109556058
submission
dmoberhaus writes:
In April, a rocket built by undergraduate students at USC became the first collegiate rocket to breach the Karman line, the official boundary separating Earth's atmosphere from outer space. This is only the second group of amateur rocketeers in history to achieve this milestone. It marks the end of a university space race that has been quietly simmering for years and speaks to the rapidly falling costs of space access. Wired reporter Daniel Oberhaus spoke with the USC rocket lab's lead engineer about the feat and what's next for amateur rocketry.
109376142
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dmoberhaus writes:
Demoparties have been a staple of the creative computing undergrounds for decades. In Europe, demoparties can attract thousands of coders, but in the US this tradition never really took off, despite the abundance of creative technologists living there. Motherboard writer Daniel Oberhaus attended Synchrony, one of the last active demoparties in the US and the *only* demoparty that takes place on an international train trip, to find the answer to a deceptively simple question: Who killed the American demoscene?
107863022
submission
dmoberhaus writes:
On Wednesday the UN convened its first ever round table on floating cities. WIRED was in attendance to hear about one specific proposal--Oceanix City--the creation of a co-founder of Blue Frontiers, the for-profit wing of the Thiel-backed Seasteading Institute. This project, he says, is less about libertarianism and more about survival. It sounds like paradise, but many technological, economic, and political hurdles will have to be overcome before it's a reality.
107817412
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dmoberhaus writes:
A team of Yale astronomers have discovered a second galaxy without dark matter, which they say is strong evidence that dark matter exists. WIRED digs into the implications of this discovery and the strange questions it raises about the formation and evolution of galaxies.
107505726
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dmoberhaus writes:
In a major breakthrough for DNA computing, researchers from UC Davis, Caltech and Maynooth University developed a technique for creating molecular algorithms that can be reprogrammed. Prior to this research, molecular algorithms had to be painstakingly designed for specific purposes, which is "like having to build a new computer out of new hardware just to run a new piece of software,” according to the researchers. This new technique could blow open the door for a host of futuristic DNA computing applications--nanofactories, light-based computers, etc.-- that would've been impossible before.
107186128
submission
dmoberhaus writes:
For a brief moment in the 1960s, NASA and other major government organizations funded a mad scientist in the Caribbean who spent his days taking acid in an isolation tank and injecting dolphins with LSD to learn how to talk to aliens. As SETI was just getting off the ground, many of its most prominent members like Frank Drake and Carl Sagan saw interspecies communication as a promising analog for communicating with ET. But the experiments happening on a remote island in the Caribbean would put these dreams to rest for decades.
107103170
submission
dmoberhaus writes:
Motherboard writer Daniel Oberhaus was the final participant in the world's first brain imaging study on salvinorin A, the psychoactive chemical in salvia divinorum. He wrote about what it's like to participate in a psychedelic drug trial, and why he volunteered to smoke the world's least favorite hallucinogen for science.
107003774
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dmoberhaus writes:
Researchers from Harvard, University of Michigan, and UCLA have conducted the world's first randomized controlled trial on the safety of parachutes. Amazingly, they found that jumping from a plane with a parachute is no safer than jumping from a plane without a parachute. This cheeky research, published recently in the British Medical Journal, was meant to demonstrate the limits of hardline "evidence based medicine" versus anecdotal evidence.
106613934
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dmoberhaus writes:
A deep dive into the world of amateur astronomers tracking the world's spy satellites. Turns out all it takes to follow classified objects in orbit is some binoculars, a stopwatch, and a _lot_ of patience!
106612936
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dmoberhaus writes:
A deep dive into the tricky economics of funding open source software development.
106446390
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dmoberhaus writes:
Researchers at Purdue University have developed a new chemical process that they say can convert approximately one-quarter of the world's plastic waste into gasoline and diesel-like fuels. Motherboard explains how it works.
106245336
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dmoberhaus writes:
Physicists in Finland have experimentally created quantum structures that some cosmologists believe were formed seconds after the Big Bang, and may have given birth to dark matter. Although the existence of these structures has been predicted for decades, this is the first time these objects were created in a lab using superfluid He-3.
106039344
submission
dmoberhaus writes:
Motherboard writer Daniel Oberhaus stopped using a computer mouse for a week and learned the virtue of keyboard shortcuts
106017820
submission
dmoberhaus writes:
The creator of uBlock Origin, one of the most robust ad blockers on the net, took to the Chromium bug tracker last night to voice his objections to a change to the Chromium engine that would make uBlock Origin impossible to use. Instead, the only ad blocker that would work on browsers running Chromium (Chrome, Brave, Opera, and soon Microsoft Edge) would be Ad Block Plus, which is hardly effective and also allows companies to pay for exemption from the ad blocker. Motherboard breaks down the proposed change and why ad blockers/their users are pissed about it
105781156
submission
dmoberhaus writes:
Motherboard spoke to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center about how it outfitted a deconsecrated 19th century chapel to host the MareNostrum 4-- the 25th most powerful supercomputer in the world.
