Twitter Hacked, Defaced By “Iranian Cyber Army”

We’ve accustomed assorted tips appropriate about 10 pm that Twitter was afraid and defaced with the bulletin below. The armpit was offline for a while.

We’re attractive into this and apprehension on a acknowledgment from Twitter.

The bulletin read:

Boeing bent 787 will assuredly fly

EVERETT, Wash. (AP) -- Weather permitting, Boeing Co. affairs to assuredly get its fresh 787 jetliner into the air Tuesday, added than two years afterwards it had intended.

The analysis aircraft completed its arena tests during the weekend, including a 150-mph birr bottomward the aerodrome at Everett's Paine Field during which its adenoids accessory briefly aerial off the pavement. Tuesday morning, pilots Michael Carriker and Randall Neville achievement to booty the 787 on a four-hour flight over Washington state, alpha the all-encompassing flight analysis affairs bare to access the plane's Federal Aviation Administration certification.

2009: the Year of Twitter and Facebook

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Twitter, fueled by smartphones and online bursts of 140 characters, soared to aerial heights over the accomplished year while Facebook eclipsed MySpace to become the world's arch amusing network.

"Those are the big winners," said Jason Keath, a North Carolina-based social media consultant and founder of SocialFresh.com, an organizer of social media conferences. "Facebook more or less tripled their size this year."

Best Meteor Shower of 2009 Peaks Tonight

This year's anniversary Geminid meteor battery is accepted to be a doozie, bearing up to 140 "shooting stars" per hour.

The event, which NASA has labeled the best meteor shower of 2009, has been ramping up the past few days but gets serious tonight.

Maximum action is accepted aboriginal Monday – about 12:10 a.m. EST (0510 UT). But the aiguille of this accident encompasses several hours, astronomers say. So acceptable examination can be had from about 9 p.m. bounded time tonight through aurora Monday.

Extra pores on plants `could ease` all-around warming

TOKYO (AFP) – Japanese advisers said on Thursday they had begin a way to accomplish bulb leaves blot added carbon dioxide in an addition that may one day advice affluence all-around abating and addition aliment production.

The Kyoto University aggregation begin that assimilation germinated seeds in a protein band-aid aloft the cardinal of pores, or stomas, on the leaves that drag CO2 and absolution oxygen, said arch researcher Ikuko Hara-Nishimura.

Not Yet the Season for a Nook

The holidays are no joyride. Between the stress, the money and the relatives, no admiration so abounding bodies arrangement Seasonal Depression, Financial-Obligation Migraine and Family Drama Disorder.

And in the electronics business, Greed-Borne Insanity is contagious.

That’s back electronics executives, addled by dollar signs on their corneas, blitz a artefact to bazaar afore it’s ready. (See also: BlackBerry Storm, Christmas 2008.)

"Climate Express" to Copenhagen lowers footprint

ABOARD THE CLIMATE EXPRESS – A alternation splashed with a blooming band agitated 450 U.N. officials, delegates, altitude activists and journalists from Brussels to the altitude acme in Copenhagen on Saturday to betoken efforts to abate the convention's carbon footprint.

More trains were abrogation from added European capitals, and one was absolute a cruise from Kyoto, Japan, through China and the Trans-Siberian avenue beyond Russia.

Chicken of the sea? Adolescent agriculture accepting a boost

KUMANO, Japan – Thousands of tuna, their argent bellies aggrandized with fat, bathe aimlessly about in netted areas of a baby bay, capacity themselves until they abound alert as abundant as in the wild.

Is this sushi's future? Adolescent aloft like chickens or cows?

As the world's adulation activity with raw angle depletes agrarian adolescent populations, long-running efforts to brand the abyssal angle from egg to adolescence may assuredly be address fruit. Though the challenges are daunting, the abeyant profits are huge.

NASA Abashed Over Fresh Rocket's Parachute Failure

NASA is still abashed over the parachute abortion that damaged its fresh Ares I-X analysis rocket during its October analysis launch, but contrarily the admission flight went well, mission managers said.

The $445 actor suborbital Ares I-X rocket, NASA's aboriginal ancestor of the agent it affairs to backpack bodies to apogee afterwards the amplitude shuttles retire, accursed off Oct. 28 from the Kennedy Amplitude Center in Florida. It soared eastward into the sky, ailing at about 28 afar (45 km) altitude, again the solid-rocket aboriginal date afar from its copy additional date and alone into the ocean as planned.

But two of three parachutes bootless to arrange to abate the spent aboriginal stage's splashdown into the ocean as planned. Consequently, the booster hit the baptize harder than expected, causing a huge cavity and added damage. Ultimately, back the genitalia aren't advised to be reused, mission managers said the malfunction wasn't a above botheration and they were able to accumulate all the abstracts they needed.

"We're still investigating what happened there and why," said Marshall Smith, chief of the System Engineering and Integration Office for the Ares I-X mission, during a Thursday news conference.

Mission managers suspect that the chutes began to deploy earlier than planned, and thus took on more force than they were designed for, resulting in their failure.


Gathering data

The towering 327-foot (100-meter) Ares I-X rocket was loaded with more than 700 onboard sensors to gather data about the booster's trajectory and performance.

Among the promising signs revealed in the report were the fact that the rocket shook and rolled much less than some models predicted, which had originally been a concern for the Ares I design concept. Additionally, early visuals raised some fears that the first and second stages might have hit each other, or "re-contacted," after separation, but detailed analysis revealed that they didn't.

"First stage separation was entirely nominal," Smith said. "We're pretty confident there's no re-contact issues."

Additionally, three connectors failed to detach during the separation of two pieces of the segment connecting the first and second stages. This was somewhat expected though, and the two pieces separated anyway, ripping the connectors, because of the strong force pulling them apart.

"It didn't really matter," said Bob Ess, Ares I-X mission manager. "We did asses this possible failure scenario before launch."


Puzzling measurements

Another odd finding was the measurement of the structural damping, which is basically how much the structure of the rocket is able to resist vibrations, during the test launch. The booster experienced about20 percent less damping than models had predicted.

"I can't tell you whether it's bad or good – it just doesn't match," Smith said.

The engineers plan to investigate that issue and others as they continue to review the data, which is still in preliminary stages of analysis. Almost all the data was recovered from the rocket when teams retrieved the stage from the ocean, though for some reason the data at the end of the flight wasn't recorded properly to the disk. But mission managers said they had other versions of that data and were more concerned with the ascent than descent anyway.

"We've got loads of that data, so were not super concerned with getting that," Smith said.

NASA is also beginning to plan the next Ares I flight test, which is currently targeted for 2012.

International Space Station aggregation acreage safely

MOSCOW – Astronauts from Canada and Belgium and a Russian cosmonaut landed cautiously on the Kazakhstan steppes on Tuesday, wrapping up a six-month assignment on the International Space Station.

The Russian Soyuz TMA-15 abridged accustomed Canadian astronaut Bob Thirsk, Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, and European Space Agency's astronaut Frank De Winne, of Belgium, affected bottomward after a block abreast the boondocks of Arkalyk in Kazakhstan's arid north, Russian Mission Control agent Valery Lyndin said.

Parachutes slowed the ability to a bendable touchdown at 10:15 a.m. Moscow time (0715 GMT), as scheduled.

Open Antecedent as a Model for Business Is Elusive

SAN FRANCISCO — In abounding ways, MySQL embodies the ethics of the autonomouscomputer appliance movement accepted as accessible source, in which a program’s architect releases it to the apple chargeless of charge, and legions of volunteers accord improvements that are additionally advisedly shared.

The start-up aggregation came out of nowhere, architecture a database appliance admired by vibrant, adolescent Internet companies. Logging in from homes broadcast about the globe, its workers seemed added a allotment of a basic collective than a accumulated monolith, and they relished demography on proprietarycomputer appliance giants like Microsoft.

Twitter Doesn’t Track The Zeitgeist. Alone 2 Percent Of Tweets Overlap With Chase Trends.

Whenever you appetite to booty a account of the accepted zeitgeist, accepted chase agreement can acquaint you a lot about what’s on people’s minds. Right now, for instance, the hottest chase agreement on Google Trends accommodate “lakewood badge shooting,” “tiger dupe mistress,” “surviving Christmas,” and “cyber monday 2009 deals.” If you attending at Trending Topics on Twitter, however, you’ll see “#isitme,” “Google Wave,” and “Soul Train Awards.” I doubtable alone the aftermost one ability accomplish it as a trending chase term.

The overlap amid trending chase agreement and Tweets is appreciably low (even if Twitter itself is a accepted chase term). A brace weeks ago I was abstinent a realtime chase console back Vik Singh (the architect abaft Yahoo Boss, anon to be an EIR at Sutter Hill Ventures) declared that alone 2 percent of all Tweets bout trending chase terms.

Energizer Bunnies: Turning Rabbits into Green Fuel

Sweden's Tommy Tuvuynger and his aggregation of able hunters don't accept to go far to acquisition their prey. Tuvuynger is active to accumulate bottomward aerial numbers in the Swedish capital, Stockholm. The aerial citizenry there has exploded over the accomplished few years acknowledgment to owners ambience chargeless their pets. Last year the abolishment band dead 6,000 of the bristling critters, which are not built-in to Sweden. When the burghal started killing the rabbits in 2006, admiral accomplished they would accept to actuate of their carcasses. At about the aforementioned time, the European Union anesthetized a law that makes it actionable to actuate of raw meat or carcasses in landfills. Solution: use the bunnies as ammunition to calefaction Swedish homes.

Commonwealth talks addition hopes of altitude deal

PORT OF SPAIN (AFP) – Hopes were ascent Saturday that a fresh all-around altitude alliance is aural ability afterwards affluent nations at a Commonwealth acme offered to advice poorer countries buck the costs of implementing any deal.

The 53-nation anatomy all-embracing above all-around players like Britain, Australia and India, and abate island states like Nauru and the Maldives, were accepted to affair a collective charge to arrest altitude change.

"Success in Copenhagen is in sight," said UN arch Ban Ki-moon, apropos to the altitude negotiations in the Danish basic December 7-18.

Signal crumbling on radio cartage reports

CORONA, Calif. – For added than 20 years, Mike Nolan was accepted to radio admirers as the "eye in the sky." He flew over Southern California freeways in his single-engine plane, advertisement on the nation's affliction traffic.

These days, he broadcasts about cartage snarls and ambuscade gridlock after abrogation the arena — after alike abrogation his home in this Los Angeles suburb. Sitting in a armchair abaft computer monitors and a television, Nolan gathers cartage abstracts and broadcasts alive on two radio stations a day.