“Hot Jupiters” aren’t particularly sexy exoplanets—just clingy ones. These gas giants orbit tightly around their host stars, and despite their name, they’re typically more massive than Jupiter. And, as you’d expect, much hotter.
Source: Gizmodo – We Finally Know How These Exoplanets Get So Freakishly Big
One of the most significant events between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens is the birth of Han and Leia’s son Ben. In this exclusive excerpt from Empire’s End, the final installment in Chuck Wendig’s Star Wars: Aftermath trilogy, it turns out Lando’s been a bit too busy to pay much attention to his old…
Source: Kotaku – Lando Calrissian Ponders a Very Important Baby Gift in This Excerpt From Star Wars Aftermath: Empire’s End
The folks at YouTube’s Warped Perception channel promise that this video simply shows a mouse trap slicing through a plain old hot dog. But when filmed at a mind-boggling 147,000 frames per second, it’s hard not to imagine the same thing happening to a finger accidentally getting caught in there—or something, uh, a…
Source: Gizmodo – Slo-Mo Footage of a Mouse Trap Decapitating a Hot Dog Will Make Your Entire Body Recoil
Rejecting Donald Trump and his associates is a simple test of moral fortitude. Sam Altman, the 31-year-old Silicon Valley thought leader and president of famed startup accelerator Y Combinator, has passed the first part of that test. He has denounced Trump’s policies, calling them racist and isolationist. He has…
Source: Gizmodo – Sam Altman Is a Coward
The internet has democratized almost everything to the point where almost anyone can now start their own streaming service. Channel 4, a British public service broadcaster, is joining the fray by launching its own internet TV platform in the US. Walt…
Source: Engadget – Walter brings foreign prestige TV dramas to the US
Enlarge / FCC Chairman Ajit Pai testifying before a Senate subcommittee on May 11, 2016. (credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)
Ajit Pai today presided over his first Federal Communications Commission meeting since being named chairman by President Donald Trump, and he promised that the FCC will eliminate regulations under his leadership.
He also said that consumer protection and enforcement are important priorities for the commission—but he wouldn’t comment about whether he’ll enforce the existing net neutrality rules.
In a press conference after the meeting, Pai was asked several times about net neutrality. While Pai has repeatedly made it clear that he opposes the current rules and wants to overturn them, he has not said whether the commission will continue to enforce all of the rules while they are still in place.
Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – FCC Chair Ajit Pai won’t say whether he’ll enforce net neutrality rules
This $12 stainless steel reusable water bottle is vacuum-sealed and double-walled to actually keep your cold drinks cold and your hot drinks hot. Grab one in black, silver, or blue.
Source: LifeHacker – Store Your Drink of Choice In This Double-Walled Water Bottle
Aaron Soetaert has lived a lot of lives. These days, he’s a video game YouTuber. Years ago, he was in the Air Force. The path between those two things, however, was fraught. After Soetaert returned home from serving in Iraq, a drunk driver nearly took his life. In the end, he lost an arm.
Source: Kotaku – One-Armed Overwatch Player Is A Hell Of A Pharah Main
An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg report: Microsoft found ample demand for its $17 billion bond offering, allowing it to cut borrowing rates on its second multibillion note offering in six months. The tech giant received at least twice as many orders as it had bonds to sell, according to people familiar with the matter. The longest portion of the offering, which generally refinanced debt maturing soon, was a $2 billion, 40-year bond with a 4.5 percent coupon that yields 1.4 percentage points above Treasuries, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s down from initial discussions of about 1.55 percentage points. Moody’s Investors Service said Microsoft will use proceeds to refinance commercial paper it sold to help support its takeover of LinkedIn. A regulatory filing shows that at the end of 2016, the Redmond, Washington-based company had $25.1 billion of the debt.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Microsoft Sells Billion in Second Bond Deal in Six Months
Enlarge / The iPhone 7 and the AirPods. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)
Apple will host its earnings call for the first quarter of its fiscal 2017 this afternoon at 5pm Eastern, and we’ll be liveblogging the call and the analyst Q&A session to give you all the information along with our insights and charts.
This quarter’s results are expected to be a return to year-over-year growth after a disappointing 2016 in which Apple’s year-over-year earnings fell for the first time since 2001. Apple’s guidance from last quarter predicted that the company would make between $76 and $78 billion this quarter with profit margins between 38 and 38.5 percent. It made $74.6 billion in revenue in Q1 of 2016.
Expect services revenue, a consistent bright spot in Apple’s 2016 earnings reports, to continue climbing. The Mac’s slow decline throughout 2016 could be slowed or reversed by the introduction of the new MacBook Pros in October. This is the first full quarter of availability for the new Series 1 and Series 2 Apple Watches, which could offset decline in the company’s nebulous “Other Products” category. And the iPad, which has been in decline since Q2 of 2014, showed signs of bottoming out in the last couple quarters of 2016. The major wildcard will be iPhone 7 sales—the iPhone is nearly two-thirds of Apple’s revenue, so slower sales of the iPhone 6S throughout 2016 were primarily responsible for the company’s decline last year.
Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Liveblog: Apple’s Q1 2017 earnings call happens at 5pm Eastern
The size of one’s carbon footprint is not usually a major concern on this romantic holiday, but it can be mitigated with advance planning.
Source: TreeHugger – How to celebrate a green Valentine’s Day
This is a video of over 1,000 musicians gathered in Cesena, Italy, performing Nirvana’s 1991 classic ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ (previously: performing the Foo Fighter’s ‘Learning To Fly’ back in 2015 in an attempt to convince the band to come perform, which worked). Man, that is a big band. How do you get that many people organized and to show up on time? I’m, um, asking for a friend who can’t get any more than four people to show up for a birthday party. “Weren’t two of those people your dogs?” Yes, but please, it hurts so much more when you say it like that. “They had no choice.” I GET IT, OKAY?
Keep going for the video, and you can check out this Youtube channel for some of the other songs they performed during the same event.
Source: Geekologie – 1,000+ Musicians Performing Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’
An international team of scientists studying a 195-million year old rib from a Lufengosaurus (a 20-foot long dinosaur that looked like a brontosaurus but was potentially bipedal, artist’s rendition below) discovered a little organic material preserved inside the bone. Obviously, I’ve been frantically trying to get John Hammond on the phone all morning.
[They found] collagen proteins locked inside. The scientists also found hematite, an iron-containing mineral possibly left over from the dinosaur’s blood, that likely contributed to the preservation of the protein bits. Proteins are the way DNA manifests itself, so protein remnants can help scientists gain information on dinosaur biology and evolution that rock-like fossils alone can’t offer.
Cool, but what does it mean for cloning? “We can’t clone dinosaurs.” Don’t you dare say that. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and I’ve definitely got a will. “What’s it say?” It says, ‘If I die I want all my stuff burned with my body so nobody can have any of it.’
Keep going for several more shots including what the dino looked like, a pic of the bone, as well as a closeup of a vascular canal that used to carry the dinosaur’s blood.
Source: Geekologie – Clone It Already: Scientists Discover Dinosaur Rib ‘With A Little Meat In It’
One of America’s fastest growing professions, wind turbine technician, attracts people with a unique set of skills, as demonstrated by climber and composer Jessica Kilroy.
Source: TreeHugger – This is what it’s like to climb and service wind turbines for a living
Planting season will soon be here, and if you’re planning a garden, you should also consider how you’re going to control weeds. Our friends at the Old World Garden Farms suggest leaving behind the harsh herbicides this year and opting for these gentler treatments, from mulch to a weed torch that looks fun to use.
Source: LifeHacker – Three Simple Ways to Stop Weeds In Your Garden Early
Nintendo has quietly updated its Japanese website to say that production of the Wii U, at least domestically, has ended. As spotted by Kotaku, the listings for the console now include the phrase “Production End (Within Japan.)” We’ve known since last…
Source: Engadget – Nintendo kills the Wii U, at least in Japan
Well, this is exciting. The official Star Trek YouTube just posted an announcement that Star Trek: Discovery has begun production and the clip is loaded with teases of what the new show holds in store.
Source: io9 – A New Star Trek: Discovery Teaser Reveals Sets, Costumes, Ships and a Captain’s Chair
Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our partners at TechBargains, we have a big list of deals to share with you. One of today’s featured deals is the Dell Latitude 14 notebook with Windows 10 Pro, a Core i7 processor, and a 500GB hard drive for just $599. In addition, we have a number of smart TVs on sale, as well as monitors, gaming headsets, and more.
Check out the full list of deals below.
Featured
Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Dealmaster: Get a Dell Latitude 14 business notebook for just 9
So you want to try a standing desk, but don’t want to commit to it for eight hours a day…what do you do? You get off your butt and buy this dual monitor riser for an all-time low price, that’s what.
Source: LifeHacker – Become a (Part Time) Standing Desk User With This Discounted Dual Monitor Riser
I know we have a lot of Elder Scrolls Online fans around [H]. Bethesda is streaming a live broadcast entitled “Discover the Next Chapter of ESO,” at 1pm CST. Twitch has the stream. Or displeasure depending on how much of a hate-boner you have for Bethesda.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Next Chapter of Elder Scrolls Online – Live
