New Scientist, on authority of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, reports that the first moon outside of our solar system may have been discovered.

It is not yet clear what double object MOA-2011-BLG-262 is: it may be a rogue planet with a massive moon about 1800 light years from Earth, or a faint star (brown or red dwarf) with a Neptune-sized planet much further away.

The discovery was made by telescopes in New Zealand and Tasmania during a micro-lensing event in 2011. Since the micro-lensing event is over and we don't know the distance of the double object, we cannot distinguish between both possibilities.

(The discovery was published late 2013, but it is making mainstream news now .)

[Cross-posted to SoylentNews]

Phoronix reports that Linksys is finally shipping its successor to the highly popular WRT54G wifi router. The original spawned a number of open source router projects, including DD-WRT , which partially shares its name. Features of the new model:

• Wireless-N & AC (2.4 & 5 GHz)
• 1.2 GHz dual-core ARM processor
• 128MB of flash memory
• 256MB of DDR3 RAM
• 4 exchangeable external antennas
• 1 gigabit ethernet port + 4 gigabit ethernet switch
• 1 USB 3.0
• 1 eSATA/USB 2.0 (somehow sharing the same port)

Although the specifications and commitment to open source are welcome, the retail cost of $250-$280 may turn some away.