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present_arms writes:

El Reg reports that the coalition government in the UK wants to push through a new surveillance law that forces ISPs to keep data for 12 months.

It's the latest in a series of attempts from the Theresa May-led Home Office to legislate on communications data, known colloquially as the snooper's charter.

The latest bid to revive May's unloved plan comes after a recent decision from judges in the European Union's highest court ruled that the Data Retention Directive was "invalid".

We really are doing our American cousins proud.

gewg_ writes:

It's not a robot, it's a seventy foot mech!

It has a humanoid form and a human operator is in the cage that is the "head". The operator gets haptic feedback and uses that to juggle 3 Volkswagens.

Sometimes we see a project that's just as frightening as it is awesome. The Bug Juggler is a prime example of this phenomenon. A seven-story diesel-powered humanoid robot is one thing, but this one will pick up two VW Beetles, put one in its pocket, pick up a third, and juggle them. Yes, juggle them.

The Bug Juggler will be driven by a brave soul sitting in the head-cage and controlling him through haptic feedback connected to high-speed servo valves. A diesel engine will generate hydraulic pressure, and the mobility required for juggling the cars will come from hydraulic accumulators.

[Linked article includes a 1.6MB animated GIF.]

cafebabe writes:

The Daily Mail reports that:

Occupying 48 million square feet, the Mall of the World will also contain health resorts, theatres, a Celebration Steet modelled on the Ramblas boulevard in Barcelona and 'retail streets network' that will stretch over four-and-a-half miles.

The grand project is part of Dubai's bid to become a year-round tourism destination, despite soaring temperatures in summer that can reach nearly 50C.

The new mall, which will be a city-within-a-city, will be the emirate's chance to attract visitors even in the height of the summer, by providing a completely climate-controlled experience.

The shopping mall itself will occupy eight million square feet, housed below a glass dome, with other attractions extending beyond the central shopping area.

In the cooler winter months, the dome will open, allowing people to shop in the fresh air, closing as the summer heats up.

It is thought the huge construction will attract 180 million visitors a year and developers hope it will secure Dubai's futures as a tourism hub.

The architectural images are more stunning than the Chinese plan to build a tower in a lake.

The threat may be real, but....:

TSA is behind times again!

jackb_guppy writes:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/06/us/tsa-security-measures/

The TSA is tightening security again... years late and with a method that proves nothing! Turn on your computer or phone or leave it behind! The laptop must be a bomb, if you cannot power it on! LOL

This is the easiest to by pass... Laptop with extra drive or power bay. Fill it. Power space is good for it too. Use a few buttons to meet the stupid test. I remember in the 90's when you had to plug it to show the boot screen. Yes, just the boot screen! Made the whole system available, but you need to use the power brick, to prove it was not fake too!

TSA about to require passengers to power up electronic devices when asked during screening

caseih writes:

Allegedly in response to an unspecified terrorist threat, the TSA has issued a directive requiring passengers on US-bound flights to prove to security personnel that their electronic devices power on and function. Devices which cannot power up will not be allowed onboard. So if you're travelling to the US you had better make sure your batteries are charged up. I imagine it won't take too many people having to abandon their expensive but dead smart phones before there will be an uproar. I am guessing this new directive is intended to prevent bombs from being smuggled on board in a laptop chassis. If security personnel really are unable with present x-ray technology to discern a normal-looking laptop from a bomb then we have serious problems.

ticho writes:

Lennart Poettering gave a talk recently in Beijing about the state of systemd and its future ahead.

Lennart keynoted at the joint FUDCon Beijing 2014 with GNOME.Asia 2014 event and he talked about the current position of systemd and its future going forward, while acknowledging it's evolved more than just being a basic init system to being "a set of basic building blocks to build an OS from."

Among the expressed objectives of systemd are turning Linux from "a bag of bits into a competitive general purpose operating system", building the Internet's Next Generation OS, unifying "pointless differences" between distributions, and causing greater innovation within the core OS. Systemd developers want to reduce administrator complexity, make everything introspectable, provide auto-discovery and plug and play, and fix things when they are broken.

Read more on Phoronix, including a link to (a badly converted) PDF with slides from the talk.

AnonTechie writes:

Applying mild electrical currents to your head could take away pain, help memory and improve attention and the US military is very interested. TDCS ( transcranial direct-current stimulation ) belongs to a group of techniques known as 'non-invasive brain stimulation' because they don't involve surgery. It is still experimental, but even in 2010, it was showing promise not only for alleviating pain, but for boosting the brain, improving memory and attention in healthy people. The US Department of Defense (DoD) wondered whether it might benefit military personnel.

http://mosaicscience.com/story/can-you-supercharge-your-brain

TDCS is not new. Would any of you like to share your experiences?

Hairyfeet writes:

Firefox usage has plunged in the last two months causing it to hit an all time low. Interestingly, Safari has also taken a huge hit, with both mobile AND desktop Safari showing a decline.

This would probably be a good time to discuss what browser you use and why...did you use Mozilla and (like me) move on? Did the recent UI changes cause you to leave, or was it something else? For those sticking with Firefox does this give you second thoughts?

Appalbarry writes:

A week or so back another user asked a pretty reasonable question "More and more, it feels like Facebook is a problem that needs solving. How can we solve it?"

Unfortunately the handful of thoughtful responses got lost in the inevitable torrent of "Facebook SUX! Twitter SUX! Internets SUX!" nonsense. You know, the on-line equivalent of saying "I read a book once and it sucked so ALL BOOKS SUX!"

I actually find Twitter really useful and rely on it heavily for some specific information flows. I also use Facebook for family and some close friends that I still want to keep in touch with. I have of course pseudonymized myself enough to keep FB out of my deepest private life.

Still, I'd love an alternative.

So, given that:

• Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms can actually be very useful when used sensibly
• Facebook and Twitter are still essential tools for many millions of people, including a lot of really smart ones.
• Platforms that connect people can be a very positive thing, and can even bring about some kinds of social change
• And given that Facebook is becoming pretty useless, annoying, and evil; and that Twitter is probably heading the same way.

I'm going to ask again, what do we need to create a functional social media platform that avoids the many problems that Facebook has, and that will actually attract a large enough user base to work?

ticho writes:

In a very surprising move Game Develop, a game creation engine that doesn't require programming, has become open source. This is after the failed Indiegogo campaign, but it still happened anyway.

There are three different licenses for different parts:

• The IDE (in the IDE folder) is licensed with GPL v3.
• The Core library, the native and HTML5 platforms (respectively Core, GDCpp and GDJS folders) are LGPL v3.
• Extensions (in the Extensions folder) are using zlib/libpng license.
• The name, Game Develop, and its logo are the exclusive property of Florian Rival.

Full story, including an example video on GamingOnLinux.

janrinok writes:

Airlines have seen almost no increase in the use of smartphones, tablets, and laptops among passengers since the Federal Aviation Administration ruled in October that they are now allowed to do so during takeoff and landing, a recent study found.

Over a four month period observed by DePaul University's Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development this year, 35.9 percent of passengers used mobile devices at any point during the flight, USA Today reported. In last year's study, while flight attendants still patrolled the aisles for devices that hadn't been shut off, 35.3 percent of passengers used devices during flight.

Such a negligible increase is a bit surprising given that passengers no longer need to worry about whether they'll have to turn off their devices before take-off or landing. But these patterns were observed just months after the FAA made the announcement. People are likely either just stuck in their ways or unaware of the rule change.

cafebabe writes:

According to research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association:

In this pilot study of patients with PAD (14 men and six women, ages 60-78), study participants increased their ability to walk unassisted after eating dark chocolate, compared to when they ate milk chocolate. The authors suggest that compounds found in cocoa - polyphenols - may reduce oxidative stress and improve blood flow in peripheral arteries.

The patients were tested on a treadmill in the morning and again two hours after eating 40 grams of dark and milk chocolate (about the size of an average American plain chocolate bar) on separate days. The dark chocolate in the study had a cocoa content of more than 85 percent, making it rich in polyphenols. The milk chocolate, with a cocoa content below 30 percent, had far fewer polyphenols.

After eating the dark chocolate, they walked an average 11 percent farther and 15 percent longer (almost 12 meters/39 feet farther and about 17 seconds longer) than they could earlier that day. But distance and time didn't improve after eating milk chocolate.

Compounds in dark chocolate are also responsible for lowering blood pressure.

Randolph Carter writes:

"Dr. Glen MacPherson doesn't remember the first time he heard the sound. It may have started at the beginning of 2012, a dull, steady droning like that of a diesel engine idling down the street from his house in the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. A lecturer at the University of British Columbia and high school teacher of physics, mathematics and biology, months passed before MacPherson realized that the noise, which he'd previously dismissed as some background nuisance like car traffic or an airplane passing overhead, was something abnormal."

"It's a very, very low wavelength noise, perhaps between 50 or 56 Hz," Moir told Mic. "And it's extremely difficult to stop infrasound because it can have a wavelength of up to 10 meters, and you'd need around 2.5 meter thick walls, built with normal materials, to keep it out. It gets into our wooden houses very easily. And part of the reason people have so much trouble identifying the source of it is because of how low frequency the Hum is: It literally moves right through your head before you can figure out which ear picked it up first."

also see...

http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_18_4_deming.pdf

http://www.thehum.info/

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/jul/22/research.science3

From the map shown in the article there seems to be quite a concentration of this in and around New Hampshire.

lhsi writes:

An article at StarTrek.com takes a look at an imagined 8th season of The Next Generation.

We know you loved season eight of Star Trek: The Next Generation and have been waiting patiently for a detailed guide chronicling each and every episode of that memorable year. Wait. Before you bombard StarTrek.com and/or our Facebook page with comments, go with us on this. Imagine there had been a season eight. What would it have been like? Now imagine that there's a guide, and a satirical /mockumentary-style one at that. Put it all together and you've got Star Trek: The Next Generation - Warped, An Engaging Guide to the Never-Aired 8th Season, written by Mike McMahan and due out on March 3, 2015 as a Gallery Books trade paperback and eBook.

Anonymous Coward writes:

People on Soylent love dice. This robot tosses dice for you when you send it a twitter message.

A tweet to @IntrideaDiceBot with the hashtag #RollTheDice will cause the Dicebot to spin up the dice. Once things have settled, DiceBot captures an image with its Raspberry Pi camera. The dice values are checked using OpenCV.

cafebabe writes:

You may have seen a craze involving colorful elastic bands.

Don't despair! It is teaching children mathematics and geometry including Pascal's triangle and Fibonacci sequences. Even young children are learning terms such as hexagon and rhombus.

Furthermore, kids are also learning reading skills and fine motor skills while making friends and gaining confidence. Many are also learning about economics.