SoylentNews

martyb writes:

I found this wonderfully readable and informative story on The Conversation: After Eight Years, NASA's Dawn Probe Brings Dwarf Planet Ceres Into Closest Focus — and it was written by "the mission director and chief engineer on Dawn at JPL." (Nothing against journalists, but sometimes they don't quite understand what they are writing about — and I should know, as an Editor on SN, I've done that myself!)

More than a thousand times farther from Earth than the moon, farther even than the sun, an extraordinary extraterrestrial expedition is taking place. NASA's Dawn spacecraft is exploring dwarf planet Ceres, which orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter. The probe has just reached the closest point it ever will, and is now beginning to collect its most detailed pictures and other measurements on this distant orb.

Ceres is a remnant from the dawn of our solar system nearly 4.6 billion years ago. All the data Dawn is now sending back will provide insight into Ceres' history and geology, including the presence of water, past or present. Scientists believe that by studying Ceres, we can unlock some of the secrets of the epoch in which planets, including our own, formed.

But this mission isn't only for scientists. Discovering the nature of an uncharted world is a thrill that can be shared by anyone who has ever gazed up at the night sky in wonder, been curious about the universe and Earth's place in it, or felt the lure of a bold adventure into the unknown.

I happen to fall into all those categories. I fell in love with space at the age of four, and I knew by the fourth grade that I wanted to earn a doctorate in physics. (It was a few more years before I did.) My passion for the exploration of space and the grandeur of scientific discovery and understanding has never wavered. It's a dream come true for me to be the mission director and chief engineer on Dawn at JPL.

Fun fact: Ceres has a diameter of about 600 miles (~ 1000 km) implying that its surface area, if laid flat, would cover a third of the continental USA. It will be a while before all of the data is accumulated and even longer for it to be downloaded and analyzed, so keep your eyes peeled for new revelations about Ceres.

I grew up in the age of Apollo and, like the story's author, am fascinated about astronomy. Not to the extent to make it my career, but I did take a few courses in college. The mind-boggling immensity of space, the incredible forces at play, the diversity of objects "out there" never cease to inspire curiosity and wonder in me.

I'm hoping there are Soylentils who share this fascination. Stories about space don't seem to get many comments, so I wonder how much interest there actually is in such stories. If you'd like to see more stories about space, please mention it in a comment.

Original Submission

"cmn32480" writes:

Submitted via IRC for cmn32480

comScore data for the month of November 2015 in the United States indicates that Microsoft's search engine is the only giant that actually managed to improve its share during the month while both Google and Yahoo stagnated.

In November, Google continued to be number one in the US with 63.9 percent of the searches in the United States performed on its sites. Microsoft was second with 20.9 percent while Yahoo was third with 12.5 percent.

What's interesting is that both Google and Yahoo had the same performance as in October 2015, but Microsoft managed to improve its share by 0.1 percentage points. While that doesn't seem much at first glance, it's worth noting that Bing is slowly but surely growing over the 20 percent share that was attained in the summer.

Source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/microsoft-s-search-engine-keeps-growing-as-google-declines-yoy-498100.shtml

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

In the nanoworld, tiny particles of gold can operate like snow blowers, churning through surface layers of an important class of semiconductors to dig unerringly straight paths. The surprising trenching capability, reported by scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and IBM, is an important addition to the toolkit of nature-supplied 'self-assembly' methods that researchers aim to harness for making useful devices.

Foreseeable applications include integrating lasers, sensors, wave guides and other optical components into so-called lab-on-a-chip devices now used for disease diagnosis, screening experimental materials and drugs, DNA forensics and more. Easy to control, the new gold-catalyzed process for creating patterns of channels with nanoscale dimensions could help to spawn entirely new technologies fashioned from ensembles of ultra-small structures.

Preliminary research results that began as lemons—a contaminant-caused failure that impeded the expected formation of nanowires—eventually turned into lemonade when scanning electron microscope images revealed long, straight channels.

"We were disappointed, at first," says NIST research chemist Babak Nikoobakht. "Then we figured out that water was the contaminant in the process—a problem that turned out to be a good thing."

That's because, as determined in subsequent experiments, the addition of water vapor served to transform gold nanoparticles into channel diggers, rather than the expected wire makers. Beginning with studies on the semiconductor indium phosphide, the team teased out the chemical mechanisms and necessary conditions underpinning the surface-etching process.

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An Anonymous Coward writes with an article from Softpedia:

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

What follows is an essay adapted from a talk, delivered in 2010 to teenagers and parents in my hometown of Cupertino, California. The talk concerned the surfaces of things, like bodies and planets, and abstract surfaces, like the Möbius strip and the torus. The goal was to learn about the world by studying surfaces mathematically, to learn about mathematics by studying the way we study surfaces, and, ideally, to learn about ourselves by studying how we do mathematics.

[...] Say you begin with a ball of clay. Its surface is a sphere. You toss it on a potter's wheel, flattening the base a bit. As the wheel spins, you press on the sides, then depress the center, then squeeze the walls you have formed a bowl. Since each change was so mild, you must never have changed the fundamental shape of the object. We must say that the surface of a ball is the same shape as the surface of a bowl.

The branch of mathematics concerned with the study of shape and space is called topology (from ancient Greek topos, meaning place). An oft-repeated and never funny joke is that a topologist cannot tell a coffee mug from a donut. This is not true. But it is true that mathematicians abstract the sensory qualities from a thing (the heft of the mug, the sweetness of the donut). And if both mug and donut were made of a perfectly malleable substance, you might expand the base of the mug to fill up its volume, then shrink the resulting thick cylinder down until it's the same width as the handle, leaving a torus. It's not that topologists think it desirable that a donut be a coffee mug. It's that, having promised to allow small deformations and being honorable folk, they are obligated to admit that the mug and donut have the same shape.

A quite readable article for those with a casual interest in math.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/12/new-google-glass-model-hits-the-fcc-website-images-included/

While an FCC appearance might make it seem like a product will soon be for sale, we wouldn't hold our breath for a consumer release. Reports from both 9to5Google and The Wall Street Journal have reported that the next version of Glass is the "Enterprise Edition" and will be aimed at businesses. Reportedly the Enterprise Edition will use an Intel Atom processor, along with some other upgraded internals, and even supports an external battery pack. The device will supposedly only be sold through the "Glass for Work" program, and businesses will be expected to load custom software on the device.

There have also been reports of a mysterious Google Glass reboot and a rename to "Project Aura." We'll guess (and hope) that Project Aura isn't what is pictured above and that work on a consumer version is still ongoing. Google has yet to formally announce the "Enterprise Edition" or "Project Aura." The last we publicly heard of Glass was that it had been "reset" under the watchful eye of Nest's Tony Fadell.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Panasonic Corporation announced today that the company has developed a soft, flexible, and stretchable polymer resin film using its proprietary stretchable resin technology. The Company will also provide a transparent electrode material and conductive paste along with this insulating film.

This newly developed material is an insulating film material that stretches and returns to its original shape, a feature that is hard to find in conventional flexible materials. It adapts to desired manners of folding and to varying free-form surfaces, substantially reducing existing design constraints. For example, it enables the construction of soft and stretchable electronic devices that are adaptable to a variety of forms, such as of clothing and the body. The newly developed material is deployable in a broad range of applications, from wearable devices to sensors, displays, and robots.

The stretchable resin film offers the following features developed on the basis of the Company's proprietary stretchable resin technology.

1. Soft and stretchable insulating film material that comes with excellent elasticity

        Tensile elongation: x 2.5 or more

2. Insulating film material capable of relaxing internal stresses arising from stretch, returning to its original shape, and withstanding repeated use

        Percentage of stress relaxation: 60%
        Recovery rate: 98% or more

The circuits are a conductive paste containing silver.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/game-of-thrones-is-the-most-pirated-tv-show-of-2015/

-- submitted from IRC

Game of Thrones was illegally downloaded more than 14 million times in 2015, according to TorrentFreak's annual compilation of the most-pirated television shows.

It's the fourth year in a row that the HBO show has sat atop the most-pirated chart. TorrentFreak estimates that episodes of the show were downloaded 14.4 million times during the year, more than twice as many as the number two contender, AMC's zombie thriller The Walking Dead, which had 6.9 million downloads. In third place is CBS' Big Bang Theory, downloaded 4.4 million times.

The numbers suggest the GoT audience watching via piracy may be substantially larger than the show's US television audience, which is estimated at 8.1 million.

2015 was the first year that US viewers were able to watch Game of Thrones, and other HBO content, without a cable subscription. Standalone streaming service HBO Now was launched in April, charging $15 a month for all-you-can-binge access to HBO programming.

Despite that, the audience watching GoT via unauthorized means has grown rapidly. Just two years ago, it was 5.9 million.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-cisco-systems-idUSKBN0UB1CD20151228

-- submitted from IRC

Cisco Systems Inc did not infringe a patent holding company's wifi technology, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Monday, reversing a near $64-million judgment against the networking equipment maker in the long-running patent dispute.

After eight years of litigation that also included a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court, the decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said Cisco was not liable for directly infringing or inducing others to infringe a patent held by Commil USA LLC on a way to help spread wireless signals over a large area, where multiple access points are needed.

Cisco General Counsel Mark Chandler said the company was gratified by the ruling. "The patent never had anything to do with our products and the millions of dollars spent defending this unmeritorious suit are a travesty," he said in an emailed statement.

Representatives for Commil could not be reached on Monday.

Texas-based Commil USA sued Cisco in 2007, shortly after buying the patent from an Israeli company, Commil Ltd, according to court documents. Cisco has called it a non-practicing entity, referring to a company that primarily makes money by licensing patents instead of making products.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Consumerist relays a report from Digiday (which appears to be so laden with ad Javascript it's not worth directly linking here) about GQ Magazine issuing an ultimatum to their web readers: disable your ad blocker, or pay us $0.50 to read this article. As Consumerist's Chris Morran puts it so eloquently, "The latest attempt to prevent people from blocking ads comes from Conde Nast, a company that loves advertising so much that it created an entire boutique salon of highly-skilled editors dedicated to creating advertisements that look like articles."

This is part of a veritable arms race, spearheaded by the Internet Advertising Bureau, in reaction to casual web users becoming more aware of ad blockers, including mobile ad blocking technology now allowed by Apple on its iOS-platform devices. The IAB's approach can be best described as schizophrenic; at one moment they are threatening to encourage their members to block ad-blocker users, as well as launching lawsuits against companies that make ad blockers, and the next moment, they are saying, "We messed up," realizing that the reason mass-market users are installing ad-blockers is due to the Idiocracy-esque avalanche of ads that are chewing up bandwidth, taxing CPUs, and even resulting in data loss due to the surreptitious installation of ransomware such as Cryptowall, often distributed via web ad networks that almost never filter out malware when they buy ads.

Meanwhile, these "ad-blocker blockers" don't seem to be blocking users with anti-Javascript measures such as NoScript, which are being installed by those in the know, due to the willy-nilly ultra-cross-scripted architecture of modern popular websites.

Original Submission

turgid writes:

In the Astronotes section of the Armagh Planetarium site, there is a story entitled Polyus: the Real Death Star?

In response to Ronald Reagan's announcement of the "Star Wars" anti-ballistic missile space-based defence system, the Soviet President Yuri Andropov approved Project Polyus-Skif, an orbital 1MW carbon dioxide laser capable of destroying ICBMs and other spacecraft.

Polyus-Skif was 37m long and over 4m wide, which was bigger even than Skylab. It was disguised as "Mir 2" to minimise suspicion from the general public. The USSR had to wait until the development of the Energia heavy lift rocket before the first satellite could be launched.

A prototype was flight-tested mounted on an Il-76 cargo plane, and it worked. However, it is not clear whether the satellite launched following the test was fully functional.

Perhaps fortunately, Polyus-Skif never made it into orbit. It fell out of the sky and burned up during launch on 15th May, 1987.

Original Submission

China Passes Antiterrorism Law That Critics Fear May Overreach

xpda writes:

China's legislature approved an anti-terrorism law on Sunday after months of international controversy, including criticism from human rights groups, business lobbies, and President Obama. The Chinese government argued that the measures were needed to prevent terrorist attacks. Opponents countered that the new powers could be abused to monitor peaceful citizens and steal technological secrets. Ironically, Chinese legislation has many of the save features as the U.K. Investigatory Powers bill which was passed last month, both of which allow authorities to weaken security so that messages can be read and force companies to co-operate with surveillance.

If Requested, Service Providers Must Help the Government Decrypt Content

Phoenix666 writes:

A new law passed by China's Parliament on Sunday requires technology companies to assist the government in decrypting content, a provision that the country maintains is modeled after Western law.

ISPs and telecommunication companies must provide technical assistance to the government, including decrypting communications, for terrorism-related investigations, according to Xinhua, China's official news agency.

Xinhua quoted Li Shouwei, of the National People's Congress Standing Committee legislative affairs commission, as saying the law doesn't require technology companies to install "backdoors," the term for code that would give security agencies consistent, secret access to data, in software.

Coming soon to a country near you.

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Phoenix666 writes:

North Korea's homegrown computer operating system mirrors its political one, according to two German researchers who have delved into the code: a go-it-alone approach, a high degree of paranoia and invasive snooping on users.

Their research, the deepest yet into the secretive state's Red Star OS, illustrates the challenges Pyongyang faces in trying to embrace the benefits of computing and the internet while keeping a tight grip on ideas and culture.
...
The operating system is not just the pale copy of western ones that many have assumed, they concluded after downloading the software from a website outside North Korea and exploring the code in detail,

"(Late leader) Kim Jong Il said North Korea should develop a system of their own," said Grunow. "This is what they've done."

North Korea, whose rudimentary intranet system does not connect to the outside internet but allows access to state media and some officially approved websites, has been developing its own operating system for more than a decade.

This latest version, written around 2013, is based on a version of Linux called Fedora and has eschewed the previous version's Windows XP feel for Apple's OSX — perhaps a nod to leader Kim Jong Un, who like his father has been photographed near Macs.

But under the hood there's a lot that's unique, including its own version of encrypting files. "This is a full blown operation system where they control most of the code," said Grunow.

This, the researchers say, suggests North Korea wants to avoid any code that might be compromised by intelligence agencies.

Sounds a lot like Windows 10.

Original Submission

HughPickens.com writes:

Jad Mouawad writes at The New York Times that a driver's license may no longer be enough for airline passengers to clear security in some states, if the Department of Homeland Security has its way the Department of Transportation will start enforcing the Real ID Act, which was enacted by Congress in 2005 following the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Homeland Security officials insist there will be no more delays. In recent months, federal officials have visited Minnesota and other states to stress that the clock was ticking. The message was that while participation was voluntary, there would be consequences for failing to comply. "The federal government has quietly gone around and clubbed states into submission," says Warren Limmer, a state senator in Minnesota and one of the authors of a 2009 state law that prohibits local officials from complying with the federal law. "That's a pretty heavy club."

Privacy experts, civil liberty organizations and libertarian groups fear the law would create something like a national identification card. Presently twenty-nine states are not in compliance with the act and more than a dozen have passed laws barring their motor vehicle departments from complying with the law, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The new standards require more stringent proof of identity and will eventually allow users' information to be shared more easily in a national database. Marc Rotenberg, the president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center,says he is concerned with all the information being available on the cards in a way that makes it more shareable and notes that the recent theft of millions of private records from the Office of Personnel Management did not inspire confidence in the government's ability to maintain secure databases. "You create more risk when you connect databases," says Rotenberg. "One vulnerability becomes multiple vulnerabilities."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The day of reckoning is nigh for a potentially huge number of orange-badged external staffers (contractors and vendors) within Microsoft. On July 1, 2014, five months into the Satya Nadella's tenure as CEO, a new company policy came down requiring orange-badged staffers to take a six month break after each 18-month stint at Microsoft. This kind of requirement wasn't unprecedented at Microsoft; one class of contingent staffers, known as A- ("a-dash"), was already subject to a mandatory 100-day break after one year employment; however, V- ("v-dash") staffers could work indefinitely, without a break.

The clock started ticking for these workers when the policy was announced; at the time, the number of orange badged staffers was estimated to exceed 70,000. By comparison, the number of blue-badged regular full-time employees was about 100,000, prior to the Nokia acquisition in 2014.

GeekWire's Todd Bishop has published a followup story; on January 1, 2016 the eighteen months are up for external staffers who were on campus when the new policy went into effect.

A FAQ from an internal company email from July, 2014 obtained by GeekWire:

Some vendors have been granted exemptions, according to GeekWire; also, other vendors have arranged to work remotely, taking advantage of the fact that the policy does not explicitly ban contractors from billing Microsoft after eighteen months, but rather terminates their building and network access.

Original Submission