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Mars

4-Billion-Pixel Panorama View From Curiosity Rover 101

Posted by samzenpus from the take-a-look dept.
A reader points out that there is a great new panorama made from shots from the Curiosity Rover. "Sweep your gaze around Gale Crater on Mars, where NASA's Curiosity rover is currently exploring, with this 4-billion-pixel panorama stitched together from 295 images. ...The entire image stretches 90,000 by 45,000 pixels and uses pictures taken by the rover's two MastCams. The best way to enjoy it is to go into fullscreen mode and slowly soak up the scenery — from the distant high edges of the crater to the enormous and looming Mount Sharp, the rover's eventual destination."
The Internet

Shorter '.uk' Domain Name Put On Ice 110

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the sudden-outbreak-of-good-sense dept.
judgecorp writes "The British domain name registry, Nominet, has abandoned the idea of a shorter .uk domain name system, which would replace the current regime where all .uk domains are in subdomains, such as .co.uk, or .org.uk. Although a consultation found a huge demand for a simpler system, Nominet couldn't get agreement on how to get there from here — so has put the idea to one side for now. There are some shorter addreses like british-library.uk — but these predate Nominet's regime."

Submission + - New Projects Use Phone Data to Track Subway Usage (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As the New York Times reports, one project "works by taking note of which cellphone tower a phone is communicating with. It then looks for disruptions in service followed by significant changes in location. If a phone located near Times Square suddenly loses service and reconnects at Prince Street and Broadway 15 minutes later, then it has almost certainly traveled there using the N or R trains." In another interesting twist, the article briefly notes, "The system will also include an experiment that uses phones’ microphones to sense when riders are on buses."
Space

Submission + - Dark Matter Revealed By Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by c0mpliant
c0mpliant writes: A huge halo of Dark Matter that surrounds our galaxy has been revealed to Astronomers at the University of California. The team, headed by Dr David Law, examined the orbit of stars which were dragged out of the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy as it pass by the Milky Way. The team noticed that pattern suggested that the composition of Dark Matter around the Milky Way is not uniform, instead making what they are referring to as a 'Beach Ball' shape that has been squashed.This marks the first definitive measure of Dark Matter in our universe

The announcement was made at the 215th American Astronomical Society Meeting which was the largest astronomy meeting in history.
Security

How to Save Mac OS X From Malware 222

Posted by timothy from the endangered-species dept.
eXchange writes "Well-known hacker Dino Dai Zovi has written an article at ZDNet discussing last week's discovery of a critical threat to Mac OS X, and another announcement of a Trojan horse exploiting this discovery. He suggests that Snow Leopard, or Mac OS X 10.6, should integrate more robust means of preventing malware attacks. Some of the suggestions he has include mandatory code-signing for kernel extensions (so only certified kernel extensions can run), sandbox policies for Safari, Mail, and third-party applications (so these applications cannot do anything to the system), and some lower-level changes, such as hardware-enforced Non-eXecutable memory and address space layout randomization."
Government

Japan Imposes "Fine On Fat" 1271

Posted by timothy from the fat-man-vs.-the-state dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A recently-introduced law in Japan requires all businesses to have mandatory obesity checks (video link) for all their employees and employees' family members over the age of 40, CNN reports. If the employee or family member is deemed obese, and does not lose the extra fat soon, their employer faces large fines. The legislated upper limit for the waistline is 33.5" for men, and 35.5" for women. Should America adopt universal health insurance, could we live to see the same kind of individual health regulations imposed on us by the government? By comparison, the average waistline in America in 2005 was 39 inches for men, 37 inches for women."

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