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LowID writes:

In the beginning, pop culture wiki TV Tropes licensed its content with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license for free content.

When Google pulled out its AdSense revenue because of... let's call it NSFW fan fiction, TV Tropes changed its guidelines to forbid tropes about mature content. In response to this move, two forks were eventually created. The admins disliked this move so much that they changed its license notice to the Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike version, despite their site not having requested copyright rights from their users. Only later they added a clause to their Terms of use page requiring all contributors to grant the site irrevocable, exclusive ownership of their edits.

I suppose the morale of the story is, if you contributed to TV Tropes before summer 2012, you should know they're distributing your content under a license that you didn't give them permission to use.

AnonTechie writes:

Anonymously spilling personal gossip and corporate secrets online is all fun and games-until someone gets a subpoena. Startups like Secret and Whisper have defined a buzzy new category of social media, attracting millions of users and tens of millions of dollars in venture capital investments with the promise of allowing anyone to communicate with anonymity. But when it comes to actually revealing corporate and government secrets -a "whistleblowing" function that the two services either implicitly or explicitly condone- users should read the fine print. For all their vaunted anonymity, both companies collect enough information to easily identify their secret-sharers, and both have exceptions written into their terms of service that allow them to rat out their private users at the first whiff of legal controversy.

http://www.wired.com/2014/05/whistleblowers-beware /

frojack writes:

The FCC today (May 15) voted 3 to 2 to proceed with a dual-tier internet, where big media providers can (must) pay big carriers to stream content faster.

The rules proposed would prevent carriers from blocking or slowing down "certain websites", and non-paid content must be provided at the same rate the subscriber paid for, or at least not arbitrarily slowed down or blocked.

After weeks of public outcry over the proposal, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said the agency would not allow for unfair, or "commercially unreasonable" business practices. He wouldn't accept, for instance, practices that leave a consumer with slower downloads of some Web sites than what the consumer paid for from their Internet service provider.

Micheal Weinberg, of Public Knowledge countered, saying "the new rules "would create a two-tier Internet where 'commercially reasonable' discrimination is allowed on any connections that exceed an unknown 'minimum level of access' defined by the FCC".

In spite of the outcry around the nation and demonstrations at FCC headquarters calls to action here on SN, the 3-2 split decision fell along party lines with the two Republicans on the five-member commission objecting to the changes on the grounds that it amounted to overregulation.

To me, the standard of "commercially (un)reasonable" seems like a loop hole large enough to allow any speed reductions the carriers want to impose, as long as they can make more money or by imposing them.

AnonTechie writes:

The global cost of securing a clean energy future is rising by the year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned Monday, estimating that an additional $44 trillion of investment was needed to meet 2050 carbon reduction targets. Releasing its biennial "Energy Technology Perspectives" report in Seoul, the agency said electricity would increasingly power the world's economies in the decades to come, rivalling oil as the dominant energy carrier. Surging electricity demand posed serious challenges, said IEA executive director Maria van der Hoeven.
"We must get it right, but we're on the wrong path at the moment," Van der Hoeven told reporters in the South Korean capital.

kaszz writes:

Comcast executive VP David Cohen in an investor call predicts capacity caps within the next 5 years. The cap would start at 300 GB and and extra 50 GB would cost 10 USD, but Cohen says that the vast majority of our customers would not be affected as the company will set the basic level of usage at a sufficient high level. Do you trust them?

AnonTechie writes:

Techdirt has an article titled, You Can Thank The CIA For The Return Of Polio, Even Though The Media Conveniently Ignores This.

Sure, here in the US we're dealing with the return of diseases like measles, mumps and whooping cough due to people who are very confused about how vaccines work. But the big news last week on the vaccine front has to be the return of polio, which has freaked out the World Health Organization, who declared it a public health emergency.

The return of polio is also due to an ill-informed anti-vaccine campaign not one driven by people confused by a fraudulent study, but rather by the Taliban. Many of the new cases are in Pakistan and a variety of nearby countries. The Taliban has been arguing for a while that vaccinations and vaccination drives are really efforts by western intelligence and/or imperialism. The problem is: the CIA basically confirmed that for them by using a fake vaccination campaign to find Osama bin Laden a few years ago.

kaszz writes:

The range of quantified DIY lab tests for health is on the rise. There's already gadgets to measure steps taken, energy used, heart rate, blood pressure, sleep patterns, etc. A device called Cue lets people track their biochemical status and offers five DIY lab tests, automates the testing procedure, and sends the results to the user's (bugged) smartphone. Test offers are testosterone levels, fertility status, flu virus, vitamin D levels, and an inflammation-marker protein. More tests are expected.

Papas Fritas writes:

Ryan Reed reports that when most Game of Thrones fans imagine George R.R. Martin writing his epic fantasy novels, they probably picture the author working on a futuristic desktop (or possibly carving his words onto massive stones like the Ten Commandments). But the truth is that Martin works on an outdated DOS machine using '80s word processor WordStar 4.0, as he revealed during an interview on Conan. 'I actually like it,' says Martin. 'It does everything I want a word processing program to do, and it doesn't do anything else. I don't want any help. I hate some of these modern systems where you type a lower case letter and it becomes a capital letter. I don't want a capital. If I wanted a capital, I would have typed a capital. I know how to work the shift key.' 'I actually have two computers,' Martin continued. 'I have a computer I browse the Internet with and I get my email on, and I do my taxes on. And then I have my writing computer, which is a DOS machine, not connected to the Internet.'

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

A few years back, John Scalzi, then-president of the of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, got the Hugo voters' packet update so that it would contain the ENTIRE novels that were Hugo award nominees. This year, however, Orbit Books has decided that they are unable to allow the entire text of three novels that are up for the Best Novel award to be included in the packet for "policy reasons". You can read what the authors of those have to say about it here.

Scalzi himself has also commented on it.

taylorvich writes:

Ars Technica reports:

A document included in the trove of National Security Agency files released with Glenn Greenwald's book No Place to Hide details how the agency's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit and other NSA employees intercept servers, routers, and other network gear being shipped to organizations targeted for surveillance and install covert implant firmware onto them before they're delivered.

Anonymous Coward writes:

China is one of the countries where Windows XP continues to be one of the leading platforms, with some stats pointing towards a 70 percent market share owned by the OS version launched by Microsoft in 2001.

From Ecns.cn:

China's Ministry of Industry and Information of Technology (MIIT) urged Windows XP users in China to switch to domestically made computer operating systems, China Central Television (CCTV) reported on Saturday.

The local government has apparently found a solution to move users off Windows XP by developing its own Linux-based alternative which would not only be offered with a freeware license, but also work on low-spec PCs, such as the ones that are currently powered by XP.

Work on this new Linux-based OS has already been started, with local authorities hoping that Windows XP users would actually give it a chance and abandon their existing operating systems that are more or less open to attacks.

It remains to be seen how many people are actually prepared to give up on Windows.

AnonTechie writes:

From Ars Technica:

Imagine you just purchased a shiny new wireless router from Amazon, only to discover that the product doesn't work as you anticipated. To vent frustration and perhaps help others avoid the same mistake, you leave a negative product review-but some of your claims ultimately turn out to be incorrect or misleading. Now the company's attorneys want to sue you for your "illegal campaign to damage, discredit, defame, and libel" it. Are you going down in flames? Or can you say what you want on the Internet? As with many areas of law, the answers are nuanced and complicated. Our primer, however, will help you avoid the obvious pitfalls.

The article contains advice from defamation lawyer Lee Berlik and free speech attorney Paul Alan Levy.

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

Charles Platt, author of Make:Electronics presents some interesting facts and demonstrations about how powerful magnets interact with non-magnetic but conductive materials. Includes some cool video demos. Have fun while teaching your kids science!

For a dramatic demonstration of the consequences, all you have to do is drop a powerful magnet through a tube made of metal that is nonmagnetic but is a good electrical conductor. Copper or aluminum will do the job. The magnet behaves as if it's falling through molasses. Nothing visible is preventing it from falling freely, but its interaction with electrons in the tube requires energy, and the energy is obtained by stealing it from the pull of gravity.

Even this is not the whole story. Electrons flowing through a conductor will generate some heat. This is the principle which causes a fuse to blow if too much current flows through it, as the fuse gets hot and melts.

SuperCharlie writes:

The U.N. has begun discussion on "lethal autonomous robots," killing machines which take the next step from our current drones which are operator controlled, to completely autonomous killing machines.

"Killer robots would threaten the most fundamental of rights and principles in international law," warned Steve Goose, arms division director at Human Rights Watch.

Are we too far down the rabbit hole, or can we come to reasonable and humane limits on this new world of death-by-algorithm?

c0lo writes:

CBS news reports:

A popular study from the 1970s that helps sell millions of dollars' worth of fish oil supplements worldwide is deeply flawed, according to a new study being published in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology. (abstract)

The original study, by Danish physicians H.O. Bang and D.J. Dyerburg, claimed Inuit in Greenland had low rates of heart disease because of their diet, which is rich in fish oil and omega-3 fatty acids from eating fish and blubber from whales and seals.

Dr. George Fodor, the new study's lead researcher, says the old study upon some public health records and on hearsay. The problem with those? The chief medical officer's annual records were likely deficient because the inaccessible, rural nature of Greenland made it difficult to keep accurate records, and also because many people didn't have access to doctors.

The new 2014 study has found that Inuit do have similar rates of heart disease compared to non-Inuit populations, and that death rates due to stroke are "very high."
The study also shows that the Greenland Inuit overall mortality is twice as high as non-Inuit populations.

Is this a similar case as for cholesterol, about which some say that blaming it for heart attack is like blaming firemen at the site for causing fires?

Angry Jesus writes:

One of the non-obvious effects of Obamacare is that health insurance companies are starting to narrow the size of their healthcare networks. In theory a narrow network of high-quality hospitals is a good thing, but in practice we are likely to see a significant variation in the quality of specific networks. In fact, this is one of the few ways in which insurance companies are allowed to compete under the new rules, so variation seems inevitable.

This situation is important to technology people because universal and affordable healthcare is expected to enable more entrepreneurship; the risk of striking out on your own is now much less because you can still afford medical care. But narrow networks can be a big surprise for people who aren't expecting them. If your kids have to get a new and untested pediatrician, then that increases the risk again.

These new narrow networks affected my family directly, it was a shock that we only learned at the doctor's office when they couldn't process our insurance. It turned out that the doctor was a member of a different, but similiarly named, PPO from the same insurer.