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Space

SpaceX Falcon 9 and Dragon Make It To Orbit 200

Posted by samzenpus from the up-up-and-away dept.
jnaujok writes "This morning the Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon capsule lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 10:43 Eastern time, after an earlier launch had been scrubbed because of a bad telemetry feed. A little over 9 minutes later, the Dragon capsule separated from the second stage into its intended orbit. Part of the COTS (Commercial access To Space) program, this is the first test of the Dragon capsule by SpaceX to prove it can be used to ferry supplies to the ISS. The Dragon capsule will make two or three orbits before returning to Earth about four hours after launch."
Cellphones

Many More Android Apps Leaking User Data 299

Posted by CmdrTaco from the because-they-can dept.
eldavojohn writes "After developing and using TaintDroid, several universities found that of 30 popular free Android apps, half were sharing GPS data and phone numbers with advertisers and remote servers. A few months ago, one app was sending phone numbers to a remote server in China but today the situation looks a lot more pervasive. In their paper (PDF), the researchers blasted Google saying 'Android's coarse grained access control provides insufficient protection against third-party applications seeking to collect sensitive data.' Google's response: 'Android has taken steps to inform users of this trust relationship and to limit the amount of trust a user must grant to any given application developer. We also provide developers with best practices about how to handle user data. We consistently advise users to only install apps they trust.'"
Robotics

Robots Taught to Deceive 239

Posted by CmdrTaco from the of-this-will-be-fine dept.
An anonymous reader found a story that starts "'We have developed algorithms that allow a robot to determine whether it should deceive a human or other intelligent machine and we have designed techniques that help the robot select the best deceptive strategy to reduce its chance of being discovered,' said Ronald Arkin, a Regents professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing."
NASA

Hints of Life Found On Saturn's Moon Titan 227

Posted by Soulskill from the time-for-cassini-2 dept.
Calopteryx writes "New Scientist reports that in 2005, researchers predicted two potential signatures of life on Titan. Now, thanks to research done with the help of the Cassini spacecraft, both have been seen, although non-biological chemical reactions could also be behind the observations. NASA's writeup has further details: 'One key finding comes from a paper online now in the journal Icarus [abstract] that shows hydrogen molecules flowing down through Titan's atmosphere and disappearing at the surface. Another paper online now in the Journal of Geophysical Research maps hydrocarbons on the Titan surface and finds a lack of acetylene. This lack of acetylene is important because that chemical would likely be the best energy source for a methane-based life on Titan, said Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., who proposed a set of conditions necessary for this kind of methane-based life on Titan in 2005. One interpretation of the acetylene data is that the hydrocarbon is being consumed as food. But McKay said the flow of hydrogen is even more critical because all of their proposed mechanisms involved the consumption of hydrogen.'"

Comment Re:And Adobe can't do this, why? (Score 1) 356

by TomorrowPlusX (#32429672) Attached to: Smokescreen, a JavaScript-Based Flash Player

Actually, adobe is. I can't recal the name of the project, but Adobe's writing a canvas-based flash renderer in JS.

Canvas is actually the right way to go, because despite all the comments in this thread about how HTML-5 is "officially as powerful as flash" now, the fact is flash does still have some advantages, like bitmap filters.

Those can be implemented from scratch in a canvas-based renderer, whereas any attempts via dynamic SVG will be subject to whatever support SVG has for filters.

In short, by implementing a from-scratch canvas-based renderer, Adobe gets full control over the pixel pipeline, which allows them to get pixel-perfect rendering. Flash is, believe it or not, a very high quality renderer, and Adobe likely doesn't want to lose that.
Earth

China To Tap Combustible Ice As New Energy Source 185

Posted by timothy from the undra-the-tundra dept.
lilbridge writes "Huge reserves of "combustible ice" — frozen methane and water — have been discovered in the tundra of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China. Estimates show that there is enough combustible ice to provide 90 years worth of energy for China. Burning the combustible ice may be a far better alternative than letting it just melt, releasing tons of methane into the air."

Comment Re:reasons this may not catch on in the US (Score 1) 533

by TomorrowPlusX (#30994916) Attached to: Electric Bicycles Surging In Popularity

Hey, I just want to thank you for a good & sensible writeup.

I am one of those people who architect his life about sensible transportation. I recently bought a house in washington dc, and ride my bike to work daily. I've been a bicycle commuter for 10 years, and have made my living arrangements favor bike commuting accordingly. It's actually pretty wonderful, I spend 15 minutes on my bike every morning and evening to get to work ( and if necessary, to stop at the grocery store on my way home ).

Frankly, it's an absolute joy. My colleagues bitch and moan about traffic, yet they insist on living as far as possible from where they work and spend more than half of every day.

Anyway, I had to comment simply because so many internet discussion threads about cycling tend to devolve into name calling and internet-tough-guy-ism.
Transportation

The Year of the E-Bicycle 494

Posted by kdawson from the daisy-daisy dept.
theodp writes "Electric bicycles have been around for more than a century, but they have never quite captured the imagination of auto-obsessed Americans. That may be about to change. At CES this month, Sanyo showed off its sleek, lightweight Eneloop Hybrid Bicycle. Priced at $2,300, the e-bike sports a black lithium-ion battery strapped to the frame beneath the seat. Press a button on the left handlebar, and a 250-watt motor kicks in, providing about twice as much power as your own pedaling. Some basic e-bike models, like the Ezip Trailz can be had for as low as $500. Both Trek and Schwinn began selling e-bikes last year, and Best Buy is offering e-bikes in three test markets: Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland, OR."
Science

Human Males Evolve At a Faster Pace Than Females 454

Posted by CmdrTaco from the can't-say-i'm-surprised dept.
Tisha_AH writes "A report by the Whitehead Institute indicates that the human Y chromosome present in males is evolving at a furious pace. Across the chromosome there can be as much as a 33% difference within humans alone. The portions of the chromosome evolving fastest are related to sperm production."

Comment Re:It's a Free Market (Score 1) 553

by TomorrowPlusX (#30493444) Attached to: Microsoft Seeks Patent On Shaming Fat Gamers

You know, I just wanted to let you know that we yanks know perfectly well what an arse is, we don't need to have your mystical moon-man speak translated for us.

Yes yes yes, it must make you feel all high-falutin-etc to condescend to let us in on your colloquialisms. But it's not a secret. We know what arse means. We also know that you call a car's trunk a "boot", and that you like to spell color with a 'u'.

We get it. Carry on.
Mozilla

Firefox Mobile Threatens Mobile App Stores, Says Mozilla 278

Posted by timothy from the race-to-the-bottom-price dept.
Barence writes "Mozilla claims that its new Firefox Mobile browser could be the beginning of the end for the hugely popular app stores created by Apple and its ilk. Mozilla claims Firefox Mobile will have the fastest Javascript engine of any mobile browser, and that will allow developers to write apps once for the web, instead of multiple versions for the different mobile platforms. 'As developers get more frustrated with quality assurance, the amount of handsets they have to buy, whether their security updates will get past the iPhone approval process ... I think they'll move to the web,' Mozilla's mobile VP, Jay Sullivan, told PC Pro. 'In the interim period, apps will be very successful. Over time, the web will win because it always does.'"
Cellphones

"Nexus One" Is Google's Android Phone 233

Posted by CmdrTaco from the better-than-the-oculus-one dept.
xchg writes "It's still not called the 'Google Phone,' but the Nexus One — to be made by HTC — is as close as I think we're going to get. The WSJ cites sources familiar with Google's plans and says that Google has designed this handset and plans to sell it directly to consumers, unlocked."
GUI

Will Tabbed Windows Be the Next Big Thing? 528

Posted by timothy from the oh-for-the-love-of-gimp dept.
kai_hiwatari writes "The recently released KDE SC 4.4 Beta 1 has introduced tabbed windows as a new feature. It is now possible to tab together windows from different applications. This looks like it will be a very good productivity tool. Like the tabbed browsers, this may well end up as a feature in all desktop environments in the years ahead."
Medicine

Why Doesn't Exercise Lead To Weight Loss? 978

Posted by timothy from the that-would-be-too-easy dept.
antdude writes "The New York Times' Well blog reports that 'for some time, researchers have been finding that people who exercise don't necessarily lose weight.' A study published online in September 2009 in The British Journal of Sports Medicine was the latest to report apparently disappointing slimming results. In the study, 58 obese people completed 12 weeks of supervised aerobic training without changing their diets. The group lost an average of a little more than seven pounds, and many lost barely half that. How can that be?"

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