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China

Submission + - Chinese want to capture an asteroid (dvice.com)

Submitted by
geekmansworld
geekmansworld writes: "Dvice reports that the Chinese want to capture an asteroid into earth's orbit and mine it. From the article: "At first glance, nudging an asteroid closer to Earth seems like one of those "what could possible go wrong" scenarios that we generally try and avoid, and for good reason: large asteroid impacts are bad times. The Chinese, though, seem fairly optimistic that they could tweak the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid by just enough (a change in velocity of only about 1,300 feet-per-second or so) to get it to temporarily enter Earth orbit at about twice the distance as the Moon.""
The Internet

Submission + - The Fastest ISPs in the U.S 1

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: PCMag conducted their sixth annual test for the fastest ISPs in the U.S. Partnering with Ookla and its popular product Speedtest.net, they conducted 58,300 tests over the course of nearly three months. The data collected used the final download and upload speed to generate an index number to pick the winners, weighting downloads at 80 percent and uploads at 20 percent in terms of importance. What's interesting about the result is that when broken down by regions, states or even cities, Verizon and Charter Communications did really well however neither one of them were the fastest ISPs in the Nation.

Submission + - Justice Department blocks AT&T-T-Mobile merger (forbes.com) 1

Submitted by AngryDeuce
AngryDeuce writes: The Justice Department is blocking AT&T's $39 billion deal to buy T-Mobile USA, saying the acquisition of the No. 4 wireless carrier in the country by No. 2 AT&T would reduce competition and raise prices.

The deal has faced tough opposition from consumer groups and No. 3 carrier Sprint since it was announced in March.

Submission + - Physicist's Algorithm Speeds Airplane Boarding (cnet.com)

Submitted by cheezitmike
cheezitmike writes: Fermilab astrophysicist Jason Steffen, waiting for a flight to leave, noticed that airlines wasted a lot of time boarding passengers and figured there had to be a better way: "Steffen considered various methods, such as boarding people in blocks, at random, and in window seats first. He set up a model using an algorithm based on the Monte Carlo optimization method used in statistics and mathematics. He found that the most efficient boarding method is to board alternate rows at a time, beginning with the window seats on one side, then the other, minimizing aisle interference. The window seats are followed by alternate rows of middle seats, then aisle seats. He also found that boarding at random is faster that boarding by blocks."
Facebook

Submission + - A new history of censorship in the West? (aljazeera.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The debate over freedom vs. safety on the net. Should governments be allowed to cut off social networks or cell service in the interest of public order? The UK riots earlier this month and the BART scandal in San Francisco proved that authoritarian governments are not the only ones interested in controlling the Internet and social media specifically. Are we moving towards a more regulated Internet? Do you prefer freedom or security?
Science

Submission + - Car Makers Explore EEG Headrests (technologyreview.com) 1

Submitted by mrtr
mrtr writes: A number of car makers are looking at whether EEG devices built into headrests could prevent accidents by sensing when a driver is in danger of drifting off. The technology comes from Neurosky, which already makes commercial EEG units for use in gaming and market research. Other approaches, such as using cameras to spot drooping eyelids have proven too unreliable so far. From the story: "Fatigue causes more than 100,000 crashes and 40,000 injuries, and around 1,550 deaths, per year in the United States, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Some studies suggest drowsiness is involved in 20 to 25 percent of all crashes on monotonous stretches of road."
AI

Submission + - IBM Prototype Chip Acts Like Human Brain (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by cheezitmike
cheezitmike writes: IBM has created two prototype computer chips which process data similar to the way humans digest information: "The challenge in training a computer to behave like a human brain is technological and physiological, testing the limits of computer and brain science. But researchers from IBM Corp. say they've made a key step toward combining the two worlds. The company announced Thursday that it has built two prototype chips that it says process data more like how humans digest information than the chips that now power PCs and supercomputers."
Programming

Submission + - C++ And The Return Of Native Code (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister suggests that the new version of C++ signals renewed interest in old-fashioned native binaries. 'Modern programmers have increasingly turned away from native compilation in favor of managed-code environments such as Java and .Net, which shield them from some of the drudgery of memory management and input validation. Others are willing to sacrifice some performance for the syntactic comforts of dynamic languages such as Python, Ruby, and JavaScript. But C++11 arrives at an interesting time. There's a growing sentiment that the pendulum may have swung too far away from native code, and it might be time for it to swing back in the other direction. Thus, C++ may have found itself some unlikely allies.'"
Linux

Submission + - Linus Torvalds: ARM has a lot to learn from the PC (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
jbrodkin
jbrodkin writes: "Linux and ARM developers have clashed over what's been described as a "United Nations-level complexity of the forks in the ARM section of the Linux kernel." Linus Torvalds addressed the issue at LinuxCon this week on the 20th anniversary of Linux, saying the ARM platform has a lot to learn from the PC. While Torvalds noted that "a lot of people love to hate the PC," the fact that Intel, AMD and hardware makers worked on building a common infrastructure "made it very efficient and easy to support." ARM, on the other hand, "is missing it completely," Torvalds said. "ARM is this hodgepodge of five or six major companies and tens of minor companies making random pieces of hardware, and it looks like they're taking hardware and throwing it at a wall and seeing where it sticks, and making a chip out of what's stuck on the wall.""
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - New Twitter-Based Hedge Fund Beat the Stock Market (theatlanticwire.com)

Submitted by nonprofiteer
nonprofiteer writes: Derwent Capital, a new hedge fund that makes trades and investments based on Twitter sentiment, beat the market--and other hedge funds--in its first full month of trading. From the Atlantic: " Using an algorithm based on the social media mood that day, the hedge fund predicted the market to make the right trades. Sounds unbelievable that something cluttered with mundane musings and media links could have anything smart to say about the market. But it's working so far." Blind luck?
Robotics

Submission + - Samarai UAV Inspired by Maple Seed - Demo at AUVSI (engineeringtv.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Bill Borgia, Director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Lockheed Martin, gives us the details on their latest unique creation: a small UAV with a design inspired by a samara, the seed from a maple tree. The Samarai has only two moving parts, weighs less than half a pound. At AUVSI Unmanned Systems 2011, the Samarai debuted and demonstrated vertical takeoff and landing, stable hover, and on-board video streaming.
Space

Submission + - DARPA to Sponsor R&D for Interstellar Travel (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Apocryphos
Apocryphos writes: The government agency that helped invent the Internet now wants to do the same for travel to the stars.

In what is perhaps the ultimate startup opportunity, Darpa, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, plans to award some lucky, ambitious and star-struck organization roughly $500,000 in seed money to begin studying what it would take — organizationally, technically, sociologically and ethically — to send humans to another star, a challenge of such magnitude that the study alone could take a hundred years.

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