wskent

Astronomers are interested in the goings-on around a star in our galaxy called KIC 8462852. There appears to be a lot of debris around it, which is a bit unusual and might have any number of causes, including that an extraterrestrial intelligence built all sorts of things around the star.

Jason Wright, an astronomer from Penn State University, is set to publish an alternative interpretation of the light pattern. SETI researchers have long suggested that we might be able to detect distant extraterrestrial civilizations, by looking for enormous technological artifacts orbiting other stars. Wright and his co-authors say the unusual star's light pattern is consistent with a "swarm of megastructures," perhaps stellar-light collectors, technology designed to catch energy from the star.

"When [Boyajian] showed me the data, I was fascinated by how crazy it looked," Wright told me. "Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build."

Boyajian is now working with Wright and Andrew Siemion, the Director of the SETI Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. The three of them are writing up a proposal. They want to point a massive radio dish at the unusual star, to see if it emits radio waves at frequencies associated with technological activity.

Phil Plait has more context on this weirdo star and how the alien angle is pretty far-fetched but also worth checking out.

Tags: astronomy   Phil Plait   Ross Andersen   science

By 2050, the world’s population is projected to approach nine billion. With more people will come more developed land—a lot more.

Urbanization, agriculture, energy, and mining put 20 percent of the world’s remaining forests, grasslands, and other natural ecosystems at risk of conversion by 2050. With that kind of expansion, there are sure to be harms—namely clean water, clean air, and biodiversity.

To mitigate some of those risks, scientists and geographers at the Nature Conservancy have taken a crucial step by mapping the potential impact that human growth will have on natural lands. It’s the most comprehensive look to date at how major forms of development will take over fragile ecosystems, if left unchecked.

Using publicly available global datasets, the researchers projected how terrestrial ecosystems would be affected by nine sectors: urban and agricultural expansion, fossil fuels (conventional oil and gas, unconventional oil and gas, and coal), renewable energy (solar, wind, and biofuels), and mining.

They ranked the development potential for each sector on a relative scale, based on either “the amount of unexploited resources (i.e. for fossil fuels, renewables, and mining) or estimated future area expansion derived from past trends (i.e. for urban and agriculture).”

Land conversion won’t look the same from region to region, or biome to biome. Continents that are less developed than others today will look much different in 35 years: In South America, the amount of natural land put to work could double, while in Africa, it could triple. Tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, shrublands, forests, and deserts make up 66 percent of the areas projected to convert.

Globally, only five percent of at-risk natural lands are strictly protected. That’s not enough, the authors write:

With development increasingly encroaching into more remote and previously undisturbed areas, it is critical that international corporations, governments and conservation organizations collaborate to reduce and minimize potential future impacts on remaining habitats.

The authors urge stronger regulations on development siting and land-use planning to ease the effects of growth.

Below are maps of each sector’s projected development threat, via PLoS One:

via http://72dotsperinch.blogspot.com/

Mark Davis worked at a Kmart in Naperville, IL in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Each month, the corporate office mailed a cassette tape to all the stores, which contained easy-listening elevator music and in-house advertisements. Davis saved all 56 cassettes and uploaded them to Archive.org. As Gareth Branwyn says, "I MAY have just gouged my eardrums out." (more…)

London-Centric, photos by Jason Hawkes, words by Jon Kelly.

lavenderrwitch:

wake-n-bacon:

The sloth

HELL PIG

Ritual interviewed Bronwyn, the woman behind the [NSFW] Internet K Hole, a "deep and vast collection of found and collected photographs from the late '70s, '80s and early '90s."

Where abouts do you collect these images from? Garage sales? Second hand shops? Or do you scour the internet for them?

I’d say 75% of the photos I find on the internet and then 25% are from flea markets/my own family/submissions. I haven’t had much luck with flea markets lately, all of the photos seem to be from the 40s-70s and I much more prefer photos from the 80s and 90s.

Symmetry sits down with Lindsay Olson as she wraps up a year of creating art inspired by particle physics.

 

 

In contrast to yesterday's post about the way the Internet is depicted in patent drawings, check out these photos of the Internet's secret actual infrastructure.

Photographer Heinrich Holtgreve's The Internet as a Place is a beautiful series of images of the deceptively banal places where the Internet's infrastructure lives -- the fiber passing through the Suez canal, the exchanges where networks talk to each other, the anonymous buildings and sewer openings that lead to dark spaces that course with data.

On a recent trip to NYC, Henrik Moltke led me on a guided tour of the sidewalks around NASDAQ, which are spraypainted with markings indicating whose fiber goes where. It's precisely because these markings are so innocuous and easy to miss that they're exciting -- a form of secret knowledge that can be discovered by anyone who chooses to see it.

His first stop was Egypt. The country is a major hub for undersea cables, 11 of which now run through the Suez Canal to connect people as far away as Germany and Malaysia. Holtgreve spent three months trying to visit places like the Cairo Internet Exchange, but no dice. Such places thrive by assuring their members of the utmost security. That means not advertising what’s inside, much less letting a photographer poke around with a Canon 5D Mark III. Even when someone would let him in, he wouldn’t always to take pictures. “I was shown around another data center in Cairo, but I wasn’t allowed to bring my camera,” he says. “They half-jokingly suspected me for being an Israeli spy.”

Still, he caught a few breaks. Holtgreve met a friendly dentist who let him photograph the Cairo exchange building from his balcony. Someone who worked for an undersea cable company gave him the GPS coordinates of a beach manhole in Alexandria where cables like SEA-ME-WE-4 and FLAG meet land. In the desert near Cairo, he photographed a warehouse owned by a major French global telecom equipment company. Hundreds of seemingly ancient antennas sat dusted with sand. “It felt like walking around Mos Eisley,” Holtgreve says.

This Is What the Internet Looks Like IRL [Laura Mallonee/Wired]

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The Nerdwriter takes on Children of Men, specifically what's going in the background of Alfonso Cuarón's film, both in terms of references to other works of art & culture and to things that push the plot along and contribute to the tone and message of the film.

Tags: Alfonso Cuaron   art   Children of Men   movies   video

Burbank Shopping Plaza No. 4

America’s Gayest Freeways

Liberty University isn’t exactly known as a hotbed of progressivism. The school, founded in 1971 by Evangelical darling Jerry Falwell, had a clear mission: to promote a Christian worldview grounded in principles of conservatism, creationism, and “and a firm support for America’s economic system of free enterprise.” But this Monday morning, Liberty students woke up to an unexpected visitor: Democratic candidate and self-avowed socialist, Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

It was a bizarre moment in electioneering, but Sanders’ decision to speak was grounded in real historical reason, and had a sincere political impact. A little less than four decades ago, the nation elected an enterprising former peanut farmer who identified both as an Evangelical and a Democrat, Jimmy Carter. And while the students of Liberty University have been largely tied to the GOP ever since, one alumus and pastoral counselor who heard Sanders speak was convinced. The Daily Kos transcribed selections from his sermon below:

“As I heard Bernie Sanders crying out to the religious leaders at Liberty University, in his hoarse voice, with his wild hair – this Jew – and he proclaimed justice over us, he called us to account, for being complicit with those who are wealthy and those who are powerful, and for abandoning the poor, the least of these, who Jesus said he had come to bring good news to. And in that moment something occurred to me. As I saw Bernie Sanders up there, as I watched him, I realized Bernie Sanders for president is good news for the poor. Bernie Sanders for president is Good News for the poor. Bernie Sanders is gospel for the poor. And Jesus said "I have come to bring gospel" – good news – "to the poor."

Those words echoed in my heart as I listened to that crazy, hoarse-voiced, wild-haired Jew standing in front of the religious leaders of the Evangelical Movement, calling us to account, as a Jew once did before, telling us that he intends to care for the least of these, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, to care for the sick, to set the prisoners free.

I wouldn't be much of a Christian if I didn't stand on the side of gospel for the poor, because, the last time I checked, that's where my master Jesus stood, and I'll stand with Him. And,  for now, that means I stand with Bernie Sanders.”

Will the Evangelical left, who’ve statistically been far more likely to vote along religious lines than economic ones, switch party affiliations, and vote for this “wild-haired” Jew in 2016? Unlikely, by nearly every statistical measure. Still, Sanders’ speech, and this alumnus’ response, laid some important groundwork for conversations of the future, where both sides are taking the time to listen.

 

(Via: The Daily Kos)  

https://youtu.be/CCDIuZUfETc

This video is amazing, and feels like something that will become even more graceful, precise, and normal as drone technology and design improve.

[caption id="attachment_422936" align="alignnone" width="1200"] ETH Zurich, 2015.[/caption]

Building a rope bridge with flying machines in the ETH Zurich Flying Machine Arena: The video shows quadrocopters autonomously assembling a rope bridge. This is part of a body of research in aerial construction, a field that addresses the construction of structures with the aid of flying machines.

In this work, a rope bridge that can support the crossing of a person is built by quadrocopters, showing for the first time that small flying machines are capable of autonomously realizing load-bearing structures at full-scale and proceeding a step further towards real-world scenarios. Except for the required anchor points at both ends of the structure, the bridge consists exclusively of tensile elements and its connections and links are entirely realized by flying machines. Spanning 7.4 m between two scaffolding structures, the bridge consists of nine rope segments for a total rope length of about 120 m and is composed of different elements, such as knots, links, and braids. The rope used for these experiments is made out of Dyneema, a material with a low weight-to-strength ratio and thus suitable for aerial construction. Of little weight (7 g per meter), a 4 mm diameter rope can sustain 1300 kg.

The vehicles are equipped with a motorized spool that allows them to control the tension acting on the rope during deployment. A plastic tube guides the rope to the release point located between two propellers. The external forces and torques exerted on the quadrocopter by the rope during deployment are estimated and taken into account to achieve compliant flight behavior. The assembly of the bridge is performed by small custom quadrocopters and builds upon the Flying Machine Arena, a research and demonstration platform for aerial robotics. The arena is equipped with a motion capture system that provides vehicle position and attitude measurements. Algorithms are run on a computer and commands are then sent to the flying machines via a customized wireless infrastructure.

In order to be able to design tensile structures that are buildable with flying robots, a series of computational tools have been developed, specifically addressing the characteristics of the building method. The design tools allow to simulate, sequence, and evaluate the structure before building.

The location of the scaffolding structure is manually measured before starting the construction. The primary and bracing structure can then be realized without human intervention. Before realizing the stabilizers, the locations of the narrow openings of the bridge are measured and input to the system, which adapts the trajectories accordingly.

More information and related publications can be found on the project website. There's an article with lots more images here.

[Federico Augugliaro, YouTube]

Kirby Ferguson writes, "Everything is a Remix has been polished, merged and rereleased for its fifth anniversary."

Everything is a Remix is Ferguson's amazing, must-watch series of videos analyzing the way that incorporating direct lifts from songs, movies and other art forms is critical to creative production. Watch these now, be amazed.

Everything is a Remix Remastered (2015 HD) [Vimeo]

[This piece also runs in “Checkerboard City,” John’s transportation column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.]

When Pete Stidman, the former director of the Boston Cyclists Union, visited Chicago for a bike conference a couple of summers ago, I let him crash on my futon. When I visited Beantown last month, Stidman, who’s now working as the active transportation specialist at a planning firm, returned the favor by taking me on a bicycle tour of the area’s burgeoning bike network.

Boston, a city of 655,884 residents (4,628,910 metro) has come a long way since 1999, when Bicycling Magazine ranked it as the nation’s worst city for biking. When I meet up with Stidman at the lovely Brewer Fountain in Boston Common, the city’s biggest downtown green space, he explains that much of the blame for that title can be traced to the city’s then-large population of “vehicular cyclists.”

Vehicular cyclists are cult followers of John Forester, author of the book “Effective Cycling” and son of “The African Queen” writer C.S. Forester. John preaches that cyclists are safest when they operate like drivers, pedaling in the center of the lane. Of course, most people aren’t willing or able to bike twenty miles per hour to keep up with cars, but Boston’s Foresterites have actively lobbied against installing bike lanes, arguing that they’re unnecessary and, paradoxically, dangerous.

Stidman says that, in 2004, the Livable Streets Alliance formed and, in 2010, the cyclists union launched, and these groups have advocated for street designs that work for all users, of all ages and abilities. “We now have a bike czar, and it’s clear that Mayor Marty Walsh is listening to his constituents who want to see more bike lanes.” There’s currently a proposal for the Connect Historic Boston Bike Trail, a network of curb-protected lanes that would encircle the downtown peninsula.

I check out a cycle from the city’s Hubway bike-share system, which uses the same equipment as Divvy, and we’re off. We roll through Downtown Crossing, a brick-lined pedestrian mall, but Stidman points out that few people are hanging out here because there’s almost no place to sit. “During Boston’s darker days [of white flight], benches were taken out, and a lot of people were pushing for getting rid of places to hang out—they thought they attracted the wrong element.”

Thankfully, that trend has reversed. Boston City Hall now recently put in Astroturf, seating and yard games as an invitation to linger. And when we get to our next stop, the Rose Kennedy Greenway, there are dozens of people relaxing in red Adirondack chairs on the lush lawn. This network of parkland, named for JFK’s mom, winds for about a half mile around the east side of the peninsula, occupying land where the double-decker Central Highway once stood. The massive Big Dig project, completed in 2008, moved the expressway underground.

While the Big Dig was originally supposed to cost $2.8 billion, the estimated final cost will be $22 billion. Stidman has mixed feelings about the expense, but he says it’s a hugely positive thing that there’s no longer a highway cutting through the middle of Boston, and that it has a ton of beautiful new public space that’s well programmed with seating, art and other amenities.

I’m particularly amazed by Janet Echelman’s aerial sculpture “As If It Were Already Here,” a complex network of rainbow-colored ropes that soars 600 feet above the street. Just think what we could do with all the extra land if Chicago launched a similar—but much cheaper—project to cap the Kennedy Expressway in the West Loop.

Next we roll by the gray complex immortalized by local band The Modern Lovers’ song about rocking “at the Government Center / To make the secretaries feel better / When they put the stamps on the letters.” Stidman tells me that Mayor Walsh unsuccessfully proposed a bill to get the group’s song “Roadrunner,” about cruising Massachusetts highways late at night, declared the official state rock song.

We cross the Longfellow Bridge into Cambridge, the home of Harvard and MIT, where Stidman points out a Copenhagen-style bike counter erected in the middle of a boulevard—858 cyclists have passed by today. It would be great to get one of these devices installed in Chicago’s Wicker Park, next to the Milwaukee Avenue “Hipster Highway.” That would be helpful for justifying the removal of car parking from one side of the street to make room for protected bike lanes.

While Chicago currently has about seventeen miles of PBLs, the city of Boston only has one protected lane street so far, but Cambridge already has four. We ride down a beautiful new, European-inspired raised bikeway on the village’s Western Avenue, which involved the conversion of one of the car lanes. A smartly dressed gentleman crosses paths with us. “I think this kind of bike lane attracts a different kind of cyclist,” Stidman says. “They’re going a little slower, and they’re a little more dressed-up.”

Not everyone we encounter is so genteel, however. As Pete slowly rolls into a crosswalk on Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge’s main drag, an old lady scolds him in a textbook, working-class Boston accent. “I’m just making a left turn,” Stidman says. She fires back, “Well, you should at least walk your bike, dips—.”

I note, “If this was Chicago, she would have said ‘j—–.’”

Monstruos

Porsche's new 600-horsepower concept car, unveiled Monday at a German auto show, can speed from 0 to 60 mph in about three seconds — but that's far from the most interesting thing hidden under the hood.

The four-seat sports car is, in a first for Porsche, all electric. Not only can the Mission E drive more than 300 miles without powering down, it can recharge almost completely within 15 minutes.

With that kind of power, the all-wheel-drive sports car is aimed squarely at taking out one of the luxury auto world's surging titans: Tesla, the Elon Musk-run electric carmaker known for its widely celebrated Model S.

But the $100,000-plus Mission E, not fit to rest on its battery-powered laurels, also comes with some truly bizarre next-generation upgrades. One of them: An eye-tracking camera in the rearview mirror that "recognizes the driver's good mood and shows it as an emoticon" on the dashboard — an odd bit of self reflection that can then be shared via social media, alongside the car's route and speed.

Porsche hasn't given an exact price or production time for the Mission E, and concept cars are known to overpromise and underdeliver. (As for the price, Porsche global head of research and development Wolfgang Hatz told the Los Angeles Times, "It will be competitive. ... The Porsche is always worth its price.")

That sports cars are now going electric — years after Tesla's first all-electric, the Roadster, was criticized as not giving enough power for true sport driving — largely can be credited to just how well Tesla has won over luxury business.

The Model S has become a thorn in the luxury auto world's side for all of its awards: It's eco-friendly, luxuriously designed and increasingly high performance, including with the recent unveiling of Tesla's ultra-fast "ludicrous mode."

[Electric-car rivals like the ‘Tesla killer’ are exactly what Elon Musk wants]

"Tesla has made as much noise with its car on its performance as it has on its environmental bent," said Karl Brauer, an analyst for Kelley Blue Book. "Porsche's thinking, 'We're not only ceding ground to the Model S on their premium status, we’re ceding on performance, too.'"

The Mission E can recharge 80 percent within 15 minutes using an 800-volt "Porsche Turbo Charging" system, closely resembling that of Tesla's Supercharger network, which spans 2,895 chargers from coast to coast.

But Porsche says the sports car would also offer some upgrades mostly unseen on the road. Eye-tracking cameras and gesture-controlled systems would help the driver take control, and 3-D displays move to follow the driver's "seat position and body attitude."

[Tesla unveils weird new car-charging robo-snake]

The emoticon-flashing driver camera struck some analysts as particularly strange. Some luxury cars, like Chevy's new Corvette, come with dashboard cameras pre-installed, but rarely are they built to help drivers share how fast they were speeding.

"We're not just making cars anymore. We're making personal expressions," Brauer said. "They may think: Why point the camera out the windshield when you can point it at me? If you're the kind of person to spend more than $100,000 on a sports car, you might just be the kind of person wanting to share pictures of yourself, too."

Live free or die is the state motto, after all.

The post Sanity and Privacy Win Out in the Library-Tor Kerfuffle appeared first on WIRED.

Untitled (Southside, Chicago), 1958, Chicago. Charles Swedlund.

You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.

0.8 percent

Tonight CNN is broadcasting the second debate of the GOP primary, and there will be 11 candidates on one stage. But prior to that debate, we get another undercard! Rick Santorum, Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sen. Lindsay Graham, Jim Gilmore and George Pataki will have a smaller debate broadcast beforehand. Rick Santorum is dominating that pack with a staggering 0.8 percent support, according to CNN’s average. [The Washington Post]

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4th lowest

The arctic sea ice situation is not great. The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that there were 1.7 million square miles of ice up north last week, the lowest this summer. That’s down 240,000 square miles from last year, and the fourth-lowest level on record. The all-time low occurred in 2012, when Earth had only 1.3 million square miles of ice. I have some ideas on how to fix this, but all of them are from that documentary “Frozen” (2013) so I may not actually be super helpful on this one. [Associated Press]

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74 percent

Kim Davis’s hasn’t done many favors for “religious liberty.” After the Supreme Court ruling that made same-sex marriage legal all over the country, 49 percent of respondents to an AP poll said officials with religious objections shouldn’t be forced to give marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Now, after Kim Davis picked her hill to jail on, an ABC News poll found that 74 percent of respondents said that equality should win out. [Slate]

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85 percent

Percentage of parents of high-school aged kids who said that computer science courses were just as, or more, important than classes like math, science, history and English, according to a new survey from Gallup and Google. [Quartz]

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400 percent

That’s the nationwide increase in calls to poison control hotlines about kids younger than 12 drinking alcoholic hand sanitizer. [CNN]

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690 people

A new case of Ebola claimed a life in Sierra Leone, leading the Ebola Response Centre to put the 690 people who lived in the same village as the victim into isolation for three weeks. Sierra Leone was one of the nations to suffer most from the disease’s outbreak in December 2013, and was considered Ebola-free last month. [Thomson Reuters]

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2,159

That’s how many CNN reports have focused on Donald Trump since he announced his intention to run for president, roughly double that of Jeb Bush and more than 5 times as many as Ted Cruz. Give the people what they want, you know? [The Wall Street Journal]

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30,000 jobs

Hewlett-Packard is splitting up, and up to 30,000 layoffs were announced at HP Enterprise, one of the forthcoming sibling companies. Prior to the layoffs, there were about 252,000 workers moving to the new company. [Associated Press]

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91,000 cans

Do you like Metallica, Budweiser, and Canada? Well buckle up for the greatest promotion of your lifetime. The Metallica logo will appear on roughly 91,000 cans of Budweiser that have been canned after feeling the vibrations of Metallica themselves. A tanker truck of the swill will be parked outside a Canadian arena where Metallica is playing, and the beer will be canned only after it soaks up all that metal. [The AV Club]

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$374 billion

Prescription drug spending in the U.S. in 2014, a 13 percent increase over the previous year. That is the highest increase since 2001. [Marketwatch]

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If you haven’t already, you really need to sign up for the Significant Digits newsletter — be the first to learn about the numbers behind the news.

As people in the film industry are well aware, Vancouver, BC is the third largest film production city in North America (right behind New York and Los Angeles). So why is it that so many people know nothing about this vibrant Canadian city? As Tony Zhou points out in his always-incredible series Every Frame a Painting, Vancouver Never Plays Itself.

Vancouver:

Also Vancouver:

Still Vancouver:

Here Zhou details the huge catalog of movies filmed in his home city. From staring as the true location for Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol (in “Seattle”, “Eastern Europe” and even “India”) to the Interview (in “North Korea”), no city has been more things that it is not.

Watch Zhou explain how Vancouver has become the ‘anycity’ it is in today’s cinema, and stay for his heartfelt call for movies to own the vibrant city they’ve been using as a backdrop.

Stream and/or download R&B artist Roman GianArthur's latest genius project here.

The post This Album of Mashed-Up D’Angelo and Radiohead Covers Is All You Need appeared first on WIRED.

Aerojet Rocketdyne has reportedly offered to acquire the United Launch Alliance for $2 billion, in what would be a major shakeup in the space launch industry and cap a tumultuous 18 months in an industry long dominated by a single player.

For years, ULA enjoyed the spoils of a monopoly in the hugely lucrative—and complicated—industry of rocket launches. The United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, had the combined might of the two defense giants, and no competition when it came to launching national security satellites into space for the Pentagon and intelligence agencies.

Times were good.

But then came along a feisty entrepreneur, with a big ego and big dreams, eager to get into the space business and upend an industry that he viewed as scerlotic. Elon Musk’s SpaceX sued for the right to compete against ULA for those contracts, and was eventually certified to do so.

But along the way, the billionaire entrepreneur kicked up a lot of dust. He accused the government of moving too slowly to certify SpaceX. He lambasted ULA for using Russian-made engines on their rockets at a time when tensions were mounting between U.S. and Russia over the Ukraine. He promised to compete the contracts for far cheaper, and publicly speculated that his competition benefited from a revolving door between the Pentagon and the defense industry.

SpaceX had already won contracts from NASA to deliver astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, and ULA took its threats to disrupt the national security launch industry seriously. It replaced its CEO with Tory Bruno, who vowed to “literally transform the company” so that it could compete. Bruno soon announced a partnership with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to build an American-made rocket engine. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.) And last summer, ULA unveiled a new, reusable rocket, the Vulcan, which would help the company lower costs.

But it still faces massive hurdles.

Led by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Congress has moved to limit the number of RD-180 engines ULA could use. Since the RD-180 powers ULA’s Atlas V rocket, that could have a huge impact on ULA’s business. And after settling the lawsuit with SpaceX, the Air Force seemed grateful to have another company able to compete for its launch contracts for the first time in a decade.

"Ultimately, leveraging of the commercial space market drives down cost to the American taxpayer and improves our military's resiliency,” said Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said in May.

All of which may make ULA’s board eager to sell—for the right price. (The Wall Street Journal and Reuters have reported that a deal could be announced as early as next week.)

After a decade in the business, ULA has been a stalwart and a go-to provider of launches for the government. Its disappearance would mark the end of an era in the space business, though Boeing and Lockheed would remain major players. Boeing won a contract to ferry astronauts to the space station and last week unveiled the new name of its capsule, the CST-100 Starliner. Lockheed makes the Orion capsule, which would be used on the massive new Space Launch System rocket being developed by NASA. It is also competing for the contract to fly cargo to the space station.

Aerojet was also hoping to build an engine that could replace the Russian RD-180, but was considered by ULA to be a backup to the engine that Bezos' Blue Origin is developing. If Aerojet acquires ULA, it's not clear what affect that would have on the engine selection.

On Twitter, Bruno, ULA's CEO, declined to comment. An Aerojet Rocketdyne spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Stephen Colbert's friends and former cast members look back at his formative years in Chicago. by Mike Thomas When Stephen Colbert breezed into town last month to shoot a segment at Buckingham Fountain for his soon-to-debut late-night program on CBS, he did so with uncharacteristically little fanfare—certainly far less than has greeted his other visits to Chicago throughout the nine-season run of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report. In 2006, the Northwestern University graduate served as grand marshal of his school's homecoming parade.…

When Fury Road came out, Laura Vaughn made an iconic post about how her left-arm transradial amputation gave her the potential to be the world's greatest Imperator Furiosa cosplayer -- and now she's done it, homebrew prosthetic and all. Read the rest

Ear-free headphones that transmit sound via bone conduction.

Whether you are creating a website, writing your resume or designing a presentation, the fonts or typeface you choose can make a notable difference. The Google Fonts directory offers a myriad of choices but how do you pick the correct font for your digital projects? Should you go for Serif fonts or Sans Serif or a combination of serifs and sans serifs?

Typography is an art and, with thousands of fonts available, it is obviously difficult for non-designers to find that perfect font combination. Need help? Here are some useful font pairing websites where type masters have already done the hard work and all you can do is follow their recommendations to pick the most elegant and gorgeous Google fonts combination for your web and print projects.

1. Beautiful Web Type (hellohappy.org) – Chad Mazzola has created a beautiful showcase of high-quality typefaces from the Google Fonts website. You’ll discover some creative usage of fonts here though they haven’t updated the site for quite some time.

2. Typ.io (typ.io) – If the body text of my website is set in Roboto, what font should I use for headings? Typ.io offers a visual list of beautiful websites that using similar font families and helps you pick the perfect matching pair based on the typography of other websites.

3. Google Type (femmebot.github.io) – Phoebe Espiritu’s typography project uses Google Fonts to stylize tales from Aesop’s Fables. This is a great reference source for finding elegant font pairs and is regularly updated as well.

4. Palet Tab (palettab.com) – A Google Chrome extension that inspires you with a fresh font and color combination from Google Fonts each time you open a new tab in Chrome.

5. 100 Days of Fonts (100daysoffonts.com) – Each single day, for 100 days, designer Do-Hee Kim picked a unique and beautiful Google Fonts pair and all her work in now showcased in this single-page website. If you need inspiration for fonts, look no further.

6. Font Pair (fontpair.co) – Another well-designed resources for finding Google Fonts that go well together. The paired fonts can be downloaded as zip files which is handy in case you want to use the fonts with your PowerPoint presentation on the local computer.

7. Font Blender (andreasweis.com/webfontblender) – If you are wondering how a set of Google Fonts will look with your text, Font Blender can help. The web app allows you to preview Google Fonts in the browser and you have the option to experiment with the font size and line height as well.

8. Type Genius (typegenius.com) – Choose a starter web font and Type Genius will recommend a list of other matching fonts that will make a good combination. Like Typ.io, this website too makes suggestions based on font combinations of other beautiful websites. Designed by Waveney Hudlin.

9. Type Source (typesource.com) – A beautiful showcase of heading and text blocks stylized using Google Fonts. Tobias Ahlin, the site creator, has included the necessary HTML & CSS code making it easy for your to replicate the styles in your own web design. The text is editable as well so you can also preview the same design with your own text.

10. Font Face Ninja (fontface.ninja) – A browser extension for Google Chrome and Safari browsers that will help you recognize the font used on any website. You even have the option to download the font files through the Ninja add-on but do check the associated license.

Also see: How to Reduce Google Fonts Size

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The story, The Best Google Font Combinations That Look Good Together, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 15/03/2016 under Fonts, Internet.

This morning, an Atlas V rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying a US Navy communications satellite into space. 

It was another smooth take off for the United Launch Alliance, the company that manufactures the Atlas V. It was a particularly beautiful launch as well; the rocket left a spectacular multi-colored trail in its wake as it ascended into space