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Submission + - Newest NOAA Weather Satellite Suffers Critical Malfunction (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released some bad news yesterday: the GOES-17 weather satellite that launched almost two months ago has a cooling problem that could endanger the majority of the satellite’s value. GOES-17 is the second of a new generation of weather satellite to join NOAA’s orbital fleet. Its predecessor is covering the US East Coast, with GOES-17 meant to become “GOES-West.” While providing higher-resolution images of atmospheric conditions, it also tracks fires, lightning strikes, and solar behavior. It’s important that NOAA stays ahead of the loss of dying satellites by launching new satellites that ensure no gap in global coverage ever occurs.

Several weeks ago, it became clear that the most important instrument—the Advanced Baseline Imager—had a cooling problem. This instrument images the Earth at a number of different wavelengths, including the visible portion of the spectrum as well as infrared wavelengths that help detect clouds and water vapor content. The infrared wavelengths are currently offline. The satellite has to be actively cooled for these precision instruments to function, and the infrared wavelengths only work if the sensor stays below 60K—that’s about a cool -350F. The cooling system is only reaching that temperature 12 hours a day. The satellite can still produce visible spectrum images, as well as the solar and lightning monitoring, but it’s not a glorious next-gen weather satellite without that infrared data.

Submission + - Uber's self driving car saw pedestrian 6 seconds before fatal strike (tucson.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From the Arizona Daily Star:
"The autonomous Uber SUV that struck and killed an Arizona pedestrian in March spotted the woman about six seconds before hitting her, but did not stop because the system used to automatically apply brakes in potentially dangerous situations had been disabled, according to federal investigators.

In a preliminary report on the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday that emergency braking is not enabled while Uber's cars are under computer control, "to reduce the potential for erratic vehicle behavior."

Instead, Uber relies on a human backup driver to intervene. The system, however, is not designed to alert the driver."
The report comes a day after Uber announced it will be ending it's self driving vehicle testing in Arizona.
Full report available at https://www.ntsb.gov/news/pres...

Submission + - The Ordinary Engineering Behind the Horrifying Florida Bridge Collapse (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The people of Sweetwater, Florida were supposed to wait until early 2019 for the Florida International University-Sweetwater University City Bridge to open. Instead, they will wait about that long for an official assessment from the National Transportation Safety Board of why it collapsed just five days after its installation, killing at least six people. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, many queries have centered on the unconventional technique used to build the bridge, something called Accelerated Bridge Construction, or ABC. But ABC is more complicated than its acronym suggests—and it’s hardly brand new. ABC refers to dozens of construction methods, but at its core, it’s about drastically reducing on-site construction time. Mostly, that relies on pre-fabricating things like concrete decks, abutments, walls, barriers, and concrete topped steel girders, and hauling them to the work site. There, cranes or specialized vehicles known as Self-Propelled Modular Transporter install them. A video posted online by Florida International University, which helped fund the bridge connects to its campus, showed an SPMT lifting and then lowering the span into place.

In a now-deleted press release, the university called the “largest pedestrian bridge moved via SPMT in US history,” but that doesn’t seem to mean much, engineering-wise. SPMTs have been around since the 1970s, and have moved much heavier loads. In 2017, workers used a 600-axle SPMT to salvage the 17,000 ton ferry that sank off the coast of South Korea in 2014. The ABC technique is much more expensive than building things in place, but cities and places like FIU like it for a specific reason: Because most of the work happens far away, traffic goes mostly unperturbed. When years- or months-long construction projects can have serious effects on businesses and homes, governments might make up the money in the long run. Workers installed this collapsed span in just a few hours. These accelerated techniques are also much safer for workers, who do most their work well away from active roads.

Submission + - Man fined for implanting NFC train ticket in hand (cnet.com)

Submitted by Unhappy Windows User
Unhappy Windows User writes: An Australian man, when checked by a ticket inspector, claimed his smartcard was implanted in his hand. He took the case to court and lost; the fine and legal fees add up to AUD 1220 (USD 950). The man, who self-identifies as a biohacker and is a member of the Science Party, accepts the ruling but states that it won't discourage him from further biohacking. He claimed he was ahead of the law. The prosecution argued that, by cutting the chip out of the card, the ticket was invalidated. It is not clear from the article whether the NFC chip was working correctly and could be read by the inspector, or not.

Comment What about Europeans? (Score 2) 401

by durgledoggy (#46201731) Attached to: Leonard Nimoy: Smoking Is Illogical
What about Europeans and people from other parts of the world where tobacco products can't be marketed, cigarettes and nicotine products have to be hidden from view? People still smoke, people still start smoking. No marketing happening to them though. All the current evidence suggests that hiding tobacco products and banning smoking in certain places is not stopping people smoke nor reducing the number of new smokers.

Besides, what ever happened to people doing what they enjoy? Some smokers do feel trapped sadly, but not all. Many do it because they enjoy it.

Submission + - Hardly Anyone Is Buying 'Smart Guns' (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: The technology is here. So-called "smart guns" are being programmed to recognize a gun owner’s identity and lock up if the weapon ends up in the wrong hands. Entrepreneurs and engineers have been developing technology to make safer guns since the early '90s, and by now we've got working prototypes of guns that read fingerprints, hand grips or even sensors embedded under the skin. But after 15 years of innovation, personalized guns still haven't penetrated the marketplace.

Submission + - Localized (visual) programming language for kids?

Submitted by jimshatt
jimshatt writes: I want my kids to play around with programming languages. To teach them basic concepts like loops and subroutines and the likes. My 8-year old daughter in particular. I've tried Scratch and some other visual languages, but I think she might be turned off by the English language. Having to learn English as well as a programming language at the same time might be just a little too much.
I'd really like to have a programming language that is easy to learn, and localized or localizable. Preferably cross-platform, or browser-based, so she can show her work at school (Windows) as well as work on in at home (Debian Linux).
By the way, she speaks Dutch and Danish, so preferably one of those languages (but if it's localizable I can translate it myself).

Any suggestions?

Submission + - Former Sega employee reveals Sega Pluto prototype console (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new Sega console has been revealed, albeit it an old one that never made it past the prototype stage.

The console is called the Sega Pluto, and apparently only two prototype units were ever made. As for what’s inside the Sega Pluto, it looks to be a modified Saturn that includes the NetLink 28.8kbit/s modem as standard. It allowed Saturn consoles to be linked up using a dial-up connection for multiplayer gaming. A disc has also been found by another user that is an internal Sega Saturn CD-R that holds a terminal specifically for Pluto.
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - Ubuntu Community Manager: RMS's post seems a bit childish to me (jonobacon.org)

Submitted by spacenet
spacenet writes: As a response to RMS speaking out against Ubuntu about its privacy-violating integrated Amazon search results, which he considers to be spyware, Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon has responded to RMS's post. In his reply, Jono claims that Stallman's views on privacy do not align with Canonical's, that some of his statements are worded in order to "generate fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Ubuntu" and that "it just seems a bit childish to me".

The comments on the post itself are well worth a read.

Submission + - Sir Patrick Moore dies aged 89 (bbc.co.uk) 3

Submitted by Tastecicles
Tastecicles writes: Patrick Moore was the monocled surveyor of the sky who awakened in millions of people an interest in galactic goings on.

His love of astronomy began at the age of six and that childhood curiosity developed into a lifelong passion.

It was a passion he shared through his programme, The Sky at Night, which he presented for more than 50 years, only ever missing one episode due to illness.

Patrick Alfred Caldwell-Moore was born at Pinner, Middlesex on 4 Mar 1923.

Heart problems meant he spent much of his childhood being educated at home and he became an avid reader.

His mother gave him a copy of GF Chambers' book, The Story of the Solar System, and this sparked his lifelong passion for astronomy.

He was soon publishing papers about the moon's surface, based on observations made with his first three-inch telescope. His 1908 vintage typewriter enabled him to publish more than a thousand books on subjects ranging from astronomy, his first love, to cricket, golf, and music.
Medicine

Submission + - Stay Home When You're Sick!

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: If you've got Google CEO Larry Page's billions, you can reduce your chances of getting sick this winter by personally providing free flu shots to all San Francisco Bay Area kids at Target pharmacies. 'Vaccinating children,' explains the Shoo the Flu initiative's website, 'will not only improve children's health, it will also dramatically reduce the risk of the flu spreading to adults.' But Tim Olshansky doesn't have Page's money, so he'll have to settle for trying to get it through people's thick heads that they really have to stay home when they're sick. 'Why do people still come to the office when they're coughing up a lung?' asks the exasperated Olshansky. 'Because unfortunately, there is a still a strong perverse culture that equates staying at home when sick with weakness. This is a flawed belief and should be questioned. Given that we have the tools now to complete most tasks from home, there is no strong reason to compel people to come to the workplace.' So, does your employer encourage employees to stay home when they're sick? How?

Submission + - How Yucca Mountain was Killed (thenewatlantis.com)

Submitted by ATKeiper
ATKeiper writes: The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, which was selected by the U.S. government in the 1980s to be the nation’s permanent facility for storing nuclear waste, is essentially dead. A new article in The New Atlantis explains how the project was killed: 'In the end, the Obama administration succeeded, by a combination of legal authority and bureaucratic will, in blocking Congress’s plan for the Yucca Mountain repository — certainly for the foreseeable future, and perhaps permanently.... The saga of Yucca Mountain’s creation and apparent demise, and of the seeming inability of the courts to prevent the Obama administration from unilaterally nullifying the decades-old statutory framework for Yucca, illustrates how energy infrastructure is uniquely subject to the control of the executive branch, and so to the influence of presidential politics.' A report from the Government Accountability Office notes that the termination 'essentially restarts a time-consuming and costly process [that] has already cost nearly $15 billion through 2009.'

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