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+ - Yahoo Pinkie-Swears It Won't Ruin Tumblr->

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes "Yahoo has agreed to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion. As you know, Yahoo is a major corporation with a need to monetize its assets in a way that makes its shareholders happy, leaving open the question of whether it’ll alter Tumblr’s DNA in order to make the latter more of a significant cash generator. But at least for the moment, Yahoo seems content to leave its new property alone. “Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business,” read the company’s press release. “The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators.” Tumblr CEO David Karp, who has been known to make some very anti-advertising comments in the past, will remain in place. Even so, anyone who likes Tumblr may have some cause for concern, because Yahoo has a history of making high-profile acquisitions that subsequently implode. Back in 1999, for example, it paid over $3 billion for GeoCities, another blogging network that it eventually shut down after years of failing the update the property. In 2005, it acquired popular photo-sharing Website Flickr, which it likewise allowed to languish and die. That same year it bought Delicious, a popular Webpage-bookmarking site, and did exactly nothing with it. So when Yahoo starts off its Tumblr press release with a promise not to screw things up, it’s a self-deprecating nod toward all that history. New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been on a bit of a buying spree of late, snatching up startups such as Summly in an attempt to make her company “cool” and relevant."
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+ - Open source browser based code editors->

Submitted by Jason Hibbets
Jason Hibbets writes "Development work has traditioanlly been done "offline" — but is that work shifting to the cloud? This article looks at ICEcoder, a fully featured, browser based code editor that allows you to code online or offline in the web browser."
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+ - Addicted to Learning? Hardcore MOOC Students Race to Pass Courses->

Submitted by jyosim
jyosim writes "Hundreds of people are spending 20 or 30 hours a week just taking free Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. They're not looking for credit, just a challenge of learning. This Chronicle of Higher Ed story looks at whether these MOOC addicts think they're learning as much as they would in a traditional college course."
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+ - Stanford's nanoscavenger makes contaminated water safe for human use->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Stanford believes it has created a nanoscavenger (nanoparticles) capable of cleaning contaminated water and then being completely removed from that water afterwards.

The breakthrough has come in the form of a synthetic material whose two outer layers are magnetic. However, they have opposite magnetic forces. When a strong permanent magnet is used, the magnetic layers within each particle turn into alignment, creating a very strong attraction to the magnet. The end result is nanoscavengers that go around cleaning the water, but then evacuate as soon as a magnet is used to extract them.

It is hoped such nanoscavengers will aid in the production of clean water usable by humans."
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+ - Earth and Moon Got Water from Common Source->

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes "I could not track down the original paper, but research now indicates the water on the Moon and Earth share a common origin. From the article, "In investigating primitive lunar samples carried to Earth by the Apollo 15 and 17 missions, the team found a deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio that matched the isotopic ratio in carbonaceous chondrites, which include some of the most primitive meteorites known. The ratio is also similar to that found in water on Earth. The findings “suggest a common source of water for both objects” and provide “a very important new constraint for models of Earth and Moon origin”, says planetary scientist Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who was not part of the study." The finding has ramifications for existing theories of formation of the Earth and Moon."
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Comment: amazingly slow...and awesome (Score 3, Insightful) 92

by Covalent (#43750907) Attached to: Opportunity Breaks NASA's 40-Year Roving Record
Seriously, try walking 1 meter in 1 minute and 40 seconds and you'll get an idea just how slow the rovers travel. Now walk 22 miles at that speed. That said, the accomplishment is still incredible. Show me any moving device that had received no maintenance in 9 years and still works.

+ - Larry Page: You Worry Too Much About Medical Privacy-> 1

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes "Yesterday, Larry Page revealed that he'd been suffering from a vocal cord ailment that impaired his ability to speak for more than a year. The positive feedback he got from opening up about it inspired him to tell attendees at Google I/O that we should all be less uptight about keeping our medical records private. As far as Page is concerned, pretty much the only legitimate reason for worry on this score is fear of being denied health insurance. "Maybe we should change the rules around insurance so that they have to insure people," he said, perhaps unaware that the Obamacare reforms kicking in next year do exactly that."
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+ - Honeynet Project Researchers Build Publicly Available ICS Honeynet->

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes "Conpot, short for Control Honeypot, is one of the first publicly available honeypots for industrial control systems (ICS) and SCADA gear. Built by two researchers from the Honeynet Project, the hope is that others will take what they started, deploy it on their own critical infrastructure networks and share the findings.
“The main goal is to make this kind of technology available for a general audience,” said Lukas Rist, one of the developers. “Not just for security researchers, but also for people who are sysadmins setting up ICS systems who have no clue what could happen and want to see malware attacks against their systems and not put them in any danger,”"
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+ - Google and NASA snap up D-Wave quantum computer->

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes "D-Wave, the small company that sells the world’s only commercial quantum computer, has just bagged an impressive new customer: a collaboration between Google, NASA and the non-profit Universities Space Research Association.
The three organizations have joined forces to install a D-Wave Two, the computer company's latest model, in a facility launched by the collaboration — the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at NASA's Ames Research Center. The lab will explore areas such as machine learning — useful for functions such as language translation, image searches and voice-command recognition. The Google-led collaboration is only the second customer to buy computer from D-Wave — Lockheed Martin was the first."
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+ - Google preparing new Google Maps design and features->

Submitted by harsh..itt
harsh..itt writes "As the rumors surfaced the web that Google has launching a new design for its Maps. On Wednesday, at Google I/O, the search giant has announced the new look for its maps.

Google has officially rebuilt its Maps from “the ground up”, with an ultimate focus on the design and interactions directly on the map, to give its users an full Maps experience.

Now Google has provided the full experience of its Google Earth and Street View in its Maps, from seeing clouds over the sky in the real time and how the Earth looks from Milky Way as the sun sets. Google has used an new imagery in its new Maps, along with the user generated photos which can uploaded and submitted to Google Maps, the maps not looks better."
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+ - A New Dawn - Google's Android IDE ->

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes "Yawn, not much happening at Google I/O this year. Well you can't expect it to be exciting every year. What! What's this — an official Android IDE! It can't be! Why isn't this headline news? OK, I admit I should probably get out more, but while Android Studio hasn't got the wow value of Glass for the general geek it should have a big wow value for any programmer thinking of working with Android.
It is a one package download that gets the beginner started with creating Android apps and has lots of editing and refactoring help. It also has a UI preview option that lets you see what your app looks like on a range of devices and lots more.
The main thing is that it promises to bring Android development into the same class as WP8 with Visual Studio and iOS with XCode.
This really is the way forward not only for Android and Java but all programming environments — More Tools!"
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+ - Homeland Security seizes account of largest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "For the past few years, Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox has billed itself as the largest, safest repository for Bitcoin buying and selling. The site has weathered a number of DDoS attacks and survived the launch (and failure) of multiple rival exchanges. Last night, for the first time, it ran afoul of the United States government."
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One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone.

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