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romanr writes:

"Copper oxides, also known as cuprates, are the most promising materials for superconductivity. Today, cuprates can be superconductive at temperatures as high as -150 °C. But for many years scientists wondered why they lose superconductivity when concentration of electrons drops below certain level. Most scientist thought that the cuprates gradually became insulators.

Scientists from Université de Sherbrooke discovered that the loss of superconductivity is because of a sudden appearance of a distinct electronic phase in the material that enters into competition with the superconductivity and weakens it. It means, that higher temperature superconductors will be possible if we can get rid of the competing phase. This new approach opens a way to get an ambient temperature superconductivity."

stderr writes: "I used to visit a certain website quite often, but if Dice Holdings decide to switch the interface to what is currently known as "Beta", I'll have to find another site for my "stuff that matters" fix. So, SoylentNews, what sites can you recommend for a "maybe-ex" /. user?"

similar_name writes:

As part of a project developed by San Francisco area start-up WaterFX, a giant solar receiver in Firebaugh, CA, rotates to track the sun and capture its energy. The 377-foot array, however, does not generate electricity, but instead creates heat used to desalinate water. The goal is to tap the abundant, if contaminated, resource in this parched region: the billions of gallons of water that lie just below the surface.

The water is tainted with toxic levels of salt, selenium and other heavy metals that wash down from the nearby Panoche foothills, and is so polluted that it must be constantly drained to keep it from poisoning crops. This, coupled with the record-breaking drought that California is facing means that irrigation costs are going to double or triple as farms are forced to buy water on the spot market.

"Food prices are going to go up, absolutely", said Dennis Falaschi, manager of the Panoche Water District. "This year, farmers in the Panoche district will receive no water. Last year, they received only 20 percent of their allocation", Mr. Falaschi said. In 2012, the allocation was 40 percent. Farmers elsewhere who rely on the State Water Project to irrigate 750,000 acres of farmland will also receive no water in 2014.

Submitted on behalf of user "crutchy" #179, who writes:

"I don't seem to be able to use the 'Submit Story' feature at the moment... I just thought I'd flag a little saga currently unfolding near where I live. An open cut coal mine that supplies coal to a nearby 1600MW power station in Victoria, Australia, has been on fire for over a week. This could threaten electricity generation in the area and might have been deliberately set.

What might be more interesting is the lack of news media attention to it."

[Ed. Note] we're working on fixing article submission, thanks for getting this to us via alternate means.

similar_name writes: "The prospect of children printing their own Transformers and My Little Pony toys is a step closer, after toy firm Hasbro revealed a partnership with 3D printing company 3D Systems. The two companies are working together to 'co-develop and commercialize innovative play printers and platforms later this year.'"

[Ed. Note] The first one I would print is Applejack.

Welcome to the new site everyone. As penance for my embarrassing triple posting earlier, I have been asked by the admins to post a link to our lovely bug tracker, which can be found at http://sylnt.us/bugs. If you notice any odd behavior around the site, please don't hesitate to submit a notice. Thank you, everyone.

Submitter ticho writes:

"The latest Snowden revelation suggests that Australia's spies are committing economic espionage on Americans, for the benefit of the American government.

The NSA's espionage partners in Australia offered the U.S. intelligence agency surveillance information on an American law firm that was representing the Indonesian government in a trade case against the U.S., according to leaked documents from Edward Snowden's stash.

Read more here."

[Ed. Note] This is another long-denied open secret now documented. One can only wonder what we gve Australia in return. Here is the NY Times article referenced in the above article.

mattie_p writes "MIT students won a hackathon last November with a non-functioning demo of Tidbit. The concept is to replace web advertising revenue with a tiny amount of Bitcoin mining on the user's browser. Out of the blue, the students were hit by a subpoena from the New Jersey Attorney General demanding that the founders 'turn over sensitive information including source codes, hosting websites, and all of the Bitcoin wallet addresses associated with Tidbit.'

At first MIT council referred the students to legal assistance from the EFF, who quickly came to their defense. Now there is a petition going around requesting the MIT administration support the students directly. Parallels are being drawn to Aaron Swartz, possibly because one of the authors of the recent petition is Prof. Hal Ableson, although details of the two cases have very little in common.

MIT President Reif has now come out strongly in support of the students--and in favor of academic freedom from interference by government."

AudioGuy writes "A Guardian reporter, Rebecca MacKinnon, has some interesting insights on how Chinese censorship may be inadvertently leaking into Micosoft's Bing Search engine.

"After conducting my own research, running my own tests, and drawing upon nearly a decade of experience studying Chinese Internet censorship, I have concluded that what several activists and journalists have described as censorship on Bing is actually what one might call "second hand censorship". Basically, Microsoft failed to consider the consequences of blindly applying apolitical mathematical algorithms to politically manipulated and censored web content. The algorithm deployed by Bing may be mathematically sound, but it fails to protect online freedom of expression. Bing failed to take into account the political reality of Chinese government censorship and its broader impact on the shape of the Chinese Internet. Without adjustments to how simplified Chinese websites based outside of mainland China are "weighted," exiled and dissident online voices inevitably lose out. Put it another way: an apolitical mathematical formula automatically amplifies Chinese government censorship to all people searching for simplified Chinese content anywhere in the world, not just in China."

Apparently Google had the same problem, but has managed to write code to prevent these side effects."

mattie_p writes that this was originally submitted by cmn32480 via the forums.

"According to Fox News, environmentalists are concerned about the impact of the world's largest solar plant, which is located in the Mojave Desert, on the local bird population. The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (a solar thermal plant) covers nearly five square miles, has approximately 350,000 garage door sized computer controlled mirrors, and has temperatures near the boilers reaching 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. Plant owners NRG Energy Inc., Google Inc., and BrightSource Energy say they have found dozens of dead birds in the complex in the last several months, some with burned or scorched feathers. The plant cost $2.2 Billion to construct, and had been held up in regulatory and wildlife relocation fighting for several years. It has officially been open since Thursday, February 13, 2014."

Dopefish writes

Greetings Soylentils! And welcome to SoylentNews!

We are here to deliver the best community-sourced news, catered for all manner of nerd! Because this is a grassroots based platform, the content feeds are powered by readers like you. Our main objective is to highlight news stories on the web that are of importance to everyone, but especially nerds. In addition, SoylentNews will strive to go beyond simple news-aggregation, with some core principles:

• Providing a soapbox for experts to discuss their profession and solicit questions from a curious audience.
• Allowing the community to comment, without any mandatory registration.
• Staying mindful of the community's needs and wants while avoiding changes to satisfy an overarching corporate agenda.

We want to make this your source for news about technology, art, and science. We are the new kid on the block and are adapting quickly to satisfy our community's needs, as we look forward to exceeding your expectations and pushing boundaries like never before. Lastly, there will be no changes in format without a general consensus from the community. Thank you for stopping by and enjoy the ride!

~Dopefish

Blackmoore writes: "The producers of "House of Numbers" have used a series of bogus copyright takedown notices to get Youtube to remove videos, in which he uses clips from the documentary as part of his criticism, showing how they mislead viewers and misrepresent the facts and the evidence. It's pure censorship: using the law to force the removal of your opponents' views."

ticho writes:

"Followers of the Penguin, Marcin Iwiński, one of the founders of CD Projekt RED, has spoken out about why the developer of The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077 has not yet shown any support towards Linux.

Marcin says: "You know, one of the reasons we have not released The Witcher on Linux is that we most probably have to address five different versions of Linux and this is always terrible to support the quality of the games afterwards. The patches, the updates, and everything. If Steam will deliver a constant Linux environment, call it SteamOS or anything like that, we would love to have our games there because, you know, the more people play our games, the better for us."

Entire podcast (in MP3 form) here."

janrinok writes:

"The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is providing many interesting news items this week. The BBC reports that the Black Ghost Knifefish has inspired construction of a new robot. The robotic fish would be able to swim in underwater situation where it would be impossible or too dangerous for a human to swim."

Read more below.

So, after dealing with a bit of monkeying with the database, I'm pleased to announce that Soylent should (in theory) have support for UTF-8 starting immediately. Now obviously this isn't well tested, so this is your chance to break the site in two, consider the comments below to be "open season" so to speak. I know the comment preview has some issues with UTF-8 (and it only works at all in Plain Text or HTML modes)

For purposes of breakage, anything that breaks the site layout/Reply To/Parent/Moderate buttons, or breaks any comments beyond itself is considered bad. We need to stop those. If you can break it (which shouldn't be hard), you earn a cookie, and I'll get you in the CREDITS file as something awesome.

For comments that are just plain unreadable, moderation will take care of them, and that isn't considered a bug. So go forth and BREAK my minions! ()}:o)↺