takyon writes:NASA has announced 19 non-reimbursable Space Act Agreements (SAAs) with 13 U.S. companies, including SpaceX, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Aerogel Technologies of Boston, and others. No money will be exchanged, but NASA employees will offer their knowledge and expertise for a variety of projects.SpaceX's SAAs concern landing Starship on the Moon and refueling Starship in-orbit:
chromas writes:"Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software toolset used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games."If you had previously taken a look at Blender, but were put off by its nonconformist UI and right-click-select paradigm, well, that's all gone now:
DannyB writes:Advertising is a cancer on societyI know it's a blog post, but you're not going to get this kind of thing in a news article. Hopefully SoylentNews' many advertisers won't be offended.
jas writes:There is a relatively old—though still fundamentally true—adage about Windows: Microsoft's biggest competition is Microsoft, as a specific subset of users (and businesses) only upgrade to the latest version of Windows kicking and screaming. According to SpiceWorks' Future of Network and Endpoint Security report, published Tuesday, 32% of organizations still have at least one Windows XP device connected to their network, despite extended support for XP ending in 2014. (Notably, the last variant of XP, Windows POSReady 2009, reached end of life in April 2019.)With the looming end of free support for Windows 7, this reticence of users and enterprises to upgrade to newer versions of Windows is likely to create significant security issues. Presently, 79% of organizations still have at least one Windows 7 system on their network, according to SpiceWorks, which also found that two thirds of businesses plan to migrate all of their machines off Windows 7 prior to the end of support on January 14, 2020, while a quarter will only migrate after that deadline.https://www.techrepublic.com/article/its-2019-and-one-third-of-businesses-still-have-active-windows-xp-deployments/Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
upstart writes:Submitted via IRC for BytramDear hackers: If you try to pwn a website for phishing, make sure it's not the personal domain of a senior Akamai security researcher
ikanreed writes:According to a recent talk presented at the Ecological Society of America, solar panels and crops aren't always in competition.In dry, hot areas, cooling by transpiration, not sunlight is the limiting factor of crop growth. Sometimes as much of 3/4 of sunlight is wasted in these places. An experiment by Greg Barron-Gafford hoped to take advantage of that.
upstart writes:Submitted via IRC for BytramSupervisors driven by bottom line fail to get top performance from employees: 'Bottom-line mentality' can lead to loss of employee respect and loyalty, research shows
RandomFactor writes:A new bill is being written with input from both the House and Senate in the hopes of speeding the introduction of self driving vehicles on the roads.Similar legislation last year (the SELF DRIVE Act in the House and the 'AV START Act' in the Senate) failed to pass even though amended repeatedly in response to Democrat