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physicsmajor writes:

TheVerge is reporting the Supreme Court has declined to hear the long-running Google, Inc. v. Oracle America, Inc. case concerning copyright over the Java APIs. This is an important case, because it sets precedent if publicly documented software APIs can be copyrighted. This has relevance throughout the FOSS community, from Wine (reimplementing the Windows API) to Octave (reimplementing the MATLAB API).

A brief history of events: The original decision, handed down in 2012 in district court, found strongly against Oracle that APIs were not protected by copyright. Oracle appealed, and the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court decision, finding the "structure, sequence and organization" of an API was copyrightable.

Google petitioned SCOTUS to hear the case. The Court seemed unsure, and requested the input of the Solicitor General (Donald Verrilli, appointed by Barack Obama). Mr. Verrilli replied with a brief instructing SCOTUS not to hear the case. Today, SCOTUS officially declined to hear arguments.

By declining to hear arguments SCOTUS defers to the appeals court ruling: APIs are copyrightable. Google may still have a defense under the Fair Use doctrine, but now all other users of APIs will have to prove Fair Use if a suit is brought. There is no option to overturn this precedent save a new case working through the courts. Soylentils, what will the effects of this decision be? Have you used or reverse-engineered code from public APIs in your own work?

sudo rm -rf writes:

Mainly due to the slowing down of earth rotation, it is about time to add another (the 35th) leap second to UTC in order to keep its time of day close to the mean solar time. NASA features an explanation of why the leap seconds have to be inserted, how earth rotation can be measured precisely and why it is impossible to give precise predictions on when the next one will happen.

janrinok writes:

News of a possible cut in broadband fees to cheer up our Australian members:

A bunch of Australian fixed telephony and broadband users are about to suffer under a regime of lower prices.

In spite of communications minister Malcolm Turnbull's 2014 assertion that lower prices are against consumer's interests, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has told Telstra to cut its wholesale fixed network access prices. The decision calls for across-the-board fixed network wholesale price cuts of 9.6 per cent.

The draft decision sets prices for seven access services from October this year until 30 June 2019. Those wholesale services include fixed line telephony and wholesale access to Telstra's copper for broadband access – for example, the “naked” copper that competitive ISPs connect to their own DSL equipment for customer access. A key point of the ACCC's reasoning is that Telstra customers shouldn't be footing the bill for NBN migration. The incumbent had argued that it would suffer higher per-customer costs as users were moved to the NBN wholesale network, even if they remained as Telstra retail customers.

“Our draft decision is that assets that become redundant as a result of migration will be removed from the asset base. Also, users of the copper network will not pay the higher prices that result from the loss of scale efficiencies as the number of services remaining on the copper network falls,” ACCC commissioner Rod Sims explained in today's announcement. The current decision is still a draft, with the regulator soliciting further submissions, and it's a certainty that Telstra will at least be trying to reverse the price cut, even if it gives up its attempt at increasing prices.

janrinok writes:

Germany's oldest remaining nuclear reactor has been shut down, part of a move initiated four years ago to switch off all its nuclear plants by 2022.

Bavaria's environment ministry said Sunday that the Grafenrheinfeld reactor in the southern German state was taken offline as scheduled overnight, the news agency dpa reported. Grafenrheinfeld went into service in 1981. It's the first reactor to close since Germany switched off the oldest eight of its 17 nuclear reactors in 2011, just after Japan's Fukushima disaster. The next to close will be one of two reactors at the Gundremmingen plant in Bavaria, which is set to shut in late 2017. The rest will be closed by the end of 2022.

Germany aims to generate 80 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050.

HughPickens.com writes:

Michael Wolff writes in the NYT that online-media revolutionaries once figured they could eat TV's lunch by stealing TV's business model with free content supported by advertising but online media is now drowning in free and internet traffic has glutted the ad market, forcing down rates. Digital publishers, from The Guardian to BuzzFeed, can stay ahead only by chasing more traffic — not loyal readers, but millions of passing eyeballs, so fleeting that advertisers naturally pay less and less for them. Meanwhile, the television industry has been steadily weaning itself off advertising — like an addict in recovery, starting a new life built on fees from cable providers and all those monthly credit-card debits from consumers. Today, half of broadcast and cable's income is non-advertising based. And since adult household members pay the cable bills, TV content has to be grown-up content: "The Sopranos," "Mad Men," "Breaking Bad," "The Wire," "The Good Wife."

So how did this tired, postwar technology seize back the crown? Television, not digital media, is mastering the model of the future: Make 'em pay. And the corollary: Make a product that they'll pay for. BuzzFeed has only its traffic to sell — and can only sell it once. Television shows can be sold again and again, with streaming now a third leg to broadcast and cable, offering a vast new market for licensing and syndication. Television is colonizing the Internet and people still spend more time watching television than they do on the Internet and more time on the Internet watching television. "The fundamental recipe for media success, in other words, is the same as it used to be," concludes Wolff, "a premium product that people pay attention to and pay money for. Credit cards, not eyeballs."

SubiculumHammer writes:

I'm a neuroscientist in a doctoral program but I have a growing interest in deep learning methods (e.g., http://deeplearning.net/ ). As a neuroscientist using MR imaging methods, I often rely on tools to help me classify and define brain structures and functional activations. Some of the most advanced tools for image segmentation are being innovated using magical-sounding terms like Adaboosted weak-learners, auto-encoders, Support Vector Machines, and the like.

While I do not have the time to become a computer-science expert in artificial intelligence methods, I would like to establish a basic skill level in the application of some of these methods. Soylenters, "Do I need to know the mathematical foundation of these methods intimately to be able to employ them effectively or intelligently?" and "What would be a good way of becoming more familiar with these methods, given my circumstances?"

janrinok writes:

Another security story from The Register to start the week off:

Attackers have added a recent dangerous Adobe vulnerability to the Magnitude exploit kit, according to respected independent malware researcher "Kafeine". The remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2015-3113) revealed last week allows attackers to hijack un-patched machines targeting Internet Explorer on Windows 7 and XP.

Web villains [sic] designated APT 3 by FireEye sleuths are already exploiting the flaw through phishing attacks. Now the researcher known as Kafeine says the vulnerability has been added to the Magnitude exploit kit in what is a significant elevation of risk for Flash users.

Kafeine says Magnitude attackers are using the exploit to drop the Cryptowall ransomware.

"CVE-2015-3113 has been spotted as a zero day by FireEye, exploited in limited targeted attacks. It's now making its path to exploit kits," he says.

Magnitude, said to generate as of August up to $US100,000 a month for its author, maintains about a third of the exploit kit market according to Trustwave. The researchers say the Magnitude author, thought to be a single Russian, could make up to $3 million a year.

janrinok writes:

A Register story:

[Security] infosec researcher Peter Gramantik says carders are exploiting an unknown vulnerability to steal billing information from e-commerce sites that use eBay's Magento platform. Gramantik found an attack script that plunders POST data and identifies valuable payment data before storing it as an encrypted image file. He says attackers appear to be exploiting a vulnerability in Magento core and demonstrate a strong understanding of the way the platform works.

A quarter of all Alexa top one million e-commerce sites are said to use Magento, making it a valuable target for attackers.

"It seems though that the attacker is exploiting a vulnerability in Magento core or some widely used module/extension," Gramantik says. "Using this vector, the attacker is able to inject malicious code into the Magento core file ... the attacker gets the content of every POST request. The sad part is that you won't know it's affecting you until it's too late, in the worst cases it won't become apparent until they appear on your bank statements."

Gramantik says the inclusion of a public key variable indicates the attacker is likely behind a family of credit card stealers.

janrinok writes:

San Francisco -- and the tech industry -- are beaming with Pride this weekend.

The United States Supreme Court on Friday ruled same-sex marriage a constitutional right, one day before San Francisco begins its famous Pride festivities, one of the largest celebrations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender -- aka LGBT -- culture in the country. The tech industry is practically euphoric, especially after high-profile executives this year, from Apple CEO Tim Cook to Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, publicly advocated advancing gay rights. But that advancement works both ways, said Gary Virginia, board president of SF Pride, which organizes the celebration. Speaking out is not just a personal decision for tech execs; it makes good business sense too, he said.

"They attract a younger population for their workforce, and it's been proven that social attitudes are changing," said Virginia. "So it behooves them to have progressive policies to attract LGBT employees. I think they see the benefit of it."

The celebration caps off a landmark year for the gay rights movement. In September, Apple's Cook wrote an essay saying he's gay, making him the first openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company. A month later, he allowed for his name to be attached to an LGBT anti-discrimination bill in his home state of Alabama. In March, Benioff said he had cancelled all Salesforce events in Indiana after its governor signed a law that would allow businesses to refuse service to anyone in the LGBT community on religious grounds. Less than a week later, dozens of executives from Airbnb, Ebay, Jawbone, Lyft, PayPal, Twitter and other companies signed a joint statement in The Washington Post against the religious freedom laws either passed or being considered in several states.

The tech industry is a relatively recent ally. LGBT leaders point out it's taken decades to achieve Friday's Supreme Court decision. New York City, for example, is commemorating the anniversary of the 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn, which many consider the jump start of the movement. The 1978 assassination of Harvey Milk, an openly gay San Francisco board supervisor, galvanized the national LGBT community.

janrinok writes:

A story picked up from Ars Technica:

While we’ve heard of consumer drones getting in the way of commercial airliners and obstructing firefighting operations, we've haven't heard of many cases where drones are shot out of the sky by a neighbor.

Eric Joe told Ars he was flying his homemade drone over his parents' orchard in Modesto, California late last year. After just three-and-a-half minutes of flight time, a single shotgun blast rang out from the neighbor's property at the low-flying, slow-moving hexacopter. The drone came crashing down instantly and was damaged beyond repair.

After the neighbor, Brett McBay, declined to cover the costs that he initially was amenable to pay, Joe took McBay to small claims court last month.

"Court finds that Mr. McBay acted unreasonably in having his son shoot the drone down regardless of whether it was over his property or not," the Stanislaus County Court Small Claims Division found.

According to Joe's attorney (and his cousin), Jesse Woo, if McBay doesn't pay within 30 days voluntarily—the end of June 2015—then they can go back to court to try to enforce the judgment.

"If he doesn't pay within 30 days we have to go through court processes to find out what kinds of assets he has and then to get a lien and get a judgement against his assets or wage garnishment," Woo said, adding that he fully intends to collect the money owed.

"We don't believe that the drone was over McBay's property—we maintain that it was briefly over the shared county access road. But even if it did, you're only privileged to use reasonable force in defense of property. Shooting a shotgun at this thing that isn't threatening your property isn't reasonable."

janrinok writes:

Ecuador has released 201 tortoises on Santa Fe Island in the Galápagos archipelago, where a similar subspecies went extinct more than 150 years ago.

Santa Fe is the former home to Chelonoidis sp, a subspecies of giant tortoise which died out after humans took a hefty toll on the ecosystem, beginning in the 18th century when pirates and buccaneers decimated the population. "We released in Santa Fe 201 tortoises from the Chelonoidis hoodensis subspecies, which are from Espanola Island, and which have morphological and genetic similarities to the extinct subspecies on the (Santa Fe) island," rangers from Galápagos National Park said.

The 201 tortoises, which were released Saturday, were raised in captivity and are between four and 10 years old. Of these, 30 have a radio transmitter that will allow park rangers to follow the animals in the wild.

The park service described repopulating the island with tortoises as "a conservation milestone" and said it signified a "new methodology for ecological restoration of the archipelago," which is located 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) off the Ecuadoran coast. The project will also study the changes that occur in the ecosystem with the tortoises and animal's coexistence with the approximately 6,500 land iguanas that live on the island, according to Danny Rueda, director of Galápagos National Park. Experts believe 14 subspecies of tortoises have lived on the Galápagos Islands, of which three—including Chelonoidis sp—are extinct. The last member of the extinct Chelonoidis abigdoni subspecies, a tortoise known as "Lonesome George," died three years ago.

The Galápagos Islands are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and are known for their unique flora and fauna. Santa Fe Island, which is located in the center of the archipelago, has an area of 24.7 square kilometers (9.5 square miles).

"gewg_" writes:

Courthouse News Service reports

A woman climbed a flagpole and cut down the Confederate flag in front of the South Carolina statehouse Saturday before promptly being arrested and seeing the banner raised again less than an hour later.

Bree Newsome, dressed in climbing gear, spoke respectfully with police gathered at the base of the flag pole as she continued to move ever closer to the flag. A video of her climb captures Newsome, a resident of Raleigh, North Carolina, talking to police from about two-thirds the way up the 30-foot pole, evidently acknowledging her imminent arrest.

"I know sir. I'm prepared", she says.

"Ma'am, come down off the pole", the officers yell as passing motorists honked their horns at the scene.

"You cannot get to me with hatred and oppression and violence", Newsome shouted as she cut the flag down. "In the name of God, this flag comes down today."

The New York Daily News identifies the woman as Brittany Ann Byuarium (Bree) Newsome of Charlotte, NC and continues

[...] When she reached the bottom, State Police took the flag out of her hands and arrested her. Another North Carolina activist, James Tyson, climbed over the four-foot wrought-iron fence and held the pole to make sure Newsome didn't fall, Lewis said. He was arrested alongside Newsome as a group of onlookers cheered off camera. The 30-year-olds were charged with defacing a monument on state Capitol grounds, a misdemeanor that can bring up to three years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

A judge ordered $3,000 bond for each of them and said they were free to travel to other states.

Lagg writes:

Looks like Github has finally did an official release of that editor we all love to hate and generally be uncertain of. Except for me of course. I use vim. No one ever questions vim right? From the announcement:

Today we're proud to announce Atom 1.0. It's amazing to think Atom has only been out and available to the public for a little over a year. A lot has happened since then. Atom has been downloaded 1.3 million times, and serves 350,000 monthly active users. The community has created 660 themes, and 2,090 packages including can't-live-without packages that have their own mini communities like the linter, autocomplete-plus, and minimap.

In the 155 releases since launch, the editor has improved immensely in performance, stability, feature-set, and modularity. The editor is faster in scrolling, typing, and start-up time. Atom now has a Windows installer, Linux packages, and several heavily requested features have been added like pane resizing and multi-folder projects.

Editor: Are there any Atom users amongst our community - what makes it your editor of choice?

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Lenovo design chief David Hill is asking for feedback about an up-top-date classic Thinkpad

"Imagine a blue enter key, 7 row classic keyboard, 16:10 aspect ratio screen, multi-color ThinkPad logo, dedicated volume controls, rubberized paint, exposed screws, lots of status LED's, and more", he writes, asking whether this would be the ThinkPad of choice for the design connoisseur, or too old school?

ThinkPad Time Machine?

BK writes:

French taxi drivers are the latest to protest the entry of Uber into their protected market. Their protests feature vandalism and blocking roads. From the AP story:

French taxi drivers pulled out the throttle in an all-out confrontation with the ultra-cheap Uber car service Thursday, smashing livery cars, setting tires ablaze and blocking traffic during a nationwide strike that caught tourists and celebrities alike in the mayhem.

[...] Taxi drivers justified their rage, saying Uber's lowest-cost service UberPop was ruining their livihoods.[sic]

[...] Anger seethed across France, with riot police chasing strikers from Paris' ring road, where protesters torched tires and swarmed onto exit ramps during rush hour on the busy artery that leads to Charles de Gaulle airport. In Toulouse in the southwest, angry taxi drivers dumped flour onto UberPop cars, tires were burned in Nantes in the west, and in Lyon, in the southeast, roads were blocked.

Compare this to Uber protests in London.

Vive le monopole!