It should come as no surprise that the Apollo astronauts left a few things behind after landing on the moon. Since the lunar module could only lift so much weight off the surface, they swapped out unwanted goods and gear for moon rocks . Among those unwanted goods were all kinds of weird things. What kinds of weird things? There were 96 bags of poop, pee, and puke. Read more…
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There’s Poop on the Moon
MojoKid writes Microsoft, it seems, just can’t catch a break. Days after a major hack took its servers offline on Christmas day, and after being lambasted in multiple stories for shipping games like Halo: The Master Chief Collection in nigh-unplayable condition, the company’s Xbox One SDK has been leaked to the public by a group calling itself H4LT. H4LT, which apparently objects to being called a hacker group, offered this explanation when asked why it was distributing the SDK. The group claims that “the SDK will basically allow the community to reverse and open doors towards homebrew applications being present on the Xbox One.” To be clear, what H4LT has done is a far cry from groups like Lizard Squad. The SDK for any given product is typically available behind some degree of registration, but they don’t necessarily cost anything. The SDK is one small component of creating the ecosystem that would be necessary to get homebrew up and running on the platform. Whether or not users will ever pull it off is another question” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Hackers Leak Xbox One SDK Claiming Advancement In Openness and Homebrew
Most of us— at least the cynical ones —assume that the NSA has probably beaten most of the encryption technologies out there. But a new report from Der Spiegel that draws on documents from Edward Snowden’s archive shows that this simply isn’t true. There are some tools that the NSA, as recently as two years ago, couldn’t crack. Read more…
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The Encryption Tools the NSA Still Can’t Crack Revealed in New Leaks
Growing nerve tissue and organs is a sci-fi dream. Moheb Costandi met the pioneering researcher who grew eyes and brain cells. Read more…
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The Man Who Grew Eyes From Scracth
Planes are giving passengers less and less leg room so it’s no surprise that quarrels break out between passengers over space. Yesterday, one such altercation got so heated that a plane was diverted to Chicago. And at the heart of the conflict? A nifty little device called the Knee Defender , which prevents seats from reclining. Read more…
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A Gadget That Stops Seats From Reclining Caused a Plane-Diverting Fight
You can buy your pretty new iPhone 6 with somewhat of a clearer conscience this fall. Apple announced today that they’re eliminating two known toxins—benzene and n-hexane—from the production of iPhone and iPads. Read more…
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Apple Is Banning Two Hazardous Chemicals From iPhone Production
First time accepted submitter catparty (3600549) writes An examination of what we can know about Facebook’s new machine learning News Feed algorithm. From the article: “Facebook’s current News Feed algorithm might be smarter, but some of its core considerations don’t stray too far from the groundwork laid by EdgeRank, though thanks to machine learning, Facebook’s current algorithm has a better ear for ‘signals from you.’ Facebook confirmed to us that the new News Feed ranking algorithm does indeed take 100, 000 weighted variables into account to determine what we see. These factors help Facebook display an average 300 posts culled from roughly 1, 500 possible posts per day, per user.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Inside the Facebook Algorithm Most Users Don’t Even Know Exists
Photoshop has become so dominant that you can use its name as a verb, but if you want to get your hands on it you need to shell out at least $10 a month . Don’t worry! There are plenty of completely free alternatives to Photoshop; here are a few of the best. Read more…
Jeddah’s Kingdom Tower will be taller than any other structure ever built. At more than one kilometer high, this supertall will require feats of engineering that, until now, have been the stuff of science fiction. Like the world’s tallest, longest, and fastest elevators—which are being developed in a mine shaft in Finland. Read more…
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The Tallest Elevators On Earth Are Being Tested In an Old Mineshaft
The truly shatterproof screen is a little bit like the flying car : It’s been promised for years, but never arrives. Scientists at University of Akron claim they’ve cracked the code, so to speak, by creating a super-tough screen out of transparent electrodes. Read more…
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Scientists Made an Unbreakable Smartphone Screen From Clear Electrodes