Submission + - Orbital ATK Returns To Flight With Successful Antares Launch To Space Station (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Orbital ATK Antares rocket – the same rocket that exploded on its way to the International Space Station two years ago – returned to flight today with a much-anticipated launch. Lifting off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, the Antares rocket is now on its way to deliver the Cygnus spacecraft filled with over 5,000 pounds of cargo to crew members aboard the ISS. Today’s launch was particularly special for Orbital ATK, a company contracted by NASA to deliver 66,000 pounds of cargo to the ISS through 2018. After their Antares rocket exploded during a launch in 2014, destroying thousands of pounds of experiments and cargo bound for the space station, Orbital ATK worked for two years to upgrade that rocket and prepare for its return to flight. Today, the Orbital ATK was finally able to fly Cygnus on top of their own rocket again. The RD-181-equipped Antares rocket carried Cygnus, which housed science experiments and supplies for the ISS crew, for their fifth operational cargo resupply mission for NASA. Along with crew supplies, spacewalk equipment and computer resources, Cygnus will bring over 1,000 pounds of science investigations to the five crew members on the ISS. One of those experiments is Saffire-II, the second Saffire experiment to be conducted inside Cygnus in order to study realistic flame propagation in space. Cygnus will spend over a month attached to the ISS. In late November, the spacecraft will be filled with about 3,000 pounds of trash and then released to begin its descent back to Earth. During reentry through Earth’s atmosphere, the spacecraft, along with trash and Saffire-II, will be destroyed.

Submission + - Feds Walk Into A Building, Demand Everyone's Fingerprints To Open Phones

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Forbes reports that the Department of Justice was issued a search warrant to gather the fingerprints of all the people present at a California residence, including residents and visitors.
The memorandum included "authorization to depress the fingerprints and thumbprints of every person who is located at the SUBJECT PREMISES during the execution of the search and who is reasonably believed by law enforcement to be the user of a fingerprint sensor-enabled device that is located at the SUBJECT PREMISES and falls within the scope of the warrant."

Submission + - Razer Acquires THX, the Audio Pioneer That George Lucas Started (venturebeat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Most of us know THX as the logo that comes up when we hear that zooming sound at the start of a film in a surround-sound movie theater. The company is a pioneer in audio technology, and today, gamer gear maker Razer is announcing that it has acquired the majority of THX Ltd.’s assets. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Irvine, Calif.-based Razer said that it has also hired the management team and employees of THX, which George Lucas started in 1983 to develop audio-visual reproduction standards for movie theaters, screening rooms, home theaters, computer speakers, game consoles, and car audio systems. It will be an interesting match with Razer, which makes laptops and peripherals for game fanatics. THX will operate as an independent startup under its own management and apart from the ongoing business of its parent company. The audio technology business will have discretion to seek agreements with other product makers, service providers and financial partners apart from Razer.

Submission + - The Linux Foundation Helps Launch the JS Foundation (softpedia.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Today, the Linux Foundation announced the creation of a new entity named the JS Foundation that will serve as an umbrella project and guiding force for various open-source utilities at the heart of the JavaScript ecosystem

The JS Foundation is actually the jQuery Foundation, which was expanded with the help of companies such as IBM and Samsung. With jQuery slowly bowing out to newer tools, the jQuery Foundation's members and their unmatched expertise will most likely be put to good use in managing the slew of new tools making up today's JavaScript landscape.

The list of JS Foundation founding members includes Bocoup, IBM, Ripple, Samsung, Sauce Labs, Sense Tecnic Systems, SitePen, StackPath, University of Westminster and WebsiteSetup.

In alphabetical order, the JS Foundation's initial projects are Appium, Chassis, Dojo Toolkit, ESLint, Esprima, Globalize, Grunt, Interledger.js, Intern, Jed, JerryScript, jQuery, jQuery Mobile, jQuery UI, Lodash, Mocha, Moment, Node-RED, PEP, QUnit, RequireJS, Sizzle, and webpack.

Submission + - Was Venus the First Habitable Planet In Our Solar System? (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Venus is often referred to as Earth’s evil twin, but conditions on the planet were not always so hellish, according to research that suggests it may have been the first place in the solar system to have become habitable. The study, due to be presented this week at the at the American Astronomical Society Meeting in Pasadena, concludes that at a time when primitive bacteria were emerging on Earth, Venus may have had a balmy climate and vast oceans up to 2,000 meters (6,562 feet) deep. Michael Way, who led the work at the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, said: “If you lived three billion years ago at a low latitude and low elevation the surface temperatures would not have been that different from that of a place in the tropics on Earth,” he said. Crucially, if the calculations are correct the oceans may have remained until 715m years ago — a long enough period of climate stability for microbial life to have plausibly sprung up. “The oceans of ancient Venus would have had more constant temperatures, and if life begins in the oceans — something which we are not certain of on Earth — then this would be a good starting place,” said Way. With an average surface temperature of 462C (864F), Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system today, thanks to its proximity to the sun and its impenetrable carbon dioxide atmosphere, 90 times denser than Earth’s. At some point in the planet’s history this led to a runaway greenhouse effect. Way and colleagues simulated the Venusian climate at various time points between 2.9bn and 715m years ago, employing similar models to those used to predict future climate change on Earth. The scientists fed some basic assumptions into the model, including the presence of water, the intensity of the sunlight and how fast Venus was rotating. In this virtual version, 2.9bn years ago Venus had an average surface temperature of 11C (52F) and this only increased to an average of 15C (59F) by 715m years ago, as the sun became more powerful. Details of the study are also published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Submission + - US Republican Senate Committee hacked

Submitted by pdclarry
pdclarry writes: While all of the recent news has been about hacking the Democratic party, apparently the Republicans have also been hacked, over many months (since March 2016). This was not about politics, however; it was to steal credit card numbers. Brian Krebs reports that; "a report this past week out of The Netherlands suggests Russian hackers have for the past six months been siphoning credit card data from visitors to the Web storefront of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC)." "If you purchased a “Never Hillary” poster or donated funds to the NRSC through its Web site between March 2016 and the first week of this month [October 2016], there’s an excellent chance that your payment card data was siphoned by malware and is now for sale in the cybercrime underground." Krebs says his information comes from Dutch researcher Willem De Groot, co-founder and head of security at Dutch e-commerce site byte.nl. The Republicans were not alone; theirs was just one of 5,900 e-commerce sites hacked by the same Russian actors.

Submission + - When is it OK to mine hacked emails? (backchannel.com)

Submitted by mirandakatz
mirandakatz writes: The recent WikiLeaks dumps and subsequent news reports beg the question: what should journalists do when presented with hacked personal emails, especially since this situation may become the new normal? How do you parse out the newsworthy from the insider gossip? Is it ever really OK to publish scoops mined from illegally obtained emails? At Backchannel, Steven Levy wants to know what you think—and whether there should be guidelines for reporters in these types of situations.

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