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Submission + - Very Bright Comet on November 2013! (blogspot.it)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) will get to within 0.012AU of the Sun (extremely close) at the end of November 2013 and then to ~0.4AU from Earth at the beginning of January 2014! According to its orbit, this comet will be a naked-eye object in the period November 2013 — Janaury 2014. And it could reach a negative magnitude at the end of November 2013.
Education

Submission + - Shared Learning Collaborative offers two $75K bounties for open source apps. (slcedu.org)

Submitted by
OSDiva
OSDiva writes: "Ever wish you could directly contribute to improving the use of Technology in Education? The Shared Learning Collaborative (SLC) has announced an offer of $75K for each of two Apache 2.0 licensed open source applications aimed at the US K-12 Education market making use of a RESTful API released this past summer by the project. SLC is a non-profit funded by the Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation and CCSSO. They are holding a series of "Camps" to bootstrap public knowledge of the project and the APIs, including one in Boston next weekend that just before the bounty submission deadline of Oct 2. http://dev.slcedu.org/slc-camps"

Submission + - Milky Way is Surrounded by Halo of Hot Gas (nasa.gov)

Submitted by kelk1
kelk1 writes: If the size and mass of this gas halo is confirmed, it also could be an explanation for what is known as the "missing baryon" problem for the galaxy [...] a census of the baryons present in stars and gas in our galaxy and nearby galaxies shows at least half the baryons are unaccounted for [...] Although there are uncertainties, the work by Gupta and colleagues provides the best evidence yet that the galaxy's missing baryons have been hiding in a halo of million-kelvin gas that envelopes the galaxy.
Science

Submission + - Fermilab prepares for a future of muons (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: At Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, protons were always the primary particles, coursing through the circular tracks of the the Tevatron, which until 2009 was the highest energy collider in the world. But there's a new particle making the rounds at the Batavia, Illinois campus: the muon, a heavy but short-lived cousin of the electron — interesting both for its usefulness in testing the Standard Model, as well as potentially being used someday in a powerful colliderLink text.
On 19 September, the lab announced that the US Energy Department (DOE) had granted the $40 million experiment “mission need” approval, a first step towards eventual funding. Last month, a second muon experiment, called Mu2e and priced at $200 million, received a second stage blessing from the DOE.
The g-2 experiment will focus on an anomaly in the spin rate of a muon within a magnetic field, which some theorists believe is evidence that supersymmetry could resolve problems in the Standard Model. Meanwhile, the Mu2e experiment, which aims to begin taking data in 2019, will sift through many trillions of muons to see if any happen to spontaneously morph into their cousins, the electron — something that is almost entirely forbidden under the Standard Model.
Bitcoin

BitFloor Joins List of Compromised BitCoin Exchanges 232

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the after-heist-six-bitcoin-becomes-a-real-boy dept.
hypnosec writes "An attacker managed to access an unencrypted backup of wallet keys and steal 24,000 BTC (worth more than a quarter million USD), following which Bitcoin exchange Bitfloor has been shut down while the investigation of the theft is going on. The attack was carried out sometime last night. In a forum post, Shtylman pleads with Bitcoin users that BitFloor needs their help."
Space

Submission + - Probing an 'Invisible' Exoplanet's Atmosphere (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "To study the atmospheres of planets beyond the solar system, astronomers have had two choices: pick one that flies across the face of its parent star relative to Earth's perspective (an event known as a transit), or wait for a new generation of more sensitive space telescopes that can directly capture the planet's faint light. Now, there's a third option. Using a cryogenically-cooled infrared detector on a telescope in Chile, astronomers ferreted out beams of light coming directly from Tau Boötis b, a massive planet about 50 light-years from Earth."

Comment Design your own? (Score 1) 629

by kg261 (#40313211) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Why Are Hearing Aids So Expensive?
I see a few people walking around with bluetooth headsets. Maybe "invisible" hearing aids are expensive, but another option would be to use(hack) these cellphone headsets, or even use an iphone (there noise cancelling sw built in). People are used to seeing them - just have to convince your mom.

Comment Maybe, just maybe (Score 3, Interesting) 827

by kg261 (#33306280) Attached to: Calling Shenanigans On Super SATA's Claimed Audio Qualities
While I would not expect that the drive cables should affect the audio in any way, I have been in hardware development long enough that when a software person makes some strange claim like"the circuit changed and I didn't do anything" that often there is something behind it. In short, these things are complex. Not that the cable should not make any difference. Maybe in his motherboard, the terminations are not good and the EMI in the board is affecting the audio. This cable may be a better match. I am not saying this is the case, but do not write off these things just because they do not make sense. That said, the writer should also try to replicate on several platforms etc etc

Comment Is there at least some kind of vault storage (Score 1) 197

by kg261 (#33048868) Attached to: Free Software, a Matter of Life and Death
I would imagine this kind of software would be too complex and specialized to be effectively reviewed at large. And who would still be responsible if something was wrong? There would be discussions to no end on how to do things. However, some kind of vault (government or 3rd party) to store the source would be good just to prevent intentional or accidental loss of the information should long term statistics show something is not right. If the software is open source, then the whole design may have to be open.
Idle

Sound As the New Illegal Narcotic? Screenshot-sm 561

Posted by samzenpus from the you-ever-see-the-back-of-a-$20-bill-on-sound? dept.
ehrichweiss writes "The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics is warning parents and teachers of a new threat to our children: sounds. Apparently kids are now discovering binaural beats and using them to get 'physiological effects.' The report goes on with everyone suggesting that such aural experiences will act as a gateway to drug usage and even has one student claiming there are 'demons' involved. Anyone who has used one of those light/sound machines knows all about the effects that these sounds will give and to state that they will lead kids to do drugs is nonsense at best. It seems the trend in scaring the citizens with a made-up problem has gone to the next level."

Comment make your own asset tracker? (Score 1) 70

by kg261 (#32812184) Attached to: Good IC / Electronic Component Inventory Software?
I think a classification and storage system would be more useful than software, but maybe you are talking about a very large number of components. If you want to roll you own, I started a very basic asset tracker using based on PHP. It's maybe slightly more useful than a spreadsheet. You can find it at http://tamb.sf.net/

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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