mission, says Peggy Whitson, chief of NASA's Astronaut Office. "He is facing many uncertainties now as he supports Gabrielle, and our goal is to allow him to keep his undistracted attention on his family while allowing preparations for the mission to progress," says Whitson. "Designating a backup allows the crew and support team to continue training, and enables Mark to focus on his wife's care." Kelly recommended the assignment of a backup commander, adding, "I am very hopeful that I will be in a position to rejoin my STS-134 crew members to finish our training.""
United States

Submission + - Patriot Act Up For Renewal, Nobody Notices

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "When the Patriot Act was first signed in 2001, it was billed as a temporary measure required because of the extreme circumstances created by the terrorist threat. The fear from its opponents was that executive power, once given, is seldom relinquished. Now the Examiner reports that on January 5th, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) introduced a bill to add yet another year to the soon to be expiring Patriot Act extending it until February, 2012 with passage likely to happen with little debate or contention. If passed, this would be the second time the Obama administration has punted on campaign promises to roll back excessive surveillance measures allowed under the act passed in the wake of 9/11. Last years extension passed under the heading of the Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act. "Given the very limited number of days Congress has in session before the current deadline, and the fact that the bill’s Republican sponsor is only seeking another year, I think it's safe to read this as signaling an agreement across the aisle to put the issue off yet again," writes Julian Sanchez."

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