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fleg wrote in to alert us that a Russian man volunteered to be the first complete head transplant subject to be performed by Dr. Sergio Canavero, of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group (TANG) in Italy. There are many articles reporting this news. We've even previously covered the plans. However, now there are also at least a couple of articles that report the procedure is an elaborate publicity stunt for the impending release of Metal Gear Solid 5.

The businessinsider.com article seems to best line out the many clues and linkings that this may be the case, not the least of which seems to be that the image of Dr. Canavero is used as the neurosurgeon in the game. Also possibly telling, the article states:

Hideo Kojima, who heads up the “Metal Gear Solid” franchise, tweeted about his next project in 2010: “The next project will challenge a certain type of taboo. If I mess up, I’ll probably have to leave the industry. However, I don’t want to pass by avoiding that. I turn 47 this year. It’s been 24 years since I started making games. Today, I got an ally who would happily support me in that risk. Although it’s just one person. For a start, it’s good.” This makes it sound like Kojima was able to persuade Dr. Canavero to join his venture — to help leverage his authority as a famous doctor and neurosurgeon to promote "Metal Gear Solid 5" with a viral marketing stunt.

[More...]

fleg writes:

The Guardian is reporting on a newly discovered bug in IOS which causes iDevices to continually crash and reboot.

Once the user has entered what its discoverer, security researchers Skycure, dubs the “no iOS Zone”, there’s no way to fix their phone other than escaping the range of the malicious network; every time it reboots, it crashes almost immediately.

The basis of the attack uses a “specially crafted SSL certificate”, typically used to ensure a secure connection, to trigger a bug in the operating system that crashes out any app using SSL.

More info on Skycure's blog.

rickatech writes:

With support from Google, Microsoft, Ping Identity, ForgeRock, Nomura Research Institute, and PayPal, OpenID Connect launched today.

OpenID Connect performs many of the same tasks as OpenID 2.0, but does so in a way that is API-friendly, and usable by native and mobile applications. OpenID Connect defines optional mechanisms for robust signing and encryption. Whereas integration of OAuth 1.0a and OpenID 2.0 required an extension, in OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0 capabilities are integrated with the protocol itself.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Newsmax reports that according to according to KRC Research about 64 percent of Americans familiar with Snowden hold a negative opinion of him. However 56 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 have a positive opinion of Snowden which contrasts sharply with older age cohorts. Among those aged 35-44, some 34 percent have positive attitudes toward him. For the 45-54 age cohort, the figure is 28 percent, and it drops to 26 percent among Americans over age 55, U.S. News reported. Americans overall say by plurality that Snowden has done “more to hurt” U.S. national security (43 percent) than help it (20 percent). A similar breakdown was seen with views on whether Snowden helped or hurt efforts to combat terrorism, though the numbers flip on whether his actions will lead to greater privacy protections. “The broad support for Edward Snowden among Millennials around the world should be a message to democratic countries that change is coming,” says Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “They are a generation of digital natives who don’t want government agencies tracking them online or collecting data about their phone calls.” Opinions of millennials are particularly significant in light of January 2015 findings by the U.S. Census Bureau that they are projected to surpass the baby-boom generation as the United States’ largest living generation this year.

Phoenix666 writes:

Researchers at University of California, San Diego have developed sensor-laden inks that can be drawn directly on the skin with a ballpoint pen:

They revealed that the main ingredients of these inks are the enzymes glucose oxidase, which responds to blood glucose, and tyrosinase, which responds to common pollutants known as phenols. To make these bio-inks serve as electrodes, they added electrically conductive graphite powder. They also added: chitosan, a clotting agent used in bandages, to help the ink stick to surfaces; xylitol, a sugar substitute, to help stabilize the enzymes during chemical reactions; and biocompatible polyethylene glycol, which is used in several drug delivery applications, to help bind all these ingredients together.

The scientists filled off-the-shelf ballpoint pens with their enzymatic inks. The pens could create a blood glucose sensor simply by drawing glucose-sensitive ink on a transparent, flexible strip that included an electrode. When a blood drop was placed on the sensor, the ink reacted with glucose in the blood and the sensor measured the reaction.

The inks can also be created to measure other chemicals.

It seems like a better solution than the epidermal implants from Cloud Atlas, as it's far more upgradeable.

fleg writes:

An interesting poll on climate change from Yale University has been released. This poll, based on data collected in the USA, shows a number of things, perhaps the most interesting being that people who believe in climate change themselves is 63%, whilst those who believe there is scientific consensus on it is 41%.

Data shows responses to a number of climate related questions at the national, state, congressional district and county level.

juggs writes:

Ripping a morsel of a meal from the talons of El Reg, we end up with something indigestible.

Rapid7, the flingers of the exploitation / testing framework that is Metasploit have revealed the effect of recent US regulatory changes via their blog.

A snippet:

Due to changes in regulatory requirements that are applicable to Metasploit (Pro and Community) and similar products, as of Sunday, April 19, 2015, individuals outside of the US and Canada who would like to use Metasploit Pro or the Metasploit Community Edition will need to request a licence and provide additional information regarding themselves or their organization designation.

In accordance with the new requirements, the request will be reviewed by Rapid7 and, unless the user is a non-US or non-Canadian government agency (or is otherwise ineligible to receive the products without approval from the US Department of Commerce), the request will be fulfilled.

This affects licence requests made through Rapid7.com as well as any third party sites that currently offer Metasploit Pro or Community products for download.

It seems we are yet again on the Magic Roundabout of encryption export controls and Clipper chip madness... who knows, maybe this time around it will be effective.

Phoenix666 writes:

Verizon is the first cable provider to take a step toward the a-la carte cable the entire industry is being forced into.

Fox Sports and ESPN claim that Verizon FiOS is violating programming contracts by relegating sports channels to optional TV bundles, but Verizon has pressed ahead with its new bundles anyway.

Verizon's Custom TV bundles, which became available two days ago, let FiOS customers buy a basic cable TV package with or without sports channels. With Custom TV, customers get 34 channels plus the choice of two channel packs. ESPN, Fox Sports, and other sports channels are available in the sports-themed packs, so customers don't have to pay anything extra to get them. However, customers could instead choose other channel packs, such as lifestyle or pop culture, and avoid the sports channels altogether.

These days sports are cited as the last bastion of the traditional cable industry, but if a-la carte sinks cable ESPN and sports content providers may have no choice but to go along.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Amir Mizroch reports at the WSJ that a PayPal executive who works with engineers and developers to find and test new technologies, says that embeddable, injectable, and ingestible devices are the next wave in identification for mobile payments and other sensitive online interactions. Jonathon Leblanc says that identification of people will shift from “antiquated” external body methods like fingerprints, toward internal body functions like heartbeat and vein recognition, where embedded and ingestible devices will allow “natural body identification.” Ingestible devices could be powered by stomach acid, which will run their batteries and could detect glucose levels and other unique internal features can use a person’s body as a way to identify them and beam that data out. Leblanc made his remarks during a presentation called Kill all Passwords that he’s recently started giving at various tech conferences in the U.S. and Europe, arguing that technology has taken a huge leap forward to “true integration with the human body.” But the idea has its skeptics. What could possibly go wrong with a little implanted device that reads your vein patterns or your heart's unique activity or blood glucose levels writes AJ Vicens? "Wouldn't an insurance company love to use that information to decide that you had one too many donuts—so it won't be covering that bypass surgery after all?"

Phoenix666 writes:

Two researchers have designed a material that can change color and texture within seconds of being exposed to light, the way cuttlefish can:

"Changing color is relatively easy; a TV can do that,” said Li Tan, an associate professor a UNL, in a press release. “Changing texture is harder. We wanted to combine the two."

In research published in the journal Applied Materials and Interfaces, the researchers were able to produce this effect by placing colloids inside a multilayered structure consisting of “a thermal insulating base layer, a light absorbing mid layer, and a liquid top layer.” Colloids are basically a material in which tiny particles are suspended in a liquid and remain evenly dispersed. In this case, the particles are made from soda lime, glass, or copper.

In practice, when a laser light strikes the material, the light begins to warm the pixels into which it has been absorbed. (These pixels are always different than the kind of laser light hitting them; for example, green pixels absorb red light.) This rise in temperature leads to tiny ruptures on the surface of the material or internal eruptions within the material.

For now the effect seems to be closer to a shape memory alloy, which is a one-time affair. Still, cool stuff.

takyon writes:

A team of researchers led by Junjiu Huang at the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou have reported human germline modification using CRISPR:

In a world first, Chinese scientists have reported editing the genomes of human embryos. The results are published in the online journal Protein & Cell and confirm widespread rumours that such experiments had been conducted — rumours that sparked a high-profile debate last month about the ethical implications of such work.

In the paper, researchers led by Junjiu Huang, a gene-function researcher at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, tried to head off such concerns by using 'non-viable' embryos, which cannot result in a live birth, that were obtained from local fertility clinics. The team attempted to modify the gene responsible for β-thalassaemia, a potentially fatal blood disorder, using a gene-editing technique known as CRISPR/Cas9. The researchers say that their results reveal serious obstacles to using the method in medical applications.

[...] A Chinese source familiar with developments in the field said that at least four groups in China are pursuing gene editing in human embryos.

While some embryos were successfully edited, the use of CRISPR/Cas9 was not nearly as reliable as desired:

The team injected 86 embryos and then waited 48 hours, enough time for the CRISPR/Cas9 system and the molecules that replace the missing DNA to act — and for the embryos to grow to about eight cells each. Of the 71 embryos that survived, 54 were genetically tested. This revealed that just 28 were successfully spliced, and that only a fraction of those contained the replacement genetic material. "If you want to do it in normal embryos, you need to be close to 100%," Huang says. "That's why we stopped. We still think it's too immature."

AnonTechie writes:

The European Southern Observatory's HARPS spectrograph has detected visible light from the exoplanet 51 Pegasi b:

Astronomers using the HARPS planet-hunting machine at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile have made the first-ever direct detection of the spectrum of visible light reflected off an exoplanet. These observations also revealed new properties of this famous object, the first exoplanet ever discovered around a normal star: 51 Pegasi b. The result promises an exciting future for this technique, particularly with the advent of next generation instruments, such as ESPRESSO, on the VLT, and future telescopes, such as the E-ELT.

The exoplanet 51 Pegasi b lies some 50 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus. It was discovered in 1995 and will forever be remembered as the first confirmed exoplanet to be found orbiting an ordinary star like the Sun. It is also regarded as the archetypal hot Jupiter—a class of planets now known to be relatively commonplace, which are similar in size and mass to Jupiter, but orbit much closer to their parent stars.

Phoenix666 writes:

Google is launching a wireless service soon that will charge you for data used, not bulk rates like current carriers:

The service, which would compete with local wireless providers like AT&T and Verizon, is expected to let customers pay only for the data they use on the network. That would mean users only pay when they make calls, listen to music or use apps, as opposed to common wireless service agreements that charge a bulk rate for a certain amount of data.

What Google wants to do is somewhat unique, according to the Journal's report. The company plans to offer two types of services that overlap. When users are on Wi-Fi, their phone calls and other data would use that connection. When not on a Wi-Fi signal, customers would use common cellular radio signals, which are more costly.

Google isn't building its own wireless network to do this. Instead, the Internet giant has reportedly made a deal with US carriers Sprint and T-Mobile to use their networks. For now, this scheme is only expected to be available on Google's Nexus 6 smartphone.

The devil is in the details, of course, what price the data? How good the coverage? Google has tantalized us for years with prospects of its Fiber, unfortunately still unavailable in backwaters like New York City, so it's a bit hard to get excited about this one. On the other hand, maybe it could disrupt cell carriers everywhere?

Phoenix666 writes:

Two architecture school graduates have taken LIDAR to the next level with a project meant to precisely reproduce London:

Today, they’re at the forefront of large-scale 3-D laser scanning, specializing in striking, ghostly reproductions of castles, museums, ice floes and more, conjured from billions of millimeter-precise dots.

Their latest undertaking is a sprawling scan of Mail Rail, a network of abandoned tunnels once used to transport mail beneath London. Like much of the group’s work, it sits at the intersection of utility and beauty, commerce and art. On one level, it’s an unprecedentedly detailed document of a historically significant site—a laudable bit of high-tech preservation.

15 years ago a buddy of mine in the 101st Airborne told me the military had done this with American cities to facilitate low-level chopper flying to put down civil insurrection, so it would be cool and useful to have archives like this available to civilians. Especially since I've really been looking forward to living in the Matrix.

AnonTechie writes:

Physicists have said they have fine-tuned an atomic clock to the point where it won’t lose or gain a second in 15bn years – longer than the universe has existed.

The “optical lattice” clock ( http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150421/ncomms7896/full/ncomms7896.html ), which uses strontium atoms, is now three times more accurate than a year ago when it set the previous world record, its developers reported in the journal Nature Communications.

The advance brings science a step closer to replacing the current gold standard in timekeeping: the caesium fountain clock that is used to set Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the official world time.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/apr/22/record-breaking-clock-invented-which-only-loses-a-second-in-15-billion-years

[Also Covered By]: http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/22/8466681/most-accurate-atomic-clock-optical-lattice-strontium