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Comment Quick Discharge batteries? (Score 1) 131

FTA: 'The best performing copolymer consisted of 90% sulfur by mass. Batteries using this copolymer had an initial storage capacity of 1,225 mAh per gram of material. After 100 charge-discharge cycles, the capacity dropped to 1,005 mAh/g, and after 500 cycles it fell to about 635 mAh/g. In comparison, a lithium-ion battery typically starts out with a storage capacity of 200 mAh/g but maintains it for the life of the battery, Pyun says.' So, situations in which a massive blast of current is required could benefit quite well from these batteries. I'm thinking like sitting at light on Mulholland and turning a knob on the Tesla's dashboard that is graduated in 1960's TV Batman style: Low-Medium-High-Zowie!

Comment Re:Already Lost (Score 1) 353

Let's not worship the P-51 without acknowledging some deadly flaws: P-51 pilots didn't dare get into a low-altitude dogfight. The slogan of Mustang drivers faced with low altitude combat was "Shit and Git!" or more politely "Boom and Zoom!" because even lower grade Luftwaffe fighters could wipe it out in tight turns down low. The supercritical wings of the Mustang were actually a hindrance down low in the thicker air in tight turns. So, while the P-51 with Merlin engine was a game changer, it had its faults.

Submission + - Microsoft reportedly plans to offer a free version of Windows 8.1 (ndtv.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to reports, to Microsoft plans to announce a free version of Windows 8.1 in a bid to persuade customers to upgrade to the latest version.

Reports claim the new version, called 'Windows 8.1 with Bing', could be given away at a developers' conference in April, a version that would have key Microsoft apps and services.

According to media reports, "Microsoft is currently experimenting with a free version of Windows 8.1 that could boost the number of people using the operating system."

Submission + - The Ukraine-Russia Cyberwar Has Already Begun (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Ground troops may be flexing their muscles in Crimea while they await marching orders, but cyber and information attacks between Russia and Ukraine are already underway.

Friday, a group of unidentified men took control of a series of communication centers in Crimea. Maintained by Ukrtelecom JSC, Ukraine's telecom provider, the facilities are essential to linking Crimea with the rest of Ukraine. With the hubs knocked out, landline, mobile, and internet services were severed, with almost no coverage available. It is unclear exactly who was responsible for these attacks, but considering their sophisticated and clandestine nature, it is reasonable to assume they were carried out by professionals.

On the other side of the border, RT—the news channel formerly known as Russia Today and funded by the state—had its website hacked on Sunday morning, with the word 'Nazi' not so stealthily slipped into headlines. Highlights included “Russian senators vote to use stabilizing Nazi forces on Ukrainian territory,” and “Putin: Nazi citizens, troops threatened in Ukraine, need armed forces' protection.” RT was quick to notice the hack, and the wordplay only lasted about 20 minutes.

Submission + - NASA Forgets How to Talk to ICE/ISEE-3 Spacecraft 1

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Randall Munroe's XKCD cartoon on the ICE/ISEE-3 spacecraft inspired me to do a little research on why Nasa can no long communicate with the International Cometary Explorer. Launched in 1978 ISEE-3 was the first spacecraft to be placed in a halo orbit at one of Earth-Sun Lagrangian points (L1). It was later (as ICE) sent to visit Comet Giacobini-Zinner and became the first spacecraft to do so by flying through a comet's tail passing the nucleus at a distance of approximately 7800 km. ICE has been in a heliocentric orbit since then, traveling just slightly faster than Earth and it's finally catching up to us from behind, and will return to Earth in August. According to Emily Lakdawalla, it's still functioning, broadcasting a carrier signal that the Deep Space Network successfully detected in 2008 and twelve of its 13 instruments were working when we last checked on its condition, sometime prior to 1999. Can we tell the spacecraft to turn back on its thrusters and science instruments after decades of silence and perform the intricate ballet needed to send it back to where it can again monitor the Sun? Unfortunately the answer to that question appears to be no. "The transmitters of the Deep Space Network, the hardware to send signals out to the fleet of NASA spacecraft in deep space, no longer includes the equipment needed to talk to ISEE-3. These old-fashioned transmitters were removed in 1999." Could new transmitters be built? Yes, but it would be at a price no one is willing to spend. "So ISEE-3 will pass by us, ready to talk with us, but in the 30 years since it departed Earth we've lost the ability to speak its language," concludes Lakdawalla. "I wonder if ham radio operators will be able to pick up its carrier signal — it's meaningless, I guess, but it feels like an honorable thing to do, a kind of salute to the venerable ship as it passes by."

Submission + - The Raspberry Pi celebrates 2 years with open source graphics driver competition (techienews.co.uk)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: The Raspberry Pi, which was first put up for sale on February 29, 2012, has completed two years and has sold over 2.5 million units during the period. Announcing the milestone and commemorating the two years, Founder and former trustee of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Eben Upton announced a $10,000 competition wherein developers will be required to demonstrate a satisfactory Quake III gameplay at a playable framerate on the credit card sized computer using open source drivers.

Submission + - Twitter restores $50,000 @N username to its owner (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: In January, Naoki Hiroshima lost his Twitter handle, @N, to the hands of a hacker who used social engineering and extortion to wrest the username from Hiroshima's hands. But today Twitter restored it to him after more than a month of the username being suspended.

Hiroshima eventually turned @N over to the attacker and notified Twitter, but Twitter said it was “investigating” and did not return the handle to Hiroshima right away. The @N account was made private and was later shut down, but access was not restored to Hiroshima until today.

“Order has been restored,” Hiroshima tweeted from @N on Tuesday afternoon. Ars contacted Twitter for comment, but a spokesperson said the company doesn't talk about private accounts for privacy and security reasons.

Submission + - Exosuit lets divers go 1,000 feet deep (cnet.com)

Submitted by KindMind
KindMind writes: A new type of diving suit allows divers to go to 1,000 feet deep (at 30 times atmospheric pressure). A picture gallery at CNET has some neat pictures of the so-called Exosuit. According to the blog for the suit: "The first scientific exploration mission utilizing the Exosuit ADS is taking place this summer (2014), approximately 100 miles off of the Rhode Island Coast at a location called the Canyons, while working in the mesopelagic environment (depths of 200 to 1000 feet) ... The expedition's mission is to evaluate methods for improved human presence and scientific interaction at the edge of the mesopelagic realm as applied to the discovery, collection, and imaging of bioluminescent and biofluorescent organisms ..."

Submission + - Apple Drops Snow Leopard Security Updates, Doesn't Tell Anyone (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: As Apple issued an update for Mavericks, Mountain Lion, and Lion yesterday, Snow Leopard users have not seen a security update since September, 2013. This would not be noteworthy if Apple, like a host of other major software vendors, would clearly spell out its OS support policies and warn users of such changes, but they have not. Thus, the approximately 20% of Mac users still running Snow Leopard now find themselves in a very vulnerable state without the latest security updates.

Comment Debacle? (Score 1) 122

by Freshly Exhumed (#46349751) Attached to: The Emerging RadioShack/Netflix Debacle

We've talked before about commercial web site glitches and the ramifications on consumers, but it seems to me that the same thing would apply in this case, with RadioShack being completely culpable. One other thing: TFA doesn't indicate any sort of Netflix legal action at this point, so maybe this supposed "debacle" isn't all that important to them.

Submission + - Gladiator Training Prison Discovered (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Gladiators had it rough. In addition to living a life of combat and bloodshed, archaeologists are finding that they were imprisoned in training schools, too. A study published online yesterday in Antiquity describes the discovery of a fortress near Vienna, with a practice arena, small cells to sleep in, and an infirmary. The facility was mapped with noninvasive earth-sensing technologies and had only one exit. There’s also a video overview of the facility.

Submission + - The Science of Solitary Confinement

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Joseph Stromberg writes in Smithsonian Magazine that although the practice of solitary confinement has been largely discontinued in most countries, it's become increasingly routine over the past few decades within the American prison system and now it's estimated that between 80,000 and 81,000 prisoners are in some form of solitary confinement nationwide. Once employed largely as a short-term punishment, it's now regularly used as way of disciplining prisoners indefinitely, isolating them during ongoing investigations, coercing them into cooperating with interrogations and even separating them from perceived threats within the prison population at their request. "We really are the only country that resorts regularly, and on a long-term basis, to this form of punitive confinement," says Craig Haney. "Ironically, we spend very little time analyzing the effects of it." Most prisoners in solitary confinement spend at least 23 hours per day restricted to cells of 80 square feet, not much larger than a king-size bed, devoid of stimuli (some are allowed in a yard or indoor area for an hour or less daily), and are denied physical contact on visits from friends and family, so they may go years or decades without touching another human, apart from when they're placed in physical restraints by guards. A majority of those surveyed experienced symptoms such as dizziness, heart palpitations, chronic depression, while 41 percent reported hallucinations, and 27 percent had suicidal thoughts and one study found that isolated inmates are seven times more likely to hurt or kill themselves than inmates at large. But the real problem is that solitary confinement is ineffective as a rehabilitation technique and indelibly harmful to the mental health of those detained achieving the opposite of the supposed goal of rehabilitating them for re-entry into society. "We are all social beings, and people who are in environments that deny the opportunity to interact in meaningful ways with others begin to lose a sense of self, of their own identity," says Haney. "They begin to withdraw from the little amount of social contact that they are allowed to have, because social stimulation, over time, becomes anxiety-arousing." Rick Raemisch, the new director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, voluntarily spent twenty hours in solitary confinement in one of his prisons and wrote an op-ed about his experience in The New York Times. "If we can’t eliminate solitary confinement, at least we can strive to greatly reduce its use," wrote Raemisch. "Knowing that 97 percent of inmates are ultimately returned to their communities, doing anything less would be both counterproductive and inhumane."

Submission + - Kepler's Alien World Count Skyrockets (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: The number planets beyond the solar system took a giant leap thanks to a new technique that verifies candidate planets found by NASA’s Kepler space telescope in batches rather than one-by-one. The new method adds 715 planets to Kepler’s list of confirmed planets, which previously totaled 246, scientists said Wednesday. Combined with other telescopes’ finds, the overall exoplanet headcount now reaches nearly 1,700. "By moving ... to statistical studies in a 'big data' fashion, Kepler has showcased the diversity and types of planets present in our galaxy," astronomer Sara Seager, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in an email to Discovery News.

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It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

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