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theodp (442580) writes Over at Alarming Development, Jonathan Edwards has an interesting rant entitled Developer Inequality and the Technical Debt Crisis. The heated complaints that the culture of programming unfairly excludes some groups, Edwards feels, is a distraction from a bigger issue with far greater importance to society. "The bigger injustice," Edwards writes, "is that programming has become an elite: a vocation requiring rare talents, grueling training, and total dedication. The way things are today if you want to be a programmer you had best be someone like me on the autism spectrum who has spent their entire life mastering vast realms of arcane knowledge — and enjoys it. Normal humans are effectively excluded from developing software. The real injustice of developer inequality is that it doesn't have to be this way." Edwards concludes with a call to action, "The web triumphalists love to talk about changing the world. Well if you really want to change the world, empower regular people to build web apps. Disrupt web programming! Who's with me?" Ed Finkler, who worries about his own future as a developer in The Developer's Dystopian Future, seconds that emotion. "I think about how I used to fill my time with coding," Finkler writes. "So much coding. I was willing to dive so deep into a library or framework or technology to learn it. My tolerance for learning curves grows smaller every day. New technologies, once exciting for the sake of newness, now seem like hassles. I'm less and less tolerant of hokey marketing filled with superlatives. I value stability and clarity."

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An anonymous reader writes In one year, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will reach Pluto after over 8 years of travel. "Not only did we choose the date, by the way, we chose the hour and the minute. And we're on track," says Alan Stern, the principal investigator for NASA's Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission. As the New Horizons spacecraft gets closer to Pluto, we will begin getting the clearest images we've ever gotten. "A great deal of planning went into this mission. But in case you're wondering, the New Horizons team did not plan for Pluto to be downgraded to a dwarf planet in the same year as the launch. That didn't change anything for Alan Stern. Some planetary scientists still dispute Pluto's planet status, and Stern says he'll always think of Pluto as a planet. Either way, it's a distant realm ripe for exploration. Scientists don't know exactly what they will see there. And that's the exciting part. 'When we first sent missions to Jupiter, no one expected to find moons that would have active volcanoes. And I could go down a long list of how often I've been surprised by the richness of nature,' Stern says."

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rtoz writes In the movie Terminator 2, the shape-shifting T-1000 robot morphs into a liquid state to squeeze through tight spaces or to repair itself when harmed. Now a phase-changing material built from wax and foam, and capable of switching between hard and soft states, could allow even low-cost robots to perform the same feat. The material developed by MIT researchers could be used to build deformable surgical robots. The robots could move through the body to reach a particular point without damaging any of the organs or vessels along the way. The Robots built from this material could also be used in search-and-rescue operations to squeeze through rubble looking for survivors.

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More than a century after their discovery, we still don't really know what blood types are for. Do they really matter?

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From avoiding the dentist to going to a party, check out these 9 weird reasons that made people stage their own abduction.

Many of these places are popular natural and man made landmarks, but what makes them a magnet for suicides?

"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."

Ready for some weird science? Some of the same olfactory sensing equipment that give your nose its sense of smell can be found in your skin cells. In other words, your skin has a sense of smell. And researchers have just figured out that your skin loves the scent of sandalwood—in fact, the aroma revs up your skin's natural healing abilities.

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Your body is constantly throwing off dead skin cells—a million every day. So how come tattoos don't fall off with them? It turns out, your body's immune system tries to get rid of the ink under your skin, but in the process, it makes those marks permanent, as this video from TED-Ed explains.

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If you've ever been to a supermarket in the UK, you were probably surprised (if not a little grossed out) to see stacks of eggs hanging out with nary a refrigerated one in site. As it turns out, we might actually be the crazy ones.

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Current tests for Alzheimer's include expensive tests using brain PET or MRI imaging. But two studies have shown that a simple eye test can detect Alzheimer's accurately at very early stages—just by looking at subjects' retinas.

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The man dealt with by mob of female vigilantes

The "Mississippi Baby," born with HIV and treated with antiretroviral drugs immediately after birth, showed no evidence of HIV after two years without treatment. Now the child has detectable levels of the virus once again. It's a sad conclusion to what seemed like an extremely promising new way to treat this vicious disease.

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NotInHere (3654617) writes As Google writes on its Online Security Blog, the National Informatics Centre of India (NIC) used its intermediate CA certificate, issued by Indian CCA, to issue several unauthorized certificates for Google domains, allowing it to do Man in the middle attacks. Possible impact however is limited, as, according to Google, the root certificates for the CA were only installed on Windows, which Firefox doesn't use — and for the Chrom{e,ium} browser, the CA for important Google domains is pinned to the Google CA. According to its website, the NIC CA has suspended certificate issuance, and according to Google, its root certificates were revoked by Indian CCA.

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If you went looking for Zvezdny Gorodok, aka Star City, on a map in the 1960s, you'd have no luck. This small town outside of Moscow was long a state secret, and for good reason: It was the base where Cosmonauts came to train for—and recover from—space flight. And it's still cooking.

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You don't fool with Mother Nature! Some of the worst invasions in history have been natural – bugs in particular have brought havoc and destruction to people, places, animals and things for thousands of years.

An anonymous reader writes "Video game designers and astronomers have been working different ends of the same problem: how to chart a galaxy full of stars. Astronomers start with observation, finding new and better ways to look into the sky and record what they can see. Game devs take the limited data we have as a starting point, and assume that everything else in the galaxy obeys roughly the same rules. They generate the rest of the galaxy procedurally from this data. But the information flow isn't simply one-way. As developers like David Braben improve their galaxy-creation models, astronomers can look at the models and see where they match (or not) with further observations, allowing them to improve their own scientific models in the process. "'The conflicts that show up are generally due to simplifications made in the models, for which new observations can provide improved guidelines. There's a continuously evolving and developing understanding of space, in which both models and observations play important roles.' ... Elite's model has expanded Braben's understanding of planet formation and distribution. Braben boasts that his games predicted extra-solar planets ('These were pretty close to those that have been since discovered, demonstrating that there is some validity in our algorithms'), and that the game's use of current planet-formation theories has shown the sheer number of different systems that can exist according to the rules, everything from nebulous gas giants to theoretically habitable worlds.""

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v3rgEz writes Marc Abrahams, founder of the Ig Nobel Prize, has put together a fascinating history of people patenting the wheel, including one inventor that did it to prove how ridiculous Australia's patent system was and another that put wheels on a wheel so it could wheel while it wheels. From the article: "I discovered today that the Australian patent office has — quietly — revoked the patent it granted, in the year 2001, for the wheel. The patent office had awarded Innovation Patent #2001100012 to John Keogh of Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia. Keogh’s application called his invention a “circular transportation facilitation device.” I became acquainted with Mr. Keogh when we awarded him — and the Australian Patent Office — an Ig Nobel Prize, in 2001."

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StartsWithABang writes 55 years ago, the Soviet probe Luna 3 imaged the side of the Moon that faces away from us for the first time. Surprisingly, there were only two very small maria (dark regions) and large amounts of mountainous terrain, in stark contrast to the side that faces us. This remained a mystery for a very long time, even after we developed the giant impact hypothesis to explain the origin of the Moon. But a new study finally appears to solve the mystery, crediting the heat generated on the near side from a hot, young Earth with creating the differences between the two hemispheres.

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meghan elizabeth writes If the Turing Test can be fooled by common trickery, it's time to consider we need a new standard. The Lovelace Test is designed to be more rigorous, testing for true machine cognition. An intelligent computer passes the Lovelace Test only if it originates a "program" that it was not engineered to produce. The new program—it could be an idea, a novel, a piece of music, anything—can't be a hardware fluke. The machine's designers must not be able to explain how their original code led to this new program. In short, to pass the Lovelace Test a computer has to create something original, all by itself.

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"Exceptional", the new video from UNISONIC — the band featuring former HELLOWEEN vocalist Michael Kiske and guitarist/vocalist Kai Hansen alongside guitarist Mandy Meyer (ASIA, GOTTHARD and KROKUS), bassist Dennis Ward and drummer Kosta Zafiriou (both of Germany's PINK CREAM 69) — can be seen below. The song is taken from UNISONIC's second album, "Light Of Dawn", which will be released on August 1 in Europe and August 12 in the U.S. via earMUSIC. The effort will be released in four different configurations: * Standard CD featuring 12 tracks * Deluxe digipak edition CD which contains 13 tracks * Gatefold double vinyl (also featuring 13 tracks plus a download code) * A strictly limited box set The "Light Of Dawn" artwork was again created by graphic artist Martin Hausler. "Light Of Dawn" track listing: Standard CD 01. Venite 2.0 02. Your Time Has Come 03. Exceptional 04. For The Kingdom 05. Not Gonna Take Anymore 06. Night Of The Long Knives 07. Find Shelter 08. Blood 09. When The Deed Is Done 10. Throne Of The Dawn 11. Manhunter 12. You And I Deluxe CD 01. Venite 2.0 02. Your Time Has Come 03. Exceptional 04. For The Kingdom 05. Not Gonna Take Anymore 06. Night Of The Long Knives 07. Find Shelter 08. Blood 09. When The Deed Is Done 10. Throne Of The Dawn 11. Manhunter 12. You And I 13. Judgement Day Boxset Deluxe CD 01. Venite 2.0 02. Your Time Has Come 03. Exceptional 04. For The Kingdom 05. Not Gonna Take Anymore 06. Night Of The Long Knives 07. Find Shelter 08. Blood 09. When The Deed Is Done 10. Throne Of The Dawn 11. Manhunter 12. You And I 13. Judgement Day Exclusive "The Early Demos" CD 01. Souls Alive 02. I've Tried 03. Cry Out Loud 04. The Other Side 05. No One Ever Sees Me * Exclusive Seven-Inch Vinyl single A1. Exceptional (Karaoke version) B1. We Rise (Live 2012) * Exclusive T-Shirt * 6 brand new pictures * Exclusive poster Vinyl A1. Venite 2.0 A2. Your Time Has Come A3. Exceptional A4. For The Kingdom B1. Not Gonna Take Anymore B2. Night Of The Long Knives B3. Find Shelter C1. Blood C2. When The Deed Is Done C3. Throne Of The Dawn D1. Manhunter D2. You And I D3. Judgement Day UNISONIC released a new EP, "For The Kingdom", on May 23 via earMUSIC. Produced by Ward, the EP contains the fast album track "For The Kingdom", the exclusive song "You Come Undone" (only available on this release) plus four previously unreleased live cuts: "Unisonic", "Never Too Late", "Star Rider" and "Souls Alive", all recorded at the 2012 edition of the Masters Of Rock festival in Czech Republic. The EP cover artwork was created by Martin Hausler. "For The Kingdom" was made available on CD, strictly limited 12-inch vinyl and as a digital download. The track listing is as follows: 01. For The Kingdom 02. You Come Undone (EP exclusive track) 03. Unisonic (live 2012; EP exclusive track) 04. Never Too Late (live 2012; EP exclusive track) 05. Star Rider (live 2012; EP exclusive track) 06. Souls Alive (live 2012; EP exclusive track) The official lyric video for the song "For The Kingdom" can be seen below. UNISONIC's self-titled debut studio album was released in North America on May 22, 2012 via Eagle Rock imprint Armoury Records. Hansen's position in GAMMA RAY is unaffected by his involvement with UNISONIC. UNISONIC is: Michael Kiske (vocals) Mandy Meyer (guitar) Kai Hansen (guitar) Dennis Ward (bass) Kosta Zafiriou (drums)