Asteroid 2012 DA14 Earth Flyby of Feb. 15: Complete Coverage

The asteroid 2012 DA14 will fly extremely close to Earth on Friday, Feb. 15, but poses no risk of impacting our planet.  It may, however, be visible in backyard telescopes if you know when and where to look, but will be a stargazing challenge, NASA says.

Discovered last year, asteroid 2012 DA14 is about half the size of a football field and will approach within 17,200 miles (27,680 kilometers) of Earth when it flies by during its close encounter.

NASA scientists have called the event a record-setting flyby for an asteroid of 2012 DA14's size. The asteroid is about the same size as the object that exploded over Russia's Siberia in 1908 in what scientists now call the Tunguska Event.

Robotic Russian Spaceship Leaves Space Station

An unmanned Russian cargo ship undocked from the International Space Station Saturday (Feb. 9) to make way for a fresh delivery of supplies for the six astronauts living on the orbiting laboratory next week.

 The trash-filled Progress 48 supply ship undocked from the space station's Russian Pirs docking port at 8:15 a.m.                   EST (1315 GMT) and was expected to intentionally destroy itself by burning up in Earth's atmosphere a few hours later.

"We just undocked a spaceship from our Space Station," Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, a flight engineer on the space station, wrote in a Twitter post Saturday. "The Progress robot ship is loaded with trash, to burn up like a meteorite in 3.5 hrs."The departure of Progress 48 clears a parking spot for the next Russian cargo ship to use when it launches toward the International Space Station on Monday (Feb. 11). That spacecraft, the Progress 50 supply ship, will launch from the Central Asian spaceport of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 9:41 a.m. EST (1441 GMT on Monday, though it will late evening at the launch site.  Russia's Progress cargo ships are vital spacecraft that have helped keep astronauts stocked with food, clothing and other vital supplies during their six-month missions. 

"DONT GET SCROOGLED BY GMAIL" ASKS MICROSOFT

In a press release pushed out today, the Scroogled campaign is also an attempt to educate Americans on some of the bad practices used by email providers. A study commissioned by Microsoft reveals that 70% of consumers “don’t know that major email providers routinely engage in the practice of reading through their personal email to sell ads”, while a larger 88% disapprove of the practice.

As well as releasing a website to accompany the campaign – which you can visit at scroogled.com - Microsoft is encouraging people to sign a petition to get Google to stop violating privacy by reading emails to generate ads. The petition aims for 25,000 signatures, and naturally Microsoft are hoping that a number of signatories will switch to Outlook.com for their email.

Now Microsoft isn’t exactly completely in the clear when it comes to email privacy, as the company does scan the subject lines of emails, as well as monitor web searches performed, to tailor advertisements inOutlook.com. On the Scroogled website, Microsoft are conveniently not advertising this fact, instead focusing on how Google scans the entire contents of your inbox, including the entirety of send and received messages, to sell ads.

Previously Microsoft has used the “Scroogled” catch-phrase to warn users against Google Shopping’spractices, but today sees the campaign expanded into a much wider attack on Google and their advertising methods. Gmail has been targeted this time around, but it’s likely more services will be highlighted in futurecampaigns.

Source: IBTimes

New Linux-powered smart pen will write for you

Aside from much slower speed at writing on paper, another significant drawback to traditional pens when compared to typing on a computer is the lack of correction utilities.

A paper notebook that you write on with a pen or pencil doesn’t feature software that let you know when you have spelled something wrong, or when your grammar doesn't sound right. It also won't tell you when your writing becomes almost impossible to read to most humans.But now, European startup firm Lernstift is looking to bring those correction utilities to pen-and-paper-- literally.

The company’s new pen of the same name will actually vibrate to alert you when your handwriting has become illegible or when you’ve made a grammatical error.

To be sure, the new pen doesn’t sport a fancy display, but instead uses different combinations of modes and vibrations in order to provide you with specific corrections.

When the pen is switched to Calligraphy Mode, it will vibrate once whenever it detects an illegible letter. In Orthography Mode, the pen will vibrate once when you make a spelling error, and vibrate twice when it detects a grammatical error.

The detection mechanisms work in the air as well, so you don’t have to actually put pen to paper for the correction features to function.

The Lernstift pen runs on the Linux operating system and employs the use of motion sensors in order to detect what you’re writing. It uses the data obtained from the motion sensors to look for possible errors.

Currently, two models of the pen are in production. The first model can be considered the standard version, providing the correction capabilities, but not much else.

A more complex model with more features works with your WiFi connection, as well as a pressure sensor to let you know when you’re pressing too hard on the paper.

If you think you’ll be emotionally stable after a pen tells you that it can write better than you, the standard model is slated for an August 2013 release, while the more complex model is planned for a release in 2014. Pricing isn't available yet.