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FuckBeta writes:

"Guido Stepko reports - In an GOLEM interview at CEBIT 2014 fair, Frank Kuypers, technical account manager at INTEL corp., proudly presented a new feature in INTEL processors, called "hooks", beginning with the new 2014 "Merrifield" 64 bit SoC chip generation.

In the Intel network only mobiles with certain Android versions are allowed to use certain functionalities. If you then replace your Android version, e.g. by a free Cyanogenmod Android kernel, not only some chips would stop working, e.g. LTE/UMTS, but also mails from your employer would be blinded out, because now the processor itself would 'classify' the new software as 'risk'.

Now, beginning with the new 2014 power efficient mobile "Merrifield" processor generation, this functionality will be used to lock the processor for certain OS'es or OS versions. Whether there will be a SDK or use of this 'functionality' will be kept a secret, still is undecided, Kuypers said.

Ryan O'Dell sees a potential abuse of the technology: "You'll buy a computer from a shop with Windows OS and not be able to change to Linux or another OS in the future. You may be able to buy the processor unlocked for a sum. With mobile phones/tablets it can be worse with phone networks also potentially have a lock-in. It's a disaster for the consumer"

Google translation from German: (Google)

An anonymous coward writes:

"Mozilla is using work on it's next generation layout engine, Servo, to fine tune a new language used for writing that layout engine. The new language, called Rust, started as a personal project of Greydon Hoare and has since grown to be sponsored by Mozilla and Samsung. From the article:

The Rust language will power Mozilla's new browser, Servo, and its big selling point is efficiency. Because C++ crashes when it runs into memory allocation issues, it weakens any browser that uses the language. Mozilla designed Rust to be superior to C++ this way, more easily isolating tasks and promote a process known as "work stealing," which is when tasks from an overloaded processor are shifted over to another one.

Rust is a general purpose, multi-paradigm, compiled programming language developed by Mozilla Research. It is designed to be a "safe, concurrent, practical language", supporting pure-functional, concurrent-actor, imperative-procedural, and object-oriented styles."

c0lo writes:

"After more than 35 years during which nobody seems to know about the fate of the Death Star architect responsible with the vents design, recently an open letter (which seems to have been written only weeks after the event) surfaced to offer an insight on both the engineering challenges as well as organizational challenges a technical minded person faces while working for a narrow-minded Empire.

The letter also raises some interesting points on potential in-fights within the upper management circles and possibly an early whistle-blowing attempt, force-choked instead of being protected and followed up; the allegations may well be the reason for which we got to read this latter so late and why nobody seems to know what happened with an otherwise pretty competent battle-station engineer and architect."

lhsi writes:

"The Atlantic looked at a recent update from the developers of the game Desktop Dungeons to discuss problems with gender bias in gaming, asking 'can a work be racist or sexist if its creator doesn't mean for it to be?'

The developers of the game had recently been adding female character art to their game with the intention that they would be "adventurers first and runway models second." While actively trying to avoid doing everything the 'simple' way, they came into some problems due to subconscious shorthands creeping in.

"This adjustment turned out to be startlingly non-trivial - you'd think that a bunch of supposedly conscious, mindful individuals would instantly be able to nail a 'good female look' (bonus points for having a woman on our crew, right?), but huge swathes of our artistic language tended to be informed by sexist and one-dimensional portrayals. We regularly surprised ourselves with how much we took for granted.'"

evilviper writes "The US Department of Commerce announced, ahead of the ITU conference, that they will begin to relinquish their remaining control over ICANN, the governing body that decides the policies and the direction of the Internet. Their stated goal is to make it independent, to ensure that no other government or international agencies are able to take charge, in the face of anti-US opinion.

This comes a year after the ITU, "the United Nations' notoriously dubious telecommunications arm", insisted on taking control of the Internet, itself, which many fear they will use in an attempt to stifle Internet growth, benefiting other telecom interests."

nobbis writes "Major Tim Peake, who will spend six months on the International Space Station in 2015 has opened a competition to name his mission, the name will also be incorporated into the mission logo.

Rosita Suenson of the European Space Agency claims that the competition is designed to engage the public, "We want people to feel part of Tim's mission". Major Peake adds "The ISS is a fantastic research laboratory so I am trying to get people engaged in what we are doing on board the space station in terms of the science, the educational outreach and the knowledge that we gain from the research we do. I want them to come up with an inspirational name for the mission."

The BBC gives some early favorites including "Beagle 3" and "Starman".

The competition is open to all citizens (and subjects) of ESA member countries, meaning the entry should be easy to pronounce in European languages."

lubricus writes:

"This past Friday (March 14, 2014), in advance of ICANN meeting in April, the US announced its attention to relinquish control of the DNS root zone to the global community. Although we can speculate as to the probable cause (*cough* NSAspying! *cough*), most international observers agree that this is a good move for the internet overall."

lhsi writes "Members of the European Parliament have backed a regulation for all smartphone devices to use a standardized charger, a Micro USB connector being the favored type (and one that is in use already).

The regulation is still only a draft law and must be approved by Europe's council of ministers. However, that body has already given its informal backing to the law, suggesting it will win final approval.

European member states will have until 2016 to translate the regulation into national laws and manufacturers will then have 12 months to switch to the new design

The reason for this regulation is both to help consumers and to cut down on electronic waste (51,000 tonnes annually)."

AnonTechie writes "Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg blasted the U.S. government's electronic surveillance practices" on Thursday, saying he'd personally called President Barack Obama to voice his displeasure. "When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government," Zuckerberg said in a post on his personal Facebook page. "I've called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform," the 29-year-old Zuckerberg continued.

Papas Fritas writes "Megan Gannon reports on Live Science that, according to a new poll, although most Americans believe the effects from global warming will take hold during their lifetime, they don't expect these changes to pose a serious threat to their way of life. A Gallup survey found that 54 percent of Americans believe global warming is already impacting the planet; another three percent think these effects will occur in a few years and eight percent think these effects will occur in their lifetime.

Meanwhile, 16 percent think global warming's effects will happen sometime after they die, and 18 percent don't expect these effects to ever take hold. But the way the public perceives the reality of global warming seems to be somewhat disconnected from how they perceive the threat of a warming world. Just 36 percent of people in the United States think global warming will eventually disrupt their way of life, they survey found.

Age also affected how people saw the effects of a changing climate. Among Americans ages 18 to 29, Gallup found that 78 percent thought the effects of global warming were already occurring or would occur during their lifetime. Just 47 percent of seniors (those 65 and over) said the same. Gallup officials say their poll's results could explain why Americans don't politically prioritize environmental issues; instead, their top concerns are issues that will affect them immediately, like the economy and health care.

"Whatever the reasons, those who argue climate change is the top problem of our age are no doubt aghast that even now, in 2014, Americans are not more worried or concerned than they are. A lot of the efforts to raise concern levels and awareness to date have obviously not worked well. It may be that new tactics are needed. So far, however, even if it is a case of whistling past the graveyard, Americans are clearly more focused on other issues.""

Fluffeh writes "Following our recent story where the AACS managed to gain possession of DVDFab's servers, domains and bank accounts, Aiseesoft (also Chinese) and Canadian based LG Software Innovations have both stepped away from their own Blu-Ray ripping software citing issues with the Cinavia Blu-Ray protection mechanism, the lawsuit against DVDFab, and the apparent inability of companies outside the US to escape the jurisdiction of US courts. The company said that its forthcoming Blu-Ray product will be shut down.

But just as others exit the market, DVDFab says it is making every effort to undermine the actions taken against it, with new domains, a new support site, prize giveaways, product discounts and even protest graphics."

Taco Cowboy writes:

"An article from University of Cambridge describes developments in 'spintronics.'"

From the article:

The terms "Superconducting" and "Spintronics" are often mentioned in many scientific research projects for the past few decades. Unfortunately, because of the inherent spin bias of the magnetic materials used in superconducting is incompatible with the way electrons are paired up during the superconducting phase, called "Cooper Pairs", where one electron spins up and another spins down, technology developed based on superconducting couldn't be applied to harness the potential to create a new generation of super-fast computers based on the spintronics principles, that is, until now.

A new research carried out by the Materials Science Department, University of Cambridge has successfully paired up the two technologies, by the use of a rare earth element, Holmium , acting as an intervening magnetic layer.

As the Cooper pairs passed through this rotating magnetic layer, the pairing was preserved despite the fact that one electron had effectively 'flipped' to create parallel aligned spins. The researchers' experiment successfully detected these parallel spin Cooper pairs, thus confirming their existence. In short, a spin bias was created, but superconductivity was retained.

Team member Dr Niladri Banerjee from the Materials Science Department and a Fellow of Wolfson College, said: 'What's never been directly demonstrated until now is that Cooper pairs can serve as transmitters of spin. That's an important step forward since now it is clear that superconductivity can play a key role in spintronics'. The next stage of the team's research will be to create a prototype memory element based on superconducting spin currents, and look for new material combinations which would increase the effectiveness of their method.

The original publication is inside the paywalled "Nature Communications"

GungnirSniper writes:

"Late last year, US retailer Target had multiple IT failures that led to 40 million credit cards being leaked, and more than $61 million in breach-related expenditures, as well as a significant cut into their holiday profits. Businessweek has a lengthy article laying out the failures, among them:

• Despite installing FireEye's monitoring technology, security administrators disabled FireEye's option to automatically delete malware as it is detected, allowing the unclassified 'malware.binary' through.
• When Target India's team received the first critical alert from FireEye, they notified the security team at Target's Headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, but the report was ignored or simply no action was taken on it.
• Additional critical alerts were generated, but apparently no action was taken on them, allowing updated malware through.
• Symantec Endpoint Protection detected odd behavior on the same server as detected by FireEye, but this did not raise concern.
• The initial illicit access was gained by an outside vendor's stolen credentials, which should not have given as much network access as it did.

Though the data was copied through a few hops in the US, it ultimately was traced to Russia. Analysis the binaries shows the malware itself was unsophisticated, and included a possible hacker's alias in the 'exfiltration code.'"

AnonTechie writes:

"According to a new report, four major American tech firms (Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Cisco) hold $ 163 Billion in United States government debt overseas for tax reasons. That means that American taxpayers are effectively paying interest toward a corporate cash stash held abroad that likely will not return to the US anytime soon.

A second report points out that, if taxed at the current rate of 35%, this would yield $89B. This sum is approximately one quarter of America's projected $514 billion budget deficit this year. There is no suggestion that any of the companies' activities are in any way unlawful."

hubie writes:

"As Roosevelt said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Information Avoidance is the term applied to behavior where people avoid seeking out information on an issue because they are afraid of finding out something they don't want to hear. This is often seen in the medical field where, for instance, some people will decline to undergo screening tests out of fear that something will turn up. A couple of University of Florida psychologists looked into this and found that if people were approached in a manner where they first had to contemplate the pros and cons of undergoing a test, they were more inclined to agree to the test.

In the open access journal Earth's Future, Richard Somerville posits that a large number of people who reject to entertain the arguments behind climate change science are doing so as the result of information avoidance. He suggests that perhaps the results of the University of Florida study can improve the way in which climate science is presented to the general public."