Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Japan to land unmanned lunar probe in 2018 (astrowatch.net)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is planning to attempt Japan’s first lunar landing in fiscal 2018, sources close to the project said Sunday. JAXA has said it will use unmanned probes to study the possible use of materials on the moon as well as its environment, which could pave the way for future manned missions. JAXA is expected to brief a government panel on the project with the aim of securing funding for mission preparations from the budget for fiscal 2016, which begins next April, the sources said

The lunar probe is likely to be launched on an Epsilon advanced rocket, the sources said

The SLIM mission is aimed at establishing a method for pinpoint landings that would make it possible to approach a target area with a level of accuracy ranging in the hundreds of meters

Submission + - Something Smells: Cities Use High Tech to Investigate Intrusive Odors 1

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Kate Murphy reports at the NYT that local governments are beginning to regulate intrusive and unpleasant smells using high tech devices. If you time-traveled back 200 years or so, you’d likely scrunch up your nose because our forebears threw sewage out their windows, and the primary mode of transport — horses — relieved themselves in the streets. These days 'we have so reduced the level of background odor pollution, we are becoming more sensitive to anything we smell,” says Pamela Dalton, an olfactory researcher at Monell Chemical Senses Center, a nonprofit group in Philadelphia that studies smell and taste. In the past offenders were typically livestock operations and wastewater treatment plants, but more recently odor inspectors are getting calls about smells emanating from ethnic restaurants, coffee roasters and candle and bath shops. In an effort to be objective, a growing number of locales have begun using a device called a Nasal Ranger, which looks like a megaphone for the nose and measures the intensity of smells according to a so-called dilution ratio (PDF). An odor is considered intrusive if the average person can smell it when it is diluted with seven parts clean air — a decades-old threshold of stinky.

New York City received more than 10,000 odor complaints last year, many from residents upset about cooking smells wafting into their apartments from restaurants and coffeehouses — smells that might be pleasing when patronizing those same establishments. “A lot of it has to do with tolerance level in neighborhoods that are getting gentrified,” says Ben Siller. “People at lower socioeconomic levels may tolerate something much better than someone who moves into the same area and buys a house, sinks a fortune into remodeling and then goes out in the backyard and smells a pot grower, charbroiler, pet food manufacturer or something stinky like that.”

Submission + - Hubble turns 25 (hubble25th.org)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: The Hubble Telescope was launched on April 24, 1990, aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery from Kennedy Space Center, Florida

Currently it is flying about 340 miles over the Earth and circling us every 97 minutes

While the telescope itself is not really much to look at, that silver bucket is pure gold for astronomers

Scientists have used that vantage point to make ground-breaking observations about planets, stars, galaxies and to reveal parts of our universe we didn't know existed. The telescope has made more than 1 million observations and astronomers have used Hubble data in more than 12,700 scientific papers, "making it one of the most productive scientific instruments ever built," according to NASA

The truly spectacular images of the cosmo have also led to a scientific bounty that has far exceeded Hubble’s original goals: measuring how fast the universe is expanding; figuring out how galaxies evolve; and studying the gas that lies between galaxies

NASA aims to keep Hubble operating through at least 2020 so that it can overlap with its successor. The James Webb Space Telescope is due to launch in October 2018 and begin observations in mid-2019

The institute is reviewing scientists’ proposals for telescope time and mulling if some projects merit special attention as Hubble nears its end. Typically, the program receives about five requests for every hour of available telescope time

“There’s clearly there’s no lack of things to do with this observatory in its remaining years. The question is what do we do?” Sembach said at a recent American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle

More links @
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/04...
http://www.space.com/29148-hub...
http://news.discovery.com/spac...
http://www.skynews.com.au/news...

Submission + - Tor is building the next generation Dark Net with funding from DARPA (dailydot.com)

Submitted by Patrick O'Neill
Patrick O'Neill writes: After years of relative neglect, Tor has been able to dedicate increasing time and resources to its hidden services thanks to funding in part by DARPA, as well as an upcoming crowdfunding campaign. DARPA's funding lasts 1-3 years and covers several projects including security and usability upgrades that close the gap between hidden services and the everyday Internet.

Submission + - Baltimore Police say Stingray phone tracking use exceeds 25,000 instances (baltimoresun.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Baltimore Police Department is starting to come clean about its use of cell-phone signal interceptors — commonly known as Stingrays — and the numbers are alarming. According to recent court testimony reported by The Baltimore Sun, the city's police have used Stingray devices with a court order more than 25,000 times. It's a massive number, representing an average of nearly nine uses a day for eight years (the BPD acquired the technology in 2007), and it doesn't include any emergency uses of the device, which would have proceeded without a court order.

Submission + - AMD Publishes New "AMDGPU" Linux Graphics Driver (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: AMD has made available its new AMDGPU Linux graphics driver comprised of a brand new DRM/KMS kernel driver, a new xf86-video-amdgpu X11 driver, and modifications to libdrm and Gallium3D. This new AMDGPU driver is designed for supporting AMD's next-generation hardware with no support differences for currently supported Radeon GPUs. While yet to be released, this new AMDGPU driver is the critical piece to the new unified driver strategy with Catalyst where their high performance proprietary driver will now become limited to being a user-space binary component that uses this open-source kernel driver.

Comment Re:Interstate Water Sharing system (Score 1) 678

> What would happen if we diverted most of the Colorado river to a piping system to southern California?

The worlds longest garden hose? California already tried that.

See the fantastic documentary Cadillac Desert . Details Mulholland's Dream, aka the rape and pillage of Owen's Lake and then tried to do the same with other river systems.

Thankfully the other states told California to fuck off before they destroyed their ecosystem.

--
First Contact is coming ~2024. Are you ready for a new perspective?

Comment Re:Why not? (Score 3, Informative) 678

Indeed. Cadillac Desert is a fantastic documentary about Mulhollands Dream, aka the rape and pillage of Owen's Lake.

In 9 parts

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

--
First Contact is coming 2024. Are you ready for a new perspective?

Submission + - Good News! The DOJ Might Kill the Comcast-Time Warner Merger (gizmodo.com) 1

Submitted by jriding
jriding writes: The Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger has been in the works for so long, itâ(TM)s starting to feel like the impending monopolistic telecom Frankenbaby was inevitable. But the Justice Department may kibosh the deal for violating antitrust laws, according to a report from Bloomberg.
http://gizmodo.com/good-news-t...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
http://www.ft.com/fastft/31000...

Submission + - Why the Myers-Briggs Test is Totally Meaningless (vox.com) 1

Submitted by tazbert
tazbert writes: At one time, it seemed like every employee I talked with knew whether they were an "ENFJ", "INTP", or one of the other Myers-Briggs personality types. I never questioned the efficacy of using these categories to guide my interactions with my co-workers. Now, after reading this article, I wonder if it made any difference. Are companies really still using this as a valid tool?

Submission + - Valve Offering Free Games To Larger Amount of Developers

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Last year, Valve made it possible for Debian developers to get free subscription to all Valve games. In the dri-devel mailing list, Daniel Stone informs that now the game company is expanding the offer to Mesa developers as well. If you have 25 or more commits to Mesa in the past 5 years, read the post for instructions on how to get VIP access to the Valve catalogue.

Comment Re:Disturbing. (Score 3, Insightful) 106

If you are single, the "correct" answer is mu which means "not applicable."

As in, the question _presupposes_ conditions which are not true. If you are single, you are not married by definition.

Truth is not a mutually exclusive binary state of True / False.

> One can stop before performing the action.

No, one never started

Comment Re:ad blocker? (Score 1) 358

by UnknownSoldier (#49446599) Attached to: Google To Offer Ad-Free YouTube - At a Price

> This is the deal that they offer. If you use AdBlock, you drop your part,

Read what you wrote again.

You keep assuming there is an obligation, namely, an ethical obligation.

You are begging the question.

There is no ethical obligation because there never was an agreement in the first place.

Your ethical claim is meritless.

Slashdot Top Deals

"A car is just a big purse on wheels." -- Johanna Reynolds

Close