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Submission + - Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo destroyed in flight (twitter.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo has broken up in flight. Local police scanner reports at least 1 pilot DOA and 1 with moderate injuries after parachuting down from the accident.

Comment Bought 1 LED, it died (Score 1) 602

by mknewman (#48002815) Attached to: The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy
One Sylvania 100w equivalent, nice bulb, had it in a heavily used area, in a ceiling fan, it died after about 1 year (not fully dead but when it warms up it starts flicking out). It's supposed to have a 5 year warranty, but I didn't save the receipt, so nobody will honor it.

Submission + - White House Names Google's Megan Smith As CTO (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: The White House has named long-time Google executive Megan Smith as the government's new CTO, in charge of improving technology and the use of data across agencies. Smith most recently served as vice president at Google's tech lab, Google[x]. She previously served as CEO of PlanetOut, helped design early smartphone technologies at General Magic and worked on multimedia products at Apple Japan in Tokyo. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT, and just might be, as noted in a previous Slashdot post, the first US CTO worthy of the title. Also on Thursday, the White House named Alexander Macgillivray, a former general counsel and head of public policy at Twitter, as deputy U.S. CTO.

Comment Electrostatic Inertial Confinement Fusion (Score 1) 225

by mknewman (#47375531) Attached to: Senate Budgetmakers Move To End US Participation In ITER
We should be pursuing the legacy of Robert Brusard https://www.youtube.com/watch?... like these folks http://www.talk-polywell.org/b.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... It works, 15 year old students have made it work in a lab http://www.popsci.com/diy/arti... and $100m would build a proof of concept energy positive plant. I have no idea why we have not done this other than we may have already under the NAVY but they aren't talking. NASA should build one for interplanetary ion engines.

Comment Re:Flyout and back plan (Score 1) 105

by mknewman (#47274667) Attached to: SpaceX Falcon 9R Vertical Take-Off and Landing Test Flight
I believe the first stage makes an orbit before de-orbiting via a burn, comes in head first with an ablative heat shield, and flips over once it's roughly subsonic. The details are still sketchy but from what I heard the first real 'landing' on water was approximately 1 mile off course. Musk wants 300 ft on next flight and on a pad at the cape by end of the year.

Submission + - Tesla releases electric car patents to the public (teslamotors.com)

Submitted by mknewman
mknewman writes: Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.

Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.

Comment Lots of updates coming (Score 2) 136

by mknewman (#47194401) Attached to: Tesla Makes Improvements To Model S
Elon Musk has said there will be a roof rack for skiis and other things (bikes, canoe?) not sure how he's going to pull that off. He's also promised 400m batteries, self driving (entrance ramp to exit ramp), better seats, 4wd and of course the megafactory and a sub $40k car capable of 200m range. Oh and Mars missions. Got to hand it to him, he doesn't think small.

Comment Re:Foolish (Score 1) 358

by mknewman (#47163955) Attached to: The Disappearing Universe
The problem is that even with FTL speeds things are still too far apart. Assume you could do 10*C it would still take 3000 years to the center of the galaxy or 10,000 years to the outskirts of Andromeda. 100*C and you are still into many multiple lifetimes of travel just to get there. The distances are so great as to be unapproachable.

Submission + - Computer Science freshman, too soon to job hunt?

Submitted by stef2dotoh
stef2dotoh writes: I've got about a year of computer science classes under my belt along with countless hours of independent online and tech book learning. I can put together a secure login-driven Web site using PHP and MySQL. (I have a personal project on GitHub and a personal Web site.) I really enjoyed my Web development class, so I've spent a lot of time honing those skills and trying to learn new technologies. I still have a ways to go, though. I've been designing Web sites for more than 10 years, writing basic PHP forms for about 5 or 6 years and only gotten seriously into PHP/MySQL the last 1 or 2 years on and off. I'm fluent with HTML and CSS, but I really like back-end development. I was hoping I might be able to get a job as a junior Web developer, but even those require 2+ years of experience and a list of technologies as long as my arm. Internships usually require students to be in their junior or senior year, so that doesn't seem to be an option for me. Recruiters are responding to my resume on various sites, but it's always for someone more experienced. Should I forget about trying to find a junior Web developer position after only one year of computer science classes? I need to find work and would like to do something that excites me, but maybe it's just too soon?

Submission + - Scientists create best-ever model of the evolving universe (nature.com)

Submitted by bmahersciwriter
bmahersciwriter writes: Mark Vogelsberger, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and his colleagues created a model of the Universe that follows the evolution of both visible and dark matter starting just 12 million years after the Big Bang. While previous models have either been small and detailed or large and coarse, this simulation covers a region of space big enough to be representative of the whole Universe but detailed enough to resolve small-scale structures, such as individual galaxies.

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