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lhsi writes:

"The British Pregnancy Advisory Service has been fined £200,000 (€241,000; $334,500) for a data breach.

A hacker had threatened to reveal the names of 10,000 people who had contacted the service, after accessing unsecured data using a website vulnerability, the BBC reports.

David Smith, deputy commissioner and director of data protection at the ICO (the Information Commissioner's Office), said:

"Data protection is critical and getting it right requires vigilance. The British Pregnancy Advice Service didn't realise their website was storing this information, didn't realise how long it was being retained for and didn't realise the website wasn't being kept sufficiently secure.

But ignorance is no excuse. It is especially unforgivable when the organisation is handing information as sensitive as that held by the BPAS."

The BPAS has said they believe the fine is out of proportion and they plan to appeal."

AnonTechie writes:

"Thinking there could be life on one of Jupiter's moons, NASA scientists are working on a plan to send robots to begin studying it. Jim Green, NASA's planetary science chief, said there's no reason to think there isn't life on Europa, the sixth-closest moon to the planet Jupiter and the sixth-largest moon in the solar system. And he can't wait to find out. NASA administrator Charles Bolden said this week that the space agency's 2015 proposed budget includes funding for a robotic mission to Europa. Green noted that NASA hopes to launch the first of a series of robotic missions to Europa in the mid 2020s.

The report explains: "In December, the Hubble Space Telescope spotted a huge water plume emanating from the south pole of Europa. Green said it wasn't a small geyser like Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park, which shoots up 90 to 180 feet in the air.

The geyser coming off Europa shoots up more than 124 miles."

AnonTechie writes:

"Sniffing out cancer with electronic noses:

We may soon be able to obtain easy and early diagnoses of diseases by smell. This week researchers found one odour-sniffing machine was as good as a mammogram at detecting breast cancer and many other devices capable of spotting other diseases may be on the way".

Dogs have demonstrated this skill for quite some time and are used in the UK to alert their owners of impending medical problems. However, until recently, it has proven impossible to replicate this ability. It seems that this is no longer the case.

Ethanol-fueled writes:

"After many years of lambasting smartphone users during my tenure at "The Other Site," I finally broke down and got a recent-model Android phone, and I'm appealing to the musicians in the audience for help: Which apps for music recording on Android would you recommend? Any stories, bugs, or gotchas of which we should be made aware? Features provided, number of tracks, backing tracks, effects, etc.? I'd prefer Android-specific information but discussion of music recording on iOS or other mobile platforms, heck any digital recording, would be welcome. Cost is not a factor, but stability is very important.

I've done a good amount of recording using Cubase on PCs so I'm no stranger to digital recording over all, one of the reasons why I'm asking you all is because most 'reviews' online seem untrustworthy, the two I'd think I'd like best are full of bad reviews and I need the straight dope from a technical crowd.

Thanks in advance for your stories and suggestions!"

mrbluze writes:

"Edward Snowden's testimony to the European Parliament is online, in which he details how the NSA has pressured first world nations to make laws that allow mass surveillance:

One of the foremost activities of the NSA's FAD, or Foreign Affairs Division, is to pressure or incentivize EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance. Lawyers from the NSA, as well as the UK's GCHQ, work very hard to search for loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations that were at best unwittingly authorized by lawmakers. These efforts to interpret new powers out of vague laws is an intentional strategy to avoid public opposition and lawmakers' insistence that legal limits be respected, effects the GCHQ internally described in its own documents as "damaging public debate." ...

Once the NSA has successfully subverted or helped repeal legal restrictions against unconstitutional mass surveillance in partner states, it encourages partners to perform 'access operations.' Access operations are efforts to gain access to the bulk communications of all major telecommunications providers in their jurisdictions, normally beginning with those that handle the greatest volume of communications. Sometimes the NSA provides consultation, technology, or even the physical hardware itself for partners to 'ingest' these massive amounts of data in a manner that allows processing, and it does not take long to access everything. Even in a country the size of the United States, gaining access to the circuits of as few as three companies can provide access to the majority of citizens' communications. In the UK, Verizon, British Telecommunications, Vodafone, Global Crossing, Level 3, Viatel, and Interoute all cooperate with the GCHQ, to include cooperation beyond what is legally required.

Many other points were made, including that whistle-blowing has become more difficult since his revalations, that the espionage is largely economic, and that there are many more revelations yet to be made."

janrinok writes "The birth of Loggerhead turtles is a spectacular and frequently observed event, and the return of the adult turtle to the same shores to lay eggs some years later is equally well observed. However, until recently, very little was known about the early years of neonate turtles. In a paper published by the Royal Society, scientists have explained how using satellite tracking has solved many of the mysteries.

Genetics studies, by catch, strandings and opportunistic sightings offshore had given broad hints that they travel in a huge circle within the currents associated with the North Atlantic subtropical gyre, reaching the Azores and Cape Verde before heading back to the Gulf of Mexico and Florida. But it is now known that the neonates actually spend a significant portion of time in the Sargasso Sea. The huge amount of sargassum seaweed causes the water temperature to rise by several degrees more than would otherwise be the case, and provides the young turtles with a food-rich environment and protection from predators.

Using solar powered beacons and satellite tracking is not, in itself, novel but overcoming the problems caused by rapidly-growing turtles has presented its own challenges. The information that the tracking has revealed was also unexpected. The link provided above is to the abstract of the paper, and a PDF of the full report is also available."

fx_68 writes:

Bloomberg Business Week reports that Disney is investing $1 billion (or milliard) in guest tracking. From the article:

Jason McInerney and his wife, Melissa, recently tapped their lunch orders onto a touchscreen at the entrance to the Be Our Guest restaurant at Florida's Walt Disney World Resort and were told to take any open seat. Moments later a food server appeared at their table with their croque-monsieur and carved turkey sandwiches. Asks McInerney, a once-a-year visitor to Disney theme parks: "How did they know where we were sitting?"

janrinok writes:

"A story to make you smile. Jason Barrow is a drummer who was electrocuted 2 years ago, resulting in the loss of his right arm below the elbow. Professor Gil Weinberg of Georgia Tech has made a prostheses which allows Jason to control 2 drumsticks with his right 'hand', while leaving his left hand free to hold a third. The article continues: 'The first stick is controlled both physically by the musicians' arms and electronically using electromyography (EMG) muscle sensors. The other stick 'listens' to the music being played and improvises.'

'Barnes will play with the device for the first time publicly on March 22 at the Robotic Musicianship Demonstration and Concert at Kennesaw State University's Bailey Performance Center. The free event, which will also feature Weinberg's Shimi robot, is part of the Atlanta Science Festival.'"

regift_of_the_gods writes:

"The makers of Nutshell CRM, a web-based service for managing sales leads and workflow (screenshots here), have notified their customers that they will no longer able to populate profiles with data from Linkedin accounts, after Linkedin informed Nutshell that it was violating the developer API's terms of use over a year and half after Nutshell first announced the feature. It's hard to argue that Nutshell's Linkedin integration feature does not violate the Linkedin Developer API Terms of Service (specifically section C: 'If your application falls into one or more of the following categories, you are required to be part of one of our Partner Programs and have a signed agreement with LinkedIn... applications used for hiring, marketing, or sales...').

However, Nutshell's CEO says Linkedin representatives also informed him they weren't accepting applications for their Partner Program from CRM vendors at this time, leaving Salesforce and Microsoft (Dynamics) as Linkedin's sole partners in that space. Also, the TOS page notes it was last revised in August 2013; it's not immediately clear whether this clause was in place when Nutshell first announced Linkedin integration in May 2012. The CEO of Zartis, which runs a web service for tracking applicants, blogged his layman's interpretation of Linkedin's Developer API TOS sometime in 2013; his post makes no mention of a prohibition for sales or marketing."

lhsi writes

"Ahead of a special episode of the Sky at Night, the BBC has a short clip demonstrating some of the sounds of the Universe (video, unsurprisingly containing sound). Even though sound waves can't travel through the vacuum of space, detected vibrations can be sped up until they are in our audio range.

The sound of charged particles interacting with Jupiter's magnetic field is eerie, but interesting to listen to."

janrinok writes "A cheap device, when fastened to a smartphone, will enable people to receive specialist eye diagnoses in remote locations, which will assist local medical personnel in providing the appropriate treatment without the expense and time of sending the patient to visit an opthalmic specialist.

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed two inexpensive adapters that enable a smartphone to capture high-quality images of the front and back of the eye. The adapters make it easy for anyone with minimal training to take a picture of the eye and share it securely with other health practitioners or store it in the patient's electronic record.

'Think Instagram for the eye,' said one of the developers, assistant professor of ophthalmology Robert Chang, MD.

The researchers see this technology as an opportunity to increase access to eye-care services as well as to improve the ability to advise on patient care remotely."

Papas Fritas writes:

"James B. Stewart writes in the NYT that there's one major difference between now and the last time Russia invaded a neighbor (Czechoslovakia in 1968): Now Moscow has a stock market that provides a minute-by-minute referendum on Putin's military and diplomatic actions.

On Monday, the Russian stock market index (RTSI) fell more than 12 percent, in what a Russian official called panic selling and the ruble plunged on currency markets, forcing the Russian central bank to raise interest rates by one and a half percentage points to defend the currency. On Tuesday, as soon as Mr. Putin said he saw no need for further Russian military intervention, the Russian market rebounded by 6 percent. With tensions on the rise once more on Friday, the Russian market may again gyrate when it opens on Monday. Russia is far more exposed to market fluctuations than many countries, since the Russian government owns a majority stake in a number of the country's largest companies and many Russian companies and banks are fully integrated into the global financial system.

The old Soviet Union, in stark contrast, was all but impervious to foreign economic or business pressure, thanks in part to an ideological commitment to self-sufficiency. By contrast, today "Russia is too weak and vulnerable economically to go to war," says Anders Aslund. "The Kremlin's fundamental mistake has been to ignore its economic weakness and dependence on Europe." Almost half of Russia's exports go to Europe, and three-quarters of its total exports consist of oil and gas. The energy boom is over, and Europe can turn the tables on Russia after its prior gas supply cuts in 2006 and 2009 replacing this gas with liquefied natural gas, gas from Norway and shale gas.

If the European Union sanctioned Russia's gas supply to Europe, Russia would lose $100 billion or one-fifth of its export revenues, and the Russian economy would be in rampant crisis. Other penalties might include asset freezes and the billionaire Russian elite who are pretty much synonymous with Mr. Putin's friends and allies are the ones who are being severely affected by visa bans, which were imposed by President Obama on Thursday. "The recent events were completely irrational, angering the West for no reason," says one Russian economist. "This is what is most scary, especially for businesses. Instead of reforming the stagnating economy, Putin scared everybody for no reason and with no gain in sight. So it is hard to predict his next actions. But I think a real Cold War is unlikely.""

lhsi writes:

"Mozilla are investigating reports that Dell is charging customers £16 to install the Firefox browser, according to The Register.

Mozilla's trademark policy says that you can't charge for distributing unaltered binaries of the software.

According to the BBC, Dell said that the money was being charged for the time and labour involved.

"In this particular situation, the customer would not be charged for the Mozilla Firefox software download, rather the fee would cover the time and labour involved for factory personnel to load a different image than is provided on the system's standard configuration."

A preliminary consultation with legal teams has stated at Mozilla, but is at an early stage."

AnonTechie writes:

"Three new planets classified as habitable-zone super-Earths are amongst eight new planets discovered orbiting nearby red dwarf stars by an international team of astronomers from the UK and Chile. The study identifies that virtually all red dwarfs, which make up at least three quarters of the stars in the Universe, have planets orbiting them. The research also suggests that habitable-zone super-Earth planets (where liquid water could exist and making them possible candidates to support life) orbit around at least a quarter of the red dwarfs in the Sun's own neighbourhood."

janrinok writes:

"There is still much research being carried out with rotating drive technology despite the arrival of SSDs on the scene. When using an electrical field in conjunction with a magnetic field, it is possible to change the magnetic arrangement in a material much more quickly than is possible using magnetic field alone.

A report from Science Daily notes:

Researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and ETH Zurich have now changed the magnetic arrangement in a material much faster than is possible with today's hard drives. The researchers used a new technique where an electric field triggers these changes, in contrast to the magnetic fields commonly used in consumer devices. This method uses a new kind of material where the magnetic and electric properties are coupled. Applied in future devices, this kind of strong interaction between magnetic and electric properties can have numerous advantages. For instance, an electrical field can be generated more easily in a device than a magnetic one.

In the experiment, the changes in magnetic arrangement took place within a picosecond (a trillionth of a second) and could be observed with x-ray flashes at the American x-ray laser LCLS. The flashes are so short that you can virtually see how the magnetization changes from one image to the next - similar to how we are able to capture the movement of an athlete with a normal camera in a series of images with a short exposure time. In future, such experiments should also be possible at PSI's new research facility, the x-ray laser SwissFEL. The results will be published in the journal Science.

Whether this becomes economically viable for mass-produced drives is yet to be seen."