SoylentNews

lhsi writes:

A review (full text) of injuries causing by using a Nintendo gaming system has found that most reported problems are mild (and don't happen too often considering the number of units sold). Different types of controllers were associated with different types of injuries.

tonyPick writes:

Spotted over on HackerNews is the announcement that the Rust programming language has made a 1.0 Alpha release.

For those of us following Rust this is a major milestone: the key part of this announcement is

The Rust programming language is developed by Mozilla, and:

The Rust homepage has an introduction to the language and download links, and the Hackernews discussion has some additional commentary.

lhsi writes:

The "weekend effect" is known in healthcare of increased mortality at weekends and bank holidays, with the assumption being that a decreased availability of trained healthcare professionals and deficits in the continuity of care were the cause.

New analysis published in The BMJ has found that this also effects palliative care (predominantly severely ill patients in far advanced stages of a disease, for whom prolongation of life is not a realistic treatment goal). Without a study, the authors offer no explanation for this correlation.

FakeBeldin writes:

As you perhaps have not heard, in Paris, France, there was a terrorist attack on the editorial board of "Charlie Hebdo", a french satirical magazine. Two brothers came in and fired Kalashnikovs, killing twelve and wounding eleven (four grievously). Europe was (and is) shocked, with spontaneous protest marches declaring "je suis Charlie" (I am Charlie) in most major European cities. A manhunt was started for the suspects, culminating the day after in two hostage situations in Paris, resulting in more deaths.

This has been conspicuously absent in the American technews sources I read. You may well argue that that's justified — after all, this is not technews. But in these same sites I have read about other terrorist attacks that involve Americans (9/11, Boston Marathon, Batman shooting, etc.). Case in point: SN itself had this news item U.S. Airstrikes Begin in Syria [against IS/ISIS/ISIL].

The Parisian shooting and subsequent hostage situation is more shocking to me (a European) than the Batman shooting or the Boston Marathon. I understand that for Americans this is different, which explains why sites with staff writers (e.g. Ars Technica) may decide to write about terror in the USA but not elsewhere. So, what about community-driven sites, such as SoylentNews? Is SN open to any such shocking news? Or only from selected areas*?

* I do wonder how little I hear about shocking terror attacks in India / China / Southeast Asia, and how much I care to read about them here on SN. Preliminary answer: yes.

[Editor's note: This submission was the first that I had heard of this. (First few days off after an arduous holiday season.) The story was accepted within 30 minutes of its being submitted. What may be common news in your area may not be as well-known elsewhere. As always, if there is a story that is important to you, please submit it. Although well-written and supported stories are ideal, we are able to fill in the blanks if you send us a link and a couple paragraphs. If the story is of a time-sensitive nature, start the headline with something to get the editor's attention; e.g. "BREAKING NEWS".]

frojack writes:

Believers of old folk wisdom now have scientific evidence to support the idea that cold weather or drafts makes people more susceptible to the common cold.

Yale News is reporting that a team of Yale researchers have published a report that lower temperature in the nasal cavity diminishes the body's immune response, reducing the ability to ward off rhinovirus.

They found that the innate immune response to the rhinovirus is impaired at the lower body temperature compared to the core body temperature. The reason for the impairment is the lower production of Type I Interferon in the cooler nasal cavities. Type I Interferon is a signaling agent to signal the body's antiviral immune responses. With reduced immune response the rhinovirus is more able to establish a foot hold.

The study abstract (paywalled) at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explains that rhinovirus, the most frequent cause of the common cold, replicate better at the cooler temperatures (33°C) found in the nasal cavity than at lung temperature (37°C), but previously the underlying mechanisms for this difference were not known. The principal discovery is the reduced interferon signaling at cooler nasal temperatures.

One would think that the Asian tradition of wearing surgical masks when they have a cold might be more effective if worn before they catch a cold.

mendax writes:

One wonders how long it took them to find the stones to do it but it seems to be happening. The New York Times is reporting that former general and C.I.A. Director David Petraeus is finally going to be prosecuted for leaking classified information to his mistress and biographer author Paula Broadwell while he was C.I.A. Director:

The F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors have recommended bringing felony charges against retired Gen. David H. Petraeus for providing classified information to his former mistress while he was director of the C.I.A., officials said, leaving Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to decide whether to seek an indictment that could send the pre-eminent military officer of his generation to prison.

The Justice Department investigation stems from an affair Mr. Petraeus had with Paula Broadwell, an Army Reserve officer who was writing his biography, and focuses on whether he gave her access to his C.I.A. email account and other highly classified information.

F.B.I. agents discovered classified documents on her computer after Mr. Petraeus resigned from the C.I.A. in 2012 when the affair became public.

Mr. Petraeus, a retired four-star general who served as commander of American forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan, has said he never provided classified information to Ms. Broadwell, and has indicated to the Justice Department that he has no interest in a plea deal that would spare him an embarrassing trial.

Now, if they would really man up and go after James Clapper for the shenanigans at the NSA and his lying to Congress.

ghost writes:

A new, portable version of OpenNTPD has just been released! "OpenNTPD is a FREE, secure, and easy to use implementation of the Network Time Protocol. It provides the ability to sync the local clock to remote NTP servers and can act as an NTP server itself, redistributing the local clock." Hopefully, nobody is still using NTPD, which suffers from multiple vulnerabilities.

lhsi writes:

Research into studies on insect herbivory in tropical regions has found that confirmation bias in non-blinded data collection may have lead to overestimation of the losses woody plan foliage (full text).

"gewg_" writes:

The United States Public Interest Research Group reports via Common Dreams

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has very quietly acknowledged that the Driving Boom is over, cutting its forecasted driving estimates by between 24 percent and 44 percent.

After many years of aggressively and inaccurately claiming that Americans would likely begin a new era of increased driving, the agency's latest forecast (PDF) finally recognizes that the Driving Boom has given way to decades of far slower growth. The amount that the average American drove actually declined nearly 9 percent between 2004 and 2014, resulting in about a half trillion fewer total miles driven in 2014 than if driving had continued to increase at earlier rates.

[...] the Department of Transportation (USDOT) had issued 61 driving forecasts in a row that overshot their mark.

[...] The baseline forecast of total driving miles shows an increase of only 0.75 percent annually during the period from 2012 to 2042, with population growth averaging 0.7 percent each year--thus leaving driving miles per-person essentially flat.

So, Soylentils, are you driving less? Planning trips better? Carpooling? Ride sharing? Taking public transit? Never did drive? Has the 'Net replaced a significant portion of your traveling? At what price did gasoline become too expensive for you?

lhsi writes:

A common complaint about waiting rooms in a general practice is that the magazines are often old and out of date. A study tracking both "gossipy" and "non-gossipy" magazines (full text) has found that the reason for this is more to do with the disappearance of newer magazines (more likely to be gossipy ones) than supply of older ones. While only one clinic was used in the study, a rate of magazine disappearance was noted as 1.32 per day.

AnonTechie writes:

For years, Chrome, Firefox, and virtually all other browsers have offered a setting that doesn't save or refer to website cookies, browsing history, or temporary files. Privacy-conscious people rely on it to help cloak their identities and prevent websites from tracking their previous steps. Now, a software consultant has devised a simple way websites can in many cases bypass these privacy modes unless users take special care.

Ironically, the chink that allows websites to uniquely track people's incognito browsing is a much-needed and relatively new security mechanism known as HTTP Strict Transport Security. Websites use it to ensure that an end user interacts with their servers only when using secure HTTPS connections. By appending a flag to the header a browser receives when making a request to a server, HSTS ensures that all later connections to a website are encrypted using one of the widely used HTTPS protocols. By requiring all subsequent connections to be encrypted, HSTS protects users against downgrade attacks, in which hackers convert an encrypted connection back into plain-text HTTP.

Sam Greenhalgh, a technology and software consultant who operates RadicalResearch, has figured out a way to turn this security feature into a potential privacy hazard. His proof of concept is known as HSTS Super Cookies.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/01/browsing-in-privacy-mode-super-cookies-can-track-you-anyway/

AnonTechie writes:

A man convicted of child porn possession has been fighting to reclaim his personal emails and photos from the government, but so far has been rebuffed by its claims that separating the good and bad files would be too difficult to pursue. A lower court agreed with the government's assessment of the situation, but this has now been overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

As the ruling [pdf link] notes, the lower court failed in its duty to shift the burden of proof from the convicted man to the government.

The panel held that the district court’s decision not to put the burden of proof on the government was legal error, where the defendant filed the Rule 41(g) motion after he pleaded guilty and the government no longer needed his property as evidence. The panel held that the government could not have carried its burden of proof had the district court correctly placed it on the government, where the government failed to submit any evidence of the difficulty and costs of segregating the defendant’s data, which it claimed was a legitimate reason for retention of the non-contraband files.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150103/12585929589/appeals-court-orders-government-to-return-non-child-porn-files-to-convicted-man.shtml

AnonTechie writes:

On Saturday, the Carolina Panthers and Seattle Seahawks will meet for a NFC divisional playoff [American-style football] game at CenturyLink Field in downtown Seattle. But while football fans across the country watch the showdown, a team of scientists from the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN) will be keeping an eye on a different part of the action — testing an earthquake early warning system with the (inadvertent) help of Seahawks fans.

Back in 2011, a stunning comeback by the Seahawks led to such raucous celebration by the fans in CenturyLink Field that a nearby earthquake sensor picked up on the vibrations caused by the stomping of elated fans. Quickly nicknamed the 'Beast Quake' researchers decided to install more sensors to see if they could capture the phenomenon again. With the new sensors active, last year they were able to monitor 'DanceQuakes' caused by fans dancing in between large plays.

http://www.popsci.com/scientists-set-monitor-seahawks-stadium-fan-quakes

AnonTechie writes:

The CBP's (Customs and Border Patrol) drone squadron has been a tightly-held secret. Documents have been pried loose by FOIA lawsuits, but it's pretty clear the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and the CBP would rather not discuss its flying surveillance technology. Not that the CBP drones are strictly for patrolling our nation's borders. They've been spotted far inland, being used by law enforcement agencies taking advantage of the CBP's drone lending library.

Finally, more details on the CBP's drones have made their way into the public domain, thanks to an Office of the Inspector General report. [https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1391066/oig-15-17-dec14.pdf (pdf link)] The information contained in this document points to two seeming contradictions, albeit the sort of contradictions often found in government agencies that run long on Congressional support but short on effective oversight.

They're expensive: "We estimate that, in fiscal year 2013, it cost at least $62.5 million to operate the program, or about $12,255 per hour."

And they're worthless: Given the cost of the Unmanned Aircraft System program and its unproven effectiveness, CBP should reconsider its plan to expand the program. The $443 million that CBP plans to spend on program expansion could be put to better use by investing in alternatives, such as manned aircraft and ground surveillance assets.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150106/18214929616/dhs-watchdog-says-border-patrols-drones-are-expensive-useless.shtml

AnonTechie writes:

Many cars now include cameras or other sensors that record the passing world and trigger intelligent behavior, such as automatic braking or steering to avoid an obstacle. Today’s systems are usually unable to tell the difference between a trash can and traffic cop standing next to it, though.

This week at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nvidia, a leading marking of computer graphics chips, unveiled a vehicle computer called the Drive PX ( http://www.nvidia.com/object/drive-px.html ) that could help cars interpret and react to the world around them.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533936/ces-2015-nvidia-demos-a-car-computer-trained-with-deep-learning/