SoylentNews

gewg_ writes:

Think Progress on the latest report from the IPCC:

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just issued its third of four planned reports. This one is on "mitigation" — "human intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases."

The third report finds that the "cost" of [mitigating greenhouse emissions to achieve an atmospheric CO2 level of 450ppm] is to reduce the median annual growth of consumption over this century by a mere 0.06 percent.

Papas Fritas writes:

Alex Mayyasi writes that a close look at the cars outside Silicon Valley's venture capital firms reveals that the cars share a mysterious detail: they nearly all have a custom license plate frame that reads, "Member. 11-99 Foundation" which is the charitable organization that supports California Highway Patrol officers and their families in times of crisis. Donors receive one license plate as part of a $2,500 "Classic" level donation, or two as part of a bronze, silver, or gold level donation of $5,000, $10,000, or $25,000. Rumor has it, according to Mayyasi, that the license plate frames come with a lucrative return on investment. As one member of a Mercedes-Benz owners community wrote online back in 2002: "I have the ultimate speeding ticket solution. I paid $1800 for a lifetime membership into the 11-99 foundation. My only goal was to get the infamous 'get out of jail' free license plate frame."

stderr writes:

For the last 6 weeks the Debian developers have had an election to determine the new Debian Project Leader. The election is now over and Lucas Nussbaum was re-elected.

As always in Debian, the result of the voting was found using the Condorcet method, which you might have heard about somewhere before...

janrinok writes:

ITER, the international fusion experiment under construction in Cadarache, France, aims to prove that nuclear fusion is a viable power source by creating a "burning plasma" that produces more energy than the machine itself consumes. Although that goal is at least 20 years away, ITER is already burning through money at a prodigious pace. The United States is only a minor partner in the project, which began construction in 2008. But the U.S. contribution to ITER will total $3.9 billion roughly four times as much as originally estimated according to a new cost estimate released yesterday. That is about $1.4 billion higher than a 2011 cost estimate, and the numbers are likely to intensify doubts among some members of Congress about continuing the U.S. involvement in the project.

The United States and ITER share a complicated history. The project was first proposed in 1985 as a joint venture with the Soviet Union and Japan. The United States backed out of that effort in 1998, citing concerns over cost and feasibility - only to jump in again in 2003. At the time, ITER was envisioned to cost roughly $5 billion. That estimate had grown to $12 billion by 2006, when the European Union, China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and United States signed a formal agreement to build the device. The United States agreed, essentially, to build 9% of the parts for the reactor, at whatever price was necessary.

ITER was supposed to start running by 2016. Since then, however, the project has been plagued by delays, cost increases, and management problem. ITER is now expected to cost at least $21 billion and won't turn on until 2020 at the earliest. And a recent review slammed ITER's management.

jdccdevel and avr wrote:

In the first disclosure of it's kind that I'm aware of, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is reporting that the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) was compromised via heartbleed. The CRA has confirmed that 900 Social Insurance Numbers (SINs) have been compromised from it's website via the Heartbleed bug.

From the article:

The agency said early Monday it became aware of the breach while repairing the bug, and that the theft happened over a six-hour period. The agency says those affected will be contacted via registered letters, and that any attempts to contact a taxpayer via email or telephone are fraudulent.

Anyone affected will be provided with credit protection services at no cost, the revenue agency said.

Gaaark writes:

Hello fellow Soylentils. Colour me a nice Soylent Green Canadian who up until recently has only worried somewhat about security. I use linux (mostly Ubuntu) and in the past I have had time to work at config files and do google searches to solve my problems. Today i have far less time to do these things. My question is: can anyone (practically) hand me a good, easy, linux-friendly, and hopefully cheap VPN solution? Extra kudos to those with free options.

Canada seems to be heading in the direction of the United States and I am beginning to worry that my internet is being taken from me. Can anyone come up with a solution to keep my internetting private and my downloads from being pried into? (I've heard VPN is the way to go, but searching for solutions leaves me wondering if I'm getting scammed in the process.)

Thanks in advance for the help.

Blackmoore writes:

Ars Technica reports one big reason we lack Internet competition: Starting an ISP is really hard.

A new fiber provider needs a slew of government permits and construction crews to bring fiber to homes and businesses. It needs to buy Internet capacity from transit providers to connect customers to the rest of the Internet. It probably needs investors who are willing to wait years for a profit because the up-front capital costs are huge. If the new entrant can't take a sizable chunk of customers away from the area's incumbent Internet provider, it may never recover the initial costs. And if the newcomer is a real threat to the incumbent, it might need an army of lawyers to fend off frivolous lawsuits designed to put it out of business.

Yes, it's difficult, but that doesn't mean people haven't done it. Considering the community here full of technical experts Why aren't we trying to start up competition for the Cable and ISP in your area?

Horse With Stripes writes:

Is Samsung really planning to develop their own mobile OS? According to Tech Times, the answer is "Yes."

Leaked court documents demonstrate that Samsung has been planning to end its use of Android technology from Google for its smartphones as it looks to create and implement its own operating system for its devices. Samsung believes that it can develop its own, unique, operating system that will be better, faster, and more user friendly.

So, fellow Soylentians, is the mobile market place not to mention developers ready for another mobile OS, app store, and all that comes with it? Is Samsung going to start from scratch or build off of Tizen? Is Samsung's hardware so distinctive that it can chance leaving Android behind, forcing customers to pick between their favorite mobile hardware and their favorite mobile OS?

janrinok writes:

Those ever-resourceful engineers and scientist at NASA are looking at ways of generating power from urine. An article from ScienceMag explains how:

Urine is typically considered something to get rid of. But urine is largely water, and that's a valuable resource in space. If a new process can be successfully scaled up from recent lab tests, future space travelers could more efficiently recycle their own urine to reclaim its water and make a little electrical power to boot.

Getting water and other supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) is expensive. It costs about $33,000 per kilogram to launch materials into low-Earth orbit, says Eduardo Nicolau, an analytical chemist at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. Launching them higher is even more costly. Resupplying spaceships carrying people far outside Earth's orbit to Mars, say probably would be prohibitively expensive even if possible.

Thus, Nicolau says, crews of long-term space missions will have to recycle their water. And the biggest source of that water is their own urine. Each astronaut on such a mission will likely produce more than 1.5 liters each day, accounting for more than 81% of the spacecraft's wastewater, Nicolau estimates. Right now, astronauts on board the ISS filter wastewater and then distill it to recover pure water, says Layne Carter, a systems engineer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, who is in charge of the space station's water systems (and who is not involved in the new study). Current processes, he notes, recover only 75% of the water from urine. But with efforts now under way, NASA engineers hope to increase that percentage to 85% next year and then to nearly 100%.

lhsi writes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26970873

"UK drug company GlaxoSmithKline is facing a criminal investigation in Poland for allegedly bribing doctors, BBC Panorama has discovered.

If the allegations are proved, GSK may have violated both the UK Bribery Act and the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. It is illegal for companies based in either country to bribe government employees abroad.

A former sales rep for GSK in the Polish region of Lodz, Jarek Wisniewski, said: "There is a simple equation," he said. "We pay doctors, they give us prescriptions. We don't pay doctors, we don't see prescriptions for our drugs."

frojack writes:

In an interesting feedback loop, some parts of plants are able to modify the genetic expression of their own nucleus in real time in a way not yet fully understood.

An interesting article in ArsTechnica summarizes a paywalled article in Science describing how Chloroplasts (in the leaves of plants) control the RNA transcription process in the roots of plants by a mechanism not yet determined.

Chloroplasts, billions of years ago were free-living individual cells. However, by a mechanism still only guessed at, they became entrapped in plant cells, and persist today in the leaves of every green plant.

Open4D writes:

Better known for smashing particles than trying to smash box office records, the Large Hadron Collider is now the subject of a feature-length documentary called Particle Fever, a "surefire crowdpleaser" (Varsity) that "brings the Higgs boson to life" (The Guardian).

It's currently showing at 36 venues in the USA. The rest of us get to pre-order "Instant Streaming and HD Download". You can see the official trailer and other clips at their You Tube channel.

For any who have seen it, what did you think? For everyone else, do you plan to go? Or do you see the cinema more as a place for fiction and fantasy?

Angry Jesus writes:

Water scarcity is a problem for nearly 1 billion people just in Africa alone. The Warka Water tower is a new tool to harvest water from the air, kind of like a low-tech Tatooine water vaporator. Unlike many other systems that have come before, it is a very simple technology with no moving parts and thus very low maintenance. On a good day, one Warka Water tower can condense 25 gallons of water. It is effective even in desert areas because night-day temperatures differences are the major factor, and the extreme temperature swings in the desert enable it to extract water even when the air has very little humidity.

Information about the project can be found here.

The UN Security Council is holding an emergency meeting to discuss the crisis in Ukraine.

Reuters reports:

The United Nations Security Council held an emergency session on Sunday night to discuss the escalating crisis in Ukraine, just hours before a deadline by Kiev for pro-Russian separatists to disarm by Monday morning or face a "full-scale anti-terrorist operation" by its armed forces.

The BBC reports:

The Russian intervention is responsible for the growing crisis in Ukraine, the US ambassador to the UN has said.

Samantha Power told an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that Moscow was the only entity able to organise the instability and unrest in the east of the country.

dx3bydt3 writes:

This Tuesday beginning at approximately 06:00 UT, a total eclipse of the moon will occur. This will be visible to all the Americas. NASA's eclipse web site provides a pdf chart where you can see just how much of the eclipse will be visible from your area.

This eclipse is the first in a "tetrad" of lunar eclipses that will occur in approximately 6 month intervals, according to this NASA article, two will occur in 2014: on April 15th, and Oct. 8th. Two more will follow in 2015: on April 4th and Sept. 28th.

Space.com will have live coverage of this eclipse and the close approach of Mars, which is happening concurrently.

Appalbarry writes:

By now even Joe Average has heard about Heartbleed, and possibly even was told something accurate.

Well and good, but there's one thing missing: how does Joe know that it's time to change all of his passwords? The Register sums things up thusly:

But to fully clean up the problem, admins of at-risk servers should generate new public-private key pairs, destroy their session cookies, and update their SSL certificates before telling users to change every potentially compromised password on the vulnerable systems.

I have logins and passwords on probably 50 to 75 sites. To date not one has e-mailed me to say "Hey, it's all fixed, change your password!" Likewise none of them seems to have posted a similar notice on their log-in page. Does anyone else feel like they're left hanging?