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Hardware

Submission + - First human powered ornithopter (thestar.com)

Submitted by spasm
spasm writes: "A University of Toronto engineering graduate student has made aviation history, successfully flying the first ever human-powered flapping-wing aircraft continuously."
Apple

Submission + - Hardware hackers reveal Apple's charging secrets (ladyada.net)

Submitted by
ptorrone
ptorrone writes: "In this 7 minute video we explore "The mysteries of Apple device charging". Usually device makers need to sign a confidentially agreement with Apple who want to say "works with iPhone / iPod" and never talk about how the insides work. If you don't put these secret resistors on the data lines to you get the dreaded "CHARGING IS NOT SUPPORTED WITH THIS ACCESSORY". We demonstrate how anyone can do this and make their own chargers that work with iPhone 4, 3Gs, etc."

Comment OK, At least two problems with this anaylysis (Score 1) 226

by gurutc (#33081724) Attached to: The Physics of a Rolling Rubber Band

Ok, At least two problems with this analysis.

1. How about heat from flexing that lowers the stiffness and allows more the top of the band to sag as speed increases. If this test was properly designed however, the sag from this effect would be countered by #2 below:

2. Doing this test in a drum means that there's no airflow over the top of the rubber band. If the band was rolling downhill at speed, the top of the rubber band would acquire an attached airflow creating lift due to the bernoulli effect. This would cause the top of the rubber band to bow upwards.

I'm amazed that no mention or consideration is made of either of these points.
Data Storage

Submission + - Dell: 90% of data is never read again (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: According to a Dell briefing given to PC Pro, 90% of company data is written once and never read again. If Dell’s observation about dead weight is right, then it could easily turn out that splitting your data between live and old, fast and slow, work-in-progress versus archive, will become the dominant way to price and specify your servers and network architectures in the future.The only remaining question will then be: why on earth did we squander so much money by not thinking this way until now?
Idle

Submission + - Oil leak could be stopped with a nuke (trueslant.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Oil leak in the Gulf of Mexican could be stopped with an underground nuclear blast, a Russian newspaper reports:

Komsomoloskaya Pravda, the best-selling Russian daily, reports that in Soviet times such leaks were plugged with controlled nuclear blasts underground. The idea is simple, KP writes: "the underground explosion moves the rock, presses on it, and, in essence, squeezes the well's channel." Yes! It’s so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union, a major oil exporter, used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities. ...

These kinds of surgical strikes to shut off underground leaks, however, were carried out only five times, with the last one occuring in 1979. And there was only one misfire, near Kharkov, Ukraine, where a nuclear blast was unable to stanch a gas leak.

Happily, with a track record like that, "the chances of failure in the Gulf of Mexico are 20%", KP writes. "The Americans could certainly risk it."

Submission + - Lidar finds overgrown Maya pyramids (nytimes.com)

Submitted by AlejoHausner
AlejoHausner writes: A team of archeologists scanned the jungle of Belize with lidar. Although most of the reflections came from the jungle canopy, some light reflected off the ground surface. Using this, suddenly hidden pyramids, agricultural terraces, and ancient roads are revealed, at 6-inch resolution. The NY Times has the story.
Emulation (Games)

Submission + - Emulation for preservation of digital artifacts (theatlantic.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Author Salman Rushdie donated his papers and notes to Emory University a while ago. Not surprisingly, many of Rushdie's original notes, drafts, and correspondence existed in electronic form. Rather than printing them out or converting them to other formats, archivists at the university created an emulated image of Rushdie's old computer, complete with old software. Researchers visiting the archive can read his email in Eudora and his Stickies notes, or read drafts of his books in ClarisWorks. When you leave your legacy to future generations, would you like a virtualized copy of your personal system to be included?

Submission + - Volcanic ash heading towards North America (theglobeandmail.com)

Submitted by chocomilko
chocomilko writes: St. John's International Airport, the easternmost airport in Canada, has begun canceling flights due to worries of ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano, leaving travelers stranded after the weekend's Juno awards festival. Early reports stated that there was a 30% chance ash would reach the island by early Monday; Air Canada has issued an all-day travel advisory. A thick blanket of fog currently covering the city isn't helping matters, either.
NASA

Submission + - NASA tapped to help Toyota acceleration analysis (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: If you want to solve a major engineering mystery why not bring in some of the world’s best engineers? The US Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today said it was doing just by bringing in NASA engineers with expertise in areas such as computer controlled electronic systems, electromagnetic interference and software integrity to help tackle the issue of unintended vehicle acceleration in Toyotas. The NHTSA review of the electronic throttle control systems in Toyotas is to be completed by late summer.

Submission + - Wikileaks receiving gestapo treatment? (twitter.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Wikileaks announced on Mar 21 (via its twitter account) its intentions "to reveal Pentagon murder-coverup at US National Press Club, Apr 5, 9am". It appears that during the last 24 hours someone from the State Department/CIA decided to visit them, by "following/photographing/filming/detaining" an editor for 22 hours. Apparently, the offending leak is a video footage of a US airstrike.
Space

Submission + - Could the Tumbleweed Rover Dominate Mars? (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "Mars has been visited by orbiters, landers and rovers, but could the future of Martian exploration be inspired by a wind-blown sphere? NASA and other research institutions have been developing the Mars Tumbleweed rover for the last decade, but with the help of the Planetary Science Institute, the Tumbleweed is now vying for some serious funding to further develop the technologies required. Although the Tumbleweed would be wholly dependent on the prevailing winds on the Martian surface, the lightweight and relatively cheap design could lead the way for a "swarm" of independent Tumbleweeds to explore vast regions of the planet. In 2003 and 2004, NASA even tested an inflatable Tumbleweed prototype on Greenland and Antarctica — it traversed hundreds of miles with ease, continually relaying location and environmental data."
Idle

Submission + - Blog about Facebook gets mistaken for Facebook

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scansafe has an article at http://blog.scansafe.com/journal/2010/2/24/cant-login-to-facebook.html about a personal blog about Facebook that got indexed by Google and received the top search result for 'Facebook Login'. This led to thousands of clueless users clicking the link thinking this blog was Facebook. The almost 2000 comments on the blog make for really disturbing reading — yes, there really are that many idiots out there.
Software

Submission + - Should I take Toyota's software update? (toyota.com) 1

Submitted by kiehlster
kiehlster writes: I'm a software developer, and I know most software has bugs, but how much trust can we put in the many lines of code found in our automobiles? I have a 2009 Camry that is involved in both of the recent Camry recalls. As part of the floor mat issue, they're offering to install a software update that would cause "the brake pedal to take precedence over the gas pedal if both were pressed" or, as their latest notice states, "would cut power to the engine if both pedals were pressed." In the computer world, we're all taught to only install firmware updates if there is a real problem because a large percentage of firmware updates actually brick the hardware or cause other unforeseen bugs. With 100 million lines of code can I really trust a software update to work safely when it is delivered in a three month development cycle? My driving habits don't cause the floor mat to slide much, so I see the update as overkill. What do you think? If it doesn't void the warranty, should I tell them to skip the software update?

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