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24 Jan 19:46

More Bad News For the F-35

by Soulskill
schwit1 sends this news from Aviation Week: "A new U.S. Defense Department report warns that ongoing software, maintenance and reliability problems with Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 stealth fighter could delay the Marine Corps' plans to start using its F-35 jets by mid-2015. It said Lockheed had delivered F-35 jets with 50 percent or less of the software capabilities required by its production contracts with the Pentagon. The computer-based logistics system known as ALIS was fielded with 'serious deficiencies' and remained behind schedule, which affected servicing of existing jets needed for flight testing, the report said. It said the ALIS diagnostic system failed to meet even basic requirements. The F35 program, which began in 2001, is 70 percent over initial cost estimates, and years behind schedule, but top U.S. officials say it is now making progress. They have vowed to safeguard funding for the program to keep it on track. Earlier this week, the nonprofit Center for International Policy said Lockheed had greatly exaggerated its estimate (PDF) that the F-35 program sustained 125,000 U.S. jobs to shore up support for the program."

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24 Jan 19:28

01/24/2014

by aaron

01/24/2014

23 Jan 19:23

Celebrating Dungeons & Dragons' 40th Anniversary

by samzenpus
disconj writes "With the 40th anniversary of the release of Dungeons & Dragons coming up this weekend, the Internet is ablaze with reflections on its legacy. Dave Ewalt gives an intro for the uninitiated. Ethan Gilsdorf explains how 'all I need to know about life I learned from Dungeons & Dragons'. Finally, Jon Peterson presents a video show-and-tell of rare artifacts from D&D's development." The real question is how many characters have you lost in Tomb of Horrors?

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23 Jan 19:23

Up To a Quarter of California Smog Comes From China

by samzenpus
wabrandsma writes "What goes around comes around – quite literally in the case of smog. The US has outsourced many of its production lines to China and, in return, global winds are exporting the Chinese factories' pollution right back to the U.S. From the article: '...the team combined their emissions data with atmospheric models that predict how winds shuttle particles around. These winds push Chinese smog over the Pacific and dump it on the western US, from Seattle to southern California. The modelling revealed that on any given day in 2006, goods made in China for the US market accounted for up to a quarter of the sulphate smog over the western U.S..'"

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23 Jan 19:22

Lenovo To Buy IBM's Server Business For $2.3 Billion

by timothy
itwbennett writes "Well, that was fast. Earlier this week the rumor mill was getting revved up about a potential sale of IBM's x86 server business, with Lenovo, Dell, and Fujitsu reportedly all interested in scooping it up. On Thursday, Lenovo Group announced it has agreed to buy IBM's x86 server hardware business and related maintenance services for $2.3 billion. The deal encompasses IBM's System x, BladeCenter and Flex System blade servers and switches, x86-based Flex integrated systems, NeXtScale and iDataPlex servers and associated software, blade networking and maintenance operations. IBM will retain its System z mainframes, Power Systems, Storage Systems, Power-based Flex servers, and PureApplication and PureData appliances." SlashBI has some words from an analyst about why Lenovo wants the x86 product line more than IBM does.

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23 Jan 19:18

Some designers are grieving over Squarespace's logo design tool

by Mark Frauenfelder

On Twitter, some designers are going through the five stages of grief over Squarespace's logo designer tool.

Denial: "This is garbage."

Anger: "This is infuriating. I thought better of Squarespace."

Bargaining: "As a professional Designer, I am thinking about discontinuing my web service with them."

Depression: "This Squarespace Logo maker is gonna put a lot of people out of work."

Acceptance: "The people making a logo in Squarespace weren't going to hire you anyway. At least now they have a simple tool to use."

    






23 Jan 19:17

For sale: water-tank castle

by Cory Doctorow
Chris Chandler

$500?! Do what now!?


If you're in New Zealand and want to have the coolest playhouse/LARP-prop south of the equator, this Trademe ad is offering a concrete water-tank converted to a castle for a surprisingly reasonable $500 (you have to pay to move it, though).


This one off creation from an old concrete water tank makes a unique playhouse.

Downstairs dungeon with gate.

Ladder leads to timber & ply 1st. floor.

Painted roof to form turrets.

Perspex windows.

Pictures do not do it justice.

Castle Playhouse (Thanks, Edwin!)
    






23 Jan 19:17

C3PO and Stormtrooper onesies

by Cory Doctorow


The C3PO onesie isn't quite a kigurumi, but it sure does look cozy. $70, sizes S to XXX-L. Pair it with a Storm Trooper armor onesie and order now to get it in time for a Valentine's Day game of "Naughty droid and stern Imperial foot-slogger."

[Insert "droid you're looking for" joke here.]

Star Wars C-3PO Costume Hooded Union Suit (via Geeks Are Sexy)

    






23 Jan 19:04

IBM says goodbye to x86 forever, sells server lines to Lenovo

by Sean Gallagher
IBM's BladeCenter servers will soon wear a Lenovo nameplate.

After reports earlier this week that IBM was again shopping its x86 server unit around—including talks with Dell—Lenovo executives announced that they had reached an agreement with IBM to buy the business for a price of $2.3 billion.

IBM will stay in the high-end server and mainframe business, focusing on its System Z and Power lines as well as its storage systems and specialized server appliances. Big Blue will hand over its System x, BladeCenter, and other x86-based server lines to Lenovo. Once the transaction is finalized, Lenovo will instantly become at least as large a server company as Dell, if not as large as HP.

The deal with Lenovo may have been reached after IBM failed to find a better one. Last year's negotiations between the companies reportedly broke down after Lenovo offered under $2.5 billion for the unit, prompting IBM to walk away. While the exact offer Lenovo made in 2013 isn't known, today's deal certainly isn't for more than that. But on the upside for IBM, the transaction will mostly be in actual dollars: Lenovo will pay approximately $2 billion in cash, and the rest of the transaction will be paid for in Lenovo stock. Lenovo and IBM will also enter into a strategic partnership that will allow Lenovo to resell IBM’s storage and cloud computing systems as well as some of its software. And about 7,500 current IBM employees are expected to be hired by Lenovo worldwide.

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20 Jan 17:45

Microsoft Quietly Fixes Windows XP Resource Hog Problem

by timothy
Chris Chandler

Such a timely update.

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft indicated this week that it has fixed a Windows XP resource-hog problem associated with the system's SVCHOST.EXE processes. Windows XP users affected by this problem typically found that the operating system was using up system resources for 15 minutes to an hour after startup, making it difficult to use the machine during that period. The Microsoft Update team had vowed last month to spend the holiday break tackling the issue, which has plagued some users for years. The fix involved stopping the system from perpetually checking Internet Explorer updates. Microsoft indicated that the fix was rolled out on Tuesday."

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20 Jan 17:35

Donut-sized rock suddenly appears in front of Mars rover

by Eric Bangeman
The same patch of Martian landscape, imaged 12 Martian days apart.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

As we’ve learned from our recent explorations of Mars, there’s really not a whole lot going on there. Yes, there are geological processes at work, but most of them move at a nearly imperceptible pace. So that's why after nearly ten years of Martian rover exploration, NASA scientists were surprised to see a rock suddenly “appear” in front of the Mars Rover last week.

You can see the rock in the images above. The image on the left shows the area in front of Opportunity on Sol 3528. The image to the right was taken 12 Martian days later and is almost identical—except for a rock the size of a donut that had unexpectedly shown up

NASA announced the discovery of the rock at an event at Caltech in Pasadena this past Thursday night, dubbing the rock “Pinnacle Island.” “It’s about the size of a jelly doughnut,” NASA Mars Exploration Rover lead scientist Steve Squyres told Discovery News. “It was a total surprise, we were like ‘wait a second, that wasn’t there before, it can’t be right. Oh my god! It wasn’t there before!’ We were absolutely startled.”

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20 Jan 17:31

Automation

'Automating' comes from the roots 'auto-' meaning 'self-', and 'mating', meaning 'screwing'.
14 Jan 21:20

How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publishing

by Dave Girard
Aurich Lawson

As the big dog of desktop publishing in the '80s and '90s, QuarkXPress was synonymous with professional publishing. In fact, it was publishing. But its hurried and steady decline is one of the greatest business failures in modern tech.

Quark's demise is truly the stuff of legend. In fact, the story reads like the fall of any empire: failed battles, growing discontent among the overtaxed masses, hungry and energized foes, hubris, greed, and... uh, CMYK PDFs. What did QuarkXPress do—or fail to do—that saw its complete dominance of desktop publishing wither in less than a decade? In short, it didn’t listen.

The rise

I went to a high school for the arts—yes, it was just like Fame, so stop asking—and only got seriously into computers, Photoshop, and design in the early nineties. Back then, when asked “what program do you learn for jobs in page layout and design," there was only one answer: QuarkXPress. Sure, you might have heard the name Pagemaker by Aldus—later purchased by Adobe—but even with my little awareness of the publishing world outside our school walls, it was obvious that no one used it. When I eventually got summer jobs in DTP service bureaus and magazines, the dominance of QuarkXPress 3 was total. The widely reported statistics were that XPress enjoyed 95 percent dominance of the publishing market at that time. But when I left Vice in ’99, the privately held Quark Inc.’s best days were behind them. That was the year that Adobe’s InDesign 1.0 hit the market.

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14 Jan 19:38

DIY tablet computer made from Raspberry Pi

by Mark Frauenfelder

I love that individuals now have the tools and technology to affordably make their own consumer electronics. Michael Caster built a tablet with a Raspberry Pi (a credit card sized Linux computer) that he calls the PiPad. It has a wood and carbon fiber case and looks great!

How I built a Raspberry Pi Tablet

    






14 Jan 19:36

Charter tries to buy Time Warner, create cable giant to challenge Comcast

by Jon Brodkin

Charter Communications has offered to buy Time Warner Cable (TWC) for $61.3 billion, taking its case directly to shareholders because TWC management turned down its previous overtures.

“We haven’t received a serious response,” Charter CEO Tom Rutledge told Bloomberg today. Rutledge complained that TWC rejected its $61 billion bid and made an unrealistically high counter-offer.

Charter released an announcement saying, "Time Warner Cable's response led Charter to determine there is no genuine intent from Time Warner Cable's management and Board of Directors to engage in a merger agreement, and that it is prudent to bring the matter to shareholders directly."

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08 Jan 19:15

Intel Puts a PC Into an SD Card-Sized Casing

by Soulskill
New submitter mpicpp points out that Intel has unveiled a PC called Edison, which fits into a casing the size of an SD card. "Edison is based on Intel’s Quark chip, which it launched last year as its attempt to muscle in on that other flavour-of-the-month market: the so-called Internet of Things. It also reflects the company’s new-found keenness on the 'maker' community. Quark, a 22nm low-power x86 processor with two cores, sits inside Intel’s Arduino-compatible Raspberry Pi-alike Galileo board computer. Edison takes the same chip, connects it to a wee bit of LPDDR2 memory and Flash storage, and plugs in Bluetooth 4.0 Smart — aka LE — and Wi-Fi for broader connectivity."

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08 Jan 19:14

World's Oldest Decimal Multiplication Table Discovered

by Soulskill
ananyo writes "From a few fragments out of a collection of 23-century-old Chinese bamboo strips, historians have pieced together what they say is the world's oldest example of a multiplication table in base 10. Each strip is about 7 to 12 millimeters wide and half a meter long, and has a vertical line of ancient Chinese calligraphy painted on it in black ink. The bamboo pieces constitute 65 ancient texts and are thought to be among the most important artifacts from the Warring States period before the unification of China. But 21 bamboo strips contained only numbers and, on closer inspection, turned out to be a multiplication table. As in a modern multiplication table, the entries at the intersection of each row and column in the matrix provide the results of multiplying the corresponding numbers. The table can also help users to multiply any whole or half integer between 0.5 and 99.5. The researchers suspect that officials used the multiplication table to calculate surface area of land, yields of crops and the amounts of taxes owed."

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07 Jan 18:09

strip for December / 18 / 2013 - Prayer for a new space race

27 Dec 18:07

Gaiman's "Ocean at the End of the Lane" wins UK book of the year prize

by Cory Doctorow

Congratulations to Neil Gaiman, whose modern fairytale The Ocean at the End of the Lane was named "book of the year" by popular vote in the UK Specsavers National Book Awards.

He said: "I've never written a book before that was so close to my own heart: a story about memory and magic and the fear and danger of being a child. I wasn't sure that anyone else would like it.

"I'm amazed and thrilled that so many other people have read it, loved it, and made their friends read it too.

"Winning a National Book Award was thrilling; discovering that the public have made The Ocean At The End Of The Lane their Book of the Year is somewhere out beyond wonderful. Thank you to everyone who voted."

Neil Gaiman novel wins Book of the Year [The Guardian]

    






23 Dec 19:22

Microsoft's Ticking Time Bomb Is Windows XP

by timothy
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Shona Ghosh writes at PC Pro that the final deadline for Windows XP support in April 2014 will act as the starting pistol for developing new exploits as hackers reverse-engineer patches issued for Windows 7 or Windows 8 to scout for XP vulnerabilities. "The very first month that Microsoft releases security updates for supported versions of Windows, attackers will reverse-engineer those updates, find the vulnerabilities and test Windows XP to see if it shares [them]," says Tim Rains, the director of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group. Microsoft says that XP shared 30 security holes with Windows 7 and Windows 8 between July 2012 and July 2013. Gregg Keizer says that if a major chunk of the world's PCs remains tied to XP, as seems certain, Microsoft will face an unenviable choice: Stick to plan and put millions of customers at risk from malware infection, or backtrack from long-standing policies and proclamations." (Read on for more.)

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23 Dec 19:21

Huge Pool of Ice-Free Water Discovered Under Greenland Ice

by timothy
The BBC reports that researchers have discovered a huge pool of meltwater beneath Greenland's ice sheet, trapped "in the air space between particles of ice, similar to the way that fruit juice stays liquid in a slush drink." From the article, based on research published in Nature Geoscience (abstract): "The scientists say the water is prevented from freezing by the large amounts of snow that fall on the surface of the ice sheet late in the summer. This insulates the water from the air temperatures which are below freezing, allowing the water to persist as liquid all year long. Other researchers believe this discovery may help explain disparities between projections of mass loss by climate models and observations from satellites."

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23 Dec 19:21

Mikhail Kalashnikov: Inventor of AK-47 Dies At 94

by samzenpus
necro81 writes "Lt. Gen. Mikhail T. Kalashnikov, an arms designer for the Soviet Union, creator of the AK-47, passed away today at age 94. Kalashnikov was born a peasant and entered the Soviet Army as a conscript. However, the self-taught tinkerer had an aptitude that took him far. The AK-47, his best-known creation, was praised for its reliability and low cost; attributes that have made it the most successful firearm ever, seeing use in homeland defense, rebellion, terrorism, and untold massacres. The inventor was himself ambivalent about the uses his creation had seen, but was nevertheless proud of his contribution to his country, where he is praised as a hero."

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23 Dec 19:20

A Reburial fit for a King

by Medievalists.net

An Oxford University academic has put together an authentic order of service for the planned reburial of Richard III.

The post A Reburial fit for a King appeared first on Medievalists.net.

23 Dec 19:13

Target says sorry again, offers 10% off and free credit monitoring

by Nathan Mattise
In essence, "look, we're really really sorry."

In light of the recent, massive breach that saw the store lose data for 40 million customer credit cards, Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel took to the Web yesterday to offer updates, apologies, and special discounts.

Steinhafel said "the issue has been identified and eliminated" and that shoppers’ PINs, birth dates, and Social Security numbers were not stolen. Still, he empathized with customers for the stress and confusion caused by this situation. He said Target will be in touch with all impacted customers, but that the store has heard “very few reports of actual fraud.” Even so, Steinhafel made a point to note any customers who were affected “will not be held financially responsible for any credit card or debit card fraud.”

As for the difficulty some customers have experienced when trying to contact Target through both the Web and its call center, the CEO chalked up wait times and unresponsive pages to “unprecedented call volume.” Steinhafel said Target is “working continuously to build capacity” for these resources.

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23 Dec 19:12

Thorium put to use, kills a few more versions of Supersymmetry

by John Timmer
Yes, this is the official logo of the team behind the research.

Are there any particles beyond the Higgs lurking where the LHC might discover them? A team of researchers that calls itself the ACME project has now produced a measurement that says the answer is "probably not." ACME looked for any imperfections in the shape of an electron's electric field and placed a limit on the measurements that is 12 times smaller than anyone had previously achieved. As far as they could tell, the electron has no imperfections, which rules out the possibility of finding many of the new particles predicted to be within the mass range that will be explored by the LHC.

The research relied on thorium atoms, which are mostly discussed as a potential nuclear fuel. But in this case, the authors were after the electrons. Thorium's high atomic number means that its innermost electrons orbit within an intense electric field that's internal to the atom, and they travel at relativistic speeds. These properties will serve to exaggerate even a minuscule imperfection in the electric field of the electron itself.

The imperfection the ACME team was after is called the electric dipole moment, and it's measured relative to the electron's spin. If the electron has an electric dipole moment, then its charge will be unevenly distributed along its spin. Nothing in the Standard Model can create an electron dipole moment, but most extensions to the Model, including Super Symmetry, posit heavier particles, the mere existence of which should alter the dipole moment.

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20 Dec 19:57

Scientific Data Disappears At Alarming Rate, 80% Lost In Two Decades

by samzenpus
cold fjord writes "UPI reports, 'Eighty percent of scientific data are lost within two decades, disappearing into old email addresses and obsolete storage devices, a Canadian study (abstract, article paywalled) indicated. The finding comes from a study tracking the accessibility of scientific data over time, conducted at the University of British Columbia. Researchers attempted to collect original research data from a random set of 516 studies published between 1991 and 2011. While all data sets were available two years after publication, the odds of obtaining the underlying data dropped by 17 per cent per year after that, they reported. "Publicly funded science generates an extraordinary amount of data each year," UBC visiting scholar Tim Vines said. "Much of these data are unique to a time and place, and is thus irreplaceable, and many other data sets are expensive to regenerate.' — More at The Vancouver Sun and Smithsonian."

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20 Dec 19:57

IDC: 40 Percent of Developers Are 'Hobbyists'

by Soulskill
itwbennett writes "A new IDC study has found that 'of the 18.5 million software developers in the world, about 7.5 million — roughly 40 percent — are so-called hobbyist developers,' which by IDC's definition is 'someone who spends 10 hours a month or more writing computer or mobile device programs, even though they are not paid primarily to be a programmer.' Lumped into this group are students, people hoping to strike it rich with mobile apps, and people who code on the job but aren't counted among the developer ranks."

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18 Dec 19:20

'Walter White,' meth dealer, gets 12 years in prison

by Xeni Jardin


Walter White, meth dealer.

A Montana man who "dealt methamphetamine out of his home and got shot in his driveway in a gunfight with his son over a drug debt will spend more than 12 years in federal prison. On Monday, Walter Jack White, 53, was sentenced to nine years on a meth possession charge and to a consecutive 3.5 years for a firearms conviction. (ht: @ditzkoff)

    






18 Dec 19:20

2013: a year of very bad cops (and some good ones)

by Cory Doctorow


Vice's Year in Bad Cops rounds up the worst American police stories of the years: cops who executed peaceful housepets in front of children, cops who forgot about jailed innocents and left them to drink their own urine, cops whose dogs only attack brown people, cops who only stop-and-frisk brown people, and, of course, Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

But the article also singles out Chris Burbank, the Chief of the Salt Lake City Police who sounds like an awesome guy. He arranged for a peaceful, respectful eviction of SLC Occupy, refuses to have his officers enforce immigration laws, and won't turn his cops into militarized SWAT goons. His motto: "[The cops] aren't an occupying force. We are a part of the community."

Most Cowardly Pet Killing, Dog Category: Antoine Jones of Georgia
On October 7, Antoine Jones, a six-foot, 300-pound probation officer, went to the Albany, Georgia, home of Cherrie Shelton, as he had multiple times in the past in order to check up on her son. As Jones walked to the door, Shelton’s 12-pound Jack Russell terrier Patches ran outside barking at him. Shelton told the local news she tried to explain that Patches didn’t bite, but before she could finish, Jones shot her dog, who died half an hour later. The officer said in a report he was threatened by the tiny dog, but though the Georgia Department of Corrections initially supported him, an internal investigation of the incident was reportedly opened at the end of October.

Most Cowardly Pet killing, Non-Dog Category: Unnamed NYPD Officers
According to a lawsuit filed by Evelyn Lugo, during a legally dubious raid on her home in September 2012 a New York cop stomped the family’s pet parakeet to death while yelling, “Fuck the bird!” The injuries to several family members are documented in photographs, so it’s quite possible the bird-murder portion of the complaint is accurate as well. RIP Tito the bird.

Most Cowardly Pet Killing, in Front of Children Category: Barry Accorti of Ohio
On June 10, a North Ridgeville, Ohio, police officer responded to a call to remove five feral kittens from a yard. According to the homeowner, officer Barry Accorti told her that the cats were going to “kitty heaven,” as the shelters were full, then shot them all 15 feet from her door. Her children saw the whole thing and were naturally hysterical, and the woman was baffled that Accorti would murder cats so casually within their earshot. Though the North Ridgeville Police Department’s Facebook page was swamped by threats and complaints when the story came out, chief Mike Freeman said his officer’s “actions were appropriate.”

This Year in Bad Cops [Lucy Steigerwald/Vice]

(Image: SWAT team members prepare for a training exercise/Oregon Department of Transportation)

    






17 Dec 19:58

Updated: Federal judge finds NSA spying unconstitutional

by Joe Mullin

In a stunning decision, a DC-based federal judge has ruled that the National Security Agency spying revealed this summer violates the constitution.

The opinion (PDF) published today by US District Judge Richard Leon is in response to a lawsuit filed by Larry Klayman, a longtime conservative activist. Klayman was fast on the draw, filing his lawsuit on June 6, one day after widespread NSA surveillance was revealed in June.

Leon's order grants an injunction that will shut down the NSA's Bulk Telephony Metadata Program, and it requires the government to destroy the metadata collected on the plaintiffs' accounts. The shutdown will only happen if an appeals court agrees with Leon, who has stayed the injunction pending appeal, "in light of the significant national security issues at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues."

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