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EQ writes:

This looks like more patent warfare between big companies—Microsoft is suing Kyocera in Washington District court for patent infringement. Why should we be concerned? Apparently it involves Android, and they are requesting an injunction against the sale and import of the phones.

From the article:

"We respect Kyocera but we believe they need to license the patented technology they are using. We're hopeful this case can be resolved amicably," said Microsoft deputy general counsel David Howard in a statement. Kyocera's phones run on the Android operating system, developed by Google Inc. In its lawsuit, Microsoft accuses Kyocera of using patented technology including location services and text messaging. The case in U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington is Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC vs. Kyocera and Kyocera Communications Inc., 15-346.

Reuters has a brief summary posted.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Jonathon Mahler writes in the NYT that in much the same way that Facebook swept through the dorm rooms of America’s college students a decade ago, the social app Yik Yak, which shows anonymous messages from users within a 1.5-mile radius is now taking college campuses by storm. "Think of it as a virtual community bulletin board — or maybe a virtual bathroom wall at the student union," writes Mahler. "It has become the go-to social feed for college students across the country to commiserate about finals, to find a party or to crack a joke about a rival school." And while much of the chatter is harmless, some of it is not. “Yik Yak is the Wild West of anonymous social apps,” says Danielle Keats Citron. “It is being increasingly used by young people in a really intimidating and destructive way.” Since the app’s introduction a little more than a year ago, Yik Yak has been used to issue threats of mass violence on more than a dozen college campuses, including the University of North Carolina, Michigan State University and Penn State. Racist, homophobic and misogynist “yaks” have generated controversy at many more, among them Clemson, Emory, Colgate and the University of Texas. At Kenyon College, a “yakker” proposed a gang rape at the school’s women’s center.

Colleges are largely powerless to deal with the havoc Yik Yak is wreaking. The app’s privacy policy prevents schools from identifying users without a subpoena, court order or search warrant, or an emergency request from a law-enforcement official with a compelling claim of imminent harm. Esha Bhandari, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, argues that "banning Yik Yak on campuses might be unconstitutional," especially at public universities or private colleges in California where the so-called Leonard Law protects free speech. She said it would be like banning all bulletin boards in a school just because someone posted a racist comment on one of the boards. In one sense, the problem with Yik Yak is a familiar one. Anyone who has browsed the comments of an Internet post is familiar with the sorts of intolerant, impulsive rhetoric that the cover of anonymity tends to invite. But Yik Yak’s particular design can produce especially harmful consequences, its critics say. “It’s a problem with the Internet culture in general, but when you add this hyper-local dimension to it, it takes on a more disturbing dimension,” says Elias Aboujaoude.” “You don’t know where the aggression is coming from, but you know it’s very close to you.”

fliptop writes:

Gigaom, the influential technology website founded by Om Malik nearly a decade ago, is no more. Although Monday saw a lot of new content on the site, including a flood of news and analysis from Apple's event, the site's management ended the day at 5.57PM PT by posting a message notifying readers that "all operations have ceased" as a result of the company becoming unable to pay its creditors.

Gigaom recently became unable to pay its creditors in full at this time. As a result, the company is working with its creditors that have rights to all of the company’s assets as their collateral. All operations have ceased. We do not know at this time what the lenders intend to do with the assets or if there will be any future operations using those assets. The company does not currently intend to file bankruptcy. We would like to take a moment and thank our readers and our community for supporting us all along.

Original story spotted on TheVerge.

Fauxlosopher writes:

The American University Law Review has published an article by Christopher A. Rogers entitled "A Slow March Towards Thought Crime: How the Department of Homeland Security’s FAST Program Violates the Fourth Amendment":

The Future Attribute Screening Technology ("FAST"), currently being tested by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), employs a variety of sensor suites to scan a person's vital signs, and based on those readings, to determine whether the scanned person has "malintent"—the intent to commit a crime. [...] the system is capable of detecting an enormous amount of the scannee's highly sensitive personal medical information, ranging from detection of arrhythmias and cardiovascular disease, to asthma and respiratory failures, physiological abnormalities, psychiatric conditions, or even a woman's stage in her ovulation cycle. This personal information warrants heightened protection under the Fourth Amendment.

A PDF of the full paper is available here.

Youtube has an example of what such testing might look like, sourced from a TSA promotional video.

danomac writes:

Maxis Emeryville, the California-based video game studio, was closed down by publisher Electronic Arts (EA) on March 4, 2015.

This means the end of an era, as the studio is known for making the SimCity and Sims series of games. EA stated that they are consolidating Maxis development into their existing studios. However, EA may be redefining 'consolidation' as a former staff member mentioned everyone was let go.

EA has been criticized in the past for its handling of Maxis titles, perhaps most notably the SimCity 2013 launch fiasco.

DECbot writes:

The Ars reports of a new hardware vulnerability uncovered as part of Google's Project Zero.

Given that this is a hardware hack, it's likely vulnerability for Windows and Mac systems as well and the likely patch is new hardware with ECC or the upcoming DDR4.

takyon writes:

Warren Buffett recently celebrated his 50th anniversary as Chairman, President, and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway with a 50th letter to shareholders. Buffett claims to consistently outperform the market by picking undervalued stocks. Tim Worstall examines the "secret" of Buffett's success, and concludes that Buffett's insurance operations and ability to borrow money at below the market rate are key.

His financing costs from that float are not zero, but they are below market. Thus his returns, even if his investment performance only matches the market (ie, he's not in fact beating the market over the decades in violation of the efficient-market hypothesis) will be above market.

Buffett has always said that he's just following the investment precepts of a bloke called Benjamin Graham. And there's very definitely an element of that in his performance. He really is a good stock-picker and there's absolutely no doubt that he would be a very rich man today after his stock-picking of the past 50 years. However, what has vaulted him into the stratosphere of, in various years, vying with Carlos Slim and Bill Gates for richest man alive is the other side of the business. Buy an insurance company (and then many more such insurance companies) in mildly uncompetitive markets and then invest the float. That way you get both leverage and below market financing costs.

It is extremely clever, there's no doubt about it, but it's not necessarily a performance that is replicable. Why? Simply because all too many people now know how it was done and thus insurance companies tend not to be cheap enough to make it work these days.

isostatic writes:

Apple have finally gone ahead and launched their iWatch. Critics will point to alternatives that are better and cheaper, but will apple be able to create the market as they did with the mp3 player, smart phone, and tablet? Or will it suffer with No wireless, less space than a nomad. Lame.

BBC reports prices starting at $349, and will go on sale on 24 April.

Apple have also released a new macbook air, with a single "USB-C" port to handle power, data, video etc.

tftp writes:

A few days ago SN saw the news that one of Russian politicians was killed. All kinds of wild theories instantly emerged. Perhaps it will be equally interesting to the SN community that the killers have been found, arrested, and are already confessing. Here is the essential part of the article:

The crime [presumably] was committed by several people. Total of five suspects have been arrested; one more suspect (Beslan Shavanov) refused to surrender, threw one grenade at the police, and blew himself up with another. One suspect, Zaur Dudaev, has already confessed.

All suspects appear to be Chechens. The President of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, personally knew two of them. He said that both were brave warriors. He also said that Zaur Dudaev left the service under unclear circumstances, and that is being looked into. Another suspect that he knew personally was the one who killed himself.

The police disclosed that the crime was poorly executed; that allowed to identify the perpetrators within a day. Criminals failed to burn the getaway car; as result, they left DNA and other evidence in it. The car was traced throughout the city by the network of traffic cameras, and that allowed the police to quickly identify the perpetrators. At least that's how it appears to be for the moment. The suspects ran a low key criminal gang in Moscow that specialized in extortion. If their motive was indeed religious, that would make it a copycat crime that is inspired by killings in Paris.

AnonTechie writes:

Massachusetts' ban on the private possession of stun guns—an "electrical weapon" under the statute—does not violate the Second Amendment right to bear arms, the state's top court has ruled.

The decision says ( http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/stungunMA-ruling.pdf ) (PDF) that the US Constitution's framers never envisioned the modern stun-gun device, first patented in 1972. The top court said stun guns are not suitable for military use, and that it did not matter whether state lawmakers have approved the possession of handguns outside the home.

The court, ruling in the case of a Massachusetts woman caught with stun gun, said the stun gun is a "thoroughly modern invention" not protected by the Second Amendment, although handguns are protected.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/you-have-the-right-to-bear-arms-not-electrical-arms-court-declares/

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Page title says it all; Lockheed Martin claims that sustainable fusion is within its grasp. Sure it's still "5 years out" - but "commercial within 10" is starting to sound like something I haven't heard before. From the article:

It sounds like science fiction, but it's not. However, it is being built by a group of scientists and engineers in a place that's legendary for doing what was thought to be impossible in a remarkably short amount of time. This place, which is part of Lockheed Martin's aeronautics business, is popularly known as the Skunk Works.

Also, a hat tip to the most entertaining source of news for Nerds, Scott Adams' Blog.

fleg writes:

The Guardian is reporting on a 2010 art project by Berlin-based artist Aram Bartholl that isn't always perhaps what he intended...

His Dead Drops involve people hiding USB flash drives in cities around the world and embedding them into walls, fences and kerbs. The idea is that you look up their location, access the drive, and do what you see fit with the files – add your own, remove or copy them over.

[...] In February, a German journalist discovered plans for a bomb uploaded to one dead drop in Cologne, along with guides to producing crystal meth, and recipes for various deadly poisons. It’s like a modern version of the Anarchist Cookbook, a collection of forbidden knowledge passed around through underground networks for the better part of 50 years, and while the dead-drop upload seems to have been as much a political act as an attempt to share bomb-creation tips, it was enough to get the police involved.

The site's faq does at least say...

In general everybody is responsible for the security of their computers and systems. Is the Internet a safe place?!? Malicious code for USB flash drives is a problem in general. They could (and will) be misused for malicious software. Be aware of that! Secure your system! Boot a virtual machine! Or ask your friend to go first ;-)

tonyPick writes:

Last Week's The Amp Hour podcast has a fascinating interview with Colin O'Flynn, creator of the ChipWhisperer, an open source software and hardware platform which is designed to evaluate side channel attacks on cryptographic hardware using power supply analysis and clock glitching.

There's additional background in this 2 minute introduction, a Black Hat presentation, coverage of the Chip Whisperer at Hackaday, and Colin has a Kickstarter for a low cost version of the platform.

From the Kickstarter:

The objective of ChipWhisperer is nothing short of revolutionizing the entire embedded security industry. Every designer who uses encryption in their design should be able to perform a side-channel attack, and understand the ramifications of these attacks on their designs. The open-source nature of the ChipWhisperer makes this possible, and my hope is that it becomes the start of a new era of hardware security research.

Hugh Pickens writes:

We previously reported on the parents in Maryland who were being investigated for neglect after letting their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter make a one-mile walk home from a Silver Spring park on Georgia Avenue on a Saturday afternoon. Now the Washington Post that after a two-month investigation the Montgomery County Child Protective Services has found the parents responsible for “unsubstantiated” child neglect in a decision that has not fully resolved their clash with authorities over questions of parenting and children’s safety. "I think what CPS considered neglect, we felt was an essential part of growing up and maturing," said Alexander Meitiv. "We feel we're being bullied into a point of view about child-rearing that we strongly disagree with."

The finding of unsubstantiated child neglect means CPS will keep a file on the family for at least five years and leaves open the question of what would happen if the Meitiv children get reported again for walking without adult supervision. The parents say they will continue to allow their son, Rafi, 10, and daughter Dvora, 6, to play or walk together, and won’t be swayed by the CPS finding. “We don’t feel it was appropriate for an investigation to start, much less conclude that we are responsible for some form of child neglect,” says Danielle Meitiv, who said she and her husband plan to appeal and worry about being investigated again by CPS. “What will happen next time? We don’t know if we will get caught in this Kafkaesque loop again.” Asked how authorities would respond if the children were reported again for walking unsupervised, Paula Tolson, spokeswoman for the Maryland Department of Human Resources, said CPS would become involved if a complaint was made about the safety of the children. In such cases, “if we get a call from law enforcement or from a citizen, we are required to investigate. Our goal is the safety of children, always.”

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

Forbes is running an interesting if sparse on detail story questioning whether the Higgs boson decays into dark matter and a photon.

The scientists who discovered the Higgs boson, the so-called God Particle, have set their sights on even bigger prey – dark matter.

The Atlas and CMS teams at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are investigating a hypothesis that the Higgs boson itself might decay into the mysterious particles thought to make up 80 per cent of the stuff in the universe.

This would be a dramatic departure from the Standard Model developed in the 1970s, which predicted a sub-atomic “particle zoo”. Since the discovery of the Higgs three years ago, that menagerie has been complete.

But while the Standard Model has been tremendously successful, it does not explain the gravitational force that keeps galaxies from flying apart.

There’s also the problem that the Higgs has a relatively low mass, quadrillions of times less than seemed natural to some researchers.

Should be an interesting year in physics.