Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Mars

Mars (One) Needs Payloads 77

Posted by timothy from the ok-but-nothing-too-heavy dept.
mbone (558574) writes Mars One has announced that their first, unmanned, lander, targeted for 2018, needs payloads. Along with their 4 experiments, and a University experiment, they have two payloads for hire: "Mars One offers two payload opportunities for paying mission contributors. Proposals can take the form of scientific experiments, technology demonstrations, marketing and publicity campaigns, or any other suggested payload. 'Previously, the only payloads that have landed on Mars are those which NASA has selected,' said Bas Lansdorp, 'We want to open up the opportunity to the entire world to participate in our mission to Mars by sending a certain payload to the surface of Mars.'" The formal Request for Proposals for all of this is out now as well.

Comment Re:Slaves of Dubai (Score 1) 265

by lgw (#47436033) Attached to: Dubai's Climate-Controlled Dome City Is a Dystopia Waiting To Happen

So lets say that's your unavoidable future. Do you want air conditioning in the desert, or no? Let's say you'll spend the next 5 years cleaning toilets - do you prefer they be the kind where you can flush the toilet paper, or the kind where you make the used toilet paper the maid's problem?

Incremental improvements remain better than no improvements. Do you know much about working and living conditions during the American industrial revolution? Living in 7-story walk-ups, heavy industry with child labor and no thought to safety at all, company stores, etc? And still people flocked to those jobs because it was better than rural America for most. It gets better, one increment at a time.

Comment Re:Yay big government! (Score 1) 310

It's worth noting that the more we depend on income taxes on high earners, the more federal revenue will suffer in bad economic times (the very times when the left would argue we need to spend most). Changes to the sum total of income of the bottom 95% in bad times are pretty small: maybe unemployment goes from 5% to 8%, so how much does that affect the total tax base? But top-tier incomes are really unstable, they go down fast in a downturn and up fast in an upturn, so federal revenue takes it on the chin from that group during times like 2008-2011.

That's probably the dominant factor in changes federal revenue as a percentage of GOP these days, now that 1% of tax payers pay about 1/3 of all income taxes, and that noise drowns out any signal we might get from changes in top marginal rate.
Space

O3b Launches Four More Satellites To Bring Internet To 'Other 3 Billion' 80

Posted by timothy from the from-above dept.
An anonymous reader writes "O3b Networks is aiming to provide internet access through satellite, to the "other three billion" people in under-served equatorial regions (Africa, the Pacific, South America). O3b launched four more satellites [Thursday], to add to the four they already have in orbit. This is a very international effort; a Russian Soyuz rocket went up from South America, carrying satellites built in France. There's a video of the rocket and payloads coming together and a video of the rocket launch. There's also an academic paper describing using the O3b system from the Cook Islands in the Pacific, giving an idea of what it does and those all-important ping times."
Transportation

Lyft's New York Launch Halted By Restraining Order 92

Posted by timothy from the restraining-competition-is-more-like-it dept.
Forbes reports that Lyft's planned expansion into the New York market has been delayed by a restraining order. The article explains that State officials had asked Lyft to delay its launch. When Lyft refused, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office filed a temporary restraining order against the startup Friday morning to prevent its launch. Other statements said that the restraining order had been granted, though Simpson said that was untrue. Lyft and officials will reconvene in court Monday for a hearing. Lyft will not launch until it has reached an agreement with the city, Simpson said. Since Monday, when Lyft announced it was planning to launch in the two boroughs [of Queens and Brooklyn], the app has faced criticism from city officials. The taxi and limousine commission declared the app 'unauthorized' and said its riders were at risk and its drivers could be cited and fined if they were caught using it. Lyft seems to have left riders mostly unscathed in Boston, where it's been operating since early last year, and in numerous other cities. Also at Ars Technica.

Comment and... (Score 4, Insightful) 157

by Tom (#47435245) Attached to: "Internet's Own Boy" Briefly Knocked Off YouTube With Bogus DMCA Claim

as activists are all too aware, false copyright claims can can knock legitimate content offline.

As not only activists but almost everyone aware of the rampant abuse going on has been claiming for years, it is high time that the "under penalty of perjury" part of the DMCA claims is actually enforced. Mistakes can happen, nobody is perfect, but some companies have been taking down large amounts of content for years, repeatedly and with not even a slap on the wrist.

Submission + - Rocket Scientist Designs 'Flare' Pot That Cooks Food 40% Faster (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Oxford University engineering professor Dr Thomas Povey just invented a new cooking pot that heats food 40% faster. The pot is made from cast aluminum, and it features fins that direct flames across the bottom and up the sides, capturing energy that would otherwise be wasted. The pot is set to hit the market next month in the UK.
Movies

"Internet's Own Boy" Briefly Knocked Off YouTube With Bogus DMCA Claim 157

Posted by timothy from the until-proven-innocent dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In a bitter irony, a documentary celebrating Aaron Swartz, the late Internet activist who helped create the Creative Commons, has been taken down from YouTube by a misguided copyright claim." From the article: [O]ne of the dark sides of how copyright is enforced on the Internet is that sites that don't actually infringe are sometimes mistakenly swept up in rightsholders' takedown notices, which are frequently automated. Visitors who tried to watch The Internet's Own Boy on YouTube Friday were greeted by the message, "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Remove Your Media LLC," a reference to a company that specializes in sending copyright takedowns in accordance with the law that governs them, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). It's not clear who made the claim, but that's not the point—as activists are all too aware, false copyright claims can can knock legitimate content offline.

Comment Idiots ruin safety records (Score 1, Insightful) 443

by jandrese (#47434205) Attached to: The First Person Ever To Die In a Tesla Is a Guy Who Stole One
I think the real message here is that Tesla's stellar safety record is due at least in part to its exclusivity and high price tag. The kind of people who can afford it are generally safer drivers. It's not a used Dodge Charger that some 16 year old asshole with a shiny new drivers license and Dad's credit card can buy off of the lot for a few thousand bucks.
The Military

DARPA Successfully Demonstrates Self-Guiding Bullets 188

Posted by Soulskill from the jerks-with-aim-bots dept.
Lucas123 writes: A DARPA-funded project has successfully developed a .50 caliber sniper round capable of maneuvering during flight in order to remain on target. The self-guiding EXACTO bullet, as it's being called, is optically guided by a laser that must remain on target for the bullet to track. The EXACTO round is capable of accurately tracking a target up to 1.2 miles away, DARPA stated. The technology, which is being developed by Teledyne Scientific and Imaging, is targeted at helping snipers remain at longer distances from targets as well as improving night shots. While DARPA's tracking bullet is the first to use a standard, small-arms caliber round, in 2012 Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) successfully demonstrated a prototype self-guided bullet that was more like like a four-inch dart.

Submission + - FAA Intimidates Coldwell Banker, Other Realtors Into Shunning Drone Photography (forbes.com) 1

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: For months, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been investigating realtors who use drones to film their properties. Now, Forbes has learned that the FAA’s investigations have succeeded in intimidating NRT —the nation’s largest residential real estate brokerage company — into advising their members to not only cease flying drones as part of their work, but to also cease using drone footage.

This is a troubling development in an ongoing saga over the FAA’s rules which punish the safe commercial use of drones. Currently, the FAA does not prohibit the use of drones for a hobby — flying over your home and taking pictures of it for fun is allowed, but because real estate drones take pictures for a commercial purpose, the FAA prohibits their use.

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close