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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:44 | Votes:95

posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday July 25 2017, @11:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the they-already-took-the-money dept.

Grekodom reports:

Economy Minister, Dimitris Papadimitriou, signed the new law that allows the voluntary operation of shops on Sundays.

The new law 4427/2017 allows for retail stores in central Athens, Thessaloniki, and tourist areas to be open on Sundays for six months of the year during tourist season. The opening of retail stores on Sundays is a prerequisite of Greece's bailout program.

The Federation of Private Sector Employees has called a 24-hour strike to protest the decision while the Hellenic Confederation of Commerce and Entrepreneurship (ESEE) said it will appeal it to the Council of State. 

The ministerial decision determines, in great detail, specific areas where the shops can open on Sundays.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday July 25 2017, @10:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the this-is-progress? dept.

Let's just throw this old thing at the Moon and call it a day:

A cargo container that was built to fly on NASA's space shuttles is being repurposed as a prototype for a deep space habitat.

Lockheed Martin announced it will refurbish the Donatello multi-purpose logistics module (MLPM), transforming from it from its original, unrealized role as a supply conveyor for the International Space Station to a test and training model of a living area for astronauts working beyond Earth orbit. The work is being done under a public-private partnership between the aerospace corporation and NASA.

"We are excited to work with NASA to repurpose a historic piece of flight hardware," said Bill Pratt, Lockheed Martin's program manager for the deep space habitat contract, in a statement.

Donatello was one of three MPLMs that was designed to fly in the space shuttle payload bay to transfer cargo to the station. Built by the Italian Space Agency under a contract with NASA, two modules, Leonardo and Raffaello, flew on 12 shuttle missions between 2001 and 2011.

Also at Popular Mechanics.

Previously: NASA and International Partners Planning Orbital Lunar Outpost
NASA Eyeing Mini Space Station in Lunar Orbit as Stepping Stone to Mars

Related: Moon Base Could Cost Just $10 Billion Due to New Technologies
Should We Skip Mars for Now and Go to the Moon Again?
Cislunar 1000 Vision - Commercializing Space
Forget Mars, Colonize Titan
Japan Planning to Put a Man on the Moon Around 2030


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday July 25 2017, @08:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the on-the-'horns'-of-a-dilemma dept.

Olympic National Park has released a mountain goat management plan:

The mountain goats at Olympic National Park in Washington have worn out their their welcome and park officials are moving ahead with plans to get rid of them. On Monday the National Park Service released a mountain goat management plan, laying out three methods of dealing with the population, which park officials say not only is damaging the environment but is dangerous to people.

One method is killing the animals with shotguns or high-powered rifles. The other is relocating them. And the last option is a combination of the two. That is the preferred plan but would likely take years, said Louise Johnson, the park's chief of resources management.

First helicopters would capture the goats in drop nets. Next a crew would tranquilize the animals, putting them in slings under the helicopter, which would carry them to a staging area. From there, they would be placed in trucks and driven hours to their natural habitat in the North Cascade Mountains. Some of the goats — roughly half — Johnson estimates, would have to be killed because crews wouldn't be able to access them in remote, rugged terrain.

There are an estimated 600 mountain goats in the park today and the population is growing by about 8 percent a year, Johnson said.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday July 25 2017, @07:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the better-feeding-of-the-pipes dept.

Google has debuted a new algorithm for traffic congestion control, TCP BBR:

We're excited to announce that Google Cloud Platform (GCP) now features a cutting-edge new congestion control algorithm, TCP BBR, which achieves higher bandwidths and lower latencies for internet traffic. This is the same BBR that powers TCP traffic from google.com and that improved YouTube network throughput by 4 percent on average globally — and by more than 14 percent in some countries.

[...] BBR ("Bottleneck Bandwidth and Round-trip propagation time") is a new congestion control algorithm developed at Google. Congestion control algorithms — running inside every computer, phone or tablet connected to a network — that decide how fast to send data.

How does a congestion control algorithm make this decision? The internet has largely used loss-based congestion control since the late 1980s, relying only on indications of lost packets as the signal to slow down. This worked well for many years, because internet switches' and routers' small buffers were well-matched to the low bandwidth of internet links. As a result, buffers tended to fill up and drop excess packets right at the moment when senders had really begun sending data too fast.

[...] We need an algorithm that responds to actual congestion, rather than packet loss. BBR tackles this with a ground-up rewrite of congestion control. We started from scratch, using a completely new paradigm: to decide how fast to send data over the network, BBR considers how fast the network is delivering data. For a given network connection, it uses recent measurements of the network's delivery rate and round-trip time to build an explicit model that includes both the maximum recent bandwidth available to that connection, and its minimum recent round-trip delay. BBR then uses this model to control both how fast it sends data and the maximum amount of data it's willing to allow in the network at any time.

IETF draft and GitHub.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday July 25 2017, @05:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-cheers-for-you dept.

If potentially being arrested and sentenced to years of hard labor wasn't a sufficient deterrent to visiting North Korea, now you have another reason not to go:

If an event is branded as annual but it only happens once, can it still be called annual? This is the case for Pyongyang's "annual" Taedonggang Beer Festival, the second of which was slated to take place during the month of August.

China-based tour company Koryo Tours, which is among the go-to tour groups organizing trips into North Korea, writes on its blog that it was "informed" North Korean organizers have canceled the event.

[...] According to Koryo, last year's event was a good opportunity to try some local brews and mingle with locals. A menu from the 2016 fest shows several types of draft beers, fried chicken and mutton on a stick available for purchase. North Korean alcohol is a curiosity for many connoisseurs around the globe, especially given its announcement last year that its scientists have invented "hangover-free booze."

North Korea has recently launched a ballistic missile thought by some to be capable of reaching Alaska, Hawaii, and possibly the west coast. Otto Warmbier, an American student who was arrested while on tour in North Korea, died on June 19th after being released on humanitarian grounds. The U.S. Congress will impose new sanctions on North Korea and the U.S. State Department has authorized a Geographical Travel Restriction will forbid Americans from visiting North Korea. The travel ban will go into effect in late August.

The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff has said that the use of military force against North Korea is "not unimaginable" and hinted that it could happen within a few months.

Hawaii's Emergency Management Agency has released a guide on how to respond to a nuclear attack.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday July 25 2017, @04:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the water-water-everywhere dept.

A study using data collected by the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter has found evidence of elevated water content in some pyroclastic deposits on the Moon:

The inside of the moon is wetter than previously thought, research suggests, opening up fresh possibilities for manned missions to the lunar landscape.

While the moon was once thought to be bone-dry, in recent years water has been found trapped in lunar volcanic glasses – material formed from magma ejected from the moon's interior. But it has remained a topic of debate just how wet the lunar innards are, with some arguing that the water content of lunar samples may not be representative of the majority of the moon's mantle – the layer beneath the crust.

Now researchers say a new analysis of satellite data has unpicked the puzzle, revealing "hotspots" of trapped water right across the moon's surface in deposits from ancient eruptions. "The lunar mantle is wetter than our previous thoughts [suggested]," said Shuai Li, co-author of the study from Brown University.

Also at Brown University, National Geographic, NPR, The Verge, and Space.com.

Remote detection of widespread indigenous water in lunar pyroclastic deposits (DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2993) (DX) (supplemental)

Here we demonstrate that, for a number of lunar pyroclastic deposits, near-infrared reflectance spectra acquired by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument onboard the Chandrayaan-1 orbiter exhibit absorptions consistent with enhanced OH- and/or H2O-bearing materials. These enhancements suggest a widespread occurrence of water in pyroclastic materials sourced from the deep lunar interior, and thus an indigenous origin. Water abundances of up to 150 ppm are estimated for large pyroclastic deposits, with localized values of about 300 to 400 ppm at potential vent areas. Enhanced water content associated with lunar pyroclastic deposits and the large areal extent, widespread distribution and variable chemistry of these deposits on the lunar surface are consistent with significant water in the bulk lunar mantle. We therefore suggest that water-bearing volcanic glasses from Apollo landing sites are not anomalous, and volatile loss during pyroclastic eruptions may represent a significant pathway for the transport of water to the lunar surface.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 25 2017, @02:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the gone-parking dept.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2017-196&rn=news.xml&rst=6901

With the push of a button, final commands for the European Space Agency's LISA Pathfinder mission were beamed to space on July 18, a final goodbye before the spacecraft was powered down.

LISA Pathfinder had been directed into a parking orbit in April, keeping it out of Earth's way. The final action this week switches it off completely after a successful 16 months of science measurements.

While some spacecraft are flashy, never sitting still as they zip across the solar system, LISA Pathfinder was as steady as they come -- literally.

It housed a space-age motion detector so sensitive that it had to be protected against the force of photons from the Sun. That was made possible thanks to a system of thrusters that applied tiny reactive forces to the spacecraft, cancelling out the force of the Sun and allowing the spacecraft to stay within 10 nanometers of an ideal gravitational orbit.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 25 2017, @01:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the overlords-with-hololens dept.

HoloLens 2 can learn!

Microsoft announced that the second generation of the HoloLens' Holographic Processing Unit (HPU) will contain a deep learning accelerator. When Microsoft first unveiled the HoloLens, it said that it comes with a special kind of processor, called an HPU, that can accelerate the kind of "holographic" content displayed by the HMD. The HPU is primarily responsible for processing the information coming from all the on-board sensors, including a custom time-of-flight depth sensor, head-tracking cameras, the inertial measurement unit (IMU), and the infrared camera.

The first generation HPU contained 24 digital signal processors (DSPs), an Atom processor, 1GB of DDR3 RAM, and 8MB of SRAM cache. The chip can achieve one teraflop per second for under 10W of power, with 40% of that power going to the Atom CPU. The first HPU was built on a 28nm planar process, and if the next-generation HPU will be built on a 14/16nm or smaller FinFET process, the increase in performance could be significant. However, Microsoft has not yet revealed what process node will be used for the next-generation HPU.

What we do know so far about the second-gen HPU is that it will incorporate an accelerator for deep neural networks (DNNs). The deep learning accelerator is designed to work offline and use the HoloLens' battery, which means it should be quite efficient, while still providing significant benefits to Microsoft's machine learning code.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 25 2017, @11:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the call-the-EPA dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Every volcanic eruption that occurs on planet Earth is full of pollutants. Not just ash and dust, mind you, but also carbon dioxide: one of the strongest greenhouse gases on our planet. In the largest cases, a single volcanic plume, lasting only hours, might add many millions of tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Could it be the case, then, that individual volcanoes add more carbon dioxide to our atmosphere than human activity does? To find the answer, we've got to look to the scientific data.

As viewed from space, it's immediately clear that the Earth is a truly living planet, distinct from every other known world in the Solar System. With continents, liquid oceans, icecaps, changing cloud patterns, and a thin but substantial atmosphere, our planet is teeming with life, changing from day-to-day and season-to-season. Without the atmosphere, our world would be some 33º C (59º F) cooler, would be incapable of having liquid water on the surface, and would see the most important part of our world — the surface — change irrevocably. Even though it's only around 0.0001% the mass of our planet, the atmosphere makes our world habitable.

The pressure allows water to exist in the liquid phase, and the heat-trapping clouds and gases like water vapor, methane, and carbon dioxide give us the warmth necessary to have oceans. Carbon in particular is a tremendous part of our planet; it's the fourth most abundant element in the Universe, the essential element for organic matter, and — other than the Sun — is the most important factor in determining Earth's temperature. It's also the essential element in two of the three major greenhouse gases playing a role in our temperature, with water vapor varying tremendously based on other factors. But most of that carbon is sequestered not in the Earth's crust, but deep within the mantle.

For billions of years, geological processes like volcanic eruptions controlled the carbon concentration in the atmosphere, as volcanism is the major way that carbon rises from the mantle into the atmosphere. Most of the carbon stored in the mantle is in the form of carbonate (a salt of carbonic acid), but there are also huge stores of actual carbon dioxide sequestered deep within the mantle as a dissolved gas within the liquid rock. Recent research about carbon reserves discovered underneath the United States has led to a new estimate of the amount of carbon in the Earth's upper mantle: approximately 100 trillion tons. By contrast, there are only about 3.2 trillion tons of CO2 (containing about 870 billion tons of actual carbon) in the atmosphere today.

Yes, we've accurately measured and estimated the amount of carbon dioxide that humans have been adding to the atmosphere through our burning of fossil fuels, but it's vital to know what the natural rate of CO2 emission is to understand the impact humans are having. Humans emit around 29 billion tons of CO2 each year: a little less than 1% of present atmospheric CO2. We tend to think of erupting volcanoes with active, smoking plumes as the biggest source of carbon dioxide, and Mt. Etna is not only a classic example, it's one of the most reliable volcanoes of all. If anyone ever bets you, "which major volcano do you think might erupt this year," bet on Mt. Etna.

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 25 2017, @09:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the darknet-sales-are-up dept.

Gizmodo writes that Roomba's Next Big Step Is Selling Maps of Your Home to the Highest Bidder:

The Roomba is generally regarded as a cute little robot friend that no one but dogs would consider to be a potential menace. But for the last couple of years, the robovacs have been quietly mapping homes to maximize efficiency. Now, the device's makers plan to sell that data to smart home device manufacturers, turning the friendly robot into a creeping, creepy little spy.

And Reuters writes that the Roomba vacuum maker iRobot is betting big on the 'smart' home including possibly a lot of related side-deals:

Angle told Reuters that iRobot, which made Roomba compatible with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant in March, could reach a deal to sell its maps to one or more of the Big Three in the next couple of years.
Amazon declined to comment, and Apple and Google did not respond to requests for comment.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 25 2017, @08:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the origami-cpu dept.

https://www.hpcwire.com/2017/07/24/darpa-continues-investment-post-moores-technologies/

The U.S. military long ago ceded dominance in electronics innovation to Silicon Valley, the DoD-backed powerhouse that has driven microelectronic generation for decades. With Moore's Law clearly running out of steam, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is attempting to reinvigorate and leverage a vibrant domestic chip sector with a $200 million initiative designed among other things to push the boundaries of chip architectures like GPUs.

DARPA recently announced that its Electronics Resurgence Initiative seeks to move beyond Moore's Law chip scaling. Among the new fronts to be opened by the defense agency are extending GPU frameworks that underlie machine-learning tools to develop "reconfigurable physical structures that adjust to the needs of the software they support."

[...] The DARPA effort also attempts to lay the groundwork for a post Moore's Law era where, according to the agency, research will focus on "integrating different semiconductor materials on individual chips, 'sticky logic' devices that combine processing and memory functions and vertical rather than only planar integration of microsystem components."

Also at NextBigFuture.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 25 2017, @06:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the stay-off-the-sidewalk dept.

The Super Commuter+ is built on an aluminum frame with a carbon fiber front fork, and it integrates a 350W Bosch Performance Speed mid-mounted motor powered by a 36V 500Wh Bosch lithium-ion battery pack mounted on the down tube. The bike has a range per charge of up to 92 miles, depending on the riding mode and the terrain of the route, with a total charge time of about 4.5 hours. A control unit and display on the handlebars allows for quick access to ride and bike data, as well as selection of the pedal-assist mode (Eco, Tour, Sport, Turbo).

It weighs in at about 52 pounds, features Schwalbe Super Moto-X 2.4" tires, includes a Shimano XT/11-speed drivetrain and has dual Shimano Deore hydraulic disc brakes for stopping power. A large LED headlight and small red LED taillights help with visibility, and front and rear fenders help keep most of the road grime off the rider, while the low-riser Bontrager handlebar and Satellite Elite grips offer a comfortable and effective hand position while riding. The removable battery pack can be charged either on or off the bike, and a lock secures the battery to the bike.

Amid news about Teslas and other new transportation options, electric bikes have been quietly growing in variety and number. Could an e-bike be a viable option for you, perhaps even a car replacement?


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 25 2017, @05:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the it-is-rocket-science dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Developing rockets is difficult – even when those rockets use existing rocket boosters. Such is the case for SpaceX and the development of the Falcon Heavy. Once operational, Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful rocket in the world. While the path to its inaugural mission has been challenging, Elon Musk is urging caution surrounding expectations of the rocket's first flight, which is expected later this year from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

The long wait is nearly over as SpaceX readies for the final series of upgrades/modifications to LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center for the upcoming debut of the company's heralded Falcon Heavy rocket.

Designed as a souped up version of the Falcon 9 – which has enjoyed a great deal of fame and attention this year with the first (and now second) reflights of previously-flown core stages as well as lofting the first reused Dragon capsule on the CRS-11 resupply mission to the ISS – Falcon Heavy's initial design seemed simple.

But as Elon Musk stated at the keynote to the ISSR&D (International Space Station Research and Development) conference on Wednesday, "it ended up being way harder to do Falcon Heavy than we thought.

"At first it sounds really easy to just stick two first stages on as strap-on side boosters. But then everything changes."

Mr. Musk admitted, "We were pretty naive about that."

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 25 2017, @03:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the paint.net? dept.

Microsoft Paint has been marked for death:

The era of Microsoft Paint appears to be coming to an end with the upcoming release of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. The image-editing application is officially being classified by Microsoft as a "deprecated feature," as noted by The Guardian. That means that, come this fall, Paint will "not be in active development and might be removed in future releases."

I go hard in the paint.

Also at PCWorld and Smithsonian.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 25 2017, @02:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the spittle dept.

The scientists came upon their findings while researching the purpose and origins of the MUC7 protein, which helps give spit its slimy consistency and binds to microbes, potentially helping to rid the body of disease-causing bacteria.

As part of this investigation, the team examined the MUC7 gene in more than 2,500 modern human genomes. The analysis yielded a surprise: A group of genomes from Sub-Saharan Africa had a version of the gene that was wildly different from versions found in other modern humans.

The Sub-Saharan variant was so distinctive that Neanderthal and Denisovan MUC7 genes matched more closely with those of other modern humans than the Sub-Saharan outlier did.

"Based on our analysis, the most plausible explanation for this extreme variation is archaic introgression -- the introduction of genetic material from a 'ghost' species of ancient hominins," Gokcumen says. "This unknown human relative could be a species that has been discovered, such as a subspecies of Homo erectus, or an undiscovered hominin. We call it a 'ghost' species because we don't have the fossils."

Those Sub-Saharan hominins were horny, baby.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 25 2017, @12:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the short-circuit dept.

Consumers in the UK could save billions of pounds thanks to major changes in the way electricity is made, used and stored, the government has said.

New rules will make it easier for people to generate their own power with solar panels, store it in batteries and sell it to the National Grid.

If they work, consumers will save £17bn to £40bn by 2050, according to the government and energy regulator Ofgem.

The rules are due to come into effect over the next year.

They will reduce costs for someone who allows their washing machine to be turned on by the internet to maximise use of cheap solar power on a sunny afternoon.

And they will even support people who agree to have their freezers switched off for a few minutes to smooth demand at peak times.

They'll also benefit a business that allows its air-conditioning to be turned down briefly to help balance a spell of peak energy demand on the National Grid.

Among the first to gain from the rule changes will be people with solar panels and battery storage. At the moment they are charged tariffs when they import electricity into their home or export it back to the grid.

It can't be a move welcomed by utilities.


Original Submission