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Hugh Pickens writes:

The Guardian reports that the woman who was accidentally shot dead by her two-year-old son in an Idaho Walmart is described by those who knew her as a gun lover, a motivated academic and a successful nuclear research scientist who worked for Battelle’s Idaho National Laboratory and wrote several papers there including one on using glass ceramic to store nuclear waste (PDF). Rutledge was raised in north-east Idaho and always excelled at school, former high school classmate Kathleen Phelps said, recalling her as “extremely smart. … valedictorian of our class, very motivated and the smartest person I know. … Getting good grades was always very important to her.”

Veronica Rutledge and her husband loved everything about guns. They practiced at shooting ranges. They hunted. And both of them, relatives and friends say, had permits to carry concealed firearms. “They are painting Veronica as irresponsible, and that is not the case,” says Terry Rutledge, her husband’s father. “… I brought my son up around guns, and he has extensive experience shooting it. And Veronica had had hand gun classes; they’re both licensed to carry, and this wasn’t just some purse she had thrown her gun into.” Many locals don't discern anything odd with a 29-year-old woman carrying a loaded gun into a Wal-Mart during the holiday season. “It’s pretty common around here,” says Stu Miller. “A lot of people carry loaded guns.” More than 85,000 people, 7 percent of Idaho's population, are licensed to carry concealed weapons (PDF), “In Idaho, we don’t have to worry about a lot of crime and things like that,” says Sheri Sandow. “And to see someone with a gun isn’t bizarre. [Veronica] wasn’t carrying a gun because she felt unsafe. She was carrying a gun because she was raised around guns. This was just a horrible accident.”

"gewg_" writes:

Kyle Rankin reports via Linux Journal

[...] it's rather difficult to have a fully Free Software laptop. Even if you can pick hardware that can use Free Software drivers, there's still that pesky BIOS.

[...] I found out about the Purism Librem 15 laptop crowdsourcing campaign

[...] the hardware I'm reviewing is a very early prototype [...] since I received the laptop quite a few of the hardware specs have changed

[...] While the Librem 15 doesn't necessarily match my personal tastes for laptop hardware due to the overall size and the mouse in particular, the mission of the company definitely does. Up until this point there were few options for laptops that ran purely Free Software, much less any that had modern hardware and a modern look and feel. I believe Purism genuinely wants to create a quality laptop that will appeal both to the Free Software community as well as privacy advocates and the Librem 15 is a nice start.

In this era of pervasive surveillance, rootkits bundled with corporate software, threats of hardware backdoors by nation states, and the overall increasing sophistication of attacks, I think Purism is on to something here. As more people value transparency as a means toward security, a computer that can provide the source code for every driver, application, and firmware it uses becomes more valuable.

One sticking point for some people interested in the Librem 15 might be the price. The initial crowdfunding campaign level offered an initial price of $1449 but at the time of this writing the next available level starts at $1649.

"gewg_" writes:

AlterNet reports

The second largest tobacco producer in the United States, Reynolds American said Thursday it will ban smoking in all indoor office spaces, bowing to smoke-free social norms.

The manufacturer of Pall Mall and Camel cigarettes said starting from January 1, 2015 smoking cigarettes, cigars, and pipes in conference rooms and elevators will be prohibited.

Designated smoking rooms will be opened by 2016 at the company's headquarters in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and at its two other offices in Tennessee and New Mexico.

[...]E-cigarettes and chewing tobacco are still permitted. Smoking is already banned in the company's production factories, cafeterias and fitness centers, and the move to extend the no-smoking zone was in line with the public standards, according to [Reynolds American spokesman David] Howard.

[...]Smoking is banned in most public spaces in North Carolina, including bars and restaurants, but Reynolds America's offices are exempt from the law, Reynolds said.

AnonTechie writes:

A breakthrough that got credit for "simplifying" quantum physics ( http://www.world-science.net/othernews/141220_quantum.htm ) could wipe away some of its more troubling contradictions by pointing out that even those who can calculate it precisely don't always get what "uncertainty" means.

A group of researchers at the National University of Singapore has suggested that the tendency of some particles to act like matter in public and like waves of energy when no one's looking may be a problem in the way physicists study particles, not in the way particles behave.

The phenomenon, described as wave-particle duality, is less likely to be excessively creative behavior from the particle than to be the result of our failure to understand the real impact of the uncertainty principle that defines the limits of how much it is possible to know about a particle, according to a study published Dec. 19 in the journal Nature Communications. ( http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/141219/ncomms6814/abs/ncomms6814.html )

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2863740/quantum-mystery-an-underestimate-of-uncertainty.html?

[Related]: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1403.4687.pdf [PDF]

hubie writes:

Disney is well known for going the extra mile with their attention to detail at their resorts. For instance, at the Epcot World Showcase, for each country highlighted they import foodstuff and merchandise and even people from the native countries. However, no matter how far they go with detail, going to Epcot in the dead of Summer will lend the same hot and sticky central Florida weather experience to each country one visits. Along those lines, over in Dubai they are working on the same Epcot-like experience called The Heart of Europe, but like most things in Dubai these days, they are working towards a very grandiose vision.

With the Heart of Europe, whole islands are dedicated to showcasing a European city. Not only will a visitor be immersed within a city that looks to be pulled right out of a European country, they plan on immersing you in European weather as well. You can already go and enjoy indoor black diamond slope skiing in Dubai, and now they want you to be able to enjoy an outdoor winter wonderland as well. Just providing rain would be tough enough, but given the climate of Dubai, meeting their vision will be quite a technological challenge.

mcgrew writes:

The BBC reports that the ten year old rover Opportunity, that was designed to last three months, is suffering from Alzheimer's. NASA calls it "amnesia", but since Opportunity is so old...

At any rate, parts of its non-volatile memory is failing. NASA is working on a hack to make it disregard the bad part of the memory.

"It's like you have an aging parent, that is otherwise in good health — maybe they go for a little jog every day, play tennis each day — but you never know, they could have a massive stroke right in the middle of the night," he said.

"So we're always cautious that something could happen."

"crutchy" writes with an article from Forbes:

Do you feel like your iPhone runs out of storage, just so Apple can sell you iCloud storage?  Well, there's a class action lawsuit for you.   Yesterday, Apple was sued in federal court by a class of plaintiffs alleging that the company engaged in unfair, deceptive, and fraudulent business acts and fraudulent advertising.

-- submitted from IRC

Hugh Pickens writes:

IMSI catchers, otherwise known as stingrays, are those surveillance tools that masquerade as cell towers and trick mobile phones into connecting, spewing private data in the process. Law-enforcement agencies have been using them for almost two decades, but there's never been a good way for individuals to detect them. Now Lily Hay Newman reports that SnoopSnitch scans for radio signals that indicate a transition to a stingray from a legitimate cell tower. "SnoopSnitch collects and analyzes mobile radio data to make you aware of your mobile network security and to warn you about threats like fake base stations (IMSI catchers), user tracking and over-the-air updates." say German security researchers Alex Senier, Karsten Nohl, and Tobias Engel, creators of the app which is available now only for Andriod. The app can't protect people's phones from connecting to stingrays in the first place, but it can at least let them know that there is surveillance happening in a given area. "There's no one set of information, taken by itself, that allows you to detect an IMSI catcher," says Nohl. "But we do stream analysis of everything that happens on your phone, and can come out with a warning if it crosses a certain threshold."

Stingrays have garnered attention since a 2011 Arizona court case in which one agent admitted in an affidavit that the tool collaterally swept up data on “innocent, non-target devices” (U.S. v. Rigmaiden). The government eventually conceded in this case that the “tracking operation was a Fourth Amendment search and seizure,” meaning it required a warrant. But given that the Justice Department has continued to claim that cellphone users have no reasonable expectation of privacy over their location data, it may take a Supreme Court judgement to settle the Stingray issue countrywide.

Bill Dimm writes with an article from TorrentFreak:

Teckla writes:

Ryan Crierie brings us an illustrated guide to the atomic bombs dropped during World War II. Compared to their shocking destructive power, their small size is amazing (and a little frightening).

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

Phil Zimmerman, creator of PGP, and Ladar Levison, founder of Lavabit, are trying to make e-mail as secure as ssh session. Their creation is called DIME, for Dark Internet Mail Environment. The document describing it (warning: PDF) starts out with this declaration from Levison:

I would like to dedicate this project to the National Security Agency. For better or worse, good or evil, what follows would not have been created without you. Because sometimes upholding constitutional ideas just isn’t enough; sometimes you have to uphold the actual Constitution. May god bless these United States of America. May she once again become the land of the free and home of the brave.

The abstract begins as follows:

This document provides the reader a detailed overview of the Dark Internet Mail Environment (DIME) and the elements required for successfully implementing DIME including the protocols and message format specification. As revealed in the Overview, this document includes detailed information covering the following artefacts: Terminology, System Architecture, the Management Record, the Signet Data Format, the Message Data Format, Dark Mail Transfer Protocol, Dark Mail Access Protocol, and a discussion of Threats and Mitigations.

AnonTechie writes:

When foreign pathogens, such as bacteria or a virus, enter our body, our immune system responds in a concerted effort to eliminate them. B cells produce antibodies that recognize markers (called antigens) on the surface of the invaders; these antibodies are then used to tag foreign pathogens for destruction.

B cells typically require interaction with T cells for full activation and antibody production, which is critical to overcoming an infection. But there are some cases where the T cells are not required. Now, researchers have figured out how this works—and discovered that it relies on the remains of long-dead viruses that litter our genomes.

Large, repetitive sugar structures that are often found on the surface of bacteria and viruses are the key to activating antibody production without the help of a T cell. These sugary structures engage proteins called B cell receptors, which activate the B cells. B cells then grow, forming short-lived cells that produce antibodies and long-lived memory cells that will recognize the same invader upon subsequent infection

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/12/remains-of-long-dead-viruses-in-our-genomes-aid-our-immune-response/

[Abstract]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/192/4238/467

tonyPick writes:

Linux Gizmos has an end of year list of 40 Linux-friendly hackable SBCs.

Over the last year we’ve seen some new quad- and octa-core boards with more memory, built-in WiFi, and other extras. Yet, most of the growth has been in the under $50 segment where the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone reign. Based on specifications alone, standouts in price/performance that have broken the $40 barrier include the new Odroid-C1 and pcDuino3 Nano, but other good deals abound here as well.

The guidelines for the boards selected are designed to ensure these platforms are hacker friendly.

The SBCs on our list are all shipping, even if only recently. They must offer open source Linux and/or Android OS images, or offer links to other free sources. The projects must offer schematics and other hardware reference materials for at least most of the board’s features and components. (For example, in the case of the increasingly common “sandwich-style SBCs,” which consist of a COM+baseboard combination, the baseboard schematic should be readily available for free download and application-specific modification.) At a minimum, licensing should enable third parties to build products at least for small runs of non-profit applications.

Originally spotted on LWN.

AndyTheAbsurd writes with an article from Engadget:

New York City wants to make it easier for the recipients of its some 8-to-10 million annual parking tickets to pay their fines. To do so, it's accepting pitches for payment systems that'd take advantage of mobile tech and things like Apple Pay and bitcoin. New York has an online payment system in place already, but as The Wall Street Journal notes, it doesn't work via mobile devices.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Warren Buffett just responded to a "Dilbert" comic strip which challenges the importance of passion in work. "Having passion for something is far from an automatic guarantee of success, but I think it helps...” he told his hometown newspaper in Omaha. He advises college students that life is more enjoyable with interesting work, "And, on balance, I believe they will enjoy more success." But in the comic strip, Dilbert's secretary argued "I'll have to fake the passion because everything I do in this job is mindless and boring." And with the release of a new book Tuesday, Dilbert's creator is still arguing that passion is irrelevant, and that when starting a new job or business, "the last thing you want to do is become passionate...!"