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Science

Submission + - Emergent Gravity Disproved (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
kdawson
kdawson writes: "A paper up on the ArXiv claims to disprove the gravity-from-entropy theory of Erik Verlinde, which we discussed soon after he introduced the idea in a symposium late in 2009. Archil Kobakhidze says that experiments measuring the effect of gravity on quantum particles (neutrons in this case) match results expected from classical Newtonian gravity, not Verlindian entropic gravity. Here is Kobakhidze's paper (PDF)."
Government

Submission + - Court overturns Mass law banning recording of cops (universalhub.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: In its ruling, which lets Simon Glik continue his lawsuit, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston said the wiretapping statute under which Glik was arrested and the seizure of his phone violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights.
Supercomputing

Submission + - Do Supercomputers Still Matter? (hp.com)

Submitted by
Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: "The innovations that are redefining the way businesses compute today were made feasible by supercomputers, the first platforms to enable parallel processing on a scale anywhere close to that of the cloud. Supercomputing would have been a lost art had it not been for the capability of everyday PC processors to be stacked together by the thousands — a technology for the high end made possible at the low end. But now, writes Scott Fulton in an exhaustive technical essay, a looming engineering bottleneck may have already rendered it technically and financially impossible for supercomputers to continue evolving at the current rate. Can the cloud go forward if the “grid” on which it’s based grinds to a halt?"
Programming

Submission + - Is Process Killing the Software Industry? (oreilly.com)

Submitted by blackbearnh
blackbearnh writes: We all know by now that Test Driven Development is a best practice. And so is having 100% of your code reviewed. And 70% unit test coverage. And keeping your CCN complexity numbers below 20. And doing pre-sprint grooming of stories. And a hundred other industry 'best practices' that in isolation seem like a great idea. But at the end of the day, how much time does it leave for developers to be innovative and creative?

A piece on O'Reilly Radar is arguing that excessive process in software development is sucking the life out of passionate developers, all in the name of making sure that 'good code' gets written. TFA:"The underlying feedback loop making this progressively worse is that passionate programmers write great code, but process kills passion. Disaffected programmers write poor code, and poor code makes management add more process in an attempt to 'make' their programmers write good code. That just makes morale worse, and so on."
Security

Submission + - Russian Drug Cops Storm Rogue Pharmacy Party (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by tsu doh nimh
tsu doh nimh writes: Brian Krebs has posted a fascinating, inside look at a battle that's been brewing between two Russian men who run a pair of the largest online rogue pharmacy programs in the world. The story focuses more on Pavel Vrublevsky, the man alleged to run Rx-Promotion — a pharmacy program that specializes in selling addictive, controlled substances like Oxycodone — and how Russian drug authorities recently raided a party in Moscow thrown for Rx-Promotion affiliates who had been competing for cash and prizes and the grand prize — a one kilogram bar of gold.
Books

Submission + - "The Hidden Reality" Draws Ire from Physicists (scientificamerican.com) 1

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: Scientific American is running a piece by science journalist John Horgan attacking pop physicist Brian Greene's latest offering titled "The Hidden Reality." He's not entirely alone, Not Even Wrong backs him up and reminds us of a growing list of multiverse propaganda. The Journal of Nature ran a short piece trying to remind everyone that Greene's book is more theory than fact but apart from those three responses, the popular press seems to be gobbling up this tantalizing concept of a multiverse. NPR offers an excerpt while SFGate and The Wall Street Journal entertain us with interviews of the controversial Greene. The New York Times and Salon seem to think it's worthwhile with Salon even calling it "the science behind" the multiverse theory. The New York Times thought it worthwhile to give Greene an op-ed column. For better or for worse, Greene has certainly brought this great debate to the public's attention — similar to his exhibition of String Theory.
The Internet

Submission + - Pondering Egypt and Net Activism (internetevolution.com)

Submitted by rsmiller510
rsmiller510 writes: A new book that calls into question the power of the internet to affect real political change is quite prescient given the situation in Egypt today where the government has literally shut down the internet.
Iphone

Submission + - NFC Could Make iPhone a Payment Machine (internetevolution.com)

Submitted by rsmiller510
rsmiller510 writes: You might not know what 'near field communication is,' but there's a chance it could transform the iPhone into a payment machine tied to your iTunes account. And if that happens, it could put Apple in the payments business.
Security

Submission + - Dancho Danchev Claimed Located (google.com)

Submitted by kdawson
kdawson writes: A Bulgarian newspaper carries a report that missing security researcher Dancho Danchev has been found — and is in a mental institution (link is a Google translation of the Bulgarian original). The article claims that 'according to reliable source of [the newspaper] Dnevnik he was placed in a Bulgarian psychiatric hospital since December 11.' I hope more will eventually be revealed as to where Danchev spent the 3 months preceding that date. During the bygone Soviet era, 'psychiatric hospital' didn't have the same connotations it might in the West.
Science

Submission + - 34,000-Year-Old Organisms Found Buried Alive (csmonitor.com) 1

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: A scientist has made a weird and and wonderful find:

It's a tale that has all the trappings of a cult 1960s sci-fi movie: Scientists bring back ancient salt crystals, dug up from deep below Death Valley for climate research. The sparkling crystals are carefully packed away until, years later, a young, unknown researcher takes a second look at the 34,000-year-old crystals and discovers, trapped inside, something strange. Something ... alive.

The Geological Society of America's current issue of GSA Today has the hard science paper.
Power

Submission + - Proven Focus Fusion Could Power Civilization (pesn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (LPP) LLC has announced that they have indisputable evidence that they have achieved 1 billion degrees via plasma confinement . With another year of experimentation followed by three years of development, they could be ready to bring to market a 5 MW plant (size of the largest wind turbines) that only costs $300,000. Slashdot reported previously that LPP had achieved billion-degree results. But critics had said that the previous set-up could not rule out the possibility that this temperature was merely a function of the beam they were creating. The new results show definitively that "confinement" is indeed happening, and is the source of the temperature, which is a key attribute needed to develop a practical commercial reactor. The reults will be published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Fusion Energy describing the basic theory guiding LPP's pursuit of useful fusion energy from the dense plasma focus, as well as featuring these first experimental results from the team's Focus Fusion-1 experimental device in Middlesex, NJ.
Space

Submission + - Tau Zero Takes Aim at Interstellar Propulsion (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "Could the future of interstellar space travel be in the hands of a group of volunteer scientists? According to Paul Gilster, of Centauri Dreams fame, interstellar propulsion techniques, by their design, will require an incremental approach, headed not by governments, but by private enterprise. And don't expect to reach the nearest star any time soon, that could take centuries! So you think striving toward interstellar spaceflight is a little "far out"? Not so fast. The Tau Zero Foundation is already on the case and has just completed year one of the five year Project Icarus study, just one project that will hopefully carry mankind beyond our solar system."

Submission + - It's suprisingly hard to notice when moving object (harvard.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists at Harvard have found that people are remarkably bad at noticing when moving objects change in brightness, color, size, or shape. In a paper published yesterday in Current Biology, the researchers present a new visual illusion that "causes objects that had once been obviously dynamic to suddenly appear static." The finding has implications for everything from video game design to the training of pilots. Several videos demonstrating this striking effect can be found at http://visionlab.harvard.edu/silencing/.
Science

Submission + - Hypersonic Radio Black-Out Problem Solved (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: Russian physicists have come up with a new way to communicate with hypersonic vehicles surrounded by a sheath of plasma. Ordinarily, this plasma absorbs and reflects radio waves at communications frequencies leading to a few tense minutes during the re-entry of manned vehicles such as the shuttle. However, the problem is even more acute for military vehicles such as ballistic missiles and hypersonic planes. Radio black out prevents these vehicles from accessing GPS signals for navigation and does not allow them to be re-targeted or disarmed at the last minute. But a group of Russian physicists say they can get around this problem by turning the entire plasma sheath into a radio antenna. They point out that any incoming signal is both reflected and absorbed by the plasma. The reflected signal is lost but the absorbed energy sets up a resonating electric field at a certain depth within the plasma. In effect, this layer within the plasma acts like a radio antenna, receiving the signal. However, the signal cannot travel further through the plasma to the spacecraft. Their new idea is to zap this layer with radio waves generated from within the spacecraft. These waves will be both absorbed by the plasma and reflected back inside the spacecraft. However, the key point is that the reflected waves ought to be modulated by any changes in the electric field within the plasma. In other words, the reflected waves should carry a kind of imprint of the original external radio signal. That would allow the craft to receive external signals from GPs satellites or ground control. And the same process in reverse allows the spacecraft to broadcast signals too.
Businesses

Submission + - For Mac developers, Armageddon comes tomorrow (zdnet.com)

Submitted by kdawson
kdawson writes: David Gewirtz's blog post over at ZDNet warns of an imminent price collapse for traditional Mac applications, starting tomorrow when the Mac App Store opens. The larger questions: what will Mac price plunges of 90%-95% mean for the PC software market? For the Mac's market share? Quoting: 'The Mac software market is about as old-school as you get. Developers have been creating, shipping, and selling products through traditional channels and at traditional price points for decades. ... Mac software has historically been priced on a parity with other desktop software. That means small products are about $20. Utilities run in the $50-60 range. Games in the $50 range. Productivity packages and creative tools in the hundreds, and specialty software — well, the sky's the limit. Tomorrow, the sky will fall. Tomorrow, the iOS developers move in and the traditional Mac developers better stick their heads between their legs and kiss those price points goodbye.'

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