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lhsi writes:

If prizes were being issued for bogus DMCA take-down notices, then Sony would be in with a good chance. Sony have filed a DMCA notice on a creative commons movie created in Blender that is on YouTube, claiming copyright reasons.

If prizes were being handed out for the "best" wrongful DMCA takedown likely to annoy the greatest numbers of people, Sony would be taking Olympic gold here.

• Free and open source software - check.
• Multiple instances of community funding via donation - check.
• Creative Commons content censorship - check.
• Blatantly claiming copyright on someone else's content - check.
• Shoot first, ask questions later mentality - check.

The only good thing to come out of this as far as Blender is concerned is all the free publicity they're going to get in the next 48 hours. Bad publicity aside, *nothing* will happen to Sony - people aren't going to like that either.

mendax writes:

El Reg reports that "the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has launched a searchable online database that contains all of the documents obtained by Edward Snowden and made public since last June."

"'These documents stand as primary source evidence of our government's interpretation of its authority to engage in sweeping surveillance activities at home and abroad, and how it carries out that surveillance,' Emily Weinrebe of the ACLU's National Security project wrote on Thursday.

"'The ACLU hopes to facilitate this debate by making these documents more easily accessible and understandable,' Weinrebe wrote. 'Toward that end, today we are launching the NSA Documents Database.'"

gewg_ writes:

A recent poll by The Inquirer asked, "Which operating system will you use after Windows XP support ends on 8 April?"

Among respondents, 33 percent said they will move to Windows 7, 17 percent will stick with XP, 13 percent will switch to Linux, 11 percent will get Windows 8, and 5 percent said OS X.

So most will switch to Windows 7, but many would rather stay with Win XP without support than switch to Linux.

Papas Fritas writes:

Selena Larson writes at ReadWrite that Facebook has a perception problem, which is largely driven by the fact it controls huge amounts of data and uses people as fodder for advertising and just can't shake its ultimately flawed nature and gain the trust of consumers.

"Perhaps the largest driver of skepticism towards Facebook is the level of control it gives users-which is arguably limited. Sure, you can edit your profile so other people can't see your personal information, but Facebook can, and it uses your data to serve advertisers says Larson. "Keep in mind: This is information you provided just once in the last 10 years-for instance, when you first registered your account and offered up your favorite movies, TV shows and books-is now given tangentially to advertisers or companies wanting a piece of your pocketbook."

Another thing people hate about Facebook is that when the time comes for someone to abandon the social network, whether over privacy concerns or frustration with the company, Facebook intentionally makes it hard to leave. "Even if you delete your account, your ghost remains. Your email address is still tied to a Facebook account and your face is still recognizably tagged as you, even if the account it's associated with has vanished." Even when you die, Facebook continues to make money off you.

Facebook has many exciting projects, but it won't have an audience left unless it addresses its perception problem says Larson. "Trust is paramount, especially on the Internet, and people need to know that Facebook is making things to improve the human experience, not just spending billions to make even more billions off our personal information," concludes Larson. "Prove to us you don't just care about money, Facebook, and perhaps we'll all realize how much you really have grown in the last 10 years."

Papas Fritas writes:

Shiela M. Elred writes at Discovery News that it's clear that some artistic professions are more at risk of suicide including writers, actors and painters. The suicide rate of musicians is about three times the national average, according to work by Steve Stack, director of the Center for Suicide Research and a professor at Wayne State University, whose research on occupation and suicide is the most comprehensive to date, covering a period of eight years of death certificates that list occupation. Kurt Cobain's case seems to be a classic representation of struggles that disproportionately affect artists and in Cobain's case were several red flags that Nirvana's lead singer was suicidal: a family history of suicide, bipolar disorder and drug addiction. In Cobain's case 5000 fans listened to a tape recording of Courtney Love reading the suicide note, and calling Kurt various foul names for killing himself. There has been speculation that Love's negative and angry reaction to her husband's death may have prevented copycat suicides among his fans. "There's definitely a known connection between creativity and mental illness," says Dr. Christine Moutier adding that over 90 percent of people who commit suicide had a mental illness, whether it be active or under-treated or undiagnosed.

According to Moutier many artists and people who commit suicide share character traits such as perfectionism. Common pathways in the brain lead people to both be more creative and experience mood and behavior patterns outside the norm. And real life for artists can be especially challenging says Steve Stack, director of the Center for Suicide Research. "As an occupational group, artists are more likely than others to experience labor market strains. These strains include unemployment, underemployment, client dependency (in a quest after gigs/contracts), multiple job holding and low incomes. Some work at menial jobs by day and do art at night." Combined with the higher rates of mental disorders such as manic depression and bipolar disorders, lives of artists are often volatile. "It's not to say you should squelch creativity" says Moutier, "but I do think family support of young adults excited about artistic endeavors is important."

mendax writes:

National Public Radio's Robert Krulwich posted an interesting and funny story, complete with high-quality drawings to illustrate his point, in his blog. It documents the surprising solution as to why krill populations dropped when the whales who ate them became scarce and then reboiunded when whales moved away from extinction. While it's not a new story, I suspect it has never been illustrated in such an artful and colorful way before.

You can get the poop here.

An anonymous coward writes:

Not that long ago a less than flattering Washington Post report on the NSA's near-panoptic MYSTIC surveillance program omitted information on which country it was currently active in at the request of government officials. Today, the L.A. Times interviewed a just-retired high-ranking NSA official who ID'd the country in question as Iraq as part of a white-wash piece on the NSA. Glen Greenwald explores the double-standard held by the Obama Administration as it hounds critics like Snowden while allowing approved leaks of top-secret material for publicity purposes.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/03/31/nsa- worlds-blows-top-secret-program/

egp writes:

The simplest of calculating logic is based on a half-adder, from which a full adder with carry can be built. These are then chained together in modern computers to implement a full 32 or 64 bit addition. There have been some interesting ventures in to computing based on biological processes, but now a team has built three and four bit adders entirely of dominoes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpLU__bhu2w

starcraftsicko writes:

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) open enrollment period for US Soylentis has ended. The website was plagued by problems from its launch and even had issues on the the last day.

So, did any Soylentis actually use healthcare.gov to sign up and how has your experience been with the Obamacare system so far?

For those that don't know, from Wikipedia:

The ACA was enacted with the goals of increasing the quality and affordability of health insurance, lowering the uninsured rate by expanding public and private insurance coverage, and reducing the costs of healthcare for individuals and the government. It introduced a number of mechanisms - including mandates, subsidies, and insurance exchanges - meant to increase coverage and affordability. The law also requires insurance companies to cover all applicants within new minimum standards and offer the same rates regardless of pre-existing conditions or sex. Additional reforms aimed to reduce costs and improve healthcare outcomes by shifting the system towards quality over quantity through increased competition, regulation, and incentives to streamline the delivery of healthcare. The Congressional Budget Office projected that the ACA will lower both future deficits and Medicare spending.

randmcnatt writes:

The EU's Sentinel-1A satellite has entered orbit and unfurled its solar panels and radar dish. The Sentinel, part of the Copernicus Programme, is designed to radar-map the earth continuously for all-weather, day and night radar imagery for land and ocean services and "provide data routinely and systematically for maritime and land monitoring, emergency response, climate change and security."

One of at least seven Sentinel missions planned, Sentinel-1A is designed for a seven year mission, with fuel available for twelve years of operation.

Anonymous Coward writes:

The US DOJ has agreed to drop 11 of 12 charges against journalist Barrett Brown. He was indicted on many charges when he provided a hyperlink to data that was claimed to have been stolen, even though he was never accused of doing the stealing, or of being the first one to publish a hyperlink to the material.

An announcement of the dismissal:
https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2014/03/ju stice-dept-moves-drop-charges-against-journalist-b arrett-brown-could-criminalize

The official court document regarding the dismissal:
https://www.eff.org/files/2014/03/05/barrett_brown _mtd.pdf

The original indictment:
http://freebarrettbrown.org/files/BB_indictment2.p df

An analysis from last year:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/indictment-b arrett-brown-threatens-right-link-could-criminalize-routine-journalism

[In the AC's opinion] While this might seem like a victory for Free Speech and Freedom of the Press, the US DOJ still helped destroy a man's life, hold him for weeks without any charges or medical care, only to drop charges (11 of 12 so far) years later, and only after big wigs came to his defense and threatened to file an amicus brief on his behalf in defense of his civil rights. This seems in-line with the usual bullying and intimidation tactics the American legal system regularly engages in, which routinely leads to the destruction of peoples' lives. Having just finished reading Homeland (http://craphound.com/homeland/) and reading the late Aaron Swartz's afterward, this news seems especially poignant.

[Editor's Note: While we encourage all contributors to comment we ask that they clearly separate the factual content of the summary from their own views and opinions. We would prefer this to take the form of a comment in the story's thread but it is also acceptable in the submission providing that it is clearly marked as such. (Please see: Submission Guidelines). Furthermore, I would usually make this remark in private to the submitter but, in this instance, it is an Anonymous Coward and I am unable to do so.]

gishzida writes:

Hardware hacker Bunnie Huang is crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop. In a blog post he said:

We're launching a crowdfunding campaign around our Novena open hardware computing platform. Originally, this started as a hobby project to build a computer just for me and xobs [Sean Cross, the other builder on the project] - something that we would use every day, easy to extend and to mod, our very own Swiss Army knife. I've posted here a couple of times about our experience building it, and it got a lot of interest. So by popular demand, we've prepared a crowdfunding offering and you can finally be a backer.

Does this open design seem expensive for an ARM quad-core?

Meanwhile, on the same subject, deif writes:

Bunnie Studios is launching a crowdfunding campaign around their Novena open laptop:

Novena is a 1.2GHz, Freescale quad-core ARM architecture computer closely coupled with a Xilinx FPGA. It's designed for users who want to modify and extend their hardware: all the documentation for the PCBs are open and free to download, and it comes with a variety of features that facilitate rapid prototyping.

The machine comes with Debian pre-installed, and the hardware comes in 4 variants:

• "Just the board" ($500)
• "Desktop": comes with case and LCD screen (no keyb/mouse) ($1195)
• "Laptop": same as Desktop + battery and a 240 GiB SSD (no keyb/mouse) ($1995)
• "Heirloom laptop": same as Laptop but with a handmade wooden case. ($5000)

In January, Make magazine ran an article on this project.

jmoschner writes:

You ever wondered where lions come from? Well an international team of scientists did. They turned to ancient DNA within lion specimens held in collections and museums around the world to try and unravel the origin and history of modern lions. Analysis reveals lions' most recent common ancestor lived around 124,000 years ago.

The study indicates that the single species of lion that persists today, Panthera leo, first appeared in Eastern-Southern Africa, supporting the conclusions of earlier research. Another detail shown by the study is that modern lions began their exodus out of Africa just 21,000 years ago.

lhsi writes:

A study was designed with two objectives:

"The first objective was to investigate the effect of hardness of food on energy intake at lunch, and to link this effect to differences in food oral processing characteristics. The second objective was to investigate whether the reduction in energy intake at lunch will be compensated for in the subsequent dinner."

The results found that harder foods reduced intake and the intake was not compensated for at a later meal.

This study shows that hard foods led to reductions in energy intake that sustain over the subsequent meal. However, it is not clear whether consumption of hard foods will produce sustained reductions in energy intake over longer periods.

These findings encourage the idea that achieving satiation earlier through subtle changes in food properties could lead to decreased energy intake over the longer term. The next challenge will be to investigate whether changes in food texture can be used to produce sustainable reductions in energy intake over consecutive days.

Teckla writes:

Google has completed its big stock split, but before you run out and buy Google stock, there are some details investors should know. Google trades under two stock tickers now: GOOGL and GOOG. GOOGL stock is voting shares, which are largely held by the current executives. This allows them to retain solid control of Google. GOOG stock is non-voting shares, which means investors in GOOG will have little or no control over the direction of the company, regardless of the number of GOOG shares owned.

On the one hand, it seems like having voting shares and non-voting shares is evil, as it pools power into the hands of a few elites. On the other hand, it's very likely that huge numbers of investors would never exercise their voting rights anyway.