SoylentNews

c0lo writes:

Ras Pi foundation announces a new product: the compute module.

The compute module contains the guts of a Raspberry Pi (the BCM2835 processor and 512Mbyte of RAM) as well as a 4Gbyte eMMC Flash device (which is the equivalent of the SD card in the Pi). This is all integrated on to a small 67.6x30mm board which fits into a standard DDR2 SODIMM connector (the same type of connector as used for laptop memory). The Flash memory is connected directly to the processor on the board, but the remaining processor interfaces are available to the user via the connector pins.

While not yet what I imagined by only the name i.e a unit to build a shoebox-sized Beowolf cluster of 1K-RasPi-cores the new form factor and pin-out should make this endeavour easier (ahem... for someone skilled in PCB design, EE practician, and a soldering-fu master that has achieved enlightenment... not quite my profile).

It is tempting to think that once we locate the missing Malaysian Airlines MH370 aircraft the answers to what actually happened will surely follow. In the last 48-72 hours both the Chinese and Australians have detected possible 'pings' from the aircraft's data recorders. If it proves to be the missing aircraft, and that is still an 'if', then this offering from long-time member crutchy might help:

This graphic shows the problem that the recovery effort will have to overcome.

cykros writes:

Dutch design firm Dus Architects announced recently that work has begun in the construction of a 3D printed canal house located in Amsterdam. Construction is set to take place over 3 years, with rooms being manufactured separately and assembled on site. While there has been much talk about the possibility of 3D printed buildings in the past few years, this is the first known project to be actively under way. More on this story at Singularity Hub.

mrbluze writes:

After several early attempts, we have settled on a process for deciding on the final name for this site currently known as SoylentNews.org. You'll need to log in and go to: userprefs/homepage and check the box marked "Willing to Vote" if you'd like to participate (do this now, the submission round will go out soon). The vote will occur using an email-based solution loosely based on the Debian/Condercet method that we cooked up. Note: checking this box will indicate that we are scraping your email address from the database for participation (this is completely opt-in). If you wish not to participate, just make sure this box is unchecked (this is the default).

We are opening the floor to name suggestions. If you have suggested a name earlier, you'll need to re-submit it through this email voting system. Though we prefer available domains, if you have pre-purchased a domain (eg: to prevent squatters), by submitting the name you are stating that you are the owner of the domain(s) and will give it without strings attached to this project if it were to be chosen.

The criteria for an acceptable name:

• Unique and free of obvious trademarks
• Ideally be a bit technological/geeky and signal the site is "news"
• Domain should be available in all permutations: .com/.net/.org
• Easy to pronounce
• Easy to type
• Easy to 'market' or has a "hook" (imagine a mug with the name, a logo, slogans, plays on words, etc.)
• Passes the girlfriend / wife / significant other / random person at work - test

This is how it will work:

1. The first round will go out asking for name submissions
2. Submissions will remain open for 7 days
3. The community will vote to yield 5 names
4. Staff will vote and produce 5 names
5. A final vote on all 10 names will be held
6. At this point, the staff will have a second full vote on the same ten items the community voted on
7. The result of this vote, and the community vote, including its runoff, will then be published
8. The staff vote is the final decision. We have to live with this. But the community will have a powerful influence on the final staff vote.

If you're interested:

• Notes on the voting system
• Wiki page with the full plan

NCommander adds: So its finally here, and I wanted to apologize for the long delay before this actually happened. To the editoral team, please bump this to the top of the index for the next 24 hours so everyone gets a chance to see it (click 'fastforward' then save to autoupdate the timestamp). I promise a Featured Story option is coming in the next major update so we don't have to deal with this!

I've pushed an emergency fix to production to close bug #142 on the tracker. For those unaware, Slashcode portscans every user when they login or post a comment. While we knew that there was some code involved in checking for open proxies, I thought it had been disabled, and the default settings in the database all default to off. The fact of the matter though is the backend was ignoring all disable checks in the database and scanning every IP to see if they were a proxy on ports 80, 3123, 8000, and 8080.

I'm f****** seething; this is unacceptable for any site, and this behaviour isn't documented anywhere; we've been portscanning since day one and were completely unaware of it. My guess is almost everyone here was unaware of this "feature" as well. Our submitter reports slashdot did this as well. There is no notification or link in the FAQ that this is done, unless you were checking your firewall rules religiously, this would have been completely unnoticed.

I'm seething and furious at the moment. How on earth is this acceptable behaviour? I understand proxy scanning; most IRC networks do it, but they notify you that they are doing so. Furthermore, a basic web application should not be probing their end users; I'm absolutely flabbergasted that this exists, as were most of the staff when it was brought to our attention. On behalf of the site, I want to offer a formal apology for this clusterf***.

Addendum: Since writing this, I've written a follow up on why this got me so upset in my journal. I've got journal replies set to on, and will respond to anyone both here and there.

sub checkForOpenProxy {
my($self, $ip) = @_;
# If we weren't passed an IP address, default to whatever
# the current IP address is.
if (!$ip && $ENV{GATEWAY_INTERFACE}) {
my $r = Apache->request;
$ip = $r->connection->remote_ip if $r;
}

# If we don't have an IP address, it can't be an open proxy.
return 0 if !$ip;
# Known secure IPs also don't count as open proxies.
my $constants = getCurrentStatic();
my $gSkin = getCurrentSkin();

my $secure_ip_regex = $constants->{admin_secure_ip_regex};
return 0 if $secure_ip_regex && $ip =~ /$secure_ip_regex/;

# If the IP address is already one we have listed, use the
# existing listing.
my $port = $self->getKnownOpenProxy($ip);
if (defined $port) {
#print STDERR scalar(localtime) . " cfop no need to check ip '$ip', port is '$port'\n";
return $port;
}
#print STDERR scalar(localtime) . " cfop ip '$ip' not known, checking\n";

# No known answer; probe the IP address and get an answer.
my $ports = $constants->{comments_portscan_ports} || '80 8080 8000 3128';
my @ports = grep /^\d+$/, split / /, $ports;
return 0 if !@ports;
my $timeout = $constants->{comments_portscan_timeout} || 5;
my $connect_timeout = int($timeout/scalar(@ports)+0.2);
my $ok_url = "$gSkin->{absolutedir}/ok.txt";

my $pua = Slash::Custom::ParUserAgent->new();
$pua->redirect(1);
$pua->max_redirect(3);
$pua->max_hosts(scalar(@ports));
$pua->max_req(scalar(@ports));
$pua->timeout($connect_timeout);

#use LWP::Debug;
#use Data::Dumper;
#LWP::Debug::level("+trace"); LWP::Debug::level("+debug");

my $start_time = Time::HiRes::time;

local $_proxy_port = undef;
sub _cfop_callback {
my($data, $response, $protocol) = @_;
#print STDERR scalar(localtime) . " _cfop_callback protocol '$protocol' port '$_proxy_port' succ '" . ($response->is_success()) . "' data '$data' content '" . ($response->is_success() ? $response->content() : "(fail)") . "'\n";
if ($response->is_success() && $data eq "ok\n") {
# We got a success, so the IP is a proxy.
# We should know the proxy's port at this
# point; if not, that's remarkable, so
# print an error.
my $orig_req = $response->request();
$_proxy_port = $orig_req->{_slash_proxytest_port};
if (!$_proxy_port) {
print STDERR scalar(localtime) . " _cfop_callback got data but no port, protocol '$protocol' port '$_proxy_port' succ '" . ($response->is_success()) . "' data '$data' content '" . $response->content() . "'\n";
}
$_proxy_port ||= 1;
# We can quit listening on any of the
# other ports that may have connected,
# returning immediately from the wait().
# So we want to return C_ENDALL. Except
# C_ENDALL doesn't seem to _work_, it
# crashes in _remove_current_connection.
# Argh. So we use C_LASTCON.
return LWP::Parallel::UserAgent::C_LASTCON;
}
#print STDERR scalar(localtime) . " _cfop_callback protocol '$protocol' succ '0'\n";
}

#print STDERR scalar(localtime) . " cfop beginning registering\n";
for my $port (@ports) {
# We switch to a new proxy every time thru.
$pua->proxy('http', "http://$ip:$port/");
my $req = HTTP::Request->new(GET => $ok_url);
$req->{_slash_proxytest_port} = $port;
#print STDERR scalar(localtime) . " cfop registering for proxy '$pua->{proxy}{http}'\n";
$pua->register($req, \&_cfop_callback);
}
#print STDERR scalar(localtime) . "pua: " . Dumper($pua);
my $elapsed = Time::HiRes::time - $start_time;
my $wait_timeout = int($timeout - $elapsed + 0.5);
$wait_timeout = 1 if $wait_timeout wait($wait_timeout);
#print STDERR scalar(localtime) . " cfop done with wait, returning " . (defined $_proxy_port ? 'undef' : "'$port'") . "\n";
$_proxy_port = 0 if !$_proxy_port;
$elapsed = Time::HiRes::time - $start_time;

# Store this value so we don't keep probing the IP.
$self->setKnownOpenProxy($ip, $_proxy_port, $elapsed);

return $_proxy_port;
}

Appalbarry writes:

While most Canadian newspapers are struggling to survive the Internet, Montreal's La Press has pulled off a rather astounding media transformation they've moved their entire newsroom over to a iPad focused production process.

To launch their iPad app, they invested about $40 million, hired 100 new staff (developers, programmers and videographers) and threw out their old work-flows. The free app has had 435,000 downloads, 70% of whom don't read their paper. Engagement time: 45 mins weekdays, 70 mins weekends. It now accounts for 28% of their revenue and garners advertisement CPM (cost per mille) nearly comparable to print.

All in all, a pretty significant success.

jmoschner writes:

The American Chemical Society's Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, published a study marinating meat with beer lowered the levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) that arise when meats are cooked at extremely high temperatures.

The study tested the effect of marinating pork with Pilsner beer, nonalcoholic Pilsner beer, and Black beer (and a control un-marinated group) then charcoal grilling the meat. The study found that black beer marinade was the most efficient on reduction of PAH formation, providing a proper mitigation strategy.

koja writes:

Edward Snowden gave testimony via video-link to Council of Europe at parliamentary hearing today (8 Apr).

Highlights:

• NSA spying on human rights organizations both within US borders and abroad
• usage of dragnet and data-mining for general law enforcement (not only for intelligence affairs)
• (popular level) description of used XKeyscore technology and it's capabilities

AFAIK this is the first time Edward Snowden testifies to any legislative organization.

Pav writes:

Roberto Unger is a philosopher, former Brazilian minister, and academic at the Harvard Law School. He is proposing a new left-wing politics informed by Free Software and similar culture (an experimental "technological vanguard" in his language). His agenda is empowerment, and many of his ideas will be familiar eg. anti-IP and wide distribution of cutting-edge tech. His longer term program is frighteningly ambitious it's as if whole industries and economies should evolve towards becoming Free Software projects. He also believes in strong government intervention at the bottom for basic services and the top for blue sky projects. His ideas are methodically explained and seem logical, and they're certainly fascinating.

Unger has written several books, though someone has put together an excellent video summary of his ideas and arguments. Ungers critique of the current state of left-wing politics particularly resonated it's devastating. Is this finally a politics that could speak to us?

jmoschner writes:

According to an article over at Scientific American, researchers have outlined a new understanding of how energy moves within certain types of electrodes in cells. The conventional thought was that electrons moved in cathodes and anodes using the Butler-Volmer equation, which describes how electrical currents respond to electrical potentials. However, after analyzing the performance of lithium ion batteries, the researchers found that the Butler-Volmer equation didn't fit the results. However, the Marcus-Hush-Chidsey theory matched the energy output.

The Marcus-Hush-Chidsey theory governs how electrons move at the atomic level. So in the case of the lithium ion battery, how electrons move between the porous electrode and its carbon coating is the main limiting factor in the cell's performance. These findings open up new avenues for optimizing battery performance.

jmoschner writes:

The BBC reports that the yellow sac spider is attracted to the smell of petrol, and will weave its web in the evaporative canister vent line, causing a blockage and build-up of pressure increasing the risk of fire. Mazda is recalling some 42,000 vehicles (namely the 2010-12 Mazda 6s) for a software update to monitor the pressure level and warn drivers of any danger. Don't count on Mazda to actually remove any spider though. When asked by the New York Times why the spiders were causing so much trouble, a Mazda spokesman said: "Don't ask me, I'm terrified of the damn things."

Mazda recalled about 52,000 of its 2009-10 Mazda 6s because of the same problem in 2011. Spiders causing car issues in not only a Mazda thing. In 2013 Toyota recalled around 803,000 vehicles in the U.S. because of the possibility that spider webs might clog a drain hole causing water to backup and potentially damage electronic components and cause the air bags to deploy.

SuperCharlie writes:

Yesterday Microsoft ended support for Windows XP. While many users and even businesses continue to cling to the venerable OS there will be no further security updates and even with active anti-virus and malware protection, many users will be left unsecure reports the LA Times and various other news outlets.

There are some exceptions for the right customers.

The UK and Dutch governments have paid Microsoft multiple millions to extend support for Windows XP past the 8 April cutoff date.

The UK extension cost £5.5m but is only valid for a year, after which public-sector users will have to be moved to newer software.

Angry Jesus writes:

Cryptome has published an intercepted message between Snowden's lawyer, Jesselyn Radack, and Glenn Greenwald. Radack was apparently fooled by a bogus PGP key published in an attempt to impersonate Greenwald. The bogus key, and associated email address, seem to be under the control of an unknown third party who subsequently leaked a copy of the message to Cryptome.

It just goes to show that when the crypto is secure, the nut behind the wheel becomes the weakest point of vulnerability.

lhsi writes:

A scientist experimented to find out where the most painful place on the body to be stung is. The Schmidt Sting Pain Index rates the painfulness of stings but doesn't take body location into account.

The author was the only person being stung and used a scale of 1 to 10 to rate how painful a sting was, using a reference point of the forearm as 5.

The three least painful locations were the skull, middle toe tip, and upper arm (all scoring a 2.3). The three most painful locations were the nostril, upper lip, and penis shaft (9.0, 8.7, and 7.3, respectively).

lhsi writes:

An Open Access article looked at how fertility affected the socioeconomic position (SEP) of descendants and long term fitness in a modern society. The greatest benefits of low fertility were observed when SEP is high; essentially having a higher SEP and fewer children meant that any educational advantages gained from a higher SEP was split between fewer children, making it more effective.

However, fewer children reduced long term fitness (i.e. a reduced descendant reproductive success) the fewer children someone had, the lower amount of children their grandchildren/great-grandchildren would have on average. This effect was not seen as much at a direct descendant level and was more prominent after a couple of generations.

Papas Fritas writes:

Seth Borenstein reports at AP that ten world-class soloists put prized Stradivarius violins and new, cheaper instruments to a blind scientific test to determine which has the better sound and the new violins won hands down. "I was surprised that my top choice was new," says American violinist Giora Schmidt. "Studying music and violin in particular, it's almost ingrained in your thinking that the most successful violinists on the concert stage have always played old Italian instruments." Joseph Curtin, a Michigan violin maker and Claudia Fritz, a music acoustics researcher at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in France had the ten violinists put a dozen instruments through their paces in a rehearsal room and concert hall just outside Paris. They even played with an orchestra. The lights were dimmed and the musicians donned dark welder's glasses. The dozen violins together were worth about $50 million and the older, more expensive ones required special security. The 10 violinists were asked to rate the instruments for sound, playability, and other criteria, and pick one that they would want to use on a concert tour.

The finding shocks music aficionados, because of the mythologies built up around the Italian violin makers of the 17th and 18th centuries, particularly the Stradivari and Guarneri families. Along with violins made by other Italian masters in this era, Stradivarius and Guarneri instruments have gained almost mythical status, with musicians insisting these instruments have a quality that cannot be reproduced.

Canadian soloist Susanne Hou has been playing a rare $6 million 269-year-old violin made by Guarneri del Gesu called by some the greatest violinmaker of all time. Like other participants, Hou was drawn to a certain unidentified violin that ranked No. 1 for four testers and No. 2 for four more. "Whatever this is I would like to buy it." Hou, whose four-year loan of the classic Italian violin has expired, is shopping for a new one this week. She wishes the researchers could tell her which one she picked in the experiment, but Curtin said the researchers won't ever reveal which instruments were used to prevent conflict of interests or appear like a marketing campaign. For Hou finding the right instrument is so personal: "There are certain things you can't explain when you fall in love."

Boxzy writes:

So when Police hide their actions, do we assume they are criminals or that "If You've Done No Wrong, You have Nothing to fear" is a huge Lie? Los Angeles police officers tampered with voice recording equipment in dozens of patrol cars in an effort to avoid being monitored while on duty, according to records and interviews. From the LA Times article:

An inspection by Los Angeles Police Department investigators found about half of the estimated 80 cars in one South L.A. patrol division were missing antennas, which help capture what officers say in the field. The antennas in at least 10 more cars in nearby divisions had also been removed. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck and other top officials learned of the problem last summer but chose not to investigate which officers were responsible. Rather, the officials issued warnings against continued meddling and put checks in place to account for antennas at the start and end of each patrol shift.

Members of the Police Commission, which oversees the department, were not briefed about the problem until months later. In interviews with The Times, some commissioners said they were alarmed by the officers' attempts to conceal what occurred in the field, as well as the failure of department officials to come forward when the problem first came to light. "On an issue like this, we need to be brought in right away," commission President Steve Soboroff said. "This equipment is for the protection of the public and of the officers. To have people who don't like the rules to take it upon themselves to do something like this is very troubling."

egp writes:

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) lists its top-10 dangers, and topping the list is the technique of SQL Injection. SQL Injection is a technique of abusing input fields with partial SQL commands. This is easy to prevent, but too often websites fail to do so. Here's the relevant xkcd, and my favorite example is at hackaday.com (see also this related post at ioactive.com).

lhsi writes:

The BBC is reporting, in a recent case of understatement, that Sir Anthony May (Commissioner for Interception) has said that the UK police 'may be overusing data-gathering powers'.

"It really does require to be investigated whether there may not be an institutional overemphasis in police forces on progressing their criminal investigations and an institutional underemphasis on the privacy side of it"

One strand is "interception", when a warrant is issued for the full content of someone's communications to be listened into. In this case there were 2,760 warrants in 2013 - a drop of 13% from the previous year. This was carried out by nine different agencies and resulted in 57 errors.

The second area is communications data - a much broader category. This involves address and subscriber information relating to phone calls, such as what other numbers a phone was in contact with (but not what was said), who owns a phone and similar details about emails and computer IP addresses. This is used much more broadly. In 2013, there were 514,608 requests (a drop from 2012, when there were 570,135). More than half were for subscriber information.

Police and other law enforcement bodies, such as the National Crime Agency, are the overwhelming consumers of this, accounting for 87.5% of requests. A further 11.5% came from intelligence agencies (overwhelmingly from MI5 (the UK's Security Service), with 56,918 requests). Local authorities made up 0.3% and other bodies 0.5%.

We've been dealing with a long standing issue involving a significant percentage of users not seeing some articles posted on the homepage. After several rounds of debugging, paulej72 *finally* found the underlying cause. Inside slashcode, there's a function that writes user preferences to the database, but this function doesn't do a lot of sanity checking. As part of the normal options, you can disable specific authors from appearing on the index, but due to an unrelated misconfiguration, this list wasn't properly populated (due to Slashcode having seperate vars for "author" and "is_admin"). The upshot of this is if you edited your preferences at all, it would write out an incomplete list of authors to the database, which would cause a bunch of articles to simply not show up.

We've applied a workaround for now, but this entire bit of logic needs to be rewritten to be less crap. Since we can't easily determine the garbage from legit users settings, we have blown away the variable on all users for the time being; the upshot is if you were manually filtering out an author, you'll have to reset it. Once we have a proper fix in place, we'll drop it into a point release, reset the user table again, and drop another announcement.

I apologize for any inconvenience.

Silentknyght writes:

"The Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin found that infants are exposed to high levels of chemical emissions from crib mattresses while they sleep." In this case, "high" means 87.1 micrograms per square meter per hour; or, overall, "rates comparable to other consumer products and indoor materials". The crib mattresses did emit phenol, considered to be hazardous according to the US EPA, but even assuming it is 100% phenol, this emission rate is at least half of the screening level for "safe" exposure this pollutant, albeit, for adults. From the article

The researchers identified more than 30 VOCs in the mattresses, including phenol, neodecanoic acid and linalool. The most abundant chemicals identified in the crib mattress foam, such as limonene (a chemical that gives products a lemon scent), are routinely found in many cleaning and consumer products.

Chemist and indoor air quality expert Charles J. Weschler, adjunct professor in environmental and occupational medicine at Rutgers University, said he does not think the levels of chemical concentration found in the mattresses are alarming, but he considers the research valuable. "It's good to be alerted to the fact that crib mattresses are a significant source of chemicals in an infant's environment," said Weschler, who noted crib mattresses might one day be analyzed for noxious chemicals as a result of such research.

The researchers found that VOC levels were significantly higher in a sleeping infant's breathing zone when compared with bulk room air, exposing infants to about twice the VOC levels as people standing in the same room. Additionally, because infants inhale significantly higher air volume per body weight than adults and sleep a longer time, they experience about 10 times as much inhalation exposure as adults when exposed to the same level of VOCs, the researchers said.