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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:45 | Votes:100

posted by cmn32480 on Friday September 23 2016, @10:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the bee-nicer-to-nature dept.

Common Dreams reports

Agrochemical giants Syngenta and Bayer discovered in their own tests that their pesticides caused severe harm to bees, according to unpublished documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the environmental group Greenpeace.

The companies conducted the trials on products that used the controversial pesticides known as neonicotinoids, or neonics, which have long been linked to rapid bee decline. Neonics are also the world's most commonly used pesticide.

According to their own studies, Syngenta's thiamethoxam and Bayer's clothianidin were found to cause severe harm at high levels of use, although the effect was lessened when used under 50 parts per billion (ppb) and 40ppb respectively, the Guardian reports.

However, as Greenpeace notes, the research "assumes a very narrow definition of harm to bee health and ignores wild bees which evidence suggests are more likely to be harmed by neonicotinoids".

That means the findings may "substantially underestimate" the impact of neonics, Greenpeace said.

[...] the studies are not realistic. The bees were not exposed to the neonics that we know are in planting dust, water drunk by bees, and wildflowers wherever neonics are used as seed treatments. This secret evidence highlights the profound weakness of regulatory tests.

Our previous discussions about neonicotinoids.


Original Submission

posted by takyon on Friday September 23 2016, @09:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the temporary-hiccup dept.

Akamai kicked journalist Brian Krebs' site off its servers after he was hit by a 'record' cyberattack is how Business Insider describes the ongoing DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service Attack) against Brian Krebs (currently offline; google cache). This is notable as Akamai was able to mitigate the effect of the record scale attack but has decided to end their service relationship with Krebs. Victory has currently been handed to the attackers: if the goal is to get Krebs' website off the Internet it has succeeded regardless of the mechanism. Despite being deleted off the Internet Krebs does not fault Akamai.

The really Interesting question is how long will it take for Krebs to return to operational status? Is there anyone else that will be willing to donate their mitigation services so Krebs can go back online? Is there any possible way he could afford to pay normal prices for mitigation services that could handle 600 gigabits per second of flooding? Exactly who do you have to piss off, how sophisticated do they need to be, and how long can they afford the risk involved with carrying out the attack? Free Speech for the Internet is going to be defined by how this plays out.

takyon: These cybercriminals are just going to get Krebs more attention and appearances in the mass media. Krebs expects his site to be back up later today. Also, it is important to note that Akamai/Prolexic provided Krebs free service.

Previously: Brian Krebs DDoSed After Exposing vDos Operators; Israeli Authorities Hit Back With Arrests
Brian Krebs' Blog Hit by 665 Gbps DDoS Attack


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Friday September 23 2016, @07:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the about-damn-time dept.

Finally, some good news for people who are determined to avoid the Windows 10 "upgrade". Microsoft has this week issued an update that removes the Get Windows 10 App and other software related to the the Windows 10 free update offer, which expired July 29, 2016. From a report on Redmond Channel Partner:

An update issued by Microsoft this week will delete the infamous "Get Windows App" from users' systems.

The Get Windows App (also known as the "GWX app") was a nag-ware-like popup that showed up on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows 8.1 desktops, prompting users to get a free upgrade to Windows 10. It hung around with that same message over a one-year period for those who didn't accept the offer. It took a lot of effort to make it go away.

The update that dispenses with the GWX app is labeled as "Knowledge Base article KB3184143." It became available through Windows Server Update Services as of Sept. 20, according to Microsoft's description article.


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Friday September 23 2016, @06:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the holy-carp dept.

The New York Times has a story that describes just how devastating it can be to an ecosystem to dispose of goldfish, "the most invasive aquatic species" in a river or stream.

Two decades ago, someone dropped a handful of unwanted pet goldfish into a creek in southwestern Australia. Those goldfish grew, swam downstream, mucked up waters wherever they went and spawned like mad. Before long, they took over the whole river.

Researchers from Murdoch University believe this scenario, or something like it, is the cause of a feral goldfish invasion in Australia's Vasse River. Since 2003, they have been running a goldfish tracking and control program that involves catching fish along the length of the river, freezing them to death and studying them in the lab. Despite this program, goldfish in the Vasse are thriving, with some fish growing as long as 16 inches and weighing up to four pounds — the size of a two-liter soda bottle.

The article contains some insightful information as to how to get rid of unwanted goldfish:

The best strategy is to give healthy fish away, to a responsible aquarium, pet store or hobbyist.... In Florida, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission takes unwanted exotic pets off people's hands on regularly scheduled amnesty days.

If your fish is sick, the most humane way to kill it is probably to put it in an ice slurry. As for whether you should flush your fish down the toilet, experts recommend against it. Not only is there a slight chance your fish could survive a journey through the septic system and end up in the wild, but, in general, it's just not a very pleasant way to say goodbye to Bubbles.

I have a couple alternate solutions. First, tropical lion fish love goldfish, as I learned in a middle school science class. Second, goldfish are edible. Think about that the next time you complain about the price of fish!


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday September 23 2016, @04:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the teaching-to-the-test-yields-a-fail dept.

El Reg reports

The NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council] reckons TV makers are configuring sets to perform well on government tests, while in the living room they become energy hogs.

Its specific claims are:

  • The TVs perform well on the US Department of Energy-mandated energy use test--but that's based on a clip that doesn't match real-world video content. ([To El Reg,] that seems like a slip-up by the DoE);
  • TVs from Samsung, LG, and Vizio are designed to disable energy-saving features if the user changes their screen settings, but there's little or no warning about this. This, the NRDC says, can as much as double the power consumption; and
  • UHD TVs turn into energy hogs when they're playing high dynamic range (HDR) content, but HDR isn't included in the DoE's test (again, surely that means the DoE needs to update its tests?).

The NRDC says European testing seemed to match another observation it made: that during the DOE test loop, some TVs seemed to exhibit "inexplicable and sustained drops in energy use". It suggests that software is specifically detecting the test loop and adjusting the TV's performance to suit.

One assumes that "a clip" refers to the standard video loop used in the tests.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday September 23 2016, @02:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the bonus-points-for-clean-compile? dept.

Codingame has developed a platform to gamify coding education for developers, and provide a channel for employers to find prospective employees. From the website:

Practice & learn the fun way
    Practice pure code

Learn new concepts by solving fun challenges in 25+ languages addressing all the hot programming topics.
    Learn from the best

In a matter of hours, discover new languages, algorithms or tricks in courses designed by top developers.
    Become the expert

Our approach has been designed to lead advanced developers to the next level.

There might be developers, team leaders, or employers in the Soylent community who would find it useful.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday September 23 2016, @01:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the ouch! dept.

Reuters via Yahoo News reports on an announcement by Yahoo! that an attacker "may have stolen names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and encrypted passwords" for 500 million accounts in 2014. According to the announcement, the FBI is looking into the matter and that "The investigation has found no evidence that the state-sponsored actor is currently in Yahoo's network".

Yahoo Inc said on Thursday that at least 500 million of its accounts were hacked in 2014 by what it believed was a state-sponsored actor, a theft that appeared to be the world's biggest known cyber breach by far. Cyber thieves may have stolen names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and encrypted passwords, the company said. But unprotected passwords, payment card data and bank account information did not appear to have been compromised, signalling that some of the most valuable user data was not taken. The attack on Yahoo was unprecedented in size, more than triple other large attacks on sites such as eBay Inc , and it comes to light at a difficult time for Yahoo. Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer is under pressure to shore up the flagging fortunes of the site founded in 1994, and the company in July agreed to a $4.83 billion cash sale of its internet business to Verizon Communications Inc . "This is the biggest data breach ever," said well-known cryptologist Bruce Schneier, adding that the impact on Yahoo and its users remained unclear because many questions remain, including the identity of the state-sponsored hackers behind it. On its website on Thursday, Yahoo encouraged users to change their passwords but did not require it.

Also covered at: Ars Technica
Computerworld
cnet
phuys.org


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday September 23 2016, @11:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the where's-my-sonic-screwdriver? dept.

Sound can now be structured in three dimensions. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the University of Stuttgart have found a way of generating acoustic holograms, which could improve ultrasound diagnostics and material testing. The holograms can also be used to move and manipulate particles.

Peer Fischer, a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and Professor at the University of Stuttgart, normally works on micro- and nanorobots. His lab also develops the nanofabrication methods that are needed to develop such tiny swimmers. Holography was not one of his core interests. "However, we were looking for a way to move large numbers of microparticles simultaneously so that we could assemble them into larger more complex structures," explains Fischer. His research team has now found such a method with acoustic holography, and it reports the first acoustic hologram in this week's issue of Nature. The method promises a number of applications in addition to particle manipulation.

Journal Reference: Kai Melde, Andrew G. Mark, Tian Qiu, Peer Fischer. Holograms for acoustics. Nature, 2016; 537 (7621): 518 DOI: 10.1038/nature19755

The article has an image of a Picasso peace dove created with an acoustic hologram.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday September 23 2016, @09:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the can-now-read-letters-without-opening-them dept.

In the 1970s, some charred fragments of ancient scrolls were discovered inside the ark of a synagogue at En-Gedi, on the western shore of the Dead Sea. The archaeologists could not unroll them without destroying them, and it was doubtful any text would be legible. So they preserved the fragments in hope that one day better technology might come along.

That day is finally here, as computer scientists at the University of Kentucky have developed a technique to read them. Recently, we've seen news about being able to read closed books, but in the past couple years technology has revolutionized the field of classical studies by allowing "virtual unrolling" of ancient scrolls. The combination of a micro-CT scan and specialized software was developed as part of a project to allow scholars to read the scrolls from Herculaneum, an ancient town near Pompeii which was also destroyed in the volcanic eruption. The so-called "Villa of the Papyri" contains the only intact ancient library ever discovered and has so far yielded nearly 2000 ancient scrolls, mostly obscure and lost works associated with Epicurean philosophical ideas. (Excavation at Herculaneum is not currently active, but many scholars speculate there could be additional chambers in the villa, possibly with thousands of other lost ancient works.)

The most recent accomplishment with this technique is the reading of a biblical fragment from the En-Gedi synagogue. As Yosef Porath, a researcher involved in the original archaeological dig nearly a half-century ago, was preparing a final report on the charred scroll fragments, he asked Pnina Shor (the head of the Dead Sea Scrolls project at the Israel Antiquities Authority) to try making some high-resolution scans. Dr. Shor was skeptical, given the poor condition of the fragments (which looked like chunks of charcoal), but she included one fragment on a whim along with other objects she was submitting for cross-sectional scanning. She forwarded the results to W. Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky who has been working on the "virtual unrolling" software.

The results were striking. Not only did they obtain a clear and legible text, but it was also found to be the earliest extant fragment of the Hebrew Bible with an identical text to the medieval Masoretic Text used as the standard Hebrew edition today. The Masoretic text serves as the basis for most modern translations, and this recent find demonstrates a possible continuous stable text going back as much as 1700-2000 years. According to the researchers, it is also the first ancient biblical fragment recovered from the ark of a synagogue (as opposed to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were preserved in desert caves.)

Links to published studies:
Article on Technical Methodology and Findings
Article on Recovered Hebrew Text and Historical Significance


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Friday September 23 2016, @08:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the dam-good-idea dept.

For the past several years, technicians have been trucking spring Chinook salmon above Foster Dam in Sweet Home to see if they would spawn, and if their offspring could survive the passage over the dam and subsequent ocean migration to eventually return as adults some 3-5 years later.

A new study examining the genetic origin of adult spring Chinook returning to Foster Dam offers definitive proof that the offspring survived, potentially opening up miles of spawning habitat on the upper South Santiam and other river systems.

Results of the study have been published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

"With a little human assistance, it is now clear that we can restore natural production to areas above some dams and there is prime habitat on some river systems, such as the North Santiam above Detroit Dam," said Kathleen O'Malley, an Oregon State University geneticist and principal investigator on the project. "This could really contribute to the long-term population viability in some river systems."


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Friday September 23 2016, @06:44AM   Printer-friendly

Last week, after more than six months of waiting, 17-year-old Gary Ruot of Debary, Florida, was accepted into a clinical trial testing a novel treatment for a rare degenerative eye disease that strikes fast and leads to irreversible blindness.

Called gene therapy, treatments such as this one attempt to slow or in some cases reverse an inherited disease by delivering a new gene to the site of a mutated, disease-causing one. But to get into a clinical trial for such therapies, patients must meet specific criteria set by drug makers. They must fall into a certain age group, they must have had symptoms for a defined period of time, and they must harbor the precise genetic mutation the therapy is designed to correct. Matching the right people to these experimental therapies is challenging, and the stakes are high for patients with no other options.

In Gary's case, there was little time to act. His vision first started declining in December 2015. In January he stopped playing baseball, and by February he couldn't see to drive anymore. That month he was diagnosed with Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy, or LHON, which affects a[s] few as one in 50,000 people worldwide.

"This is a devastating disorder that has no proven therapy of any great efficacy," says Nancy Newman, principal investigator in the trial and a professor of ophthalmology at Emory University School of Medicine, where it is taking place. "That's why a patient would be willing to move into the gene therapy area, despite the fact that there will always be risks."

[Continues....]

Gary's mother, Jennifer Ruot, tracked down the trial, which is sponsored by GenSight Biologics. Since it's testing a drug intended to correct the exact genetic mutation responsible for Gary's vision loss, it represented his best hope to get his sight back—but he wasn't eligible to join, because the minimum age was 18. A friend of his created a petition to deliver to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to lower the age limit, and Jennifer called or e-mailed GenSight regularly asking for updates about the trial.

Sometimes the FDA needs to see good safety data in adults before giving the go-ahead to researchers to enroll children in clinical trials. This was the case with GenSight, which received regulatory approval this month to enroll patients aged 15 to 18.

GenSight was able to slightly expand the patient population for its trial because LHON is biologically the same disease in a 15-year-old and a 20-year-old, Newman says. Some gene therapy trials specifically target diseases in children or even infants. But not all gene therapies are considered safe for children, because they may damage organs that are not yet fully developed.

Designing clinical trials for gene therapy is tricky. In phase I and II trials, which are trying to establish safety, researchers seek out patients with advanced cases of the disease. That minimizes risk in case an experimental therapy goes wrong. Once a therapy moves into more advanced clinical trials, they enroll patients who have developed symptoms more recently; studying these patients is a better way to measure efficacy. But seeking patients at these different disease stages shrinks the pool of those ultimately able to participate.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday September 23 2016, @05:03AM   Printer-friendly
from the ignorance-is-bliss dept.

Microsoft has been criticised over its Windows 10 software by consumer rights group Which?.

The body said it had received hundreds of complaints about the upgrade, including lost files, emails no longer syncing and broken wi-fi and printing.

In some cases, it said, users had had to pay for their computer to be repaired.

Microsoft defended its software and highlighted that it provided help online and by phone.

"The Windows 10 upgrade is a choice designed to help people take advantage of the most secure and most productive Windows," said a spokesman.

"Customers have distinct options. Should a customer need help with the upgrade experience, we have numerous options including free customer support."

Which? surveyed more than 5,500 of its members in June, and said that 12% of the 2,500 who had upgraded to Windows 10 had later reverted to an earlier version.

It's not a surprise to anyone on Soylent, but this is the sort of thing that causes conventional wisdom to shift.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Friday September 23 2016, @03:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the stranger-than-fiction dept.

The puzzling appearance of an ice cloud seemingly out of thin air has prompted NASA scientists to suggest that a different process than previously thought -- possibly similar to one seen over Earth's poles -- could be forming clouds on Saturn's moon Titan.

Located in Titan's stratosphere, the cloud is made of a compound of carbon and nitrogen known as dicyanoacetylene (C4N2), an ingredient in the chemical cocktail that colors the giant moon's hazy, brownish-orange atmosphere.
...
"The appearance of this ice cloud goes against everything we know about the way clouds form on Titan," said Carrie Anderson, a CIRS co-investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study.
...
The first step in the proposed process is the formation of ice particles made from the related chemical cyanoacetylene (HC3N). As these tiny bits of ice move downward through Titan's stratosphere, they get coated by hydrogen cyanide (HCN). At this stage, the ice particle has a core and a shell composed of two different chemicals. Occasionally, a photon of ultraviolet light tunnels into the frozen shell and triggers a series of chemical reactions in the ice. These reactions could begin either in the core or within the shell. Both pathways can yield dicyanoacteylene ice and hydrogen as products.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday September 23 2016, @01:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the fail-to-plan-OR-plan-to-fail? dept.

Lenovo has confirmed that several of its Yoga laptops are refusing to install Linux-based operating systems. The Chinese firm said the issue had been caused by its switch to a new storage system, which reads and records data faster than normal.

There had been confusion after one of its employees posted that Linux was blocked because of an "agreement with Microsoft". However, Lenovo has denied enforcing a deliberate ban.

The restriction affects PCs sold with the "signature edition" of Windows 10. The term refers to a promise that "junk" software is not pre-installed alongside the OS to avoid slowing down its operation.

The Lenovo rep's response (linked to in the excerpt) seems to have been given before the company PR people got involved.

Hot Hardware , offers an alternative perspective:

Yesterday, Lenovo confirmed that Linux cannot be installed on the machine because there are no OS-specific drivers for the device's proprietary RAID configuration. Given that this machine has been designed to work with Windows 10, it should come as no surprise that Lenovo probably didn't want to devote too much of its resources to developing alternative drivers for this particular model.

To be more specific, Lenovo had this to say:

To support our Yoga products and our industry-leading 360-hinge design in the best way possible we have used a storage controller mode that is unfortunately not supported by Linux and as a result, does not allow Linux to be installed. Beyond the controller setup limitation, other advanced capabilities of the Yoga design would likely not work with current Linux offerings.

Lenovo does not intentionally block customers using other operating systems such as Linux on Yoga or any of its devices and is fully committed to providing Linux certifications and installation guidance on a wide range of suitable products.

In a statement provided to The Register , Lenovo further clarified its position on RAID support in Linux for the Yoga 900, writing, "Unsupported models will rely on Linux operating system vendors releasing new kernel and drivers to support features such as RAID on SSD."


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Friday September 23 2016, @12:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the time-for-ACs-to-update dept.

Release 2.6 of TAILS (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) has been announced: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tails-26-out.

TAILS is believed to be one of the most secure ways currently in use on the internet of protecting your identity, although it is possible to compromise information if it is used used incorrectly.

Their home page is https://tails.boum.org/


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Friday September 23 2016, @12:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the leaving-already? dept.

Hints of an early exodus of modern humans from Africa may have been detected in living humans.

People outside Africa overwhelmingly trace their descent to a group that left the continent 60,000 years ago.

Now, analysis of nearly 500 human genomes appears to have turned up the weak signal of an earlier migration.

But the results suggest this early wave of Homo sapiens all but vanished, so it does not drastically alter prevailing theories of our origins.

And two separate studies in the academic journal Nature failed to find the signal of a later movement.

Writing in Nature , Luca Pagani, Mait Metspalu and colleagues describe hints of this pioneer group in their analysis of DNA in people from the Oceanian nation of Papua New Guinea.

The researchers examining the DNA in Papua New Guinea found the traces of the earlier migration by subtracting the DNA from the more recent migration out of Africa 60,000 years ago and the DNA from the Denisovans.


Original Submission