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Angry Jesus writes:

A new process that combines geothermal power and carbon-dioxide sequestration kills two birds with one stone. The idea is to take the CO2 produced by traditional fossil fueled energy plants, liquefy it and inject it deep into the ground at geothermal sites. Due to the heat in those areas, the CO2 will expand and some of it will carry that heat to the surface. It turns out that CO2 is 10x more efficient at extracting geothermal energy than traditional water-based methods, making geothermal practical in areas where current water-based geothermal energy is not.

janrinok writes:

MaximumPC has a story that explains why Facebook's acquisition of Oculus VR has sparked an amount of animosity from virtual-reality enthusiasts, most notably from the original Kickstarter backers.

The article explains:

Is the hate unwarranted? Perhaps some of it, but many of the Kickstarter backers have a right to feel betrayed.

Take a moment and imagine that you've always dreamt of going sailing, but never had the means to obtain a boat. One day you meet and befriend a passionate and intelligent boat builder, Ted, who shares the same dreams of sailing as you do. Ted says that once he builds his boat, you'll be able to go sailing on it, whenever you please. Sounds perfect, doesn't it? But because Ted needs funds to build the boat, he asks you for a donation. Because you fervently believe in his vision, capabilities, and promise, you comply. After several months, Ted takes you out on some test runs. You find the ship to be shaping up nicely and can already imagine yourself sailing the seven seas with it. Then, all of a sudden, some rich executives walk by and throw a boatload of cash at Ted to acquire it.

Ted, by textbook definition, just sold out. And in doing so, crossed the boundaries between the trust and vision that you guys shared together. Still, Ted assures you that once he's done building the boat, you'll still be able to take it out on joyrides whenever you want, but deep down inside, you know the execs hold the keys to the ship, and you can't help but fear that they may wreck it.

This is analogous to how Oculus says no changes will be made to their original vision, though it's difficult to imagine a future where Facebook won't try and integrate their services into it, pester you with annoying ads, or steer VR away from its original open-source/mod-friendly gaming intention. If that's not an infuriating situation, I don't know what is. Is what Oculus did illegal? No, but Oculus did break a gentleman's agreement. They violated an unwritten rule. It's like a friend who asks to borrow five bucks, wins the lottery, and doesn't pay you back.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The Verge is reporting that researchers at Arizona State University may have found an unlikely solution to the West Nile Virus, tobacco plants.

From the article:

Some people think of tobacco as a drug, whereas others think of it as a therapy or both. But for the most part, it's hard to find people who think of the tobacco plant in terms of its medical applications. Qiang Chen, an infectious disease researcher at Arizona State University, is one such person. His team of scientists conducted an experiment, published today in PLOS ONE, that demonstrates how a drug produced in tobacco plants can be used to prevent death in mice infected with a lethal dose of West Nile virus. The study represents an important first step in the development of a treatment for the mosquito-borne disease that has killed 400 people in the US within the last two years.

The abstract of the paper can be found here.

Angry Jesus writes:

Global TV sales have been falling for years dropping 7% to 238M in 2012, another 6% in 2013 to 225M and are expected to drop at least 11% to below 200M in 2014. A major component of the drop seems to be a steep reduction of demand in China beginning in the last two quarters of 2013.

This could be good news for anyone looking to buy a new tv set, manufacturers are expected to cut prices and accelerate the introduction of new technology like OLED, 4k UHDTV and dolby high dynamic range to try to stimulate buying.

How long have you had your current TV, and what would it take to entice you to upgrade?

janrinok writes:

"CNet is reporting that Microsoft is hoping that users will not exploit a loophole which would save them $100 for an Office 365 subscription. But it is not as straightforward as it might appear as there are a few twists to the tale. From the article:

Microsoft wants you to buy Office 365, making the $100 subscription service mandatory to access the full power of Office apps for iPad. But if you don't want to pay the price, you don't technically have to. After tinkering with numerous devices and accounts since the debut of Office on iPad Thursday, CNET discovered a loophole in how Office 365 authentication gets enforced on Apple tablets. The loophole allows users who have not paid for the subscription to enjoy the benefits of those tablet apps for iOS.

"Similar to our commercial use rights, we do not strictly enforce the limit on tablet installations, but trust that our users respect and understand the device limits outlined in the EULA [end user rights agreement]," a Microsoft spokesperson told CNET. Subscriptions now form the backbone of Microsoft's software licensing, and the company has made an aggressive push to make it as convenient as possible to access its Office app suite through an Office 365 subscription. It wants to turn one-time customers into annual ones, and users are signing up. Within hours of going live on Thursday, the apps grabbed the top four slots in the free category of Apple's top charts.

Sweetening the deal, Microsoft gives you for less than the price to buy the software outright for only one computer the ability to install Office on five Macs or PCs and up to five tablets. However, there's nothing to stop you from trying a sixth tablet, or a seventh or an eighth or beyond. For now, there is no set limitation.

Additionally:

Similar to sharing around an HBO Go password among friends, all that's required to exploit the loophole which, again, is against the rights agreement that limits you to authenticating only five tablets is to have someone with a valid Office 365 account log in to Word, Excel or any other Office app on iPad. Once that happens, the tablet is automatically authenticated for all Office apps and any future users, regardless of whether or not those users have paid for 365. In other words, someone with a Microsoft account that was, just minutes prior, unable to access the best features of an iPad Office app will then be able to utilize the full version as well as other downloaded Office apps seemingly indefinitely. The prompt to pay for 365 or resort to using the "read-only" mode disappears.

Angry Jesus writes:

Google has a tool suite for schools, Apps for Education, which many universities and K-12 schools have adopted, making it mandatory that students use it. As part of the contract with the schools, Google promises not to target ads to educational users unless they opt in.

That promise seems to be a smokescreen of semantic technicalities. Just like all of the other tracking "opt out" systems on the internet, Google still brings the full-force of their data-mining and profiling to bear on the students. They just don't remind them that they are being tracked by showing them targeted advertising. Out of sight, out of mind, but the profiles are still there and Google makes no promises as to where that data may end up in the future.

So, nine plantiffs are suing Google. Their motion to make the case into a class action suit was denied, but Google's motion to dismiss was also denied. The lawyering continues...

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Amsterdam had social media in 1994, back before normal people in most places even knew the Internet existed. It grew to 400,000 users before being privatized and thus killed. Now there is an effort to recover and preserve it.

Angry Jesus writes:

Popular Science has a story about the Zetas drug cartel's deployment and use of a vast radio network across much of Mexico and hints at their use of Big-Data/NSA style analysis of thousands of data feeds.

The central character of the story is nondescript radio and car-alarm installer, but once he was captured by US authorities it appears that the Zetas kidnapped the IT talent they needed to keep their networks up and running.

The Burnaby Kid writes:

Figured I'd toss this out there, since SN was asking for interesting story submissions. I'm a professional magician working abroad, and I've been indulging in this incredibly geeky performing art for almost two decades. One problem that happens a lot when it comes to magic is that the nature of secrecy means that we don't get open dialogue with the muggles we perform for, and that leads to us getting into this weird sort of insular and incestuous discussion with other magicians, which ends up warping our minds to the extent that we start doing moronic things like... oh, I don't know... referring to our audience members as "muggles". We get into some pretty weird debates, and I've been trying my best to argue for raising the bar, such as by suggesting that we need to be more sensitive about what you guys like, such as by making sure that if we pull out a deck of cards, we've got something to perform that can compete with Card Through Window. And yet... Maybe I've got it wrong? What DO you guys like? If you like watching magicians perform, what do you like about it? If you don't, why not?

hoopsman writes:

The OculusVR blog is reporting that Michael Abrash has teamed up with John Carmack again at Oculus VR, taking up the post of Chief Scientist. They last worked together on Quake at id Software. Facebook money is having the right kind of effect on the company!

n1 writes

Mozilla appointed a new CEO earlier this month, Brendan Eich. Previously flying under the radar to a degree as CTO for Mozilla, he has now come under scrutiny by Mozilla employees across the globe for his financial support of Proposition 8 in 2008.

Proposition 8 sought to ban same-sex marriage in California and passed with 52.24% of the vote. Mozilla employees such as Jess Klein and Chris McAvoy have taken to twitter to call for their new CEO to step down.

Mozilla's head of Education Christie Koehler avoided discussing Eich's suitability as CEO but noted in a blog post:

Like a lot of people, I was disappointed when I found out that Brendan had donated to the anti-marriage equality Prop. 8 campaign in California. It's hard for me to think of a scenario where someone could donate to that campaign without feeling that queer folks are less deserving of basic rights. It frustrates me when people use their economic power to further enshrine and institutionalize discrimination.

n1 writes:

Der Spiegel is reporting that the German companies have been targeted for surveillance and infiltrated by the NSA and GCHQ:

Top secret documents from the archive of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden viewed by SPIEGEL show that the British spies surveilled employees of several German companies, and have also infiltrated their networks.

The document also states that company employees are targets - particularly engineers - saying that they should be detected and "tasked", intelligence jargon for monitoring. In the case of Stellar, the top secret GCHQ paper includes the names and email addresses of 16 employees, including CEO Christian Steffen.

martyb writes:

According to researchers, WPA2 wireless security can now be cracked. The abstract can be found here.

Wireless security standards have had an uneasy time of it since their inception, WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) was the original recommendation for wireless security. Within 2 years' time, cracks were found in the protocol and it is now deprecated. Next came recommendations to use WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access), but it, too, was later deprecated.

The most recent wireless security recommendation, WPA2, has now met a similar fate.

As part of their purported security protocols routers using WPA2 must reconnect and re-authenticate devices periodically and share a new key each time. The team points out that the de-authentication step essentially leaves a backdoor unlocked albeit temporarily. Temporarily is long enough for a fast-wireless scanner and a determined intruder. They also point out that while restricting network access to specific devices with a given identifier, e.g. their media access control address (MAC address), these can be spoofed.

There are thus various entry points for the WPA2 protocol, which the team details in their paper. In the meantime, users should continue to use the strongest encryption protocol available with the most complex password and to limit access to known devices via MAC address.

Other recommendations include using a tunneling protocol such as IPSec or SSH within a WPA2 connection and/or to replace wireless connections with a wired one. What impact does this revelation have on your communications infrastructure?

janrinok writes:

Ars Technica has a story about the US Navy's planned Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).

From the article:

The Navy's littoral combat ship (LCS) was supposed to be the ship of the future, designed to be easily converted from one role to another with a relatively quick swap-out of "mission modules". But what the Navy got instead was a range of headaches and a ship with significantly less flexibility and capability than the ships the LCS was replacing. Now, as National Defense reports, the Department of Defense has cut the number of ships to be built nearly in half, and it has put future purchases on hold while it considers its options.

But there could still be good news for the defense contractors building the LCS: the options include a beefed-up version of the ship that could raise its cost further and increase the profits of Lockheed Martin and Austal USA in the process. Considering the fact that these ships have already had significant problems (including "aggressive corrosion" of one design's hull because it didn't include cathodic protection), yet another design change could cost the US billions more for a class of ships that has never lived up to its concept.

Stu Slade, warship analyst for Forecast International, told National Defense, "This isn't a done deal. It's certainly a setback for the LCS program viewed in isolation, but it's one that could yet be reversed" because the cuts won't hit until 2016 when the White House gets a new occupant.

lhsi writes:

An investigation into whether selection bias is a reason that religious attendance and depression are related has been conducted and found that "elevated depressive symptoms do not cause religiously affiliated individuals to subsequently decrease attendance at religious services."

Attenders who developed elevated symptoms were less likely to subsequently decrease their attendance (relative risk ratio: 0.55, 95% CI [0.38-0.79]) relative to baseline as compared to those without elevated symptoms. This inverse association remained significant after controlling for health and demographic covariates, and when using multiply imputed data to account for attrition. Non-attenders were unlikely to start attending after elevated depressive symptoms. This study provides counter evidence against previous findings that church attenders are a self-selected healthier group.