SoylentNews

An Anonymous Coward writes:

"Good news, everyone! A brand-new version of QGIS has been released (changelog). QGIS, a full-featured GPL-licensed GIS program has been under active development for twelve years and is now at version 2.2. Funded by a wide range of organizations, the QGIS project lets users create professional-quality maps that compete well with the output of established proprietary GIS packages like ArcView and MapInfo. Notable features of the program include its support for a wide range of file formats, modular design, map server, web publishing, as well as easy python scripting, and an extensive python plugin library.

For those interested, versions are available for GNU/Linux, BSD, Windows, MacOS X, and Android here."

AnonTechie writes:

According to an article from The Register, a team from Stanford University has patented technology that could halve the bandwidth that a mobile provider needs.

Operating under the name Kumu Networks, they are showcasing tech which they claim would exactly double throughput. Radio equipment (such as mobile phones) would be able to send and receive on the same frequency through a process similar to noise-cancelling headphones; by knowing what a base station is transmitting it can cancel out the information from the very faint signal it receives.

Popeidol writes:

"NASA is testing out some new designs for robots based on Tensegrity (Short for Tensional Integrity, a principle Buckminster Fuller helped develop). The idea is that you have rigid rods joined by flexible joints and cables, which gives you a highly-resilient and flexible structure. NASA calls it the Super Ball Bot "for its ability to bounce on landing and shift its shape via multiple small motors to roll across a surface."

There are still plenty of problems to be solved, the positive attributes mean they're currently investigating the option of simultaneously deploying many of them to the surface of a planet directly from orbit."

andrew writes "Magnus Carlsen, arguably the best chess player ever, has made a new chess app available on iTunes. PlayMagnus claims to be able to mimic the play of Magnus at different ages from age 5 to his current world championship strength at 23 years old. This is made possible by use of a customized chess engine built on thousands of different positions from his games.

From Reuters article:

So what is it like for Carlsen to play against his younger self?

"He is really tricky," the champion said. "Even Magnus at 11 years old was a very gifted tactician. A while ago I played as a test Magnus (aged) 14. I outplayed him at some point positionally. And just boom, boom, he tricked me tactically.

"But he makes mistakes as well, so I just have to be patient."

Magnus also plans to eventually add the functionality of on-line chess games against other app users, a service as old as the Internet, putting his app in direct competition with long established chess servers like FICS and ICC."

c0lo writes:

"Reuters reports that security company Hold Security LLC has uncovered stolen log in credentials from some 360 million online accounts that are available for sale on cyber black markets. Some of the more salient points in the article include:

• The data was made available over the past three weeks, meaning an unprecedented amount of stolen credentials are available for sale underground.
• The security firm is unsure where the credentials came from or what they can be used to access; the worst case scenario may include online bank account and private health records.
• The credentials were stolen in breaches that have yet to be publicly reported. The companies attacked may be unaware for the present.

The same source reports the stash was obtained in multiple breaches, but the log in credentials of 105 million accounts may have been taken in a single attack. If confirmed, this would make the largest single breach to date.

Hold Security LLC is the same company that uncovered the Adobe customer data breach in October 2013."

kef writes:

"NASA's Kepler mission has doubled the number of known planets outside of our solar system. In what can only be described as a "bonanza", 715 new planets have been reported thanks to the Kepler space telescope's planet-hunting mission. Using a new method for verifying potential planets led to the volume of new discoveries from Kepler, which aims to help humans search for other worlds that may be like Earth."

Ellis D. Tripp writes "The California state assembly is considering a new bill aimed at reducing the incidence of Driving Under the Influence of Drugs (DUID). The proposed law would make it a criminal act to operate a motor vehicle with ANY detectable level of ANY Schedule I through IV drug in your bloodstream. Not only does this include many prescription drugs, but it would also include substances such as gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), n,n-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), and testosterone, all of which are controlled substances, and also happen to occur naturally in the human body.

Whether an intentional attempt to create a law to be used selectively against anyone the cops want to arrest, or just an example of the gross ignorance of basic science among US legislators, laws like this are sure to be on the rise as prosecutors and police seek to retain power in the face of efforts to legalize marijuana and begin rolling back the abuses of the War on Drugs."

janrinok writes "A little light-hearted relief:

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.

If it weren't for C, we'd all be programming in BASI and OBOL.

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.

In a world without fences and walls, who needs Gates and Windows?

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes.

More humour can be found at bash.org"

visaris writes "Phys.org reports researchers at IBM have set a new record for data transmission over a multi-mode optical fiber. The record data rate of 64Gb/s was achieved over a cable 57 meters long, using non-return-to-zero (NRZ) modulation with a type of laser called a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL). Researcher Dan Kuchta notes, "Others have thought that this modulation wouldn't allow for transfer rates much faster than 32 Gb/s." Indeed, many researchers thought that achieving higher transmission rates would require turning to more complex types of modulation, such as pulse-amplitude modulation-4 (PAM-4). The achievement demonstrates that standard, existing technology for sending data over short distances should be able to meet the growing needs of servers, data centers and supercomputers through the end of this decade, according to the researchers. "What we're showing is that [...] this technology has at least one or two more generations of product life in it," says Kuchta."

AnonTechie writes "Bruce Schneier: The NSA has become too big and too powerful. What was supposed to be a single agency with a dual mission --protecting the security of U.S. communications and eavesdropping on the communications of our enemies has become unbalanced in the post-Cold War, all-terrorism-all-the-time era. Putting the U.S. Cyber Command, the military's cyberwar wing, in the same location and under the same commander, expanded the NSA's power. The result is an agency that prioritizes intelligence gathering over security, and that's increasingly putting us all at risk. It's time we thought about breaking up the National Security Agency."

frojack writes:

"Tesla stock soared today, up over 17% at one point, on solid earnings reports, and also due to achieving the highest recommendation of all cars from Consumer Reports (Note, not linking direct to paywalled CR site). In addition, Tesla Motors Inc. is expected to make a big announcement regarding its 'gigafactory' battery plant this week. Tesla is rumored to be partnering with Japan's Panasonic Corp. or South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. The location of the factory is also yet to be determined, although analysts have bet on New Mexico or Arizona. One thing is sure: 'Tesla hopes to reinvent battery production like it already did to other parts of the auto supply chain,' one Wall Street analyst said.

Within the next few weeks, CEO Elon Musk will go to China to deliver the country's first Model S according to CNBC."

fx_68 writes:

"A sharp rise in the foreign population has ratcheted up racial tensions. Does Singapore have a problem with xenophobia? It seems that barely a month goes by these days without news reports highlighting friction between Singaporeans and foreign workers in the tiny multi-ethnic city-state."

Blackmoore writes:

Glen Greenwald at The Intercept has published another expose on how western intelligence agencies are attempting to control and manipulate online discourse.

The newest article from Greenwald is based around a document from JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group), a previously secret unit of Britan's GCHQ. Entitled "The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations", the document outlines tactics used to achieve JTRIG's purposes of (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable.

From the article: "The broader point is... these surveillance agencies have vested themselves with the power to deliberately ruin people's reputations and disrupt their online political activity even though they've been charged with no crimes, and even though their actions have no conceivable connection to terrorism or even national security threats."

Xerxes writes:

"A Florida woman who has been living off the grid has had her home declared 'Unsanitary' and has until March to connect her off-the-grid home to the city water system, or face eviction."

[ED Note: Ordinances such as this are not uncommon. My own father once had a property condemned on this basis while he was in the midst of a billing dispute with a utility.]

Angry Jesus writes:

"The Chicago Police Department is mis-applying epidemiological science (the study of entire populations) to target individuals in a real-life version of Minority Report. They have decided that it is a good idea to put people on a secret list based on a Big Data analysis of their social networks. But don't worry, it isn't racist or abusive because, Science!"