87287843
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braindrainbahrain writes:
David Hahn, who achieved some notoriety as a teenage boy scout with his attempt to build a nuclear reactor in his garden shed, has passed away. His "reactor" ended when the EPA declared his backyard as a Superfund cleanup site due to hazardous levels of radiation. His story was captured in a Harper's magazine article, and later the book "The Radioactive Boy Scout" by Ken Silverstein. It was also a Slashdot topic at the time.
The cause of death was not given.
82952055
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braindrainbahrain writes:
Having conquered checkers, chess, and more recently Go, artificial intelligence research now looks at the next frontier: the popular real-time strategy game of Starcraft. Deep Mind, the Google company that defeated the Go champoin, is now considering the game which would require the AI to deal with hidden information and player bluffing..
79597377
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braindrainbahrain writes:
A US based website that has covers the unofficial exchange rate between the US dollar and the Bolivar, the Venezuelan currency, has been accused of cyber terrorism in a civil complaint. Venezuela, suffering from ever increasing inflation, maintains very tight controls on currency exchange and in the suit is accusing the website operators of racketeering and conspiracy. In an earlier speech, Venezuelan President Nicola Maduro stated he would ask the President of the United States to hunt down the operators of the DT Site and extradite them to Venezuela to be tried as criminals.
72836389
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braindrainbahrain writes:
The name of Elon Musk and SpaceX, the rocket company he founded, are well known to slashdottters. This article and book excerpt tells the story of the creation of SpaceX and their first rockets, how it almost sank Musk's other company, Tesla Motors, and how the inspiration for the SpaceX in the first place was the idea of sending mice to Mars.
71319695
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braindrainbahrain writes:
Hacker Oscarv wanted a PDP-8 mini computer. But a buying a real PDP-8 was horribly expensive and out of the question. So Oscarv did the next best thing: use a Raspberry Pi as the computing engine and interface it to a replica PDP-8 front panel, complete with boatloads of fully functional switches and LEDs.
70467773
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braindrainbahrain writes:
Mars One is, of course, the highly speculative, low credibility project to land humans on Mars after a one-way trip. In 2013 they had announced that two contracts had been awarded to the aerospace industry to develop a Mars orbiter and a Mars lander to carry a science experiment payload to the surface. Both contracts have been completed, but so far, Mars One has no immediate plans to renew the contracts and pursue further development of the crafts.
66705285
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braindrainbahrain writes:
... so maybe a rock star programmer needs one too. As described in this article, the 10X talent agency , which got started in the music business, isnot your typical head hunter/recruiter agency. "The company’s name comes from the idea, well established in the tech world, that the very best programmers are superstars, capable of achieving ten times the productivity of their merely competent colleagues."
57926703
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braindrainbahrain writes:
Gene Rush, a former division chief at NASA Johnson, is running a five-part series on how the US can return to the Moon in four years. And not just land there, but actually build a base on the Moon.
How is this feasible? Hint: A public/private partnership between NASA and and a private space travel company.
55220747
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braindrainbahrain writes:
Mars One, the low credibility effort to colonize Mars, is at least funding some interesting concept studies for their alleged plan to colonize the red planet. One of the most interesting is the effort to maintain uninterrupted communications with Mars. This is not as trivial as it may sound, as any satellite in Martian orbit will still have to deal with occultations between Mars and Earth due to the Sun. Surrey Satellite Technology will be performing the study.
54774069
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braindrainbahrain writes:
Slate magazine has written the story about the only work of art placed on the Moon , the Fallen Astronaut sculpture, placed on the Moon during the Apollo 15 mission to commemorate both American and Soviet deceased astronauts. The little statue, rather than bringing fame and fortune ended up being nearly forgotten and got both Apollo astronaut David Scott and Belgian sculptor Van Hoeydonck in hot water with the US government.
31758429
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braindrainbahrain writes:
Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, has a facebook page in which he posts a short gripe about Comcast. Seems watching video through Xfinity is subsidized by Comcast by not counting towards your cap on your data plan. All other services, Netflix included, do.
T quote him:
"When I watch video on my Xbox from three of these four apps, it counts against my Comcast internet cap. When I watch through Comcast’s Xfinity app, however, it does not count against my Comcast internet cap
29733099
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braindrainbahrain writes:
Coincidence or conspiracy? Two new science fiction magazines have just been announced and they are both being published by more serious science publications. New Scientist magazine has announced the publication of Arc, "A new digital magazine about the future". Arc features such articles as "The best time travel movie ever made" and "The future of science fiction, games, galleries — and futurism". They are advertising new fact and fiction from the likes of Maragret Atwood and Alastair Reynold.
The MIT Technology Review has announced the TRSF, dubbed "the first installment of a to-be-annual 'hard' SF collection". Some authors: Joe Haldeman and Cory Doctorow.
As an interesting note, both publications will be printed on paper for the first ("collectable") issue only, all forthcoming ones will be e-books.
27794030
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braindrainbahrain writes:
The members of the Stuttgart Hackerspace have taken it upon themselves to launch their own space program. The immediate goal of the Hacker Space Program is to create an uncensorable internet in space beyond the control of terrestrial entities using a network of ground stations and communications satellites. In the longer term (think the year 2035), they'd like to put a hacker astronaut on the moon!
10859460
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braindrainbahrain writes:
Photographs of the Sea of Crises on the Moon taken by The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, show the Soviet lunar landers, Luna 20, Luna 23, and Luna 24, which landed on the Moon in the 1970s. In addition to the landers, it is possible to see the tracks made by the Lunokhod lunar rover! The Soviet Lunokhod lunar rover predates the first successful Mars Rover by some 30 years
(BTW: Very kewl old-style artists drawings of the soviet crafts on the wikipedia links above)
