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Space

A Real-Time Map of All the Objects In Earth's Orbit 41

Posted by Soulskill from the except-for-that-mickey-mantle-home-run dept.
rastos1 writes: It started as a passion project in April for 18-year-old James Yoder, an alum of FIRST Robotics, the high school robotics competition. He wanted to learn more about 3D graphics programming and WebGL, a JavaScript API. It's stuffin.space, a real-time, 3D-visualized map of all objects looping around Earth, from satellites to orbital trash. In total, stuffin.space tracks 150,000 objects. Type in a satellite name to scope out its altitude, figure out its age, group satellites by type, and so on.

Submission + - Lizard Squad Teen Convicted of 50,700 Hacking Charges

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: A 17 year old by the name of Julius "zeekill" Kivimaki has been convicted of 50,700 computer crimes charges in relation to a series of hacks committed by the infamous computer hacking gang Lizard Squad. The teen was given a two-year suspended prison sentence and ordered to fight cybercrime. Lizard Squad has taken credit for a slew of big hacks over the last few years, including a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the PlayStation and Xbox networks, as well as a reported assault on the anonymizing communication service Tor.

Submission + - U.K. may send more people into space (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: A few months ahead of the first visit by a U.K. astronaut to the International Space Station (ISS), the U.K. Space Agency has published its first strategy on human spaceflight, promising greater involvement in crewed missions and perhaps even participation in a mission out into the solar system. Following a public consultation and lengthy discussions across government, the new strategy, published today, concludes that continued involvement in the ISS and other programs is the best way to involve U.K. scientists and industry in human spaceflight. The document says the government will consider bilateral projects with other space agencies but fears always being the junior partner since the United Kingdom has no launchers or space stations. It does not think that the commercial launch industry is sufficiently mature for the United Kingdom to buy services commercially. The report also states: “The Agency will also consider its role in human exploration missions beyond Earth orbit, especially where this complements science and technology goals for robotic exploration.”

Submission + - Harry Shearer Returns To The Simpsons

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Fans of The Simpsons will find this turn of events nothing short of excellent: seven weeks after telling that he was exiting the Fox's forever-running animated comedy, Harry Shearer has agreed to rejoin the show. Shearer has now signed the same four season contract as the other five primary voice actors. He previously tweeted "I wanted what we've always had: the freedom to do other work." Executive producer Al Jean found that tweet confusing, saying, "Everybody on the show does lots of outside projects. He actually gets to record on the phone and do the [table] reads on the phone. So we've never kept him from doing that stuff."

Submission + - Seasteading Institute aims to build floating city by 2020 (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Eloking
Eloking writes: An organization in which Paypal founder Peter Thiel is an investor is aiming to build a floating city-state by 2020. The Seasteading Institute says semi-independent floating cities would provide an opportunity to try out new modes of government and could also tackle a number of other problems.
Portables

Two-Pounder From Lenovo Might Be Too Light For Comfort 134

Posted by timothy from the my-keyboard-weighs-more-than-this dept.
MojoKid writes: With the advent of solid state storage and faster, lower-powered processors that require less complex cooling solutions, the average mainstream notebook is rather svelte. Recently, however, Lenovo announced their LaVie Z and LaVie Z 360 ultrabooks and at 1.87 and 2.04 pounds respectively, they're almost ridiculously light. Further, with Core i7 mobile processors and fast SSDs on board, these machines perform impressively well in the benchmarks and real world usage. If you actually pick one up though, both models are so light they feel almost empty, like there's nothing inside. Lenovo achieved this in part by utilizing a magnesium--lithium composite material for the casing of the machines. Though they're incredibly light, the feeling is almost too light, such that they tend to feel a little cheap or flimsy. With a tablet, you come to expect a super thin and light experience and when holding them in one hand, the light weight is an advantage. However, banging on a full-up notebook keyboard deck is a different ball of wax.

Submission + - Airbus chating on competition in cross-channel e-flight challenge

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Aerospace giant Airbus has been accused of 'bad sportsmanship' after squashing the ambitions of light aircraft maker Pipistrel to be the first to fly an electric aircraft across the English Channel.
After Pipistrel acquired flight permissions, the German electronics company Siemens which supplies the electric motor used in the Pipistrel Alpha Electro contacted Pipistrel to say they could not use the motor over water (partly German).

Submission + - Robots in the rough: Pictures and videos from demo day at FSR Toronto (robohub.org)

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes: This June the world’s top experts on field and service robotics met at the bi-annual Field and Service Robotics (FSR) conference, hosted this year by the University of Toronto. We went up to the UTIAS lab for Demo Day to get a first hand look at some of the robot research platforms being developed there, and at Waterloo, and MDA Robotics. Some nice pics and video demos of a tethered robot climbing walls, an autonomous RUV driving through tall grasses, a robust controller for quadrotors, a hexcopter with a multi-camera system that constructs maps, and even an autonomous test car.
Security

'Severe Bug' To Be Patched In OpenSSL 69

Posted by timothy from the best-kind dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The Register reports that upcoming OpenSSL versions 1.0.2d and 1.0.1p are claimed to fix a single security defect classified as "high" severity. It is not yet known what this mysterious vulnerability is — that would give the game away to attackers hoping to exploit the hole before the patch is released to the public. Some OpenSSL's examples of "high severity" vulnerabilities are a server denial-of-service, a significant leak of server memory, and remote code execution. If you are a system administrator, get ready to patch your systems this week. The defect does not affect the 1.0.0 or 0.9.8 versions of the library.

Submission + - 'Severe Bug' To Be Patched In OpenSSL

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Register reports that upcoming OpenSSL versions 1.0.2d and 1.0.1p are claimed to fix a single security defect classified as "high" severity. It is not yet known what this mysterious vulnerability is — that would give the game away to attackers hoping to exploit the hole before the patch is released to the public. Some OpenSSL's examples of "high severity" vulnerabilities are a server denial-of-service, a significant leak of server memory, and remote code execution. If you are a system administrator, get ready to patch your systems this week. The defect does not affect the 1.0.0 or 0.9.8 versions of the library.

Submission + - Nvidia Hopes To Sell More Chips By Bringing AI Programming To The Masses (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Artificial intelligence typically requires heavy computing power, which can only help manufacturers of specialized chip manufacturers like Nvidia. That's why the company is pushing its Digits software, which helps users design and experiment with neural networks. Version 2 of digits moves out of the command line and comes with a GUI interface in an attempt to move interest beyond the current academic market; it also makes programming for multichip configurations possible.

Submission + - Pressure mounts on Google to extend Right to Be Forgotten to US (betanews.com) 1

Submitted by Mark Wilson
Mark Wilson writes: The Right To Be Forgotten has proved controversial. A little over a year ago Google was told by a European court that it should accept requests to remove from search results pages that are "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant". Now, calls for the scheme to be extended to the US are growing ever-louder.

Consumer Watchdog not only says that the Right To Be Forgotten should be brought to the US, but also that Google's refusal to do so is an "unfair and deceptive" business practice. The consumer group is writing to the Federal Trade Commission calling for the search giant to be investigated and forced to consider the removal of certain search results. As has been proved in Europe, it's something that is not without controversy.

Submission + - World's First Road-Ready Line of 3D Printed Cars Unveiled Today by Local Motors (3dprint.com)

Submitted by ErnieKey
ErnieKey writes: Phoenix-based Local Motors 3D printed their first Strati car last September, and has been going strong since, announcing the Project [Redacted] design challenge in June seeking input from their co-creation community for a road-ready 3D printed car design. A panel of judges reviewed more than 60 entries, and this morning the winners were announced, with Oregon-based Kevin Lo taking the Grand Prize for his design, a customizable vehicle called the Reload Redacted — Swim and Sport. The modular design includes both the 'Swim' and the 'Sport' body types, and both allow for customization and repair via snap modularity.

Submission + - How Light Is Too Light For A Laptop? Lenovo LaVie Z Breaks 2 LB Barrier (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Ultralight notebooks or "ultrabooks" have become the norm, with the demand for thinner and lighter frames that are still capable of delivering full-featured notebook performance. With the advent of solid state storage and faster, lower-powered processors that require less complex cooling solutions, the average mainstream notebook is rather svelte. Recently, however, Lenovo announced their LaVie Z and LaVie Z 360 ultrabooks and at 1.87 and 2.04 pounds respectively, they're almost ridiculously light. Further, with Core i7 mobile processors and fast SSDs on board, these machines perform impressively well in the benchmarks and real world usage. If you actually pick one up though, both models are so light they feel almost empty, like there's nothing inside. Lenovo achieved this in part by utilizing a magnesium--lithium composite material for the casing of the machines. Though they're incredibly light, the feeling is almost too light, such that they tend to feel a little cheap or flimsy. With a tablet, you come to expect a super thin and light experience and when holding them in one hand, the light weight is an advantage. However, banging on a full-up notebook keyboard deck is a different ball of wax. Which begs the question: Are ultrabooks getting too light? Microsoft's Surface 3 is 1.37 pounds, but it's a tablet doubling as a notebook (a 2-in-1 device). What about full-up business or consumer class notebooks? Do they really need to be that light?

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