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Fluffeh writes:

Two weeks ago PayPal closed the account of cloud-storage service Mega, citing pressure from Visa and MasterCard. The ban has undoubtedly hurt Mega's business, and CEO Graham Gaylard is in Europe to discuss possible legal repercussions against a report that's partly responsible for the ban. From the TorrentFreak story:

Initially, taking legal action against NetNames for defamation was difficult, as UK law requires the complaining party to show economic damage. However, after the PayPal ban this shouldn’t be hard to do.

“Mega has been operating, and continues to operate, a completely legitimate and transparent business. Unfortunately now, with the blatant, obvious, political pressure and industry lobbying against Mega, Mega needs to defend itself and will now cease taking a passive stance,” Gaylard says.

el_oscuro writes:

According to ABC News , U.S. News & World Report , and a bunch of other websites, the US Department of State has been hacked again, or never was unhacked.

"The State Department shut down large parts of its unclassified email system today in a final attempt to rid it of malware believed to have been inserted by Russian hackers in what has become one of the most serious cyber intrusions in the department’s history, U.S. officials told ABC News."

"The outage could last though the weekend, according to officials. But as of now there is no time limit and no real indication of when the system will be back online."

tynin writes:

The sun’s corona will be visible around the moon when the total solar eclipse peaks on the morning of March 20th. The best view of the event will be from the Atlantic Ocean near Greenland, just off southeast Iceland, and into the northern parts of Siberia. However, those living in Europe, Northern Africa, and Western Asia will be able to partially view the eclipse.

The path of the eclipse is displayed in greater detail on a Google Map. (Needs javascript enabled)

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A 21-year-old man in South Africa has received the world’s first successful penis transplant and accepts the organ as his own, doctors said on Friday.

The operation took a team of surgeons nine hours and has allowed the patient to become sexually active.

The man’s penis was amputated three years ago after a circumcision went wrong at a traditional initiation ceremony. The patient, who has not been named, received the new organ from a deceased donor on 11 December and has regained all functions.

Professor Andre van der Merwe, head of the urology division at Stellenbosch University, whose staff carried out the operation at Tygerberg hospital in Cape Town, said the recipient is doing “extremely well” both physically and psychologically.

“The patient accepted the penis as his own,” he told the eNews Channel Africa (eNCA). “He told me in no uncertain terms that the fact it belonged to somebody else is completely out of his mind and he’s moved on with this as his own penis. That’s absolutely the way we want it.”

Source:The Guardian

Maximum Trolling! writes:

Wired's Parker Higgins writes:

Tor users started reporting last week that they are being prompted more frequently than ever for a phone number confirmation when creating a new Twitter account—or in some cases when using a long-standing account. This development is disastrous for the free speech the platform generally stands for, and will likely not curb the abuse for which it has come under fire.

Only Twitter can determine what the tell-tale indicators are and how they’re balanced; if the company considers Tor use a very strong indicator of bad behavior, then Tor users will be disproportionately targeted for measures like phone number checks. Unfortunately, that undermines the anonymity of the people who need it most, without necessarily providing protection for targets of harassment.

Abuse on Twitter comes from accounts using real names, and from accounts using pseudonyms. It comes from accounts with massive follower bases, and from so-called “egg” accounts that are freshly made. It can come from a user with a handful of sock puppets, or a small army of one troll’s dedicated fans. Very few of these categories rely on Tor for their trolling, and they’re not likely to be affected. But other people that rely on strong anonymity will.

Cracking down on anonymity tools may seem like something to do, but Twitter—and the other online platforms we count on—need to do better than just doing something.

ticho writes with an article from Discovery:

The idea to use lasers to turn brown eyes blue was born in an unlikely place: a dermatologist's office.

Driving home after having some pigment spots removed from his skin by laser, Gregg Homer wondered what would happen if you used a similar laser on the eyes.

[...] The original idea, that the frequency of the green laser is such that it passes straight through the cornea and is only absorbed by dark color, makes it "incredibly safe and incredibly differentiating," Homer said.

[...] The change isn't immediate; the laser is set at a low energy so that the blue eye is revealed over a couple of weeks.

While there have been no adverse effects in the 37 people who have had one eye treated in trials outside of the U.S., Homer said, it's too early to say for certain what long-term effects the procedure could have. Ophthalmologists say the primary health concern, at least theoretically, is glaucoma.

"Maybe you don't see it immediately, but 10 years down the road it could be a public health problem," Dr. Ivan Schwab, an ophthalmologist and clinical spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology and professor of ophthalmology at the University of California, Davis, told Discovery News.

Horse With Stripes writes with an article from Reuters:

International Business Machines Corp is considering adopting the underlying technology behind bitcoin, known as the "blockchain," to create a digital cash and payment system for major currencies, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The objective is to allow people to transfer cash or make payments instantaneously using this technology without a bank or clearing party involved, saving on transaction costs, [...] "When somebody wants to transact in the system, instead of you trying to acquire a bitcoin, you simply say, here are some U.S. dollars," [...] "It's sort of a bitcoin but without the bitcoin."

NotSanguine writes:

New research from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has identified what may be concentric "ripples" of stars that are part of the Milky Way, outside what has previously been considered to be the boundaries of our galaxy.

Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, researchers have established new boundaries for our home galaxy.

From the Phys.Org report on the findings:

The Milky Way galaxy is at least 50 percent larger than is commonly estimated, according to new findings that reveal that the galactic disk is contoured into several concentric ripples. The research, conducted by an international team led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Professor Heidi Jo Newberg, revisits astronomical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey which, in 2002, established the presence of a bulging ring of stars beyond the known plane of the Milky Way.

"In essence, what we found is that the disk of the Milky Way isn't just a disk of stars in a flat plane—it's corrugated," said Heidi Newberg, professor of physics, applied physics, and astronomy in the Rensselaer School of Science. "As it radiates outward from the sun, we see at least four ripples in the disk of the Milky Way. While we can only look at part of the galaxy with this data, we assume that this pattern is going to be found throughout the disk."

Juan Fiero writes:

CBS News Reports:

A growing number of scientific studies is making it harder for researchers to keep track of all their content.

Attention decay in science [link to paper], a new paper published by professors from universities in Finland and California, reports that "the attention that can be devoted to individual papers measured by their citation counts, is bound to decay rapidly," due to the overwhelming number of studies.

The research suggests that the decay is accelerating in recent times, signaling that papers are forgotten more quickly. The study focused on scientific research but notes that the same concept can be applied to the internet and popular culture.

The conclusion states that due to the exponential growth of these publications scholars “forget” papers more easily now than in the past, sometimes making it harder to isolate the most relevant information.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Reuters reports that the United States has asked Vietnam to stop letting Russia use its former US base at Cam Ranh Bay to refuel nuclear-capable bombers which are engaged in shows of strength over the Asia-Pacific region. General Vincent Brooks, commander of the U.S. Army in the Pacific, says the Russian bombers have conducted "provocative" flights, including around the U.S. Pacific Ocean territory of Guam which is home to a major American air base. Brooks said the planes that circled Guam were refuelled by Russian tankers flying from the strategic bay, which was transformed by the Americans during the Vietnam War into a massive air and naval base. Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed that the airport at Cam Ranh Bay was first used for staging Il-78 tankers for aerial refueling of Tu-95MS bombers in January 2014. Asked about the Russian flights in the region, the State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Washington respected Hanoi's right to enter agreements with other countries but added that "we have urged Vietnamese officials to ensure that Russia is not able to use its access to Cam Ranh Bay to conduct activities that could raise tensions in the region."

Cam Ranh Bay is considered the finest deepwater shelter in Southeast Asia. North Vietnamese forces captured Cam Ranh Bay and all of its remaining facilities in 1975. Vietnam’s dependence on Russia as the main source of military platforms, equipment, and armaments has now put Hanoi in a difficult spot. Russia has pressed for special access to Cam Ranh Bay ever since it began delivering enhanced Kilo-class submarines to Vietnam. "Hanoi is invariably cautious and risk averse in its relations with the major powers," says Carl Thayer. "The current issue of Russian tankers staging out of Cam Ranh pits Russia and China on one side and the United States on the other. There is no easy solution for Vietnam."

Bringin' Home the Bacon writes:

Pornography, though prevalent in the modern world, still isn't the sort of thing one expects to see while waiting in traffic behind a cop car. That's especially true at the busiest downtown intersection of a wealthy Chicago suburb like Wheaton, Illinois (and by extension Fapp Circle) best known for being the home of an evangelical Christian college once attended by Billy Graham.

A citizen's angry complaint led to an internal forensic examination of the squad car's computer, and "25 pictures depicting nudity and/or graphic sexual activity" were subsequently found in unallocated hard drive space—suggesting that they had been deleted but not actually purged from the disk. This pattern of activity was so extensive that the Burr Ridge forensic analyst wrote, "The sheer volume of information discovered was too voluminous to include in this report. This report is a mere sample of the conduct and violations of Officer T. Sommerfield."

Technology didn't suddenly make porn in the patrol car possible, but it did make it far easier to access. Thanks to the Internet, the distance between idea and action has collapsed almost to nothing. Ruining your life, which used to take serious effort, can now be accomplished with one simple misclick, as with the Connecticut soccer coach who accidentally sent a smartphone video of himself masturbating to several members of his high school girls' soccer team, lost his job, and now faces criminal charges.

Officer Sommerfield's story shows just how the Internet's ease of access to pornography affected someone already suffering from other issues.

Big Bad Bhavneet writes with an article from Yahoo!:

An Indian bride walked out of her wedding ceremony after the groom failed to solve a simple math problem, police said Friday.

The bride tested the groom on his math skills and when he got the sum wrong, she walked out. The question she asked: How much is 15 plus six? His reply: 17.

[...] "The groom's family kept us in the dark about his poor education," said Mohar Singh, the bride's father. "Even a first grader can answer this."

[...] Most marriages in India are arranged by the families of the bride and groom. Except for brief meetings, the couple rarely gets to know each other before the nuptials.

Have any of my fellow SN readers rejected somebody or have been rejected from a relationship for lack of math skills? Comments and stories are welcome!

frojack writes:

Softpedia reports that Greg Kroah-Hartman officially announced the ninth Long Term Maintenance (aka Long Term Support) release of the Linux kernel 3.18 a few days ago, on March 7.

"Long Term" in the Linux world means that these kernels will be supported for two years. LTS kernels are important because they are often chosen for embedded devices (routers etc), as well as distros that focus on long lives, because LTS kernels represent islands of stability in a sea of near constant change. The designation is only bestowed on a few kernels, and generally signifies the end of development on that version.

3.18.9 isn't the latest kernel out there. Linux kernel 3.19.1 is already in development.

Kroah-Hartman said "All users of the 3.18 kernel series must upgrade." (The general advice is to wait till your Distro does that for you.) Most interpret Greg's pronouncement to mean this kernel will be be the only kernel maintained out the 3.18 line.

Linux kernel 3.18.9 includes updates for the ARM, ARM64, MIPS, PowerPC, s390, ARC, and x86 architectures, as well as numerous updated and new drivers for USB, Xen, SCSI, Wireless, etc. In addition, it also fixes some issues with the Btrfs, NFS, XFS, OCFS2, and JFFS2 file systems, and adds networking and sound enhancements.

ticho writes:

nodontdie.net runs an interview with Al Lowe, the guy who made Leisure Suit Larry games for Sierra. Interesting things are being talked about.

tonyPick writes:

Hackaday has an in-depth piece on the legal fight between Arduino (LLC) and Arduino (SRL), over the Arduino name and direction.

Although the Arduino has been in development since 2005, the company Arduino LLC was originally founded in 2009 by Gianluca Martino, Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, David Mellis and Tom Igoe, and runs arduino.cc.

Martino also founded the company "Smart Projects" as a manufacturer for Arduino hardware.

In 2014 Martino sold his shares in "Smart Projects", and Federico Musto was appointed CEO. At around this time the company changed name to Arduino SRL and registered the domain arduino.org.

This did not go down well, and lawsuits are in flight.

The story of the legal battle between the two companies had been featured in an earlier hackaday article, and there's alternative coverage at zdnet and I Programmer