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Bidding In Government Auction of Airwaves Reaches $34 Billion

An anonymous reader sends word that the 2014 wireless spectrum license auction has surpassed $34 billion. “A government auction of airwaves for use in mobile broadband has blown through presale estimates, becoming the biggest auction in the Federal Communications Commission’s history and signaling that wireless companies expect demand for Internet access by smartphones to continue to soar. And it’s not over yet. Companies bid more than $34 billion as of Friday afternoon for six blocks of airwaves, totaling 65 megahertz of the electromagnetic spectrum, being sold by the F.C.C. That total is more than three times the $10.5 billion reserve price that the commission put on the sale, the first offering of previously unavailable airwaves in six years.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Bidding In Government Auction of Airwaves Reaches $34 Billion

How NASA will launch four spacecraft at once to study magnetic fields

NASA has been planning to study the magnetic reconnection between the Earth and the sun for years, and now the agency has revealed how its scientists are going make it happen. Magnetic reconnection is a process that converts magnetic energy to kinetic or thermal energy. It happens all over the universe, but close to home, it occurs during solar flares, coronal mass ejections and when solar winds interact with the Earth’s magnetic field, causing aurorae. In order to study and create a 3D map of the mysterious phenomenon, NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale mission will send four spacecraft to space, which will position themselves in a pyramid. A single rocket will carry all four (stacked on top of each other) to their destination, as you can see in the demo video of the launch below. Each one is designed to break free from the stack once the rocket reaches orbit, and to deploy its “booms” (or foldable, extendable limbs equipped with sensors needed for the study) once it gets in position. Barring delays, these spacecraft will launch in March 2015 to seek out parts near our planet where magnetic reconnection typically occurs, so that we may understand it better. [Image credit:NASA/Goddard] Filed under: Science Comments Source: NASA

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How NASA will launch four spacecraft at once to study magnetic fields

The Big Picture: our clearest view yet of Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon

It’s going to be a long, long time before anyone gets to see Jupiter’s moon Europa first-hand, but NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory just provided the next best thing. It has released a “remastered” image of the icy celestial body that shows what it would look like to the naked eye. NASA’s Galileo probe snapped the original photo mosaic (using near-infrared, green and violet filters) back in the 1990s, but they’ve been put through modern image processing techniques that simulate visible light wavelengths. This view also shows why scientists are so eager to explore Europa’s surface . Those blue and white parts? They’re oceans of relatively pure water ice, where scientists hope to find evidence of simple organisms; this is likely humanity’s best shot at discovering alien life without traveling to other stars. While it’ll take years for any probe to get to this Jovian moon, it could easily be worth the trip. Filed under: Science Comments Via: io9 , Universe Today Source: NASA JPL

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The Big Picture: our clearest view yet of Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon

Redbox rentals will get a price hike on December 2nd

If you’re looking snag a DVD or Blu-ray from Redbox while out gathering holiday supplies, you’ll soon be paying a bit more for the rental . On December 2nd, the red kiosks will increase rates from $1.20 to $1.50 for DVDs and from $1.50 to $2 for Blu-ray selections. While the allure of Redbox lies in its low prices, even after the increase, its rates will still hit the wallet for sums significantly lower than on-demand or streaming rentals from the likes of Amazon, iTunes and others. In addition to the cost increase, Redbox will launch a recommendation engine — similar to Netflix — that will serve up suggestions for your next rental based on previous titles that you enjoyed. Games aren’t exempt either, as that nightly fee will increase from $2 to $3 in January. [Photo credit: Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star via Getty Images] Filed under: Home Entertainment , HD Comments Via: The Verge

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Redbox rentals will get a price hike on December 2nd

This is now the longest train journey in the world

21 days. That’s the time it will take to complete the largest train journey in the world. 6, 200 miles (9977 kilometers) that go from Yiwu, China, to Madrid, Spain. It’s also part of the New Silk Road, a Chinese project to gain control over transcontinental cargo transportation between Asia and Europe. Read more…

The BlackBerry Passport enigma: TCOB-machine or “worst designed thing, ever”

Party time with the corporate tool, BlackBerry’s Passport. Sean Gallagher Specs at a glance: BlackBerry Passport Screen 1440 x 1440 pixels, 4.5 inches (493 ppi) AMOLED OS BlackBerry 10.3 (with Android compatibility) CPU 2.26 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 RAM 3GB GPU Adreno 330 Storage 32 GB internal, with microSD support up to 128 GB Networking Wi-Fi 802.11ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot

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The BlackBerry Passport enigma: TCOB-machine or “worst designed thing, ever”

DreamWorks Reveals Glimpse of "Super Cinema" Format For VR Films

An anonymous reader writes Warren Mayoss, Head of Technology Product Development at DreamWorks Animation, spoke at the 2014 Samsung Developer Conference last week about the company’s forays into the young medium of virtual reality. In addition to real-time experiences, DreamWorks is exploring ways to enabled their bread and butter in VR: high-fidelity pre-rendered CGI. One method the company is exploring is a “Super Cinema” format: pre-rendered 360 degree 3D frames to be projected around the user in virtual reality. On stage, Mayoss showed a video glimpse of the format using assets from the company’s “How to Train Your Dragon” franchise. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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DreamWorks Reveals Glimpse of "Super Cinema" Format For VR Films

Highly Advanced Backdoor Trojan Cased High-Profile Targets For Years

An anonymous reader points out this story at Ars about a new trojan on the scene. Researchers have unearthed highly advanced malware they believe was developed by a wealthy nation-state to spy on a wide range of international targets in diverse industries, including hospitality, energy, airline, and research. Backdoor Regin, as researchers at security firm Symantec are referring to the trojan, bears some resemblance to previously discovered state-sponsored malware, including the espionage trojans known as Flame and Duqu, as well as Stuxnet, the computer worm and trojan that was programmed to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. Regin likely required months or years to be completed and contains dozens of individual modules that allowed its operators to tailor the malware to individual targets. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Highly Advanced Backdoor Trojan Cased High-Profile Targets For Years

Great Firewall of China Blocks Edgecast CDN, Thousands of Websites Affected

An anonymous reader writes: Starting about a week ago, The Great Firewall of China began blocking the Edgecast CDN. This was spurred by Great Fire’s Collateral Freedom project, which used CDNs to get around censorship of individual domains. It left China with either letting go of censorship, or breaking significant chunks of the Internet for their population. China chose to do the latter, and now many websites are no longer functional for Chinese users. I just helped a friend diagnose this problem with his company’s site, so it’s likely many people are still just starting to discover what’s happened and the economic impact is yet to be fully realized. Hopefully pressure on China will reverse the decision. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Great Firewall of China Blocks Edgecast CDN, Thousands of Websites Affected

Doubling Saturated Fat In Diet Does Not Increase It In Blood

An anonymous reader writes: A new study by researchers at Ohio State University found that dramatically increasing the amount of saturated fat in a person’s diet did not increase the amount of saturated fat found in their blood. Professor Jeff Volek, the study’s senior author, said it “challenges the conventional wisdom that has demonized saturated fat and extends our knowledge of why dietary saturated fat doesn’t correlate with disease.” The study also showed that increasing carbohydrates in the diet led to an increase in a particular fatty acid previous studies have linked to heart disease. Volek continued, “People believe ‘you are what you eat, ‘ but in reality, you are what you save from what you eat. The point is you don’t necessarily save the saturated fat that you eat. And the primary regulator of what you save in terms of fat is the carbohydrate in your diet. Since more than half of Americans show some signs of carb intolerance, it makes more sense to focus on carb restriction than fat restriction.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ken May

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