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jbWolf writes:

The BBC has a story that claims For the first time, frogs have been seen giving birth to tadpoles. A few details can be found on Wikipedia or the more detailed version at PLOS One.

Most frogs lay eggs and although some species give birth to froglets, newborn tadpoles are new to science.

Nearly all the world's 6,000 frog species use external fertilisation: the female lays eggs during mating, while the male releases sperm to fertilise them. "But there are lots of weird modifications to this standard mode of mating," Dr McGuire said. "This new frog is one of only 10 or 12 species that has evolved internal fertilization, and of those, it is the only one that gives birth to tadpoles, as opposed to froglets or laying fertilized eggs."

How the male frogs manage to fertilise eggs inside the female remains a mystery, because frogs have no conventional sexual organs to transfer the sperm.

I had not heard of any frog that gives birth to froglets instead of laying eggs before this article. Because this article is dominating the news, I could not find any example of this despite what Dr. McGuire says. Does anyone else know about frogs giving birth to live froglets?

frojack writes:

Linux Magazine has an article showing how one enthusiast built his own aircraft tracking system for $25 and a few open source Linux Applications.

The recent tragedy of AirAsia Flight 8501 brought the usual crescendo of demands from TV talking heads for continuous monitoring of passenger planes and disbelief that such a system does not exist in this day and age.

One such system is in place on large numbers of aircraft in the EU and US, and deployment is expected to be complete in most fleets by 2020. That system is called Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast, or ADS-B. It constantly transmits the heading, altitude, speed, GPS position, and flight number on a frequency of 1,090MHz.

Charly Kühnast built a real-time flight mapping systems for these signals from a couple linux packages and a cheap USB digital terrestrial television stick, similar to this one.

Charly even has a live demo up and running at This Link which shows aircraft within range of his home receiver, located in the Netherlands Germany. Sometimes there are none, other times there are multiple aircraft, each of which can be clicked in the list to to highlight the plane's position and track, and show links to official flight status pages. You can zoom in and out to see 25 km concentric range circles. I've seen planes as far away as 50 km on Charly's map.

Presumably it would be a simple matter for a linux user to log each such transmission to provide the last position of each plane.

[Ed's note: Corrected Charly's home receiver location.]

joekiser writes:

From Crackberry:

"Thanksgiving this year was a bad time for Sony Pictures Entertainment, and that's putting it lightly. Hackers known as The Guardians of Peace managed to take over entire portions of their internal systems which led to the theft of a ton of personally identifiable information about Sony Pictures Entertainment employees, movie scripts, information about movie deals, and even full versions of unreleased Sony movies. Because of the hack, Sony had to find new ways to communicate with each other and keep the organization running during that time and as a new report from the WSJ [Subscription required] highlights, they turned to BlackBerry in some cases."

[Ed note: Also see coverage at Marketwatch and CNN Money .]

novak writes:

This is an article that I found to be very interesting, about the dystopian surveillance state we are rapidly headed towards, and especially about a man named Ai Weiwei, imprisoned by the Chinese government. From TFA:

Ai Weiwei has been living in our future. His movements are restricted and he is structurally being watched by the government. He lives in a world without privacy. A world without privacy is a world without freedom.

https://medium.com/@hansdezwart/ai-weiwei-is-living-in-our-future-474e5dd15e4f

AnonTechie writes:

Nearly all of the roughly US$370 million in bitcoin that disappeared in the February 2014 collapse of Mt. Gox probably vanished due to fraudulent transactions, with only 1 percent taken by hackers, according to a report in Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, citing sources close to a Tokyo police probe.

Of the 650,000 bitcoins unaccounted for — worth about US$208 million today — only about 7,000 appear to have been purloined by hackers, the newspaper reported on New Year's Day, adding that investigators have yet to identify who was responsible.

That conflicts with the explanation by Mt. Gox, which blamed a bug in the Bitcoin system when it filed for bankruptcy on Feb. 28.

"We believe that there is a high probability that these bitcoins were stolen as a result of an abuse of this bug," Mt. Gox said in a statement on its website that day ( https://www.mtgox.com/img/pdf/20140228-announcement_eng.pdf ), which suggested "a variety of causes including hacking by third parties."

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2863167/police-blame-fraud-for-most-of-mt-goxs-missing-bitcoins.html

GreatAuntAnesthesia writes:

This vintage half-hour special of the BBC's "Tomorrow's World", first aired in 1987, looks at manned space exploration in the wake of the Challenger disaster, the context of the then still-present Soviet Space program and space race, and of course the technology of the time. Tomorrow's World was a much-loved and respected science and technology television series that ran for almost 40 years, which will be fondly remembered by Brit Soylentils of a certain generation.

Early plans for the ISS (referred to throughout as "the American Space Station") focus on the manufacturing of drugs and microchips in freefall, and political concerns about the militarisation of space. Plans for European and Soviet shuttle-like vehicles are compared. Mention is made of the Challenger investigation and the technical (but not the managerial) failures and solutions. Bold predictions about pre-millenial Mars missions are bandied about and big, chunky mid-80s sweaters are worn. If hindsight makes parts of this video seem politically or technologically naive, that only adds to the fascination of this window into an optimistic, turbulent and pivotal era in manned spaceflight.

[Note: This link is to the BBC iplayer. This may present some not-insurmountable obstacles for those of you who are outside the UK and/or opposed to DRM.]

Teckla writes:

SSH is a great tool many people are familiar with, but many more people aren't. Even if you use ssh daily, Why aren’t we using SSH for everything? is a great introduction to many things ssh does now, and what it could be used for in the future. One humble example is an ssh-chat server. The icing on the cake? The source for ssh-chat is open.

cmn32480 writes:

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google Fiber has filed a letter with the FCC. The letter highlights a significant positive if broadband providers are to be regulated under Title II as a Telecom company. The benefit for them is that as a regulated Telecom, they can no longer be denied access to the poles, conduits, and rights of way that other utility providers (Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc.) have access to. This would result in more than just cost savings (poles are cheaper than trenches), it should also give Google the ability to have a larger footprint faster.

I understand the upside to Google, what is the downside?

Hairyfeet writes:

It looks like Netmarketshare jumped the gun when they said Windows 8.x had overtaken XP, because apparently their figures had Windows 8.x losing 7 points in a single month... to Windows NT. After those figures were pulled the latest numbers have Windows 8.x nearly 6% behind XP.

Does this change your view of Windows 8? Are you or your company going to deploy Windows 8, or wait for Windows 10? How many of you still have XP running in the field?

yarp writes:

The Guardian is reporting that the US government seems convinced of North Korean involvement in the recent Sony hacks, and has today imposed further sanctions against the country.

Despite some continued claims from outside the US government that the hack may have been the work of disgruntled employees instead, the White House on Friday followed through on its threat to seek revenge, blaming the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea for “provocative, destabilizing, and repressive actions and policies, particularly its destructive and coercive cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment”.

Scott Borg writing for CNBC has some alternative theories:

North Korea regularly carries out cyber attacks, but these attacks have always been relatively crude. Groups that monitor North Korea's cyber activities have never seen any sign that North Korea is currently a serious cyber threat or on the verge of becoming one.

The cyber attacks carried out against Sony required a much higher level of skill than North Korea could manage as recently as last spring.

[...] Here are some of the possibilities:

1) A criminal enterprise, perhaps ethnically Russian, that wants to confuse anyone investigating its extortion attempt by dragging in North Korea.
2) A group of criminal cyber attackers, perhaps South Korean, who have been mistaken for North Korea, because they simply used some of the same generally available attack tools and servers that North Korea would have used.
3) Ideologically-motivated hackers in Western countries who hate Sony and feel a common cause with anyone else who is Sony's enemy, including North Korea.
4) Former employees who want to hurt Sony and who figured they could add to Sony's woes by stirring up a conflict between Sony and a foreign government, such as North Korea.
5) Any group that wants the United States to take a harder line with North Korea, including many South Koreans, Japanese, and others in East and Southeast Asia.

Borg concludes the article:

The list of possibilities grows larger, the more you think about it. Even more possibilities emerge when you consider that different groups could have cooperated in the attacks, and that the same attackers might have had more than one motive.

Does this make the proposals in the media for making North Korea pay for these attacks sound more than a little naïve? Welcome to the world of cyber conflict! We all better get used to it, because this is what faces us in the year ahead.

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.