Kligat writes "Back in January, it was reported that the youngest planet ever to be discovered, about ten times the mass of Jupiter, was orbiting the eight- to ten-million-year-old star TW Hydrae. Now a Spanish research team has concluded that TW Hydrae b doesn't exist, and that cold spots on the star's surface actually produced the dip in brightness instead of a transiting planet. Not as cool as if a planet had actually been there, but refutations are science, too, right?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

calmond writes with this excellent snippet from CNET News: "QinetiQ Group PLC claimed Sunday that its propeller-driven aircraft called Zephyr flew for 83 hours and 37 minutes non stop, more than doubling the official world record set by Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk in 2001. The Zephyr is much different from the Global Hawk, which is about the size of a fighter and requires runway for taking off and landing. Zephyr, on the other hand, is an ultra-lightweight carbon-fiber aircraft that weighs less than 70lbs and is designed to launch by hand. The little aircraft flies on solar power generated by amorphous silicon arrays covering the aircraft's paper-thin wings. It is powered day and night by rechargeable lithium-sulfur batteries that are recharged during the day using solar power."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

They have a Flickr stream.

And a Twitter feed..

Uploaded a lot more pictures, and am about to upload a 2 minute tour of the inside of the DNC.

An anonymous reader writes "gNewSense, the fully-free GNU/Linux distribution sponsored by the FSF, has released a 2.1 live CD (torrent). Since the last release, more non-free binary blobs have been removed, new artwork has been added and lots of other improvements have been made. It's also two years since the first edition of gNewSense, and in that time an impressive ten live CDs have been released! gNewSense 2.1 DeltaH is based on Ubuntu Hardy, and removes non-free software that other distributions don't." I wonder if gNewSense can be easily installed on an OLPC XO the way several other distros can.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "gNewSense, the fully-free GNU/Linux distribution sponsored by the FSF, has released a 2.1 live CD (torrent). Since the last release, more non-free binary blobs have been removed, new artwork has been added and lots of other improvements have been made. It's also two years since the first edition of gNewSense, and in that time an impressive ten live CDs have been released! gNewSense 2.1 DeltaH is based on Ubuntu Hardy, and removes non-free software that other distributions don't." I wonder if gNewSense can be easily installed on an OLPC XO the way several other distros can.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's super hot outside, but the press puts on a good show.

Found free workspace, fast Ethernet and power. Happy blogger.

Now I'm looking for Google's tent, and the unassigned media tent (which is what bloggers are, officially, at the DNC).

Lots of the landscape is familiar, and it was true I'd need to re-experience it to recall the memories.

The photos from this part of the day's exploration begin here.

Lawrence Person writes "Legendary science fiction writer Ray Bradbury turned 88 years old on August 22. Happy Birthday Ray! 'The Illustrated Man' was one of the first science fiction books I ever read, and I've been hooked ever since. I'm sure that's true of a lot of science fiction writers and readers, be it that, or 'The Martian Chronicles,' or 'Fahrenheit 451.' There are also several videos of Ray on that page, including one where he doesn't endorse Sunsweet Prunes." I remember when another student on the bus loaned me "Fahrenheit 451," and my middle-school English teacher Mrs. Young was smart enough to include "All Summer in a Day" in her curriculum.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reader LM741N, pointing to a report released this month by California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, writes "Gallium Arsenide has now been listed as a carcinogen. Given the increasing usage of gallium arsenide, the main constituent in LEDs, and their recent championing as more efficient light sources in recent news stories and Slashdot, there may be significant environmental concerns as related to their disposal. Morover, workers in industries using the substance may be at risk of cancer as well."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

About to upload some pics and videos.

I'm posting regular updates to Twitter.

When I set out from Berkeley on Tues morning, this was my destination,. A dramatic entrance (movie) into the Pepsi Center, where the Democratic Convention opens tomorrow.

Lots more pictures following.

mario writes "Now that the OpenMoko platform has stabilized enough to provide the OM2008 image (supporting the three major toolkits), things are starting to heat up. Linuxdevices is reporting on the start of a port of Devicescape's connect application. Koolu (another Canadian company) is also doing development for its W.E. phone (a branded FreeRunner). Which leads me to ask, Where are the American companies?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

zentanu writes "It's said that if you want to be happy, be a gardener. What about IT security professionals? Having worked as an IT security consultant for several years, I now wonder if my job has a negative influence on my happiness, because it constantly teaches me to focus on the negative side of life: I always have to think about risks and identify all sorts of things that could go wrong. As an auditor I search for errors that others have made and haughtily tell them. As a penetraion tester I break systems that system engineers and administrators have laboriously built. I assume inside threats and have to be professionally suspicious. The security mindset surely helps me in my job, but is it good for me on the long run? What kind of influence has being an IT security professional had on your general attitude towards life? What helps you stay out of pessimism and cynicism? Is protecting existing things really as good as building new ones?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A spokesperson for Students for a Free Tibet tells Boing Boing that the 6 US citizens who were detained last week by Chinese authorities for participating in pro-Tibet protests around the site of the Olympics have been released. The group included videobloggers and artists whose work has previously been featured on Boing Boing. All were sentenced to 10 or more days in jail.
"James Powderly, Brian from Alive in Baghdad, and everyone else all arrive at LAX around 6 or 7pm tonight," says the SFT rep. A group of Tibetan expatriates and pro-Tibet activists plan to greet them at the airport and welcome them home.
Previously: Beijing and Tibet: GRL's James Powderly, Brian of "Alive in Baghdad, 4 other US citizens receive 10-day jail sentence

photonic writes "After three years of study, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finally released its report on the collapse of World Trade Center building 7. The main conclusion is that the building came down due to fire, not due to debris damage or some conspiracy demolition team. The fire started pretty small after the collapse of WTC 1, but was left to burn several floors out completely. The important finding is that the collapse was triggered by thermal expansion of beams, which could detach asymmetrically loaded girders from the main columns. Some limited pancaking of floors then caused a lack of lateral support and buckling of a single column. This triggered the failure of the entire core of the building, which finally fell down as a single piece. Crackpot theories can be discussed elsewhere; please limit the discussion to the science here. All documents can be found at NIST's WTC page, which read like a porn magazine for finite element junkies. Simulation movies are also available. And yes, they used Beowulf clusters to do the simulations, some of which lasted for several months."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I'm over the first hurdle getting set up for the Democratic Convention. I've got my press credential for tomorrow. Later today I'm heading over to the Pepsi Center to take some pictures. If you're here and reading this let's get together to talk politics and tech.

Some pics I took this morning...

Security details everywhere, also lots of volunteers offering help. Everyone's friendly and upbeat.

Obama-branded merchandise is going fast.

This guy looks like Obama, but...

I'm in the hotel where all reporters get their credentials. Spotted one or two famous faces. Got my s.w.a.g. bag.

ekesis tips a story up at NewScientist about the development of a new surveillance system by German engineering conglomerate Siemens. The system is notable for its integration of many different types of automated data-gathering. It can scan "telephone calls, email and internet activity, bank transactions and insurance records." It uses advanced pattern-recognition software to pick out unusual activities and important pieces of data. So far, the system has been sold to 60 countries. "According to a document obtained by New Scientist, the system integrates tasks typically done by separate surveillance teams or machines... This software is trained on a large number of sample documents to pick out items such as names, phone numbers and places from generic text. This means it can spot names or numbers that crop up alongside anyone already of interest to the authorities, and then catalogue any documents that contain such associates."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Aviran brings us an analysis of Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden's voting record on technology issues. CNet breaks down the issues by category and provides details on the tech-related legislation he's introduced in the past several years. Biden received a score of 37.5% on CNet's 2006 technology voter guide. We've discussed the technology stances of McCain and Obama in the past.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Adam Korbitz writes "Astrobiology Magazine reports on new research indicating extremophile microbes may be able to live on Titan, the sixth and largest moon of Saturn — in spite of the fact that the moon is largely ice and covered with lakes of liquid methane. Titan joins Mars, Venus, Europa and Enceladus as a potential home to extremophile life in our solar system."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Barence sends this excerpt from PC Pro: "Nvidia has delivered a scathing criticism of Intel's Larrabee, dismissing the multi-core CPU/GPU as wishful thinking — while admitting it needs to catch up with AMD's current Radeon graphics cards. 'Intel is not a stupid company,' conceded John Mottram, chief architect for the company's GT200 core. 'They've put a lot of people behind this, so clearly they believe it's viable. But the products on our roadmap are competitive to this thing as they've painted it. And the reality is going to fall short of the optimistic way they've painted it. As [blogger and CPU architect] Peter Glaskowsky said, the "large" Larrabee in 2010 will have roughly the same performance as a 2006 GPU from Nvidia or ATI.' Speaking ahead of the opening of the annual NVISION expo on Monday, he also admitted Nvidia 'underestimated ATI with respect to their product.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

David Byrne and Brian Eno's new album "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today" is up this week in a wide variety of formats, ranging from a free, DRM-free stream of the whole disc to a bunch of digital delivery options (320kbps MP3, Flac, or digital+CD) and a gorgeous little "deluxe package" with bonus tracks and a package designed by Stefan Sagmeister.

Byrne is literally my favorite recording artist of all time. I own the whole canon, in multiple formats, and a quick perusal of my top-rated MP3s in my music player, Banshee, tells me that he makes up more than a quarter of my favorite music. I have never been disappointed by anything he's done, and I've just bought myself the deluxe set and I'm listening to the stream and absolutely loving it. What a great day this is shaping up to be. Everything That Happens Will Happen Today