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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:45 | Votes:100

posted by janrinok on Monday January 26 2015, @10:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the when-I-was-a-boy..... dept.

Spotted over at HackerNews is a link to a detailed description of the build steps for a homebrew 8 bit (6502 based) home computer.

The pages, by Dirk Grappendorf, cover stage by stage descriptions of the implementation, including the hardware schematics, assembler listings and a prototype built up on breadboard.

This is a description of my attempt to build a simple microcomputer system with an 8-bit MOS 6502 CPU that was used in many popular home computers of the 1970s and 1980s like the Commodore 64 or the Apple II. This project was started in September 2014 and finished in January 2015. Above you can see an image of the final product. This is no in-depth tutorial on how to build a 6502 based computer system. It is more like a developer diary, which describes the evolution of the system design over time from the first simple support circuits to the complete product.

Original hackernews discussion thread.

posted by janrinok on Monday January 26 2015, @08:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the big-iron-versus-fluffy-cloud dept.

http://www.itworld.com/article/2875112/ibm-is-about-to-get-hit-with-a-massive-reorg-and-layoffs.html

From the article, "IBM is expected to go through a massive reorg next month that will reportedly see 26% of its 430,000-strong work force let go, or 111,800 people. If that figure holds true, that would make it far and away the largest corporate layoff event in history, breaking the record previously held by IBM, when it cut 60,000 in 1993."

posted by janrinok on Monday January 26 2015, @05:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the hacking-as-hacking-was-intended-to-be dept.

Michael Weissenstein reports for the Associated Press:

Cut off from the Internet, young Cubans have quietly linked thousands of computers into a hidden network that stretches miles across Havana, letting them chat with friends, play games and download hit movies in a mini-replica of the online world that most can't access.

Home Internet connections are banned for all but a handful of Cubans, and the government charges nearly a quarter of a month's salary for an hour online in government-run hotels and Internet centers. As a result, most people on the island live offline, complaining about their lack of access to information and contact with friends and family abroad.

A small minority have covertly engineered a partial solution by pooling funds to create a private network of more than 9,000 computers with small, inexpensive but powerful hidden Wi-Fi antennas and Ethernet cables strung over streets and rooftops spanning the entire city. Disconnected from the real Internet, the network is limited, local and built with equipment commercially available around the world, with no help from any outside government, organizers say.

posted by janrinok on Monday January 26 2015, @03:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the too-hard-to-swallow? dept.

With the advent of the internet came a superabundance of available information regarding personal health. However, with this deluge of available information also came a hefty downfall - a massive amount of misguided and unreliable information.

Out of all fields of discussion, it's safe to say that no other topics are more dangerous to have misinformation spread about than diet and nutrition. If a nutrition myth is continually repeated, it can soon become a culturally accepted truth, something that is dangerous to the general public. So for that matter, this article will address some of the most common and misguided nutrition 'facts' out there today.

posted by LaminatorX on Monday January 26 2015, @02:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the declaration-of-dependance dept.

When Daniel Pfeifer gave a talk about dependency management in 'When dependency hell freezes over' at Meeting C++ last year, he said: "Try to complete the following sentence: Python has Pip, Ruby has Gem, Dart has Pub, C++ has... "

Unfortunately, we cannot continue the sentence because there is no solution for resolving and keeping track of dependencies and version compatibilities for C/C++ projects. This is where biicode is trying to fill the gap.

And even though it started as a closed source project it looks like it is going to become open source.

posted by LaminatorX on Monday January 26 2015, @12:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the ministry-of-truth dept.

Some U.K. politicians are trying once again to pass mass surveillance laws after the Paris attacks. It’s a misguided approach, says a computing researcher.

In response to the terrorist attacks in Paris, the U.K. government is redoubling its efforts to engage in mass surveillance. Prime Minister David Cameron wants to reintroduce the so-called snoopers’ charter—properly, the Communications Data Bill—which would compel telecom companies to keep records of all Internet, email, and cellphone activity. He also wants to ban encrypted communications services.

It is statistically impossible for total population surveillance to be an effective tool for catching terrorists. [Conclusion]: Mass surveillance makes the job of the security services more difficult and the rest of us less secure.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2015/01/mass_surveillance_against_terrorism_gathering_intelligence_on_all_is_statistically.html

posted by LaminatorX on Monday January 26 2015, @09:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the paperless-millennials dept.

The Department of Communications of the Government of South Africa reports

With inland schools opening today, learners in seven Gauteng schools are walking into a new era of the digital classroom, which will connect them to a world of endless educational opportunities.

The pilot project, known as the "Big Switch On", is a paperless education system, which will enable learners to have access to learning material, workbooks and other subject matter through the use of Information Communications Technology (ICT).

The seven schools in the pilot project will also receive state-of-the-art internet connection and each [learner] will receive a tablet, turning ordinary schools into "classrooms of the future".

According to the provincial Department of Education, the "Big Switch On" pilot project is the first step in realising Gauteng's vision, which aspires to build a world-class education system by modernising public education and improving the standard of performance across the entire system.

[...]The price tag to migrate all schools in the province to the digital system is estimated at R17 billion [about $1M USD] over the next five years. The tablets are programmed for educational purposes only, with lessons pre-loaded. Permanent IT specialists will be on site at any given time to assist the students and educators with the new system.

Apart from surveillance cameras, each school will have two armed security officers. The tablets have also been fitted with tracking devices.

posted by LaminatorX on Monday January 26 2015, @06:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the steel-sieve dept.

FinFisher was a kind of bogeyman in the security community since brochures advertising the software’s capabilities popped up in a Wikileaks drop in December of 2011. FinFisher could purportedly empower its owner with the kinds of advanced intrusion techniques usually reserved for the NSA.

FinFisher was created and sold by Gamma International, an international surveillance company with offices in London and Frankfurt. The Gamma brochures promised remote monitoring and keylogging — they even said they could listen in on a target’s Skype calls in real time. It’s the kind of technology that could be subject to international export restrictions like the Wassenaar Agreement, so finding it in the hands of the Bahraini government would have major diplomatic consequences.

posted by LaminatorX on Monday January 26 2015, @03:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the nothing-funny-to-say dept.

The Independent reports that hacktivist group Anonymous, in a project named Operation DeathEaters, is calling for help in its fight against international pedophile networks, or what it calls the “paedosadist industry” and has issued a video instructing activists on how they can aid in the operation. The Anonymous project is intended to break what it says is a conspiracy of silence among sympathetic politicians, police and mainstream media to downplay the full extent of the online child sex industry. “The premise behind OpDeathEaters is to expose high level complicity, obstruction of justice and cover-up in the paedo-sadist industry in order to show the need for independent inquiries,” says Heather Marsh, an online activist who is helping to co-ordinate the operation and describes herself as an “old friend” of Anonymous. The Anonymous database, which will be hosted on the GitHub online repository, promises to collate cases from all around the world, cross-referencing connections within sub-groups including the police, armed forces, schoolteachers, politicians, media, academics and religious organisations. The database’s ultimate purpose has yet to be fully determined, but in the first instance the group says it wants to shut down the child-sex industry by “dismantling the power structure which held it there” and by “educating to create a cultural change”.

The group is calling on volunteers to help with the ongoing work, which has been divided into three steps. The first is about collecting “all the factual information,” second is to “share that information as widely as possible,” and the third step is “to set up an independent, internationally linked, inquiry into all the areas which do not appear to have been investigated properly.” Activists point to the muted media coverage given to a recent case in Washington DC in which Michael Centanni, a senior Republican fundraiser, was charged with child sex offences after investigators traced transmissions of child pornography to his computers in his basement. The case was not covered by The Washington Post or the New York Times, and was only picked up by a local NBC affiliate state and The Washington Examiner, a small conservative paper in the city. According to the court filings, Centanni was found in possession of 3,000 images, many apparently filmed in his own bedroom, including one showing a man raping a five year old girl.

posted by martyb on Monday January 26 2015, @12:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the picking-up-the-pieces dept.

Wired has an article on a group of Physicists at NYU that attempted to find the Higgs Boson in old data ahead of the LHC results:

The key to their strategy was a particle collider that had been dismantled in 2001 to make room for the more powerful LHC. For $10,000 in computer time, they would attempt to show that the Large Electron-Positron collider had been making dozens of Higgs bosons without anybody noticing.
...
If Cranmer’s little team had found the Higgs boson before the multi-billion-dollar LHC and unseated the Standard Model, if the count had been 32 instead of 2, their story would have been front-page news. Instead, it was a typical success for the scientific method: A theory was carefully developed, rigorously tested, and found to be false.

It's an interesting story from a rarely covered side of scientific research.

Originally spotted at The physics week in review.

posted by martyb on Sunday January 25 2015, @10:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong? dept.

Millions of genetically modified mosquitoes could be released in the Florida Keys if British researchers win approval to use the bugs against two extremely painful viral diseases. Never before have insects with modified DNA come so close to being set loose in a residential U.S. neighborhood. "This is essentially using a mosquito as a drug to cure disease," said Michael Doyle, executive director of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, which is waiting to hear if the Food and Drug Administration will allow the experiment.

Dengue and chikungunya are growing threats in the U.S., but some people are more frightened at the thought of being bitten by a genetically modified organism. More than 130,000 signed a Change.org petition against the experiment.

Even potential boosters say those responsible must do more to show that benefits outweigh the risks. "I think the science is fine, they definitely can kill mosquitoes, but the GMO [Genetically Modified Organism] issue still sticks as something of a thorny issue for the general public," said Phil Lounibos, who studies mosquito control at the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory. "It's not even so much about the science—you can't go ahead with something like this if public opinion is negative."

[More after the break.]

The article goes on to report that the disease is carried by Aedes aegypti, a tiger-striped invader whose biting females spread these viruses. This mosquito is working its way north and Key West is particularly vulnerable. All it would take for an outbreak is for a few visitors to the area to get bit by these mosquitoes which would then become hosts and spread the disease through out the area.

There are no vaccines or cures for dengue, ... or chikungunya, which causes painful contortions. ... dengue sickens 50 million people annually worldwide and kills 2.5 percent of the half-million who get severe cases, according to the World Health Organization. Chikungunya has already overwhelmed hospitals and harmed economies across the Caribbean after infecting a million people in the region last year.

Key West is under continual spraying to try and suppress this species, but the cost is high and the pesticides are becoming less and less effective. The hope is that these GMO mosquitoes would breed with the locals and kill off the offspring and lead to their eradication. Problematically, the males (which do not bite) are selected by hand for release and the potential exists for females to be released as well.

Enter Oxitec, a British biotech firm launched by Oxford University researchers. They patented a method of breeding Aedes aegypti with fragments of proteins from the herpes simplex virus and E. coli bacteria as well as genes from coral and cabbage. This synthetic DNA has been used in thousands of experiments without harming lab animals, but it is fatal to the bugs, killing mosquito larvae before they can fly or bite.

[...] FDA spokeswoman Theresa Eisenman said no field tests will be allowed until the agency has "thoroughly reviewed all the necessary information."

[...]"What Oxitec is trying to spin is that it's highly improbable that there will be negative consequences of this foreign DNA entering someone that's bitten by an Oxitec mosquito," said Lounibos, "I'm on their side, in that consequences are highly unlikely. But to say that there's no genetically modified DNA that might get into a human, that's kind of a gray matter."

http://phys.org/news/2015-01-millions-gmo-insects-loose-florida.html

posted by martyb on Sunday January 25 2015, @07:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the sorry-about-that,-officer dept.

Giant bubbles of gas that erupted from the core of the Milky Way galaxy 2.5-4 million years ago are expanding out into space at mind-blowing speeds, according to new observations that may help reveal how the strange balloon-like lobes formed. The giant structures now extend 30,000 light-years above and below the plane of the Milky Way.

"A few million years ago, there was a very energetic event at the galactic center, and we're seeing a remnant," lead author Andrew Fox, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, said at a press conference this month.

Fermi bubbles were first discovered in 2010 by scientists using NASA’s Fermi Large Area Telescope, which revealed two lobes of material protruding from the center of the Milky Way. Since then, the features have been studied in the X-ray and radio wavelengths.

Fox and his team paired Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph with a distant quasar to measure the speed and composition of the billowing bubbles. A quasar is a very bright source of light generated by fast-moving particles near a supermassive black hole inside a distant galaxy. Light from the quasar is so strong that it outshines its parent galaxy. The scientists measured how the ultraviolet light from quasar PDS 456 shifted as it passed through the base of the northern bubble.

With the help of the bright quasar, the team determined that material on the near side of the northern lobe is streaming toward the sun, while material on the far side is zipping away. The material is gushing out of the Milky Way at approximately 900 to 1,000 kilometers per second, or about 2 million mph.

The study will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, and will be available online in preprint form on archive.org.

posted by martyb on Sunday January 25 2015, @02:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the you-must-enter-all-numbers-in-hex dept.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, about 70% of all US taxpayers are eligible for free federal income-tax-preparation and electronic-filing software through a program known as Free File. From the article:

Grappling with confusing tax forms and instructions may seem like the textbook definition of cruel and unusual punishment.

But there are a few ways for most taxpayers to make the task less burdensome. For example, about 70% of all taxpayers are eligible for free federal income-tax-preparation and electronic-filing software through a program known as “Free File.”

[...] Free File (IRS.gov/FreeFile) is a partnership between the Internal Revenue Service and a group of 14 tax-software companies, known as the Free File Alliance. The companies are offering products at no charge. But they aren’t available to everyone.

“If you earned $60,000 or less last year, you are eligible to choose from among 14 software products,” the IRS says.

Have you used this program before? What has your experience been? Would you recommend it to your fellow Solylentils?

posted by martyb on Sunday January 25 2015, @11:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the keeping-up-is-hard-to-do dept.

President Obama believes America must build “21st century infrastructure—modern ports, stronger bridges, faster trains and the fastest Internet,” and in his State of the Union this week he asked the Republican-controlled Congress to pass a bipartisan infrastructure plan, likely the trillion-dollar legislation Senator Bernie Sanders proposed earlier this month. It’s an ambitious plan that many agree is desperately needed.

The American Society of Civil Engineers says the US needs massive investments in all essential infrastructure, from bridges and airports to dams and railways. According to the society’s most recent infrastructure report card ( http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/a/#p/grade-sheet/gpa ), the US earns a D+ for its infrastructure. It is, in a word, a mess. This is about much more than potholes. This is about keeping the economy, literally and figuratively, moving. Much of the economic boom the United States has experienced over the last 50 years is because the network of highways makes it easy to ship goods. If it continues into a state of disrepair, the long-term hit to our economy could be catastrophic.

posted by martyb on Sunday January 25 2015, @09:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the there-are-no-birds-in-the-tropics dept.

No, I didn't get the headline wrong. While you surely have heard that aviation is bad for global warming, this is about the reverse: Climate change could make it harder for airplanes to get liftoff. From the article:

As air gets hotter, it gets less dense, and this can spell trouble for aircraft. Thin air can't generate enough lift and thrust to get a plane safely airborne within the fixed length of a runway. If it's too hot, airplanes will have to shed pounds, in the form of passengers and cargo, according to a study from Columbia University.

As the climate gets hotter, airports may have to adapt:

Airports might have to put in longer runways, or flights may have to be shifted to cooler parts of the day. The study, which was published in the journal Weather Climate Society and presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting this week, forces us to reckon with yet another niggling consequence of climate change.