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Space

Qu8k Rockets Above the Balloons 153

Posted by timothy from the want-to-subscribe-to-your-newsletter dept.
darkjohnson writes "Lately we've been inundated with 100k' balloon flights and amazing video footage from space — the flights usually taking better than an hour to achieve apogee. Derek Deville took a shortcut to 121k' using a 'home made' Q rocket motor and a ton of engineering genius. On September 30, 2011 at 11:08am, Qu8k (pronounced 'Quake') launched from the Black Rock Desert in Nevada to an altitude of 121,000' in 92 seconds before returning safely to earth.This small documentary on the flight is probably one of the most brilliant Amateur Rocket videos out there right now." The launch was an attempt to claim the Carmack Prize. (And Deville evidently likes to launch another kind of rocket, too.)
Microsoft

.NET Programmers In Demand, Despite MS Moves To Metro 319

Posted by timothy from the lagging-indicator dept.
mikejuk writes "Are you a newbie programmer looking for a job? It seems your best bet is to opt for .NET. According to technical jobs website Dice.com, companies in the U.S. have posted more than 10,000 positions requesting .NET experience — a 25 percent increase compared to last year's .NET job count. So Microsoft may want us to move on to Metro but the rest of the world seems to want to stay with .NET."
Android

Submission + - Google Talk Enables Video Chat On Android Phones (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Google recently launched Google Talk with video and voice chat for Android phones. With the service, users will be able to video or voice chat with their friends and family directly from an Android phone. Calls can be placed over 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi connections. According to Google, the new features will first roll out to the Nexus S phones over the next few weeks as part of the Android 2.3.4 over-the-air update. Google Talk with video and voice chat will launch on other Android 2.3 and higher devices in the future as well. The video demo here shows it in action."
Programming

Submission + - ISO C++ Committee Approves C++0x Final Draft (herbsutter.com)

Submitted by Randyll
Randyll writes: On the 25th, in Madrid, Spain, the ISO C++ committee approved a Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) for the C++ programming language. This means that the proposed changes to the new standard so far known as C++0x are now final. The finalization of the standard itself, i.e. updating the working draft and transmitting the final draft to ITTF, is due to be completed during the summer, after which the standard is going to be published, to be known as C++ 2011. With the previous ISO C++ standard dating back to 2003 and C++0x having been for over eight years in development, the implementation of the standard is already well underway in the GCC and Visual C++ compilers. Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, maintains a handy FAQ of the new standard.
AI

Submission + - Kinect's AI breakthrough explained (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: Microsoft Research has just published a scientific paper and a video showing how the Kinect body tracking algorithm works — it's almost as amazing as some of the uses the Kinect has been put to! This article explains how it does it.
EU

US Reneges On SWIFT Agreement 394

Posted by samzenpus from the we-changed-our-minds dept.
Windrip writes "It seems the US is not living up to its end of the bargain when it comes to the SWIFT data agreement. When the agreement was signed last year, every EU citizen was guaranteed the right to know if the American authorities had retrieved their banking information, and which authorities had requested the information. Now one European Parliamentarian, Alexander Alvaro says that, once again, the Americans are not honoring their treaties."
Hardware Hacking

Makerbot Thing-o-Matic 3D Printer Review 117

Posted by timothy from the not-for-the-faint-of-heart dept.
rsk points out this "review of the $1200 Makerbot Thing-o-Matic 3D printer. After a 16-hour self-assembly and a few weeks of use, a blown PSU was replaced with a higher powered PSU via a mod to the Thing-o-Matic. Video of the Thing-o-Matic printing out little solar panel mounts from Google Sketch-up included in the review. Final thoughts suggest that the Thing-o-Matic is not a great gift for non-engineers: 'You need a decent understanding of robotics, hardware, software, electronics and mechanics, need a little hand dexterity and a ton of patience.'"
Google

Google Shares Insights On Accelerating Web Sites 230

Posted by samzenpus from the hurry-it-up dept.
miller60 writes "The average web page takes 4.9 seconds to load and includes 320 KB of content, according to Google executive Urs Holzle. In his keynote at the O'Reilly Velocity conference on web performance, Holzle said that competition from Chrome has made Internet Explorer and Firefox faster. He also cited the potential for refinements to TCP, DNS, and SSL/TLS to make the web a much faster place, and cited compressing headers as a powerful performance booster. Holzle also noted that Google's ranking algorithm now includes a penalty for sites that load too slowly."
Google

Google Applies To Become Energy Marketer 160

Posted by CmdrTaco from the what-aren't-they-doing-now dept.
necro81 writes "Google consumes massive amounts of electrical energy to power its data centers across the country and world. Now it has created a subsidiary, Google Energy LLC, and applied (pdf) to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to become a utility-scale energy trader. Google's stated aim is to be able to purchase renewable energy directly from producers at bulk rates, pursuing its goal of becoming carbon neutral. It is likely that Google Energy would also permit Google's own renewable energy projects to sell their energy at more favorable rates. Google reportedly does not have plans to actively become an energy broker, a la Enron."
Science

USGS Develops Twitter-Based Earthquake Detection 95

Posted by samzenpus from the whole-lotta-shaking-going-on dept.
sprinkletown writes "A team of seismologists at the US Geological Survey has found that Twitter is the fastest way to get information out of an earthquake area, especially in those less densely populated. Seeing the Twitter community as an untapped resource, the USGS has developed a new way to track earthquakes by clustering quake-centric tweets."
Science

8% of Your DNA Comes From a Virus 478

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-not-you-peronally dept.
An anonymous reader writes "About 8 percent of human genetic material comes from a virus and not from our ancestors, according to an article by University of Texas at Arlington biology professor Cédric Feschotte, published in the Jan. 7, 2010 issue of Nature magazine."

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