Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Submission + - Universe's missing matter solved

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Astronomers Just Solved the Mystery of the Universe’s Missing Matter

‘A new study reveals that 76% of all ordinary matter exists in the form of hot intergalactic gas.’

‘Astronomers .. have tracked down the universe’s “missing” matter. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) indicate that over three-quarters of ordinary matter, officially called baryonic matter, exists in the form of hot, low-density gas between galaxies.’

“The decades-old ‘missing baryon problem’ was never about whether the matter existed,” CfA astronomer Liam Connor said in a CfA statement. “It was always: Where is it? Now, thanks to FRBs, we know: three-quarters of it is floating between galaxies in the cosmic web.”

Submission + - NASA Uses GPS On the Moon For the First Time (popsci.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On March 2, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost made history, becoming the first commercial lunar lander to successfully touchdown on the moon’s surface. The groundbreaking lander is wasting no time in getting to work. According to NASA, the joint public-private mission has already successfully demonstrated the ability to use Earth-based GPS signals on the lunar surface, marking a major step ahead of future Artemis missions. Accurate and reliable navigation will be vital for future astronauts as they travel across the moon, but traditional GPS tools aren’t much good when you’re around 225,000 miles from Earth. One solution could be transmitting data from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) to the lunar surface in order to autonomously measure time, velocity, and position. That’s what mission engineers from NASA and the Italian Space Agency hoped to demonstrate through the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE), one of the 10 projects packed aboard Blue Ghost.

“On Earth we can use GNSS signals to navigate in everything from smartphones to airplanes,” Kevin Coggins, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program, said in a statement. “Now, LuGRE shows us that we can successfully acquire and track GNSS signals at the Moon." LuGRE relied on two GNSS constellations, GPS and Galileo, which triangulate positioning based on dozens of medium Earth orbit satellites that provide real-time tracking data. It performed its navigational fix at approximately 2 a.m. EST on March 3, while about 225,000 miles from Earth. Blue Ghost’s LuGRE system will continue collecting information over the next two weeks almost continuously while the lander’s other tools begin their own experiments.
Data Storage

Hard Drive Overclocking Competition From Secau 162

Posted by timothy from the spit-it-out dept.
Blittzed writes "We were reminiscing about the good old days of overclocking CPUs and memory, and the subject of hard drive overcloking came up. The discussion / argument we were having in the research lab ended up in a bet which now has to be settled. So, we are putting our money where our mouth is, and putting up $10,000 to anyone who can read a 500GB drive in under an hour. We will also consider other attempts with a smaller amount of money in the event that the one hour is not possible. There are a few rules (e.g. the drive still needs to work afterwards), but otherwise nothing is ruled out. Specific details can be found on the URL. Go let the white smoke out!"
Idle

Submission + - Optimus Prime made of junk cars in China (dvice.com)

Submitted by rmaureira
rmaureira writes: An awesome 33 feet, 6 ton Optimus Prime replica is being shown at Beijing's Olympic Park. Made from junked car parts and scrap metal parts it surely looks awesome.

Comment Re:I love the wording in the above translation. (Score 3, Insightful) 293

by rmaureira (#32893780) Attached to: Chile First To Approve Net Neutrality Law
There's a catch in the project tho', in one of the paragraphs says: "May not limit the right of a user to enter or use any class of instruments, devices or appliances on the network, provided they are legal and that they do not damage or harm the network or service quality." The last line can be used by ISPs saying that you're "damaging the network" with your computer. Now we need to wait for the government to pass the law, and then enforce it.
Communications

AT&T Breach May Be Worse Than Initially Thought 102

Posted by Soulskill from the i-smell-class-action dept.
ChrisPaget writes "I'm somewhat of an authority on GSM security, having given presentations on it at Shmoocon (M4V) and CCC (I'm also scheduled to talk about GSM at this year's Defcon). This is my take on the iPad ICCID disclosure — the short version is that (thanks to a bad decision by the US cell companies, not just AT&T) ICCIDs can be trivially converted to IMSIs, and the disclosure of IMSIs leads to some very severe consequences, such as name and phone number disclosure, global tower-level tracking, and making live interception a whole lot easier. My recommendation? AT&T has 114,000 SIM cards to replace and some nasty architectural problems to fix." Reader tsamsoniw adds that AT&T has criticized the security group responsible for pointing out the flaw, while the group claims they did it 'as a service to our nation.'
Government

Porn Surfing Rampant At US Science Foundation 504

Posted by samzenpus from the when-science-gets-dirty dept.
schwit1 writes "The Washington Times reports, 'The problems at the National Science Foundation (NSF) were so pervasive they swamped the agency's inspector general and forced the internal watchdog to cut back on its primary mission of investigating grant fraud and recovering misspent tax dollars.' One senior executive at the National Science Foundation spent at least 331 days looking at pornography on his government computer, records show. The cost to taxpayers: up to $58,000. Why aren't they running a product like Websense?"
Businesses

Asus Slaps Linux In the Face 644

Posted by samzenpus from the et-tu-asus dept.
vigmeister writes "From Techgeist, 'Linux just got a major slap in the face today from Asus. One of the highlights of Linux going mainstream was the wildly popular Asus Eee PC preinstalled with a customized Linux distro geared towards web applications. While I personally never got what the big deal was, I was still happy for all the Linux people out there waiting for this day, but it looks like the cause for celebration won't be lasting much longer. Asus and Microsoft have teamed up and have made a site called 'It's Better With Windows.' The page touts how easy it is to get up and ready with Windows on an Asus Eee PC, while slyly stating that you won't have to deal with an 'unfamiliar environment' and 'major compatibility issues.' While it is silly to state such a thing since Asus built the Linux distribution specifically for the Eee PC, I give Microsoft two points for snarky comments.'"
Hardware Hacking

Netbook-Run Dice Robot Can Rack Up 1.3 Million Rolls a Day 280

Posted by timothy from the internet-worth-something-after-all dept.
stevel writes "The owner of games site GamesByEmail.com created Dice-O-Matic, 'a machine that can belch a continuous river of dice down a spiraling ramp, then elevate, photograph, process and upload almost a million and a half rolls to the server a day. ... The Dice-O-Matic is 7 feet tall, 18 inches wide and 18 inches deep. It has an aluminum frame covered with Plexiglas panels. A 6x4 inch square Plexiglas tube runs vertically up the middle almost the entire height. Inside this tube a bucket elevator carries dice from a hopper at the bottom, past a camera, and tosses them onto a ramp at the top. The ramp spirals down between the tube and the outer walls. The camera and synchronizing disk are near the top, the computer, relay board, elevator motor and power supplies are at the bottom.' While not called out in the article, the pictures clearly show a Dell Mini 9 running the show (and performing the optical recognition of the dice values.) No, it's not running Linux."
Security

Submission + - Cracking PINs on Bank Cards (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Cybercriminals have cracked the PINs used with bank cards. Although the article in unclear as to whether it is simply a HSM misconfiguration issue, or a true crack, the millions of dollars already taken are a disturbing development.
It's funny. Laugh.

Even Dirtier IT Jobs 175

Posted by CmdrTaco from the summon-mike-rowe dept.
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Dan Tynan offers up 7 'even dirtier IT jobs' in a follow-up of last year's 7 dirtiest jobs in IT. Number four? Zombie console monkey. 'Wanted: Individuals with low self-esteem and high boredom threshold willing to spend long hours poring over server logs and watching blinking lights on a network console.'"

Slashdot Top Deals

This is a good time to punt work.

Close