Russian spacecraft landed on moon hours before Americans – “A previously unheard recording of a Russian spacecraft attempting to beat NASA’s Apollo 11 in 1969’s race to the moon has been released…”

Who is Neil Armstrong? – “A hero to millions, Neil Armstrong has consistently shunned the limelight. To mark the 40th anniversary of the first manned Moon landing, author Andrew Smith travelled across America to discover why the man who first set foot upon the Moon remains such an enigma…”

10 Commonly Overlooked Auto Safety Issues – “However, you may not necessarily be ready to hit the road just yet: You may be overlooking important safety issues. These issues can be costly — not to mention dangerous — if you don’t take care of them immediately…”

Arduino Class – “Arduino ClassAs a father of three I don’t get out for “me time” very often, and certainly not classes to broaden my geeky horizons. But the Mrs. graciously allowed me to take a class, so I signed up for a course on arduino at Minneapolis’s cool maker collective, Studio Bricolage…”

World’s largest live underwater observatory project launched in Canada – “water_01The world’s largest and most advanced underwater observatory project was launched in a ceremony at Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt in the western Pacific province British Columbia…”

HP’s Web-Connected Printer Could Be a Game-Changer – “HP has unveiled a new touchscreen-equipped printer with WiFi and Web connectivity that could open up a whole new world of possibilities for consumers and businesses. The company also announced HP Apps Studio, where users can go to download applications and content to their printers…”

Find My IPhone Has Its First Real World Success Story – “In what is almost certainly the first incident of many to come, iPhone owner Kevin Miller was able to retrieve his lost and stolen iPhone from the hands of the thief using Apple’s new Find My iPhone feature…”

World Clock

How Bonds Work – “I think it’s time for a wonky economics lesson for all the laymen out there on how bonds work…”

Treat killing like a disease to slash shootings – “Shootings and killings in deprived areas of Chicago and Baltimore have plummeted by between 41 and 73 per cent thanks to a programme that treats violence as if it is an infectious disease…”

10 Things Your Congressperson Won’t Say – “When members of the U.S. House of Representatives stand for reelection, for most it’s a formality: On average, more than 90 percent of House incumbents win…”

Bill Nye Explains: The iPhone 3GS’s Oleophobic Screen – “The new 3GS iPhone has a coating that helps you leave no, well hardly any, prints–-fingerprints. The glass screen is coated with a polymer, a plastic that human skin oil doesn’t adhere to very well. People in the chemical bonding business like to call the finished surface “oleophobic.”"

Hands On With Google Voice -This Is Really Cool – “Google Voice provides a single phone number, such as 415-555-1212, for all your cell, home, and work numbers, and lets you manage your voice services online. Unlike a landline service, a Google Voice number isn’t tied to a geographical location. Unlike a cellular service, it’s not linked to a specific handset. And unlike a VoIP line, it’s not matched with an IP address. Rather, it’s tied to you. So if you move, change jobs, or switch wireless carriers, your Google Voice number stays with you. One drawback: you can’t port your current number to Google Voice, although that option may be added in the near future, the company says…”

Humans prefer cockiness to expertise – “EVER wondered why the pundits who failed to predict the current economic crisis are still being paid for their opinions? It’s a consequence of the way human psychology works in a free market, according to a study of how people’s self-confidence affects the way others respond to their advice…”

10 Ways to Learn Stuff While Procrastinating Online – “Here are 10 other easy ways to put off whatever you’re supposed to be doing while also getting your knowledge fix…”

Britain’s National Health Service: Simple, sensible and civilized – “A former NHS patient has some advice for Americans skeptical of single-payer, government-run healthcare: You’ll get over it…”

Quaint my ride:

Students create portable device to detect suicide bombers – “Improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the weapons of suicide bombers, are a major cause of soldier casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. A group of University of Michigan engineering undergraduate students have developed a new way to detect them…”

Why bankers aren’t worth it – “His latest speech, “Small Lessons from a Big Crisis” [pdf link], is grist for those who believe top bankers are being paid far too much…”

Logic of Lemmings in Compiler Innovation – “It has been at least four decades since the idea first emerged that, besides translating to machine code, a compiler must be able to perform a second important function: automate detection of a large class of programming errors without the need for massive test suites. What followed was a series of programming languages and their compilers embodying this idea that at first (1970s and 1980s) software practitioners began to adopt at a typical rate. But in the following decade, the industry reversed course, choosing C and later C++, which not only allow, but routinely require, highly unsafe methods scarcely above the assembly-language level, with huge regions of semantics that are explicitly disavowed as “undefined.”"

Cherry, The Mobile Operator That Doesn’t Care Whether You’re On Wi-Fi Or Not – “Then the company’s CEO got up on stage, introduced himself, took out his Nokia smartphone, called some random guy in the audience and had him call him back on his phone afterwards. Projecting his mobile phone screen on a bigger screen for everyone to see, he demonstrated how he didn’t need to launch an application and just browsed his contact list to call the other person. Standard functionality, sure, but the cool part of it was the fact that the phone was lacking the presence of a SIM card, which is supposed to identify you as a subscriber of a telephony service…”

A Goldman trading scandal? – “While most in the US were celebrating the 4th of July, a Russian immigrant living in New Jersey was being held on federal charges of stealing top-secret computer trading codes from a major New York-based financial institution—that sources say is none other than Goldman Sachs…”

Amazing laser spacecraft:

A Drug That Could Give You Perfect Visual Memory – “Imagine if you could look at something once and remember it forever. You would never have to ask for directions again. Now a group of scientists has isolated a protein that mega-boosts your ability to remember what you see…”

Stephen Hawking: “Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution” – ” Although It has taken homo sapiens several million years to evolve from the apes, the useful information in our DNA, has probably changed by only a few million bits. So the rate of biological evolution in humans, Stephen Hawking points out in his Life in the Universe lecture, is about a bit a year…”

Inflatable Tower Promises Easy Access to Outer Space – “An inflatable tower nine miles tall and tethered to a mountain top could cut the cost to launch spacecraft, reduce the need for geostationary communications satellites, and improve cell phone signals…”

Amazon takes one more step toward in-book advertisements for the Kindle – “Advertisements embedded in the text of your favorite book? It’s enough to make a purist squirm…”

AMD takes Phenom II 955 BE to 7.0GHz for 4th of July blast – “Over the 4th of July weekend, AMD sponsored an overclocking event in Finland. This event may become home base for a new quad-core overclock world record at an astounding 7.0GHz, should the results be validated (at the time of this writing, the CPU-Z database entry has not yet been validated due to some question over the contents of the generated CPU-Z validation file)…”

Physical reality of string theory demonstrated – “String theory has come under fire in recent years. Promises have been made that have not been lived up to. Leiden theoretical physicists have now for the first time used string theory to describe a physical phenomenon. Their discovery has been reported in Science Express. ‘This is superb. I have never experienced such euphoria.’ Jan Zaanen makes no attempt to hide his enthusiasm. Together with Mihailo Cubrovic and Koenraad Schalm, he has successfully managed to shed light on a previously unexplained natural phenomeon using the mathematics of string theory…”

Report: DOJ Reviewing US Telecom Deals With Handset Makers – “The U.S. Department of Justice has begun to look into the way that large operators form exclusivity agreements for popular handsets over concerns that the practice is anticompetitive, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal citing unnamed people familiar with the matter…”

You wouldn’t run a business this way (explains why your alma mater calls you once a week begging for money):

New algorithm guesses SSNs using date and place of birth – “Two researchers have found that a pair of antifraud methods intended to increase the chances of detecting bogus social security numbers has actually allowed the statistical reconstruction of the number using information that many people place on social networking sites…”

Printable batteries!? – “Researchers at the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Electronic Nano Systems ENAS have developed small and printable batteries…”

Electromagnetic Leak – “If extraterrestrial civilizations are monitoring our TV broadcasts, this is what they are currently watching…”

Planck achieves ultra-cold state – “Europe’s Planck observatory has reached its operating temperature, making it the coldest object in space…”

Hunt for Life on Saturnian Moon Heats Up – “Unfortunately, NASA has no current plans to send a probe crashing through the ice anytime soon. Enceladus lost out in the most recent round of mission planning to the Jovian moon, Europa, to be NASA’s marquee outer planet mission…”

The Kilogram Isn’t What It Used to Be—It’s Lighter – “What I love best about the kilogram is its tangibility, its solid, sculpted form of shiny platinum and iridium. I’m referring to not just any kilogram but the quintessential one that resides here—the actual International Prototype Kilogram, or IPK, created in 1879 as the official standard of mass. It’s a smooth cylinder of alloy, only an inch and a half high and an inch and a half in diameter. Though petite, the IPK is necessarily dense; it weighs 2.2046 pounds. If you went to pick it up, you might think someone had cemented it to the tabletop for a prank. Even if you knew what to expect, its compact heft would still boggle your senses…”

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