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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 17 declined, 13 accepted (30 total, 43.33% accepted)

Submission + - The first private Lunar mission. (thedailybeast.com)

Submitted by mbone
mbone writes: The Daily Beast reports that China is moving ahead with its lunar sample return mission (which will place it in a very exclusive club; only the USA, Russia and Japan have returned samples from celestial bodies) with the Chang’e 5-T1 lunar orbiter, but they also have another first, the first lunar get-away special, which has given a Luxembourg company LuxSpace its own first (sorry Google X Prize): the first private Lunar Mission, the " Manfred Memorial Moon Mission (4M)."

Now, the 4M is not much of a spacecraft, just a transmitter at 145.980 MHz with the handle JT65B for hams to communicate with (it's not clear from the article if this is a transponder, or just send only), together with a radiation dosimeter, but you can bet that this is not just the first private Moon mission — there will be more.

Submission + - Mars (One) Needs Payloads (mars-one.com)

Submitted by mbone
mbone writes: Mars One has announced that their first, unmanned, lander, targeted for 2018, needs payloads. Along with their 4 experiments, and a University experiment, they have two payloads for hire :

Mars One offers two payload opportunities for paying mission contributors. Proposals can take the form of scientific experiments, technology demonstrations, marketing and publicity campaigns, or any other suggested payload. “Previously, the only payloads that have landed on Mars are those which NASA has selected,” said Bas Lansdorp, “We want to open up the opportunity to the entire world to participate in our mission to Mars by sending a certain payload to the surface of Mars.”

The formal Request for Proposals for all of this is out now as well.

Submission + - Violation of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by mbone
mbone writes: A very interesting paper has just hit the streets (or, at least, Physics Review Letters) about the Heisenberg uncertainty relationship as it was originally formulated about measurements. They find that they can exceed the uncertainty limit in measurements (although the uncertainty limit in quantum states is still followed, so the foundations of quantum mechanics still appear to be sound.) This is really an attack on quantum entanglement (the correlations imposed between two related particles), and so may have immediate applications in cracking quantum cryptography systems. It may also be easier to read quantum communications without being detected than people originally thought.
The Internet

Submission + - US Government loses confidence in ICANN (doc.gov)

Submitted by mbone
mbone writes: The "no cost" contract between the US Department of Commerce and ICANN over hosting the Internet Assigned Names and Number Authority (IANA) was supposed to be re-let this March. Now, it has been withdrawn, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) says that "we are cancelling this RFP because we received no proposals that met the requirements requested by the global community." This is a pretty stunning vote of no confidence in ICANN by the US Government, on the eve of the 43rd ICANN meeting in Costa Rica. Speculation is that this is related to the attempts of the ITU-T to take over Internet governance, but it also could be over the new Global top level domains. I am sure we will be hearing a lot more about this in the weeks to come.
The Internet

Submission + - In Court ? Be careful what you post on Facebook. (courtroomstrategy.com)

Submitted by mbone
mbone writes: Going to Court ? Seeking damages for injuries ? Be careful what you post on Facebook (and, presumably, elsewhere). ! In the first case of its kind (analyzed in the Courtroom strategy blog, a Suffolk County NY Judge allowed a defendant in a personal injury lawsuit to obtain access to the Facebook profile of the plaintiff suing them, saying "Plaintiff has no legitimate reasonable expectation of privacy." You have been warned. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice, but I would expect this to become common.
Google

Submission + - Google is testing Airborne Camera Drones (www.wiwo.de)

Submitted by mbone
mbone writes: According to the German language site WirtschaftsWoche (an English version is available from the IBTimes) Google has purchased a German "Microdrone" for evaluation. These devices can take off, fly a mission and land automatically using GPS, and can carry night vision cameras or even "see through walls" Far IR cameras. Of course, the maker of these drone assures us that they cannot be a "Big Brother der Lufte" because that is "verboten."

Is it just me, or is Google entering into dangerous airspace here ? It seems like the ruckus from a backyard-after-dark addition to Street View could make the legal tussles Google has already encountered with the driving vans seem minor by comparison.
Space

Submission + - Hayabusa returns particles from asteroid (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by mbone
mbone writes: Slashdot readers may remember the long odyssey of the Japanese Hayabusa spacecraft — and the recent Slashdot article entitled "No Samples On Japan's Hayabusa Asteroid Probe."

Well, the BBC now has a story, "Hayabusa capsule particles may be from asteroid." Apparently JAXA (the Japanese Space Agency) has opened the sample container returned to Earth by Hayabusa, and has released "images of tiny dust particles inside the container."

You will note that I titled this story carefully — Hayabusa has now returned particles from the asteroid. Whether they are asteroid particles or pieces of dust brought all the way from Earth remains to be seen, but they were certainly returned from the asteroid — a remarkable technical feat. This announcement, I think, gives considerable hope that these particles are from the near-Earth asteroid, Itokawa, as the Japanese have been very careful in trying to avoid contamination. Even a tiny speck of dust would be very revealing about the asteroid's constitution and possibly its history as well. Kudos to JAXA for a job well done.
Space

Submission + - Jupiter is missing a belt (tgdaily.com)

Submitted by mbone
mbone writes: Jupiter just went through Superior Conjunction (i.e., went behind the Sun as seen from the Earth), so it has been out of view for a while. Now that has returned, it is different — the South Equatorial Belt (SEB) is missing. The SEB has about 10 times the surface area of the Earth, so this is not a small change. Here are a series of photos of Jupiter's new look. The Jupiter Red Spot typically inhabits the southern border of the SEB, but it doesn't seem to be affected by the change. It's a pity that this happened at Superior Conjunction, and that there is no satellite in Jupiter orbit, so details of the change are largely missing.

The SEB has previously gone missing in 1973 and 1990. Since no one really knows what makes the Jovian belts, no one knows why they disappear either. If the belts are really just material from deeper layers coming to the surface, it is possible that the convection has stopped for some reason, or that high altitude clouds have covered it over.

Submission + - How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Music (americafree.tv)

Submitted by mbone
mbone writes: Ever wonder how Jimi Hendrix would cover Lady Gaga? Whether you do or not, you may be about to find out. Eliot Van Buskirk describes North Carolina's Zenph Sound Innovations, which takes existing recordings of musicians (deceased, for now) and models their "musical personalities," to create new recordings, apparently to critical acclaim.

The company has raised $10.7-million Intersouth Partners to pursue their business plan, and hopes to branch out into, among other things, software that would let musicians jam with virtual versions of famous musicians.

This work unites music with the very similar trend going on in the movies — Tron 2.0, for example, will clone the young Jeff Bridges. If this goes on, will the major labels and studios actually need musicians and actors ? In 100 years, will no one make money playing guitar, because, after all, who could compete with Hendrix and Clapton and Jeff Beck ?
Supercomputing

Submission + - Hydraulic Analogue Computer from 1949 (americafree.tv) 2

Submitted by mbone
mbone writes: In the New York Times there is an interesting story about a hydraulic analogue computer from 1949 used to model the feedback loops in the economy. According to the article "copies of the "Moniac," as it became known in the United States, were built and sold to Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Ford Motor Company and the Central Bank of Guatemala, among others." There is a cool 19 MB video of the computer at Cambridge University in operation. I remember that the Instrumentation Lab at MIT still had a analogue computer in its computer center in the mid-1970's, but even then it seemed archaic and now this form of computation is largely forgotten.

With 14 machines built, it must have been one of the more successful analogue computers — a supercomputer of its day. Of course, you have to wonder if it could have been used to predict our current economic difficulties.
Google

Submission + - Confirmed Gmail / Google App outage

Submitted by mbone
mbone writes: Earlier today there was a confirmed Google outage which got a lot of attention from network operators. From a post to NANOG after everything calmed down :

Google ack'da maintenance on their core network did not go as planned-Forced traffic to one peer link that was unable to handle all the traffic. Maintenance has been rolled back. Issue has been restored

This is exactly what makes me nervous about cloud computing and data storage. It's bad enough when I screw up a config and it takes down my mail, but what about when it happens to the entire globe at once ?
Networking

Submission + - Internet Filtering Lobby ? 1

Submitted by
mbone
mbone writes: "Wired Blog's David Kravets reports on a new Lobbying effort called Arts & Labs. This lobby has as members AT&T, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Viacom and the Songwriters Guild of America. Their web site says "network operators must have the flexibility to manage and expand their networks to defend against net pollution and illegal file-trafficking which threatens to congest and delay the network for all consumers."

Does it seem that this is an attempt to make P2P seem like spam and other malware, or is it just me ?"

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