69178121
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mpicpp writes:
A Chinese spacecraft service module has entered orbit around the moon, months after being used in the country's landmark test flight that sent a prototype sample-return capsule on a flight around the moon and returned it to Earth.
The service module from China's circumlunar test flight arrived in orbit around the moon this week, according to Chinese state media reports. The spacecraft is currently flying in an eight-hour orbit that carries it within 125 miles (200 kilometers) of the lunar surface at its closest point, and out to a range of 3,293 miles (5,300 km) at its highest point.
According to chief engineer Zhou Jianlian of the Beijing Aerospace Control Center the module will make its second and third braking in the early hours of today (Jan. 12) and tomorrow, Beijing time. Doing so will enable the module to enter a 127-minute orbit around the moon, Zhou said. [China's 1st Round-trip Moon Shot in Pictures]
Earlier reports noted that a camera system is onboard the service module, designed to assist in identifying future landing spots for the Chang'e 5 mission that will return lunar samples back to Earth in the 2017 time frame.
69174705
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mpicpp writes:
The Twitter and YouTube accounts of the Pentagon's command for its forces in the Middle East have been hacked, according to a defense official Monday.
It is unclear what the problem is with the accounts, according to Central Command based in Tampa.
"We can confirm that the U.S. Central Command's Twitter and YouTube accounts were compromised earlier today," said a Defense official speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. "We are taking appropriate measures to address the matter. I have no further information to provide at this time."
69080947
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mpicpp writes:
Anonymous declared war on Islamic extremists Friday and promised to take revenge for the attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hedbo.
In a video posted on YouTube, the group of hackers said they would track down websites and social media networks linked to terrorists, and take them down.
"We, Anonymous around the world, have decided to declare war on you the terrorists," it said.
The video is described as a message for "al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorists," and promises to avenge the killing of 12 people in Wednesday's attack.
"We intend to take revenge in their name, we are going to survey your activities on the net, we are going to shut down your accounts on all social networks," Anonymous said.
69076753
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mpicpp writes:
Sandrine Campeau thought she was ready for winter once she downloaded the city’s new snow-removal app called INFO-Neige MTL.
Instead, she got a $118 ticket last month during the first snow-removal operation in NDG.
“We parked our car and relied entirely on the INFO-Neige application to not get a ticket — and we did,” Campeau told CBC’s Homerun host Sue Smith.
The online application is a pilot project developed by the city of Montreal to remind people to move their parked vehicles. Available only in five boroughs for now, it sends an alert to your mobile device when snowplows are about to clear your street, and another to alert you once the snow-removal operations have been completed.
Campeau said she parked her car Friday at midnight, and waited for alerts.
“We [got a notification Sunday] that the snow had been cleared,” said Campeau, who then went to her car to discover a ticket for $118.
69069355
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mpicpp writes:
We've already heard that Microsoft plans to build Cortana into Windows 10. Now it appears the Windows maker has further plans for Cortana in its upcoming operating system refresh.
Cortana is slated to play a supporting role in Spartan, the rumored new web browser planned for Windows 10, according to The Verge. From the sounds of it, Cortana-Spartan integration won't be a voice-activated feature, unlike what Google has done with "OK Google" in Chrome on desktop PCs.
Instead, Cortana will play a more Google Now-like role, surfacing information about tracked flights, hotel bookings, package tracking, and other information as you ask for it. Say, for example, you wanted to see shipping progress on a package from Amazon. As you start typing the information into the Spartan address bar Cortana would fill in the package tracking details for you.
Why this matters: Although we're still in the rumor zone with Cortana-Spartan integration, adding smarts to Windows 10 and the web browser is an important move for Microsoft. Google's ability to surface flight tracking, shipping information, and other data for its users has helped attract and keep people in its Android-Chrome ecosystem. Microsoft's Cortana already offers some of this Google-like functionality on Windows Phone, but building Cortana into the desktop will give the service a much needed expansion.
69030751
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mpicpp writes:
The Federal Communications Commission is in the middle of a high-stakes decision that could raise taxes for close to 90 percent of Americans. The commission is considering whether to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service and, in doing so, Washington would trigger new taxes and fees at the state and local level.
The agency would like to make Internet service a public utility, placing broadband under Title II regulation of the Communications Act of 1934. This move would make broadband subject to New Deal-era regulation, and have significant consequences for U.S. taxpayers.
Under this decision to reclassify broadband, Americans would face a host of new state and local taxes and fees that apply to public utilities. These new levies, according to the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), would total $15 billion annually. On average, consumers would pay an additional $67 for landline broadband, and $72 for mobile broadband each year, according to PPI’s calculations, with charges varying from state to state.
Proponents of broadband reclassification, including the left-of-center organization Free Press, claim that it would not result in higher taxes or fees. The recently extended Internet Tax Freedom Act, they assert, prohibits state and local taxation of Internet service. This is incorrect, however. The act does not apply to telecom-related fees.
Free Press and other broadband reclassification proponents also say the new taxes and fees can be prevented if the FCC designates broadband as an interstate service. A Progressive Policy Institute report explains why this also is incorrect:
68993161
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mpicpp writes:
A scientist named Nora Noffke says she thinks that the Curiosity rover may have found fossils on Mars. Noffke’s findings have been published in the journal Astrobiology. The study theorizes that certain rocks on Mars might have been formed by microbes, Discovery reports.
To create her hypothesis, Noffke closely examined photographs taken by Curiosity and compared them to rocks on Earth that have definitely been formed by living organisms. She says the pictures returned by the rover look extremely similar to microbe-created rocks on our own planet. The specific photos Noffke studied were taken in Gale Crater, specifically in the Yellowknife Bay area which houses the Gillespie Lake outcrop. The bottom of the lake and bay, which once contained water, consists of sedimentary sandstone.
While there have been previous papers theorizing that certain rocks prove life on Mars due to the presence of fossils, those have often been debunked. Noffke’s work has been so thorough, though, that even NASA is impressed.
NASA spokesperson Chris McKay explained, “I’ve seen many papers that say ‘Look, here’s a pile of dirt on Mars, and here’s a pile of dirt on Earth. And because they look the same, the same mechanism must have made each pile on the two planets. That’s an easy argument to make, and it’s typically not very convincing. However, Noffke’s paper is the most carefully done analysis of the sort that I’ve seen, which is why it’s the first of its kind published in Astrobiology.”
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mpicpp writes:
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's official IRNA news agency says the judiciary has ordered three personal communication apps blocked, a decision President Hassan Rouhani's administration has long opposed.
The Wednesday report says the judiciary has ordered that LINE, WhatsApp and Tango, three popular apps providing free phone and messaging services, be shut down.
Rouhani and fellow moderates are opposed to blocking websites or social networking applications, saying authorities should only target illegal content.
IRNA said the order will be implemented within the next few hours. Users in Tehran could still access the services Wednesday afternoon.
Social websites including YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have already been blocked by censors, though many young and Web-savvy Iranians use proxy servers or other workarounds to bypass the controls.
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mpicpp writes:
There are a lot of companies making head-mounted displays with probable release dates in 2015—it feels like Oculus has opened the floodgates and “VR” is about to really become a thing. But California-based Avegant is aiming sort of parallel to the crowd by developing a display that isn’t intended to suck you into an immersive 360-degree experience, but rather to give you the option to quickly drop a display in front of your eyes while still being able to see a bit of the world around you.
The company has ridden a successful Kickstarter campaign through to the late development stage of their Glyph headset, and is poised to ship production versions of the device to its backers in late 2015, with regular non-Kickstarter customers receiving their devices by the end of the year. Rather than use an OLED display to provide an image, the Glyph uses a pair of small DLP arrays to bounce light directly onto the wearer’s retinas. This results in a very clear, very bright pixel-free image with an extremely high effective refresh rate.
The Glyph relies on a smartphone or other A/V device with a standard HDMI cable to actually provide video to display; we demoed a heavy prototype Glyph by watching a 3D movie on a Playstation 3 directly from the Playstation Store and also by playing a few rounds of a racing game on an Android phone. In both instances, the image appeared like a square screen without any visible pixelation or any of the “screen door effect” apparent in all the other head-mounted displays I’ve tried.
The Glyph’s screen has a field of view of about 40 percent, which Tang says the company designed for on purpose so that users could still have some awareness of the world around them. You can also clearly see the world above and below the screens—while playing the racing game, for instance, I was able to look down and clearly see and interact with the controls on the smartphone I was holding.
A final production version of the Glyph doesn’t yet exist, though Tang assured us that the company was close to having final hardware in-hand. We were able to try on some non-functional prototype models, and the overall look of wearing the headphone band down over our eyes was very Star Trek. Whether you’re comfortable appearing in public like this is up to you (we have no problem with it because after all the stuff we’ve done in public for Ars, we’re pretty comfortable with ourselves).
The Glyph is available for preorder right now for $499, though the company says that the price will rise to $599 after mid-January."
68984271
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mpicpp writes:
Chief Executive Brian Krzanich demonstrated a tiny computer built into the button of his jacket and a wristband that was capable of transforming into a flying camera at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
Intel, known more for its computer chips, is attempt to expand into the area of smart gadgets that you can wear. Krzanich said during his keynote that Intel was pushing to create computerized apparel and other gadgets equipped with sensors, an area that Intel hopes is rife with growth as the demand for smartphones and tablets begins to taper off, according to a Reuters report.
Dubbed Curie, the button-sized computer that can be worn is planned for release this year, and it will include a Bluetooth radio and a low-power chip from Intel’s Quark line. It’s a largely new area for Intel, which has not released much in the wearable gadgets market until now.
He said such technology could be worn on rings, bags, pendants, bracelets, and other types of clothing in addition to a jacket button. The company is also working with apparel firm Oakley to create a gadget for athletes.
The drone on his wrist is called Nixie, and it can be launched into the air equipped with a camera and is capable of navigating around obstacles.
Krzanich said he had learned from Intel’s past mistake of not moving quickly enough to create chips for smartphones and tablets, causing the company to miss out on that market. Krzanich has been the company’s CEO since 2013.
68953119
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mpicpp writes:
A "deeply personal" picture of every consumer could be grabbed by futuristic smart gadgets, the chair of the US Federal Trade Commission has warned.
Speaking at CES, Edith Ramirez said a future full of smart gadgets that watch what we do posed a threat to privacy.
The collated data could create a false impression if given to employers, universities or companies, she said.
Ms Ramirez urged tech firms to make sure gadgets gathered the minimum data needed to fulfil their function.
The internet of things (IoT), which will populate homes, cars and bodies with devices that use sophisticated sensors to monitor people, could easily build up a "deeply personal and startlingly complete picture" of a person's lifestyle, said Ms Ramirez.
The data picture would include details about an individuals credit history, health, religious preferences, family, friends and a host of other indicators, she said.
The granularity of the data that could be gathered by existing devices was without precedent, she said, and likely to get more detailed as time went on.
An individual's preference for reality TV or the History Channel could be tracked by tablets or smart TV sets and then shared with other organisations in a way that could prove damaging, she said.
"Will this information be used to paint a picture of you that you won't see but that others will?" she asked, wondering if it would influence the types of services people were offered, ads they were shown or what assumptions firms made about their lifestyle.
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mpicpp writes:
Astronomers have proved that they can accurately tell the age of a star from how fast it is spinning.
We know that stars slow down over time, but until recently there was little data to support exact calculations.
For the first time, a US team has now measured the spin speed of stars that are more than one billion years old — and it matches what they predicted.
The finding resolves a long-standing challenge, allowing astronomers to estimate a star's age to within 10%.
68738137
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mpicpp writes:
Chick-fil-A is working with law enforcement to look into potential unusual activity involving card payments at a few of its locations, the fast-food chain said.
The chain did not detail the extent of the possible breach, the number of restaurants or the locations.
The company learned on December 19 that there was "limited suspicious" payment card activity "appearing to originate from payment cards used at a few of our restaurants," it said in a news release Wednesday.
"We take our obligation to protect customer information seriously, and we are working with leading IT security firms, law enforcement and our payment industry contacts to determine all of the facts."
Chick-fil-A said it will let customers know more details later, and it added that if a breach is substantiated, customers will not be liable for fraudulent charges.
The company also said it will pay for identity protection services to those affected, including credit monitoring.
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submission
StartsWithABang writes:
This past weekend, Eric Metaxas lit up the world with his bold article in the Wall Street Journal, Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God. As a scientific counterpoint, this article fully addresses three major points of that "case", including what the condition are that we need for life to arise, how rare (or common) are those conditions, and if we don't find life where we expect it, can we learn anything about God at all?
68629759
submission
mpicpp writes:
There's been talk for a while that Microsoft was going to make some big changes to Internet Explorer in the Windows 10 time frame, making IE "Spartan" look and feel more like Chrome and Firefox.
It turns out that what's actually happening is Microsoft is building a new browser, codenamed Spartan, which is not IE 12 — at least according to a couple of sources of mine.
Thomas Nigro, a Microsoft Student Partner lead and developer of the modern version of VLC, mentioned on Twitter earlier this month that he heard Microsoft was building a brand-new browser. Nigro said he heard talk of this during a December episode of the LiveTile podcast.
Spartan is still going to use Microsoft's Chakra JavaScript engine and Microsoft's Trident rendering engine (not WebKit), sources say. As Neowin's Brad Sams reported back in September, the coming browser will look and feel more like Chrome and Firefox and will support extensions. Sams also reported on December 29 that Microsoft has two different versions of Trident in the works, which also seemingly supports the claim that the company has two different Trident-based browsers.
However, if my sources are right, Spartan is not IE 12. Instead, Spartan is a new, light-weight browser Microsoft is building.
Windows 10 (at least the desktop version) will ship with both Spartan and IE 11, my sources say. IE 11 will be there for backward-compatibility's sake. Spartan will be available for both desktop and mobile (phone/tablet) versions of Windows 10, sources say.
