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sigma wrote to tell us of a story that appeared in The Enquirer:

When the UK government announced plans to shift to the .odf Open Document Format, and away from Microsoft's proprietary .doc and .docx formats, Microsoft threatened to move its research facilities out of the UK.

The prime minister's director of strategy at the time, Steve Hilton, said that "Microsoft phoned Conservative MPs with Microsoft R&D facilities in their constituencies and said we will close them down in your constituencies if this goes through" "We just resisted. You have to be brave," Hilton said.

Although I am not a great lover of Microsoft, I'm not sure that this is any different than many other companies who will try to protect their profits - and, arguably, the jobs of their employees - when they can see the potential for the loss of business. But perhaps other companies are a little more subtle - especially when it is obvious that official papers will one day become public knowledge.

[Editor's Comment: This submission has been significantly edited - comment is not attributable to sigma]

[Editor's Comment: Please see public apology regarding this story.]

kaszz writes:

According to Daniel Mathews a lecturer in mathematics and founding member of Wikileaks, new laws passed in Australia (but not yet in effect) could criminalize the teaching of encryption. He explains how a ridiculously broad law could effectively make any encryption stronger than 512 bits criminal if your client is not Australian.

From the article:

The story begins with the Australian government's Defence and Strategic Goods List (DSGL). This list specifies goods considered important to national defence and security, and which are therefore tightly controlled.

Regulation of military weapons is not a particularly controversial idea. But the DSGL covers much more than munitions. It also includes many "dual-use" goods, which are goods with both military and civilian uses. This includes substantial sections on chemicals, electronics and telecommunications, among other things.

Disturbingly, the DSGL risks veering wildly in the direction of over-classification, covering activities that are completely unrelated to military or intelligence applications.

He says, "In short, the DSGL casts an extremely wide net, potentially catching open source privacy software, information security research and education, and the entire computer security industry in its snare. Most ridiculous, though, are some badly flawed technicalities. As I have argued before, the specifications are so imprecise that they potentially include a little algorithm you learned at primary school called division. If so, then division has become a potential weapon, and your calculator (or smartphone, computer, or any electronic device) is a potential delivery system for it."

HughPickens.com writes:

ABC News reports that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released a list of English-language material recovered during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2011 including one document dubbed "Instructions to Applicants," that would not be entirely out of place for an entry-level position at any American company – except for questions like the one about the applicant's willingness to blow themselves up. The questionnaire includes basic personal details, family history, marital status, and education level. It asks that applicants "answer the required information accurately and truthfully" and, "Please write clearly and legibly." Questions include: Is the applicant expert in chemistry, communications or any other field? Do they have a family member in the government who would cooperate with al Qaeda? Have they received any military training? Finally, it asks what the would-be jihadist would like to accomplish and, "Do you wish to execute a suicide operation?" For the final question, the application asks would-be killers that if they were to become martyrs, who should al Qaeda contact?

The corporate tone of the application is jarringly amusing, writes Amanda Taub, but it also hints at a larger truth: a terrorist organization like al-Qaeda is a large bureaucratic organization, albeit one in the "business" of mass-murdering innocent people. Jon Sopel, the North American editor from BBC News, joked that the application "looks like it has been written by someone who has spent too long working for Deloitte or Accenture, but bureaucracy exists in every walk of life – so why not on the path to violent jihad?"

Adamsjas writes:

The Times of India website carried coverage of the net neutrality fight in India.

It seems that the telecom authority stirred up a hornets nest by suggesting that net neutrality could come to an end in India:

Currently, India has a defacto net neutrality policy (which is to say no explicit policy at all). The major carriers are arguing for the right to charge content providers for carrying their content (big surprise).

Last month one of the big web shopping sites in India, Flipkart, pulled out of Airtel Zero's program of offering free services to Airtel customers in return for payment by Flipkart directly to Airtel. (Similar to Netflix pays Comcast). Indian net neutrality fans were dancing in the streets for Flipkart's refusal to play along.

But apparently the carriers were less than pleased and started lobbying the regulators. This resulted in other (elected) government officials to rushing to net neutrality's defense. The dust has not yet settled on that debate.

The first linked page has a rather entertaining video name Save the Internet that explains the situation in India.

takyon writes:

Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov has urged men to stop their wives from using WhatsApp after anger over a police chief's forced marriage to a 17-year-old spread on the messaging service:

"Lock them in, do not let them go out, then they will not post anything," Ramzan Kadyrov was quoted as saying. Mr Kadyrov had earlier backed a police chief's marriage to a 17-year-old, even though he was already married, in apparent violation of Russian laws. His chief of staff has since proposed legalising polygamy in Chechnya.

Mr Kadyrov, an authoritarian leader and close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has in recent years outlawed the abduction of brides and underage marriage. He is also thought to be in favour of polygamy. His top aide Magomed Daudov said: "It all has to be in keeping with Sharia: But if a man can support more than one wife, then why not?"

Before Saturday's ceremony, local media reported that police chief Nazhud Guchigov, 47, had prevented Kheda Goylabiyeva from leaving her home and threatened her family with reprisals if they did not hand her over.

Mr Kadyrov denounced discussion of the marriage on WhatsApp in comments broadcast on local state-run TV. "Stop. Behave like Chechens," he was reported as saying. "The family honour is the most important thing. Do not write such things. Men, do take your women out of WhatsApp." Last week he took to his Instagram account to criticise Russian media coverage of the marriage as "this fuss ordered by some liberals". "The girl's parents gave their blessing to this marriage," he claimed, arguing that reports to the contrary were filled with lies.

HughPickens.com writes:

In a case straight out of CSI, CNN reports that police are searching for the man suspected in the gruesome slayings of the Savopoulos family and their housekeeper, after his DNA was purportedly found on a pizza crust at the scene of the quadruple murders:

They discovered his DNA on the crust of a Domino's pizza -- one of two delivered to the Savopoulos home May 14 as the family was held hostage inside -- a source familiar with the investigation said.

The pizza apparently was paid for with cash left in an envelope on the porch: "The next morning, Savvas Savopoulos's personal assistant dropped off a package containing $40,000 in cash at the home, according to the officials and police documents."

The bodies of Savopoulos, along with his wife, Amy, their 10-year-old son Philip and the family's housekeeper, Veralicia Figueroa, were discovered the afternoon of May 14 after firefighters responded to reports of a fire.

D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier says the killings are likely not a random crime and police have issued an arrest warrant for the 34-year-old Daron Dylon Wint, who is described as 5'7 and 155 lbs and might also go by the name "Steffon." He apparently used to work at American Iron Works, where Savvas Savopoulos was CEO and president. The neighborhood is home to numerous embassies and diplomatic mansions as well as the official residence of Vice President Joe Biden and his wife. "Right now you have just about every law enforcement officer across the country aware of his open warrant and are looking for him," says Lanier. "I think even his family has made pleas for him to turn himself in."

n1 writes:

The Washington Post reports:

A dollar bill is a special kind of thing. You can keep it as long as you like. You can pay for things with it. No one will ever charge you a fee. No one will ask any questions about your credit history. And other people won't try to tell you that they know how to spend that dollar better than you do.

For these reasons, cash is one of the most valuable resources a poor person in the United States can possess. Yet legislators in Kansas, not trusting the poor to use their money wisely, have voted to limit how much cash that welfare beneficiaries can receive, effectively reducing their overall benefits, as well.

The legislature placed a daily cap of $25 on cash withdrawals beginning July 1, which will force beneficiaries to make more frequent trips to the ATM to withdraw money from the debit cards used to pay public assistance benefits.

Since there's a fee for every withdrawal, the limit means that some families will get substantially less money.

Linatux writes:

JPL has published an even closer look at the bright spots on Ceres.

Apart from a closer look, there isn't much new information. While looking at the picture though, I was having trouble with the perspective on the craters. If I invert/negative the image, the spots are of course black, but the craters look like craters. What gives?

"Dawn scientists can now conclude that the intense brightness of these spots is due to the reflection of sunlight by highly reflective material on the surface, possibly ice," Christopher Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission from the University of California, Los Angeles, said recently.

Dawn is currently about 7,200 km from the surface of Ceres. On December 8th, it will be 375 km from the surface.

McGruber writes:

For a few very profitable years, Vanessa and Mario Perez made more than $322,000 by clearing up the blemished credit reports of people with bad bill-paying histories, almost as if by magic.

Federal authorities say the Perezes had a secret weapon: a network of dirty Miami-Dade County, Florida police officers, who wrote 215 falsified police reports. The Perezes used these falsified police reports to claim their customers were victims of identity theft when the customers were not.

The false ID theft claims provided the Perezes' clients with an official excuse for their bad credit histories so they could get negative items removed from their reports. In turn, the customers could boost their credit scores with reporting agencies such as Equifax and obtain credit cards, loans and other financing again.

Vanessa Perez was previously convicted of absentee ballot fraud (along with dozens of others) after Miami's infamous 1997 election.

rts008 writes:

Glenn "Cannon Balls" Hughes, a mail carrier that took it upon himself to fly a gyrocopter into restricted space in Washington, D.C. to deliver messages to Congress, is now facing more charges and possible prison time, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Shortly after being arrested, he was charged with crimes that could have put him behind bars for up to five years. Now additional charges have been added to raise that to a possible nine-and-a-half years, almost double the time he faced at first.

Amid the debate, lawmakers have suggested that the laws under which Hughes faced charges should be updated with tougher penalties.

When Hughes was first charged in April, he faced fewer counts and a possible sentence of fewer than five years in prison.

The list of charges seems a bit over the top, but that level of vindictiveness from our government seems the norm these days, OMO.

"I am more convinced than ever that I did the right thing," Hughes said in a Wednesday evening interview.

The charges include two felonies: one count each of operating as an airman without an airman's certificate and violating registration requirements involving aircraft. In addition, he was indicted on four misdemeanor counts: three counts of violation of national defense airspace, and one of operating a vehicle falsely labeled as a postal carrier.

If Hughes is convicted of either of the two felonies, he will be required to forfeit his gyrocopter to the federal government.

Hughes called his potential sentence "excessive" because of the nature of his action: an act of civil disobedience where no one was hurt, and no property was damaged.

"How is that worth 9½ years?" he said. "I think the prosecutor has an uphill battle."

Hughes said he is not certain what will happen at Thursday's arraignment. But he said he is open to the idea of a plea bargain, if it means no jail time. But he also is prepared for the possibility that his case could go in front of a jury.

I'm not certain I would have his optimism about the prosecution having an uphill battle, but I do hope he is right about that.

Disclaimer: I take full blame for the 'Cannon Balls' moniker in the title summary. It was meant to be a statement and show of my admiration for G. Hughes, who I see as worthy of respect, whether you agree with his cause, or not.

AnonTechie writes:

Owen Maroney worries that physicists have spent the better part of a century engaging in fraud.

Ever since they invented quantum theory in the early 1900s, explains Maroney, who is himself a physicist at the University of Oxford, UK, they have been talking about how strange it is — how it allows particles and atoms to move in many directions at once, for example, or to spin clockwise and anticlockwise simultaneously. But talk is not proof, says Maroney. “If we tell the public that quantum theory is weird, we better go out and test that's actually true,” he says. “Otherwise we're not doing science, we're just explaining some funny squiggles on a blackboard.”

It is this sentiment that has led Maroney and others to develop a new series of experiments to uncover the nature of the wavefunction — the mysterious entity that lies at the heart of quantum weirdness. On paper, the wavefunction is simply a mathematical object that physicists denote with the Greek letter psi (Ψ) — one of Maroney's funny squiggles — and use to describe a particle's quantum behaviour. Depending on the experiment, the wavefunction allows them to calculate the probability of observing an electron at any particular location, or the chances that its spin is oriented up or down. But the mathematics shed no light on what a wavefunction truly is. Is it a physical thing ? Or just a calculating tool for handling an observer's ignorance about the world ?

http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-physics-what-is-really-real-1.17585

An Anonymous Coward writes:

According to a story at the Intercept, the National Security Agency and its closest allies planned to hijack data links to Google and Samsung app stores to infect smartphones with spyware, a top-secret document reveals.

As part of a pilot project codenamed IRRITANT HORN, the agencies were developing a method to hack and hijack phone users’ connections to app stores so that they would be able to send malicious “implants” to targeted devices. The implants could then be used to collect data from the phones without their users noticing.

takyon writes:

China has announced plans to spend $182 billion over the next 30 months to modernize the nation's network infrastructure:

The State Council, China's chief administrative authority, said the government will invest at least $69.3bn in network construction this year, which in turn will be supplemented with $112.8bn in expenditure before the end of 2017, all in order to accelerate the construction of fiber optic networks and 4G networks.

The state investment follows Li Keqiang, the State Council Premier, announcing China's "Internet Plus" policy, which is intended to see the nation focus on domestic technology adoption in order to boost domestic growth while also giving Chinese technology firms a chance do do better overseas.

Complaining about China's internet speeds previously, Keqiang undershot the Network Readiness Index [which ranks China 62nd], instead seemingly favouring Akamai's State of the Internet: Q4 2014 report [Subscription required], stating that "China has more cellphone users than any other country, but its net service speed ranks below 80th in the world due to underdeveloped information infrastructure".

The State Council has said: "By the end of 2017, all households in locations above prefecture level will have access to 100 Mbps fiber optic networks, over 80 per cent of villages will be covered by fiber optic networks, all cities and villages will be covered by 4G networks, and broadband speeds in municipalities and provincial capitals will reach 30 Mbps."

[Editor's Comment: This article might sound a bit like a soyvertisement but it has been submitted by one of our community and someone who is well qualified in his field - David Eccles from the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research in New Zealand. It is interesting to read about what is considered currently to be state of the art in field genome sequencing.]

David Eccles (gringer) writes:

On the 14th and 15th of May, 2015, Oxford Nanopore Technologies held their inaugural nanopore sequencing conference, London Calling. The conference was set up to inform people about the current progress of Oxford Nanopore's first sequencing device, the muesli bar-sized, USB-powered MinION. Over 250 people were in attendance at the conference, representing 35 countries, including two from New Zealand: Nicole Moore from Environmental Science and Research, and David Eccles from the Malaghan Insititute of Medical Research. Over the course of two days, these attendees discovered how the MinION is quietly turning the world of sequencing inside out.

Everything needed for sample preparation and sequencing can fit into a single piece of checked luggage on an airplane. The MinION is robust enough to make it across unsealed roads to remote parts of Africa, where it has been used for sequencing on-location during the Ebola outbreak. The MinION has also been put through its paces for tracking the traffic of organisms. Detection at the species level can be achieved in under 20 minutes of sequencing, and very subtle changes for the same species from different origins can be identified in less than an hour.

Clive Brown, Chief Technical Officer for Oxford Nanopore Technologies, gave a brief summary of what is to come in the near future of nanopore sequencing:

• A fast mode for sequencing, allowing a human genome to be sequenced with high reliability in a 2-day run.
• An improved Mk II sequencer, with six time the throughput and six times the run time of the first sequencer.
• A clip-on sample preparation laboratory (Voltrax), allowing preparation and sequencing directly from blood in 20 minutes.
• Time-based pricing, reducing the minimum cost of a single-molecule sequencing run to $50.
• A 48-cell desktop sequencing device (PromethION) that can produce over 6 terabases of sequence per day, making sample preparation time the slowest part of the sequencing process.

AnonTechie writes:

Shedding new light on 175-year-old principle: New class of swelling magnets have the potential to energize the world

A new class of magnets that expand their volume when placed in a magnetic field and generate negligible amounts of wasteful heat during energy harvesting, has been discovered by researchers at Temple University and the University of Maryland.

The researchers, Harsh Deep Chopra, professor and chair of mechanical engineering at Temple, and Manfred Wuttig, professor of materials science and engineering at Maryland, published their findings, "Non-Joulian Magnetostriction," in the May 21st issue of the journal, Nature. This transformative breakthrough has the potential to not only displace existing technologies but create altogether new applications due to the unusual combination of magnetic properties.

"Our findings fundamentally change the way we think about a certain type of magnetism that has been in place since 1841," said Chopra, who also runs the Materials Genomics and Quantum Devices Laboratories at Temple's College of Engineering.

In the 1840s, physicist James Prescott Joule discovered that iron-based magnetic materials changed their shape but not their volume when placed in a magnetic field. This phenomenon is referred to as "Joule Magnetostriction," and since its discovery 175 years ago, all magnets have been characterized on this basis.

"We have discovered a new class of magnets, which we call 'Non-Joulian Magnets,' that show a large volume change in magnetic fields," said Chopra. "Moreover, these non-Joulian magnets also possess the remarkable ability to harvest or convert energy with minimal heat loss."

[Abstract]: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v521/n7552/full/nature14459.html