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janrinok writes:

The WSJ is reporting that the U.S. Department of Justice is pushing to make it easier for law enforcement to get warrants to hack into the computers of criminal suspects across the country. The move, which would alter federal court rules governing search warrants, comes amid increases in cases related to computer crimes. Investigators say they need more flexibility to get warrants to allow hacking in such cases, especially when multiple computers are involved or the government doesn't know where the suspect's computer is physically located.

From the article:

The Justice Department effort is raising questions among some technology advocates, who say the government should focus on fixing the holes in computer software that allow such hacking instead of exploiting them. Privacy advocates also warn government spyware could end up on innocent people's computers if remote attacks are authorized against equipment whose ownership isn't clear.

The government's hacking tools such as sending an email embedded with code that installs spying software resemble those used by criminal hackers (sic). The government doesn't describe these methods as hacking (sic), preferring instead to use terms like "remote access" and "network investigative techniques".

Ars Technica cover the same story but offer some useful analysis of the subject.

n1 writes:

Mark Zuckerberg took to his blog yesterday to announce the next phase of his Internet.org initiative, to deliver Internet to the majority of the world which currently has no connectivity.

Today, we're sharing some details of the work Facebook's Connectivity Lab is doing to build drones, satellites and lasers to deliver the internet to everyone.

We've made good progress so far. Over the past year, our work in the Philippines and Paraguay alone has doubled the number of people using mobile data with the operators we've partnered with, helping 3 million new people access the Internet.

He goes on to describe the team working on this project, including NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab and the UK aerospace company Ascenta. Which casts doubt over previous speculation that Facebook is planning to acquire Titan Aerospace.

dotdotdot writes:

An extremely tiny lensless camera (PDF), developed by Rambus, has been slowly making waves over the past year. Researchers for the company, David Stork and Patrick Gill won a Best Paper award at last year's Sencomm 2013 for describing what the company has created.

We describe a new class of lensless, ultra-miniature computational imagers and image sensors employing special optical phase gratings integrated with CMOS photodetector matrices. Because such imagers have no lens, they are ultraminiature (~100 µm), have large effective depth of field (1 mm to infinity), and are very inexpensive (a few Euro cents). The grating acts as a two-dimensional visual 'chirp' and preserves image power throughout the Fourier plane (and hence preserves image information); the final digital image is not captured as in a traditional camera but instead computed from raw photodetector signals. The novel representation at the photodetectors demands that algorithms such as deconvolution, Bayesian estimation, or matrix inversion with Tikhonov regularization be used to compute the image, each having different bandwidth, space and computational complexities for a given image fidelity.

Such imaging architectures can also be tailored to extract application-specific information or compute decisions (rather than compute an image) based on the optical signal. In most cases, both the phase grating and the signal processing can be optimized for the information in the visual field and the task at hand. Our sensor design methodology relies on modular parallel and computationally efficient software tools for simulating optical diffraction, for CAD design and layout of gratings themselves, and for sensor signal processing. These sensors are so small they should find use in endoscopy, medical sensing, machine inspection, surveillance and the Internet of Things, and are so inexpensive that they should find use in distributed network applications and in a number of single-use scenarios, for instance in military theaters and hazardous natural and industrial conditions.

tathra writes:

A paper released in The Lancet (abstract) and covered by NewScientist has found a definitive link between public smoking bans and better public health, such as reductions in pre-term births and lower instances of hospital visits due to asthma attacks.

From the NewScientist article:

Smoking bans are linked with falls in childhood asthma attacks and premature births, according to the biggest analysis yet of the impact of public smoking bans on child health. The finding should dispel fears that such laws could have the opposite effect because they may lead people to smoke more at home.

While the studies included in this meta-analysis did not investigate the mechanisms, the authors suggest that the fall in asthma admissions is a reflection of the bans making smoking less socially acceptable. "It's changing societal norms rather than the actual exposure of children in public places," says Been. It is likely that more people are banning smoking in their home, he says.

Other studies have shown that rates of heart attack and stroke also tend to fall after smoking bans are introduced.

Opponents of such legislation argue that these bans cause more harm to children of smokers by encouraging their parents to smoke even more inside their homes, but this study shows that that is not the case.

GungnirSniper writes:

An abstract of a study released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that the study's "2010 [Autism Spectrum Disorder] prevalence estimate of 14.7 per 1,000 (95% CI = 14.3-15.1), or one in 68 children aged 8 years, was 29% higher than the preceding estimate of 11.3 per 1,000 (95% CI = 11.0-11.7), or one in 88 children aged 8 years in 2008." Of the sites surveyed, four counties in New Jersey had the highest prevalence estimate, with 21.9 per 1,000 (95% CI = 20.4-23.6).

National Public Radio quotes CDC experts that "skyrocketing estimates don't necessarily mean that kids are more likely to have autism now than they were 10 years ago."

"It may be that we're getting better at identifying autism," says , director of the CDC's National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.
Researchers say intervention in early childhood may help the developing brain compensate by rewiring to work around the trouble spots.

Another abstract of a "small, explorative study" from The New England Journal of Medicine describes Patches of Disorganization in the Neocortex of Children with Autism and suggests "a probable dysregulation of layer formation and layer-specific neuronal differentiation at prenatal developmental stages." CBS News demystifies the study as "brain abnormalities may begin in utero." [Ed's note: Link intermittent]

Last month, we discussed findings that suggest that delaying fatherhood may increase the risk of fathering children with disorders including Autism.

lhsi writes

An investigation into the health-related quality of life of chronic Lyme disease (CLD) has discovered that it is significantly lower compared to the general population and patients with other chronic illnesses. Around 300,000 people in the USA are diagnosed with Lyme disease every year, according to 2013 figures..

Compared to the general population and patients with other chronic diseases reviewed here, patients with CLD reported significantly lower health quality status, more bad mental and physical health days, a significant symptom disease burden, and greater activity limitations. They also reported impairment in their ability to work, increased utilization of healthcare services, and greater out of pocket medical costs.

CLD patients have significantly impaired health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and greater healthcare utilization compared to the general population and patients with other chronic diseases. The heavy burden of illness associated with CLD highlights the need for earlier diagnosis and innovative treatment approaches that may reduce the burden of illness and concomitant costs posed by this illness.

lhsi writes:

Analysis of three health studies has shown that "consumption of fried food could interact with genetic background in relation to obesity." Previous studies have linked fried food consumption to obesity, however hadn't taken an individuals genetic make-up into consideration.

We found a significant interaction between fried food consumption and genetic predisposition to adiposity in two prospective cohorts of US women and men. The findings were further replicated in a large independent cohort of US women. These results for the first time suggest that individuals with a greater genetic predisposition to adiposity might be more susceptible to the adverse influence of overconsumption of fried food on adiposity; and overconsumption of fried foods might magnify genetic effects on adiposity.

Additionally, it was found that those with a higher frequency of consumption also had additional unhealthy lifestyle traits.

Compared with participants with a lower frequency of consumption, those with a higher frequency were younger, tended to be smokers, and spent more time watching television. Participants who consumed more fried foods drank more sugar sweetened beverages and had higher total energy intakes and Western dietary pattern scores and lower levels of alcohol consumption, physical activity, and alternative healthy eating index.

elgrantrolo writes:

With the iPad likely to be a top selling PC these days, this distinction in the computing world is likely to become less important, even more now that Microsoft announced the release of MS Office apps for Android phones and for the iPad. Some strings are attached to the Office365 SaaS, but overall, it looks like a significant step for Microsoft to be less reliant on the Windows OS.

mlosh writes:

I've got a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014) and would like to connect to a private network through WiFi for development work, but still have access to the general Internet through the 3G/4G cellular radio for other apps. So far, it does not seem possible. Connecting to WiFi seems to route all data through WiFi to the private network, cutting off the Internet. Is there a way to have both radios working and routing packets separately on this Galaxy Note, or any other Android device, short of customizing the network stack software?

jorl17 writes:

A recent post at WineHQ shows (a google-translation of) the new release of the Linux Unified Kernel (Longene) project where the developers indicate how they've moved WINE's wineserver functionality into kernel-space and used several techniques to make running unmodified x86 Windows binaries on native ARM platforms running Linux and the new Longene kernel module (plus a custom QEMU). They claim they can already run Microsoft Office software such as Powerpoint and Excel at "acceptable" speeds on an ARM 1.0 GHz processor.

Do note that the cross-cpu functionality is currently claimed to be in development for Longene 2.0 and not the current 1.0 release.

lhsi writes:

The journal Nature have been requesting some authors obtain a waiver from their faculty open access policy, even though in this case the policy has been in place for 3 years. Their publication contracts also include a fine-print-laden exclusive license that is a transfer of copyright in all but name, which is in some ways worse than just asking for copyright assignment.

From the article:

...I have moved, in the past few days, from laughing at the bumbling way NPG seems to be fighting its battle against OA policies to a sense of real outrage. This effort to punish faculty who have voted for an internal and perfectly legal open access policy is nothing less than an attack on one of the core principles of academic freedom, faculty governance. NPG thinks it has the right to tell faculties what policies are good for them and which are not, and to punish those who disagree.

tathra writes:

MedicalXpress reports:

Working with genetically engineered mice, Johns Hopkins neuroscientists report they have identified what they believe is the cause of the vast disintegration of a part of the brain called the corpus striatum in rodents and people with Huntington's disease: loss of the ability to make the amino acid cysteine. They also found that disease progression slowed in mice that were fed a diet rich in cysteine, which is found in foods such as wheat germ and whey protein.

Their results suggest further investigation into cysteine supplementation as a candidate therapeutic in people with the disease.

Up to 90 percent of the human corpus striatum, a brain structure that moderates mood, movement and cognition, degenerates in people with Huntington's disease, a condition marked by widespread motor and intellectual disability. And while the genetic mutation underlying Huntington's disease has long been known, the precise cause of that degeneration has remained a mystery. An abstract can be found here but, unfortunately, the full scientific paper is paywalled.

Mice are not humans, of course, but this could possibly lead to treatments, or even a cure, for the debilitating disease.

mendax writes:

A New York Times op-ed reports:

A team of web designers recently released an astonishingly innovative app for streaming movies online. The program, Popcorn Time, worked a bit like Netflix, except it had one unusual, killer feature. It was full of movies you'd want to watch. When you loaded Popcorn Time, you were presented with a menu of recent Hollywood releases: "American Hustle," "Gravity," "The Wolf of Wall Street," "12 Years A Slave," and hundreds of other acclaimed films were all right there, available for instant streaming at the click of a button.

If Popcorn Time sounds too good to be true, that's because it was. The app was illegal - a well-designed, easy-to-use interface for the movie-pirating services that have long ruled the Internet's underbelly. Shortly after the app went public, its creators faced a barrage of legal notices, and they pulled it down. But like Napster in the late 1990s, Popcorn Time offered a glimpse of what seemed like the future, a model for how painless it should be to stream movies and TV shows online. The app also highlighted something we've all felt when settling in for a night with today's popular streaming services, whether Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Hulu, or Google or Microsoft's media stores: They just aren't good enough.

Anonymous Coward writes:

Two years ago John Carmack tweeted, "I can send an IP packet to Europe faster than I can send a pixel to the screen. How f'd up is that?" And if this weren't John Carmack, I'd file it under the interwebs being silly.

Not convinced? You aren't alone, but Carmack appeared when called out to defend this claim.

We looked further and found this informative article from AnandTech about input lag.

lhsi writes:

Last Friday, the French newspaper Le Monde revealed a previously undisclosed relationship between French telco Orange and the French intelligence services, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE).

From the article:

According to an internal document from Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) leaked by Edward Snowden, DGSE has an almost unlimited ability to spy on French citizens and international users by accessing a major, unnamed French telco's networks. The Le Monde article reports the telco in question as the French global telco giant Orange.

keplr writes:

The universe is going to be around for a long time, but humans will likely not be around for the vast majority of it. This clock, built with logic gates within Minecraft, ticks the eons away via exponentially increasing "pulses", culminating in the opening of a door around the time the universe will reach thermodynamic equilibrium -- when time itself will die, and every moment will be like every other that will follow.

tathra writes:

MedicalXpress reports on a paper published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology about an antioxidant found to prevent and reverse the habit-forming effects of cocaine.

Cocaine promotes habitual behaviours and these can potentially be reversed with the use of an antioxidant, research at the University of Sydney has shown.

We show that exposure to cocaine speeds up habit learning and, importantly, this effect is not limited to drug use. We also discovered that these drug-induced habits can be prevented by taking an antioxidant, N-acetylcysteine (NAC)

This could lead to new treatments for people with drug addictions (or other bad habits), or to ways to prevent drugs from causing addiction in the first place. Which could be quite useful in medicine, if it could be applied to other habit-forming drugs such as morphine.

sootman writes:

Apple has sent an email out to iTunes users informing them that if a child has made an unauthorized in-app purchase, the money may be refunded.

We've heard from some customers that it was too easy for their kids to make in-app purchases. As a result, we've improved controls for parents so they can better manage their children's purchases, or restrict them entirely. Additionally, we are offering refunds in certain cases. Our records show that you made some in-app purchases, and if any of these were unauthorized purchases by a minor, you might be eligible for a refund from Apple.

They go on to describe a process where you can look at your purchase history and mark any that you'd like a refund on if they were made by minors. The program will run until April 15, 2015.

This comes as a result of an agreement between Apple and the FTC earlier this year.

zocalo writes:

Techdirt is reporting in a follow up to their 2006 story about how the Los Angeles wing of the Boy Scouts of America had started offering an MPAA-supported patch in "respecting copyright," in which "respecting copyright" was actually respecting the MPAA's industry slanted view of copyright. Now it appears that the Girl Scouts are finally catching up. The Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation has helped create a special new "IP patch" for the Girl Scouts (PDF).

As the articles notes in its conclusion, there is also an "Energy Conservation" badge sponsored by an oil company so it appears that if you have a powerful enough industry, you can now push propaganda on kids in the form of "merit badges".

lhsi writes:

Antibiotic resistance is a problem that could lead to major infections becoming untreatable. A trial was performed where patients who did not need immediate antibiotics were "randomised to undergo four strategies of delayed prescription: recontact for a prescription, post-dated prescription, collection of the prescription, and be given the prescription." In these cases, patients were essentially allowed to recover on their own for a few days before using antibiotics. It was found that no prescription or delayed prescription resulted in fewer than 40% of patients using the antibiotics. Additionally, they were associated with "less strong beliefs in antibiotics, and similar symptomatic outcomes to immediate prescription."

"It shows little difference in symptom control between strategies involving no prescription, immediate prescription, or delayed prescription. This finding contrasts both health professionals' behaviour in commonly requiring immediate antibiotics, and the persistently strong beliefs patients have in the effectiveness of antibiotics. The different ways of using delayed prescription, when the same structured approach is used, had more similar outcomes than previous trial data suggest, although the collection approach performed well on most criteria."