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Hugh Pickens writes:

The NYT reports that Carnegie Mellon University just emailed 800 applicants to their graduate computer science program that they were accepted, only to email them later in the day to say, in effect: Oops, not really.

“It was heart-shattering. The hardest part for me was telling my family and friends that congratulated me on my acceptance that I was not,” said one 26-year-old applicant while another wrote on Facebook that in the hours between her Carnegie Mellon acceptance and rejection, she quit her job and her boyfriend proposed marriage, ending her post, “What do I do now?” Carnegie Mellon declined to comment beyond a prepared statement that acknowledged and apologized for the error. “When you’re a high-tech school like Carnegie Mellon or M.I.T., the egg on your face is that much worse,” said Anna Ivey. Carnegie Mellon’s statement struck some as falling far short of a real explanation. “This error was the result of serious mistakes in our process for generating acceptance letters," wrote Carnegie-Mellon.

Or in the words of Gilda Radner playing Emily Litella on “Saturday Night Live” - "Never mind."

AnonTechie writes:

Long the domain of science fiction, researchers are now working to create software that perfectly models human and animal brains. With an approach known as whole brain emulation (WBE), the idea is that if we can perfectly copy the functional structure of the brain, we will create software perfectly analogous to one. The upshot here is simple yet mind-boggling. Scientists hope to create software that could theoretically experience everything we experience: emotion, addiction, ambition, consciousness, and suffering.

“Right now in computer science, we make computer simulations of neural networks to figure out how the brain works," Anders Sandberg, a computational neuroscientist and research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, told Ars. "It seems possible that in a few decades we will take entire brains, scan them, turn them into computer code, and make simulations of everything going on in our brain.”

Everything. Of course, a perfect copy does not necessarily mean equivalent. Software is so… different. It's a tool that performs because we tell it to perform. It's difficult to imagine that we could imbue it with those same abilities that we believe make us human. To imagine our computers loving, hungering, and suffering probably feels a bit ridiculous. And some scientists would agree.

But there are others—scientists, futurists, the director of engineering at Google—who are working very seriously to make this happen.

In a recent article ( http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0952813X.2014.895113#.VNT3UkKmAwM [Signup Required]) in the Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, Sandberg dives into some of the ethical questions that would (or at least should) arise from successful whole brain emulation. The focus of his paper, he explained, is “What are we allowed to do to these simulated brains ?” If we create a WBE that perfectly models a brain, can it suffer ? Should we care ?

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/02/if-software-looks-like-a-brain-and-acts-like-a-brain-will-we-treat-it-like-one/1/
[Related]: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/22/robots-google-ray-kurzweil-terminator-singularity-artificial-intelligence

c0lo writes:

The Guardian reports:

Google is boldly opposing an attempt by the US Justice Department to expand federal powers to search and seize digital data, warning that the changes would open the door to US “government hacking of any facility” in the world.

In a strongly worded submission [PDF] to the Washington committee that is considering the proposed changes, Google says that increasing the FBI’s powers set out in search warrants would raise “monumental and highly complex constitutional, legal and geopolitical concerns that should be left to Congress to decide”.

...In particular, Google sounds the alarm over the FBI’s desire to “remotely” search computers that have concealed their location – either through encryption or by obscuring their IP addresses using anonymity services such as Tor. Those government searches, Google says, “may take place anywhere in the world. This concern is not theoretical. ... [T]he nature of today’s technology is such that warrants issued under the proposed amendment will in many cases end up authorizing the government to conduct searches outside the United States.”

(Apologies, I'd love to post excerpts from the "strongly worded submission", but the PDF is packing a scan of the hardcopy submission and I'm too lazy to either transcribe or fire an OCR for the job. Maybe you could commit the sin of reading TFA once in a while, makes an interesting reading: there's an example of a Texas judge having to deny a warrant to search a computer of unknown location because the IP pertained to a block assigned to a South-Asia country and lots of good argumentation why seizure of data on unknown location computers can easily amount to government hacking).

AnonTechie writes:

The radio frequency band that many NASA missions use to communicate with spacecraft — S-band — is getting a bit crowded and noisy, and likely to get more [congested] as science missions demand higher and higher data rates.

A team of NASA technologists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, just may have a solution, particularly for potential missions that plan to operate in low-Earth orbit and have limited real estate to accommodate communications gear.

Under two different research and development projects, technologists Mae Huang and Victor Marrero-Fontanez have collaborated to test and verify components of a prototype end-to-end Ka-band space communications system, which promises significantly higher data rates — a whopping 2.4 gigabits of data per second (Gbps) — over more traditional S-band systems, which theoretically could achieve data rates of 90 megabits of data per second (Mbps).

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-02/nsfc-ntd021715.php

frojack writes:

TheScientist has an article about a new form of Idea Exchange for scientists, that closely follows the process scientists use when they walk into a colleague's office to "bounce an idea off of him." Physicist David Harris hopes to provide a bulletin board for half-baked ideas for scientists in any field of inquiry.

“There is intellectual capital locked up in the heads of scientists rather than circulating in the scientific community,” said Harris. As a result, he added, “people often get similar ideas around about the same time, frantically work on it for quite a long time, put a lot of resources into it, without even necessarily knowing if there are other people doing the exact same thing.”

Harris developed a platform that enables researchers to publish their ideas online in real time, making them immediately available for public scrutiny.

The Journal of Brief Ideas, which launched in beta this month, is a citable online index of research articles that are 200 words or fewer. You can browse through half-baked brain belching of scientists all over the world for entertainment or to see if anyone else is working on something you are interested in.

• Antipsychotic drugs to control nematodes?
• Reanimation of Australian Megafauna?
• Crowd Funding Science?
• Does transpiration in hyperaccumulator Pteris vittata mediate arsenic translocation from the roots to fronds via xylem?

Yikes!

It remains to be seen whether this will attract actual usage, or whether it will be avoided like the plague by scientists working in a publish-or-perish environment.

tonyPick writes:

Spotted on HackerNews is a link to a report that Lenovo is installing adware onto new computers, which hijacks network traffic.

The adware, named Superfish, is reportedly installed on a number of Lenovo’s consumer laptops out of the box. The software injects third-party ads on Google searches and websites without the user’s permission.

Superfish appears to affect Internet Explorer and Google Chrome on these Lenovo computers.

Specifically it appears to be performing a MITM attack by pre-installing a proxy server and an associated root certificate.

The above article has been updated to note:

Update: Mozilla Firefox does not appear to be affected by the SSL man-in-the-middle issue, because it maintains its own certificate store.

Original HackerNews discussion thread, plus additional coverage at Techspot and ZDNet.

frojack writes:

EurekAlert (a news site operated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science) is running a story about a cheap source of solar cell materials made from chitin and chitosan, which is found in the shells of shrimp and other soft shelled sea animals.

Researchers used a process known as hydrothermal carbonization to create the carbon quantum dots (CQDs) from the widely and cheaply available chemicals found in crustacean shells. They then coat standard zinc oxide nanorods with the CQDs to make the solar cells.

Wiki says this about the process:

Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) is a new variation (biomass conversion) of an old field (biofuel) that has recently been further developed by workers in Germany. It involves moderate temperatures and pressures over an aqueous solution of biomass in a dilute acid for several hours. The resulting matter reportedly captures 100% of the carbon in a "biocoal" powder that could provide feedsource for soil amendment (similar to biochar) and further studies in economic nano-material production

This process was developed to better utilize brown coal (Lignite) which is common in Germany.

Currently quantum dots made from the shrimp shells suffer from low efficiency, but [the process] is incredibly cheap, and sustainable. Shrimp shells are cheap, and the shrimp are tasty, so its a win win solution for everyone but the shrimp.

The EurekAlert article is short on details because the research, done by Queen Mary University of London, is not yet published.

n1 writes:

Phys.org reports:

Cuba has temporarily reduced the hourly charge for using state-run Internet cafes in the country's first small but substantive public move to increase online access since the declaration of détente with the U.S.

Virtually all home Internet connections remain illegal and getting online at government centers remains prohibitively expensive, with the cheapest hour now costing roughly 10 percent of the average monthly salary of $20.

Users nonetheless hailed the decision to cut the rate by 50 percent until April 10 in state centers that previously charged $4.50 an hour. The promotion gives Cubans two hours and 16 minutes for $5.

"gewg_" writes:

The Center for American Progress reports

After years of political brinksmanship and parsimonious blame-gaming, the bankrupt solar panel manufacturer has been the poster child of clean energy failure since 2011. The news that [Elon Musk's] fast-growing solar provider SolarCity is moving into one of the company's former buildings [marks] a major step forward for both the solar company and the optics of the entire domestic industry.

Even though the Department of Energy's low-carbon technology loan program that backed Solyndra is expected to make taxpayers a $5 to $6 billion return over the course of the average 22-year loan lifecycle, the much-maligned solar manufacturing industry is still in the process of rehabilitating its public image after Solyndra failed to deliver on $500 million in taxpayer-backed loans.

[...]In September, SolarCity broke ground on a new one gigawatt manufacturing facility in New York where the company will also manufacture solar modules. SolarCity has become the nation's largest solar company that sells, installs, and leases solar systems.

Regarding the acquisition of the former Solyndra facility, SolarCity spokesman Jonathan Bass said that "in this particular case, the Silevo team is growing and need a larger space. We looked at a number of different buildings, this was available and suits our needs."

[...]Three months ago, SolarCity's management said it expects the company to install up to 1,000 megawatts of solar in 2015.

n1 writes:

Slate reports:

That misconduct happens isn’t shocking. What is: When the FDA finds scientific fraud or misconduct, the agency doesn’t notify the public, the medical establishment, or even the scientific community that the results of a medical experiment are not to be trusted. On the contrary. For more than a decade, the FDA has shown a pattern of burying the details of misconduct. As a result, nobody ever finds out which data is bogus, which experiments are tainted, and which drugs might be on the market under false pretenses. The FDA has repeatedly hidden evidence of scientific fraud not just from the public, but also from its most trusted scientific advisers, even as they were deciding whether or not a new drug should be allowed on the market. Even a congressional panel investigating a case of fraud regarding a dangerous drug couldn't get forthright answers. For an agency devoted to protecting the public from bogus medical science, the FDA seems to be spending an awful lot of effort protecting the perpetrators of bogus science from the public.

[...] We didn’t have to search very hard to find FDA burying evidence of research misconduct. Just look at any document related to an FDA inspection. [...] My students and I looked at FDA documents relating to roughly 600 clinical trials in which one of the researchers running the trial failed an FDA inspection. In only roughly 100 cases were we able to figure out which study, which drug, and which pharmaceutical company were involved.

n1 writes:

Forbes reports:

Samsung has promised that it would debut a mobile wallet service this year to compete with Apple Pay, Google Wallet, and others. Now, it has made it apparent how it will do that: by acquiring the U.S. mobile payments service LoopPay.

The two companies had been rumored in December to be in talks to incorporate LoopPay’s payment technology, which works in far more stores than Apple Pay and Google Wallet, into some Samsung phones.

Alternative sources: Ars Technica and CNET .

An Anonymous Coward writes with an article from The Register :

In November 2012 the Mozilla Foundation announced “Project Shumway”, an effort to create a “web-native runtime implementation of the SWF file format.”

Two-and-a-bit years, and a colossal number of Flash bugs later, Shumway has achieved an important milestone by appearing in a Firefox nightly, a step that suggests it's getting closer to inclusion in the browser.

Shumway's been available as a plugin for some time, and appears entirely capable of handling the SWF files.

Few average users know of Shumway's existence, never mind seek it out. So the inclusion of the software in Firefox's nightlies will give it greater exposure. For now the code can only play certain videos hosted on Amazon.com, but developers intend to expand the list of sites from which Shumway will play SWF files.

c0lo writes:

The Globe and Mail reports:

The RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] has labelled the “anti-petroleum” movement as a growing and violent threat to Canada’s security, [...] an RCMP intelligence assessment warns that foreign-funded groups are bent on blocking oil sands expansion and pipeline construction, and that the extremists in the movement are willing to resort to violence.

“There is a growing, highly organized and well-financed anti-Canada petroleum movement that consists of peaceful activists, militants and violent extremists who are opposed to society’s reliance on fossil fuels,” concludes the report which is stamped “protected/Canadian eyes only” and is dated Jan. 24, 2014. The report was obtained by Greenpeace.

[...] The government has tabled Bill C-51, which provides greater power to the security agencies to collect information on and disrupt the activities of suspected terrorist groups. [...] the legislation would also expand the ability of government agencies to infiltrate environmental groups on the suspicion that they are promoting civil disobedience or other criminal acts to oppose resource projects.

[...] RCMP spokesman Sergeant Greg Cox insisted the Mounties do not conduct surveillance unless there is suspicion of criminal conduct.

[...] But Sgt. Cox would not comment on the tone of the January, 2014, assessment that suggests opposition to resource development runs counter to Canada’s national interest and links groups such as Greenpeace, Tides Canada and the Sierra Club to growing militancy in the “anti-petroleum movement.”

The report extolls the value of the oil and gas sector to the Canadian economy, and adds that many environmentalists “claim” that climate change is the most serious global environmental threat, and “claim” it is a direct consequence of human activity and is “reportedly” linked to the use of fossil fuels.

[...] “This document identifies anyone who is concerned about climate change as a potential, if not actual – the lines are very blurry – ‘anti-petroleum extremist’ looking to advance their ‘anti-petroleum ideology,’” said Keith Stewart, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace.

The anti-terrorist laws are meant to make us safe and they'll never be abused; one has to be a crazed paranoid to think otherwise, right?

AnonTechie has a follow-up to the story we ran last week — HTTP/2 on its Way In, SPDY on its Way Out — with news from The Next Web that HTTP/2, the first major change to HTTP in 16 years, has been finalized:

Today, the next major version of HTTP took a big step toward becoming a reality; it’s been officially finalized and now moves towards being fully standardized. According to a blog by Mark Nottingham, the chair of the IETF HTTP Working Group, the standard was completed today and is on its way to the RFC Editor to go through editorial processes before being published as a standard.

HTTP/2 is a huge deal; it’s the next big version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, marking the largest change since 1999 when HTTP 1.1 was adopted.

The new standard brings a number of benefits to one of the Web’s core technologies, such as faster page loads, longer-lived connections, more items arriving sooner and server push. HTTP/2 uses the same HTTP APIs that developers are familiar with, but offers a number of new features they can adopt.

wirelessduck writes:

The Register reports: "Apple's bad hair day: Watch 'stripped' of health sensors":

Apple has ditched plans to make its new smart watch a health-monitoring device following problems with the technology and regulatory issues, according to reports.

Sources told The Wall Street Journal that some of the features were too complicated, while others would have prompted unwanted regulatory oversight. It said development of its health sensor technology has failed to meet standards, with inconsistency from sensor readings, arising from hairy arms or dry skin.

"Apple also experimented with ways to detect blood pressure or the amount of oxygen in the blood, but the results were inconsistent," said the paper.