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Submission + - There are two companies fighting to call themselves Arduino; here's what we know (hackaday.com)

Submitted by szczys
szczys writes: Arduino is a household name in hobby electronics. But now there are two companies calling themselves Arduino and as you've probably guessed this is going to play out in the courts. How can this be? One company started the Arduino movement and used the other company, a contract manufacturer, to actually make the hardware. This went on for a few years before the trademark was actually granted. Elliot Williams did dome digging to help figure out how this all might shake out.

Submission + - Why Canadian Anti-Terror Bill Eviscerates Canadian Privacy Protection (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Nearly twenty years ago, Stephen Harper, then a Reform Party MP, warned against the privacy implications of an electronic voter registry and the fear that information sharing within government raised significant privacy concerns. Today, as Canadian Prime Minister, Harper is fast-tracking a bill that eviscerates privacy protections within the public sector that Michael Geist says represents the most significant reduction in public sector privacy protection in Canadian history. If that weren't enough, Harper is even blocking the Privacy Commissioner of Canada from appearing as a witness at the committee studying the bill.

Submission + - Cody Wilson Wants to Destroy Your World (medium.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In 2013 Cody Wilson posted online the design files needed to 3D print weapons. The files were downloaded at least 100,000 times before the U.S. State Department ordered him to take them down. Last fall he reemerged with a new project, the Ghost Gunner--a relatively small and affordable CNC milling machine that could easily manufacture the lower receiver of an AR-15. It was a different approach toward the same goal of multiplying the number of firearms in the world. But are we really facing a world where backyard bunker-builders are manufacturing their own gun components? Reporter Andrew Zaleski visited Wilson to check on the status of his project. What he found was a man in the throes of small-business hell. As Wilson puts it, “It’s like the nightmare of a startup with the added complication that no one will allow you to do it anyway.”

Submission + - Billionaire teams up with NASA to mine the moon (cnbc.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Moon Express, a Mountain View, California-based company that's aiming to send the first commercial robotic spacecraft to the moon next year, just took another step closer toward that lofty goal. Earlier this year, it became the first company to successfully test a prototype of a lunar lander at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The success of this test—and a series of others that will take place later this year—paves the way for Moon Express to send its lander to the moon in 2016.

Submission + - DARPA accelerates ultimate automated pilot software (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded the first contracts to vendors that will build the ultimate auto-pilot — an automated system that can help take care of all phases of aircraft flight-even helping pilots overcome facing failures in-flight

Submission + - Senolytics: A New Class of Drugs With the Potential to Slow the Aging Process (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: It's a cruel irony that when we're young we want to be older, but when we're older we want to be younger. While few would advocate research into ways to make kids grow up faster, there are plenty of efforts underway looking to forestall the rigors of age. The latest cause for hope in this area comes in the form of a new class of drugs called senolytics, which have been shown to dramatically slow the aging process in animal models.

Submission + - Rust Never Sleeps (nytimes.com)

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes: Interesting book review in the New York Times yesterday for Jonathan Waldman's Rust: The longest War. How much have you really considered the engineers, chemists, physicists and bureaucrats engaged in a war to stop the natural forces of oxidation. Rust, the book says, costs the United States $437 billion annually, more "than all other natural disasters combined." Technologies used to combat rust include the one micron thick polymer in your can of Coke, to the invention of stainless steel. Would Slashdot readers find a nontechnical book on the subject of entropy... entertaining?

Submission + - Researchers nearly double the size of worker ants (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Researchers have nearly doubled the size of a handful of Florida ants by chemically modifying their DNA, rather than by changing its encoded information. The work may help explain how the insects—despite their high degree of genetic similarity—grow into the different varieties of workers needed in a colony.

Submission + - The Milky Way May be 50 Percent Bigger Than Thought (discovery.com) 1

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: A ring-like filament of stars wrapping around the Milky Way may actually belong to the galaxy itself, rippling above and below the relatively flat galactic plane. If so, that would expand the size of the known galaxy by 50 percent and raise intriguing questions about what caused the waves of stars. Scientists used data collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to reanalyze the brightness and distance of stars at the edge of the galaxy. They found that the fringe of the disk is puckered into ridges and grooves of stars, like corrugated cardboard. “It looks to me like maybe these patterns are following the spiral structure of the Milky Way, so they may be related,” astronomer Heidi Newberg, with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, told Discovery News.

Submission + - The secret to chameleon color change: Nanocrystals (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Researchers report that chameleons change colors by rearranging a lattice of nanocrystals in one of the top layers of skin cells. These cells, called iridophores, contain tiny crystals made from guanine, one of the nucleic acid building blocks of DNA. The nanocrystals have a highly ordered arrangement, which normally causes them to strongly reflect one color of light, such as green. But when another male enters their surroundings, the animals stretch their skin cells, broadening the nanocrystalline lattice, thereby causing it to reflect a longer wavelength of light, such as yellow. In addition, the team found that chameleons contain a second, deeper layer of iridophores that reflect heat-producing infrared light, which presumably helps the animals stay cool. The new insights could help scientists design novel materials that stretch to change colors.

Submission + - Sugar industry shaped NIH agenda on dental research (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: The sugar industry convinced the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) that studies that might persuade people to cut back on sugary foods should not be part of a national plan to fight childhood tooth decay, a new study of historical documents argues. The authors say the industry’s activities, which occurred more than 40 years ago, are reminiscent of the tobacco companies’ efforts to minimize the risks of smoking.

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The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected. -- The Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd Edition, June 1972

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