Tag: function-async

From the Northern to the Southern Cross (astronomy photo by Nicholas Buer)

Image: Nicholas Buer , via APOD . A particularly psychedelic Astronomy Picture of the Day : There is a road that connects the Northern to the Southern Cross but you have to be at the right place and time to see it. The road, as pictured above, is actually the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy; the right place, in this case, is dark Laguna Cejar in Salar de Atacama of Northern Chile ; and the right time was in early October, just after sunset. You can follow APOD on Twitter , too.        

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From the Northern to the Southern Cross (astronomy photo by Nicholas Buer)

Virgin Galactic reaches new supersonic heights, completes third powered flight

Feathered Flight during SpaceShipTwo’s third powered flight on 10 January 2014 over the Mojave desert. .This image was taken by MARS Scientific as part of the Mobile Aerospace Reconnaissance System optical tracking system..More infomation on MARS Scientific and the Mobile Aerospace Reconnaissance System can be found at: www.MarsScientific.com Richard Branson’s commercial spaceline Virgin Galactic today completed the third rocket-powered supersonic flight of its passenger carrying reusable space vehicle, SpaceShipTwo (SS2). Here’s the company’s news brief, from Mojave: In command on the flight deck of SS2 for the first time under rocket power was Virgin Galactic’s Chief Pilot Dave Mackay. Mackay, along with Scaled Composites’ (Scaled) Test Pilot Mark Stucky, tested the spaceship’s Reaction Control System (RCS) and the newly installed thermal protection coating on the vehicle’s tail booms. All of the test objectives were successfully completed. Today’s flight departed Mojave Air and Space Port at 7:22 a.m. PST with the first stage consisting of the WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) carrier aircraft lifting SS2 to an altitude around 46,000 ft. At the controls of WK2 were Virgin Galactic Pilot Mike Masucci and Scaled Test Pilot Mike Alsbury. On release, SS2’s rocket motor was ignited, powering the spaceship to a planned altitude of 71,000 ft. – SS2’s highest altitude to date – and a maximum speed of Mach 1.4. SS2’s unique feather re-entry system was also tested during today’s flight. Two important SS2 systems, the RCS and thermal protection coating, were tested during today’s flight in preparation for upcoming full space flights. The spaceship’s RCS will allow its pilots to maneuver the vehicle in space, permitting an optimal viewing experience for those on board and aiding the positioning process for spacecraft re-entry. The new reflective protection coating on SS2’s inner tail boom surfaces is being evaluated to help maintain vehicle skin temperatures while the rocket motor is firing. SS2’s propulsion system has been developed by Sierra Nevada Corp and is the world’s largest operational hybrid rocket motor. Although today’s flight saw it burn for a planned 20 seconds, the system has been successfully tested in ground firings to demonstrate performance characteristics and burn time sufficient to take the spaceship and its private astronauts to space. Commenting on the successful test flight, Sir Richard Branson said: “I couldn’t be happier to start the New Year with all the pieces visibly in place for the start of full space flights. 2014 will be the year when we will finally put our beautiful spaceship in her natural environment of space. Today, we had our own Chief Pilot flying another flawless supersonic flight and proving the various systems required to take us safely to space, as well as providing the very best experience while we’re up there.” This flight was the third opportunity to see a supersonic, rocket-powered test of the Virgin Galactic system after dozens of successful subsonic test flights. “Today’s flight was another resounding success,” said Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides. “We focused on gathering more transonic and supersonic data, and our chief pilot, Dave, handled the vehicle beautifully. With each flight test, we are progressively closer to our target of starting commercial service in 2014.” For Mackay, the flight was a “dream come true.” “I have watched SS2 evolve over the years into an incredible vehicle that is going to open up space to more people than ever before,” he said. “To be behind the controls and fly it as the rocket ignited is something I will never forget. She flew brilliantly. All the tests went really well and generated vital data that will be used to further fine-tune our operations.”        

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Virgin Galactic reaches new supersonic heights, completes third powered flight

Pirate Bay uploads up by 50% in 2013

2013 was a banner year for the Pirate Bay, despite having been forced to change domain names half-a-dozen times. The site saw a 50% increase in uploads in 2013 , to 2.8 million links, presently being swarmed by nearly 19 million users. The Pirate Bay is reportedly developing a peer-to-peer browser that will be much harder to block using existing censorship techniques. Pirate Bay Uploads Surge 50% in a Year, Despite Anti-Piracy Efforts [Ernesto/TorrentFreak]        

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Pirate Bay uploads up by 50% in 2013

Pee-Wee Herman talks about the remastered Christmas Special and Playhouse episodes

Kembrew writes, “I saw your post in Boing Boing today about Pee-Wee, and coincidentally, I just published a piece on Pee-wee’s Christmas Special . I think it’s the first time Paul Reubens has been interviewed about the upcoming remastered Pee-wee’s Playhouse DVDs that will come out next year.” I previously invoked the term “eye-popping” to describe Pee-wee’s Playhouse, but starting next year, viewers will run the risk of having their eyeballs permanently dislodged from their sockets. “The Christmas Special is going to come out, along with the entire Playhouse series, on Blu-ray,” Reubens tells me. “It’s being remastered now.” “The show was never seen on film,” he says. “The show was shot on film and transferred to tape and edited on tape, and all the effects were done on tape. Then the entire show was put on another tape to broadcast, so there are three or four generations of quality that are lost on every episode. So we went back to the original film elements, and the company I’m working with has recreated every edit in every single show, and recreated all the effects from all the original elements—which we were lucky to have kept.” “It looks unbelievable. It’s so extreme, people are going to freak out when they see it,” Reubens adds. “The detail and clarity and color is amazing.” This means that Gary Panter’s set design, the stop motion animation and other details will come alive in psychedelic high definition. It’s the kids show equivalent of being upgraded from cough syrup to mescaline. Pee-wee’s (remastered) Christmas Adventure: An interview with Paul Reubens [Kembrew McLeod/Little Village]        

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Pee-Wee Herman talks about the remastered Christmas Special and Playhouse episodes

SpaceX completes first mission to geostationary transfer orbit

FALCON 9 SES 8 LAUNCH An announcement from SpaceX today: “Space Exploration Technologies successfully completed its first geostationary transfer mission, delivering the SES-8 satellite to its targeted 295 x 80,000 km orbit. Falcon 9 executed a picture-perfect flight, meeting 100% of mission objectives. Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at 5:41 PM Eastern Time. Approximately 185 seconds into flight, Falcon 9’s second stage’s single Merlin vacuum engine ignited to begin a five minute, 20 second burn that delivered the SES-8 satellite into its parking orbit. Eighteen minutes after injection into the parking orbit, the second stage engine relit for just over one minute to carry the SES-8 satellite to its final geostationary transfer orbit. The restart of the Falcon 9 second stage is a requirement for all geostationary transfer missions. “The successful insertion of the SES-8 satellite confirms the upgraded Falcon 9 launch vehicle delivers to the industry’s highest performance standards,” said Elon Musk, CEO and Chief Designer of SpaceX. “As always, SpaceX remains committed to delivering the safest, most reliable launch vehicles on the market today. We appreciate SES’s early confidence in SpaceX and look forward to launching additional SES satellites in the years to come.” Today’s mission marked SpaceX’s first commercial launch from its central Florida launch pad and the first commercial flight from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in over five years. SpaceX has nearly 50 launches on manifest, of which over 60% are for commercial customers. This launch also marks the second of three certification flights needed to certify the Falcon 9 to fly missions for the U.S. Air Force under the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program. When Falcon 9 is certified, SpaceX will be eligible to compete for all National Security Space (NSS) missions.        

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SpaceX completes first mission to geostationary transfer orbit

Terabyte laptop SDDs for $435!

For the second half of the 1990s, my standard advice to people buying computers was to max out the RAM as the cheapest, best way to improve their computers’ efficiency. The price/performance curve hit its stride around 1995, and after decades when a couple gigs of RAM would cost more than the server you were buying it for, you could max out all the RAM slots in any computer for a couple hundred bucks. Operating systems, though, were still being designed for RAM-starved computers, and when you dropped a gig or two of RAM in a machine, it screamed . It’s still good practice to max out your RAM, but it doesn’t get you much of a dividend. The turbo-charger of the 2010s is solid-state disk-drives, and they’re screaming up the same price/performance curve that RAM traversed twenty years ago. Two years ago, I traded my laptop drive for a 400GB SDD, spending as much on the drive as I had on the machine, and it was worth every penny. My laptop battery-life nearly doubled, and I stopped getting watch-cursors altogether; no matter what task I performed, it was done instantly. In October, I bought a one terabyte SDD for a ridiculous $435 — about a third of what I paid for a 600GB drive a little over a year ago! — and having run it for two months now, I’m prepared to pronounce it good. I wasn’t familiar with the manufacturer, Crucial, but they got very good reviews on Amazon, and at that price I was prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. My machine — a Thinkpad X230 running Ubuntu 13.10 — chugs along with nary a beach-ball, and I can go six to eight hours on a six-cell battery with full brightness, and continuous Wifi and Bluetooth usage. I’m rough on my computer, and it’s taken plenty of knocks and bumps without any noticeable impact on the drive. To accompany the new drive, I bought a pair of $78 Toshiba USB3 1TB drives (one for backing up at the office, the other for my travel bag). They’re nothing near as fast as the SDD, but combined with the USB3 bus, they’re plenty quick for daily incremental backups, which take less than five minutes. If your storage needs aren’t as massy as mine, there’s a whole line of Crucial SDDs, 480GB for $269 , 240GB for $140 and so on. They all come with three year warranties, though I haven’t had cause to get service for my drive yet (knock wood). The drive is 7mm high, and comes with an easy-to-fit adapter for 9mm enclosures. I was less impressed with the adapter I bought to copy the files over; it was fiddly and prone to losing its connection. Ultimately, I slapped the new drive into a case in order to make the transfer. Crucial M500 960GB SATA 2.5-Inch 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter/spacer) Internal Solid State Drive CT960M500SSD1        

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Terabyte laptop SDDs for $435!

Thorium fueled engine

Thorium Concept Car – Image Courtesy www.greenpacks.com Maggie has shared a couple ( here , here ) articles on Thorium as a super-fuel. This sounds like a fantastic implementation! Via IndustryTap : Laser Power Systems (LPS) from Connecticut, USA, is developing a new method of automotive propulsion with one of the most dense materials known in nature: thorium. Because thorium is so dense it has the potential to produce tremendous amounts of heat. The company has been experimenting with small bits of thorium, creating a laser that heats water, produces steam and powers a mini turbine. Current models of the engine weigh 500 pounds, easily fitting into the engine area of a conventionally-designed vehicle. According to CEO Charles Stevens, just one gram of the substance yields more energy than 7,396 gallons (28,000 L) of gasoline and 8 grams would power the typical car for a century.        

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Thorium fueled engine

On Windows’ battery life problems

Jeff Atwood loves everything about his Surface Pro 2 except for its terrible battery life . The Windows light usage battery life situation has not improved at all since 2009. If anything the disparity between OS X and Windows light usage battery life has gotten worse. Microsoft positions Windows 8 as an operating system that’s great for tablets, which are designed for casual web browsing and light app use – but how can that possibly be true when Windows idle power management is so much worse than the competition’s desktop operating system in OS X – much less their tablet and phone operating system, iOS? A typical data point: Windows, on a 13″ MacBook Air, lasts about half as long per charge as OS X. What’s the deal?        

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On Windows’ battery life problems

The downfall of Silk Road, and with it, the so-called Dark Net

From Adrian Chen’s Gawker long-read about that recent bust of the web’s biggest online illegal drug marketplace: The lesson of the Silk Road takedown isn’t that Ulbricht was sloppy about security.        

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The downfall of Silk Road, and with it, the so-called Dark Net