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kaszz writes:

The British health service NHS has plans to build a database of all citizens DNA in stealth and share with companies like Google. The first step is to upload all the medical records in NHS England from general practitioner to a central database called the Health and Social Care Information Centre. This has been a politicians' dream as they imagine that it will magically improve health care, solve every crime and provide other improbable benefits. Recent complaints and concerns in the UK have had the project delayed by 6 months, but it hasn't been halted.

There's a form to fax in order to express your wish to opt-out. The only secrets are the ones not shared with anyone.

stormwyrm writes:

After having just acquired Oculus Rift and WhatsApp, Facebook has also recently purchased Finnish company ProtoGeo Oy, the maker of a popular fitness tracking app for Android and iOS called Moves for an undisclosed sum. While the company in its press release states:

For those of you that use the Moves app, the Moves experience will continue to operate as a standalone app, and there are no plans to change that or commingle data with Facebook.

It remains to be seen for how long that will remain true. Coverage of the acquisition at the Wall Street Journal notes:

Apps like Moves could also benefit Facebook by helping it gather data. At the heart of Facebook's business model is its knowledge about users, which it uses to sell targeted advertisements. The Facebook spokeswoman said the company won't use any data from the Moves app, but that could change in the future.

AnonTechie writes:

No Yellowstone mega-eruption coming, experts say:

Yellowstone National Park are fighting viral rumors of an impending, cataclysmic eruption of a mega volcano slumbering at the US Western preserve known for its geothermal features. Volcanologists said reams of geological data have given them a deep of understanding of the Yellowstone Caldera - and all signs point to calm. Over the past several weeks, the Internet has been abuzz with speculation over worrying signs suggesting an explosive awakening for the so-called super-volcano, whose last catastrophic eruption was 640,000 years ago. That eruption covered a good portion of North America in ash several inches thick, and had a long-lasting impact on the Earth's climate. A video showing a herd of bison fleeing the iconic Wyoming park went viral. And several days later, a 4.8-magnitude earthquake, the strongest in three decades, fed the rumor mill still further.

AnonTechie writes:

The US Supreme Court is to rule on warrant-less searches of electronic devices. Law Enforcement (LE) want access, without warrants, to electronic devices of everybody arrested.

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday will take on the digital-age controversy over search and seizure of smart-phones and other devices. In two cases coming before the court, warrant-less searches of an electronic device not only provided the basis for criminal prosecutions but also strayed from the original reason for the arrests in question. President Barack Obama's administration and prosecutors from states across the country have lobbied for police officers to be able to search arrestees' gadgets - at or about the time of arrest - without a warrant. Such action, however, demands an examination of the Fourth Amendment's protection against "unreasonable searches and seizures." If nine out of 10 American adults own mobile phones and the devices have advanced to become virtual extensions of our personal and private lives, at what point does LE's access to their call logs, photos, and cloud-hosted data become "unreasonable" invasions of constitutionally protected privacy?

AnonTechie writes:

If you thought you were protecting your country, you may justifiably feel betrayed.

For the past 10 months, a major international scandal has engulfed some of the world's largest employers of mathematicians. These organizations stand accused of law-breaking on an industrial scale and are now the object of widespread outrage. How has the mathematics community responded? Largely by ignoring it.

Those employers-the U.S. National Security Agency and the U.K.'s Government Communications Headquarters-have been systematically monitoring as much of our lives as they can, including our emails, texts, phone and Skype calls, web browsing, bank transactions, and location data. They have tapped Internet trunk cables, bugged charities and political leaders, conducted economic espionage, hacked cloud servers, and disrupted lawful activist groups, all under the banner of national security. The goal, to quote former NSA director Keith Alexander, is to "collect all the signals, all the time."

kaszz writes:

In 2011, the U.S. Department of Education delegated teacher recruitment to Microsoft (RFP, pdf). 'The decision to turn over TEACH to [Microsoft] Partners in Learning serves to expand the already outsized influence Gates and his fortune have on public education,' wrote the Washington Post at the time. So, 'what happens when a public institution in a democracy - the US Department of Education - outsources its goal of recruiting good teachers to a private industry?'

Well, in addition to Teach.org and redundant social media efforts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Linkedin, and YouTube, the U.S. is now relying on 'Innovative Microsoft Advertising to Recruit the next Generation of Teachers'. From the press release:

'The Ad Council and TEACH have formed a unique outreach campaign with Microsoft's Advertising team in an effort to recruit the next generation of teachers who will drive innovation and redefine teaching in K-12 classrooms. Microsoft donated over 125 million impressions across Xbox 360, Windows 8, and MSN in order to encourage consumers to rediscover teaching through interactive ad units. This media effort is an extension of the Ad Council and TEACH's public service advertising (PSA) campaign, Make More...Throughout March, consumers were able to engage with TEACH "NUads on Xbox", via gesture, voice or controller on their Xbox 360 consoles...Most recently, Microsoft leveraged their Windows 8 platform to provide a unique experience to consumers, enabling them to navigate through a series of questions to help "discover their true passion," along with the opportunity to play challenging mind and word games, such as a word scramble and tangrams.'

Check out the demo of the Windows 8 platform experience [YouTube], in which a person is advised 'You'd Make a Great Science & Tech Teacher,' on the basis of a 'Personality Quiz' consisting of five dragged-and-dropped photos. (Apple and BSD/Linux users need not to apply..?)

Blackmoore writes:

Ars Technica brings us a rather lackluster review of Ubuntu 14.04. Ubuntu 14.04 review: Missing the boat on big changes

Canonical pushed out Ubuntu 14.04 last week. This release is the first Ubuntu Long Term Support release in two years and will be supported for the next five years.

It feels like, for Canonical at least, this Long Term Support release couldn't have come at a worse time. The company is caught in a transitional phase as it moves from a desktop operating system to a platform that spans devices.

The problem for Canonical is that it's only about 90 percent of the way to a platform-spanning OS, but it just so happens that the company's schedule calls for a Long Term Support release now.

Long Term Support releases are typically more conservative and focus on stability and long-term maintenance rather than experimental or flashy new features. Things that are 90 percent done don't make it into LTS releases. And, unfortunately for Canonical, most of its foundation-shaking changes to Ubuntu are currently only about 90 percent done and thus not part of this release.

It's an unfortunate time for a release in the cycle; Do you think they should have held off and waited for xMir? Or will they finally pry Microsoft Bob away from your cold dead hands?

AnonTechie writes:

The Baltic Sea is under threat from thousands of tons of Second World War chemical weapons which have now corroded to the point that they are contaminating the sea bed, marine experts have warned. After the War, Britain and the Soviet Union dumped up to 65,000 tons of unused German chemical weapons and chemical-weapons agents into the Baltic, with many of them falling into the Gotland Deep, where depths reach 820 feet.

"Our research has shown that in the Gotland Deep there are about 8,000 shells and missiles that could pollute the environment," said Doctor Jacek Beldowski, for the Polish Institute of Oceanography. "We have now confirmed that these objects are contaminating the seabed. Until now we could only speculate this would happen."

The toxic consequences seem obvious in hindsight, but it was a different time back then a time when the seas seemed big enough that our trash could lie in it forever undisturbed. "The Baltic Sea is known as the chamber pot of Europe," as Yevgeny Usov of Russia's Green Party put it in more colorful terms for the LA Times back in 1992.

There is another concern however. At Potsdam in 1945 it was agreed that the dumping would take place into the Bornholm and Gotland deeps, but some pollution has been detected near to Gdansk. It is suspected that the Soviets often threw everything overboard "as soon as they were out of sight of land", and it is this waste that is now being detected in the waters only a few hundreds of meters from the shore.

kaszz writes:

The white house will release a report next week on the potential for big data to discriminate by race, religion, income or other criteria. The report reviews the adequacy of existing privacy laws and regulations in the era of online data collection. The review is led by Obama's senior counselor, John Podesta, who will outline concerns about whether methods used for commercial applications may be inherently vulnerable to inadvertent discrimination.

A great example comes from an app called "Street Bump", produced by the Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics in Boston, that detects pot-holes using sensors in smartphones while you drive, which inadvertently directed repair crews to wealthier neighborhoods, because that's where people were more likely to carry smartphones and download the app. John said "It's easy to imagine how big data technology, if used to cross legal lines that we have been careful to set, could end up reinforcing existing inequities in housing, credit, employment, health, and education."

lhsi writes:

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-481_en. htm?locale=en

An EU-funded research project called SOLAR-JET has produced the world's first "solar" jet fuel from water and carbon dioxide (CO2). Researchers have for the first time successfully demonstrated the entire production chain for renewable kerosene, using concentrated light as a high-temperature energy source. The project is still at the experimental stage, with a glassful of jet fuel produced in laboratory conditions, using simulated sunlight. However, the results give hope that in future any liquid hydrocarbon fuels could be produced from sunlight, CO2 and water.

Techwolf writes:

According to Phoronix, getting support from motherboard manufacturers can be downright hostile for linux users. Some go as far as requiring Microsoft Windows to be installed before getting to speaking terms. With TYAN as about the only motherboard maker (that I am aware of) to fully support linux, my question is: "Do any of you use a TYAN motherboard in a typical desktop use case? If so, what were your experiences, pro and con?

Followup question is: Have any motherboard manufactures changed their tune recently regarding support for linux users?

With the recent end-of-life of free Windows/XP support, Valve's work on its Steam OS, and Android's large market share, how close are we to the point where a user can just install linux (or a BSD variant) and it just works? What hardware (old and new) has been especially problematic for you? What has been your greatest challenge and/or frustration?

Ethanol-fueled writes:

From the article, paraphrased:

When Steven Wise, a 63-year-old legal scholar in the field of animal law, decided to poke around Circle L Trailer Sales to assess the living conditions of the Reindeer living on the company grounds, he was horrified to discover that a former circus chimpanzee named Tommy was forced to live in inhumane conditions:

A rancid milk-musk odor wafted forth and with it the sight of an adult chimpanzee, crouched inside a small steel-mesh cell. Some plastic toys and bits of soiled bedding were strewn behind him. The only visible light emanated from a small portable TV on a stand outside his bars, tuned to what appeared to be a nature show.

Being sufficiently moved by witnessing that heinous crime, Wise and a few cohorts strolled into the Fulton County Courthouse wielding a legal document the likes of which had never been seen in any of the world's courts, a legal package including a detailed account of the "petitioner's" cruel and unusual solitary confinement along with nine affidavits gathered from leading primatologists, underscoring the physical and psychological damages such living conditions endured by a being with such cognitive capability. Tommy would not, however, have anticipated that he was about to make legal history as the first nonhuman primate to ever sue a human captor in an attempt to gain his own freedom.

Granting rights associated with personhood to non-persons has been discussed extensively before, but would be giving personhood to animals be a dangerous slippery-slope? Would be the mark of a more humane and mature society?

kaszz writes:

Bill Gates and the founders of Twitter bet millions of US dollars that meat lovers will embrace a new plant-based product that mimics the taste of chicken and beef. It has been hard to get meat substitutes to the dinner tables of Americans over the years, but the tech giants believe these newest products will pass the "tastes like chicken" test. Gates has met several times with Ethan Brown, whose product, Beyond Meat, is a mash-up of proteins from peas and plants.

Angry Jesus writes:

Looking for a new guilty pleasure tv show? If Tosh.0, Jackass and Mythbusters had a three-way baby, it would be National Geographic UK's new show, The Science of Stupid. Each episode centers around a couple of stunts, like doing backflips, roundhouse kicks, bike jumps or skateboard grinds. Each segment starts with a handful of videos demonstrating people failing at doing the stunts, often with hilarious results, and then progresses to a discussion of the physics of the stunt, why the stunt failed and the correct way to do it. The show lets you laugh at stupid youtube videos and is at least somewhat educational at the same time. Throw in a snarky British commentator and the result is more watchable than it has any right to be.

If you don't live in the UK where it is broadcast, NatGeo has put the first couple of episodes online.

Papas Fritas writes:

Natalie Matthews writes that a year ago, a friend of hers left her two roommates at a bar to walk the three blocks home to their apartment in a yuppie Boston neighborhood. "She wanted decent sleep before a Saturday morning exercise class; her friends wanted late night food. Instead, she was jumped by a stranger on the curb of her apartment building, brutally raped, and beaten in her living room while her roommates ate burritos, none the wiser," writes Matthews. " If she'd done something, anything, differently, would it have changed the outcome of her night? It's an unproductive exercise, both she and I know. And yet when I heard about Kitestring, she was the first thought that flashed in my mind, because maybe Kitestring would have helped her, had it existed then."

Kitestring is a new service that aims to make sure people get from point A to point B safely, notifying their emergency contacts if they don't. You tell Kitestring that you're in a dangerous place or situation, and give it a time frame of when to check in on you. If you don't reply back when it checks your status, it'll alert your emergency contacts with a custom message you set up. "Perfect for blind or online meet-up dates, walking home at night, or feeling safe in any dangerous situation, Kitestring is like the virtual mom I've always needed," writes Mary Rockcastle, "especially if your mom is like mine and is never awake past 8:30pm."

AnonTechie writes:

Late Saturday, Microsoft confirmed the existance of a new zero-day vulnerability that resides in all versions of Internet Explorer since IE6 has been spotted in the wild. The vulnerability, which could allow remote code execution, is being used in "limited, targeted attacks," according to an advisory issued by Microsoft. While all versions of the web browser, IE6 through 11, are affected by the vulnerability, attacks are currently targeting IE versions 9, 10 and 11, according to security firm Fire Eye, which first reported the flaw Friday.

Angry Jesus writes:

The Washington Post reports:

Netflix has reached an agreement with three smaller cable companies that, for the first time, will let U.S. subscribers watch the streaming video service's content as though it were an ordinary cable channel. The deal will add Netflix as an app to certain set-top boxes nationwide on RCN, Grande Communications and Atlantic Broadband.

kaszz and AnonTechie wrote:

Not only can car washes be time-consuming and/or expensive, they are a short-term solution. Engineers at Nissan are using 'super-hydrophobic' and 'oleophobic' nanotechnology paint finish called Ultra-Ever Dry that can repel water and oils, as well as dirt, dust, mud and grit on the new Nissan Note. It works by creating a thin air shield above the surface that makes rain, road spray, frost, sleet and standing water roll off without tainting the surface at all. Nissan has no plans of making the special paint standard on factory models but will consider offering the self-cleaning paint as an aftermarket option. Nissan will now determine if the material is durable for long-term use on vehicles and for the different weather conditions around the globe. Nissan has plans to test the technology this summer in Europe, using researchers based in its England technical facility using a Versa Note for testing.

How many times do you roll that dripping, glistening car out of the car wash parking lot only to hit a muddy puddle or rainstorm within the first day or two?

kaszz writes:

Astronomer Kevin Luhman has found the 7th closest star to the sun. It's only 7.2 light-years away and was discovered using NASA's Spitzer and WISE telescopes. The reason for this long time to discover it is because it's brown dwarf which is usually relatively cold and small compared to stars. Brown dwarfs are more massive than planets, but not quite massive enough for internal pressure to ignite sustained Hydrogen fusion in their cores. The temperature for this object is 225-260 kelvin (-48 to -13 celsius). Phil Plait points out that it's almost like the freezer in your kitchen.

It implies this object is very old, too, because it would've been a few thousands degrees when it formed, and would take at least a billion years to cool down to its current chilly temperature. It's hard to determine how old it actually is, but it's most likely 1-10 billion years old. It has a very low mass, too, probably between 3 and 10 times the mass of Jupiter. That's pretty lightweight even for a brown dwarf. And here's another amazing thing about it: It might be a planet. What I mean is, it may have formed around a star like a planet does, then got ejected by gravitational interactions with other planets.