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Hugh Pickens writes:

Neil Irwin writes at the NYT that financially literate people like to complain that buying lottery tickets is among the silliest decisions a person could make but there are a couple of dimensions that these tut-tutted warnings miss, perhaps fueled by a class divide between those who commonly buy lottery tickets and those who choose to throw away money on other things like expensive wine or mansions. According to Irwin, as long as you think about the purchase of lottery tickets the right way — purely a consumption good, not an investment — it can be a completely rational decision. "Fantasizing about what you would do if you suddenly encountered great wealth is fun, and it is more fun if there some chance, however minuscule, that it could happen," says Irwin. "The $2 price for a ticket is a relatively small one to pay for the enjoyment of thinking through how you might organize your life differently if you had all those millions."

Right now the Multi-State Lottery Association estimates the chances of winning the grand prize at about 1 in 175 million, and the cash value of the prize at $337.8 million. The simplest math points to that $2 ticket having an expected value of about $1.93 so while you are still throwing away money when buying a lottery ticket, you are throwing away less in strictly economic terms when you buy into an unusually large Powerball jackpot. "I am the type of financial decision-maker who tracks bond and currency markets and builds elaborate spreadsheets to simulate outcomes of various retirement savings strategies," says Irwin. "I can easily afford to spend a few dollars on a Powerball ticket. Time to head to the convenience store and do just that."

Appalbarry writes:

Thanks to lead from WAT HiFi, I found an fascinating article that compares various storage media - HDD, SSD, RAID - and how that choice affects playback of audio. If you're an audiophile like me, you'll want to read this.

I'd love to hear from other fans of ultra high-end audio with their experiences.

The SSD initially seemed to have an advantage, but we had walked into a trap. While it seemed to have higher definition, sounding more evenly tempered, sophisticated, certainly a little clearer and also somehow more vitally connected, there was also an slightly foreign processed quality, almost a coloration – not quite a 'glare' but more as if the lights at the recording venue had been turned up a little too much. Direct comparison with the HDD version showed that the SSD's subtle 'halo' effect was indeed less natural. And the HDD version has a clear advantage on one aspect of sound quality: music flowed a little better and timing was superior too, with more natural dynamic expression. So despite the SSD's advantage in clarity and audible sophistication, in the end we considered that the hard disk version beat the SSD by about 13%...

Of course, much also depends on your choice of Cable Elevators.

otherwhere writes:

NASA announced its plan for a policy ensuring public access to articles and data resulting from the approximately $3 billion it invests annually in basic and applied research. Actually, almost exactly like the NIH -- within 12 months and in PubMed.

The provisions of NASA’s policy on articles track with those in the current NIH Public Access policy, and will require NASA-funded researchers to deposit articles into the PubMed Central database, to be made accessible with no more than than a 12 month embargo. However, the NASA plan notes that, “publishers may petition for longer embargo periods, but strong evidence of the benefits would be needed.” This language is notable, as it seems to suggest that any determination of changes in embargo length will be measured against the public good, rather than specific industry concerns.

Original NASA PDF here.

Via techdirt.

monster writes:

In a top secret April 2013 internal memo, NSA officials warned that the aggresive and sophisticated cyberattack Iran faced from the West allowed it to improve its own capabilities by studying and then replicating the tactics involved.

As quoted from the document, "Iran, having been a victim of a similar cyber attack against its own oil industry in April 2012, has demonstrated a clear ability to learn from the capabilities and actions of others."

In an ironic twist, the same document suggests that offensive cyberattacks on other states do not merely provoke counter-attacks, but can also teach adversaries how to launch their own. Talk about "aiding the enemy"!

"gewg_" writes:

El Reg reports

The broadcaster flagged the demise of Windows Media last year, when it also announced Audio Factory, a streaming tool delivering audio in the AAC codec over http. Audio Factory aims to standardise Auntie's [the BBC's oft-use nickname in the UK] audio delivery practices and infrastructure.

[...]writes senior product [sic] manager Jim Simmons, [...] "we cannot afford to support every service on all the existing legacy formats", [...] "We are now retiring Windows Media. This already had low listener numbers and is not being supported by the wider industry."

How low? Between two and five per cent of listeners. The BBC tried to hang on to Windows Media for those who rely on it, but used the logic below to turn it off:

"Continuing to serve Windows Media is too expensive at a time when the BBC is facing significant cuts in its funding. It requires special infrastructure to serve it and the industry is moving away from providing it as an option.

We have explored the potential to set up an authentication process to provide downloads to these devices, in a way that would meet our rightsholder agreements, but this would also be complicated and expensive."

[...]The broadcaster is also ceasing SHOUTcast streams that use the AAC codec, replacing them with an MP3 version of the services.

As Roy Schestowitz has pointed out repeatedly at TechRights, there has been an incestuous revolving door thing going on between the Beeb and Microsoft, so this is a noteworthy step.

takyon writes:

Police in Australia have seized 3D-printed weapons after a raid in a suburb of Gold Coast City, Queensland. The haul included plastic knuckle dusters and what are suspected to be printed gun parts. If confirmed, the state's police force has said it would be the first time it had discovered 3D-printed firearm components in a home.

"We've obviously got to get it through our ballistic experts but we can identify most if not all of the major components of a weapon," detective inspector Scott Knowles of Queensland Police Service told ABC News following the arrest of a 28-year-old suspect in Mudgeeraba. He added that the owner of the printer thought to have been involved had given the machine to the suspect to be calibrated, and was not aware that it was going to be misused.

Last year, Australia's Senate held an inquiry into gun-related violence, during which there were calls for the country's laws to be updated to take account of new technologies. However, DI Knowles noted that Queensland's current laws were already adequate to prosecute a case if ballistics experts confirmed the 3D-printed parts involved were designed for use in firearms. "With weapons and parts manufactured this way still being classified as a firearm under current legislation, people can also see themselves before the courts for manufacturing and possessing these items" he said.

In 2013, the New South Wales police force released videos warning of the dangers of 3D-printed guns and depicting an exploding Liberator, while acknowledging that it is impossible to stop the proliferation of gun CAD files. Last year, Yoshitomo Imura was arrested in Japan and sentenced to two years of prison after posting a video showing himself firing a 3D-printed revolver of his own design.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

SpaceX is going soon to send spy satellites into orbit:

“Going forward, the Air Force will conduct competitions consistent with the emergence of multiple certified providers. Per the settlement, SpaceX will dismiss its claims relating to the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) block buy contract pending in the United States Court of Federal Claims.”

The settlement means that SpaceX will see an expansion of its private spaceflight program. The company has already managed to bag a contract from NASA for trips to International Space Station and the settlement means that it will now have the ability to launch surveillance satellites for the US.

sigma writes:

Several people have been warning users to avoid The Pirate Bay, due to CloudFlare integration and potential FBI IP bugs. There are even suggestions that the FBI has been involved in the site's somewhat mysterious rebirth.

Nobody knows who really runs The Pirate Bay, but the old moderation team were all removed as part of the relaunch. The Pirate Bay now allows people to 'report' malicious torrents instead of having a moderation team.

Some claim the FBI re-launched The Pirate Bay or had connections to the owners, implanting IP bugs on all torrent’s uploaded for investigation. The Pirate Bay has denied these accusations, claiming CloudFlare is only a temporary measure to help with the influx of traffic on the torrenting site.

CloudFlare is a cloud server provider, but is based in the US. Many privacy advocates claim CloudFlare is not a safe tool, due to the potential warrant-less searches from the FBI and other US agencies. On the topic of working with the FBI, The Pirate Bay has not responded, but TorrentFreak claims the accusations are "complete nonsense" but said that "general security concerns of using a US-based service are legitimate".

What does SoylentNews think? Is it wise to stay away?

tonyPick writes:

MIT Technology Review has a review of the book "The Powerhouse" by Steve Levine, which chronicles the story of Envia Systems.

Envia systems promised a breakthrough in battery technology, where a cell could "store twice as much energy as a conventional one", and quoted the head of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, Arun Majumdar:

The technology, however, turned out not to be practical and Envia couldn't reproduce the success it had with prototypes:

Although this article is nominally a review of the book, it summarizes the problems in development of this battery technology and provides extensive background links on Envia, and other battery technology efforts.

sigma writes:

Researchers from University College London and the Universities of Gdansk, Singapore, and Delft are suggesting that rather than being an immutable fundamental law, the second law of thermodynamics is more precisely a probability-driven process.

According to Science 20, "The researchers found that not only does the second law hold at such small scales, but there are actually many other second laws at work. In other words, just like larger systems, small systems also tend to become more disordered. But there are additional second laws which constrain the way in which disorder can increase."

http://www.science20.com/news_articles/the_second_law_of_thermodynamics_is_more_of_a_guideline_than_a_rule-153049

An Anonymous Coward writes:

My question is for the professional programmers. Can someone become a good programmer without going through formalized education, like college, or are self-taught programmers ineffective? I am going back and forth on whether it is worth the time investment in doing self-education. There are many open-source projects that could use help, and there is a trove of code from which to learn. As a professional, would you be excited or worried about working with self-taught talent?

martyb writes:

Exactly one year ago SoylentNews published its very first story: Welcome to SoylentNews!

And what a year it's been!

It all started with a posting at slashdot where an editor claimed they had "listened to their audience" about complaints about the new Beta version of the site that was being rolled out. Many noted that any changes were cosmetic — that it was the community that made that site what it was. And, in inimical nerd fashion, a "SlashCott" was scheduled from February 10-17 wherein the participants pledged to not visit /. for one whole week.

Others took a more active role. The source code for /. was originally made open source and was available on the internet. Sadly, that code had not been maintained and was several years out of date. Some intrepid souls labored long and hard to locate servers, coordinate activities, and get the code knocked into shape. The goal was to create an alternative site that was free from the manipulations of a corporate overlord.

That first story signified a major accomplishment, but the site was still unstable and many features were incomplete, non-functional, or just plain ugly. Many more days of implementation, debugging, and testing were to follow culminating with SN going live to the world on February 17, 2014: Welcome to the World of Tomorrow... Today!.

Much has happened since that nascent story first graced the 'net. There have been changes in our all-volunteer staff. We had votes for the name of the site. We implemented UTF-8 support so stories and comments can include any valid character. We incorporated as a Public Benefit Corporation — on USA's Independence Day no less! We have an on-line store where you can buy SoylentNews Swag. You can subscribe and help support our site.

By the numbers: Over 5000 accounts have been registered and nearly 5000 stories have been posted to the site. Each story is read from 500-2000 times by logged-in users, and approximately 10 times as many Anonymous Cowards. More importantly, nearly 150,000 comments have been posted by you, our community.

Today, we have a small but dedicated group of volunteers who keep the site running. They keep the OS up-to-date on our servers, maintain our Wiki, e-mail, and IRC channels. They add features and fix bugs in the SN code base. Others edit and publish stories to appear on the site. We have a Board of Directors who take care of the legal sides of things. A treasurer who follows the finances. And there are still others who help in a non-technical, but just as necessary capacity in keeping the site humming along.

So, hats off to all who have helped build this site to what it is today!

McD writes:

Martin Brinkmann at ghacks.net reports that Mozilla has decided to change tack in combating malicious add-ons. As blacklisting bad Firefox add-ons becomes unworkable, they will switch to a whitelist model this year — enforced with code signing.

The system Mozilla describes revolves around add-ons that Mozilla will sign. Walled gardens are nice, but they're still prisons — so will the Mozilla code signing system allow us to whitelist add-ons signed by other authorities we trust besides them? Only this vague statement offers any clue:

For extensions that will never be publicly distributed and will never leave an internal network, there will be a third option. We’ll have more details available on this in the near future.

As always, it's all about who controls the keys. Here's hoping Mozilla includes a mechanism that respects the freedom to trust someone other than them.

LancePodstrong writes:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-10/drillers-take-second-crack-at-fracking-wells-to-cut-cost-energy

Beset by falling prices, the oil industry is looking at about 50,000 existing wells in the U.S. that may be candidates for a second wave of fracking, using techniques that didn’t exist when they were first drilled.

New wells can cost as much as $8 million, while re-fracking costs about $2 million, significant savings when the price of crude is hovering close to $50 a barrel, according to Halliburton Co., the world’s biggest provider of hydraulic fracturing services.

While re-fracking offered mixed results in the past, earning it the nickname “pump and pray,” the oil crash is forcing companies to pursue new technologies to produce oil more cheaply. Analyzing reams of data from older wells has become a key piece of the puzzle, identifying the best candidates for re-fracking instead of picking them simply at random, said Hans-Christian Freitag, vice president of integrated technology at Baker Hughes Inc.

Samsung allegedly inserts ads into locally stored/played movies

q.kontinuum was the first to notify us:

This article claims that Samsung smart TVs will insert advertisements when watching locally stored movies. I'd like to make some snide remarks about it, but to be honest, I'm speechless.

Samsung Smart TVs Stuffing In Pop-Up Ads

An Anonymous Coward then wrote in with some more information:

A number of owners of Samsung’s smart TVs are reporting this week that their TV sets started to interrupt their movie viewing with Pepsi ads, which seem to be dynamically inserted into third-party content.

Reports for the unwelcome ad interruption first surfaced on a Subreddit dedicated to Plex, the media center app that is available on a variety of connected devices, including Samsung smart TVs. Plex users typically use the app to stream local content from their computer or a network-attached storage drive to their TV, which is why many were very surprised to see an online video ad being inserted into their videos. A Plex spokesperson assured me that the company has nothing to do with the ad in question.

However, it looks like the Pepsi ad isn’t just making an appearance within Plex. Subscribers of Australia’s Foxtel TV service are reporting that streams watched through the Foxtel app on Samsung TVs have been interrupted by the same commercial.

http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-tv-pop-up-ads-2014-1?IR=T
https://gigaom.com/2015/02/10/samsung-tvs-start-inserting-ads-into-your-movies/

http://community.foxtel.com.au/t5/Technical-Support/Foxtel-on-Samsung-Smart-TV-plays-Pepsi-ad-after-15-minutes-WTF/m-p/44149
http://community.foxtel.com.au/t5/Foxtel-Play/Ads-in-the-middle-of-Foxtel-Play-streaming/m-p/44116#M2032

tonyPick writes:

Medium has an article on the two definitions of the Big Bang, and the two differing definitions cosmologists have for this event, one of which is no longer considered accurate.

This article seems to be in response to the recent news articles based around the model which suggests that quantum equations predict the universe has no beginning, and gives some context to the arguments and terminology.

Originally spotted over at Science Blogs