SoylentNews

martyb writes:

Might there finally be an economic reason to go back to the moon? According to Mining the Moon becomes a serious prospect in Science Daily, two companies are taking steps to mine water on the moon and convert it to rocket fuel.

Texas-based Shackleton Energy Company (SEC) plans to mine the vast reserves of water ice and convert it into rocket propellant in the form of hydrogen and oxygen, which would then be sold to space partners in low Earth orbit. As the company's chief executive officer, Dale Tietz, explains, the plan is to build a "gas station in space" in which rocket propellant will be sold at prices significantly lower than the cost of sending fuel from Earth.

SEC plans to extract the water ice by sending humans and robots to mine the lunar poles, and then use some of the converted products to power mining hoppers, lunar rovers and life support for its own activities.

Moon Express, another privately funded lunar-resources company, is also interested in using water ice as fuel -- but in a different form. It plans to fuel its operations and spacecraft using "high-test peroxide" (HTP), which has a long and illustrious history as a propellant.

Separately, I'd read many years ago about using microwaves to fuse the lunar regolith. This would reduce issues with the extremely abrasive moon dust and also provide a means of making, say, bricks from the regolith. Here is a representative report: Microwave Sintering of Lunar Soil: Properties, Theory, and Practice. And, more recently, Another 3D-Printed Moon Base Concept Uses Sintered Regolith Bricks.

Are we finally at a point where commercial access to the moon is possible? What major roadblocks do you foresee? If they were hiring for working at a moon base, would you apply for a position?

frojack writes:

70 years on, Russia is planning to send a €3-4 trillion bill to Germany as reparations for damages done to Russia during World War II.

Tass is reporting that Deputies of the State Duma, the lower house of Russian parliament are setting up a workgroup that will calculate the damage that Germany inflicted on the Soviet Union during World War II, and is planning to present the demand to Germany.

According to the claim:

The USSR got some German assets, furniture, clothes and manufacturing equipment under Yalta agreements from the Soviet sector of control. And although an agreement on cessation of reparations was signed with the German Democratic Republic, no such agreements were ever signed with the Federal Republic of Germany before or after reunification.

(Note: In addition to nearly everything movable from Soviet occupied eastern part of Germany, the USSR demanded and received 11,100 tons of machinery equipment from the Western zone. Western nations mostly demanded patents, engineering, and scientific property and coal as reparations. Reparations largely ended in 1949. But Germany and Russia have also been bickering over stolen works of art for decades.)

Even Russian experts believe there is no real expectation of actually getting any money this long after the end of hostilities. They point out that the new Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras earlier spoke about a possibility of making reparation claims for the damage Greece sustained during World War II but Germany made it clear it was not going to pay anything.

But the real reason for this push for cash is hinted at by the proposal's author, Mikhail Degtyaryov of the Russian LDPR party, who believes this issue is still quite topical, because today's Germany "continues inflicting damage on Russia as it presses forward with unlawful sanctions on the part of the EU".

AnonTechie writes:

Lucasfilm is demanding that popular photo-sharing site ImageShack ( https://imageshack.com ) cough up the identity of one of its users the studio says uploaded an infringing photograph connected to its upcoming Star Wars movie.

ImageShack has already deleted the picture from user "Darth-Simi" whose account was used to post a picture that was described as a villain from the upcoming "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" movie. The image included a glimpse of a red crossguard lightsaber like the one shown in a teaser trailer officially released in November. Lucasfilm's parent company, Disney, is seeking a San Francisco federal court to order California-based ImageShack to turn over Darth-Simi's personal information.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/lucasfilm-heads-to-court-to-unmask-star-wars-the-force-awakens-image-leaker/

c0lo writes:

EFF runs a piece on the ownership of one's electronic devices, in this case the popular Phantom drones (one of which crashed into the White House yard last week):

As the White House reacted to the drone crash with a call for more regulation, the manufacturer of the downed quadcopter announced it would push a firmware update to all its units in the field, permanently preventing those drones from taking off or flying within 25km of downtown Washington DC.

Now, while TFA goes on and on with the various examples on "Who Really Owns Your Drones?", I stopped at the thought of: "Actually, what exactly is the problem the Phantom model's manufacturer is trying to solve? And why it feels compelled to do it?"

AnonTechie writes:

An international team of scientists has discovered the greatest absence of evolution ever reported—a type of deep-sea microorganism that appears not to have evolved over more than 2 billion years. But the researchers say that the organisms' lack of evolution actually supports Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The findings are published online today by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The scientists examined sulfur bacteria, microorganisms that are too small to see with the unaided eye, that are 1.8 billion years old and were preserved in rocks from Western Australia's coastal waters. Using cutting-edge technology, they found that the bacteria look the same as bacteria of the same region from 2.3 billion years ago—and that both sets of ancient bacteria are indistinguishable from modern sulfur bacteria found in mud off of the coast of Chile.

http://phys.org/news/2015-02-scientists-hasnt-evolved-billion-years.html

[Abstract]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/27/1419241112

"gewg_" writes:

Roy Schestowitz at TechRights reports

Cyanogen is not about privacy, not about software freedom, not even about choice. It's about "anti-Google". It has been like this for a while and it got a lot worse once Microsoft paid Cyanogen, almost as though Microsoft rewards Cyanogen for the "Scroogled"-type rhetoric and seeks to use Cyanogen as a Trojan horse or carrier of Microsoft's proprietary and privacy-hostile 'apps' for Android.

MS-CM, or the Microsoft-backed fork and FUD source against Android, is having issues. Partners leave. Maybe that alone is a reason for leaning on Microsoft. Maybe the "anti-Google" angle is becoming the business model. Days ago Linux Veda wrote: "Today's announcement may now mean that OnePlus devices will now longer ship with Cyanogen OS at all, if it turns out that they have made their own ROM."

Only two days later a followup said that "OnePlus kicks Cyanogenmod out, announces two new ROMs". As the article puts it: "After a disappointing spat with Cyanogen, OnePlus have decided to ditch the once community driven, now Microsoft-back custom ROM--CyanogenMOD--and bring their own ROMs to the market."

[...]A lot of the "Google controls Android with an iron fist" type of characterisations came from Microsoft-friendly sites like The Verge (I first spotted this and wrote about it in 2013). It's not that it's 100% untrue, but they have accentuated this to incite against Google and then tried to use it to poison the minds of OEMs while Microsoft (and proxies like Nokia) attempted an antitrust angle, not only in the US but in Europe too.

Microsoft is, as usual, playing dirty. This is the latest example of it and those who give CM the benefit of the doubt do so at their own peril. MS-CM (maybe CMS, as in Cyanogen MicroSoft) is definitely trying to just commit suicide by aligning itself with Microsoft, like many other dead 'partners' ([of] convenience).

Related:
Microsoft may Embrace Android and Invest Heavily in Cyanogen

takyon writes:

Following the vote to redefine "broadband Internet" as 25/3 Mbps, the FCC may be poised to act against state laws restricting municipal broadband.

The FCC is considering taking action in a dispute between ISPs and at least two cities: Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina. In response to the rise of these municipal networks, both state governments of Tennessee and North Carolina took action to pass legislation preventing the growth of these networks from encompassing greater areas, and to prevent other cities from following the same path. Since the drafting of these bills, no further municipal broadband networks have been established, and the two that already exist have not been able to expand.

Now, following the vote last week to change the definition of broadband Internet to 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up, the FCC is turning its attention to other ways to help provide faster Internet across the country. The draft is currently being considered by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, and is expected to be circulated to other FCC commissioners in the coming weeks.

The draft aims to remove barriers that prevent the development of Internet services under city management currently imposed by state laws. In North Carolina, House Bill 129 prevents Greenlight from being able to competitively price Internet access, requiring services to be priced at or above competing Internet service providers. In Tennessee, the laws prevent municipal networks from expanding past a limited geographic area, so they cannot expand into multiple municipalities. In addition, large ISPs have risen up against both municipal networks, stating that the use of state funds for the construction of municipal networks is a misuse of state resources and should be outlawed.

Foreseeing future attempts to build municipal networks, other states have taken preemptive action. Currently, there are 19 states with such laws preventing cities from developing these networks. According to Section 706 of the Communications Act, the promotion and development of broadband networks inside of the United States is listed as a duty of the FCC, and as such, the agency has the authority to call laws into question that prevent broadband networks from developing.

To prevent possible intervention from the FCC, Republicans are taking action in Congress. A proposed bill by Senator John Thune of South Dakota and House Representative Fred Upton of Michigan is currently being deliberated. If passed, the FCC would be restricted and unable to use Section 706 to intervene in the decisions of state governments against municipal broadband networks.

The draft is expected to be voted on at the public FCC meeting, which will be held on February 26.

Alternate coverage at The Washington Post, Ars Technica, The New York Times, Fast Company, and FierceTelecom.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Google's Project Ara is an effort to create a modular smartphone. Users can dynamically swap hardware modules to upgrade or alter the configuration of the phone. It is scheduled to debut in Puerto Rico in the second half of 2015 for testing. Now SolidEnergy has announced a high-density battery module for the platform:

Module makers for Project Ara are already lining up to create third-party modules for the platform, and one of the more interesting ones is SolidEnergy, which promises to make revolutionary batteries that have twice the capacity of current batteries.

SolidEnergy is an MIT startup with $4.5 million in funding, and it has 12 employees who have been working on this new technology for the past three years. The company has developed an ultra-thin metal anode that has twice the density of the graphite and silicon anodes commonly used in smartphone batteries.

"Our battery basically makes the Project Ara phone more practical," said SolidEnergy founder and CEO Dr. Qichao Hu in an interview. "Right now, one of the major challenges with this phone is that the battery life is too short."

Because the company can just sell its own battery modules to consumers and because its batteries can store twice as much energy than the competitors, SolidEnergy has chosen to make batteries for Project Ara at first. Project Ara only has room for so many modules, and the battery module isn't particularly large in size. That makes high storage capacity very compelling. SolidEnergy will begin commercializing its own batteries in 2016. Batteries targeted at electric vehicles will follow in 2017.

ah.clem writes:

The most accurate measurement yet of the half-life of iron-60 has been made by an international team of physicists. While previous measurements of the half-life had differed by a factor of two, the team says that it has accounted for most sources of error that plagued earlier experiments. The radioactive isotope – whose half-life is measured at 2.60 million years with a 2% uncertainty – can now be used to date astrophysical events on that timescale, making it a reliable astrophysical chronometer.

While most of the iron in the universe is iron-56 – a stable nucleus made up of 26 protons and 30 neutrons – iron-60 (60Fe) has 34 neutrons and it is the four extra neutrons that make the isotope unstable to radioactive decay. 60Fe is also an "extinct radionuclide" – a nuclide formed by primordial processes in the early solar system, nearly 4.6 billion years ago.

Read it before it rusts over at Physicsworld.

tonyPick writes:

Emily Lakdawalla's blog on The Planetary Society has an article on the details of communicating with New Horizons.

The article goes into some of the tricks used to improve the data rates and keep within the spacecraft power budgets.

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

Generally I'm not a perruser of townhall.com but I ran across this one opinion piece I found worth visiting and relevant to us.

Now, it has spread like a virus, and thanks to the SJW's, is creeping into practically every nook and cranny of the tech industry. But the fact remains that their contentions about sexism in tech do not hold water. Like any other industry out there, women may end up coming across cretins that mistreat them, but there isn't a concerted effort or conspiracy out there preventing women from entering the tech industry. On the contrary, tech giants are bending over backwards to entice women to work for them, and there are organizations doing all they can to encourage more women to enter tech fields.

Why bother reading opinion pieces by Conservatives? Because a closed mind is a waste of brain cells. A hypothesis you refuse to test will forever remain such and never gain theory-hood.

[EiC NOTE: I hesitate on running this. The Fine Article goes down the well trod "complaints about *-ism are overblown and those who complain about *-ism's effects just want special treatment" road that always leads to apologia for a status quo that hurts people. Consider this a test. If we can have a healthy discussion about this, even where we have disagreements, without being inundated with the sort of frat-brogrammer culture that the extremely competent women sitting next to me left their previous departments to get away from or descending into RedPill-style misogynistic wangst, then we will continue to be a community of which I can be proud. -LaminatorX]

"gewg_" writes:

Silicon Republic reports

Marketed as the most secure smartphone on the market, the Blackphone has had to quickly fix a serious vulnerability that allowed it to be accessed with the help of a relatively simple SMS hack.

Launched in June of last year, the phone was heralded as the 'anti-NSA' phone that wouldn't allow governments, snoops, or hackers to access the phone's data or systems as part of a partnership between the Spanish smartphone manufacturer Geeksphone and Silent Circle, an encrypted communications company.

However, despite praise for the device, a team from Azimuth Security in the US have stumbled on a flaw which should make the phone's creators a little embarrassed.

The bug relates specifically to Blackphone's Silent Text messaging program which its discoverer, Mark Dowd, found after purchasing the phone it contained within 'a serious memory corruption vulnerability'.

[...]He first discovered the flaw in August 2014 but following the protocol that is common among security experts, has only just gone public with the information once there is confirmation from the affected company that the bug has been patched, which is now the case.

pinchy writes:

National Geographic has an interesting article on a phenomenon known as earthquake lights where scientists have apparently made some headway into determining the cause.

Rare flashes of light that are sometimes seen around earthquakes are not caused by birds, or planes, or UFOs—all of which had been previously used to explain the phenomena known as earthquake lights.

Instead, the lights are caused by electrical properties of certain rocks in specific settings, report scientists in a new paper.

Sometimes called earthquake lightning, the lights can take "many different shapes, forms, and colors," says study coauthor Friedemann Freund, an adjunct professor of physics at San Jose State University and a senior researcher at NASA's Ames Research Center.

Freund says common forms of earthquake lights include bluish flames that appear to come out of the ground at ankle height; orbs of light called ball lightning that float in the air for tens of seconds or even minutes; and quick flashes of bright light that resemble regular lightning strikes, except they come out of the ground instead of the sky and can stretch up to 650 feet (200 meters).

Phoenix666 writes:

Good news for hobbyists!

From RaspberryPi.org:

Let’s get the good stuff out of the way above the fold. Raspberry Pi 2 is now on sale for $35 (the same price as the existing Model B+), featuring:

• A 900MHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU (~6x performance)
• 1GB LPDDR2 SDRAM (2x memory)
• Complete compatibility with Raspberry Pi 1

Because it has an ARMv7 processor, it can run the full range of ARM GNU/Linux distributions, including Snappy Ubuntu Core, as well as Microsoft Windows 10.

Although I can't think why anyone would choose a B+ any more.

MrNemesis writes:

As reported by The Register, the Financial Times (paywalled article) today listed that Eyeo, the parent company behind the well-known AdBlock Plus browser extension, has extended its whitelist of "acceptable ads" to include ads and trackers from Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Taboola.

Users can still disable these by turning off the extension's "Acceptable Ads" feature, but with the continuing erosion of paid bypassing of such blocking features, how much life do commercially sustained ad-blockers have in them?