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Submission + - Armadillo Aerospace resurrected on KickStarter by the team members (parabolicarc.com)

Submitted by savuporo
savuporo writes: John Carmack's ex-Armadillo Aerospace team has re-launched the suborbital rocket project now as Exos Aerospace through Kickstarter campaign. While original Armadillo efforts stopped just shy of actually getting to space, the team intends to pick up where they left off, rebuild and make this into a sustainable suborbital payload business.
There are multiple other small launcher startups springing up again across the globe, Rocket Labs recently unveiled their new engines, Firefly is making progress and Lin Industrial also announced their rocket recently.

Submission + - Ancient megadrought entombed dodos in poisonous fecal cocktail (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Nine hundred kilometers off the east coast of Madagascar lies the tiny island paradise of Mauritius. The waters are pristine, the beaches bright white, and the average temperature hovers between 22C and 28C (72F to 82F) year-round. But conditions there may not have always been so idyllic. A new study suggests that about 4000 years ago, a prolonged drought on the island left many of the native species, such as dodo birds and giant tortoises, dead in a soup of poisonous algae and their own feces.

Submission + - Pope Attacked by Climate Change Skeptics

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The Telegraph reports that as the Vatican forges an alliance with the UN to tackle climate change, skeptics accuse Pope Francis of being deeply ill-informed about global warming. The Pope discussed climate change with Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary-General, who then opened a one-day Vatican conference called "The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development". Organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, SDSN and Religions for Peace, the goal of the conference is to help strengthen the global consensus on the importance of climate change in the context of sustainable development.

But a group of British and American skeptics say the Pope is being fed “mistaken” advice from the UN and that he should stick to speaking out on matters of morality and theology rather than getting involved in the climate change debate. "The Pope has great moral authority but he’s not an authority on climate science. He’s a learned man but the IPCC has got it wrong,” says Jim Lakely of the Heartland Institute, a conservative American pressure group partly funded by billionaire industrialists who question climate change. "The Pope would make a grave mistake if he put his moral authority behind scientists saying that climate change is a threat to the world. Many scientists have concluded that human activity is a minor player. The Earth has been warming since the end of the last Ice Age.”

It was the first time the Heartland Institute, which is based in Chicago and has been described by the New York Times as "the primary American organization pushing climate change skepticism," has traveled to Rome to try to influence a pope. "The sideshow envisioned by these organizations will not detract from the deep concern that Pope Francis has for the truth and how it relates to the environment," says Dr. Bernard Brady, Professor and Chair of the Theology Department at the University of St. Thomas. "Pope Francis will probably follow his predecessor, Benedict XVI, recognizing the interrelatedness of climate change with other moral issues and calling for persons, organizations, communities, nations, and indeed the global community, to reconsider established patterns of behavior."

Submission + - Who Owns Pre-Embryos? (newyorker.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientifically and legally, frozen embryos are not the same as a living child. Nevertheless, they can inspire legal battles that resemble custody disputes. This article follows a case between a couple who had been dating for five months when the woman received a cancer diagnosis. Before beginning chemotherapy, she and her boyfriend of five months decided to harvest and set aside some fertilized eggs, just in case. (If the treatment saved her but destroyed her ability to have kids, and the couple stayed together and decided they wanted kids, the pre-embryos would preserve that option.) She survived, but their relationship didn't. With no explicit contract in place, the disposition of the pre-embryos is now hotly contested. "[R]eading over the case, one gets the sense that there’s a fundamental lack of language to describe what’s at stake. There may be an emerging field of law and legal precedent, but the terms at hand don’t adequately capture the nature of the dispute."

Submission + - The Battle of 100 Freeciv AIs (freeciv.org)

Submitted by Andreas(R)
Andreas(R) writes: The open source Freeciv project has simulated an epic game where 100 artificial intelligence players fight it out on a large map. You can watch the replay and check out the statistics of each AI.

Submission + - How to build a Maker Space for a Liberal Arts College 1

Submitted by XxtraLarGe
XxtraLarGe writes: I work for a small liberal arts college, and have been asked to research makerspaces. I have done a bunch of initial research which tells me a lot about equipment being used, as well as location, etc., but what I'm not finding are what to know before you start, or what it takes to make the effort worthwhile.

I'd be interested in hearing from other educators, staff, students and other maker community members on Slashdot that had makerspaces at their schools or community — can be any level — and what was the experience like? 3D printer, 3D scanner & Laser cutting machines seem to be a given, so I'd like to hear what kinds of think-outside-the-box equipment/materials did you have? We are considering putting it in our library, which seems to be a popular choice with most schools. There's also the possibility of having it somewhere in town that it could be more accessible to members of the community, maybe even as a co-op.

Submission + - The next generation of medical tools may be home-brewed (medium.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the Little Devices Lab at MIT, Jose Gomez-Marquez builds medical tools using a DIY mindset. He’s designing cheap alternatives to existing hospital equipment to help spread high-quality medical care around the world. Gomez-Marquez is at the forefront of a large and often-unrecognized group of DIY medical tool builders. Together they are challenging the idea that staying healthy requires extraordinarily expensive, sophisticated equipment built by massive corporations. Harnessing this inventive energy, he argues, could improve the health of thousands of people around the world.

Submission + - Verizon Tells Customer He Needs 75Mbps For Smoother Netflix Video (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Verizon recently told a customer that upgrading his 50Mbps service to 75 Mbps would result in smoother streaming of Netflix video. Of course, that's not true — Netflix streams at a rate of about 3.5 Mbps on average for Verizon's fiber service, so there's more than enough headroom either way. But this customer was an analyst for the online video industry, so he did some testing and snapped some screenshots for evidence. He fired up 10 concurrent streams of a Game of Thrones episode and found only 29Mbps of connection being used. This guy was savvy enough to see through Verizon's BS, but I'm sure there are millions of customers who wouldn't bat an eye at the statements they were making. The analyst "believes that the sales pitch he received is not just an isolated incident, since he got the same pitch from three sales reps over the phone and one online."

Submission + - A Light-Powered Retina Implant for the Blind (ieee.org)

Submitted by the_newsbeagle
the_newsbeagle writes: In certain diseases of the retina, people lose function in the photoreceptor cells that respond to light and trigger a message to the brain. So engineers have designed various retina implants that do the job instead, including the Argus II system, which received the first FDA approval for an implanted visual prosthetic in 2013. But the Argus II only produces vision of about 20/1200. A new implant in the pipeline from Stanford University has already achieved 20/250 vision in rats, and is aiming at 20/120, which would be below the legal threshold for blindness. This implant is photovoltaic, so the same infrared light that beams an image of the world into the implanted chip also powers its electronics.

Submission + - Researchers Mount Cyber Attacks Against Surgery Robot

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A group of researchers from University of Washington have tested the security of a teleoperated robotic surgery system created by their colleagues, and have found it severely lacking. "Teleoperated surgical robots will be expected to use a combination of existing publicly available networks and temporary ad-hoc wireless and satellite networks to send video, audio and other sensory information between surgeons and remote robots. It is envisioned these systems will be used to provide immediate medical relief in under-developed rural terrains, areas of natural and human-caused disasters, and in battlefield scenarios," the researchers noted, and asked: "But what if these robotic systems are attacked and compromised?"

Submission + - US successfully tests self-steering bullets that can follow moving targets (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: The United States Department of Defense has carried out what it says is its most successful test yet of a bullet that can steer itself towards moving targets.

Experienced testers have used the technology to hit targets that were actively evading the shot, and even novices that were using the system for the first time were able to hit moving targets.

The project, which is known as Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance weapon, or Exacto, is being made for the American government’s military research agency, Darpa.

It is thought to use small fins that shoot out of the bullet and re-direct its path, but the US has not disclosed how it works. It only says that the programme has “developed new approaches and advanced capabilities to improve the range and accuracy of sniper systems beyond the current state of the art”.

Technology in the bullet allows it to compensate for weather and wind, as well as the movement of people it is being fired at, and curve itself in the air as it heads towards its target. That should allow snipers to become much more accurate — even those that are not experienced at using the system, as was found in the tests in February.

Submission + - KDE Plasma 5.3 Released (kde.org) 2

Submitted by jrepin
jrepin writes: The KDE community has relesed Plasma 5.3, a major new features release of the popular opensource desktop environment. The latest release brings much enhanced power management, better support for Bluetooth, and improved Plasma widgets. Also available is a technical preview of Plasma Media Center shell. In addition, Plasma 5.3 represents a big step towards support for Wayland windowing system. There are also a few other minor tweaks and over 300 bigfixes.

Submission + - RealTek SDK Introduces Vulnerability In Some Routers (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: SOHO routers from manufacturers including at least Trendnet and D-Link allow attackers anywhere in the world to execute malicious code on the devices, according to a security advisory issued over the weekend. The remote command-injection vulnerability resides in the "miniigd SOAP service" as implemented by the RealTek SDK. Before someone asks, there is no comprehensive list of manufacturers or models that are affected. Nerds may be able to spot them by using the Metasploit framework to query their router. If the response contains "RealTek/v1.3" or similar, the device is likely vulnerable. For now, the vulnerable routers should be restricted to communicate only with trusted devices. HP's Zero Day Initiative reported the bug confidentially to RealTek in August 2013, but the issue was disclosed 20 months later as no fix has been provided.

Submission + - Breakthough makes Transparent Aluminum affordable

Submitted by frank249
frank249 writes: In the Star Trek universe, transparent aluminum is used in various fittings in starships, including exterior ship portals and windows. In real life, Aluminium oxynitride is a form of ceramic whose properties are similar to those of the fictional substance seen in Star Trek. It has a hardness of 7.7 Mohs and was patented in 1980, and has military applications as bullet-resistant armour, but is too expensive for widespread use.

Engadget reports that there has been a major breakthrough in materials science. After decades of research and development, the US Naval Research Laboratory has created a transparent, bulletproof material that can be molded into virtually any shape. This material, known as Spinel (magnesium aluminate), is made from a synthetic powdered clay that is heated and pressed under vacuum into transparent sheets. Spinel weighs just a fraction of a modern bulletproof pane.

Submission + - New Privacy Threat: Automated Vehicle Occupancy Detection (eff.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation is warning against a new potential privacy threat: cameras that look instead cars and try to identify the people inside them. This technology is a natural combination of simpler ones that have existed for years: face recognition software and road-side cameras (red light cameras, speeding cameras, license plate readers — you name it).

"The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), a government umbrella group that develops transportation and public safety initiatives across the San Diego County region, estimates that 15% of drivers in High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes aren’t supposed to be there. After coming up short with earlier experimental projects, the agency is now testing a brand new technology to crack down on carpool-lane scofflaws on the I-15 freeway. ... In short: the technology is looking at your image, the image of the people you're with, your location, and your license plate. (SANDAG told CBS the systems will not be storing license plate data during the trial phase and the system will, at least for now, automatically redact images of drivers and passengers. Xerox’s software, however, allows police the option of using a weaker form of redaction that can be reversed on request.)"

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