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cafebabe writes:

Friday 19th September is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. From Wikipedia:

International Talk Like a Pirate Day (ITLAPD, September 19) is a parodic holiday created in 1995 by John Baur (Ol' Chumbucket) and Mark Summers (Cap'n Slappy), of Albany, Oregon, U.S., who proclaimed September 19 each year as the day when everyone in the world should talk like a pirate.

Further:

According to Summers, the day is the only holiday to come into being as a result of a sports injury. He has stated that during a racquetball game between Summers and Baur, one of them reacted to the pain with an outburst of "Aaarrr!", and the idea was born. That game took place on June 6, 1995, but out of respect for the observance of D-Day, they chose Summers' ex-wife's birthday, as it would be easy for him to remember.

At first an inside joke between two friends, the holiday gained exposure when John Baur and Mark Summers sent a letter about their invented holiday to the American syndicated humor columnist Dave Barry in 2002. Barry liked the idea and promoted the day.

They even have their own official web site complete with an English-to-Pirate Translator.

mendax writes:

Over ten years ago, a girlfriend I had at the time said something to me that I thought was as crazy as she was. She told me that I ought to stop using artificial sweeteners and stop drinking diet sodas because they can actually cause diabetes. Well, she was crazy in other ways but she may have been right in this area. The New York Times published an article that points out that artificial sweeteners may be very bad for many of us.

Artificial sweeteners may disrupt the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar, causing metabolic changes that can be a precursor to diabetes, researchers are reporting.

The scientists performed a multitude of experiments, mostly on mice, to back up their assertion that the sweeteners alter the microbiome, the population of bacteria that is in the digestive system.

The different mix of microbes, the researchers contend, changes the metabolism of glucose, causing levels to rise higher after eating and to decline more slowly than they otherwise would.

[One researcher] noted that many conditions, including obesity and diabetes, had been linked to changes in the microbiome. “What the study suggests,” she said, “is we should step back and reassess our extensive use of artificial sweeteners.”

Previous studies on the health effects of artificial sweeteners have come to conflicting and confusing findings. Some found that they were associated with weight loss; others found the exact opposite, that people who drank diet soda actually weighed more.

Some found a correlation between artificial sweeteners and diabetes, but those findings were not entirely convincing: Those who switch to the products may already be overweight and prone to the disease.

The Nature article itself is paywalled, but its abstract and figures are available on-line.

tonyPick writes:

There's a follow up article at IEEE Spectrum on the work being done at Google Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, a joint venture with NASA and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA).

This follows the earlier news that Google hired Professor John Martinis and his team to help their commercial quantum computer project. This was also reported at Techcrunch, Wired and others.

D-Wave, one of Google's existing partners in Quantum Computing, have produced specialised hardware, which appears to solve a specific optimisation problem using Quantum Annealing. However there has been controversy about the claims made by D-Wave, the D-Wave Two is not a universal quantum computer, and although there is evidence of quantum effects it does not appear to be able to reliably outperform traditional computers according to independent performance testing, summarised at CNet.

This announcement had lead some to see this as a change of approach for Google, However this new article goes into more detail about the objectives of Professor Martinis group, clarifying some of the earlier speculation:

There's an introductory video to Quantum Computing by PHD Comics covering background and terminology (spotted though the Scott Aaronson blog links).

frojack writes:

CBNC is Reporting that Larry Ellison, co-founder and longtime CEO of Oracle, will be stepping down, effective immediately. He will be replaced by Mark Hurd and Safra Catz, Oracle said. In an unusual move, Hurd and Catz will both be named CEO of the company—not co-CEOs.

Its probably the biggest change for the appearance of change in modern corporate history. According to Oracle:

Ellison has drawn some public ire in recent years. In September 2013, reports surfaced that some shareholders were not pleased with the nearly $77 million compensation package that Oracle doled out to Ellison the previous fiscal year. This is different than the technical ire he has drawn for decades of acquisitions, predatory pricing and litigation.

Not going away, and probably not going to be silent, it seems uncertain this is as clean a cut as Bill Gates' exit of Microsoft.

See also the report at Forbes which notes "Oracle stock turned red following the after hours announcement, shares were down about 2.5% to $40.50. Prior to the announcement Oracle shares were up 8.6% year-to-date."

What say Soylentils? Will this help Oracle in the public eye?

[Update: see additional reports at: phys.org, Ars Technica, ComputerWorld, IT World, and El Reg.]

[Update: Official Oracle announcement.]

AlHunt writes:

Brace yourselves, guys and girls ... it's fairly current and it's legitimate tech news...

The motorcycle fueled by bacon grease!

From the article:

According to the bacon bike Tumblr, making bacon fuel is pretty simple. The first step was to make a lot of bacon. Sounds like a dream job, right? Then they took the leftover grease and worked with Bio-Blend Fuels in Wisconsin to refine the bacon into 100% biodiesel. “The fuel is an environmentally safe alternative to conventional diesel fuel,” according to the website. “We turned about 275 gallons of bacon grease into 250 gallons of engine pumping b100 bacon bio diesel.”

Video from local news.

It get 75 miles to the pound.

AnonTechie writes:

The Russian Embassy, White House, Supreme Court, and other landmarks have some nosy neighbors, claims the maker of an ultrasecure mobile phone.

Continuing a sort of cross-country tour to detect phony cell towers, also known as interceptors or IMSI catchers, researchers associated with the security firm ESD America have detected 15 of the covert devices in Washington D.C., plus three more in nearby Virginia.

The company used their ultrasecure CryptoPhone 500 to search for the interceptors, which can compromise phones through baseband hardware and are believed to have a range of roughly 1 mile. ESD America's phones allegedly detected telltale signs of call interception in the vicinity of the White House, the Russian Embassy, the Supreme Court, the Department of Commerce, and the Russell Senate Office Building, among other landmark buildings.

Les Goldsmith, ESD America's CEO ( http://esdamerica.com/ ), stresses that he can't be sure who runs these surveillance devices. But he points out that the U.S. government already has the ability to listen to or track calls through domestic networks, thanks to the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). “The U.S. government can listen to calls without deploying interceptors on the street,” says Goldsmith. “That’s why I think these are from foreign governments.”

http://www.popsci.com/article/gadgets/washington-dc-littered-phony-cell-towers

[Editor's note: see also our earlier story: Secure Android Phone Finds 'Fake' Cellphone Towers in U.S.]

gewg_ writes:

Common Dreams reports

As Occupy Wall Street marked its third anniversary on Wednesday, one offshoot group, Rolling Jubilee, made a historic achievement as the collective bought and abolished nearly $4 million in debt owed by thousands of students.

Rolling Jubilee, a project of Occupy Wall Street's Strike Debt movement, acquired debt incurred by students of Everest College, one of the operations of Corinthian Colleges (CCI), an umbrella company of for-profit schools, and paid for it at a discounted rate, clearing a total of $3.85 million from the collective debt of 2,761 people.

"Debt is the tie that binds the 99 percent, whether you are a student delinquent on your student loans or a parent struggling to pay healthcare bills," said Strike Debt activist Ann Larson. "Being forced into debt for basic social services is a systemic problem and the only solution is to respond collectively to create a new, equitable economy."

Corinthian Colleges--and by extension, Everest--is facing multiple federal fraud investigations, as well as a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for its predatory lending practices, as roughly 90 percent of its funding comes from federal student loans, Rolling Jubilee said.

Related:
Federal Crackdown On For-Profit Colleges Claims Its First Victory

Anonymous Coward writes:

Having escaped from Windows development for a couple years now, I now check Microsoft-focussed sites only intermittently. Neowin was a favorite because (among other reasons) they stubbornly maintained a retro, printed newsletter look, somewhat like SN, pre-beta Slashdot or Craigslist. But being different gets lonely, so apparently a few weeks ago they rolled out the same splashy magazine/large icon look and feel that nearly all the other big traffic tech sites have. A change I found even more jarring is that half or more of the content now seems to have nothing to do with Microsoft, or its OEMs and ISVs; there are now *lots* of articles about Apple, Google, Amazon, FB etc. Fine, but isn't the site still called "Neowin"?

Yeah, get off my lawn. There's another ancient forum called Activewin that maintains the old look, but they seem to have lost whatever community they had many years ago. So perhaps the folks at Neowin are onto something.

lhsi writes:

The BBC reports:

BradTheGeek writes:

A Virginia company states that it is developing a texting detector for traffic police.

From the article:

"The technology works by detecting the telltale radio frequencies that emit from a vehicle when someone inside is using a cellphone," said Malcolm McIntyre of ComSonics. "Cable repairmen use similar means to find where a cable is damaged - from a rodent, for instance - by looking for frequencies leaking in a transmission," McIntyre said.

What do you think? Privacy risk? Revenue generating false positive detector? Technically feasible?

JimmyCrackCorn writes of an investigation published in The Milbank Quaterly.

From the article:

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Safety and Innovation Act has recently relaxed conflict-of-interest rules for FDA advisory committee members, but concerns remain about the influence of members’ financial relationships on the FDA’s drug approval process. Using a large newly available data set, this study carefully examined the relationship between the financial interests of FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) advisory committee members and whether members voted in a way favorable to these interests.

[...] There appears to be a pro-sponsor voting bias among advisory committee members who have exclusive financial relationships with the sponsoring firm but not among members who have nonexclusive financial relation- ships (ie, those with ties to both the sponsor and its competitors). These findings point to important heterogeneities in financial ties and suggest that policymakers will need to be nuanced in their management of financial relationships of FDA advisory committee members.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Newsweek reports that ISIS has announced a new curriculum banning the study of math for students in areas of Iraq and Syria it controls. Also banned will be the teaching of music, social studies (especially anything about elections or democracy), and sports. Books cannot include any reference to evolution and teachers must say that the laws of physics and chemistry "are due to Allah's rules and laws." Students will instead learn all about "belonging to Islam," and how to "denounce infidelity and infidels." Teachers who break the rules "will be punished," according to fliers posted in ISIS-controlled territory.

mendax writes:

Slate published a story about a university professor who got fed up with her students' e-mailing habits:

A Salem College faculty member last semester took an uncompromising approach to curbing syllabus and inbox bloat: Why not ban most student emails?

“For years, student emails have been an assault on professors, sometimes with inappropriate informality, sometimes just simply not understanding that professors should not have to respond immediately,” Spring-Serenity Duvall, assistant professor of communications at Salem College, wrote in a blog post last week. “In a fit of self-preservation, I decided: no more. This is where I make my stand!”

Duvall’s frustration is shared by many in academe—or anyone with an email account—from faculty members beset by questions they have answered both in class and in writing to students inundated by university email blasts. This spring, when Duvall taught at the University of South Carolina–Aiken, she adopted a new email policy to cut down on emails from students telling her they would be late, or would miss class, or would have to leave early, or any of the countless others that could be handled face to face.

The story goes on to describe the success she had in imposing this restriction.

JNCF writes:

Cryptome has released an email from a former Giganews employee alledging that Giganews is being run by FBI agents who purposefully host child pornography and engage in surveillance of their Virtual Private Network (VPN) services and Usenet groups. From the email:

Special Agent Scott Kibbey is central to the whole Giganews operation, including Data Foundry, but with different names. This agent is a top exec for Data Foundry, a top admin for Giganews, the Golden Frog front company run from the same Usenet servers for VyprVPN, and the other Usenet fronts Usenet.net, Supernews, Rhino Newsgroups, and Powerusenet. Another business front name they used when I was there is Powerhouse Management. Kibbey rolled out the OS images, kernels, patches, setup the entire VyprVPN service including the detailed logging which is easily accessible to him and the other government agents working there.

[...] This is my warning - that all of the content being downloaded and shared on the Usenet network is going through the authorities! Giganews customers are being logged! The log file is called the "gigauth" on their "cruncher" servers which logs every connection by every customer, which are then archived. This means Usenet uploaders are helping the feds monitor the distribution of Usenet content if their newsgroup provider peers with Giganews!

Giganews vehemently denied the allegation:

Giganews has always supported the Open Internet and fought for the personal freedoms that the Open Internet enables. Unfortunately, one of those freedoms is the ability for anyone to say almost anything they want, whether or not it is true or factual, and for others to believe it. Yesterday, Giganews was accused of being an FBI operation by an ex-employee through the well-known Cryptome.org. This accusation is completely false, and the accuser offers no evidence to support the claim.

Cryptome is standing by the leaker, Nick Caputo.

gewg_ writes:

The Local Germany reports:

Shunned by government and big telecom companies, [Sollwitt, a village of 123 homes] in rural northwest Germany is set to expand the super-fast internet network they built to a second village.

[...]The project is the latest effort of Burgerbreitbandnetz, the Citizen's Broadband Internet Company, a small group of locals who took it upon themselves to build a super high-speed internet network in the village of Lowenstedt when Germany's major telecommunications companies turned them away. The group hopes to connect 59 villages in the county by 2021.

"Their answer was no," said Ute-Gabriel Boucsein, head of the village internet startup. "They say the region where we live [in Schleswig-Holstein] is too far away and there aren't enough people."

For the big telecom companies, that meant there wasn't enough money to be made. But for the villagers, it was a matter of survival.

"In 2010, the villages had problems selling land," said Boucsein. "People want to buy, but they ask how fast, how good the internet is and when it's not so good the people don't buy." Not only do new people not move in, but the young people leave, says dairy farmer Holger Jensen. "Then, when the older people start to die, the village shrinks."

[...]For €999, villagers could become shareholders in the company and provide the money needed to get financing to build the fibre-optic infrastructure. The Burgerbreitbandnetz team needs 68 percent of households in the village to sign up. As of this afternoon the company had signed up 72 percent of the homes in Sollwitt.

_NSAKEY writes:

Wired has a story about Ricochet, a new custom IM client by John Brookes which lets users communicate over tor hidden services. From the article:

Brooks, who is just 22 and a self-taught coder who dropped out of school at 13, was always concerned about privacy and civil liberties. Four years ago he began work on a program for encrypted instant messaging that uses Tor hidden services for the protected transmission of communications. The program, which he dubbed Ricochet, began as a hobby. But by the time he finished, he had a full-fledged desktop client that was easy to use, offered anonymity and encryption, and even resolved the issue of metadata—the “to” and “from” headers and IP addresses spy agencies use to identify and track communications—long before the public was aware that the NSA was routinely collecting metadata in bulk for its spy programs. The only problem Brooks had with the program was that few people were interested in using it. Although he’d made Ricochet’s code open source, Brooks never had it formally audited for security and did nothing to promote it, so few people even knew about it.

The article goes on to explain how Ricochet got into the spotlight:

Enter Invisible.im, a group formed by Australian security journalist Patrick Gray. Last July, Gray announced that he was working with HD Moore, developer of the Metasploit Framework tool used by security researchers to pen-test systems, and with another respected security professional who goes by his hacker handle The Grugq, to craft a secure, open-source encrypted chat program cobbled together from parts of existing anonymity and messaging systems—such as Prosody, Pidgin and Tor. They wanted a system that was highly secure, user friendly and metadata-free. Gray says his primary motivation was to protect the anonymity of sources who contact journalists.

“At the moment, when sources contact a journalist, they’re going to leave a metadata trail, whether it’s a phone call record or instant message or email record [regardless of whether or not the content of their communication is encrypted],” he says. “And that data is currently accessible to authorities without a warrant.”

When Brooks wrote to say he’d already designed a chat program that eliminated metadata, Gray and his group took a look at the code and quickly dropped their plan to develop their own tool, in favor of working with Brooks to develop his.

“He writes incredible code,” Gray says, “and really thinks like a hacker, even though he doesn’t have a security background.”

gewg_ writes:

Techdirt reports

In a set of strange coincidences not unlike those surrounding the IRS/Lois Lerner email disappearance, the Los Angeles Unified school board has decided it will only retain internal emails for one year going forward.

The Los Angeles Unified school board voted Tuesday to buy a Microsoft email archiving service programmed to automatically destroy staff emails after one year.

Why only one year? According to the Chief Information Officer of the school district, the one year limit is mandated by district policy(PDF) -- which is handy, but likely not the real reason. (Keeping all those bytes is considered "too expensive.") After all, if this policy was already in force, why the vote on retention limits?

More likely, this decision was prompted by recent events -- namely the publication of emails more than a year old.

The decision comes less than three weeks after KPCC published two-year-old internal emails that raised questions about whether Superintendent John Deasy's meetings and discussions with Apple and textbook publisher Pearson influenced the school district's historic $500 million technology contract.