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Smaller Than Earth-Sized Exomoon Discovered? 25

Posted by samzenpus from the that's-no-moon dept.
astroengine writes "Through the technique of microlensing, a candidate exomoon has been discovered in orbit around a free-floating planet about 1,600 light-years away toward the galactic bulge. The microlensing event, MOA-2011-BLG-262, was detected by the MOA-II telescope at Mt. John University Observatory (MJUO) in New Zealand and it appears to have a mass of approximately half that of Earth. The host planet is around 4 times the mass of Jupiter. Unfortunately there cannot be further studies of his particular exoplanet-exomoon pair (as microlensing events are transient and random), so the astronomers who made the discovery are remaining cautious and point out that although the exoplanet-exomoon model fits the data the best, there's a possibility that the lensing object may have been a more distant star with a massive exoplanet in tow. Microlensing surveys are, however, sensitive to low mass exoplanets orbiting massive free-floating planets, so this is a tantalizing first-detection. The study's pre-print publication has been uploaded to the arXiv."

Comment Re:Wat? (Score 3, Informative) 191

by anonymov (#45250329) Attached to: GCC 4.9 To See Significant Upgrades In 2014

If you doubt that RMS is [slashdot.org]objecting plugins [gnu.org] in GCC then you're apparently new to /. and GCC.

Wait, wut? You were talking about GCC, why are you equating "GCC" and "RMS" now? "RMS opposes hackability in GCC" and "GCC opposes hackability" are two different statements, don't you think? RMS is not quite at the post of BDFL for GCC project, unlike Linus for Linux or Guido for Python.

And did you know that both plugins and GIMPLE from your previous quote are already in GCC? Your posts look pretty silly with that knowledge: "GCC opposes hackability - see, they don't want convenient IR and plugins! (except they have plugins and had IR at the time of your quoted post about Stallman hating it)"

Comment Re:Why a 64-bit phone is good: (Score 1) 348

by anonymov (#44869891) Attached to: Did Apple Make a Mistake By Releasing Two New iPhones?

Close, but no cookie.

64 bit wide general registers have fuck all to do with SIMD. ARM had SIMD extensions since ARMv6. ARMv8 adds to that more SIMD registers, 2 x double precision float SIMD format (before it had only single precision) and a few more extras.

IOW, it will easily give performance enhancements, but reasons you state are quite a bit off.

Comment Re:Apple makes money either way... (Score 1) 348

by anonymov (#44869859) Attached to: Did Apple Make a Mistake By Releasing Two New iPhones?

It is still going to have to load that memory into RAM somewhere.

And your point is? Freeing up developer's time from building a subsystem to juggle chunks of file and leaving it up to OS instead is a good thing, whether you have that amount of RAM now or not.

And again I will repeat that there is not likely to be many people storing files that big on their iPhones that they need to seek faster than they already can.

And the life's standing still - there's no reason to believe there won't be such files, neither as media, nor as, say, game assets in future. None at all.

More registers has nothing to do with it being 64 bit. Nothing at all. How are Apple going to deal with most of their devices not having that many registers? Most likely nothing will use them at all until the older devices are phased out.

More registers have to do with ARM64. While you're getting fixed on "but it simply says 64 bit in marketing material!", developers read that as "It has ARMv8 with all the niceties it brings".

Dealing with that can be as easy as adding another compilation target to XCode and having AppStore distribute appropriate binaries depending on user's device. With Apple holding the keys, they can simply demand developers to submit both versions.

While pushing it to the front lines of marketing is indeed strange, it's not nearly as useless as you think.

Comment Re:This won't end well (Score 1) 250

by anonymov (#44861501) Attached to: California School District Hires Firm To Monitor Students' Social Media

Which part of "public on Facebook" did you miss and where did you read about phenomenal hackers and deep NSA connections of the monitoring firm?

People are arguing - and I tend to agree - that it's not school's business reading public FB walls, just like it's not school's business to send people to watch over playground and sit in cafes behind their students. It's public, physically and legally, point of dissent is ethical.

Comment Re:This won't end well (Score 1) 250

by anonymov (#44861207) Attached to: California School District Hires Firm To Monitor Students' Social Media

Teensy hint: RTFA

"I find it interesting that people keep asking if we're doing something illegal or snooping or eavesdropping, but what we're actually doing is looking at public posts," Frydrych said. "We don't see any private posts."

It's not just "publicly accusing a teacher", it's "publicly accusing a teacher, with _all_ your friends and relatives there to hear it and eternal record remaining".
Advertising

Retail Stores Plan Elaborate Ways To Track You 195

Posted by timothy from the just-ask-at-the-casino-what-works dept.
Velcroman1 writes "Retailers are experimenting with a variety of new ways to track you, so that when you pick up a shirt, you might get a message about the matching shorts. Or pick up golf shoes at a sports store and you see a discount for a new set of clubs. New technologies like magnetic field detection, Bluetooth Low Energy, sonic pulses, and even transmissions from the in-store lights can tell when you enter a store, where you go, and how you shop. Just last year, tracking was only accurate within 100 feet. Starting this year, they can track within a few feet. ByteLight makes the lighting tech, which transmits a unique signal that the camera in your phone can read. The store can then track your location within about 3 feet — and it's already in use at the Museum of Science in Boston."

Submission + - DHS Shuts Down Dwolla Payments to and From Mt. Gox (betabeat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A representative for Dwolla told Betabeat that the company is “not party” to this matter and encourages those with questions to reach out to Mt. Gox or the DHS. “The Department of Homeland Security and U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland issued a ‘Seizure Warrant’ for the funds associated with Mutum Sigillium’s Dwolla account (a.k.a. Mt. Gox),” he said. “In light of the court order, procured by the Department of Homeland Security, Dwolla has ceased all account activities associated with Dwolla services for Mutum Sigillum while Dwolla’s holding partner transferred Mutum Sigillium’s balance, per the warrant.”
Handhelds

Surface Pro Sold Out; Was It Just Understocked? 413

Posted by timothy from the ladies-and-gentleman-just-a-few-left dept.
TechCrunch is one of the many outlets to report that Microsoft's Surface Pro tablet computer sold out on its first day of wide availability. Business Insider points to Reddit threads complaining that "selling out" was largely a product of not having all that many in stock to begin with, in some cases not even enough to cover pre-ordered devices.

Comment Re:Look at the Opera Mini Browser (Score 1) 83

by anonymov (#41175999) Attached to: New iOS App Sends Users' Web Traffic Through Its Proxy Servers

Err, no, not "does that" at all.

Opera Mini is basically server-side browser, rendering pages at their side and sending them preprocessed to the phone - to save teeny-tiny CPUs some cycles and teeny-tiny dataplans some kilobytes. AFAIK, you can't even install any of Opera proxies for use in other applications.

Wajam, OTOH, does "When you search, Wajam shows you what your friends have shared." - and they need all your webtraffic from all your apps for them to plug their added items (and their ads) in web pages.

Comment Re:The judge;'s job isn't to get livid. (Score 1) 404

And now you go from "tried to influence the jury with inadmissible evidence" to "tried to force inadmissible evidence".

What's the problem with that?

You don't see any difference in the meanings? One involves, well, direct attempts to influence jury, other one:

Did he present the said evidence to the jury against orders? Are reporters on the jury now?

Yes, by explicitly stating that the evidence was about Apple copying SONY in the courtroom.

Really? Just hearing description of evidence is enough to influence jury? You're quite dismissive of legal system here, assuming jury's not only gonna break obligation not to read media coverage of process, but also going to be influenced solely by description of evidence explicitly dismissed by the judge and not even meant for consideration by jurors. Seriously, read the fucking article, I see you still didn't do that. Even Apple's lawyers refer only to publication as attempts to influence jury, not about jury hearing his description.

Your definition of "Samsung explicitly tried to influence the jury in the courtroom using excluded evidence" is rather stretched.

I am yet to see how...

Explicit (adj.) Very specific, clear, or detailed.

So, "reconsider her earlier decision that Samsung not be allowed to present evidence showing that Apple's iPhone was inspired by "Sony style."" is very specific, clear and detailed influence?

Also, you're again doing your thing with renaming "inspired by "Sony style"" to "Apple copied SONY". Hyperboles much?

Comment Re:The judge;'s job isn't to get livid. (Score 1) 404

And now you go from "tried to influence the jury with inadmissible evidence" to "tried to force inadmissible evidence".

Did he present the said evidence to the jury against orders? Are reporters on the jury now?

Your definition of "Samsung explicitly tried to influence the jury in the courtroom using excluded evidence" is rather stretched.

Comment Re:The judge;'s job isn't to get livid. (Score 1) 404

Well, they should. You never know where you'll hear about "frivolously abusing patents on basic shapes" or "slavishly copying in attempt to confuse the consumer" which could give you preconceptions about trial.

How do they even choose a fair jury with all this trollfest in media going for a year already?

Comment Re:The judge;'s job isn't to get livid. (Score 4, Insightful) 404

Why do you always link to things that contradict you?

"Contrary to the representations Apple's counsel made to this Court, Samsung did not issue a general press release and more importantly, did not violate any Court Order or any legal or ethical standards," Quinn wrote. "These false representations by Apple's counsel publicly and unfairly called my personal reputation into question and have resulted in media reports likewise falsely impugning me personally."

"Moreover, before jury selection, virtually all of the information and images in the excluded slides had already appeared in dozens of media reports, including by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, and CNET," Quinn's declaration said.

So yeah, pointing which of long published images were not admitted into trial in a press release not meant to be read by jurors is "trying to influence jury", as Apple made sure everyone knows. I'm sorry, I think you've messed up your post somehow, whose bullshit propaganda was that again?

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