SoylentNews

NotSanguine writes:

The BBC is reporting about a new type of vibration sensor that is sensitive enough to detect minute vibrations such as blood flow and speech.

The new type of sensor uses a thin layer of platinum embedded on a polymer that mimics sense organs present in the joints of some spiders. Vibrations cause cracks in the platinum to open and close, which can be detected and quantified. I can see many applications for such sensors, including ultra-sensitive body activity sensors, vibration detection in highly sensitive experimental gear, and the ever popular choice, spy equipment. The research is presented in an article published recently in Nature.

From the BBC News article:

Speaking to BBC News, Prof Mansoo Choi said the project began two years ago, when one of his colleagues at Seoul National University read a paper in the same journal.

It described how a particular species of wandering spider communicates with potential mates, metres away on the same plant, by scratching the leaves and "hearing" the vibrations. The organ in the spiders' legs that detects these incredibly faint vibrations is made up of a series of slits. It is called the "lyriform organ" because the slits vary in length, like the strings of a lyre. "We tried to mimic the cracked shape of the organ," Prof Choi said.

"gewg_" writes:

El Reg reports

Good news, hayseeds: the FCC has ruled that rural broadband should be held to the same standard as that of connections in built-up cities and towns.

The stateside regulator has issued a new order, which states that in the US countryside, providers must maintain at least a 10Mbit/s downlink speed for subscribers if they want to call it "broadband". The ruling will apply to ISPs that receive taxpayer dollars through the FCC's Connect America Fund.

Previously, the FCC required ISPs to deliver a 4Mbps connection in order to get the rural broadband funding. Companies are also required to deliver 1Mbps upload speeds. The increased bandwidth is supposed to match the speeds of urban connections, and is the first [uptick] for the Connect America Fund program since 2011.

[...]The $4.5bn Connect America Fund was established in 2011 with the aim of expanding and improving phone and broadband service in the American countryside. The fund is slated to run through 2020 with the goal of connecting 100 million US homes countrywide with 100Mbps broadband.

sigma writes:

Ex-Apple engineer Rod Schultz wrote a paper in 2012 citing “a secret war” that Apple fought with iTunes competitors. In the paper, he wrote, “Apple was locking the majority of music downloads to its devices".

The engineer was subpoenaed to show that Apple tries to suppress rivals to iTunes and iPods. The court submission argues that Apple’s anti-competitive actions drove up the prices for iPods from 2006 to 2009 and plaintiffs are seeking $350 million in damages, which could be tripled under antitrust laws.

The Wall Street Journal notes that 'Outside the courtroom Schultz said the early work of his former team reflected the digital-music market’s need for copyright protections of songs. Later, though, he said it created “market dominance” for the iPod. Schultz left Apple in 2008.'

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/12/12/former-itunes-engineer-tells-court-he-worked-to-block-competitors/

novak writes:

Fake Cell phone base stations, or ISMI catchers, which allow a third party to listen to phone conversations and monitor other phone activity, were found in Oslo around the Norwegian parliament building, the Prime Minister's home, among other places. At this point it is not known, or at least revealed, who planted them. Criminals? Members of the government spying on other members? More Five-Eyes shenanigans?

Article in English:
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Secret-surveillance-detected-in-Oslo-7825278.html

Full (original) article in Norwegian:
http://mm.aftenposten.no/stortinget-og-statsministeren-overvakes/

sigma writes:

Microsoft has just confirmed that their recent update (KB 3004394) is causing a range of serious problems and recommends removing it.

Users are reporting that USB 3.0 drivers are broken, User Account Control (UAC) prompts are behaving oddly and the Windows Defender anti-malware service has been disabled by the update. Microsoft has acknowledged that it even prevents the installation of future Windows Updates.

Note that the problems with this patch only apply to Windows 7, so if you have been diligent in paying your Microsoft tax, you're safe. If insist on staying with an old OS, and have Windows 7 set to automatically update every Tuesday, you should consider permanently disabling that feature.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2014/12/13/new-windows-7-patch-is-effectively-malware-disables-graphics-driver-updates-and-windows-defender/

Hugh Pickens writes:

Andrew Pollack reports at the NYT that a federal judge has blocked an attempt by the drug company Actavis to halt sales of an older form of its Alzheimer’s disease drug Namenda in favor of a newer version with a longer patent life after New York’s attorney general filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing the drug company of forcing patients to switch to the newer version of the widely used medicine to hinder competition from generic manufacturers. “Today’s decision prevents Actavis from pursuing its scheme to block competition and maintain its high drug prices,” says Eric Schneiderman, the New York attorney general. “Our lawsuit against Actavis sends a clear message: Drug companies cannot illegally prioritize profits over patients.” The case involves a practice called product hopping where brand name manufacturers (“product hoppers”) make a slight alteration to their prescription drug (PDF) and engage in marketing efforts to shift consumers from the old version to the new to insulate the drug company from generic competition for several years. For its part Actavis argued that an injunction would be “unprecedented and extraordinary” and would cause the company “great financial harm, including unnecessary manufacturing and marketing costs.” Namenda has been a big seller. In the last fiscal year, the drug generated $1.5 billion in sales. The drug costs about $300 a month.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

No titles from Microsoft Press, or even Manning, made the cut for Bill Gates' favorite books of 2014. That's probably because these days, Gates is more interested in solving the world's problems than in hacking tight code in the basement, or beating competitors into the ground, although an old collection of business articles from the New Yorker (newly back in print, which enabled its consideration) did make the cut. Not surprisingly, Thomas Piketty's controversial Capital was in there, as well as a book on Asian growth economies and one on the economics of raw materials. As for fiction, there is a second novel featuring the antics of a couple in academia - written by a man who happens to have co-authored a well-known textbook on data modeling.

Back lists:

Gates' favorite books of 2013

Gates' favorite books of 2012

canopic jug writes:

Peter Hansteen blogs about passwords and swarms of bots trying to guess router passwords. In his current logs he finds more than 700 machines looking for mostly what appears to be various manufacturers' names and a few other usual suspects. He's posted his data online and some analysis.

tonyPick writes:

Aeon has an essay on the lessons from Egyptology on preserving our culture.

This article covers the work of the Long Now Project, including the 10,000 year clock and the Rosetta Project.

Hugh Pickens writes:

The NYT reports that Peruvian authorities say Greenpeace activists have damaged the fragile, and restricted, landscape near the Nazca lines, ancient man-made designs etched in the Peruvian desert when they placed a large sign that promoted renewable energy near a set of lines that form the shape of a giant hummingbird. The sign was meant to draw the attention of world leaders, reporters and others who were in Lima, the Peruvian capital, for a United Nations summit meeting aimed at reaching an agreement to address climate change. Greenpeace issued a statement apologizing for the stunt at the archaeological site and its international executive director, Kumi Naidoo, flew to Lima to apologize for scarring one of Peru’s most treasured national symbols. “We are not ready to accept apologies from anybody,” says Luis Jaime Castillo, the vice minister for cultural heritage. “Let them apologize after they repair the damage.”

But repair may not be possible. The desert around the lines is made up of white sand capped by a darker rocky layer. By walking through the desert the interlopers disturbed the upper layer, exposing the lighter sand below. Visits to the site are closely supervised - ministers and presidents have to seek special permission and special footwear to tread on the fragile ground where the 1,500 year old lines are cut. “A bad step, a heavy step, what it does is that it marks the ground forever,” says Castillo. “There is no known technique to restore it the way it was.” Castillo says that the group walked in single file through the desert, meaning that they made a deep track in the ground then they spread out in the area where they laid the letters, making many more marks over a wide area. “The hummingbird was in a pristine area, untouched,” Castillo added. “Perhaps it was the best figure.”

buswolley writes:

David Holmes at pando.com says

  "Now, in what might be the ultimate troll against government oversight, somebody has proposed an unholy union between Uber and bitcoin,"

Over the course of its five-year existence, Uber has courted controversy and pushed the regulatory envelope at nearly every opportunity. From insurance to safety to privacy, Uber’s Travis Kalanick has acted like a rebel with a $40 billion cause, and many local governments are still playing catch up. They say it’s better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission. Uber has time for neither.

Alongside Uber’s centralized arrogance is Bitcoin’s decentralized anarchy. The crypto-currency resists government regulation by design. The very things that make it appealing in theory — anonymity, ease of transfer across borders — attracts money launderers and buyers and sellers of illicit goods.

The union between the two is called Ridecoin and it sounds like it’s straight out of Peter Thiel’s dream journal. The tagline reads, “Bitcoin Uber! Distributed blockchain based ridesharing. Can’t be shut down like Uber and Lyft. It just exists.”

"gewg_" writes:

El Reg reports

As foreshadowed in February, Ford has announced a new in-car entertainment and communications system that will run on BlackBerry's QNX real-time operating system, not Windows as is the case for the company's current efforts.

Ford Sync 3 will offer touch-screen and voice recognition controls. The latter will allow drivers to command both their vehicle and apps on their phone. Siri control is another feature.

The auto-maker's offered a touch-screen system for some time now, but it's widely regarded as one of its weak points. A complete refresh on a new operating system therefore looks like a good move.

frojack writes:

Courthouse News is reporting that a patent covering caching data in a computer network does not apply to any Google apps.

Google apps that let users store data online do not violate a rival software developer's patents, a federal judge ruled. SuperSpeed LLC, a Massachusetts-based company, sued Google in June 2012, claiming Google Drive and Google Docs - applications that facilitate cloud data storage - infringe on its patents.

At issue is U.S. Patent 5,918,244, caching I/O devices across a network, which enables data sharing among computers linked in a network.

The patent claims, among other things claims:

The cache keeps regularly accessed disk I/O data within RAM that forms part of a computer systems main memory. The cache operates across a network of computers systems, maintaining cache coherency for the disk I/O devices that are shared by the multiple computer systems within that network.

The patent itself was filed in 1994, and published in 1999, has in excess of 30 claims, some of which are so specific as to specify the type of network, (VAX) and a tier of three levels of caching.

Had SuperSpeed's claims prevailed, they might have had wide ranging applicability to just about everything we do with computers attached to any kind of network. U.S. District Judge Sim Lake sided with Google on Friday and determined that the Google Apps had not infringed on SuperSpeed's patent however, the judge declined to declare the patents invalid as Google had requested.

tadas writes:

An article in the British Medical Journal maintains, based on analysis of the Darwin Awards, that men are far more likely to perform truly idiotic and dangerous acts than women.

From the article abstract:

Non-technical summary available at the Washington Post and C|Net.

lhsi writes:

GCHQ (Government Communication Headquarters, UK) have hosted an event aimed at boosting the cyber security sector in the UK.

Also announced was a new Android application that aims to teach basic encryption techniques.

[More after the break.]