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Submission + - Meteor Trails Could Reveal Other Objects on Collision Course with Earth (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Want to know if that meteor that just struck Earth has a companion? Take a look at its trail. A new study shows that images of a meteor’s streak through the atmosphere taken by Earth-gazing probes, including weather satellites, can pin down the object’s orbit, enabling scientists to check and see whether another planet-threatening object is traveling in the same trajectory. The threat to our planet from an object’s orbital companions isn’t merely an abstract concern: One recent study suggests that about 15% of the asteroids that cross Earth’s path may be part of double or triple asteroid systems.

Submission + - CryptoSeal shuts down VPN service. NSA suspect. (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by sl4shd0rk
sl4shd0rk writes: CryptoSeal Privacy, a consumer VPN service, has apparently shuttered it's doors saying it has immediately zeroed it's crypto keys citing "it is impossible for us to continue offering the CryptoSeal Privacy consumer VPN product." the statement goes further with a warning: "For anyone operating a VPN, mail, or other communications provider in the US, we believe it would be prudent to evaluate whether a pen register order could be used to compel you to divulge SSL keys protecting message contents, and if so, to take appropriate action,". Sounds like another victim of FISA endorsed illegal NSA activity.

Submission + - Astronomy's 20th Century Legacy Preserved in 21st Century Cloud (pari.edu)

Submitted by MCastelaz
MCastelaz writes: A team of astronomers at the Astronomical Photographic Data Archive is launching a crowdfunding campaign to bring the diverse and rich astronomical photographic collections of 20th century astronomy into the 21st century digital world. Before the invention of digital cameras in the 1990's, and for more than 120 years before that, astronomers put in several million telescope hours photographing the night sky — measuring star brightnesses, detecting comets, planets, nebulae, mapping our Galaxy, and building the foundations of our understanding of our Universe. All of this raw beauty, and secrets yet to be discovered, are held as largely unexplored photometric, astrometric, spectral and surface brightness images on thin, fragile pieces of glass. Digitizing the glass photographic plates is the only way to forever preserve these several thousand terabytes of data acquired and left as a legacy to us by our greatest scientists studying the night sky, and giving future explorers a time machine to the past night sky. The project was recently launched on Kickstarter and has a little less than a month go.

Submission + - Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life? (codinghorror.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror is trying to figure out why the battery life for devices running Windows is so much worse than similar (or identical) devices running other operating systems. For example, the Surface Pro 2 made great strides over the original Surface Pro, increasing web-browsing battery life by 42%, but it still lags far behind Android and iOS tablets. The deficit doesn't get any better when Windows is run on Apple hardware. Atwood says, 'Microsoft positions Windows 8 as an operating system that's great for tablets, which are designed for casual web browsing and light app use – but how can that possibly be true when Windows idle power management is so much worse than the competition's desktop operating system in OS X – much less their tablet and phone operating system, iOS?' Anand Lal Shimpi is perplexed, too. Atwood is now reaching out to the community for answers: 'None of the PC vendors he spoke to could justify it, or produce a Windows box that managed similar battery life to OS X. And that battery life gap is worse today – even when using Microsoft's own hardware, designed in Microsoft's labs, running Microsoft's latest operating system released this week. Microsoft can no longer hand wave this vast difference away based on vague references to "poorly optimized third party drivers." ... I just wish somebody could explain to me and Anand why Windows is so awful at managing idle power.'

Submission + - GNOME 3.10 Released (gnome.org)

Submitted by kthreadd
kthreadd writes: Version 3.10 of the GNOME software collection has been released. New in this release is improved support for Wayland, the upcoming X replacement. The system status menus have been consolidated into one single menu. Many of the applications in GNOME now features header bars instead of title bars, which merges the titlebar and toolbar into a single element and allows applications to offer more dynamic user interfaces. GNOME now also includes an application for searching, browsing and installing applications called Software. Several other new applications have also been added to GNOME including Music, Photos, Notes and Maps.

Submission + - Programmers' Most Hated Languages - And How To Avoid Them (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: If you work in programming for any length of time, you will sooner or later be forced to work with a language that, whether due to odd syntax, too much (or too little) flexibility, poor debugging capabilities or any number of other reasons, makes you pull your hair out. Of course, some languages are easier to avoid than others. If Visual Basic is your I-can't-stand-it language you can simply not work at any company with Windows applications created before 2008. But if Perl's myriad ways of doing things (and hence near=unreadability) turn you off, maybe you should just give up on programming altogether.

Submission + - Its nuclear plant shut, Maine town full of regret (bostonglobe.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: In a wooded area behind a camouflage-clad guard holding an assault rifle, dozens of hulking casks packed with radioactive waste rest on concrete pads — relics of the shuttered nuclear plant that once powered the region and made this fishing town feel rich.

In the 17 years since Maine Yankee began dismantling its reactors and shedding its 600 workers, this small, coastal town north of Portland has experienced drastic changes: property taxes have spiked by more than 10 times for the town’s 3,700 residents, the number living in poverty has more than doubled as many professionals left, and town services and jobs have been cut.

“I have yet to meet anyone happy that Maine Yankee is gone,” said Laurie Smith, the town manager. “All these years later, we’re still feeling the loss of jobs, the economic downturn, and the huge tax increases....”

“It became a ghost town,” said [Tony] True, 51, who has lived in Wiscasset most of his life.... “I wish Maine Yankee never came here,” he said. “We went from having anything we wanted to having nothing, like going from being spoiled children to having no parents. The closing really put a curtain on Wiscasset....”

But the plant faced serious allegations of safety violations and falsifying records around the time it was closed, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Agency investigators found Maine Yankee relied on inadequate computer analyses to demonstrate the adequacy of its emergency core cooling system; “willfully provided inaccurate information” to the NRC about its ability to vent steam during an accident; and provided falsified records of safety-related equipment.

“Many of these violations and underlying causes were longstanding and appeared to be caused by ineffective engineering analyses,” NRC officials wrote to Maine Yankee shortly after the plant closed.

They added that Maine Yankee “was a facility in which pressure to be a low-cost performer led to practices which over-relied on judgment, discouraged problem reporting, and accepted low standards of performance.”

Submission + - NASA's Plutonium Problem Could End Deep-Space Exploration (wired.com)

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: Wired reports, "Most of what humanity knows about the outer planets came back to Earth on plutonium power. Cassini’s ongoing exploration of Saturn, Galileo’s trip to Jupiter, Curiosity’s exploration of the surface of Mars, and the 2015 flyby of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft are all fueled by the stuff. The characteristics of this metal’s radioactive decay make it a super-fuel. ... there is no other viable option. Solar power is too weak, chemical batteries don’t last, nuclear fission systems are too heavy. So, we depend on plutonium-238, a fuel largely acquired as by-product of making nuclear weapons. But there’s a problem: We’ve almost run out. "We’ve got enough to last to the end of this decade. That’s it,” said Steve Johnson, a nuclear chemist at Idaho National Laboratory. And it’s not just the U.S. reserves that are in jeopardy. The entire planet’s stores are nearly depleted. ... what’s left has already been spoken for and then some. ... Political ignorance and shortsighted squabbling, along with false promises from Russia, and penny-wise management of NASA’s ever-thinning budget still stand in the way of a robust plutonium-238 production system. The result: Meaningful exploration of the solar system has been pushed to a cliff’s edge. One ambitious space mission could deplete remaining plutonium stockpiles ..."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Who Could Buy BlackBerry? (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: In a move that seemed to surprise exactly nobody in the tech world, BlackBerry announced that it would consider selling itself to the highest bidder. Now that BlackBerry’s announced that a company sale is on the table—not a shocker to anyone even vaguely aware of its fortunes over the past few years—it’s worth considering who would snatch it off the market, and why. How about a Chinese company like Huawei or Lenovo? Or maybe Dell or Hewlett-Packard would be willing to shell out the cash for BlackBerry's portfolio and still-significant customer base. Or maybe even a firm like Cisco, more interested in BlackBerry's patents and backend infrastructure than its phones. What company do you think would be best suited to acquire the struggling smartphone maker?

Submission + - Apache Web Server Usage Falls Below 50 Percent - Or Does It? (eweek.com) 4

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: Apache has always dominated the web server landscape. But in August, its' share has slipped below 50 percent for the first time in years. The winner isn't nginx either — it's Microsoft IIS that has picked up share. But don't worry, this isn't likely a repeat of the Netscape/IE battle of the late 90's, Apache is here to stay (right?)

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