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NASA

Submission + - Space Shuttle Endeavour's Greatest Hits (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by RedEaredSlider
RedEaredSlider writes: On the occasion of the last launch of the Endeavour, is a look at some of the great moments from the space shuttle's history. After one more shuttle mission, it looks like American Astronauts will be hitching rides with the Russians. But it's worth looking back and realizing that it was a worthwhile program, if only because it showed us how to make spaceflight routine — and with luck there will be others.

Submission + - Watch How The Police Raid A Mobile Phone (gizmodo.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Gizmodo has a video of a piece of software called Lantern 2,used by the police to extract information off a smartphone:

"Plug your iPhone in. Click 'Aquire'. Wait for a progress bar to complete. After about 15 minutes, I had the entire contents of my phone in an extremely user-friendly interface. Anything you would want to know — or didn'(TM)t even know you'd want to know – about my phone is easy to tap. An entire minute by minute chronology of my text exchanges. Every picture I'd ever taken. My bookmarks. My cookies. Every Skype call I've ever placed. My entire Facebook friend list. Every mobile tower my phone has touched, with longitude and latitude coordinates. All there."
Japan

Submission + - Safecast Crowdsources Radiation Detection (safecast.org)

Submitted by students
students writes: Safecast is seeking donations and volunteer citizen scientists to link a network of home built open source and government radiation monitors to a Google map. They claim to meet "our collective need for trusted information." But unlike the National Weather Service or Tsunami Warning Centers, they do not provide any expert interpretation. Could radiation data misunderstood by the press or public cause an unnecessary panic? The public needs context, not raw data, censorship, or geiger counter bans.

Comment Re:Yes and No (Score 1) 242

by phrackwulf (#35868616) Attached to: Are We Suffering Origin Story Fatigue?

In a similar vein, the one bright spot in the total train wreck that was the Charlize Theron version of "Aeon Flux" was when she shoots a grappling hook at the giant air ship thingy and it bounces off. It is about time that happened to someone in one of these movies.
Japan

Submission + - TEPCO To Move Radioactive Water From Reactor (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by RedEaredSlider
RedEaredSlider writes: Tokyo Electric Power Co. plans to move the radioactive water from one of the reactor buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and treat it on site, the company said.

In a statement, TEPCO outlined a plan to take about 10,000 cubic meters of contaminated water from the turbine building of reactor unit 2, and move it to a treatment plant that will be built on site. The water treatment equipment will be supplied by AREVA, the French nuclear power plant company.

Radiation exposure inside the plant for workers is expected to be high as they try to extract the water. TEPCO said radiation exposure will likely be about 0.011 millisieverts per hour surrounding the building where the water is stored. Nuclear plant workers at Fukushima are limited to doses of about 250 millisieverts per year. It would take two years to reach that limit at the exposure level TEPCO is planning for — if one is outside the building.

Robots sent in to two other damaged reactors buildings, No. 1 and No. 3, found levels of 49 and 57 millisieverts per hour, respectively. The levels in reactor No. 1 are enough to kill a person after about eight days of exposure.
Google

Submission + - BING IS GAY

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: ok bing is rly gay. i think that google is way better. according to knowledgeable scientists, bing is in fact gay. thanks for your time, and remember...BING IS GAY!!!!!!!!!

Submission + - Japanese Samurai Sword History (ultrabladeshop.com)

Submitted by Tessero
Tessero writes: This is a really cool article about the history of samurai swords and their production. It talks about the different ages that swords in Japan started their development from copying Chinese swords to mastering the katana.

Comment What do the kids get out of it? (Score 1) 56

by phrackwulf (#35757860) Attached to: 92,000 LEGO Robots To Take Over Peruvian Schools Alongside OLPC

Can they learn to program on these things? Lego's and laptops are great, but I'm skeptical about the overall benefits of programs like these. Another problem is whether the kids really get to learn the fundamentals of the chips and hardware that go into these little OLPC's. What happens when the kids grow up and technology marches along to the next thing? Wouldn't it be better to be able to rent low cost OLPC's from a central source then take them back when you are done or the technology has been obsoleted? I guess I have visions of million OLPC piles of these computers ending up in Indonesian landfills.

Comment So then.. (Score 1) 141

by phrackwulf (#35677110) Attached to: 50% of Tweets Consumed Come From<nobr> <wbr></nobr>.05% of Users

It's just like a real live social network? Glad we wrapped this one up, experiment successful apparently. Besides, isn't it nice to know that the introverts need no longer be bothered by the popular extroverts taking up oxygen in the real world when they can be blathering away online or following celebrity blather? I think of it as a solution to the info sphere version of second hand smoke.

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