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takyon writes:

NASA will impact a small asteroid with a spacecraft and measure changes in its orbit around a larger asteroid:

The first-ever mission to demonstrate an asteroid deflection technique for planetary defense -- the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) -- is moving from concept development to preliminary design phase, following NASA's approval on June 23.

"DART would be NASA's first mission to demonstrate what's known as the kinetic impactor technique -- striking the asteroid to shift its orbit -- to defend against a potential future asteroid impact," said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This approval step advances the project toward an historic test with a non-threatening small asteroid."

While current law directs the development of the DART mission, DART is not identified as a specific budget item in the Administration's Fiscal Year 2018 budget.

The target for DART is an asteroid that will have a distant approach to Earth in October 2022, and then again in 2024. The asteroid is called Didymos -- Greek for "twin" -- because it's an asteroid binary system that consists of two bodies: Didymos A, about one-half mile (780 meters) in size, and a smaller asteroid orbiting it called Didymos B, about 530 feet (160 meters) in size. DART would impact only the smaller of the two bodies, Didymos B.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/65803_Didymos

Related: https://www.nas.nasa.gov/publications/articles/feature_asteroid_simulations.html

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Smart windows equipped with controllable glazing can augment lighting, cooling and heating systems by varying their tint, saving up to 40 percent in an average building's energy costs.

These smart windows require power for operation, so they are relatively complicated to install in existing buildings. But by applying a new solar cell technology, researchers at Princeton University have developed a different type of smart window: a self-powered version that promises to be inexpensive and easy to apply to existing windows. This system features solar cells that selectively absorb near-ultraviolet (near-UV) light, so the new windows are completely self-powered.

"Sunlight is a mixture of electromagnetic radiation made up of near-UV rays, visible light, and infrared energy, or heat," said Yueh-Lin (Lynn) Loo, director of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and the Theodora D. '78 and William H. Walton III '74 Professor in Engineering. "We wanted the smart window to dynamically control the amount of natural light and heat that can come inside, saving on energy cost and making the space more comfortable."

The smart window controls the transmission of visible light and infrared heat into the building, while the new type of solar cell uses near-UV light to power the system.

"This new technology is actually smart management of the entire spectrum of sunlight," said Loo, who is a professor of chemical and biological engineering. Loo is one of the authors of a paper, published June 30, that describes this technology, which was developed in her lab.

Source: Princeton University

Journal Reference: Nicholas C. Davy, Melda Sezen-Edmonds, Jia Gao, Xin Lin, Amy Liu, Nan Yao, Antoine Kahn, Yueh-Lin Loo. Pairing of near-ultraviolet solar cells with electrochromic windows for smart management of the solar spectrum. Nature Energy, 2017; 2: 17104 DOI: 10.1038/nenergy.2017.104

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

The High Court has granted Liberty permission to challenge part of the UK's "extreme mass surveillance regime", with a judicial review of the Investigatory Powers Act.

The law forces internet companies to keep logs of emails, phone calls, texts and web browsing histories and to hand them over to the state to be stored or examined. The civil liberties campaign group wants to challenge this mass collection, arguing that the measure breaches British people's rights.

In a separate case in December, the European Court of Justice ruled the same powers in the previous law governing UK state surveillance were unlawful.

The government argues that it needs access to the data to help with criminal investigations and that the legislation is required because so much communication is done online. But Liberty said the legislation had passed through Parliament in part thanks to "shambolic political opposition" and that the government failed to provide evidence that surveillance of everybody in the UK was lawful or necessary.

Martha Spurrier, director of Liberty, said: "It's become clearer than ever in recent months that this law is not fit for purpose. The government doesn't need to spy on the entire population to fight terrorism. All that does is undermine the very rights, freedoms and democracy terrorists seek to destroy."

She added: "Our government's obsession with storing vast amounts of sensitive information about every single one of us looks dangerously irresponsible. If they truly want to keep us safe and protect our cybersecurity, they urgently need to face up to reality and focus on closely monitoring those who pose a serious threat."

Source: ZDNet

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Passengers have more chance of winning the National Lottery jackpot than being allocated middle seats at random on a Ryanair flight, according to new Oxford University analysis.

In recent weeks Ryanair have faced mounting customer criticism, with some accusing the airline of splitting up groups and families, who do not pay an additional charge for reserved seating. These claims have been rejected by the airline which says that customers who do not wish to pay for their preferred seat are randomly allocated one, free of charge.

Last night, the BBC Consumer affairs programme, Watchdog, ran its own investigation to test how random the airline's seating algorithm is.

As part of their tests, groups of four people were sent on four separate Ryanair flights. In each instance every single person was allocated a middle seat. Dr Jennifer Rogers, Director of the new Oxford University Statistical Consultancy was then invited to analyse the data, to work-out the chances of every person getting a middle seat allocated randomly.

By looking at the amount of window, aisle and middle seating available on each flight, at the time of check-in, Dr Rogers, calculated the chances of all four people being randomly given middle seats on each of the flights, to be around 1:540,000,000. The chances of winning the National Lottery jackpot are 1:45,000,000. (This means that you are 10 times more likely to win the lottery than be in a group who are all randomly allocated middle seats.)

Source: Oxford University

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Scientists from Trinity College Dublin and AMBER, the Science Foundation Ireland-funded materials science research centre hosted in Trinity College Dublin, have created 'molecular cages' that can maximise the efficiency of converting molecules in chemical reactions, and that may in future also be used as sensors and drug-delivery agents. The cages can be packed with different molecules, many of which have a specific task or functionality.

Incredibly, a teaspoon of powder containing these cages provides a greater internal surface area to boost reactivity and storage capacity than would be provided by an entire football field (4000 m2/g).

This enormous intrinsic surface area relative to the weight of the structure in combination with the solubility offers great promise for energy conversion, while the structure blueprint (hollow, with sub-cages) allows different molecules to be discretely contained within. This latter feature is key in increasing the potential uses for these 'metal-organic-organic polyhedra' (MOP), because it means materials can be packed so as to react only when specific conditions present themselves.

One such example is in bio-sensing and drug-delivery, with a biological cue required to kick-start a chemical reaction. For example, a drug could be encapsulated in one of these MOP in the knowledge that it would only be released at the specific target site, where a specific biological molecule would trigger its release

Source: Trinity College Dublin

Journal Reference: Kevin Byrne, et.al. Ultra-large supramolecular coordination cages composed of endohedral Archimedean and Platonic bodies. Nature Communications, 2017; 8: 15268 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15268

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

A balanced diet is chocolate in both hands -- a phrase commonly used to justify ones chocolate snacking behavior. A phrase now shown to actually harbor some truth, as the cocoa bean is a rich source of flavanols: a class of natural compounds that has neuroprotective effects.

In their recent review published in Frontiers in Nutrition, Italian researchers examined the available literature for the effects of acute and chronic administration of cocoa flavanols on different cognitive domains. In other words: what happens to your brain up to a few hours after you eat cocoa flavanols, and what happens when you sustain such a cocoa flavanol enriched diet for a prolonged period of time?

Although randomized controlled trials investigating the acute effect of cocoa flavanols are sparse, most of them point towards a beneficial effect on cognitive performance. Participants showed, among others, enhancements in working memory performance and improved visual information processing after having had cocoa flavanols. And for women, eating cocoa after a night of total sleep deprivation actually counteracted the cognitive impairment (i.e. less accuracy in performing tasks) that such a night brings about. Promising results for people that suffer from chronic sleep deprivation or work shifts.

It has to be noted though, that the effects depended on the length and mental load of the used cognitive tests to measure the effect of acute cocoa consumption. In young and healthy adults, for example, a high demanding cognitive test was required to uncover the subtle immediate behavioral effects that cocoa flavanols have on this group.

Source: ScienceDaily

Journal Reference: Valentina Socci, Daniela Tempesta, Giovambattista Desideri, Luigi De Gennaro, Michele Ferrara. Enhancing Human Cognition with Cocoa Flavonoids. Frontiers in Nutrition, 2017; 4 DOI: 10.3389/fnut.2017.00019

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

A new analysis of documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden details a highly classified technique that allows the National Security Agency to "deliberately divert" US internet traffic, normally safeguarded by constitutional protections, overseas in order to conduct unrestrained data collection on Americans.

According to the new analysis, the NSA has clandestine means of "diverting portions of the river of internet traffic that travels on global communications cables," which allows it to bypass protections put into place by Congress to prevent domestic surveillance on Americans.

The new findings, published Thursday, follows a 2014 paper by researchers Axel Arnbak and Sharon Goldberg, published on sister-site CBS News, which theorized that the NSA, whose job it is to produce intelligence from overseas targets, was using a "traffic shaping" technique to route US internet data overseas so that it could be incidentally collected under the authority of a largely unknown executive order.

US citizens are afforded constitutional protections against surveillance or searches of their personal data. Any time the government wants to access an American's data, they must follow the rules of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court, a Washington DC-based court that authorizes the government's surveillance programs.

But if that same data is collected outside the US, the bulk of the NSA's authority stems from a presidential decree dating back more than three decades.

[...] The government's use of traffic shaping exploits a fundamental principle about internet traffic: Data takes the quickest and most efficient route, which sometimes means bouncing from different countries around the globe, rather than staying within a country's borders.

That allows the NSA to vacuum up data it treats as an overseas communication -- with little regard for whether the data belongs to an American.

Source: ZDNet

Original Submission

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

The developers that make Calculate Linux have a release announcement for us. The list of changes is significant and this release, coming half a year or so after the last rather than two years as the previous one did, looks like it may mark a change in how much work is going into this interesting distro.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, Calculate Linux is Gentoo-based with optional binary packages^*, a distinct lack of all things systemd by default, an intriguing templating system^** for conf files of all sorts, and an installer that is not even remotely like the typical Gentoo install procedure^***.

Being Gentoo-based, it is of course rolling release. Its update system is Portage based with the standard tools but it does come with a couple wrapper scripts to make your life easier like 'cl-update' which is a single-command utility to update the system, 'cl-setup-video' for picking which video driver you prefer to use, and 'cl-kernel' for building customized kernels.

I found this distro about nine months ago and it took me about a month to decide that every bloody Linux box in the place needed to be running it. They have been ever since. I've no complaints and heartily recommend it over any systemd distro (yes, even Arch), over Slackware, over Devuan, and even over vanilla (if there is such a thing) Gentoo.

To be clear, this is a personal endorsement not a SoylentNews endorsement. If you have the room to spare, I highly recommend giving it a try in a VM for a while and seeing if it tickles your fancy. Installer images for it are available in the usual place.

^*Using the BINHOST feature of Portage and automatic or manual mirror selection. If you don't customize a package away from the default build options, you'll get a binary version for most packages. If you do or find a package without a binary build, it's typical Gentoo.

^**I've used it a few times but haven't remotely scratched the surface of what it's capable of, so I can't really go into detail on it.

^***It has a noob-usable GUI and takes maybe five minutes of your attention and half an hour with a decent network connection to download any updated packages instead of installing the ones from the image and then updating them.

Original Submission

cafebabe writes:

Computing is notorious for not having a worthwhile professional association. Some practitioners join the IEEE, the IET or the ACM. However, membership typically costs hundreds of dollars per year and offers little practical help to computer professionals working in small companies. If you're working for government or a large corporation or you're a super programmer in a well funded start-up then you probably have a union or you don't need a union. However, if you're the sole techie in a small business, appreciation for your dedication is just the start. What happens when you're asked to do something unethical or illegal? Where do you turn when a job goes sour? How do you avoid the problem? How can you avoid really toxic employers?

Rather than paying hundreds of dollars per year for talks and conferences, you require local experts who have first-hand experience of local employers and local employment problems. How can this be achieved reliably and cost-effectively? This is where our expertise should shine. Firstly, union entry should be at least as stringent as the conceirge union. Secondly, there should be a web-of-trust within each metropolitan region (and ideally between regions). In the best case, the network distance between all members should be four or less. Thirdly, an obligatory website should incur less hits than SoylentNews and therefore an upper bound for costs can be established for a volunteer effort. Essentially, it should be possible to run a union from donations of US$3000 per year or significantly less. Indeed, the major cost to members would be food and drink expenses when informally meeting other members.

So who wants to join a computer professional union with sensible fees and obligations?

Original Submission

cafebabe writes:

Every year divisible by four with remainder one, adventurous geeks hold an outdoor festival in the Netherlands. This year, about 6000 people are expected to attend a long weekend.

Among them will be a group of experimenters who will be testing a 42 volt direct current grid. Specifically, a cluster of tents within the festival will receive approximately 50 × 4 Amperé supplies and 8 × 16 Amperé supplies. Hopefully, this will be run by solar power but there will also be a backup generator. Switching a high load of direct current is more complicated than alternating current and losses around the example MOSFET circuit are expected to be less than 0.2W per junction. Although people are expected to bring together previously untested circuitry, it is hoped that pieces of the project will inspire multiple direct current grids in more permanent locations.

Hopefully, electrocution or voltage drop doesn't halt electrical distribution at the festival.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

He is collecting stories about how people have been using FreeDOS and will do so until the middle of July.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Cmn32480_phone

Yes, Boaty McBoatface has returned from its first journey, sent deep into the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, where it experienced some of the coldest abyssal ocean waters on Earth.

It was sent on an expedition funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), who ran the now famous vote that propelled Boaty to stardom. During three excursions, researchers used Boaty to get data on temperature, speed of water, and underwater turbulence rates of the Orkney Passage. This is about 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) deep, and 800 kilometers (500 miles) from the Antarctic Peninsula.

[...] This was Boaty's first Antarctic voyage, traveling more than 180 kilometers (110 miles) by its own, and experiencing water colder than 0°C (32°F). It's thought that changing winds over the Southern Ocean may be affecting seafloor currents that carry AABW, which is what Boaty was investigating. As the flow gets faster, it could affect global climate change.

Source; also at the BBC

Boaty McBoatface

Original Submission

Modern programmers live in a very special period of time, when the software is penetrating into literally all spheres of human life and is installed on a numerous amount of devices that are a part of our every day life. Nobody is surprised by software in the fridges, watches and coffee-machines. However, the dependence of people on the smart technology is also growing. The inevitable consequence: the reliability of the software becomes priority number 1. It’s hard to scare someone with a freaked out coffee-maker, although it can bring a lot of harm (liters of boiling coffee flowing on your white marble countertop…). But the thought of growing requirements for the quality of software is really important, that’s why let’s talk about errors in the code that led to significant waste of time and money.

The aim of these stories is to fight against the idea that defects in programs can be treated as lightly as they were before. Errors in programs now aren’t just incorrectly drawn units in a game, the code is now responsible for people’s health and safety of property. In this article I would like to cover several new examples of the necessity to treat code really thoughtfully.

[It appears that the submitter of this story is also the author of the linked story. We generally try to avoid such items as it could very well lead to a submission queue stuffed with self-promoted articles. As it is the weekend, I thought I would try this story out as an experiment. Feel free to opine in the comments. --martyb]

Original Submission

bootsy writes:

Ron Gilbert's newest game, "Thimbleweed Park", has been out for a few months now but the latest patch is pretty neat.

https://forums.thimbleweedpark.com/t/thimbleweed-park-update-917-is-live/833

The most interesting parts are allowing the playable characters to talk to each other and recognition of each other when they walk past.

In a sign of the changing nature of gamers the game now includes a phone helpline but the helpline is called from phones within the game itself and it has an awareness of your progress so can give more tailored hints.

It is discussed in more detail here
http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/hints_and_dialogs

Original Submission

kaszz submitted a story which became:

At least 1 million homes in the USA have solar systems on their rooftops and their use — together with local batteries — is increasing, enabling homeowners the ability to collect energy and store it for later usage on-site. This enables homeowners to cut their dependence on the electrical grid — and their bills. This could be economically painful for utilities. A new McKinsey study predicts two outcomes 1) electrical grid cut off completely 2) primarily local energy collection with the electrical grid as a backup.

The cost of collecting solar energy and storing it on-site makes the incentive too small even for residents of sunny Arizona to cut the electrical grid off. But partial defection from the grid with 80-90% of the demand supplied on-site makes economic sense in 2020 and total defection makes sense around 2028

The prediction by McKinsey is that the electrical grid will be repurposed as an enormous, sophisticated backup. One, where utilities only add energy at those times when the on-site systems aren't collecting enough energy.

My comment: So far good enough. But then why not simple connect to neighbors directly for electrical power transfer and cutting the utilities out of the loop even for electrical fallback needs? A electrical power mesh grid might need some interesting mathematical modeling though.

(As a side note, maybe this will soon make UPS for home use obsolete?)

Original Submission