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Comment Re:Hmm (Score 1) 81

That's not all that different from how he got started with Tesla. He had no intention of starting a car company (he already had SpaceX), he just wanted AC Propulsion to build him a copy of their t-zero - but they had no interest, even for a small fortune. But then they pointed him to this guy named Martin Eberhard who had this wild idea to commercialize the t-zero's tech base on a Lotus Elise body and was looking for funding... and thus Tesla was born.

Australia

Over 9,000 PCs In Australia Infected By TorrentLocker Ransomware 83

First time accepted submitter River Tam writes Cybercriminals behind the TorrenLocker malware may have earned as much as $585,000 over several months from 39,000 PC infections worldwide, of which over 9,000 were from Australia. If you're a Windows user in Australia who's had their files encrypted by hackers after visiting a bogus Australia Post website, chances are you were infected by TorrentLocker and may have contributed to the tens of thousands of dollars likely to have come from Australia due to this digital shakedown racket.
The Military

Navy Develops a Shark Drone For Surveillance 45

An anonymous reader writes The Navy is testing a new underwater drone called GhostSwimmer, which is designed to a look like a shark and conduct surveillance work. It is being adapted by the chief of naval operations' Rapid Innovation Cell (CRIC) project, Silent NEMO, in Norfolk, Va.. GhostSwimmer is 5 feet long and weighs almost 100 pounds. It can operate in water depths from 10 inches to 300 feet, and is designed to operate autonomously for long periods of time, according to the Navy.

Submission + - Australia proposed new restrictions on technology export and pubblication

An anonymous reader writes: Australia is starting a public consultation process for new legislation that further restricts the publication and export of technology on national security grounds. The public consultation starts now (a few days before Christmas) and it is due by Jan 30th while a lot of Australians are on holidays. I don't have the legal expertise to dissect the proposed legislation, but I'd like some more public scrutiny on it. I find particularly disturbing the phrase "The Bill includes defences that reverse the onus of proof which limit the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty" contained in this document, also available on the consultation web site.
Moon

NASA Tests Feasibility of 3D Printing on the Moon and Other Planets 58

ErnieKey writes A major application of 3d printing that could revolutionize space travel would be using 3d printers to create structures on non-terrestrial bodies like the moon, other planets, and even asteroids. Researchers from NASA's Kennedy Space Center have been working to develop solutions to materials issues, and recently presented initial findings on the potential for using in-situ materials like basalt for 3D printing. Their innovative method is based on only using in-situ supplies, and not materials that need to be brought into space.

Comment Re:seems a lot like human vision to me (Score 1) 130

I think it was fairly clear what was going on, the neural networks latch on to conditions that are necessary but not sufficient because they found common characteristics of real images but never got any negative feedback. Like in the peacock photo the colors and pattern are similar, but clearly not in the shape of a bird but if it's never seen any non-bird peacock colored items how's the algorithm supposed to know? At any rate, it seems like the neural network is excessively focusing on one thing, maybe it would perform better if you divided up the work so one factor didn't become dominant. For example you send outlines to one network, textures to a second network and colors to a third network then using a fourth network to try learning which of the other three to listen to. After all, the brain has very clear centers too, it's not just one big chunk of goo.

Submission + - Marissa Mayer's reinvention of Yahoo! stumbles

schnell writes: The New York Times Magazine has an in-depth profile of Marissa Mayer's time at the helm of Yahoo!, detailing her bold plans to reinvent the company and spark a Jobs-ian turnaround through building great new products. But some investors are saying that her product focus (to the point of micromanaging) hasn't generated results, and that the company should give up on trying to create the next iPod, merge with AOL to cut costs and focus on the unglamorous core business that it has. Is it time for Yahoo! to "grow up" and set its sights lower?

Submission + - Marissa Mayer's reinvention of Yahoo! stumbles

schnell writes: The New York Times Magazine has an in-depth profile of Marissa Mayer's time at the helm of Yahoo!, detailing her bold plans to reinvent the company and spark a Jobs-ian turnaround through building great new products. But some investors are saying that her product focus (to the point of micromanaging) hasn't generated results, and that the company should give up on trying to create the next iPod, merge with AOL to cut costs and focus on the unglamorous core business that it has. Is it time for Yahoo! to "grow up" and set its sights lower?

Comment Re:Pretty sad (Score 1) 156

g++ supports it with __restrict__. And if you're writing high performance code but not having support for the features of modern compilers, you're an idiot. In appropriate situations, the performance difference for using restrict or not is huge. Array-heavy tasks like image processing often get a 2-fold or more benefit with using restrict. There's very few places in the coding word where a single keyword can raise your performance that much.

Comment Re:As with all space missions: (Score 1) 200

I'll begin by stating that I I don't support such a mission, as I prefer robotic exploration. But this proposal isn't as extreme as it may sound - it's probably a heck of a lot easier than landing on a planet and taking off. It's only 640 m/s from earth escape to Venus (3/5ths that of Mars). Transit time is less and launch windows a lot more frequent. Venus offers very easy aerocapture. You don't have to deal with the randomness of the surface - your "landing" is a lot more forgiving. Your habitat is probably simpler, not having to deal with a surface (although there's a few potential complications that need to be studied, such as storms, and I don know the radiation level at the desired altitude). Keeping it aloft is easy - even normal earth air is a lifting gas on Venus. Solar energy arriving at Venus is double that of Earth. Nearly earth's gravity eliminates a lot of the uncertanties about skeletal and muscular wasting.

One of the neat things is that a person could potentially step outside without any sort of special suit, just an oxygen mask. It's a "maybe", though, as there's a few complicating factors. It's 37C (100F) at the same sort of heights that it's about 600mb; for US analogies, it's Phoenix temperatures at Mount Whitney air pressures (lower or higher for both, depending on your exact altitude - you can choose). So it's not a perfect match - but probably tolerable. But there's two potential complicating gases: SO2/sulfuric acid and carbon monoxide. Breathing them is right out, but even long-term (hours at a time) skin exposure might be problematic at the given concentrations; it's not certain whether at these altitudes they'd be prohibitive. They would however make eye protection a must at the very least, the eyes are more sensitive to both CO and SO2 than the skin.

Manned or not, the main advantage of a Venus blimp would be the lower altitude it would provide to scientific equipment versus satellites. So you'll get a lot more information on the atmosphere, which could help answer questions about Venus's evolution (and how other worlds in other systems might be). You'll get higher resolution radar imaging of the surface. You simplify to some extent sample return missions from the surface, as each sample collection doesn't have to be a self contained return mission. Etc.

One thing on Venus I'd love to see studied more is the super-reflective radar surfaces. It's now believed to be due to a "galena snow", snow made of shiny, electrically conductive lead sulfide. I'd really love to know more about the surface minerology of Venus in general.

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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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