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Earth

Panel Says U.S. Not Ready For Inevitable Arctic Oil Spill 95

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the we're-doomed dept.
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "As eagerness to explore the Arctic's oil and gas resources grows, the threat of a major Arctic oil spill looms ever larger—and the United States has a lot of work to do to prepare for that inevitability, a panel convened by the National Research Council (NRC) declares in a report released yesterday. The committee, made up of members of academia and industry, recommended beefing up forecasting systems for ocean and ice conditions, infrastructure for supply chains for people and equipment to respond, field research on the behavior of oil in the Arctic environment, and other strategies to prepare for a significant spill in the harsh conditions of the Arctic." Shortest version: no one has any idea how any spill cleanup techniques would work in the arctic environment.
Books

Ask Slashdot: Books for a Comp Sci Graduate Student? 247

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the suggesting-some-knowledge dept.
peetm (781139) writes "Having visited with me and my wife recently, the girlfriend of an ex-student of mine (now taking an M.Sc. in pure CS) asked me to suggest useful books for her boyfriend: '... He recently mentioned that he would love to have a home library, like the one you have, with variety of good, useful and must-have books from different authors. ... Mostly, I was thinking your advice would be priceless when it comes to computer science related books, but .. I would appreciate any sort of advice on books from you. ...' Whilst I could scan my own library for ideas, I doubt that I'm really that 'current' with what's good, or whether my favorites would be appropriate: I've not taught on the M.Sc. course for a while, and in some cases, and just given their price, I shouldn't really recommend such books that are just pet loves of mine — especially to someone who doesn't know whether they'd even be useful.

And, before you ask: YES, we do have a reading list, but given that he'll receive this as part of this course requirement anyway, I'd like to tease readers to suggest good reads around the periphery of the subject." I'll throw out Pierce's Types and Programming Languages (and probably Advanced Topics in Types and Programming Languages ), and Okasaki's Purely Functional Data Structures .
Space

Are Habitable Exoplanets Bad News For Humanity? 608

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the type-13-planets dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The discovery of Kepler-186f last week has dusted off an interesting theory regarding the fate of humanity and the link between that fate and the possibility of life on other planets. Known as the The Great Filter, this theory attempts to answer the Fermi Paradox (why we haven't found other complex life forms anywhere in our vast galaxy) by introducing the idea of an evolutionary bottleneck which would make the emergence of a life form capable of interstellar colonization statistically rare. As scientists gear up to search for life on Kepler-186f, some people are wondering if humanity has already gone through The Great Filter and miraculously survived or if it's still on our horizon and may lead to our extinction."
Networking

New White House Petition For Net Neutrality 248

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the money-speaks-louder-than-petitions dept.
Bob9113 (14996) writes "On the heels of yesterday's FCC bombshell, there is a new petition on the White House petition site titled, 'Maintain true net neutrality to protect the freedom of information in the United States.' The body reads: 'True net neutrality means the free exchange of information between people and organizations. Information is key to a society's well being. One of the most effective tactics of an invading military is to inhibit the flow of information in a population; this includes which information is shared and by who. Today we see this war being waged on American citizens. Recently the FCC has moved to redefine "net neutrality" to mean that corporations and organizations can pay to have their information heard, or worse, the message of their competitors silenced. We as a nation must settle for nothing less than complete neutrality in our communication channels. This is not a request, but a demand by the citizens of this nation. No bandwidth modifications of information based on content or its source.'"
Google

Google Plus Now Minus Chief Vic Gundotra 93

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the google-plus-still-exists? dept.
JG0LD (2616363) writes "Vic Gundotra, the man behind Google Plus and one of Google's most prominent executives, announced today that he will leave the company 'effective immediately.' Gundotra made the announcement, appropriately enough, in a lengthy Google Plus post, praising his co-workers and saying that he is 'excited about what's next.' However, he did not further outline his future plans, saying that 'this isn't the day to talk about that.'"

Submission + - Mozilla announces $10K bug bounty for certificate verification in Firefox 31 (techienews.co.uk)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Mozilla has announced a special $10,000 bug bounty for anyone who breaks its certification verification in upcoming Firefox 31 slated for a July 31 launch. Mozilla revealed its work on a new certification verification library for its products which it claims is more robust and maintainable. To ensure that its new code doesn’t meet with the same fate as Heartbleed and Apple’s #gotofail bug, Mozilla announced the special bug bounty to “make sure this code is rock solid before it ships to millions of Firefox users”. The non-profit organisation is interested in bugs through which the browser accepts fake untrustworthy certificate chains which otherwise should be rejected or something in the code that may lead to exploitable memory corruption. Mozilla also adds that a bug that causes Firefox to accept forged signed OCSP responses would also qualify as a bounty worthy bug under this program.
Communications

Verizon and New Jersey Agree 4G Service Equivalent to Broadband Internet 155

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the buying-regulators-for-fun-and-profit dept.
An anonymous reader writes with news that Verizon and New Jersey regulators have reached a deal releasing Verizon from their obligation to have brought 45Mbps broadband to all NJ residents by 2010. Instead, 4G wireless service is considered sufficient. From the article: "2010 came and went and a number of rural parts of the state are still living with dial-up or subpar DSL. And even though the original deal was made in the days of modems and CompuServe, its crafters had the foresight to define broadband as 45Mbps, which is actually higher than many Verizon broadband customers receive today. ... In spite of that, and the thousands of legitimate complaints from actual New Jersey residents, the BPU voted unanimously yesterday to approve a deal with Verizon ... According to the Bergen Record, Verizon will no longer be obligated to provide broadband to residents if they have access to broadband service from cable TV providers or wireless 4G service. ... Residents who happen to live in areas not served by cable or wireless broadband can petition Verizon for service, but can only get broadband if at least 35 people in a single census tract each agree to sign contracts for a minimum of one year and pay $100 deposits."

Submission + - Space Hackers preparing to recover a 36 year old historic Spacecraft from Deep S

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A band of engineers, space hackers, has picked up the carrier signal and is now trying to do something hard and never done before — recover a 36 year old NASA spacecraft (http://makezine.com/2014/04/24/crowdfunding-the-recovery-of-a-lost-spacecraft/) from the grips of deep space and time. ISEE-3, later rechristened ICE, the International Cometary Explorer, is returning to Earth. With old NASA original documents and with Rockethub crowdfunding (http://www.rockethub.com/42228), a team led by Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing is attempting to steer the spacecraft back into a Earth orbit and return it to scientific operations. Dennis says, "ISEE-3 can become a great teaching tool for future engineers and scientists that will design and travel to Mars". Only 40 days remain before the spacecraft will be out of range for recovery. A radio telescope is available, command and telemetry, propulsion design are in hand but things have to come together (http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/nasa/how-to-resurrect-a-35-year-old-spacecraft-16724874?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1457_54583169) and the team is hoping for public support to provide the small amount needed to accomplish a very unique milestone in space exploration.
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not part of story ----------------------
Dear Slashdot. My user account is staffinfection but I have not used it for some time. I do not have the linked email to recover the password. Can you send me the password to telluric@hotmail.com or tim.reyes@yahoo.com? I am a nasa engineer (http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/profile/treyes/).
Printer

Consumers Not Impressed With 3D Printing 302

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the drip-coffee-and-widget-maker dept.
Lucas123 (935744) writes "Putting a 3D printer beside the coffee maker in every home, as some manufacturers hope will happen someday, is a long ways from reality as consumers today still don't understand how the technology will benefit them, according to a new study. The study, by Juniper Research, states that part of the problem is that killer applications with the appropriate eco-system of software, apps and materials have yet to be identified and communicated to potential users. And, even though HP has announced its intention to enter the 3D printing space (possibly this fall) a massive, mainstream corporation isn't likely to change the market."
Science

New Shape Born From Rubber Bands 120

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the sproingees dept.
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Physicists playing with rubber bands have discovered a new shape. In an attempt to create a spring that replicates the light-bending properties of cuttlefish ink sacs, a team of researchers suspended two rubber strips of different lengths. Connecting the bottoms of the two strips to a cup of water, the shorter band stretched to the same length as the longer one. After gluing the two stretched strips together, the researchers gradually drained the water from the cup. As the bands retracted and twisted from the reduced strain, the researchers were shocked to see the formation of a hemihelix with multiple rainbow-shaped boundaries called perversions. The team hopes their work inspires nanodevices and molecules that twist and transform from flat strips into predetermined 3D shapes on demand." There are several videos attached to the original paper, and all can be viewed without flash.

Submission + - The girlfriend of a student asks - what books for an M.Sc., ...

Submitted by peetm
peetm writes: Having visited with me and my wife recently, the girlfriend of an ex-student of mine asks ..

"... He recently mentioned that he would love to have a home library, like the one you have, with variety of good, useful and must-have books from different authors. I wonder if you would be so kind to advise me on this. Mostly, I was thinking your advice would be priceless when it comes to computer science related books, but .. I would appreciate any sort of advice on books from you. ..."

This ex-student is now taking an M.Sc. in CS (pure), and whilst I could scan my own library for ideas, I doubt that I'm really that 'current' with what's good, or whether my favourites would be appropriate: I've not taught on the M.Sc. course for a while, and in some cases, and just given their price, I shouldn't really recommend such books that are just pet loves of mine — especially to someone who doesn't know whether they'd even be useful to her boyfriend.

And, before you ask: YES, we do have a reading list, but given that he'll receive this as part of this course requirement anyway, I'd like to tease readers to suggest good reads around the periphery of the subject.
Space

Astronomers Discover Pair of Black Holes In Inactive Galaxy 45

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the ate-all-the-other-stars dept.
William Robinson (875390) writes "The Astronomers at XMM-Newton have detected a pair of supermassive black holes at the center of an inactive galaxy. Most massive galaxies in the Universe are thought to harbor at least one supermassive black hole at their center. And a pair of black holes is indication of strong possibility that the galaxies have merged. Finding black holes in quiescent galaxies is difficult because there are no gas clouds feeding the black holes, so the cores of these galaxies are truly dark. It can be only detected by this 'tidal disruption event'."
Power

Submission + - Alternative energy is people! (ap.org)

Submitted by es330td
es330td writes: From TFA: An Oregon county commission has ordered an incinerator to stop accepting boxed medical waste to generate electricity after learning the waste it's been burning may include tissue from aborted fetuses from British Columbia.

Sam Brentano, chairman of the Marion County board of commissioners, said "We thought our ordinance excluded this type of material at the waste-to-energy facility. We will take immediate action to ensure a process is developed to prohibit human tissue from future deliveries."

Submission + - pfSense maintainers implement anti-open source -tools License Agreements (pfsense.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As many may be unwaware, the "open source", FreeBSD 8.3-based pfSense firewall project has recently been upheaed by Electric Sheep Fencing's Jim Thompson. The -tools repository was suddenly pulled offline several weeks ago without explanation, thus preventing community contributors from building their own distributions. Jim's response (as gonzopancho) via the developer forums has been murky at best, and at worst — closer to absolutely disgusting.

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