The State of Open Source Hardware In 2008 (2)
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Soulskill (49)
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ptorrone writes "MAKE Magazine has put together their 3rd annual 'State of Open Source Hardware 2008' — in just a few years, the number of projects has grown from a small handful to an amazing 60+ offerings. Similar to open source software, open source hardware is available with source code, schematics, firmware and bills of materials, and allows commercial use. The most popular project, Arduino, the open source prototyping platform for artists and engineers, has ...
New "Juno" Mission To Jupiter Announced (9)
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Riding with Robots writes "Today NASA announced it is officially proceeding with the Juno robotic mission to Jupiter. Scheduled to launch in August 2011 and reach the largest planet in 2016, the spacecraft will orbit the planet 32 times, skimming about 4,800 kilometers over the planet's cloud tops for about a year. The mission will focus on Jupiter's structure and evolution, and not on Europa or the other icy moons that may hide oceans under ...
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JonTheGeek said:
Dammit, why aren't we going to Europa??
A Computer Composing and Playing Jazz (9)
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timothy (8)
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Roland Piquepaille writes "The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has some unusual teaching programs. One PhD student, Øyvind Brandtsegg, is a graduate of the jazz program and this article describes how has developed a computer program and a musical instrument for improvisation. The PhD student is 36 years old and is at the same time a composer, a musician and computer programmer. His 'computer instrument' can take any recorded sound as input and ...
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Brian said:
Equally appropriate title: A Computer Composing and Playing Random Notes
New iPhone Apps Help Drivers Beat Speed Traps (16)
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Ponca City, We love you writes "Two mobile applications, NMobile and Trapster, are providing drivers with up-to-date maps of speed-enforcement zones with live police traps, speed cameras or red-light cameras. Each application pulls up a map pinpointing the locations of speed traps within driving distance and an audio alert will sound as vehicles approach an area tagged as harboring a speed trap. Both applications rely on the wisdom of the crowds for their data with ...
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Brian said:
Ironically, it would not be very difficult to use your cellphone to prove that you are speeding. In the future the very thing that alerts you of speed traps is really the thing that is getting you busted.
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darinr80 said:
Another thumbs up for the iPhone!
Google Turns On User-Tweakable Search Wiki (9)
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timothy (8)
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Barence writes "Google has launched a new service that allows users to tailor to their own search results. Called SearchWiki, the service allows Google account holders to move results up or off the rankings, or even add their own choice of site to the top of the search results. Google claims that any changes a user makes will only affect their results, and not those of fellow surfers, although it's difficult to believe that some ...
Massive Martian Glaciers Found (15)
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timothy (8)
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Kozar_The_Malignant writes "Scientific American is reporting that 'data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter point to vast glaciers buried beneath thin layers of crustal debris.' Data from the surface-penetrating radar on MRO revealed that two well-known mid-latitude features are composed of solid water ice. One is about three times the size of the City of Los Angeles. This certainly makes the idea of establishing a station on Mars far more plausible."Read more of this story at ...
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JDAL. said:
Okay. Let's go start a colony! (And by "let's" I mean "people who need little more than water and dirt to be happy.")
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Dan Bencsik said:
sweetness, I want a piece of that real estate. Lol
Adobe Releases C/C++ To Flash Compiler (43)
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SnT2k writes "Adobe recently released the beta version of Alchemy which compiles C/C++ code into AS3 bytecode (which runs on AVM2) that can run on the Flash or Flex platform and boasts increased performance for computationally-intensive tasks (but still slower than native C/C++). It was demonstrated last year during the Chicago MAX 2007 to run Quake. A few months later it has been demonstrated to run a Python interpreter and Nintendo Emulator. One interesting tidbit ...
Scientists see political attacks as badge of pride (12)
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Fewer Than 1% Arrested From TSA's "Behavior Detection" (10)
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An anonymous reader writes "Fewer than 1% of airline passengers singled out at airports using the much vaunted 'suspicious behavior detection' techniques are arrested, Transportation Security Administration figures show. The TSA program, launched in early 2006, looks for terrorists using a controversial surveillance method based on behavior detection and has led to more than 160,000 people in airports receiving scrutiny, such as a pat-down search or a brief interview. It has resulted in only 1,266 ...
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i80and said:
I've said it before and I've said it again: I don't have a problem with the TSA. Gage Blackwood does his job well, and Baldwin is a goo--oh, wait, wrong TSA.
NASA Tests Deep-Space Network Modeled On the Internet (11)
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hcg50a writes "NASA has successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet. Working as part of a NASA-wide team, engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit dozens of space images to and from a NASA science spacecraft located about 20 million miles from Earth. The store-and-forward protocol was designed by NASA in consultation with Vint Cerf. Here's a discussion from ...
The Neurological Basis of Con Games (9)
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Hugh Pickens writes "If we humans have such big brains, how can we get conned? Neuroeconomist Paul J. Zak has an interesting post on Psychology Today in which he recounts how he was the victim of a classic con called 'The Pigeon Drop' when he was a teenager and explains how con men take advantage of the Human Oxytocin Mediated Attachment System, called THOMAS, a powerful brain circuit that releases the neurochemical oxytocin when we ...
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ParanoidMike said:
sounds like a scientific basis for a David Mamet Script-o-Matic...
Pirates Hijack $100 Million Saudi Oil Tanker (1)
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A Saudi supertanker hijacked by pirates with its $100 million oil cargo was anchoring off Somalia on Tuesday, the U.S. navy said. "At this time, Vela is awaiting further contact from the pirates in control of the vessel," the shipping arm of the state oil giant Saudi Aramco announced.
Stark: Talk Radio's Killing GOP (2)
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Steven Stark: There are plenty of theories circulating about how the GOP got itself into this mess, but one prime suspect clearly isn't getting its due -- conservative talk radio. Today, in a media universe of thousands of choices, the key to economic success is to find your intense minority and play to it for all it's worth. But divisiveness is as profitable in radio as it is fatal to a mass political movement.
10 Trends in Game Design (1)
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Aspiring game designer and 3D artist David McClure discusses the top 10 trends he sees in game design and which games have them. Paying attention to the design decisions that developers make in new games is key to guessing where games, as a medium, will go next.
4.8Gbps USB 3.0 spec finalized; hardware still long way off (11)
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jhruska@arstechnica.com (Joel Hruska) (2)
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The USB 3.0 Promoter Group announced the completion of the USB 3.0 standard today, clearing the way for a new wave of Super Speed devices... eventually. We won't actually see support for the standard on devices or motherboards until late 2009/mid-2010.Read More...
Why Developers Are Switching To Macs (28)
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snydeq writes "Programmers are finding themselves increasingly drawn to the Mac as a development platform, in large part due to Apple's decision to move to Intel chips and to embrace virtualization of other OSes, which has turned Mac OS X into a flexible tool for development, InfoWorld reports. The explosion of interest in smartphone development is helping the trend, with iPhone development lock-in to the Mac environment the chief motivating factor for Apple as a ...
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mernisse said:
I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds OS X cumbersome and painful to use.
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DCFemella said:
Cause Macs rule!
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Simon MacDonald said:
"The sting of ka-ching" is the only thing holding me back.
The Science of the Lightsaber (12)
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Smartcowboy writes "Chances are that you have seen a lightsaber at one time or another, whether on the evening news or down at the local cantina. Therefore you know that a lightsaber is an amazing and versatile device that is able to cut through nearly anything in a matter of milliseconds. Have you ever wondered how these remarkable weapons work? Where does the energy come from, and how are they able to contain that energy ...
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JDAL. said:
Money line, from the slashdot editor: "I was sure the blade was made from the focused hate and disappointment of the last three movies."
Science's Alternative To an Intelligent Creator (11)
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Hugh Pickens writes "Discover magazine has an interesting article on the multiverse theory — a synthesis of string theory and the anthropic principle that explains why our universe seems perfectly tailored for life without invoking an intelligent creator. Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse. While most of those universes are barren, some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life. The idea that the universe was ...
