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Submission + - 55-year-old Dark Side of the Moon Mystery Solve, Not Related to Led Zeppelin (medium.com)

Submitted by azulza
azulza writes: The far side looks *nothing* like the side that faces us. After 55 years, we may finally know why. It wasn’t until the Soviet spacecraft Luna 3 (1959) swung around to the far side of the Moon, that we got our first pictures of the far side of the Moon. One thing you’ll notice right away is the almost complete absence of the dark maria (spots) on the far side, and perhaps the second thing you’ll see is how much more prominently and thoroughly cratered the far side is.

You see, there’s an obvious explanation—that perhaps you even thought of yourself—but it turns out to be wrong. Think that Earth deflects asteroids? Nope! Read on for the insightful and thought-provoking article about the formation of our only moon!

Submission + - Universal Studios Japan Is Creating A Massive 49 Foot Attack On Titan (japanrealm.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As a part of Universal Japan’s “Universal Cool Japan” limited attraction, the studio will soon be producing the largest titan we’ve seen yet, and very likely the largest titan that will ever be created, as the studio intends to make the statue realistic and life-sized.

Get your swords ready AOT fans, because you may have to fight for your life just to enter Universal Studios Japan. Just kidding, but nonetheless, Universal Japan is having a tribute to Hajime Isayama’s “Attack on Titan The Real”, which will feature a massive, near life-sized replica of a 49-foot statue Eren Titan. But what good is just one lone titan, right? Alongside this beast, there will also be a 46-foot female Titan

Submission + - Proposed Explanation for "Darwin's Dilemma" (go.com) 2

Submitted by TaleSlinger
TaleSlinger writes: Scientists following two different lines of evidence have just published research that may help resolve "Darwin's dilemma," a mystery that plagued the father of evolution until his death more than a century ago.

Life appeared when the earth was tens of millions of years old, but evolution didn't go into high gear until the "Cambrian Explosion", nearly a billion years later. The two papers propose complementary theories that help explain this. The first suggests that scientists have long overestimated the amount of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere in the pre-Cambrian era just before the "explosion." The second suggests suggests that very dramatic changes driven by the tectonic breakup of the so-called "supercontinents" of the pre-Cambrian era could have caused an extraordinary leap in oxygen levels of both the ancient oceans and the earth's atmosphere.

These two studies fit neatly together, suggesting that a world deprived of oxygen could have changed relatively quickly into an incubator for new life in shallow ponds spread across the continents and fed by waters rich in nutrients. Perhaps that set the stage for the explosion, which may have been five times the evolutionary rate seen today.

Submission + - Telecom providers strike back on Obama's net neutrality support 1

Submitted by mwagner
mwagner writes: The cable and phone industries came out swinging following President Obama's surprise endorsement of net neutrality Monday. The industry says strong net neutrality regulation would hurt broadband by freezing investment. They threatened to take the fight to Congress and the courts, as they've done in the past. National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) President & CEO Michael Powell said "Congress and only Congress should make a policy change of this magnitude." Verizon said Title II "would apply 1930s-era utility regulation to the Internet."

Submission + - Nevada Earthquake Swarm Increases Chance Of Larger Quake

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hundreds of small earthquakes have been gaining in strength in northwestern Nevada. The Nevada region bordering California and Oregon was hit by 18 quakes in less than 24 hours, with magnitudes measuring from 2.7 to 4.5. According to CNN: "This does not necessarily mean a big one will come, state seismologists said, but they added that it's good to be prepared, just in case. Seismologists refer to such quake groupings as swarms, and the U.S. Geological Survey has detected them regularly. They can produce thousands of small tremors."

Submission + - The largest Kuiper Belt object isn't Pluto OR Eris

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: Out beyond Neptune, the last of our Solar System’s gas giants, the icy graveyard of failed planetesimals lurks: the Kuiper Belt. Among these mixes of ice, snow, dust and rock are a number of worlds — possibly a few hundred — massive enough to pull themselves into hydrostatic equilibrium. The most famous among them are Pluto, the first one ever discovered, and Eris, of comparable size but undoubtedly more massive. But there’s an even larger, more massive object from the Kuiper Belt than either of these, yet you never hear about it: it’s Triton, the largest moon of Neptune, a true Kuiper Belt object!

Submission + - SpaceShipTwo's Rocket Engine Did Not Cause Fatal Crash (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: It wasn’t SpaceShipTwo’s hybrid rocket motor — which was flying on Friday with a new type of fuel — that caused the fatal crash, the head of the accident investigation agency said late Sunday. The ship’s fuel tanks and its engine were recovered intact, indicating there was no explosion. “They showed no signs of burn-through, no signs of being breached,” Christopher Hart, acting chairman of the National Transportation and Safety Board, told reporters at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, Calif. Instead, data and video relayed from the ship show its hallmark safety feature — a foldable tail section designed for easy re-entry into the atmosphere from space — was deployed early, causing the in-flight break-up.

Submission + - Profits! Profits! Profits! Ballmer Says Amazon Isn't a Real Business

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: According to Steve Ballmer, Amazon.com is not a real business. “They make no money,” Ballmer said on the Charlie Rose Show. “In my world, you’re not a real business until you make some money. I have a hard time with businesses that don’t make money at some point.” Ballmer’s comments come as Amazon posted a $437 million loss for the third quarter, disappointing Wall Street. "If you are worth $150 billion," Ballmer added, "eventually somebody thinks you’re going to make $15 billion pre-tax. They make about zero, and there’s a big gap between zero and 15." Fired-up as ever, LA Clippers owner Ballmer's diss comes after fellow NBA owner Mark Cuban similarly slammed IBM, saying Big Blue is no longer a tech company (Robert X. Cringely seems to concur). "Today, they [IBM] specialize in financial engineering," Cuban told CNBC after IBM posted another disappointing quarter. "They're no longer a tech company, they are an amalgamation of different companies that they are trying to arb[itrage] on Wall Street, and I'm not a fan of that at all."

Submission + - Anonymized mobile data can still identify you, says new research (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new report (http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1225/pir2014_submission_11.pdf) from a Singapore-based research group posits that a large majority of individuals are relatively easy to identify from supposedly 'anonymized' mobile datasets. An individual's movements over time form a 'trajectory' which is difficult to obscure even at medium resolution. '‘Not So Unique in the Crowd: a Simple and Effective
Algorithm for Anonymizing Location Data' proposes improving anonymity by cutting the trajectory into sub-trajectories, maintaining the analytical value of the data whilst affording better identity protection within datasets.

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