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NASA

Submission + - 'Superflares' Spotted in Crab Nebula by NASA (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Astronomers were shocked when the dusty remains of an exploded star, the Crab Nebula, unleashed a surprising blast of gamma rays, the highest-energy light in the Universe.

The outburst, which was similar to an enormous 'superflare' five times more powerful than any flare previously seen from the object, was first detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope on April 12 and lasted six days.
Idle

Submission + - Einstein for Everyone (pitt.edu)

Submitted by sridharo
sridharo writes: An interesting post simplifying Einstein's Theories. It's Relativity theory made relatively simple.
Facebook

Facebook Admits Hiring PR Firm To Smear Google 172

Posted by CmdrTaco from the yeah-we-meant-to-do-that dept.
hasanabbas1987 writes "The clash of the Internet Giants reached new heights after a spokesman for Facebook confirmed to Daily Beast that Facebook paid a high level Public Relation firm to publish and spread stories against Google throughout the media to study various methods to examine the allegations that Google has been violating user privacy."

Submission + - How do I prevent websites from tracking me?

Submitted by witch-doktor
witch-doktor writes: I use FF4. I have "do not track" ticked. But when I go to discovery.com it seems to know all about me and my facebook friends. How do I stop this? How do I stop this in general?
Google

Google Lobbies Nevada To Allow Self-Driving Cars 275

Posted by samzenpus from the to-drive-or-not-to-drive dept.
b0bby writes "The NY Times reports that Google is quietly lobbying for legislation that would make Nevada the first state in which self-driving cars could be legally operated on public roads. 'The two bills, which have received little attention outside Nevada's capitol, are being introduced less than a year after the giant search engine company acknowledged that it was developing cars that could be safely driven without human intervention.'"
Google

Submission + - Sergey Brin: Windows is "torturing users" (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
jbrodkin
jbrodkin writes: "Google created Chrome OS because Windows is "torturing users," Google co-founder Sergey Brin says. Only about 20% of Google employees use Windows, with the rest on Mac and Linux, and Brin hopes that by next year nearly all Googlers will be using Chromebooks. "With Microsoft, and other operating system vendors, I think the complexity of managing your computer is really torturing users," Brin told reporters at Google I/O. "It's torturing everyone in this room. It's a flawed model fundamentally. Chromebooks are a new model that doesn't put the burden of managing the computer on yourself." Google claims 75% of business users could be moved from Windows computers to Chrome laptops."

Comment s/w dev != manufacturing (Score 1) 460

by sridharo (#36092572) Attached to: Is Process Killing the Software Industry?
Processes are defined in the manufacturing industries to prevent slippage of 'achievable/defined' quality. Unfortunately the extension of processes from these industries (six sigma?) to software development doesnt reap the intended benefits.
Blame it on the guy who thought the role of a programmer and the line technician are the same!
Facebook

Submission + - Who Owns Your Social Identity? (ieee.org) 1

Submitted by wjousts
wjousts writes: Who actually owns your username on a website? What rights do you have to use it? What happens if they decide to take it away? IEEE Spectrum reports:

What happens if Facebook or Twitter or, say, your blog hosting service, makes you take a different user name? Sound impossible? It’s happened. Last week, a software researcher named Danah Boyd woke up to find her entire blog had disappeared, and in fact, had been renamed, because her hosting service had given her blog’s name to someone else.

And as important as they are, what protects our accounts are the terms of service agreements. If you read them—and who does?—you’d learn, probably to no surprise, that they protect the provider a lot more then they protect you.

Submission + - fix it! (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: fix the *$#&@#* qotd on the bottom of the page u lazy &*%%$$%s

Submission + - Einstein proven right, again (wattsupwiththat.com)

Submitted by sanzibar
sanzibar writes: After 52 years of conceiving, testing and waiting, marked by scientific advances and disappointments, one of Stanford’s and NASA’s longest-running projects comes to a close with a greater understanding of the universe.

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And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions. -- David Jones

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