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Submission + - Arctic faces an ice-pocalypse (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Thick sheets of ice coating roads, homes, and pastures. Dead reindeer, no radio transmissions, and flights canceled for days. When ice came to this Arctic mining outpost on the Svalbard archipelago two winters ago, it crippled the community for weeks and devastated wildlife for months. Now, scientists are saying such weather extremes in the Arctic—known as rain-on-snow events—may become more frequent in the future.
Science

Video CMI Director Alex King Talks About Rare Earth Supplies (Video 2) 11

Posted by Roblimo from the the're-still-looking-for-unobtanium dept.
Yesterday we ran video #1 of 2 about the Critical Materials Institute (CMI) at the Iowa State Ames Laboratory in Ames, Iowa. They have partners from other national laboratories, universities, and industry, too. Obviously there is more than enough information on this subject that Dr. King can easily fill two 15-minute videos, not to mention so many Google links that instead of trying to list all of them, we're giving you one link to Google using the search term "rare earths." Yes, we know Rare Earth would be a great name for a rock band. But the mineral rare earths are important in the manufacture of items ranging from strong magnets to touch screens and rechargeable batteries, so please watch the video(s) or at least read the transcript(s). (Alternate Video Link)

Submission + - Interviews: Ask Adora Svitak About Education and Women In STEM and Politics

Submitted by samzenpus
samzenpus writes: Adora Svitak is a child prodigy, author and activist. She taught her first class on writing at a local elementary school when she was 7, the same year her book, Flying Fingers was published. In 2010, Adora spoke at the TED Conference. Her speech, "What Adults Can Learn from Kids", has been viewed over 3.7 million times and has been translated into over 40 different languages. She is an advocate for literacy, youth empowerment, and for the inclusion of more women and girls in STEM and politics. 17 this year, she served as a Youth Advisor to the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, DC. and is a freshman at UC Berkeley. Adora has agreed to take some time from her books and answer any questions you may have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.
Hardware

Video CMI Director Alex King Talks About Rare Earth Supplies (Video) 27

Posted by Roblimo from the we're-talking-about-minerals-not-the-band dept.
CMI in this context is the Critical Materials Institute at the Iowa State Ames Laboratory in Ames, Iowa. They have partners from other national laboratories, universities, and industry, too. Rare earths, while not necessarily as rare as the word "rare" implies, are hard to mine, separate, and use. They are often found in parts per million quantities, so it takes supercomputers to suss out which deposits are worth going after. This is what Dr. King and his coworkers spend their time doing; finding concentrations of rare earths that can be mined and refined profitably.

On November 3 we asked you for questions to put to Dr. King. Timothy incorporated some of those questions into the conversation in this video -- and tomorrow's video too, since we broke this into two parts because, while the subject matter may be fascinating, we are supposed to hold video lengths down to around 10 minutes, and in this case we still ended up with two videos close to 15 minutes each. And this stuff is important enough that instead of lining up a list of links, we are giving you one link to Google using the search term "rare earths." Yes, we know Rare Earth would be a great name for a rock band. But the mineral rare earths are important in the manufacture of items from strong magnets to touch screens and rechargeable batteries. (Alternate Video Link)

Comment Re:Systemd works OK in Fedora (Score 1) 581

by jawtheshark (#48418527) Attached to: Debian Votes Against Mandating Non-systemd Compatibility
I had a system where switching a SCSI card with a NIC from PCI1 to PCI2 (and vice versa of course), made Windows 2000 bluescreen. Just switching those two cards. Nothing else and the SCSI had only a scanner attached, no bootable devices.

So, yes, that is long ago, but Windows 2000 implies at least the year 2000.

Linux didn't complain at all.... Yes, I was running Linux back then in dual boot.

Comment Re:Wooden bikes are cool (Score 1) 71

by drinkypoo (#48416355) Attached to: Collin Graver and his Wooden Bicycle (Video)

I've been to Calfee and seen the best-known bike. Yes, the tubes are just bamboo. It's just that simple.

You should see how carbon fiber bike frames are prototyped. Cut and scallop your CF tubing, epoxy the tubes together into a frame shape, put it into a clamp and then wrap the joints with CF twine while brushing on the resin. When done, stick it in the oven and cook it. When it comes out you take a die grinder to the places where the tubes come together and just smooth it out and make it pretty, done and done. It's literally just done by hand on a table. For the final bike they make molds for the pieces which join the tubes, but you only save a couple ounces on the final frame and the end result has about the same strength.

Comment Re:Toronto Municipal Gov't divided (Score -1, Troll) 169

by drinkypoo (#48416329) Attached to: City of Toronto Files Court Injunction Against Uber

There is a difference between sharing a journey which would happen anyway (and being compensated for fuel used, etc.) and someone actively earning a living from driving people around.

Yes, and that difference is who is getting paid. That is literally the only difference.

this Uber nonsense threatens to lower the quality massively, as well as put people at risk.

No, it really doesn't, because Taxis suck anyway. They do not receive special safety inspections above and beyond the normal, the drivers do not receive special scrutiny above and beyond a normal driver, the only issue is insurance which the ride services already require be handled, or handle themselves.

Taxi drivers are usually shitty drivers. The twat who drives a [licensed taxi] minivan around the county in which I live can't even figure out that left turn always yields at an intersection. Bitch almost hit me. And when you drive through a city, the taxi drivers are always the biggest assholes, cutting people off and whatnot, even when they don't actually know where they are going.

Fuck Taxis, and fuck Toronto

Comment Re:Wait a second, this is very interesting. (Score 1) 109

by drinkypoo (#48416323) Attached to: Nokia's N1 Android Tablet Is Actually a Foxconn Tablet

The design is so close one has to wonder if they are actually using the same machinery for some of the components between this tablet and the iPad. They really are that similar.

Foxconn makes the Apple iDevices, and China is known worldwide for its copying. Foxconn actually has some real engineers that can design things. So they just went ahead and copied the overall design, making only those changes which were necessary. They won't be using any of the same components, but the devices might well be produced on lines formerly used for Apple equipment.

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