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lhsi writes:

The smallest ever force measured has been detected using a combination of lasers and a unique optical trapping system that uses a cloud of ultracold atoms. The researchers measured a force of approximately 42 yoctonewtons. A yoctonewton is one septillionth of a newton and there are approximately 3 x 10^23 yoctonewtons in one ounce of force.

"We applied an external force to the center-of-mass motion of an ultracold atom cloud in a high-finesse optical cavity and measured the resulting motion optically," says Dan Stamper-Kurn, a physicist who holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and the UC Berkeley Physics Department. "When the driving force was resonant with the cloud's oscillation frequency, we achieved a sensitivity that is consistent with theoretical predictions and only a factor of four above the Standard Quantum Limit, the most sensitive measurement that can be made."

Such measurements will be useful in the study of gravity waves and quantum gravity. Wikipedia has a nice write up of the quantum limit. Science Magazine has the abstract.

lhsi writes:

A new paper has been published which suggests that the speed of light as described by the theory of general relativity may actually be slower than had been thought.

Franson's arguments are based on observations made of the supernova SN 1987A-it exploded in February 1987. Measurements here on Earth picked up the arrival of both photons and neutrinos from the blast but there was a problem-the arrival of the photons was later than expected, by 4.7 hours. Scientists at the time attributed it to a likelihood that the photons were actually from another source. But what if that wasn't what it was, Franson wonders, what if light slows down as it travels due to a property of photons known as vacuum polarization-where a photon splits into a positron and an electron, for a very short time before recombining back into a photon. That should create a gravitational differential, he notes, between the pair of particles, which, he theorizes, would have a tiny energy impact when they recombine-enough to cause a slight bit of a slowdown during travel. If such splitting and rejoining occurred many times with many photons on a journey of 168,000 light years, the distance between us and SN 1987A, it could easily add up to the 4.7 hour delay, he suggests.

AnonTechie writes:

The Library of Congress has been collecting analog recordings of sound and moving images since the late 1800s: Early film reels from inventor Thomas Edison's lab of the 1890s. Audio recordings of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech. The original 35 mm film stock of "Star Wars." These national treasures are among the millions of cultural artifacts being stored in secure vaults in the Library of Congress' National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, some 90 minutes southwest of Washington. The center occupies the Packard Campus, a former bunker for storing federal currency, and measures an amazing 415,000 square feet. Its artifacts are housed in dozens of temperature-controlled vaults and on 90 miles of storage shelves.

q.kontinuum writes:

First, I want to note if you are only interested in news, skip this submission. This one is supposed to spawn a discussion about smartphones, some aspects of their dreaded ecosystems, and impact on society. Maybe the discussion could lead to some more specific submissions and discussions.

From a hardware perspective, modern smartphones are fully fledged computers, plus something. Only, this "plus something" (ability to send premium SMS/call premium numbers, often being always online) and the typical use as a personal assistant with GPS makes it makes it a valuable target and a bigger threat financially-wise and to privacy. Simultaneously, since it derived from simple mobile phones, average users perceive it more as a toy than a viable security threat.

Consequences are that either people accept being locked into a golden cage (e.g. iPhone, Google Play, Windows Phone) or take the risk of being victimized by malware (unlocked apps from dubious sources), or to have a very limited selection of applications (SailfishOS, MeeGo, ...).

Software wise, Cyanogenmod with Privacy Guard might be a step in the right direction, while hardware wise the Fairphone or Jolla might be good candidates (although they both lack e.g. dual SIM support, they both are fully accessible; no locked boot manager etc.)

So, what needs to change? Is there a chance to get a community governed app-store for smartphones, like we have for most Linux distributions? Would a simple plug-and-play home-cloud device help privacy significantly, or do we have to assume any data on a smartphone is already compromised? Would a platform-independent notification service be helpful (to make it easier for e.g. TextSecure to support multiple different platforms), and how could it be established and financed? How could producers be convinced to offer free (as in freedom) and up-to-date hardware for reasonable prices? How could we improve customers' risk awareness?

So, given we've recently managed to find a good middle ground on the subscription front, I thought it would be nice to end the week with a lighthearted subject most of you care about.

STATISTICS!

As most of you are likely aware, we've been running piWik on SN for the last few weeks to get a better idea of what our general traffic looks like. We've learned quite a few interesting things from it, and I figured the community would love to take a look at the report itself. So, without further ado: piWik Statistics Report for mid-June. (warning: PDF file, the HTML output had far too many images to easily copy it off piWik and rehost it somewhere else, and there was no ASCII report that I could find).

lhsi writes regarding a BBC story:

Digital technology, once accused of nearly destroying the music industry, is now being hailed as its saviour.

In the UK, about 7.4 billion tracks were streamed on audio services in 2013, twice the total recorded in 2012, says BPI, the music industry trade body.

While digital accounted for 50% of UK record industry trade revenues last year, streaming brought in 10%, and this figure is rising fast.

As a sign of streaming's maturity, listening data will now be incorporated in the UK's official singles charts for the first time from July, the Official Charts Company announced this week.

Streaming has its critics, not least those artists and labels who believe the service providers do not pay enough in royalties. Despite this, support is growing from within the industry. "There are still a lot of things that need to be worked out around revenue sharing," says Jon Webster, chief executive of Music Managers Forum (MMF), which has about 400 members in the UK representing more than 1,000 artists worldwide. "But any artist has to be on a streaming service now - it's what consumers want," he says. "It's part of the future. And if you're successful, you can still make a considerable about of money from it."

maxwell demon writes:

So we now have a very clear-cut case of the NSA causing damage to American business: The German government has cancelled a contract with Verizon because of the danger of NSA spying. The contract is about an internal Government network for communication between the ministries. The contract is going to the German company Deutsche Telekom AG instead. From the article:

cafebabe writes:

A new micro-iris features 55µm thick transparent chemical rings of electrochromic polymer PEDOT (poly 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) which turn opaque when 1.5V is applied. The obvious application is in front of CCD cameras in phones but it has other applications.

Acrimonious Coward writes:

A bogus SoundCloud takedown reveals a much larger issue with private sites and the public domain. The sound in question--the famous "Houston, we have a problem" snippet of the Apollo 13 mission--is incontrovertibly available to all, for any use, without copyright restrictions. The fact that it's been yanked from a SoundCloud page, though, is a sad demonstration of how completely many online services have swallowed the fallacy that "unauthorized" means "unacceptable."

kaszz writes:

The US Congress has passed a law that will give increased protection for whistle blowers that work in government agencies like NSA and CIA. An employee that reports grievances shall not be exposed to reprisals. The law also requires Senate confirmation for the director of the NSA, a post that until now had been outside senators' oversight.

Non-staff contractors, such as Mr Snowden during his time working for the NSA, are not covered by the new protections. They had been protected under a law that was in effect between 2007 and 2012.

AnonTechie writes:

From news.rice.edu:

New immigration research from Rice University, the University of North Carolina and the Centre for Population, Poverty and Public Policy Studies suggests the U.S. should re-evaluate its definition of skilled workers to include informal skills of migrant workers.

The study, "Identifying and Measuring the Lifelong Human Capital of 'Unskilled' Migrants in the Mexico-U.S. Migrator Circuit," draws on a binational multistage research project that involved interviews with 320 Mexican migrants and return migrants in North Carolina and Guanajuato, Mexico. The study identifies lifelong human capital knowledge and technical and social skills acquired and transferred throughout these migrants' careers.

The study was funded by UNC Carolina Population Center, the UNC Research Council and the research program of the Mexican Higher Education Secretary and is available online at http://jmhs.cmsny.org/index.php/jmhs/article/view/26.

AnonTechie writes:

Yahoo! News reports:

France strongly attacked the US-based body that assigns Internet addresses on Wednesday, saying it was not a fit venue for Internet governance and that alternatives should be sought.

The Eurozone's second-largest economy has been at war with the body, which assigns domain names like '.com' and runs crucial Internet infrastructure, over the '.wine' and '.vin' suffixes being rolled out as part of an unprecedented expansion of domains.

ICANN did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But earlier this week, ICANN's president Fadi Chehade said that France had not yet exhausted all avenues to voice its concerns, and that it should do so. "We all get frustrated sometimes when we don't get the conclusion that we want," he told a press conference.

Technohat writes:

The ongoing spat between publisher Hachette and Amazon has been making the round lately on news sites. Cory Doctorow points out the blunder Hachette made when it allowed Amazon to digitally encrypt their book titles with DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Under U.S. law Hachette is unable to release an application to remove the DRM from their customers' books which would allow their customers to migrate away from Amazon's Kindle. Only Amazon is legally able to remove the DRM placed on their book titles. In essence, by trapping their customers in Amazon's DRM, they have, in turn, been ensnared themselves.

dryriver writes:

The BBC reports:

The clock on the facade of the building housing the Bolivian congress in La Paz has been reversed. Its hands turn left and the numbers have been inverted to go from one to 12 anti-clockwise.

Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca dubbed it the "clock of the south". He said the change had been made to get Bolivians to treasure their heritage and show them that they could question established norms and think creatively.

"Who says that the clock always has to turn one way? Why do we always have to obey? Why can't we be creative?", he asked at a news conference on Tuesday. "We don't have to complicate matters, we just have to be conscious that we live in the south, not in the north," Mr Choquehuanca added.

TGV writes:

Nest is going to share data with its parent, Google.

Matt Rogers, a co-founder of the smart-thermostat maker, said in an interview that Google will connect some of its apps to Nest, allowing Google to know when Nest users are at home or not.

Users will have to opt in for their information to be shared with Google, Rogers said. "We're not becoming part of the greater Google machine." The news comes as Nest said it will allow developers of appliances, light fixtures, garage door openers and more to access user information, part of Nest's bid to be the operating system for the smart home.

AnonTechie writes:

All they need to be is 300 meters high and 50 meters wide. (Just as interesting a project as Percival Lowell's theory that an advanced but desperate culture had built the canals to tap Mars' polar ice caps, the last source of water on an inexorably drying planet.)

Temple University's Rongjia Tao used the International Journal of Modern Physics B to suggest what might be called the Game of Thrones approach to the US' tornado problem: build a giant wall. Or maybe three. Tao's idea is based on a distinctive combination of geography that makes the US ground zero for tornado activity (last year, the US had 811 tornadoes; Europe had just 57). Cold air is lifted high above the Great Plains as it passes over the Rocky Mountains. Meanwhile, warm, humid air travels north across the plains from the Gulf of Mexico. This combination sets up the conditions for intense storm activity, which often produces tornadoes. Tao's idea is simple: interfere with the flow of air. And since it's easier to get in the way of air flowing close to the ground, he suggests targeting the northward flow of air. All we need to do is build a giant wall that runs east-west, about 300 meters high (that's about 1.5 times the height of the Westeros wall) and 50 meters wide. That wall would disrupt the northward flow of air enough to block the intense turnover that spawns tornadoes while still allowing air to flow north and produce rain.