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Space

+ - Space vs. poverty debate in India similar to one raging in the United States->

Submitted by
MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes "Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was obliged recently to defend his country’s space program, which involves the spending of billions of rupees when India still has a large number of people living in abject poverty. The debate raging in India parallels a similar one that has simmered in the United States for decades."
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NASA

+ - Launched Today in 1978, USSR Probe Found Lightning on Venus->

Submitted by littlesparkvt
littlesparkvt writes "The only success that the Venera had was a gas chromatograph , which measure the composition of the Venus atmosphere, as well as instruments to study scattered solar radiation. These instruments sent back an amazing detail though, Venus has evidence of lightning and thunder and also the discovery of carbon monoxide at low altitudes."
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Google News Sci Tech: Microsoft's Bing is now the default search engine on all Kindle Fire models - Di->

From feed by feedfeeder

Digital Trends
Microsoft's Bing is now the default search engine on all Kindle Fire models
Digital Trends
Definitely a big win for Microsoft, all Web searches will be routed through Bing as the default search engine on the Kindle Fire HD. Noticed first by UberGizmo at Amazon's press conference in Santa Monica this week, the default search engine used in ...
Best Gadgets of the Week: Amazon Kindle Fire HD, Kindle Paperwhite, Nokia's ... ABC News
SciTechTalk: Tablet wars heat upUPI.com
Amazon caves in, will remove ads from Kindle Fire for $15 feeArs Technica
Statesman Journal-TechRadar UK-Wall Street Journal
all 3,941 news articles

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Games

+ - Valve reveals gaming headset, teases Big Picture->

Submitted by dotarray
dotarray writes "Gaming is big business says Valve, as the developer takes the time to show off its brand new gaming headset and TV-based Big Picture. Rather than inviting the games media masses who have been clamouring for any details on the Seattle company's "wearable computing" initiative, Gabe Newell and his team instead went right to the top, with an in-depth interview published in The New York Times."
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Privacy

+ - White House circulating draft of executive order on cybersecurity->

Submitted by InPursuitOfTruth
InPursuitOfTruth writes "Shortly after we began celebrating the victory of the cybersecurity bill failing in the senate, those tasked with the tough job of finding novel ways around our Bill of Rights protections suggested the creation of an executive order to overcome the ridiculous limitations of democracy. In order to ensure that companies have the opportunity to "volunteer" their customers' private information over to the government without having to inform or obtain the consent of the people themselves, or having to worry about being sued by the people or prosecuted by a theoretical future government that protects the people's rights, the White House is circulating a draft of executive order on cybersecurity."
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Comment: Re:Yep (Score 1) 7

by dusanv (#40459187) Attached to: The Euro was Created to CAUSE State Economic Collapses

You are oversimplifying. If you are loaded with debt, you want inflation to wipe all that debt away. If you aren't loaded with debt, you don't want inflation eating your salary and the few assets you may have. Inflation hits poor people more than rich. Poor are less likely to be deep in debt (no income to back it up or assets to act as collateral) and more likely to be spending a significant part of their paycheck on basic commodities that would get a lot more expensive due to inflation. All the rich guys I know are neck deep in debt and are praying for more stimulus and other money printing. Gas going from $1 to $2 doesn't really affect them in the slightest.

Best definition of inflation from the perspective of the poor I have seen: everything you want is more expensive (energy, food, rent), everything you have is cheaper (labour manily).

AMD

+ - CPUs of the future: AMD partners with ARM, Intel designs a brain on a chip->

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes "In the past week, both AMD and Intel have given us a tantalizing peek at their next-generation neuromorphic (brain-like) computer chips. These chips, it is hoped, will provide brain-like performance (i.e. processing power and massive parallelism way beyond current CPUs) while consuming minimal amounts of power. First, AMD last week announced that its future APUs will feature ARM Cortex cores, first to implement TrustZone (ARM Holdings' hardware DRM/security chip), but then eventually as part of a proper x86-ARM-GPU heterogeneous system architecture (HSA). It isn’t too crazy to think that a future AMD (or Texas Instruments) chip might have a few GPU cores, a few x86 CPU cores, and thousands of tiny ARM cores, all working in perfect, parallel, neuromorphic harmony — as long as the software toolchain is good enough that you don’t have to be some kind of autist to use all of those resources efficiently. Intel, on the other hand, today unveiled a neuromorphic chip design based on multi-input lateral spin valves (LSV) and memristors. LSVs are microscopic magnets that change their magnetism to match the spin of electrons being passed through them (spintronics). Memristors are electronic components that increase their resistance as electricity passes through them one way, and reduce their resistance when electricity flows in the opposite direction — and when no power flows, the memristor remembers its last resistance value (meaning it can store data). Unlike state-of-the-art CMOS transistors that require volts to switch on and off, the LSV neurons only require a handful of electrons to change their orientation, which equates to 20 millivolts. For some applications, Intel thinks its neuromorphic chip could be up to 300 times more energy efficient than the CMOS equivalent."
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Microsoft

+ - 'Xbox Surface' 7-inch tablet said to be on tap for Microsoft event->

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes "Rumors and speculation have been flying since Microsoft announced last week that it was hosting a press conference in Los Angeles on Monday, and that might be exactly what the Redmond-based company was hoping for. Early well-sourced reports indicated that a Microsoft-branded tablet is on tap for the event, and a number of subsequent reports have said much of the same. TechCrunch later reported that we should expect a Barnes & Noble collaboration, but B&N squashed that rumor relatively quickly. Next up from the rumor mill? An “Xbox Surface” tablet with a 7-inch display, an ARM based TI processor, full HD 1080p-output and a 28-nanometer AMD graphics processor..."
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+ - Samsung Galaxy S3 Face Unlock tricked by photograph->

Submitted by AlistairCharlton
AlistairCharlton writes "Android's Face Unlock security on the Samsung Galaxy S3 can be tricked into unlocking the phone by showing it a photograph of the owner.

In a test carried out by IBTimes UK, we found that the Galaxy S3 cannot distinguish between a photograph and a real person, leading us to suggest users should select a more secure way of locking the phone, such as with a PIN or password."
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Cloud

+ - U.S. Government Demands For Google's Data Increased 37% Over The Last Year->

Submitted by Sparrowvsrevolution
Sparrowvsrevolution writes "Governments are sticking their noses into Google's servers more than ever before. In the second half of 2011, Google received 6,321 requests that it hand over its users’ private data to U.S. government agencies including law enforcement, and complied at least partially with those requests in 93% of cases, according to the latest update to the company’s bi-annual Transparency Report.

That’s up from 5,950 requests in the first half of 2011, and marks a 37% increase in the number of requests over the same period the year before. Compared with the second half of 2009, the first time Google released the government request numbers, the latest figures represent a 76% spike. Data demands from foreign governments have increased even more quickly than those from the U.S., up to 11,936 in the second half of 2011 compared with 9,600 in the same period the year before, though Google was much less likely to comply with those non-U.S. government requests."
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Comment: Freaky (Score 1) 10

by dusanv (#40340019) Attached to: Proof of Astroturf Modding and I am Targeted.

Didn't expect to see that on /. This is exactly why I metamod. I have some mod points right now (your comment is insightful) but the discussion is too old so it won't let me use one (and rightly so, this is two weeks + 1 day old). It's also interesting that they modded it just before it got archived.

As to PR firms having people on /., there have been some really weird comments lately. It's possible.

Comment: Re:Er, Your Statement and His Don't Quite Mix (Score 1) 744

by dusanv (#39801359) Attached to: 'Gaia' Scientist Admits Mispredicting Rate of Climate Change

Solar power... in Ontario??? I'm glad to know you have messed up pricing there (or rather, you said, "used to," which implies you don't any more), but in most places the power company pays you a lot less for solar power than what you pay them.

Tell me about it. Totally nuts. I heard they reduced pricing last fall (when they found themselves in a couple of billion dollar hole) so I double checked. Well, now it's $0.549/kWh. And they cranked up the pricing when you buy from them in the mean time (no real surprises there). Colour me skeptical, but do you have an example where residential feed-in is paid less than they sell for? As per this page, the minimum paid is in Hawaii at $0.224. That's still well above what anyone pays for power.

He also is something of a crackpot. He also isn't a climate researcher.

OK, I'm just looking over the awards and accolades he received in his Wikipedia page. Fellow of the Royal Society, CBE, Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for the Environment, RGS Discovery Lifetime award, Wollaston Medal, ... I'm counting some 10 books published. Some crackpot.

"And do you think (fop that I am) that I could be the Scarlet Pumpernickel?" -- Looney Tunes, The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950, Chuck Jones)

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