Month: February 2016

Citizens of Facebook, you will now be permitted to express these six feelings. All other emotions are forbidden. (credit: Facebook)

"We know it's a big change," said Facebook product manager Sammi Krug in an announcement today. That's right—Facebook is taking its relationship with you to the next level. From now on, you'll be allowed to respond to posts with reactions other than the ubiquitous thumbs up emoji that means "like."

Your five options (other than thumbs up) will be emoji that mean "love," "haha," "sad," "angry," and "wow."

The dramatic change has been brewing for the past year, while the company carefully considered which emotions it would allow people to express:

The New York Times' recent guide to smartphone battery life tweaks included an animated GIF teaching readers how to enable third-party ad-blocking software within iOS 9. This image was taken from the GIF. (credit: The New York Times)

The New York Times inadvertently found itself on both sides of the media world's ongoing ad-blocking conversation this week when a public statement by its CEO was countered by an article about smartphone battery life.

On one side of the argument stood CEO Mark Thompson, who spoke against the practice on Tuesday during a keynote discussion at New York's Social Media Week—and suggested possibly banning Times access for users who employ ad-blocking software. Adweek reported on that conversation, which saw Thompson say that his paper's content should be valued "like it's HBO rather than a broadcast network" and that "trying to use and get the benefit of the Times' journalism without making any contribution to how it's paid is not good."

Yet the Times followed those statements on Wednesday with a feature-length guide in its technology section titled "Tips and Myths About Extending Smartphone Battery Life." The guide, which is advertised as "part of a series of creative collaborations with The Wirecutter," covers topics such as downloading media instead of streaming it and keeping a phone's automatic brightness setting enabled, and it also dismisses battery-related myths. Most interestingly—at least in light of Thompson's statements—is its unqualified recommendation to "block power-sucking ads."

Enlarge / Three Muslim burials from the seventh or eighth century CE, in the French town of Nimes. The people were buried with great care, using Islamic funeral traditions that persist to this day. (credit: Gleize et al.)

Today, the southern French city of Nimes is known for its beautiful waterways and well-preserved Roman architecture. But back in the seventh century, it was the prize in a battle between Roman soldiers, Gothic tribes, and the well-organized forces of a new political superpower known as Islam. Now, archaeologists have discovered the first evidence that Muslims lived in Nimes during this early phase in Islamic expansion across North Africa and Europe. Three newly discovered graves—the oldest Muslim graves in France—hint at what life was like in a medieval city whose residents were a mix of Christians from Rome, local indigenous tribes, and Muslims from Africa.

A team of French archaeologists describe the three graves in an article in PLoS One, explaining that they were found in an area that was once enclosed by a Roman-style wall from the days when Nimes was a key outpost in Septimania, on the western fringes of the Roman Empire. Taken by the Visigoths in the fifth century, the city remained under that tribe's control in a region called Narbonne until the early seventh century. But then things began to change, as the Umayyad Caliphate army worked its way north.

Map of the Arab empire during the period when the people in these graves were likely alive. (credit: G. Devilder)

Though there were great battles during this time, far more common were migrations of people swept up by the cultural changes caused by shifting empires. As the Medieval POC project has been documenting for years, there were many people from Africa and the Middle East in Europe during this time.

The SES-9 on the pad. Weather conditions are 60 percent "go" for a launch on Wednesday. (credit: SpaceX)

Update: Due to weather concerns SpaceX scrubbed Wednesday's launch attempt. The company will try again Thursday, when the launch window again opens at 6:46pm ET.

Original story: Weather permitting, SpaceX will launch a commercial communications satellite, SES-9, to a geostationary transfer orbit on Wednesday at 6:46pm ET. The rocket company will try yet again to fly its booster back to an automated ship in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida.

However, because this is a high orbit (about 35,000km above the equator) and will require a heavy vehicle with more fuel and more speed, returning safely back to Earth is far from a sure thing. Still, the company says it will make another attempt at a historic first, landing an orbital rocket on a sea-based platform.

A recent satellite image of Imam Khomeni Space Center shows that the launch gantry for a Simorgh "satellite launching vehicle" is in position for fueling and launch of the rocket. (credit: Arms Control Wonk/ Middlebury/Airbus Defense and Space)

Just weeks after North Korea successfully launched a satellite into orbit, Iran is preparing an attempt to match that effort—and rocket ahead in the development of its own ICBM technology in the process. Images obtained by Melissa Hanham, Catherine Dill, and Dr Jeffrey Lewis of Arms Control Wonk from Apollo Mapping and Airbus Defense and Space show that the Imam Khomeni Space Center near Semnan, Iran, is actively preparing for a launch. The Iranian government has issued a NOTAM (notice to airmen) warning them away from the area from March 1 to March 2.

The Khomeni Space Center is near Semnan, Iran—about 200 kilometers east of Tehran. The launch vehicle being stacked there, called the Simorgh, is designed to put a 100 kilogram payload (220 pounds) into a low-earth orbit of 500 kilometers (310 miles, or roughly 270 nautical miles).

The satellite, which was unveiled in February, is called the Friendship Testing Satellite. It's essentially a giant "cubesat" carrying a number of experiments. And like the North Korean Kwangmyŏngsŏng-4 satellite launched in February, the Friendship Testing Satellite is roughly the mass of a nuclear warhead.