14th October 2012 Archive

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Skydiver Baumgartner in 128,000ft plunge from brink of space

Updated Steely-sphered Austrian breaks records

Skydiver Felix Baumgartner jumped 128,000 feet (24 miles, 39km) out of a balloon today, to complete the highest skydive in history. It took just under 10 minutes for the Austrian to reach the desert surface below. The Red Bull Stratos space capsule finally got off the ground at Roswell, New Mexico, following two aborts on the …

Science 14 Oct 16:10
UNSW offers free online Computing 1 class

Australian University joins global rush to give it away online

The University of New South Wales (UNSW) has jumped on the international bandwagon of Universities giving their courses away for free, with a 12-week Computing 1 course starting today. Available here, the course will be taught by Associate Professor Richard Buckland, an academic who specialises in security, cyber crime and …

Jobs 14 Oct 20:00
NZ government network leaking data like a sieve

Updated: Ministry apologises, launches investigation

A row has broken out in New Zealand after a blogger exposed serious security flaws in that country’s job-seeker network. The blogger, Keith Ng, demonstrated that public job-seeker kiosks had unauthenticated access to the corporate network of the Ministry of Social Development (MND). His posting raised concerns that attackers …

Security 14 Oct 21:38
Successful launch readies Galileo satellites for test

Positioning satellite constellation takes shape

The European Space Agency’s Galileo satellite positioning system is soon to enter its “service validation phase”, following the successful launch of the third and fourth satellites in the system. The two satellites were hoisted to their orbit at around 22,300 km by a Soyuz ST-B launcher operated by Arianspace. With four …

Science 14 Oct 22:02
Australian boffins have a ball with lightning maths

St Elmo will spin in his grave

Scientists at Australia’s CSIRO have put forward a mathematical model which they believe could help explain the origin of ball lightning. While people have observed ball lightning for centuries – at least – explaining it has been so troublesome that it’s attracted a variety of strange hypotheses – all the way to microwave …

Science 14 Oct 23:00
Fukushima operator feared shutdown if risks revealed

TEPCO ignored chance of big tsunami, 'fesses up to fear of regulation

The operator of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant, TEPCO, has admitted it was ill-prepared to cope with the tsunami of March 2011, and promised to do better in future. That promise is articulated in a new document, Fundamental Policy for the Reform of TEPCO Nuclear Power Organization (PDF), released last Friday. The …

Science 14 Oct 23:30