172539391
submission
Kreuzfeld writes:
Help please: here in Lawrence, Kansas the public school district has recently started using Gaggle," a system for monitoring all digital documents and communications created by students on school-provided devices. Unsurprisingly, the system inundates employees with false 'alerts' but the district nonetheless hails this pervasive, dystopic surveillance system as a great success. What useful advice can readers here offer re. successful methods to get public officials to backtrack from a policy so corrosive to liberty, trust, and digital freedoms?
124211420
submission
Kreuzfeld writes:
Today marks the final mission of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Conceived of as an infrared-optimized "Great Observatory," Spitzer has spend the last 6002 days providing Earthlings with an unprecedented view into other galaxies, our own solar system, and (unexpected to its designers!) planets around other stars. But in its Earth-trailing solar orbit, Spitzer is now over 1.5 astronomical units from the Earth: radio transmissions are increasingly difficult, and (more importantly) Spitzer's operating costs were ultimately deemed to be too high relative to its science output. Spitzer's infrared capabilities won't be replaced until 2021 (at the earliest) when NASA's James Webb Space Telescope — an even larger successor to Spitzer and the Hubble — is anticipated to launch. Bon voyage, Spitzer — we'll see you again in about 30 years when our orbits meet up again.
56184429
submission
Kreuzfeld writes:
For many years, astronomers have suspected that brown dwarfs — 'failed stars' with masses between those of planets and stars — have cloudy atmospheres. Our recent paper in Nature presents the first global, 2D map of the patchy clouds in the atmosphere of a brown dwarf: our neighbor, the 6.5 light-years-distant Luhman 16B. Eventually, astronomers will use this technique to make weather movies of global cloud patterns on brown dwarfs and extrasolar planets.
