Will Trump pick an “agent of change” or an insider to lead NASA?

Whether Trump supports SLS and Orion could become clear with his NASA administrator.

Enlarge / Vice President-elect Mike Pence arrives at Trump Tower on November 15, 2016. He will likely have the final say on Trump's space policy decisions. (credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Donald J. Trump was elected president of the United States a little more than a week ago, and in that time, a mad scramble has ensued within the US aerospace community to identify candidates to become the next NASA administrator. What might those picks mean for the future of the nation's civil space policy and human spaceflight program? This parlor game has become doubly difficult in the wake of news Wednesday that Vice President-elect Mike Pence gutted the existing transition teams and removed lobbyists from those positions.

After multiple discussions with insiders, here's the state of play as best as Ars can understand it as of Thursday morning. Following the lobbyist purge, Trump's space policy team is being led by Mark Albrecht, a long-time Republican space policy adviser and former executive secretary of the National Space Council, which last existed in 1992. This influential council served as a bridge between the nation's civil and military space activities, and one of Trump's clearly defined goals is to reinstate the council, which Pence would likely head.

Aside from Pence and Albrecht, the other key player in Trump's transition team with regard to space policy is one of its six vice chairs, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who would likely seek to shake things up at the space agency. Perhaps the biggest question facing NASA and space policy, then, is whether Trump will go for an outsider's space policy in the mode of Gingrich, which seems consistent with the stated desire to "drain the swamp," or whether he will accede to the pressures of big business and inertia.

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LTE-Nachfolger: Nutzung von 5G wird schnell zunehmen

Heute ist das Interesse an dem LTE-Nachfolger 5G noch gering. Doch das wird sich bald ändern. Bei den Netzbetreibern besteht bereits große Nachfrage nach der Einführung von Pre-Standard-5G-Netzen. (5G, Ericsson)

Heute ist das Interesse an dem LTE-Nachfolger 5G noch gering. Doch das wird sich bald ändern. Bei den Netzbetreibern besteht bereits große Nachfrage nach der Einführung von Pre-Standard-5G-Netzen. (5G, Ericsson)

Playstation Network: Gamer soll für DDOS auf Dyn verantwortlich sein

Das eigentliche Ziel des DDoS-Angriffs, der Dienste wie Twitter, Amazon, Spotify und Netflix zeitweise lahmgelegt hat, soll Sonys Playstation Network gewesen sein. Diese Theorie äußert der Netzbetreiber Level 3 – Dyn selbst ist noch nicht überzeugt. (Mirai-Botnetz, Virus)

Das eigentliche Ziel des DDoS-Angriffs, der Dienste wie Twitter, Amazon, Spotify und Netflix zeitweise lahmgelegt hat, soll Sonys Playstation Network gewesen sein. Diese Theorie äußert der Netzbetreiber Level 3 - Dyn selbst ist noch nicht überzeugt. (Mirai-Botnetz, Virus)

Android-Smartphone: Oneplus Three wird nach fünf Monaten eingestellt

Das Oneplus 3T wird kein zweites, verbessertes Topmodell neben dem Three sein, sondern das nur fünf Monate alte Gerät ablösen. Damit dürfte das Three in die Geschichte der Smartphones als eines der Topgeräte mit der kürzesten Verkaufszeit eingehen. (Oneplus, Smartphone)

Das Oneplus 3T wird kein zweites, verbessertes Topmodell neben dem Three sein, sondern das nur fünf Monate alte Gerät ablösen. Damit dürfte das Three in die Geschichte der Smartphones als eines der Topgeräte mit der kürzesten Verkaufszeit eingehen. (Oneplus, Smartphone)

Adobe Reader mobile app can now scan documents with your phone’s camera

Adobe Reader mobile app can now scan documents with your phone’s camera

Google may have introduced a mobile app this week that turns your smartphone into a photo scanner, but Adobe is taking a slightly different approach by letting you use a phone or tablet as a document scanner.

The latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader for Android and iOS includes a scan function, allowing you to snap a picture of a business card, receipt, contract, or whiteboard and save it as a PDF.

Reader is hardly the first document scanning app available for mobile devices, but Adobe says the new functionality is powered by the new Adobe Sensei machine learning platform, which helps the company’s apps automatically detect the edges of a document, among other things, making it easy to crop and straighten an image so that it looks like a real scan rather than simply a photo.

Continue reading Adobe Reader mobile app can now scan documents with your phone’s camera at Liliputing.

Adobe Reader mobile app can now scan documents with your phone’s camera

Google may have introduced a mobile app this week that turns your smartphone into a photo scanner, but Adobe is taking a slightly different approach by letting you use a phone or tablet as a document scanner.

The latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader for Android and iOS includes a scan function, allowing you to snap a picture of a business card, receipt, contract, or whiteboard and save it as a PDF.

Reader is hardly the first document scanning app available for mobile devices, but Adobe says the new functionality is powered by the new Adobe Sensei machine learning platform, which helps the company’s apps automatically detect the edges of a document, among other things, making it easy to crop and straighten an image so that it looks like a real scan rather than simply a photo.

Continue reading Adobe Reader mobile app can now scan documents with your phone’s camera at Liliputing.

Firefox Focus: Mozilla veröffentlicht Trackingschutz-Browser für iOS

Den Trackingschutz für iOS von Mozilla gibt es künftig nicht mehr nur für den Safari-Browser, sondern auch als eigenständigen Browser, der Firefox Focus heißt. Die Privatsphäre der Nutzer soll damit weitgehend geschützt werden. (Mozilla, Firefox)

Den Trackingschutz für iOS von Mozilla gibt es künftig nicht mehr nur für den Safari-Browser, sondern auch als eigenständigen Browser, der Firefox Focus heißt. Die Privatsphäre der Nutzer soll damit weitgehend geschützt werden. (Mozilla, Firefox)

Qualcomm Quick Charge 4 promises 5 hours battery life from a 5 minute charge

Qualcomm Quick Charge 4 promises 5 hours battery life from a 5 minute charge

One way to get longer battery life out of a smartphone is to put a bigger battery inside. Another is to come up with ways to charge the battery more quickly. Smartphone makers have been taking both approaches in recent years… and starting in 2017, there will be another option for fast charging.

Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon 835 processor will be the first to support the company’s Quick Charge 4 technology, which Qualcomm says is up to 20 percent faster and up to 30 percent more efficient than Quick Charge 3.0.

Continue reading Qualcomm Quick Charge 4 promises 5 hours battery life from a 5 minute charge at Liliputing.

Qualcomm Quick Charge 4 promises 5 hours battery life from a 5 minute charge

One way to get longer battery life out of a smartphone is to put a bigger battery inside. Another is to come up with ways to charge the battery more quickly. Smartphone makers have been taking both approaches in recent years… and starting in 2017, there will be another option for fast charging.

Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon 835 processor will be the first to support the company’s Quick Charge 4 technology, which Qualcomm says is up to 20 percent faster and up to 30 percent more efficient than Quick Charge 3.0.

Continue reading Qualcomm Quick Charge 4 promises 5 hours battery life from a 5 minute charge at Liliputing.

Kommunikation: SpaceX beantragt Betriebserlaubnis für 4.425 Satelliten

Im Jahr 2019 will SpaceX anfangen, die ganze Welt mit Internet von Satelliten zu versorgen. Jetzt hat das Unternehmen die Betriebserlaubnis beantragt und dabei einige Details offengelegt. (Satelliteninternet, Technologie)

Im Jahr 2019 will SpaceX anfangen, die ganze Welt mit Internet von Satelliten zu versorgen. Jetzt hat das Unternehmen die Betriebserlaubnis beantragt und dabei einige Details offengelegt. (Satelliteninternet, Technologie)

Some genetic disorders may be caused by defects we couldn’t detect

Chromosome rearrangements may be behind more human disorders than we thought.

Enlarge / Major genetic defects are often identified by looking for oddities in the chromosome pairs. (credit: National Cancer Institute)

You have two copies of each chromosome, one from your mom and one from your dad. And your parents’ two copies get scrambled together before they get passed on to you, so the copy of chromosome 1 you got from your mom is a unique composite of the two copies she got from her two parents. Same with the copy of chromosome 1 you got from your dad.

This process is called recombination, and the mixing of genes it allows is one of the primary benefits of sexual reproduction. According to geneticists, anyway. But now it seems that recombination is responsible for more genetic issues than we had previously surmised.

Like elections and everything else in this world, recombination doesn’t always go smoothly, and different types of errors can happen. Genetic sequences can get inverted or duplicated when they are moved from one chromosome to another; or they can get spliced into the wrong place, disrupting a gene. These errors have clinical ramifications, often resulting in neurodevelopmental disorders, especially autism spectrum disorders and intellectual disability.

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Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chip will power next year’s smartphones

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chip will power next year’s smartphones

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 and 821 chips power some of the fastest Android smartphones of 2016 (and a few Windows phones too). Next year Qualcomm is hoping to achieve the same feat with its new Snapdragon 835 processor.

The company says the new chip is its first to be built using Samsung’s 10nm FinFET technology, which Qualcomm says means up to 27 percent better performance over a 14nm chip, up to 40 percent lower power consumption, and up to a 30 percent increase in are efficiency (meaning the chip takes up less space inside a phone).

Continue reading Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chip will power next year’s smartphones at Liliputing.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chip will power next year’s smartphones

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 and 821 chips power some of the fastest Android smartphones of 2016 (and a few Windows phones too). Next year Qualcomm is hoping to achieve the same feat with its new Snapdragon 835 processor.

The company says the new chip is its first to be built using Samsung’s 10nm FinFET technology, which Qualcomm says means up to 27 percent better performance over a 14nm chip, up to 40 percent lower power consumption, and up to a 30 percent increase in are efficiency (meaning the chip takes up less space inside a phone).

Continue reading Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chip will power next year’s smartphones at Liliputing.