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prospectacle writes:

Researchers at The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have developed a thermo-electric generator which resides in a light, flexible glass-fabric, and which can be powered by body heat.

When using KAIST's TE generator (with a size of 10 cm x 10 cm) for a wearable wristband device, it will produce around 40 mW electric power based on the temperature difference of 31 degrees F between human skin and the surrounding air.

To put this in context: Based on Table 9 ("Average System Power (mW)") of this research paper into smart-phone power consumption (based on the Openmoko Neo Freerunner) we'd need at least 10 times that (400 to 1100 mW) to power our phones.

buswolley writes:

PBS investigates why a dollar has value.

It is not because of the gold in Fort Knox. There used to be gold behind the dollar, but not now. President Richard Nixon cut the last ties in 1971, effectively ending the foundation of the Bretton Woods international monetary system.

Rather, the ultimate reason that the U.S. dollar has value, at least in the opinion of some economists, and in my own, is that no one likes being in jail. And dollars are a get-out-of-jail-free card.

randmcnatt writes:

NASA is inviting the whole world to join in making a GlobalSelfie on Earth Day.

Just go outside on Tuesday, April 25, take a picture of yourself and surroundings, then upload the portrait to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+ or Flickr.

The images will be used to create a new "Blue marble" mosaic of the Earth.

c0lo writes:

Times.com is the first one to report:

In the company's annual letter to shareholders, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos revealed what has to be the most counterintuitive personnel policy in corporate America today: If an employee isn't happy working at the online retail giant, they can earn up to $5,000 just for quitting.

Pay To Quit started at Amazon-owned Zappos, and the parent company adopted the concept for its fulfillment centers...
In a Harvard Business Review blog post examining this practice at Zappos back in 2008, author and Fast Company co-founder Bill Taylor says the quit money (it was $1,000 per employee back then) worked out costing less than the online shoe retailer would have lost if unmotivated employees put the brakes on its fast-paced corporate culture.

Would you like to see the practice adopted by your current employer? I wouldn't, yet.

Fluffeh writes:

It has been a little while now that this fledgling community has been around and it remains one of my favorite stories about communities. A splinter of a much larger community took it upon themselves to challenge the rest and make a move to a new home. Shedding the shackles that were being placed on them was a bold move, but one that has been fantastic.

The community here is great, but here is my question. Overall, we are amazingly tolerant of others, of the choices they make, and of their beliefs. I would then be curious, if we are such a tolerant group, how do we address intolerance in our ranks? I recently came across what I can only say filled me with pity and sadness. I find it saddening that in this day and age, and especially in this group, there are still such hate-filled people.

But this poses a question: how does a group that is tolerant deal with intolerance within it's ranks? Does our acceptance of others extend to accepting someone that has thoughts and beliefs which are far from the norm within this community, or is there a limit placed on how far from our own values a member of the community may be?

c0lo writes:

NY Times reports senior administration officials said Saturday (2014/04/12) that Obama decided in Jan that NSA should reveal major flaws in Internet security when they discover them, rather than keep mum so that the flaws can be used in espionage or cyberattacks. The attached string: this has to be done in most circumstances.

The broad exception that was carved: "a clear national security or law enforcement need" may warrant NSA keeping silence about it. The White House has never publicly detailed Obama's decision, but elements of it became evident on Friday, when the White House denied that it had any prior knowledge of the Heartbleed bug, the Internet security hole that sent Americans scrambling last week to change their online passwords.

Not surprisingly, officials at the NSA and at its military partner, the United States Cyber Command, warned that giving up the capability to exploit undisclosed vulnerabilities would amount to "unilateral disarmament" - a phrase taken from the battles over whether and how far to cut America's nuclear arsenal.

Rhetorical question: how much must the government and citizens interests diverge before it is clear something is so broken it needs replaced?

lhsi writes:

Online citizen science reduces the costs of scientific research, increases the capacity of research efforts, and fosters a partnership between citizens and scientists. A key challenge to citizen science is the retention of volunteers. An open access study into what drives the quantity and quality of Citizen Science Participation looked at why people participate and what can be done to increase participation.

The findings suggest that projects should strive to increase volunteers' commitment to the project and its goals. Additionally, while all motivational factors had a positive effect on the level of participation, the salience of factors differs between projects. It was noted that the quality of the contribution was also important; "For example, the fact that intrinsic motivation was not found to enhance quality stresses the need to develop more enjoyable, game-like, participation mechanisms, such as the one used in Foldit. Similarly, mechanisms such as social network features should be put in place to create and emphasize social influences, linking them to the quality of one's contributions, so that norm-oriented motives would be positively linked to contribution quality".

Ethanol-fueled writes:

Excerpts from the article, paraphrased,

In 2009, the South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya was barred from competition and obliged to undergo intrusive and humiliating "sex testing" after fellow athletes at the Berlin World Championships questioned her sex. Ms. Semenya was eventually allowed to compete again, but the incident opened the world's eyes to the process of sex testing and the distress it could bring to an athlete who had lived her whole life as a girl.

Rather than trying to decide whether an athlete is "really" female, as decades of mandatory sex tests did, the current policy targets women whose bodies produce more testosterone than is typical. If a female athlete's testosterone level is deemed too high, a medical team selected by the sport's governing bodies develops a "therapeutic proposal." This involves either surgery or drugs to lower the hormone level. If doctors can lower the athlete's testosterone to what the governing bodies consider an appropriate level, she may return to competition.

The article goes on to elaborate that any "intersex" traits are to be corrected with "drastic, unnecessary and irreversible medical interventions" including the use of surgery, before they can return to competition.

The article also concludes that, "Barring female athletes with high testosterone levels from competition is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Worse, it is pushing young women into a choice they shouldn't have to make: either to accept medically unnecessary interventions with harmful side effects or to give up their future in sports." What say you?

lhsi writes:

http://torrentfreak.com/39-of-film-industry-profes sionals-are-movie-tv-show-pirates-140412/

A survey of professionals in the film industry were asked what they thought of piracy and how it affected their business. In general those with lower budgets thought it had less of a negative effect, or a positive one.

The surveyor also attempted to find out how many downloaded films and TV shows illegally, without directly asking.

Serial_Priest writes:

The Pew Research Center asked a set of professors, businessmen, and readers of "technology-oriented listservs" to imagine the Internet of 2025. (Source in PDF and HTML.)

Some respondents speculated that there would be amplification of known trends: "ambient" networks (sensors, cameras, phones/tracking devices) that are increasingly integrated into work and social life, ongoing disruption of traditional "content" industries, and the continued growth of analytics/surveillance ("tagging, databasing, and intelligent analytical mapping of the physical and social realms.") Of course, networks "accurately predict[ing] our interests and weaknesses" implies the loss of personal privacy, first to governments and corporations, but eventually to any interested party or social engineer.

Others predicted decentralization and fragmentation self-forming mesh networks, darknets, and proliferating incompatible national/corporate algorithms. Your freedom would be circumscribed by the ideology of your network's owner.

I put the question to you, O People of Soylent. What futures do you foresee? What trends or pathologies does the Pew report minimize or neglect? How can or should *we* influence the Internet's direction in the next decade?

taylorvich writes:

The security and antivirus firm Kaspersky has released a visualization tool of attacks that it is currently working on around the world.

http://cybermap.kaspersky.com/

rliegh writes:

Eweek commentator Wayne Rash wrote a brief but cogent analysis of what caused the Heartbleed bug in this editorial. He makes the case that the cause of the Heartbleed bug was the assumption in the open-source world that everyone else was vetting the code and checking for bugs. For years we've gone by the quip that "many eyes make bugs shallow", but does OpenSSL's recent problems prove that an internet version of The Bystander Effect outweighs the "many eyes" factor? Does the open source community possess the capability for introspection needed to compensate for this discovery?

infodragon writes:

A study by the University of Pittsburgh and Norris Cotton Cancer Center found that teen binge drinking is linked with liking, owning and accurately recognizing music that references alcohol by brand name.

Correlation is not causation, however it's an interesting link between music and drinking.

c0lo writes:

Andrew Auernheimer, aka Weev the grayhat security researcher and Internet antiblog troll was convicted for exposing a flaw in AT&T security which allowed the e-mail addresses of iPad users to be revealed.

The conviction was vacated Friday (2014/04/11) on the grounds of improper choice of venue, but the court commented anyway that "no evidence was advanced at trial" that "any password gate or other code-based barrier" was breached.

The defendant's attorney, Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in an e-mail that a "retrial is barred by double jeopardy." If the authorities do seek a second trial, he said, "we will raise precisely that."

prospectacle writes:

I.P. Law blog IPWatchdog has been running a series of articles intending to debunk common myths about the patent wars. The most recent and final piece is about the claim that "Software patents are stifling innovation in the industry, and should not be allowed because software innovation is more incremental and iterative than in other industries."

Their arguments against this claim include the following:

1. Google is a big promoter of this claim but owns a large number of software patents. I guess the implication is that it's dishonest or hypocritical to work within a system if you also want to criticise or change that system.
2. Patents don't stifle innovation as shown by the great rise in software start-ups since the 1990s when patenting software became common. This is a great argument, because no other major events in the software industry happened in the 90's which might explain the rise in software startups and innovation. Except I suppose the creation of the world-wide-web via the release of a free, open source web-browser and server. Oh and the release of linux. But neither of those really went anywhere.
3. Code innovation is no more incremental or gradual than innovation and patents in other industries. This may be true. On the other hand all of software production (virtually) is incremental innovation, whereas many other products (e.g. hardware, drugs) have separate operations of production on the one hand, and innovation on the other, each of which can be profitable by itself. That key difference seems important but isn't addressed.
4. When software patents started to become popular "critics warned that these new kinds of patents would hold back further scientific discovery and innovation. And yet in each case, innovation and discovery actually intensified and their benefits to society multiplied." Of course this ignores the real question of how fast the industry would have progressed without software patents.

No doubt the rest of their series is equally convincing.