Goose only wishes he had moves like these. This stunning dash cam footage from an F-16 attached to the 51st Wing captured some intense aerial action at the recent Red Flag-Alaska exercises?including mid-air refuelings, targeted bomb strikes, low-altitude flybys, and even a cameo appearance by a B-2 stealth bomber.
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If you've been torn between Samsung's NX300 and NX1000 mirrorless cameras, you should know the company has officially split the difference with its new NX2000. While it likely won't sway NEX-3N lovers away from Sony, the $650 NX2000 is only a Benjamin more than Sammy's lower-end NX1000 and packs the same 3D-capable DRIMe IV processor and NFC functionality as the pricier NX300. Of course, you still get the 20.3-megapixel APS-C sensor seen across the line. The differentiating factor from its siblings is the Galaxy Camera-like 3.7-inch, 1,152k-dot touchscreen (fixed) on the back, rather than the usual assortment of rear buttons. The 100 to 25,600 ISO range and maximum JPG burst rate of 8 fps is just like the 300's, though this is only capable of recording 1080p video at 60 fps. Unfortunately, the autofocus is only contrast-detection, but Samsung claims that it's one of the fastest to the draw.
As you'd expect, this shooter features WiFi (single band) for connecting through AllShare or the Smart Camera app, plus there's a microSD slot for transferring files physically. Sure, it's not the most exciting update to Samsung's camera line, but it's clearly a big leap up from the NX1000 -- on paper, anyway. The NX2000 will be available soon in your choice of white, black or pink, and it comes bundled with Adobe Lightroom 4, a 20-50mm lens and a hotshoe-powered flash. Grab more looks in the gallery below and hit the press release after the break for all the technical details.
Edgar Alvarez contributed to this report.
Filed under: Cameras
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It's designed to make driving safer, particularly after a long day at work or a tiring road trip, but GM's haptic seat technology that lets you know when you start unintentionally changing lanes might be even scarier than the drift.
The system uses a windshield mounted camera to monitor the lines on the road when the vehicle is traveling faster than 35 miles per hour. And when it detects a lane change without the turn signal being used, it will cause the driver's seat to vibrate on either side so they know which direction they've started to drift and can immediately correct it. And as an added bonus, straddling two lanes with a vehicle could provide a relaxing massage, even if at the cost of enraged drivers around you. [GM]
Source: http://gizmodo.com/gms-vibrating-seats-might-be-more-startling-than-accid-487187374
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With a week left in an already successful Kickstarter campaign (approaching three times its initial $50,000 goal), the makers of the MiiPC are giving backers the chance to increase their system's memory. Add $15 before the close of the project and you'll be able to double things up, from 1GB to 2GB of RAM and 4GB to 8GB of storage -- the move comes in response to pledger feedback, according to the company. And speaking of listening, the makers of the parental-friendly Android PC are also tossing in a free built-in mic for those who pre-ordered, just for good measure.
Filed under: Desktops
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/J9MwQBPKwSM/
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By Jennifer Saba and Liana B. Baker
(Reuters) - Some of the biggest U.S. media conglomerates beat earnings expectations on Wednesday, though Time Warner Inc, Viacom Inc and Comcast Corp all showed signs of being susceptible to swings in TV advertising revenue.
Time Warner posted a profit that topped even the most optimistic Wall Street estimate by 4 cents, and Comcast and Viacom both beat expectations by one penny. But all three were just shy of revenue expectations.
Viacom's stock got the strongest lift from its results, with shares rising 3 percent to $65.95 in late-morning trading and touching a new multiyear high earlier in the session.
The company reported a 6 percent drop in revenue because of a weak slate of movies from its studio Paramount Pictures, but advertising revenue turned positive during the quarter.
Its cable network properties, including MTV and Nickelodeon, posted a 2 percent rise in advertising revenue in the United States.
Viacom has been struggling with a decline in TV ratings, which are the currency for commercials. The children's network Nickelodeon in particular was a drag.
"Viacom had ratings pressure for a long time, so it's significant that they have turned the corner in terms of ad growth, which is now positive instead of negative," said Brett Harriss, an analyst with Gabelli & Co.
For Time Warner, on the other hand, first-quarter ad revenue at cable properties including TNT and news channel CNN fell 1 percent.
Part of the decline had to do with the timing of the 2013 NCAA college basketball tournament, a huge TV draw that partially slipped into a different quarter and drained away revenue. The company said second-quarter ad revenue at its cable networks will be up in the high single digits in percentage terms.
Time Warner shares fell 1.3 percent to $59, recouping some of their earlier losses.
Comcast, which unlike the other two companies combines media properties with a cable television system, benefited more from cable than from its media unit.
The company lost more video customers than expected but gained more Internet subscribers than estimated. On the other hand, operating cash flow at NBC Universal was a negative $35 million, much worse than a year earlier.
Revenue at NBC also fell because the network did not have the lucrative Super Bowl this year, TV's premiere advertising event.
Shares rose 2 percent to $42.17, their highest level in about a month.
(Reporting by Jennifer Saba and Liana B. Baker; Writing by Ben Berkowitz; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/major-media-companies-top-estimates-shaky-ad-market-154950783.html
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A video screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shows the interest rate decision of the Federal Reserve, Wednesday, May 1, 2013. The Fed maintained its plan to keep short-term interest rates at record lows at least until unemployment falls to 6.5 percent from its current 7.6 percent. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
A video screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shows the interest rate decision of the Federal Reserve, Wednesday, May 1, 2013. The Fed maintained its plan to keep short-term interest rates at record lows at least until unemployment falls to 6.5 percent from its current 7.6 percent. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
A video screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shows the interest rate decision of the Federal Reserve, Wednesday, May 1, 2013. The Fed maintained its plan to keep short-term interest rates at record lows at least until unemployment falls to 6.5 percent from its current 7.6 percent. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Federal Reserve cautioned America's political leaders Wednesday that their policies are hurting the economy.
The Fed stood by its aggressive efforts to stimulate the economy and reduce unemployment. But it sent its clearest signal to date that tax increases and spending cuts that kicked in this year are slowing the economy.
"Fiscal policy is restraining economic growth," the Fed said in a statement after a two-day policy meeting.
The Fed maintained its plan to keep short-term interest rates at record lows at least until unemployment falls to 6.5 percent. And it said it will continue to buy $85 billion a month in Treasury and mortgage bonds. The bond purchases are intended to keep long-term borrowing costs down and encourage borrowing and spending.
The minutes of the previous policy meeting in March showed that many Fed officials were open to reducing the bond purchases before year's end, so long as the economy improved. But Wednesday's statement indicated that Fed officials are also open to expanding the bond buying if the economy needs it.
The Fed's statement signaled its concern about a Social Security tax increase, which took effect Jan. 1, and deep government spending cuts, which began taking effect March 1. The across-the-board spending cuts took effect automatically after Congress failed to reach a budget deal.
Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors, said he viewed the Fed's more forceful remarks on the issue as criticism of Congress' fiscal policies.
"The Fed noted that the private economy is pushing ahead, but it is the government that is putting roadblocks in the way," Naroff said. "That was as clear a shot at Congress as I have seen the Fed take."
Democrats in Congress generally agreed with the Fed's criticism while Republicans took exception.
"Jobs and economic growth should be our top priority right now, which is exactly why we need to replace the irresponsible across-the-board cuts from sequestration with pro-growth and sustainable fiscal policies," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash.
But House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling said that the Fed's easy money policies had not helped the economy. "America is nearly five years into the Fed's historically unprecedented interventionist policies and there is very little gain to show for it," said Hensarling, R-Texas.
Paul Edelstein, director of financial economics at IHS Global Insight, said the Fed's point that fiscal policy is restraining the economy was a reminder to investors "that flexibility runs in both directions."
"If conditions deteriorate, the Fed will do more," Edelstein said.
Two years ago, Chairman Ben Bernanke argued at a Fed conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., that Congress should do more to stimulate hiring and growth. Since then, Congress hasn't joined the Fed in trying to stimulate growth. Instead, congressional leaders have focused on deficit reduction and allowed tax increases and spending cuts to take effect.
In its statement Wednesday, the Fed made clear that it could increase or decrease its bond purchases depending on the performance of the job market and inflation.
David Jones, chief economist at DMJ Advisors, said that in saying it could increase or decrease its bond purchases, the Fed wants to show flexibility: It's ready to respond, whether the economy improves or weakens significantly.
"I think the Fed is in a wait-and-see mode, like the rest of us," Jones said.
Jones said he expects no change in the level of bond purchases until September or later. The Fed wants time to see whether the economy can grow fast enough to drive sustained improvement in the job market, he said.
The Fed's statement appeared to cause little response in the stock market, which fell sharply on signs of a slowdown in hiring and manufacturing and weak earnings reports from some major companies. The Dow Jones industrial average sank 138 points, or nearly 1 percent.
Debate among Fed policymakers at their previous meeting in March had led some economists to speculate that the Fed might scale back its bond purchases if job growth accelerated.
But several reports in recent weeks have suggested that the economy might be weakening. Employers added only 88,000 jobs in March, far fewer than the 220,000 averaged in the previous four months. On Friday, economists expect the government to report that employers added about 160,000 jobs in April.
And the economy grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the January-March quarter ? a decent growth rate but one that's expected to weaken in coming months because of the higher Social Security taxes and federal spending cuts.
At the same time, consumer inflation as measured by the gauge the Fed most closely monitors remains well below its 2 percent target. That gauge rose just 1 percent in the 12 months that ended in March. Low inflation gives the Fed room to keep interest rates low without igniting price increases.
When prices fall too low, though, they raise the risk of deflation ? a prolonged drop in wages, prices and the value of assets like stocks and houses. The United States last suffered serious deflation during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Fed policymakers worry about possible deflation any time inflation dips below 2 percent.
The Fed's efforts to drive down unemployment and raise inflation to its target rate mean it isn't meeting either of its dual mandates: to maximize employment and maintain price stability. That makes it more likely that the Fed will maintain its current level of bond purchases until the end of the year or later.
"We expect the Fed will maintain the current purchase pace into early 2014, then taper gradually," Michael Hanson, a senior economist, wrote in a report for BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research.
The Fed has been joined by other major central banks in seeking to strengthen growth and reduce high unemployment.
The European Central Bank could cut its benchmark lending rate from a record low of 0.75 as soon as Thursday because the euro area's economy remains stagnant.
Unemployment for the eurozone is 12.1 percent. And the ECB predicts that the euro economy will shrink 0.5 percent in 2013.
Japan's central bank has acted to flood its financial system with more money to try to raise consumer prices, encourage borrowing and help pull the world's third-largest economy out of a prolonged slump. Economists say Japanese consumers will spend more if they know prices are going to rise.
The Bank of Japan has kept its benchmark rate between 0 and 0.1 percent to try to stimulate borrowing and spending.
The Fed's action Wednesday was supported on an 11-1 vote. Esther George, president of the Kansas City regional Fed bank, dissented for a third straight meeting. The statement said George remained concern that the Fed's aggressive stimulus could heighten the risk of inflation and financial instability.
___
Associated Press reporter Alan Fram contributed to this report.
Associated PressMay 1, 2013 ? NASA scientists don't often learn that their spacecraft is at risk of crashing into another satellite. But when Julie McEnery, the project scientist for NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, checked her email on March 29, 2012, she found herself facing this precise situation.
While Fermi is in fine shape today, continuing its mission to map the highest-energy light in the universe, the story of how it sidestepped a potential disaster offers a glimpse at an underappreciated aspect of managing a space mission: orbital traffic control.
As McEnery worked through her inbox, an automatically generated report arrived from NASA's Robotic Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis (CARA) team based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. On scanning the document, she discovered that Fermi was just one week away from an unusually close encounter with Cosmos 1805, a defunct spy satellite dating back to the Cold War.
The two objects, speeding around Earth at thousands of miles an hour in nearly perpendicular orbits, were expected to miss each other by a mere 700 feet.
"My immediate reaction was, 'Whoa, this is different from anything we've seen before!'" McEnery recalled.
Although the forecast indicated a close call, satellite operators have learned the hard way that they can't be too careful. The uncertainties in predicting spacecraft positions a week into the future can be much larger than the distances forecast for their closest approach.
This was most dramatically demonstrated on Feb. 10, 2009, when a study revealed that Cosmos 2251, a dead Russian communications satellite, would pass about 1,900 feet from the functioning Iridium 33 communications satellite later in the day. At the predicted time of closest approach, all contact with Iridium 33 was lost. Radar revealed clouds of debris traveling along the orbits of both spacecraft, confirming the first known satellite-to-satellite collision.
That crash generated thousands of fragments large enough to be tracked and many smaller pieces that evade detection. Much of the wreckage remains a hazard to operating spacecraft because only about 20 percent of the trackable pieces have reentered the atmosphere.
With a speed relative to Fermi of 27,000 mph, a direct hit by the 3,100-pound Cosmos 1805 would release as much energy as two and a half tons of high explosives, destroying both spacecraft.
Despite the apparent crowding in Earth orbit, there's usually a vast amount of space between individual objects. Close approaches -- also known as conjunctions -- with fragments, rocket bodies and active payloads remain infrequent events. Moreover, few of the potential conjunctions identified a week into the future will actually materialize.
"It's similar to forecasting rain at a specific time and place a week in advance," said Goddard's Eric Stoneking, the attitude control lead engineer for Fermi. "As the date approaches, uncertainties in the prediction decrease and the initial picture may change dramatically."
Twice before, the Fermi team had been alerted to potential conjunctions, and on both occasions the threats evaporated. It was possible the Cosmos 1805 encounter would vanish as well, and the spacecraft's observations could continue without interruption.
But the update on Friday, March 30, indicated otherwise. The satellites would occupy the same point in space within 30 milliseconds of each other.
"It was clear we had to be ready to move Fermi out of the way, and that's when I alerted our Flight Dynamics Team that we were planning a maneuver," McEnery said.
The only way to accomplish this was by firing thrusters designed to ensure that Fermi would never pose a threat to another satellite. Intended for use at the end of Fermi's operating life, the thrusters were designed to take it out of orbit and allow it burn up in the atmosphere.
Because a failure of this system, such as a propellant leak or an explosion, could have ended Fermi's mission prematurely, the thrusters had never been tested, adding a new source of anxiety for McEnery.
"You can't help but be nervous thinking about highly flammable fluids heading down pipes they'd never flowed down before," she said. "But having done this, we now know the system works as designed, and it gives us confidence should we need to maneuver again in the future."
The Goddard CARA team determined how big a push Fermi would need to mitigate the threat. Working with the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, CARA scientists also checked that the projected new orbit wouldn't put Fermi on course for a conjunction with another object. The Flight Operations Team selected possible times for the primary maneuver and, just in case, up to three additional ones.
Over the weekend, the radar and optical sensors of the U.S. Space Surveillance Network continued keeping tabs on Cosmos 1805 and every other artificial object larger than 4 inches across in Earth orbit. Of the 17,000 objects currently tracked, only about 7 percent are active satellites.
Once each day, JSpOC analyzes the updated orbits, looks for possible conjunctions a week or more into the future, and notifies the Goddard CARA team of any events involving NASA's robotic missions. Another group at NASA's Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston performs the same function for all spacecraft carrying astronauts, including the International Space Station.
By Tuesday, April 3, the threat still had not receded and all plans were in place for firing Fermi's thrusters.
Shortly after noon EDT, the spacecraft stopped scanning the sky and oriented itself along its direction of travel. It then parked its solar panels and tucked away its high-gain antenna to protect them from the thruster exhaust.
"The maneuver, which was performed by the spacecraft itself based on procedures we developed a long time ago, was very simple, just firing all thrusters for one second," Stoneking explained. "There was a lot of suspense and tension leading up to it, but once it was over, we just sighed with relief that it all went well."
By 1 p.m., Fermi was back to doing science. A few hours later, the various teams met to evaluate the results of the maneuver and determine if another would be required. When the two spacecraft reached their long-awaited conjunction the following day, they would miss by a comfortable margin of 6 miles, with no further actions needed.
"A huge weight was lifted," McEnery said. "I felt like I'd lost 20 pounds."
Last year, the Goddard CARA team participated in collision-avoidance maneuvers for seven other missions. A month before the Fermi conjunction came to light, Landsat 7 dodged pieces of Fengyun-1C, a Chinese weather satellite deliberately destroyed in 2007 as part of a military test. And in May and October, respectively, NASA's Aura and CALIPSO Earth-observing satellites took steps to avoid fragments from Cosmos 2251.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/nasa/~3/L1HHTDRzBLk/130501101256.htm
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