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If there wasn't life on Mars before, there might be now. Before NASA sent Curiosity to Mars, it was thoroughly cleaned of all traces of contaminants. But swabs of rover's surfaces taken before it was sent to Mars have revealed 377 different strains of bacteria that potentially could have made the trip. Some of them may have even survived.

A study that identified 377 strains found that a surprising number resist extreme temperatures and damage caused by ultraviolet-C radiation, the most potentially harmful type. The results, presented today at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, are a first step towards elucidating how certain bacteria might survive decontamination and space flight.

Tags: biology   Curiosity   Mars   science

Chuck E. Cheese is moving into virtual reality. The restaurant chain has just announced a new test program, which will see it use the Oculus Rift headset to simulate a ticket blaster — a large tube where prize tickets whizz around your head — at birthday parties. In the new version, you'll be able to grab virtual tickets that can be redeemed at an IRL merchandise counter. As of now the use of the Rift will be very limited, restricted to a six-week pilot program across three markets, including Dallas, Orlando, and San Diego.

Nearly 30 restaurants in total will be part of the test, and it sounds like the company is eager to use the technology even more in the future. "Oculus Rift technology is the next frontier in the gaming industry,"...

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Ashwini Chhabra, deputy commissioner of policy and planning at the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, will be joining Uber as the startup's first head of policy development and community engagement.

The Commission has had an at-times adversarial relationship with Uber, which launched its yellow cab-hailing app in New York City without approval and had to pull it back. Since then, the commission has affirmed its belief that hailing apps are good for New Yorkers, but forced Uber to go through a bureaucratic process that gave its competitors time to catch up. Having lost its first-mover advantage, Uber is now up against similar apps including Hailo and Taxi Magic.

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Backscatter X-ray screening machines proved too invasive and controversial for airports, but apparently they're getting a new lease on life at US prisons. According to Federal Times, 154 of the full-body scanners have already been distributed to prisons in states including Iowa, Louisiana, and Virginia. Five others have found new homes at sheriffs' offices across Arkansas. The TSA pulled backscatter machines from airports last year in response to criticism from travelers and lawmakers over the revealing output they produce. Rapiscan, the vendor of those scanners, failed to meet a Congressionally-mandated deadline that called for nude, full-body images to be replaced with a more generic representation of passengers being screened. The...

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God bless America.

There are probably a lot of good reasons not to order unregulated alcoholic slushies off the internet, via a private Instagram account. But late last week, with the weather finally warming up, I couldn't think of any. So, after taking the necessary steps, I had a batch of Phrosties delivered to the New York Magazine offices.

Like those quarts of Nutcracker in bodegas' back coolers, or the legendary frozen margaritas once sold to go at El Sombrero, Phrosties join a proud legacy of clandestine New York City booze. These, however, are engineered for the social-media age. To get some, you just request to follow the semi-official Instagram account, which gives you access to the necessary phone numbers. Text the right one for your borough, then wait for the delivery person to show up. They arrive with Igloo coolers full of Phrosties, priced $10 each (plus tip). The flavors have names like Blue Hawaiian, Dragonberry Colada, La Phiesta, and Hero — good luck figuring out any of the action ingredients. All told, the entire process took me like two hours.

The service itself has been around for a little less than a year, but as word has traveled, it's taken off in the last few months. The appeal is obvious: alcoholic slushies, delivered to your door, 24/7. Buying them feels like the cartoon version of a drug deal, and some people will point out that this is kind of a dicey proposition. Order drinks from untraceable strangers and have them delivered to your exact location: As long as you don't have a keen sense of self-preservation, it's hard to beat the convenience.

Phrosties are also a sight to behold: semi-frozen, technicolor concoctions of sugar, ice, food coloring, a lot — a lot — of alcohol, and who knows what else, icy with a pastel ombre effect. They are eminently Instagrammable, like avocado toasts for the Bushwick party set.

But the real question is, how do Phrosties taste? They're the liquid version of that "Turn Down for What" video: It's like drinking frozen Kool-Aid, mixed with Red Bull and spiked with 150-proof Everclear. But to get an expert opinion, I took some to New York's esteemed restaurant critic, Adam Platt.

"This is just pure sugar and grain alcohol," he said after his first taste. "I already have a headache." Even still, he understood the allure: "After the first sip, you’re loving the sugar. After the third sip, you’re thinking how pretty the colors look and why can't you feel your lips? After chugging the whole thing, who cares? You’re lying blotto on the sidewalk and all is bliss."

Read more posts by Alexis Swerdloff

Filed Under: questionable choices, phrosties

When the world’s best “memory athletes” meet in competition, they quickly build mental “palaces” of images, and just as quickly tear them down.

LEGO Ideas is the new name for the grassroots program that's seen sets like Ghostbusters, Minecraft and Back to the Future become LEGO reality. It will also, in my wildest dreams, let this monstrosity become something we can buy.

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If you've ever wanted to wallpaper your living room with the work of the old masters, now's your chance. The Metropolitan Museum of Art this month released an astounding 394,000 high-resolution images to the public. Visitors to the Met’s website can sort images by artist, medium, location, and era, and freely download images that are generally at least 10 megapixels in size.

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The Department of Justice charged five individuals from the People’s Liberation Army in connection with stealing trade secrets from American companies.

Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Tesla Motors, Legislation and Policy

On the subject of Tesla Motors and its efforts to legally sell its electric vehicles directly to consumers without franchised dealerships, the FTC has taken aim at Missouri and New Jersey. The Commission hasn't made any nationwide decision on the subject quite yet, but in a May 16 statement it encouraged the two states to reconsider policies that would further prohibit automakers from selling directly to consumers. And the FTC didn't mince words, calling such laws an example of "protection that is likely harming both competition and consumers." This is much further than the FTC has ever gone before in support of direct vehicle sales.

FTC didn't mince words, saying such laws were "likely harming both competition and consumers."

The statement follows an April blog post from three FTC officials, who wrote that the anti-direct sales mandates were "protectionist" and "bad policy." Tesla has been doing battle with a number of states as well as lobbying efforts from the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), which represents 16,000 new car and truck dealerships representing about 32,000 domestic and international franchises. The NADA has been supporting dealers who oppose Tesla's direct sales for years.

In fact, Jonathan Collegio, vice president of public affairs for the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), maintained that the states need to retain the right to regulate the automobile sales distribution channel.

"These arguments ignore the fact that fierce competition between local dealers drives down prices both within and across brands. When three Ford dealers compete for the same customer, the customer wins, period," Collegio wrote in an e-mail to AutoblogGreen. "Finally, it's a major fallacy to compare buying cars with buying other goods, like books or computers. New cars are major purchases that require licensing, insurance, complex financing involving trade-ins, contain hazardous materials, and if operated incorrectly can cause serious bodily injury."

Tesla representatives didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from AutoblogGreen.

New Jersey and Missouri have both been in the news lately. Garden State politicos have created a bit of a grey area, first voting in mid-March to stop Tesla stores from selling cars starting April 1, then extending the deadline to April 15. Tesla appealed the ban with the state Superior Court last month, and the FTC says the " limited, selective set of exceptions" are "very likely anticompetitive and harmful to consumers." In Missouri, Tesla appears to be winning the on-the-ground fight, but if a proposed bill against direct sales there becomes law, it will "amplify the adverse effects of the current prohibition" and "discourage innovation," the FTC says. Read more below.

Continue reading FTC staff comes out in favor of Tesla, direct vehicle sales

FTC staff comes out in favor of Tesla, direct vehicle sales originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Mon, 19 May 2014 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The bar snacks of yore can’t hold a peanut to the brisket tots and fried fish skins of today.

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If the Moon orbited the Earth at the same distance as the International Space Station, it might look a little something like this:

At that distance, the Moon would cover half the sky and take about five minutes to cross the sky. Of course, as Phil Plait notes, if the Moon were that close, tidal forces would result in complete chaos for everyone involved.

There would be global floods as a tidal wave kilometers high sweeps around the world every 90 minutes (due to the Moon's closer, faster orbit), scouring clean everything in its path. The Earth itself would also be stretched up and down, so there would be apocalyptic earthquakes, not to mention huge internal heating of the Earth and subsequent volcanism. I'd think that the oceans might even boil away due to the enormous heat released from the Earth's interior, so at least that spares you the flood... but replaces water with lava. Yay?

Tags: astronomy   Earth   Moon   Phil Plait   science   space   video

While not quite exhaustive in scope, Laura Turner Garrison's piece in Mental Floss about how Manhattan neighborhoods got their names is worthwhile reading.

In recent decades, businesses and real estate agents have tried in vain to clean up the lively reputation of this west side neighborhood by renaming it "Clinton." Gentrification and expansion from the neighboring theater district have certainly helped the beautification cause. Nonetheless, the area spanning 34th Street to 59th Street and 8th Avenue (or 9th, depending on who you ask) to the Hudson River just can't shake the nickname "Hell's Kitchen."

Not included in the piece is the East Village, which was part of the Lower East Side until the 1960s, when the neighborhood's new residents (artists, hippies, Beatniks) and real estate brokers recast the area as the eastern outpost of Greenwich Village. (via digg)

Tags: language   NYC

It's Internet Week in New York City (just a week to think about the internet, everyone, then we can go back outside), and Mayor de Blasio announced that he's forming a "broadband task force" to "shake up the status quo when it comes to broadband." "The goal is quite simple," he said. "We must have universal, affordable, high-speed internet access throughout this city....It's essential for everything we need to do to be a fair and just city, because we can't continue to have a digital divide that holds back so many of our citizens." [ more › ]

New York State will take a close look at Comcast's proposed purchase of Time Warner Cable, a deal that hangs on the approval of federal and state regulators, including those in New York, where TWC is based. Governor Andrew Cuomo said today that the state's Public Service Commission would be reviewing the purchase to see if it was in the interest of New York and those currently subscribing to TWC within the state. "The state is taking a hands-on review of this merger to ensure that New Yorkers benefit," Governor Cuomo says in a statement.

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The pop-up includes family-style dishes and Thai petits fours.

Duangporn Songvisava, who is Thai, and Dylan Jones, who is Australian, are the married co-chefs at Bo.lan, the Bangkok restaurant that ranked 28th on this year's S.Pellegrino- and Acqua Panna-sponsored Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list. (They met in the kitchen of David Thompson's Nahm, which ranked No. 1.) The chefs serve a kind of Slow Food-inspired set menu of Thai food using sustainable and organic ingredients, and they'll be cooking next month on June 6 and 7 at 545 Greenwich Street. Tickets, which are $150, include hors d'oeuvres, a degustation menu, drinks, desserts, and Thai petit fours. [Official site, Related]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: pop-ups, bangkok, bo lan, foodievents

All these first-person shooters today, spraying their bullets across the battlefield, never picking them up when they're done firing. So wasteful! Thank goodness developer Terri Vellmann and publisher Devolver Digital are releasing Heavy Bullets, a...

Eric Johnson, writing for Recode:

Twitch is a fast-growing service that lets people — mostly men — watch livestreams of other people — mostly men — playing videogames.

And it is booming: When Twitch started up in June 2011, it claimed five million users a month. In 2012, it was up to 20 million. By the end of last year, that number had jumped to 45 million. Broadband service provider Sandvine says Twitch now accounts for 1.35 percent of Internet traffic during peak hours in North America. That’s more than HBO Go’s 1.24 percent.

My 10-year-old son loves watching videos of people playing video games. I thought this was odd at first, in a grumpy dad “These kids today…” way. Then last week, while watching my beloved New York Yankees for the umpteenth time this year, it hit me: there’s nothing different about watching video of one sort of game (video) than another (sports). I watch hundreds of hours of baseball every year.

Tricia Duryee, writing at GeekWire, calls Twitch “the ESPN of the video game industry”, which I think captures the potential opportunity here perfectly.

Banjo-Kazooie and Perfect Dark studio Rare has been hit with layoffs, with reports putting the figure at around 16 employees losing jobs. According to Eurogamer and CVG sources, the layoffs affect a number of high-profile staff, while Eurogamer adds...

The Congressmen who sent letters to the FCC condemning Net Neutrality received 2.3 times more campaign contributions from the cable industry than average. The analysis, conducted with Maplight's Congressional transparency tools, shows that Dems are cheaper to bribe than Republicans (GOP members received 5x the Congressional average from Big Cable; Dems only 1.2x) and shows what a chairmanship of a powerful committee is worth: Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who chairs the FCC-overseeing Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, got $109,250 (the average congressscritter got $11,651).

29 Congresscritters own stock in Comcast, and Comcast is the 25th most-held stock in Congress. Read the rest

A group offers instructional videos on slipping through station gates without paying, and it uses monthly dues to cover fines for any members who are nabbed.

LogoLounge is a database of over 200,000 logos, amassed with the intention of creating “a more efficient way to find reference material for logos.” It’s exactly the kind of laudable idea that the Internet makes possible — in the analog age, even knowing what logos were out there was an impossibility. But the fact that a…

As redditor Tomcruiseama points out, the $70 Ikea PS 2014 lamp is basically a Death Star: it's a Hoberman-sphere-like lampshade that can be mechanically expanded or contracted to control the amount of light it emits.

Computer performance is a bit of a shell game. You're always waiting for one of four things:

• Disk
• CPU
• Memory
• Network

But which one? How long will you wait? And what will you do while you're waiting?

Did you see the movie "Her"? If not, you should. It's great. One of my favorite scenes is the AI describing just how difficult it becomes to communicate with humans:

It's like I'm reading a book… and it's a book I deeply love. But I'm reading it slowly now. So the words are really far apart and the spaces between the words are almost infinite. I can still feel you… and the words of our story… but it's in this endless space between the words that I'm finding myself now. It's a place that's not of the physical world. It's where everything else is that I didn't even know existed. I love you so much. But this is where I am now. And this who I am now. And I need you to let me go. As much as I want to, I can't live your book any more.

I have some serious reservations about the work environment pictured in Her where everyone's spending all day creepily whispering to their computers, but there is deep fundamental truth in that one pivotal scene. That infinite space "between" what we humans feel as time is where computers spend all their time. It's an entirely different timescale.

The book Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud has a great table that illustrates just how enormous these time differentials are. Just translate computer time into arbitrary seconds:

1 CPU cycle	0.3 ns	1 s
Level 1 cache access	0.9 ns	3 s
Level 2 cache access	2.8 ns	9 s
Level 3 cache access	12.9 ns	43 s
Main memory access	120 ns	6 min
Solid-state disk I/O	50-150 μs	2-6 days
Rotational disk I/O	1-10 ms	1-12 months
Internet: SF to NYC	40 ms	4 years
Internet: SF to UK	81 ms	8 years
Internet: SF to Australia	183 ms	19 years
OS virtualization reboot	4 s	423 years
SCSI command time-out	30 s	3000 years
Hardware virtualization reboot	40 s	4000 years
Physical system reboot	5 m	32 millenia

The above Internet times are kind of optimistic. If you look at the AT&T real time US internet latency chart, the time from SF to NYC is more like 70ms. So I'd double the Internet numbers in that chart.

Latency is one thing, but it's also worth considering the cost of that bandwidth.

Speaking of the late, great Jim Gray, he also had an interesting way of explaining this. If the CPU registers are how long it takes you to fetch data from your brain, then going to disk is the equivalent of fetching data from Pluto.

He was probably referring to traditional spinning rust hard drives, so let's adjust that extreme endpoint for today:

• Distance to Pluto: 4.67 billion miles.
• Latest fastest spinning HDD performance (49.7) versus latest fastest PCI Express SSD (506.8). That's an improvement of 10x.
• New distance: 467 million miles.
• Distance to Jupiter: 500 million miles.

So instead of travelling to Pluto to get our data from disk in 1999, today we only need to travel to … Jupiter.

That's disk performance over the last decade. How much faster did CPUs, memory, and networks get in the same time frame? Would a 10x or 100x improvement really make a dent in these vast infinite spaces in time that computers deal with?

To computers, we humans work on a completely different time scale, practically geologic time. Which is completely mind-bending. The faster computers get, the bigger this time disparity grows.

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Even if you're not actively using your consoles, they're still using electricity—and the amount of energy consoles consume has increased from last generation consoles.

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In this video from Mashable, the Sesame Street crew, along with Zachary Levi sing about the wonders of putting down your technology and going outdoors on a sunny day. Maybe they just haven't bought into our all virtual reality future.

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It's currently illegal to use unmanned aerial drones for anything commercial in the US, something that could be changing sooner than expected. Bloomberg reports that the US Federal Aviation Administration plans a "streamlined" approval process for low-risk commercial uses like farming and filmmaking. The new rule, which will be proposed in November, would allow commercial drones less than 55 pounds to be used in such activities as long as they were considered low risk to humans, structures, and other aircraft. Those approvals could come ahead of a larger reevaluation of FAA regulations covering small unmanned aircraft, expected sometime next year.

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Beautiful animated map by Joey Cherdarchuk showing Manhattan’s work and home population hour-by-hour.