RTFA: http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/

The Google Lunar X PRIZE seeks to create a global private race to the Moon that excites and involves people around the world and, accelerates space exploration for the benefit of all humanity. The use of space has dramatically enhanced the quality of life and may ultimately lead to solutions to some of the most pressing environmental problems that we face on earth – energy independence and climate change.

This prize is made out of cheese.

RTFA: http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33853/113

Los Angeles (CA) The inventor of the KillaCycle electric motorcycle almost killed himself during a demonstration at the Wired NextFest conference. Bill Dube, a government scientist during the day and electric bike builder at night, did a burn out in front of the Los Angeles Convention Center, but accidentally accelerated too much and crashed into a Minivan.

Freaky video. It’s totally shocking how quickly this motorcycle accelerates. I’m glad the guy was conscious and talking at the end of it, but shit. The worst part is that I can see this happening to myself - killed by my own invention… classic.

RTFA: http://www.catb.org/retro/plankalkuel/

Plankalkül was an attempt by Konrad Zuse in the
1940’s to devise a notational and conceptual system for
writing what today is termed a program. Although this
early approach to a programming language did not
lead to practical use, the plan is described here because
it contains features that are standard in today’s programming
languages. The investigation is of historical
interest; also, it may provide insights that would lead
to advancements in the state of the art. Using modern
programming terminology, the Plankalkül is presented
to the extent it has been possible to reconstruct it from
the published literature.

Standing on the shoulders of giants. Turing this and Turing that…

RTFA: http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/back-door.html

Ken Thompson’s 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM admitted the existence of a back door in early Unix versions that may have qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. In this scheme, the C compiler contained code that would recognize when the login command was being recompiled and insert some code recognizing a password chosen by Thompson, giving him entry to the system whether or not an account had been created for him.

Normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from the source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler. But to recompile the compiler, you have to use the compiler so Thompson also arranged that the compiler would recognize when it was compiling a version of itself, and insert into the recompiled compiler the code to insert into the recompiled login the code to allow Thompson entry and, of course, the code to recognize itself and do the whole thing again the next time around! And having done this once, he was then able to recompile the compiler from the original sources; the hack perpetuated itself invisibly, leaving the back door in place and active but with no trace in the sources.The Turing lecture that reported this truly moby hack was later published as “Reflections on Trusting Trust”, Communications of the ACM 27, 8 (August 1984), pp. 761–763

“We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy! We’re scum! We suck!” –Wayne and Garth