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kaszz writes:

National Science Foundation (NSF) has hallmarked three categories in a 15M USD funded research program into phase 3 of the Future Internet Architecture (FIA) program:

• Deployment-driven evaluation and evolution of the eXpressive internet architecture
• Named data networking next phase
• Next-phase mobility first project.

Research will also go into platforms that effectively eliminate bottlenecks between video transmissions and further enhancements to security architecture and encryption are also key points of research for all teams. Feature networks may have to handle spotty mesh networking.

According to the NSF:

"The objective of the new awards is to move the FIA efforts from the design stage to piloted deployments that assess how the designs work at large-scale and within challenging, realistic environments. Cities, nonprofit organizations, academic institutions, and industrial partners across the nation will collaborate with researchers to test the new designs."

kaszz writes:

Sprint was the only US telecomm company to counter request the NSA for the legal rationale to release telephone metadata. Sprint asked for legal justification when it received requests for its phone metadata in 2009.

Newly declassified documents show the dilemma faced by telecommunications companies when the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) came calling.

According to a story this week in the Washington Post, Sprint asked the NSA for legal justification when it received requests for phone metadata in 2009. Reportedly, it was the only telco to require a legal rationale. The documents related to previous occasions for which the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA, had issued orders.

After the documents were presented, Sprint dropped its challenge and complied with the request.

Anonymous Coward writes:

We might, from time to time, imagine the high-tech world of counter-espionage. Well, here's a story that shows it is still the low-tech methods and little things that give the spy away.

The investigation began in 2004 when the F.B.I. was tipped off to a potential espionage threat at Power Paragon. The case was assigned to a special agent named James Gaylord; since the technologies at risk involved the Navy, Gaylord and his F.B.I. colleagues were joined by agents from the Naval Criminal Investigation Service. A Chinese-American engineer, named Chi Mak was put under extensive surveillance: the investigators installed a hidden camera outside his home, in Downey, California, to monitor his comings and goings, and surveillance teams followed him wherever he went. All of his phone calls were recorded.

Read the story. However, for those with too little time: "On May 10, 2007, the jury convicted Mak on charges of conspiring to export U.S. military technology to China and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. Weeks later, Tai, Fuk, and their son, Billy, pleaded guilty to being part of the conspiracy. Rebecca Mak pleaded guilty to being an unregistered foreign agent. Mak was sentenced to twenty-four and a half years; Tai received a sentence of ten years. Fuk and Billy were deported to China, as was Rebecca - after she had spent three years in prison."

lhsi writes:

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership [TTIP] protesters faced water cannons as the public were barred from observing the negotiations in Brussels.

Peaceful Protesters against austerity and the secrecy surrounding TTIP agreements were met with violence and water cannons from Belgian police.

In an unprovoked move 281 people were "violently arrested" (quoted Revolution News), including Belgian and European parliamentarians and candidates, senior trade union officials, farmers and many elderly citizens.

US Ambassador to the EU, Anthony Gardner, and the EU Commissioner responsible for TTIP, Karel De Gucht have recently complained that speculation of social media has been spreading rumours on false grounds - "There's a void [in information]. The void is being filled more and more by social media." A lack of transparency surrounding the negotiations may have created that void in the first place.

lhsi writes:

Depending on which analysts you talk to, forecasts range from estimates of seeing 25 billion to 50 billion connected devices worldwide by 2020, but Internet of Things (IoT) pundits also point to the challenges ahead in cost and energy use.

Addressing that challenge, UK-based communications company Arqiva announced plans on May 16 to build and run a national low-power, battery-preserving network to connect smart devices in 10 UK cities next year, in support of the Internet of Things. This will be a UK rollout starting with Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester, and Sheffield. The network will use the SIGFOX 'ultra-narrowband' technology, with its key advantages of being suited to connect objects over long distances where a long battery life and low cost are needed.

The Arqiva network will become part of the SIGFOX global Internet of Things network; SIGFOX networks are deployed in France, the Netherlands, Spain, and in cities including Moscow and Munich.

AnonTechie writes:

Today, the majority of cancers are detected on the macroscopic level, when the tumor is already composed of millions of cancer cells and the disease is starting to advance into a more mature phase. But what if we could diagnose cancer before it took hold- while it was still only affecting a few localized cells? It would be like putting a fire out while it was still just a few sparks versus after having already caught on and spread to many areas of the house. An international team of researchers, led by ICFO- Institute of Photonic Sciences in Castelldefels, announce the successful development of a "lab-on-a-chip" platform capable of detecting protein cancer markers in the blood using the very latest advances in plasmonics, nano-fabrication, microfluids and surface chemistry. The device is able to detect very low concentrations of protein cancer markers in blood, enabling diagnoses of the disease in its earliest stages. The detection of cancer in its very early stages is seen as key to the successful diagnosis and treatment of this disease.

carguy writes:

As reported in the Knoxville News and other papers, waste kitchen grease isn't trash anymore it's a feedstock for biodiesel fuel. If the article is to be believed, it is worth thousands of dollars per truckload. Contracted haulers are having trouble with fly-by-night operators getting there first and "stealing" the waste product.

Vegetable oil and biodiesel are really being used in USA. For example, I visited a dairy farm recently and they were pressing soybeans to remove the oil. The resulting mash is good cow feed (he said that the soy oil is not very good for the cows) and the oil can be burned directly in tractors and other farm equipment if cut 50-50 with regular diesel fuel. The farmer shared the press with a relative and between the two of them they figured the investment would pay off in fuel savings in a few years. This is a reasonable return on investment, with savings on fuel costs into the future.

lennier writes:

Woody Leonhard of Infoworld summarizes the current state of Microsoft KB 2919355, the ambiguously-titled 'Windows 8.1 Update' (not to be confused with the update _to_ Windows 8.1).

In short: Microsoft has frozen two discussion threads on KB2919355 issues (after 103 and 116 pages of comments), and updated the Knowledge Base article with workarounds for seven major errors... some of which don't work.

In last week's Patch Tuesday, Microsoft changed their deadline for this Update until June (formerly they were requiring all Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 systems worldwide to have installed the Update in order to receive new patches).

Meanwhile, if you run a WSUS server, you may notice that the package for KB291355 (last reissued for the third time on 6 May) was apparently silently reissued over the weekend with a new release date of '15 May 2014', but there's no indication of any software updates in the KB article. The article revision number, however, now stands at '21.0'. Yes, twenty-one revisions. With no changelog.

Anyone else with interesting stories about your deployment issues with this Update?

McGruber writes:

The A. C. Gilbert Company (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._C._Gilbert_Company ) was once one of the largest toy companies in the world. It manufactured Erector Sets ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erector_Set ), American Flyer toy trains ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Flyer ), and chemistry sets ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemistry_set ).

Chemist John Farrell Kuhns ( http://www.kickstarter.com/profiles/1742632993/bio ) received an AC Gilbert Chemistry set for Christmas 1959, while he was still in grade school. By the time Kuhns was twelve years old he had a home lab set up in my family's basement. Now, more than 50 years later, he still has a home lab.

As an adult, Mr. Kuhns wanted to share these experiences with his daughter, nephews and nieces, and their friends. But he soon discovered that real chemistry sets were no longer available. He wondered how, without real chemistry sets and opportunities for students to learn and explore, where would our future chemists come from?

In 2004, Kuhns and his wife opened their science store, H.M.S. Beagle ( http://www.hms-beagle.com/ ) and last year used Kickstarter to launch a new Heirloom Chemistry set (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1742632993/he irloom-chemistry-set ). Kuhns uses a CNC router to cut out his wood cases, which are then hand assembled and finished with the shiny brass hardware and exotic wood inlays. Kuhns also synthesizes, purifies and/or formulates and packages all of the chemicals.

Gary Hanington, professor of physical science at Great Basin College, was another child who was lucky enough to own a Gilbert chemistry set. Hanington wrote about his set in this article
http://elkodaily.com/lifestyles/speaking-of-scienc e-a-c-gilbert-chemistry-sets/article_30dc31c8-c258 -11e1-9dfd-001a4bcf887a.html

Sadly, not everyone sees the educational value of real chemistry sets. The AC Gilbert chemistry sets are #3 on Cracked's "The 8 Most Wildly Irresponsible Toys" ( http://www.cracked.com/article_19481_the-8-most-wi ldly-irresponsible-vintage-toys_p2.html ) and #8 on Complex.com's "The 25 Worst Must-Have Christmas Toys Ever ( http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/12/25-wors t-must-have-christmas-toys-ever/gilbert-chemistry- set )

Main Story:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1742632993/hei rloom-chemistry-set

Ethanol-fueled writes:

Raw Story summarizes a New York Times report that Colleges across the country this spring have been wrestling with student requests for what are known as "trigger warnings," explicit alerts that the material they are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans.

The debate has left many academics fuming, saying that professors should be trusted to use common sense and that being provocative is part of their mandate. Trigger warnings, they say, suggest a certain fragility of mind that higher learning is meant to challenge, not embrace. "Any kind of blanket trigger policy is inimical to academic freedom," said Lisa Hajjar, a sociology professor, who often uses graphic depictions of torture in her courses about war. "Any student can request some sort of individual accommodation, but to say we need some kind of one-size-fits-all approach is totally wrong. The presumption there is that students should not be forced to deal with something that makes them uncomfortable is absurd or even dangerous."

Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said, "It is only going to get harder to teach people that there is a real important and serious value to being offended. Part of that is talking about deadly serious and uncomfortable subjects."

A summary of the College Literature, along with the appropriate trigger warnings, assumed or suggested in the article is as follows: Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" (anti-Semitism), Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" (suicide), "The Great Gatsby" (misogynistic violence), and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (racism).

Note: The Raw Story link was provided to provide an alternative to the article source, the New York Times, due to user complaints about the NYT website paywalling their articles.

Anonny_Moose writes:

I have several domains mostly vanity stuff that I have registered and pointed at my server(s).
While registering a new domain name is always pretty cheap the first year no matter where you go, for the subsequent years of registration the price tends to skyrocket compared to the initial year(s).

It seems to me it's a classic lock in attempt, as renewals should result in far less cost than new registration.

What registrar charges a more reasonable amount for ongoing registration, given that _all_ I want is domain names that point at my IP address?

AnonTechie writes:

Experiment aims to create matter from light:
In what could be a landmark moment in the history of science, a team of physicists working at the Blackett Physics Laboratory in Imperial College London have designed an experiment to validate one of the most tantalizing hypotheses in quantum electrodynamics: the theory that matter could be created using nothing more than pure light. Premised on a discussion that they had over one day and a few cups of coffee, the three physicists two from Imperial College and one visiting from the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Germany recognized that their work on fusion energy also offered possibilities in the theory of light to matter creation, suggested in a theory 80 years ago by two American physicists, Breit and Wheeler. These two physicists had premised the idea that because annihilating electron-positron pairs produce two or more photons, then colliding photons should, in turn, produce electron-positron (or "Breit-Wheeler") pairs.

http://www.gizmag.com/experiment-to-turn-light-int o-matter/32107/

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/impe rialcollege/newssummary/news_1-5-2014-14-26-39

Papas Fritas writes:

Jane Wakefield reports at BBC that a man convicted of possessing child abuse images is among the first to request Google remove links to pages about his conviction after a European court ruled that an individual could force it to remove "irrelevant and outdated" search results. Other takedown requests since the ruling include an ex-politician seeking re-election who has asked to have links to an article about his behaviour in office removed and a doctor who wants negative reviews from patients removed from google search results.

Google itself has not commented on the so-called right-to-be-forgotten ruling since it described the European Court of Justice judgement as being "disappointing". Marc Dautlich, a lawyer at Pinsent Masons, says that search engines might find the new rules hard to implement. "If they get an appreciable volume of requests what are they going to do? Set up an entire industry sifting through the paperwork?" says Dautlich. "I can't say what they will do but if I was them I would say no and tell the individual to contact the Information Commissioner's Office." The court said in its ruling that people could request the removal of data related to them that seem to be "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed."

shortscreen writes:

A man was identified as a potential donor when his wife needed a transplant for her left lung. However, doctors determined that the lobe from the man's left lung would be inadequate. They decided to use a larger lobe from his right lung instead. Swapping the organ from right to left would present a challenge to surgeons, who must connect blood vessels during the procedure. So a 3D model of the woman's chest cavity was produced, and the team planned out their actions in advance.

The surgery took place at Kyoto University in early March. The woman was discharged on May 10th, her husband having already recovered and returned to work.

iwoloschin writes:

Apple's reality distortion field must be faltering. The mobile giant is being sued by a former customer who is claiming that since switching to Android she has had issues receiving text messages from other iPhone users.

Apple's iMessage retains text messages sent from other users of Apple devices and won't deliver them to her Samsung Electronics Co. phone running on Google Inc.'s Android operating system, Adrienne Moore said in the complaint filed yesterday in San Jose, California.

People who replace their Apple devices with non-Apple wireless phones and tablets are "penalized and unable to obtain the full benefits of their wireless-service contracts," according to the complaint.

This is a well known problem, with my wife suffering through the same issue several months ago when switching to a Nexus 5. We eventually had to call Apple up to tell them to manually disable iMessage, though they seemed a little confused as to why you would ever want to do that.