Using images captured at a variety of wavelengths by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express Orbiter, Riding with Robots creator Bill Dunford has crafted a composite image of the Red Planet’s south polar cap that’ll make you stop and stare. Read more…
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The Southern Pole of Mars is more beautiful than we ever imagined
Still trying to wrap your head around H.P. Lovecraft’s mysterious Elder Things and collection monsters who lived below the ice of the Antarctic? Well, now you can see exactly what these mysterious beasts looked like from the author’s point of view, thanks to a few pages of recently discovered doodles right out of Lovecraft’s notes. Read more…
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Lovecraft sketch shows the author’s vision for Mountains of Madness
An anonymous reader writes “The Diplomat reports on the 2006 National Medium to Long-term Plan (MLP) for the Development of Science and Technology, China’s most ambitious national science and technology plan to date. The MLP consists of sixteen megaprojects — both civilian and military — that serve as ‘S&T vanguard programs designed to transform China’s science & technology capabilities in areas such as electronics, semiconductors, [and] telecommunications.’ Thirteen of the megaprojects are listed in the MLP, while three are classified for national security reasons. The three classified megaprojects are likely the military components of the Shenguang Laser Project (used for thermonuclear weapons), the Beidou 2 Satellite Navigation System, and the Hypersonic Vehicle Technology Project.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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China’s Secret Scientific Megaprojects
Many people are claiming that these new Meganews Magazines autonomous newstands could save the print industry. That’s maybe a bit optimistic, but at the least they’ll help reduce the mountains of wasted paper from unsold magazines since the over-sized vending machine only prints publications when they’re ordered, in just two minutes. Read more…
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This Kiosk Prints Magazines and Newspapers As They’re Purchased
MojoKid writes “Low-power parts for hand-held devices may be all the rage right now, but today Intel is taking the wraps off a new high-end desktop processor with the official unveiling of its Ivy Bridge-E microarchitecture. The Core i7-4960X Extreme Edition processor is the flagship product in Intel’s initial line-up of Ivy Bridge-E based CPUs. The chip is manufactured using Intel’s 22nm process node and features roughly 1.86 billion transistors, with a die size of approximately 257mm square. That’s about 410 million fewer transistors and a 41 percent smaller die than Intel’s previous gen Sandy Bridge-E CPU. The Ivy Bridge-E microarchitecture features up to 6 active execution cores that can each process two threads simultaneously, for support of a total of 12 threads, and they’re designed for Intel’s LGA 2011 socket. Intel’s Core i7-4960X Extreme Edition processor has a base clock frequency of 3.6GHz with a maximum Turbo frequency of 4GHz. It is easily the fastest desktop processor Intel has released to date when tasked with highly-threaded workloads or when its massive amount of cache comes into play in applications like 3D rendering, ray tracing, and gaming. However, assuming similar clock speeds, Intel’s newer Haswell microarchitecture employed in the recently released Core i7-4770K (and other 4th Gen Core processors) offers somewhat better single-core performance.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Intel Launches Core I7-4960X Flagship CPU
hypnosec writes “Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 3.11 as anticipated. Torvalds notes that the final version doesn’t bring in a lot more than what is already present in the rc7, but it does include fixes — most of them in networking, file systems, and audio.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Linux 3.11 Released
China’s building boom has created a ton of abandoned cities and massive ruins — most of which are brand new, and have never had people living in them. Here are the deserted Chinese cities, mostly built in the last 10 years, which could be sets for your next dystopian movie. Read more…
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China’s brand-new abandoned cities could be dystopian movie sets
dryriver writes “The new Facebook advertising policy: ‘Our goal is to deliver advertising and other commercial or sponsored content that is valuable to our users and advertisers. In order to help us do that, you agree to the following: You give us permission to use your name, profile picture, content, and information in connection with commercial, sponsored, or related content (such as a brand you like) served or enhanced by us. This means, for example, that you permit a business or other entity to pay us to display your name and/or profile picture with your content or information, without any compensation to you. If you have selected a specific audience for your content or information, we will respect your choice when we use it.’ — Facebook also made it clear that the company can use photo recognition software to correctly identify people on the network. It said: ‘We are able to suggest that your friend tag you in a picture by scanning and comparing your friend’s pictures to information we’ve put together from your profile pictures and the other photos in which you’ve been tagged.’ — It [Facebook] said it was also clarifying that some of that information reveals details about the device itself such as an IP address, operating system or – surprisingly – a mobile phone number. The Register has asked Facebook to clarify this point as it’s not clear from the revised policy wording if a mobile number is scooped up without an individual’s knowledge or as a result of it being previously submitted by that person to access some of the company’s services. Importantly, Facebookers are not required to cough up their mobile phone number upon registering with the service. At time of writing, Facebook was yet to respond with comment.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Facebook To Overhaul Data Use Policy
Em Adespoton writes “Before the VirnetX case, nearly all FaceTime calls were done through a system of direct communication. Essentially, Apple would verify that both parties had valid FaceTime accounts and then allow their two devices to speak directly to each other over the Internet, without any intermediary or ‘relay’ servers. However, a small number of calls—5 to 10 percent, according to an Apple engineer who testified at trial—were routed through ‘relay servers.’ At the August 15 hearing, a VirnetX lawyer stated that Apple had logged ‘over half a million calls’ complaining about the quality of FaceTime [since disabling direct connections].” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Apple Now Relaying All FaceTime Calls Due To Lost Patent Dispute
Via Reuters “The Justice Department said it would refocus marijuana enforcement nationwide by bringing criminal charges only in eight defined areas – such as distribution to minors – and giving breathing room to users, growers and related businesses that have feared prosecution.”
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Obama administratrion permits states to manage marijuana