SoylentNews

wantkitteh writes:

Liquor conglomerate Diageo has performed experiments that show a person's perception of taste changes depending on other sensory inputs at the time:

If you drink a glass of single malt in a room carpeted with real grass, accompanied by the sound of a lawnmower and birds chirping, and all bathed in green light, the whisky tastes "grassier". Replace that with red lighting, curved and bulbous edges and tinkling bells and the drink tastes sweeter. Best of all, creaking floorboards, the sound of a crackling fire and a double bass bring out the woody notes and give you the most pleasurable whisky experience.

The nascent field of Neurogastronomy has shown that everything around us, from the ambient sounds to the colour of the crockery, significantly alter the way food tastes. As these same senses are involved in contextualizing the tastes, smells, textures and sounds of food as we eat, manipulating those senses with secondary inputs while eating seems to be the next logical step towards the perfect gastronomic experience.

Blackmoore writes:

Ars Technica reports Hacker "weev" demands bacon following prison release

Auernheimer was in prison for obtaining and disclosing personal data of about 140,000 iPad owners from a publicly available AT&T website.

[Submitter's Comment: As a member of this site, I too demand bacon.]

el_oscuro writes:

Most Solyenters are familiar with LaCie, a French company that makes computer hard drives. They're now owned by Seagate, and maintain their own online storefront, which was one of many hit by hackers in a recent credit card data breach. This time, the baddies exploited vulnerabilities in the Web application platform ColdFusion, which has been ongoing for almost an entire year.

Shadowy but usually reliable sources told the site Krebs on Security that the people behind these smaller breaches might be the very same outfit that stole as many as 150 million customer records from Adobe in 2013, and information from major data brokers like LexisNexis and Dun & Bradstreet earlier that same year.

Blackmoore writes:

Ars Technica is reporting on a novel process for flowing salt water over graphene to generate electricity.

From the article:

Scientists have investigated generating electrical power using nano-structures. In particular, they have looked at generating electricity when ionic fluids (a liquid with charged ions in it) are pushed through a system with a pressure gradient. However, the ability to harvest the generated electricity has been limited because it requires a pressure gradient to drive ionic fluid through a small tube. But scientists have now found that dragging small droplets of salt water on strips of graphene generates electricity without the need for pressure gradients. [full paper is paywalled]

Tidal power, anyone?

Blackmoore writes:

From Web Pro News

A new documentary is looking to discover the truth behind the legend. The movie, directed by Zak Penn (writer on screenplays such as X-Men: The Last Stand and creator of the Alphas TV show), will cover the excavation of the alleged Atari dump site.

Though the production reportedly ran into trouble getting permission for the excavation, the event is now scheduled to take place on April 26. Gaming fans are now being invited to come to the dig site and watch as the truth comes out. The day-long excavation will take place from 9:30 am to 7:30 pm at the Alamogordo Landfill.

This entire endeavor is being funded in part by Microsoft's Xbox Entertainment Studios as part of its new documentaries initiative. The company will be producing a documentary series that will air first on Xbox consoles.

The news has been addressed by a number of sites .

Is this newsworthy, or should we have just left this tired dinosaur buried?

dx3bydt3 writes:

Images captured by the Cassini spacecraft have shown disturbances in Saturn's A ring, the outermost of the bright rings. The disturbances include unusual protuberances in the ring's edge, and a 1200km long by 10km wide arc that is 20% brighter than the adjacent areas of the ring. According to a NASA article "Scientists believe the arc and protuberances are caused by the gravitational effects of a nearby object". The lead author of the report, Carl Murray of Queen Mary University of London stated "We may be looking at the act of birth, where this object is just leaving the rings and heading off to be a moon in its own right." The object nicknamed "Peggy" is estimated to be approximately 1km in diameter. The Cassini spacecraft will be closer to the edge of the A ring in 2016 and may even be able to capture an image of the object itself.

DECbot writes:

ArsTechnica is reporting that scientists have identified when a harmless strain of streptococcus evolved into a highly infective strain causing the flesh-eating disease necrotizing fasciitis. By analyzing 3,600 streptococcus strains from around the world, Musser was able to identify the evolution of the harmless streptococcus into necrotizing fasciitis by noting the changes in the DNA by horizontal gene transfer occurring between the streptococcus and foreign DNA, likely originating from bacteriophages. The foreign DNA gave the streptococcus the ability to produce new toxins, suppressing the immune system response and increasing the bacteria's chance of survival.

Full study and abstract can be found at the PNAS.

Nerdfest writes:

"How the least-likely person to purchase a Model S became an owner" is one person's story of the financial justifications for buying a Tesla S. In his words: "This is my story about how I ended up purchasing a Tesla Model S. No snazzy car photos not trying to sell you on the beauty of the car, there are plenty of websites for that. This site is about the economics of purchasing and owning a Tesla."

Baed on feedback to the author, there have been some adjustments to the model he used, but it's interesting to see that the luxury electric car is competitive even with climate change and other factors eliminated. Comparison spreadsheets are here.

lhsi writes:

A recent BBC article discusses the health benefits of standing instead of sitting while working and the potential costs to switch.

From the article:

Medical research has been building up for a while now, suggesting constant sitting is harming our health - potentially causing cardiovascular problems or vulnerability to diabetes.

We can't simply fix it by heading for the gym.

Papas Fritas writes:

Klint Finley reports that Edward Snowden used a Linux Distro designed for anonymity to keep his communications out of the NSA's prying eyes. The Amnesic Incognito Live System (Tails) is a kind of computer-in-a-box using a version of the Linux operating system optimized for anonymity that you install on a DVD or USB drive, boot your computer from and you're pretty close to anonymous on the internet. "Snowden, Greenwald and their collaborator, documentary film maker Laura Poitras, used it because, by design, Tails doesn't store any data locally," writes Finley. "This makes it virtually immune to malicious software, and prevents someone from performing effective forensics on the computer after the fact. That protects both the journalists, and often more importantly, their sources." The developers of Tails are, appropriately, anonymous. They're protecting their identities, in part, to help protect the code from government interference. "The NSA has been pressuring free software projects and developers in various ways," the group says.

Leebert writes:

Following the arrest of a Dutch teenager on Sunday for tweeting a bomb threat to American Airlines, the airline is now receiving dozens of similar threats via Twitter in protest.

Boxzy writes:

Over the decades the race between size of data files and hard drives has been a steadily decreasing margin. I well remember my first HD, 200 megabytes, which was enough to store 250 Amiga floppy disks. Over the years processors and I/O throughput have increased to the point where Video is now the dominant type of file, such that my pc has multiple 2TB drives and I have to manage my storage carefully. Long gone is the casual ability to back up on floppies, then CD's, then DVD's and even BluRay's are now impractical. Putting aside backups, when are we going to get the next paradigm shifting technology in storage? This article suggests things do not look good.

elf writes:

The Daily Mail and Metro are reporting:

Atletico Madrid assistant coach Germán Burgos became the first person to use a Google Glass application to help his team to victory on Sunday night.

Burgos took to the dugout at the Coliseum Alfonso Perez wearing a pair of the innovative glasses which Google have developed alongside the the Liga de Futbol Profesional (LFP) to allow coaches to receive live statistics from the match.

The new technology meant the Atletico coach could keep up with 'general statistics', 'game building', 'defence' and 'shots' all while watching their side cruise to a 2-0 win.

I would like to clarify some points on the in-progress submission and voting process.

• Ideally the name should be available in .com .org and .net
• If not, we will still accept the submission
• Suggestions left as comments on this site will not be added
• If you are unable to submit a name through the formal process as a last resort the name can be submitted to suggestions@soylentnews.org or you can pester a staff member on IRC via a private message
• Submissions close on Saturday at 06:50 UTC so I suggest getting them in by Friday at the latest

If you plan on making a submission then I also recommend you read the original article with full instructions. Unfortunately, if you did not register to vote before April 12, you are out of luck for this vote.

If you want more information about bounces, plain text email, or voting read this comment by audioguy.

McGruber writes:

ProPublica reports:

Return-free filing might allow tens of millions of Americans to file their taxes for free and in minutes. Or that, under proposals authored by several federal lawmakers, it would be voluntary, using information the government already receives from banks and employers and that taxpayers could adjust. Or that the concept has been endorsed by Presidents Obama and Reagan and is already a reality in some parts of Europe.

Sounds great, except to Intuit, maker of Turbotax who last year spent more than $2.6 million on lobbying. Some of which was spent on four bills related to the issue, federal lobbying records show.