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Submission + - NASA Spacecraft Becomes First to Orbit a Dwarf Planet (nasa.gov)

Submitted by The Grim Reefer
The Grim Reefer writes: NASA's Dawn spacecraft has become the first mission to achieve orbit around a dwarf planet. The spacecraft was approximately 38,000 miles (61,000 kilometers) from Ceres when it was captured by the dwarf planet's gravity at about 4:39 a.m. PST (7:39 a.m. EST) Friday.

Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California received a signal from the spacecraft at 5:36 a.m. PST (8:36 a.m. EST) that Dawn was healthy and thrusting with its ion engine, the indicator Dawn had entered orbit as planned.

"Since its discovery in 1801, Ceres was known as a planet, then an asteroid and later a dwarf planet," said Marc Rayman, Dawn chief engineer and mission director at JPL. "Now, after a journey of 3.1 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) and 7.5 years, Dawn calls Ceres, home."

In addition to being the first spacecraft to visit a dwarf planet, Dawn also has the distinction of being the first mission to orbit two extraterrestrial targets. From 2011 to 2012, the spacecraft explored the giant asteroid Vesta, delivering new insights and thousands of images from that distant world. Ceres and Vesta are the two most massive residents of our solar system’s main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Submission + - Laser destroys truck, 1 mile away (pcmag.com)

Submitted by MutualFun
MutualFun writes: Don't piss off Lockheed Martin: The aerospace company this week used a laser to obliterate the engine of a small truck from more than a mile away. (Finally, 'Star Wars' is making a comeback!)

Submission + - Inside Bratislava's low-cost, open source bike share solution (opensource.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Bike Kitchen started WhiteBikes in Bratislava after a failed attempt by the city to finance a similar program. At first users shared donated bikes with the same lock code. They needed a system that would work somewhat automatically without the need for manual rentals (e.g. somebody giving out bicycles).

From there, smsBikeShare was born. Users registered with a mobile phone number and could send basic SMS commands (RENT, RETURN, FREE, WHERE, etc.). The system used an inexpensive SMS gateway API and a local message-back number to receive and respond to messages. Shared bicycles have a coded U-lock with a four-digit number, and upon renting a bike, users receive a code to unlock the bicycle and another to reset it to once they are done.

Send a message, receive the answer, unlock the bike, reset the lock, and you're off pedaling.

Submission + - Self-Driving Cars Will Be in 30 U.S. Cities by the End of Next Year (observer.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Automated vehicle pilot projects will roll out in the U.K. and in six to 10 U.S. cities this year, with the first unveiling projected to be in Tampa Bay, Florida as soon as late spring. The following year, trial programs will launch in 12 to 20 more U.S. locations, which means driverless cars will be on roads in up to 30 U.S. cities by the end of 2016. The trials will be run by Comet LLC, a consulting firm focused on automated vehicle commercialization.

“We’re looking at college campuses, theme parks, airports, downtown areas—places like that,”

Submission + - Ubuntu To Officially Switch To SystemD Next Monday

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Ubuntu is going live with SystemD, reports Martin Pitt in the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list. Next Monday, Vivid (15.04) will be switched to boot with SystemD instead of UpStart. The change concerns desktop, server, and all other current flavors. Technically, this will flip around the preferred dependency of init to systemd-sysv | upstart in package management, which will affect new installs, but not upgrades. Upgrades will be switched by adding systemd-sysv to ubuntu-standard's dependencies. If you want, you can manually do the change already, but it's advisable to do an one-time boot first. Right now it is important that if you run into any trouble, file a proper bug report in Launchpad (ubuntu-bug systemd). If after some weeks it is found that there are too many or too big regressions, Ubuntu can still revert back to UpStart.

Submission + - New Titanium nanoparticles-based paint creates self-cleaning surfaces (techienews.co.uk)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Scientists have created a paint not only provides ultimate self-cleaning surfaces, but also continues to retain those abilities even in cases of damaging effects. The paint, composed of titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles, is delivered as a suspension in ethanol containing the chemical perfluorooctyltriethoxysilane. Once the coating is applied on any surface, the ethanol needs to be allowed to evaporate for 180 seconds before it is ready for use. Depending on the surface on which it is applied, the coating can be sprayed, dipped, or painted onto a surface. YouTube Link [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtLs5ky3m-s]

Submission + - Daylight Saving Time Change on Sunday for N. America 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Just a reminder that DST starts this weekend for most of North America. The majority of people feel that DST is a bad idea and want it to stop. If that was done, the main question would then probably be whether to go to Standard time year-round, or "summer" time year-round (more). For the latter, there is some evidence that it helps reduce crime (at least initially); for the former, more northern locations would have sunrise occur 08:30 or later, which would make the morning commute difficult. Some even argue that the US should go to only two timezones. The DST change occurs at the end of March in the EU, so they're will a second round of confusion for trans-Atlantic conference calls then.

Submission + - Demand for Linux Skills Rising This Year (dice.com) 2

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: This year is shaping up as a really good one for Linux, at least on the jobs front. According to a new report (PDF) from The Linux Foundation and Dice, nearly all surveyed hiring managers want to recruit Linux professionals within the next six months, with 44 percent of them indicating they’re more likely to hire a candidate with Linux certification over one who does not. Forty-two percent of hiring managers say that experience in OpenStack and CloudStack will have a major impact on their hiring decisions, while 23 percent report security is a sought-after area of expertise and 19 percent are looking for Linux-skilled people with Software-Defined Networking skills. Ninety-seven percent of hiring managers report they will bring on Linux talent relative to other skills areas in the next six months.

Submission + - Microsoft Convinced That Windows 10 Will Be Its Smartphone Breakthrough (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, handset manufacturers are making all the right noises about support for Windows 10, which will run on both ARM- and Intel-based phones and provide an experience very much like the desktop. But much of the same buzz surrounded Windows 8 and Windows 7 Phone. In fact, Microsoft has tried and repeatedly failed to take the mobile space by storm.

Submission + - New Zealand spied on nearly two dozen Pacific countries (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: New documents from Edward Snowden indicate New Zealand undertook "full take" interception of communications from Pacific nations and forwarded the data to the NSA.

The data, collected by New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau, was then fed into the NSA's XKeyscore search engine to allow analysts to trawl for intelligence.

The New Zealand link helped flesh out the NSA's ambitions to intercept communications globally.

Submission + - 'The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress' Coming to the Big Screen 2

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Hollywood Reporter reports that Twentieth Century Fox recently picked up the movie rights to "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress," based on the classic sci-fi book by Robert A. Heinlein and will retitled the movie as 'Uprising'. Heinlein's 1966 sci-fi novel centers on a lunar colony's revolt against rule from Earth and the book popularized the acronym TANSTAAFL (There ain't no such thing as a free lunch), a central, libertarian theme. The novel was nominated for the 1966 Nebula award (honoring the best sci-fi and fantasy work in the U.S.) and won the Hugo Award for best science fiction novel in 1967. An adaptation has been attempted twice before — by DreamWorks, which had a script by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, and by Phoenix Pictures, with Harry Potter producer David Heyman attached — but both languished and the rights reverted to Heinlein's estate. Brian Singer, who previously directed X-Men: Days of Future Past, will adopt the screenplay and reportedly direct. Several of Heinlein's novels have been adapted for the big and small screen, including the 1953 film Project Moonbase, the 1994 TV miniseries Red Planet, the 1994 film The Puppet Masters, and — very loosely — the 1997 film Starship Troopers.

Submission + - US Air Traffic Control System Is Riddled With Vulnerabilities

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A recently released report (PDF) by the US Government Accountability Office has revealed that despite some improvements, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) still needs to quash significant security control weaknesses that threaten the agency’s ability to ensure the safe and uninterrupted operation of the national airspace system (NAS). The report found that while the "FAA established policies and procedures for controlling access to NAS systems and for configuring its systems securely, and it implemented firewalls and other boundary protection controls to protect the operational NAS environment [...] a significant number of weaknesses remain in the technical controls—including access controls, change controls, and patch management—that protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of its air traffic control systems."

Submission + - One Year Later, We're No Closer To Finding MtGox's Missing Millions (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: When Mt. Gox collapsed on Feb. 28, 2014, with liabilities of some ¥6.5 billion ($63.6 million), it said it was unable to account for some 850,000 bitcoins. Some 200,000 coins turned up in an old-format bitcoin wallet last March, bringing the tally of missing bitcoins to 650,000 (now worth about $180 million). In January, Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, citing sources close to a Tokyo police probe of the MtGox collapse, reported that only 7,000 of the coins appear to have been taken by hackers, with the remainder stolen through a series of fraudulent transactions. But there’s still no explanation of what happened to them, and no clear record of what happened on the exchange.

Submission + - The Mexican Drug Cartels' IT Guy (vice.com)

Submitted by sarahnaomi
sarahnaomi writes: It could have been any other morning. Felipe del Jesús Peréz García got dressed, said goodbye to his wife and kids, and drove off to work. It would be a two hour commute from their home in Monterrey, in Northeastern Mexico’s Nuevo León state, to Reynosa, in neighboring Tamaulipas state, where Felipe, an architect, would scout possible installation sites for cell phone towers for a telecommunications company before returning that evening.

That was the last time anyone saw him.

What happened to Felipe García? One theory suggests he was abducted by a sophisticated organized crime syndicate, and then forced into a hacker brigade that builds and services the cartel’s hidden, backcountry communications infrastructure. They’re the Geek Squads to some of the biggest mafia-style organizations in the world.

Submission + - Ubisoft's newest video game requires a prescription (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by wired_parrot
wired_parrot writes: Ubisoft, in partnership with McGill university, has developed a game designed to treat lazy eye. The game works as a treatment by training both eyes using different levels of contrast of red and blue that the patient sees through stereoscopic glasses. It is hopeful that the new treatment will bring a more effective way of addressing a condition that affects 1-5% of the population.

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