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Submission + - WWII Bugatti 100P Plane Rebuilt: Jet Fighter that Could Have Won Battle of Brita (ibtimes.co.uk) 2

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Featuring forward pitched wings, a zero-drag cooling system and computer-directed flight control, plane was capable of reaching an air speed of 500mph, which would have made it the fastest and most advanced plane of its time.

If the Germans had been able to get hold of the Bugatti, it is believed that the plane could have outperformed the British Supermarine Spitfire planes during the Battle of Britain.

Submission + - Your Next Car's Electronics Will LIkely Be Connected by Ethernet (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: As the sophistication of automotive electronics advances, from autonomous driving capabilities to three-dimensional cameras, the industry is in need of greater bandwidth to connect devices to a car's head unit. Enter Ethernet. Industry standards groups are working to make 100Mbps and 1Gbps Ethernet de facto standards within the industry. Currently, there are as many as nine proprietary auto networking specifications, including LIN, CAN/CAN-FD, MOST and FlexRay. FlexRay, for example, has a 10Mbps transmission rate. Making Ethernet the standard in the automotive industry could also open avenues for new apps. For example, imagine a driver getting turn-by-turn navigation while a front-seat passenger streams music from the Internet, and each back-seat passenger watches streaming videos on separate displays.

Submission + - Whole Foods: America's Temple of Pseudoscience (thedailybeast.com)

Submitted by __roo
__roo writes: Americans get riled up about creationists and climate change deniers, but lap up the quasi-religious snake oil at Whole Foods. It’s all pseudoscience—so why are some kinds of pseudoscience more equal than others? That's the question the author of this article tackles: "From the probiotics aisle to the vaguely ridiculous Organic Integrity outreach effort ... Whole Foods has all the ingredients necessary to give Richard Dawkins nightmares." He points out his local Whole Foods' "predominantly liberal clientele that skews academic" shop at a place where a significant portion of the product being sold is based on simple pseudoscience. So, why do many of us perceive Whole Foods and the Creation Museum so differently?

Submission + - Exosuit lets divers go 1,000 feet deep (cnet.com)

Submitted by KindMind
KindMind writes: A new type of diving suit allows divers to go to 1,000 feet deep (at 30 times atmospheric pressure). A picture gallery at CNET has some neat pictures of the so-called Exosuit. According to the blog for the suit: "The first scientific exploration mission utilizing the Exosuit ADS is taking place this summer (2014), approximately 100 miles off of the Rhode Island Coast at a location called the Canyons, while working in the mesopelagic environment (depths of 200 to 1000 feet) ... The expedition's mission is to evaluate methods for improved human presence and scientific interaction at the edge of the mesopelagic realm as applied to the discovery, collection, and imaging of bioluminescent and biofluorescent organisms ..."

Submission + - Spark Advances From Apache Incubator To Top-Level Project

Submitted by rjmarvin
rjmarvin writes: The Apache Software Foundation announced the open-source cluster-computing framework for Big Data analysis has graduated http://sdt.bz/68845 from the Apache Incubator to a top-level project. A project management committee will guide the projects day-to-day operations, and Databricks cofounder and VP of Apache Spark Matei Zaharia will be appointed VP of Apache Spark.Spark runs programs 100x faster than Apache Hadoop MapReduce in memory, and it provides APIs that enable developers to rapidly develop applications in Java, Python or Scala, according to the ASF http://spark.apache.org/.

Submission + - Open Source Brings High-End Canon Camera Dynamic Range Closer to Nikon's (zdziarski.com)

Submitted by PainMeds
PainMeds writes: Magic Lantern is an open source "free software add-on" that "adds a host of new features to Canon EOS cameras that weren't included from the factory by Canon". One of ML's newest features is a module named Dual ISO, which takes advantage of the sensor in some of Canon's high-end cameras (such as the 5D MK II and MK III) to allow the camera to capture an image in two different ISOs, greatly expanding the dynamic range of the camera, and bringing its dynamic range closer to Nikon's popular D800 and D4.

Submission + - Study: Half of In-App Purchase Come From Only 0.15% of Players (recode.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Have you ever seen a goofy microtransaction for a game you play and wondered, 'Does anyone actually buy that junk?' As it turns out, few players actually do. A new study found that only 1.5% of players actually spend money on in-app purchases. Of those who do, more than 50% of the money is spent by the top 10%. 'Some game companies talk openly about the fact that they have whales, but others shy away from discussing them publicly. It costs money to develop and keep a game running, just like those fancy decorations and free drinks at a casino; whales, like gambling addicts, subsidize fun for everyone else.' Eric Johnson at Re/code says he talked to a game company who actually assigned an employee to one particular player who dropped $10,000 every month on in-app purchases.

Submission + - Clap for the Wolfram: Language Demo is Insanely Great

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The devil will be in the details, but if you were stoked about last November's announcement of the Wolfram programming language, you'll be pleased to know that a just-released dry-but-insanely-great demo delivered by Stephen Wolfram does not disappoint. Even if you're not in love with the syntax or are a FOSS devotee, you'll find it hard not to be impressed by Wolfram's 4-line solution to a traveling salesman tour of the capitals of Western Europe, 6-line camera-capture-to-image-manipulation demo, or 2-line web crawling and data visualization example. And that's just for starters. So, start your Raspberry Pi engines, kids — there is a lot more to programming than dragging-and-dropping Flappy Bird puzzle pieces!

Submission + - First Outdoor Flocks of Autonomous Flying Robots

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: Aerial flocking has been a long standing goal for roboticists but the technical demands for autonomous outdoor flocking has always been too great. Now a European team has successfully demonstrated autonomous outdoor flocking for the first time with up to 10 flyers in the air simultaneously for up to 20 minutes. The flyer of choice is the MK Basicset L4-ME made by the German company MikroKopter. They modified this by attaching an extension board carrying a variety of navigational devices such as a gyroscope, accelerometer, GPS receiver and so on as well as a wireless communications unit and a minicomputer to calculate trajectories. To simplify these calculations, all the quadcopters fly at the same altitude to make the flocking problem two-dimensional. The team say the quadcopters can fly autonomously in lines and circles and even demonstrate self-organising behaviour when confined to specific volumes of space. Crucially, the flock does not rely on any centralised control for its behaviour.The potential applications are numerous. The researchers imagine using them for large-scale, redundant observations over wide areas, perhaps for farming, traffic monitoring and, of course, military purposes. They might even put on aerial displays for entertainment purposes.

Submission + - Indian space agency prototypes its first crew capsule (electronicsweekly.com)

Submitted by sixsigma1978
sixsigma1978 writes: India is about to take one small step towards human space flight. Last week the country’s space agency unveiled a prototype of its first crew capsule, a 4-metre-high module designed to carry two people into low Earth orbit.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning a test flight for later this year – even though it still awaits government approval and funding for a human space-flight programme. The unpiloted capsule will fly on the maiden launch of a new type of rocket that would otherwise have carried a dummy payload.

Comment Re:Proof dogs talk: (Score 2, Funny) 139

by slampman (#46304755) Attached to: Dogs' Brains Have Human-like "Voice Area"

Guy is walking down the street and he sees a sign in the window of a house: For sale: talking dog.

Guy thinks to himself, "yeah, right," but he's intrigued, so he knocks.

A man answers the door, "yeah?"

"Your sign says you have a talking dog for sale?

"Yeah."

"Really. Can I see him?"

Gesturing to the sliding glass door at the back of the room, "yeah, he's out the back. Go ahead."

Guy walks out the patio door and sure enough, there's a big Labrador sitting in the back yard. Guy says, "hey, boy.."

Dog says "pleased to meet you.

Guy, taken aback, stammers.. "you.. you really can talk?

Dog says "yup. I can talk."

Guy is floored. "What the hell! How did this happen? How did you, a talking dog, come to be here?"

The dog explains, "well, I knew I was different from the time I was a puppy. I had this gift of speech and I felt I had to use it for good. I contacted the government and they placed me with the CIA as a deep mole. I did some very dangerous work for years, and it came time I needed to get out. So they transferred me to the TSA and I did some eavesdropping and terrorist-sniffing in our nation's airports. Now, being older, I knew it was time to settle down, so I retired, met a nice chocolate lab bitch, and we have six beautiful puppies."

The guy is amazed and thrilled. He runs back into the house, "that dog is amazing! How much do you want for him?"

"Ten dollars."

"Ten dollars?? For that amazing dog? But.. why? Why so cheap?"

"Why so cheap? That dog is a fucking liar. He never did any of that shit."

Comment This story is wildly inaccurate. (Score 1) 144

by slampman (#38620004) Attached to: Solo Explorer Begins Bicycle Journey To South Pole

She's not solo.
The bikeS are only being used a minority of the time - apparently they did 40+ miles today kite skiing.

See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/8992225/Helen-Skeltons-Polar-Challenge-begins.html
And current updates: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/activityandadventure/8969960/Helen-Skeltons-Polar-Challenge-the-latest.html

I do find the (real) story super interesting.
The Courts

JPL Background Check Case Reaches Supreme Court 112

Posted by timothy from the faster-boys-if-you-want-your-pay dept.
Dthief writes "A long-running legal battle between the United States government and a group of 29 scientists and engineers of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, has now reached the US Supreme Court." At issue: mandatory background checks for scientists and engineers working at JPL, which they allege includes snooping into their sexual orientation, as well as their mental and physical health.
Space

Space Photos Taken From Shed Stun Astronomers 149

Posted by timothy from the love-the-gold-mylar dept.
krou writes "Amateur astronomer Peter Shah has stunned astronomers around the world with amazing photos of the universe taken from his garden shed. Shah spent £20,000 on the equipment, hooking up a telescope in his shed to his home computer, and the results are being compared to images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. 'Most men like to putter about in their garden shed,' said Shah, 'but mine is a bit more high tech than most. I have fitted it with a sliding roof so I can sit in comfort and look at the heavens. I have a very modest set up, but it just goes to show that a window to the universe is there for all of us – even with the smallest budgets. I had to be patient and take the images over a period of several months because the skies in Britain are often clouded over and you need clear conditions.' His images include the Monkey's head nebula, M33 Pinwheel Galaxy, Andromeda Galaxy and the Flaming Star Nebula, and are being put together for a book."
Books

Why Your e-Books Are No Longer Yours 295

Posted by kdawson from the i-am-not-a-lawyer-but-they-are-or-at-least-will-be dept.
Predictions Market sends us to Gizmodo for an interesting take on the question: when you "buy" "content" for Amazon's Kindle or the Sony Reader, are you buying a crippled license to intellectual property when you download, or are you buying a book? If the latter, then the first sale doctrine, which lets you hawk your old Harry Potter hardcovers on eBay, would apply. Some law students at Columbia took a swing at the question and Gizmodo reprints the "surprisingly readable" legal summary. Short answer: those restrictive licenses may very well be legal, and even if you had rights under the first sale doctrine, you might only be able to resell or give away your Kindle — not a copy of the work.

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