58944499
submission
KentuckyFC writes:
Iapetus, Saturn’s third largest moon, was first photographed by the Cassini spacecraft on 31 December 2004. The images created something of a stir. Clearly visible was a narrow, steep ridge of mountains that stretch almost halfway around the moon’s equator. The question that has since puzzled astronomers is how this mountain range got there. Now evidence is mounting that this mountain range is not the result of tectonic or volcanic activity, like mountain ranges on other planets. Instead, astronomers are increasingly convinced that this mountain range fell from space. The latest evidence is a study of the shape of the mountains using 3-D images generated from Cassini data. They show that the angle of the mountainsides is close to the angle of repose, that’s the greatest angle that a granular material can form before it landslides. That’s not proof but it certainly consistent with this exotic formation theory. So how might this have happened? Astronomers think that early in its life, Iapetus must have been hit by another moon, sending huge volumes of ejecta into orbit. Some of this condensed into a new moon that escaped into space. However, the rest formed an unstable ring that gradually spiralled in towards the moon, eventually depositing the material in a narrow ridge around the equator. Cassini’s next encounter with Iapetus will be in 2015 which should give astronomers another chance to study the strangest mountain range in the Solar System.
52969329
submission
plover writes:
The Seattle Times reports "the Smithsonian Institution is launching a new 3D scanning and printing initiative to make more of its massive collection accessible to schools, researchers and the public worldwide. A small team has begun creating 3D models of some key objects representing the breadth of the collection at the world's largest museum complex. Some of the first 3D scans include the Wright brothers' first airplane, Amelia Earhart's flight suit, casts of President Abraham Lincoln's face during the Civil War and a Revolutionary War gunboat. Less familiar objects include a former slave's horn, a missionary's gun from the 1800s and a woolly mammoth fossil from the Ice Age. They are pieces of history some people may hear about but rarely see or touch."
So far they have posted 20 models on the site, with the promise of much more to come.
51777893
submission
jrepin writes:
Google is offering rewards as high as $3,133.70 for software updates that improve the security of OpenSSL, OpenSSH, BIND, and several other open-source packages that are critical to the stability of the Internet. The program announced Wednesday expands on Google's current bug-bounty program, which pays from $500 to $3,133.70 to people who privately report bugs found in the company's software and Web properties.
51749843
submission
iONiUM writes:
Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Round phone with a curved 5.7" display today. It comes with a hefty $1,000 USD price tag. This is a follow-up to the 55" curved TVs it began selling in June, and is most likely the first step before fold-able phones hit the market. Considering the recent LG announcement of mass OLED flexible screen production, it seems that we are indeed getting very close to flexible phones. One question I wonder is, will Apple follow suit? So far there has been no indication they are even attempting flexible/bendable screens.
51196555
submission
cagraham writes:
BitTorrent has released a new file format called Bundle into closed alpha-testing today, according to VentureBeat. The format allows artists to embed a paywall inside of their work, and then distribute the art for free over BitTorrent. When users open the work they can listen or view part it for free, and are then prompted to either pay a fee, turn over their email address, or perhaps share the work over social media, in order to see the rest. The new format may ease artists concerns about releasing work for free and having to hope for compensation in the future. Artists who have already signed on include Madonna, The Pixies, and author Tim Feriss.
50893011
submission
angry tapir writes:
The probe requests emitted by a smartphone as it seeks a Wi-Fi network to connect reveal the device's manufacturer thanks to its MAC address. This can offer some information about a crowd of people by looking at the breakdown by device brand. However, because some OSes include a preferred network list (PNL) in their probes, it may be possible to use Wi-Fi sniffing to infer even more information about a group of people by looking for common SSIDs, and potentially mapping them to known network locations. A group of Italian researchers has been looking at ways to use the information in probe requests to analyse the social connections of crowds.
50815995
submission
Damek writes:
The OpenZFS project launched today, the truly open source successor to the ZFS project. ZFS is an advanced filesystem in active development for over a decade. Recent development has continued in the open, and OpenZFS is the new formal name for this community of developers, users, and companies improving, using, and building on ZFS. Founded by members of the Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and illumos communities, including Matt Ahrens, one of the two original authors of ZFS, the OpenZFS community brings together over a hundred software developers from these platforms. Read their announcement here.
50307411
submission
CowboyRobot writes:
A Tripwire survey of 1,320 IT personnel from the U.S. and U.K. showed that most staff "don't communicate security risk with senior executives or only communicate when a serious security risk is revealed." The reason is that staff have resigned themselves to staying mum due to an environment in which "collaboration between security risk management and business is poor, nonexistent or adversarial", or at best, just isn't effective at getting risk concerns up to senior management.
50298089
submission
Eloquence writes:
Three years ago, Musopen raised nearly $70,000 to create public domain recordings of works by Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Schubert, and others. Now they're running a new campaign with a simple but ambitious objective: 'To preserve indefinitely and without question everything Chopin created. To release his music for free, both in 1080p video and 24 bit 192kHz audio. This is roughly 245 pieces.' Will this funding approach work to incrementally free up humanity's cultural heritage?
50077445
submission
Jim_Austin writes:
Teams of hundreds of young scientists--including many grad students and postdocs--staffed the Large Hadron Collider and helped make one of the most important scientific discoveries in recent decades. Now they must compete for just a handful of jobs.
50077121
submission
rjmarvin writes:
Cities are taking coding to the streets http://sdt.bz/64063 through projects like Code for America and CityNext, working with governments on multiple levels to better serve constituents with mobile and cloud technologies. The "Peace Corps for geeks" is leveraging technology to make everyday life in cities run more smoothly, providing a way to "connect technologist and designers with their government to solve important problems and reimagine how government could work." It's the way of the future...
50063909
submission
AlbanX writes:
PayPal has responded to claims it is ripping out its VMware hypervisors for OpenStack, describing its use of components of OpenStack as a means for ending its reliance on vendor release cycles.
49986301
submission
rjmarvin writes:
Two developers were able to successfully reverse-engineer Dropbox http://sdt.bz/64049 to intercept SSL traffic, bypass two-factor authentication and create open-source clients. They presented their paper, "Looking inside the (drop) box" at USENIX 2013, explaining step-by-step how they were able to succeed where others failed in reverse-engineering a heavily obfuscated application written in Python. They also claimed the generic techniques they used could be applied to reverse-engineer other Frozen python applications: OpenStack, NASA, and a host of Google apps, just to name a few...
49839611
submission
itwbennett writes:
The lunar laser communications demonstration will be part of the agency's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission, which is scheduled to launch on Sept. 6. Here's how the system will work: When the satellite is in orbit around the moon and visible from Earth, one of three ground stations will shoot a laser towards its approximate location. The laser beam from Earth will scan a patch of sky and should illuminate the spacecraft at some point. When that happens, the spacecraft will begin transmitting its own laser towards the ground station and the two will lock on to each other. The technology should allow an upstream data rate, from the Earth to the spacecraft, of around 20Mbps and a much faster downstream rate of 622Mbps. That's roughly six times the speed that's currently possible with radio-based transmission, said Don Cornwell, mission manager for the lunar laser communications demonstration.
49836887
submission
Zothecula writes:
In three years, if you happen to be 3,000 meters (9,800 ft) beneath the surface of the ocean, keep an eye out for the Cyclops. No, not the hairy giant, but the 5-passenger submersible. Once it’s commercially available in 2016, it should be “the only privately owned deep-water manned submersible available for contracts.” As for why it’s called the Cyclops, just check out its one-big-eye-like 180-degree borosilicate glass observation dome.
