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canopic jug writes:

Via BSD Now, the old, familiar file command has been completely rewritten by OpenBSD developer Nicholas Marriott, who also happens to be the author of tmux. This new edition takes advantage of modern coding practices and the usual OpenBSD scrutiny. It will run by default as an unprivileged user with no shell, and in a systrace sandbox, strictly limiting what system calls can be made and has a drastically reduced potential for damage which a malicious file could do. Ian Darwin, the original author of the utility, saw the commit and, in what may be a moment in BSD history to remember, replied.

AnonTechie writes:

The possibility that Earth could have a supercontinent that would occupy two-thirds of the planet's surface in a couple of hundred million years' time is just one of the geological projects being investigated by an international team of academics.

The five-year project is sponsored by UNESCO and the International Union for Geological Sciences (IUGS) and will investigate the Earth's evolutionary 'supercycles' involving both tectonic plates and its deep mantle.

Curtin University Institute of Geoscience Research (TIGeR) ( http://geodynamics.curtin.edu.au ) geologist Professor Zheng-Xiang Li will work with project co-leaders Yale University Professor David Evans, University of Colorado Professor Shijie Zhong and University of Saskatchewan Professor Bruce Eglington.

"The project will assemble a multidisciplinary team of hundreds of scientists and research students from around the world to establish new concepts, tools, maps and global databases to assist the modeling of global changes and the discovery of new Earth resources," Prof Li says.

Twenty years ago Prof Li was involved in uncovering the evolutionary history of Rodinia which is the precursor to the well-known supercontinent Pangea.
"Global GPS measurements of plate motions tell us that the Atlantic Ocean has been [and still is] widening by a few centimetres a year, whereas the Pacific Ocean is becoming narrower at a similar rate," Prof Li says.

"If such a trend continues, within the next one or two hundred million years, the Pacific Ocean would close up to bring the Americas to collision with the Eurasian continent while the Australian continent is set to join this future supercontinent 'Amasia', by moving around seven centimetres per year toward Asia."

http://phys.org/news/2015-04-australia-path-supercontinent-amasia.html

sigma writes:

Open Source.com has raised an interesting issue.

With household and municipal scale electricity generation becoming commonplace, it appears that the energy market is about to experience a major technological disruption. Of course, with disruption comes opportunity, and there's already some clear contenders in the field, from Tesla with their cars and batteries, Suntech with their solar panels, to Vestas with their huge turbines.

There's a big caveat with all of this large-scale investment though, and that's contending with the existing centralized power grids and the utilities that manage them. Open source models are a good fit for this new paradigm, with collaboration replacing monopolies and open systems displacing proprietary vendor controls. High quality open source software tools exist already, including the well-supported PowerMatcher suite, but how will this collection of solutions wrest control of the key "last mile" hardware from the hostile and entrenched utilities?

Any suggestions from the SoyLentil team? If we get it right, all of us could become unfeasibly wealthy...

AnonTechie writes:

The "real" challenge technology presents isn't that it replaces workers, but rather displaces them.

The robots perform tasks that humans previously performed. The fear is that they are replacing human jobs, eliminating work in distribution centers and elsewhere in the economy. It is not hard to imagine that technology might be a major factor causing persistent unemployment today and threatening “more to come.”

Surprisingly, the managers of distribution centers and supply chains see things rather differently: in surveys they report that they can’t hire enough workers, at least not enough workers who have the necessary skills to deal with new technology. “Supply chain” is the term for the systems used to move products from suppliers to customers. Warehouse robots are not the first technology taking over some of the tasks of supply chain workers, nor are they even seen as the most important technology affecting the industry today.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/scarce-skills-not-scarce-jobs/390789/

takyon writes:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is warning of a new surveillance technology to look out for alongside drones, automatic license plate readers, facial recognition, IMSI catchers (like Stingray), and Rapid DNA analyzers. It's Xerox's new and improved system for Automated Vehicle Occupancy Detection, also known as Automated Vehicle Passenger Detection or Automated Vehicle Occupancy Verification:

For years, government agencies have chased technologies that would make it easier to ensure that vehicles in carpool lanes are actually carrying multiple passengers. Perhaps the only reason these systems haven't garnered much attention is that they haven't been particularly effective or accurate, as UC Berkeley researchers noted in a 2011 report.

Now, an agency in San Diego, Calif. believes it may have found the answer: the Automated Vehicle Passenger Detection system developed by Xerox.

The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), a government umbrella group that develops transportation and public safety initiatives across the San Diego County region, estimates that 15% of drivers in High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes aren't supposed to be there. After coming up short with earlier experimental projects, the agency is now testing a brand new technology to crack down on carpool-lane scofflaws on the I-15 freeway.

Documents obtained by CBS 8 reporter David Gotfredson show that Xerox's system uses two cameras to capture the front and side views of a car's interior. Then "video analytics" and "geometric algorithms" are used to detect whether the seats are occupied.

When the detection system's computer determines a driver is improperly traveling in the carpool lane, the cameras instantly send photos of the car's interior and its license plate to the California Highway Patrol.

In short: the technology is looking at your image, the image of the people you're with, your location, and your license plate. (SANDAG told CBS the systems will not be storing license plate data during the trial phase and the system will, at least for now, automatically redact images of drivers and passengers. Xerox's software, however, allows police the option of using a weaker form of redaction that can be reversed on request.)

Hugh Pickens writes:

Andrew Marantz has an interesting read in The New Yorker about Lulu, a mobile app already downloaded five million times that allows female users of Facebook to make positive and negative evaluations of male users on the basis of their romantic, personal, and sexual appeal. Lulu is rigidly heteronormative—only women can rate men—and women tend to use Lulu the way someone investigating a potential mate a generation ago might have sought out the town busybody.

“It’s one of these rare products that evokes only strong reactions,” says Sam Altman. “No one feels ambivalent about it.” To rate a man on Lulu, a woman selects from a battery of pre-written hashtags—some positive (#LifeOfTheParty, #DoesDishes), some negative (#Boring, #DeathBreath), and some ambiguous (#DrivesMeCrazy, #CharmedMyPantsOff, #PlaysDidgeridoo). Those responses are distilled into a harshly precise numerical score. Alexandra Chong calls her startup “a community where women can talk honestly about what matters to them.” Others have called it Yelp for men. “Of course people on Lulu talk about sex,” says Chong. “Sex is part of what women talk about.”

A man must grant his permission for a Lulu profile to be created on his behalf, and, perhaps surprisingly, most men consent, says Chong. “We try to tell men, ‘Women on Lulu are building men up, not just tearing them down.'” Many women use Lulu for caveat-emptor purposes, such as managing expectations before a date. “One guy I went out with had a lot of hashtags like #OneTrackMind," says Sarah Burns, "so I dressed conservatively, didn’t drink too much—I tried to send the message, I’m not going home with you tonight. Which I didn’t.”

fliptop writes:

Kevin Parrish at Tom's Hardware writes:

Allen Lo, Deputy General Counsel for Patents at Google, published a blog announcing the launch of the Patent Purchase Promotion, an experimental marketplace where businesses and individuals can sell their patents to Google. Why? Because the company wants to remove "friction" from the patent market.

"Unfortunately, the usual patent marketplace can sometimes be challenging, especially for smaller participants who sometimes end up working with patent trolls," Lo said in the blog. "Then bad things happen, like lawsuits, lots of wasted effort, and generally bad karma. Rarely does this provide any meaningful benefit to the original patent owner."

[...] Here's how Google's promotion will work: The company will open up the marketplace between May 8 and May 22, 2015. During that time, patent holders will head to a special portal and make pitches to Google that will include a description and what sellers want, financially. After May 22, Google will close the portal and review every submission. Google will then contact patent owners by June 26, 2015 if the company is interested in buying the submitted patent.

Additional coverage at ZDNet.

"gewg_" writes:

Common Dreams reports

Corinthian Colleges, the for-profit education system that has come under fire for its predatory student loan schemes, said [April 26] it would shut down all of its 28 remaining campuses, roughly two weeks after the U.S. Department of Education announced it would fine the institution $30 million for misrepresentation regarding job placement rates.

[...]At its peak, the California-based company ran more than 120 colleges across the country with more than 110,000 students.

This final shutdown will displace about 16,000 students.

[...]Students whose campuses are closing may be eligible for closed-school loan discharges, [said Education Undersecretary Ted Mitchell]. "We will do everything we can to ensure that Corinthian makes good on its obligations to students and taxpayers to the extent possible. In addition, we encourage Corinthian students to pursue debt relief with their state".

However, some say that the Department of Education has yet to come through on those promises. As the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) pointed out in February, the government gave funds to keep Corinthian afloat before it filed for bankruptcy, but gave no such help to the tens of thousands of students who were left without a degree and saddled with debt.

"There's widespread evidence they've engaged in years and years of deceiving students and taxpayers," NCLC attorney Robyn Smith told the Boston Globe at the time. "We're not seeing any relief for the students who've suffered the consequences."

Previous coverage on SoylentNews:
Update: Corinthian Colleges Fined $30M for Fraud

AnonTechie writes:

In 2001, a doctor in New York completed what may seem like a routine surgery to remove a patient’s gallbladder. But in fact that procedure wasn’t routine at all, because the patient was in France. That was the first successful long-distance robotic surgery, or telesurgery, ever performed, and since then the field has taken off. Though robotic surgery is not yet the industry standard, sales of medical robots are increasing by 20 percent each year, and by 2025 the Department of Defense wants to have deployable Trauma Pods ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4wjAlprgBc ) that could allow surgeons to operate on soldiers from hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Though proponents of telesurgery have thoroughly discussed its benefits (there's no delay due to travel time, for example, and surgery could be possible in remote locations like deep underwater or in outer space) there hasn’t been much exploration of its weaknesses. Researchers from the University of Washington decided to put the telesurgery technology to the test to see if they are susceptible to cyber attacks. According their study, the security of surgical robots leaves much to be desired. ( http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.04339 )

http://www.popsci.com/robots-used-surgery-can-be-easily-hacked

"gewg_" writes:

Defense News reports

The House Armed Services Committee (HASC), for the second consecutive year, is proposing blocking the retirement of A-10 attack planes.

[...]The long-expected move was revealed Monday afternoon with the release of Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry's version of the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which the full panel will mark up on [April 29].

The Air Force argues the decades-old A-10s are too expensive to keep flying. Lawmakers reject those arguments, saying the A-10s--which bring jobs to their states and districts--save US lives on the battlefield and must be kept operational.

"Rigorous oversight, endorsements from soldiers and Marines about the protection only the A-10 can provide, and repeated deployments in support of [Operation Inherent Resolve] have persuaded Chairman Thornberry and many members from both parties that the budget-driven decision to retire the A-10 is misguided," according to a HASC fact sheet accompanying the legislation.

On the downside IMO:

Responding to the Navy's and Marine Corps' shared list of "unfunded priorities" submitted this year to lawmakers, the House committee is proposing language that would clear the services to purchase more fighter aircraft than requested.

The Arizona Daily Star notes

Arizona [Congresswoman] Martha McSally [a former A-10 pilot and squadron commander] said she plans to offer amendments prohibiting both the A-10's retirement and the EC-130H [the Compass Call electronic jamming and surveillance plane] cuts.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Lina Nilsson writes in an op-ed piece in the NYT that she looks with despair at estimates that only about 14 percent of engineers in the work force are women but that there may be a solution to the disparity that is much simpler than targeted recruitment efforts. "An experience here at the University of California, Berkeley, where I teach, suggests that if the content of the work itself is made more societally meaningful, women will enroll in droves," writes Nilsson. "That applies not only to computer engineering but also to more traditional, equally male-dominated fields like mechanical and chemical engineering."

Nilsson says that Blum Center for Developing Economies recently began a new program that, without any targeted outreach, achieved 50 percent female enrollment in just one academic year. In the fall of 2014, UC Berkeley began offering a new Ph.D. minor in development engineering for students doing thesis work on solutions for low-income communities. They are designing affordable solutions for clean drinking water, inventing medical diagnostic equipment for neglected tropical diseases and enabling local manufacturing in poor and remote regions.

According to Nilsson, women seem to be drawn to engineering projects that attempt to achieve societal good and cites MIT, University of Minnesota, Penn State, Santa Clara University, Arizona State, and the University of Michigan that have programs aimed at reducing global poverty and inequality that have achieved similar results. For example, at Princeton, the student chapter of Engineers Without Borders has an executive board that is nearly 70 percent female, reflecting the overall club composition.

"It shows that the key to increasing the number of female engineers may not just be mentorship programs or child care centers, although those are important" concludes Nilsson. "It may be about reframing the goals of engineering research and curriculums to be more relevant to societal needs. It is not just about gender equity — it is about doing better engineering for us all."

CoolHand writes:

We previously covered Valve offering paid mods in the Steam Workshop. Now, Valve (and Bethesda) have realized that the way they were attempting to implement payment for modders (and themselves) could not stand alongside the current model, at least with the goodwill of the community.

From the article:

We've done this because it's clear we didn't understand exactly what we were doing. We've been shipping many features over the years aimed at allowing community creators to receive a share of the rewards, and in the past, they've been received well. It's obvious now that this case is different.

We understand our own game's communities pretty well, but stepping into an established, years old modding community in Skyrim was probably not the right place to start iterating. We think this made us miss the mark pretty badly, even though we believe there's a useful feature somewhere here.

Hopefully they do get a fully-baked donation system implemented (or some other method that makes sense).

AnonTechie writes:

Many M-16s, the conventional wisdom goes, entered Syria after militants seized thousands of them from Iraq’s struggling security forces, which in turn had received the guns — along with armored vehicles, howitzers and warehouses’ worth of other equipment — from the Pentagon before American troops left the country in 2011. The militants’ abrupt possession of former American matériel was part of the battlefield turnabout last summer that led Julian E. Barnes, a Wall Street Journal correspondent, to tweet a proposed name for the Pentagon’s anti-militant bombing campaign: Operation Hey That’s My Humvee. And yet by this year, for all the attention the captured weapons had received, M-16s were seemingly uncommon in Syria. The expected large quantities had eluded researchers.

The investigator urged his host, a local security official, to rush after the Kurd and ask if he would allow the rifle to be photographed and its origins ascertained. Soon the investigator (who works for Conflict Armament Research, a private arms-tracking organization in Britain, and who asked that his name be withheld for safety reasons) found a surprise within his surprise. The rifle, which its current owner said had been captured from the Islamic State last year, was not an M-16. It was a Chinese CQ, an M-16 knockoff that resembles its predecessor but has a starkly different arms-trafficking history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/magazine/where-the-islamic-state-gets-its-weapons.html

takyon writes:

Six writers have withdrawn from the PEN American Center's annual gala in protest over the organization's decision to give its Freedom of Expression Courage Award to the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which was attacked on January 7th:

The writers who have withdrawn from the event are Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi, The New York Times reports. [...] Kushner, in an email to The Times, said she was withdrawing from the May 5 PEN gala because she was uncomfortable with Charlie Hebdo's "cultural intolerance" and promotion of "a kind of forced secular view." Those views, The Times added, were echoed by the other writers who pulled out of the event. Carey told The Times that PEN, in its decision, was going beyond its role of protecting freedom of expression." A hideous crime was committed, but was it a freedom-of-speech issue for PEN America to be self-righteous about?" he said in an email to the newspaper. Novelist Salman Rushdie, a past president of PEN who spent years in hiding because of a fatwa over his novel The Satanic Verses, criticized the writers for pulling out, saying while Carey and Ondaatje were old friends of his, they are "horribly wrong."

Glenn Greenwald has written about the controversy over at The Intercept, which is hosting letters and comments written by Deborah Eisenberg and Teju Cole. Greenwald notes:

Though the core documents are lengthy, this argument is really worth following because it highlights how ideals of free speech, and the Charlie Hebdo attack itself, were crassly exploited by governments around the world to promote all sorts of agendas having nothing to do with free expression. Indeed, some of the most repressive regimes on the planet sent officials to participate in the Paris “Free Speech” rally, and France itself began almost immediately arresting and prosecuting people for expressing unpopular, verboten political viewpoints and then undertaking a series of official censorship acts, including the blocking of websites disliked by its government. The French government perpetrated these acts of censorship, and continues to do so, with almost no objections from those who flamboyantly paraded around as free speech fanatics during Charlie Hebdo Week.

"gewg_" writes:

El Reg reports

With digital reaching its audience targets, the government set a 2017 date for the death of analogue FM radio in [Norway].

[...]However, the Norwegian Local Radio Association disputes the communications ministry's figure, pointing instead to Norwegian Government Statistical Bureau data that "listening to DAB radio is presently limited to 19% on a daily basis."

In an e-mail sent to Vulture South [El Reg's Australian operation], the association says the Minister of Culture's announcement swept up DVB-T and Internet radio to claim that "digital listening" had hit the 50 per cent target that triggers an FM switch-off.

The association also notes that an all-DAB nation would provide a lot less service to motoring tourists without digital radios in their cars. "This proposed change means that most visitors will not be able to listen to national channels or public radio for emergency alerts, traffic or other important information", the group said in a media release e-mailed to El Reg. It claims that a focus on large broadcasters would leave FM investments by community radio stranded.

The local broadcasters are backed by the Progress Party, a partner in the coalition government in Norway, [as well as by] the Greens.

Related: Norway to be First Nation to Switch Off National Analog FM Stations