Wednesday, 8 May 2013

Fiery annular solar eclipse to be broadcast live on Internet

Most of Earth's inhabitants won't be able to directly watch the moon pass in front of the sun on Thursday -- leaving only a golden ring around its edges -- but anyone can catch the action online. Read this article by Dara Kerr on CNET News.

Relive Earth's wild history of meteor strikes

In the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's a meteor! This nifty graph lets you explore confirmed meteor strikes on Earth.

Originally posted at <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57583600

3D-printed guns could be outlawed in California

Senator Leland Yee plans to introduce legislation to ban 3D-printed gun technology in order to "ensure that it is not used for the wrong purpose with potentially deadly consequences." (Credit: Screenshot by Dara Kerr/CNET) With gun control battles raging among federal and state legislators, it was inevitable that the issue of 3D-printed handguns would come up, especially with such a gun now available.

jQuery Migrate 1.2.1 Released

They say there are no second acts in software ? well, there are always second acts in software. Especially when the first act bombs. With that in mind, version 1.2.1 of the jQuery Migrate

App turns smartphone sensors into weather stations

Weather reports typically only tell you what the weather should be doing in given places - not what it is doing. But that could soon change if an online service that uses people's phones as tiny weather stations works out. Launched today, WeatherSignal will crowdsource meteorological data from Android smartphones and map it on a website.

Legged Robot Performs Acrobatic Leaps - (watch video)

Presented at ICRA 2013 by Aaron M. Johnson and D. E. Koditschek, University of Pennsylvania. Learn more: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/upenn-kodlab-rhex-legged-robot-leaping

Tesla hits first profitable quarter ever

Breaking records, the electric car company's total revenue for the first quarter rose 83 percent over last quarter -- giving it adjusted earnings of $0.12 per share on revenue of $562 million.

Future-tech fair exposes geeky visions

The CalArts Digital Arts and Technology Expo offers a glimpse into the future of digital entertainment. If the innovations on display here are any indication, the future looks mighty fun. (Credit: Bruce Lot and Mark Morris) It's that time of year when student boffins the world over display their final projects, offering tantalizing glimpses into their mad-scientist machinations, and possibly the future.

Microsoft names Amy Hood as new Microsoft chief financial officer

Microsoft today announced that Amy Hood, who currently serves as chief financial officer of the Microsoft Business Division, was named Microsoft chief financial officer, succeeding outgoing CFO Peter Klein, who will remain at Microsoft through the end of June to ensure a smooth transition. Hood becomes CFO effective immediately.

Lockheed laser weapon hits its mark again

In a series of tests, the prototype ADAM system destroys a number of targets that the defense contractor describes as "free-flying Qassam-like rockets." (Credit: Lockheed Martin/Screenshot by CNET) Lockheed Martin's ADAM laser weapon wants to step up its game.

HPC means business in Cray XC30-A supercomputer debut

(Phys.org) ?What better place to use the "new vintage" computing theme than in Napa Valley where the Cray User Group meeting took place on Tuesday, The tie-in this year is Cray's new vintage of superc

Bad breath? This robot girl will tell you straight

Two new robots have hit Japan, both designed to let you know that you're a little on the smelly side. (Credit: Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia) We've all known people who, let's face it, have a bit of a pong, and not the cool video game kind.

How to Log PHP Errors and SQL to Chrome Console in CakePHP

First install ChromeLogger.

Setting up Chrome Logger and Error Handling

After installing the chrome plugin you?ll want to add the associated server-side library to app/Vendor/ChromePh

Microsoft and Hortonworks Share Hadoop Insights at Yahoo! Hack Europe: London

<img src="http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/9mOnpbImH5XvainejIW_hw--/YXB

Expired emails provide easy route to Facebook hacking

UP TO a million Facebook accounts could be vulnerable to an all-too-simple method of email hijacking that requires no programming skills or computer expertise. All you need, it turns out, is patience and someone's expired Hotmail address. So say security researchers at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey.

Platform Updates: Operation Developer Love



Reach people who hav

Faster Phrase Queries with Bigram Indexing

Bigram indexing lets you dramatically increase the performance of phrase queries. This post will tell you how it's done. The Idea Assume that some of your phrase queries are occasionally very slow. The root cause is usually simple: that, most likely, is just because they're processing way too much data.

John Legend: "True Colors" - (watch video)

In a heart-melting moment, TED Talks Education host John Legend sits at the piano to sing "True Colors," giving the lyrics a special meaning for kids and teachers. "So don't be afraid / to let them show / your true colors / are beautiful, like a rainbow."

NASA Awards Contract to Modify Mobile Launcher

NASA has awarded a contract to J.P. Donovan Construction Inc. of Rockledge, Fla., to modify the mobile launcher that will enable the agency's Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket to send humans

AWS Direct Connect location in Seattle and access to AWS GovCloud (US) now available

We are delighted to make two important announcements today - a new AWS Direct Connect location in Seattle supporting the AWS US West (Oregon) regi

Mars rover wakes up, gets better laser aiming

SPRING break is over for NASA's Mars rover. But before it can get to work, Curiosity will receive some upgrades, such as the ability to fire its laser with more autonomy. The rover had gone into standby mode throughout April, when Mars went behind the sun from our perspective.

Announcing AWS Management Pack for Microsoft System Center


We are excited to announce the AWS Management Pack for Microsoft System Center. The AWS Management Pack enables you to view and monitor

Fanning the flames: House burns in wildfire simulation

YOU wouldn't want to be trapped inside this house, as searing embers from an approaching wildfire set it alight. Fortunately for those nearby, the wildfire is simulated and under control. Spot the spectator. Hidden behind the pipes blasting the house with embers on the right, and wearing a flame-resistant hood and suit, this wildfire scientist is observing the building to see what sparks up first.

Bringing Debian to Google Compute Engine

This was an exciting week for the Debian community who Debian 7.0 "wheezy" that brings big improvements including hardened security, improved 32/64-bit compatibility and addresses a lot of community feedback. Today we're adding Debian images for Google Compute Engine .

Typesafe Interview: Scala + Akka is an IaaS for Your Process Architecture

Wednesday, May 8, 2013 at 9:00AM This is an email interview with Viktor Klang , Director of Engineering at , on the Scala Futures model & both topics on which is he is immensely passionate and knowledgeable. How do you structure your application? That's the question I explored in the article Beyond Threads And Callbacks.

Geoffrey Canada: Our failing schools. Enough is enough! - (watch video)

Why, why, why does our education system look so similar to the way it did 50 years ago? Millions of students were failing then, as they are now -- and it's because we're clinging to a business model that clearly doesn't work.

Pearl Arredondo: My story, from gangland daughter to star teacher - (watch video)

Pearl Arredondo grew up in East Los Angeles, the daughter of a high-ranking gang member who was in-and-out of jail. Many teachers wrote her off as having a problem with authority. Now a teacher herself, she's creating a different kind of school and telling students her story so that they know its okay if sometimes homework isn't the first thing on their mind.

Artist 3D-prints portraits from DNA left in public places

Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg collects gum, hair, and cigarette butts from public places to extract DNA data and create 3D portraits based on genetics. (Credit: Heather Dewey-Hagborg) We can't help but leave our DNA all over the place. If you drop a chewed piece of gum or a cigarette butt, it might get picked up by artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg.

Malcolm London: "High School Training Ground" - (watch video)

Young poet, educator and activist Malcom London performs his stirring poem about life on the front lines of high school. He tells of the "oceans of adolescence" who come to school "but never learn to swim," of "masculinity mimicked by men who grew up with no fathers." Beautiful, lyrical, chilling.

Ramsey Musallam: 3 rules to spark learning - (watch video)

It took a life-threatening condition to jolt chemistry teacher Ramsey Musallam out of ten years of "pseudo-teaching" to understand the true role of the educator: to cultivate curiosity. In a fun and personal talk, Musallam gives 3 rules to spark imagination and learning, and get students excited about how the world works.

New Quick Assist Items in Latest Dart Editor Build

A new Dart Editor build is available at www.dartlang.org/editor. This build introduces a couple of quick assist items. The first assist item lets you combine an 'if' statement with an inner 'if' statement. Place the cursor over the starting if, press cmd-1, and hit return.

Bill Gates: Teachers need real feedback - (watch video)

Until recently, many teachers only got one word of feedback a year: "satisfactory." And with no feedback, no coaching, there's just no way to improve. Bill Gates suggests that even great teachers can get better with smart feedback -- and lays out a program from his foundation to bring it to every classroom.

Turning Star Trek's medical tricorder into reality

A special selection of content every week, giving you access to the latest news in science

Troubleshooting: so easy a ten-year-old can do it

The ten-year-old in question is Jessica, Gordon?s daughter, who dropped into the office last week to give us a hand testing some Raspberry Pis that customers had sent back to the manufacturers as ?

New in Symfony 2.3: Great new Features in the Console Component

New in Symfony 2.3: Great new Features in the Console Component The console progress helper was added in 2.2. For 2.3, several enhancements were made to the display like avoiding too much flickering, or supporting UTF-8. There is also one new feature, the possibility to set the current progress of the bar.

First Flight Tests for a Quadrotor UAV with Tilting Propellers - (watch video)

Presented at ICRA 2013 by Markus Ryll, Heinrich H. Bulthoff, and Paolo Robuffo Giordano from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics

Weekly Podcast 05/07/2013


Meeting notes:



  • Announcements


    • new web sites: <a href="http

NASA Television to Air Space Station Soyuz Landing

NASA Television will provide live coverage May 12-14 as three crew members aboard the International Space Station end five months in orbit and return to Earth for a scheduled landing May 13.

This Week in Spring - 7 May, 2013

Welcome to An Epic Week in Spring! Lots of new sessions have been posted to SpringOne Conference, so head over to the site and check out the featured sessions! We'll have the agenda grid online before the end of May.

Node Roundup: Node-sass, TowTruck, peer-vnc


You can send in your Node projects for review through our contact form.

Node-sass



Node-sass (GitHub: <a href="https://github.com

SpringOne2GX 2012 Replays: Spring Integration in the Wild, Java EE Services for Spring Applications

What kind of services may a Spring application expect from a modern Java EE server, beyond the pre-packaging of common Java APIs? How much effort does it take to add a custom selection of Java EE services to e.g. Tomcat, for use in Spring-based applications?

DevConf 2013



DevConf 2013 in Moscow, Russia on Jun 14



DevConf is the ultimate meeting place for russian-speaking web-developers,
combining several language-specific

jQuery Roundup: UI 1.10.3, simplePagination.js, jQuery Async


Note: You can send your plugins and articles in for review through our contact form.

jQuery UI 1.10.3



<a href="http://blog.jquer

3D/4D ultrasound hologram printing service using Pioneer's compact holographic printer #DigInfo - (watch video)

Pioneer has announced a service that prints the expressions of unborn babies as 3D holograms, using a compact full-color hologram printer developed by the company last year. This device can record full color card-sized Lippmann hologram in 120 minutes.

Gigapi: a Raspberry Pi rig for gigapixel photography

We've seen a number of photographers who have taken to the Pi as a way to bring down the cost of the sort of kit that was, pre-Pi, outside the budgets of mere mortals. Case in point: gigapixel photography.

To make your star quality real, you need a roadmap

MOST of us possess one or two real talents, hopefully discovered while we were still young enough to develop them. But for many people, there remains the nagging possibility that we might possess other skills: sparks of potential that we never nurtured or perhaps never even noticed.

IkeaBot: An Autonomous Multi-Robot Coordinated Furniture Assembly System - (watch video)

Presented at ICRA 2013 by Ross A. Knepper, Todd Layton, John Romanishin, and Daniela Rus from the Computer Science and Arti?cial Intelligence Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Automatically Process Cloud Storage Uploads with Change Notifications





Do your customers upload files to <a href="

Foursquare, YouTube apps get major updates for Windows Phone 8

Freshly enhanced versions of both Foursquare and YouTube arrived in the Windows Phone Store today, bringing additional Windows Phone 8 features to the two popular apps. The updated YouTube app lets you pin channels, playlists and results directly to your Start Screen, redesigns the playlist experience as a touch-friendly filmstrip and allows you to limit what videos little ones can watch by pinning the app to Kid's Corner and configuring your YouTube Safety Settings.

Coinbase (YC S12) raises $5M from Union Square Ventures, largest financing round yet for a Bitcoin startup

Eleven-month-old startup Coinbase announced Tuesday the largest funding round to date for a Bitcoin startup, a $5 million investment led by Union Square Ventures. In an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal, Coinbase's founders Fred Ehrsam and Brian Armstrong said the Series A deal-which followed a seed round in September 2012 of $600,000-will help the San Francisco company cover operating costs and hire engineers, designers and business-support staff.

Boeing primes the B-52 for the digital age

The aircraft maker says a $76 million contract will let it start upgrading the U.S. Air Force's aging but still potent fleet of heavy bombers. (Credit: U.S. Air Force) Douglas MacArthur famously said that old soldiers never die, they just fade away. Some famous old aircraft take a different route: they go digital.

UF launches HiPerGator, the state's most powerful supercomputer

The HiPerGator supercomputer and recent tenfold increase in the size of the university's data pipeline make UF one of the nation's leading public universities in research computing. "If we expect our researchers to be at the forefront of their fields, we need to make sure they have the most powerful tools available to science, and HiPerGator is one of those tools," UF President Bernie Machen said.

Sticky-footed robot gets high using hot plastic

A sticky-footed robot that can climb rocky cliff faces while carrying five times its own mass has been developed in Switzerland. It could act as a scout for mountain rescue teams, help construction crews on skyscrapers or simply scoot up your wall to paint your ceiling.