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kaszz writes:

Asteroid threats seems only taken seriously when the last close call is fresh in memory. But it didn't last long enough to establish consistent funding. On March 23, 1989, when an asteroid 300 meters in diameter called 1989FC passed within 684 000 kilometers from Earth. New York Times wrote, "In cosmic terms, it was a close call." This event also woke up the powers that were after this arguably close brush with total annihilation. The US Congress asked NASA to prepare a report on the threat posed by asteroids. The document from 1992, "The Spaceguard Survey: Report of the NASA International Near-Earth-Object Detection Workshop," was rather bleak.

If a large Near-Earth Object (NEO) were to hit the Earth, the report said, its denizens could look forward to acid rain, firestorms, and an impact winter induced by dust being thrown kilometers into the stratosphere. After reports from the National Research Council made it clear that meeting the discovery requirement outlined in the Congressional mandate was impossible given the lack of program funding, NEOO got a tenfold budget increase from 2009 to 2014. Yet it still faces a number of difficulties. An audit of the program released September 2014 described the NEOO program as "a one-man operation that is poorly integrated and lacking in objectives and oversight".

AnonTechie writes:

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are legal and increasingly popular for individuals wanting to circumvent censorship, avoid mass surveillance or access geographically limited services like Netflix and BBC iPlayer. Used by around 20 per cent of European internet users they encrypt users' internet communications, making it more difficult for people to monitor their activities.

The study of fourteen popular VPN providers found that eleven of them leaked information about the user because of a vulnerability known as 'IPv6 leakage'. The leaked information ranged from the websites a user is accessing to the actual content of user communications, for example comments being posted on forums. Interactions with websites running HTTPS encryption, which includes financial transactions, were not leaked.

The leakage occurs because network operators are increasingly deploying a new version of the protocol used to run the Internet called IPv6. IPv6 replaces the previous IPv4, but many VPNs only protect user's IPv4 traffic. The researchers tested their ideas by choosing fourteen of the most famous VPN providers and connecting various devices to a WiFi access point which was designed to mimic the attacks hackers might use.

http://phys.org/news/2015-06-internet-anonymity-software-leaks-users.html

[More Info]: GWI Infographic: VPN Users

The paper 'A Glance through the VPN Looking Glass: IPv6 Leakage and DNS Hijacking in Commercial VPN clients' by V. Perta, M. Barbera, G. Tyson, H. Haddadi, A. Mei will be presented at the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium on Tuesday 30 June 2015.

See also our story here.

AnonTechie writes:

Science just took us a small step closer to HAL 9000. A new artificial intelligence (AI) program designed by Chinese researchers has beat humans on a verbal IQ test. Scoring well on the verbal section of the intelligence test has traditionally been a tall order for computers, since words have multiple meanings and complex relationships to one another.

But in a new study, the program did better than its human counterparts who took the test. The findings suggest machines could be one small step closer to approaching the level of human intelligence, the researchers wrote in the study, which was posted earlier this month on the online database arXiv, but has not yet been published in a scientific journal. Don't get too excited just yet: IQ isn't the end-all, be-all measure of intelligence, human or otherwise.

For one thing, the test only measures one kind of intelligence (typically, critics point out, at the expense of others, such as creativity or emotional intelligence. Plus, because some test questions can be hacked using some basic tricks, some AI researchers argue that IQ isn't the best way to measure machine intelligence.

[Paper - PDF]: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1505.07909v2.pdf

tt0265459 writes:

The New York Times published an article on Sunday confirming what we've all assumed — that internet privacy policies are so full of loopholes as to be meaningless. They found that of the 100 top alexa-ranked english-language websites, 85 had privacy policies that permitted them to disclose users' personal information in cases of mergers, bankruptcy, asset sales and other business transactions.

When sites and apps get acquired or go bankrupt, the consumer data they have amassed may be among the companies' most valuable assets. And that has created an incentive for some online services to collect vast databases on people without giving them the power to decide which companies, or industries, may end up with their information.

"In effect, there's a race to the bottom as companies make representations that are weak and provide little actual privacy protection to consumers," said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit research center in Washington.

AnonTechie writes:

The US House of Representatives is wading into the debate over whether human embryos should be modified to introduce heritable changes. Its fiscal year 2016 spending bill for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would prohibit the agency from spending money to evaluate research or clinical applications for such products.

In an unusual twist, the bill—introduced on June 17—would also direct the FDA to create a committee that includes religious experts to review a forthcoming report from the US Institute of Medicine (IOM). The IOM's analysis, which considers the ethics of creating embryos that have three genetic parents, was commissioned by the FDA.

The House legislation comes during a time of intense debate on such matters, sparked by the announcement in April that researchers in China had edited the genomes of human embryos. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) moved quickly to remind the public that a 1996 law prevents the federal government from funding work that destroys human embryos or creates them for research purposes.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-congress-moves-to-block-human-embryo-editing/

[Source]: http://www.nature.com/news/us-congress-moves-to-block-human-embryo-editing-1.17858

We covered a related story, Three-Person Babies Could Be Possible in Two Years just over a year ago.

takyon writes:

Hot on the heels of Microsoft handing over Bing imaging assets and employees to Uber, AOL has announced a partnership and deal that will see it take over sales and management of online advertisements on Microsoft Web properties:

The deal, which was announced on Monday (US time), will see AOL take over ads for such sites as MSN Homepage, Outlook.com, Skype, Xbox, and ads in apps. Markets affected include the US, UK, Canada, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain. "The arrangement will improve ad campaign efficiency and effectiveness through the delivery of scaled premium inventory across display, video and mobile, and enables marketers to deeply target premium audiences globally in key verticals, including autos, entertainment, health & fitness, lifestyle, money, news, sports, travel, and weather," AOL gushed in a canned statement.

The partnership also includes a new ten-year arrangement in which the AOL portal will switch its search engine to Bing from January 1, 2016, while AOL will sell and manage ads both on its own search site and on Microsoft's. "This deal is further evidence of the quality of Bing results and the performance of the Bing Ads marketplace," Microsoft corporate veep Rik van der Kooi said in a statement. "And we will continue our focus on delivering world class consumer services and content and look forward to partnering with AOL to market them."

Online ads have never been a massive business for Microsoft. Compared to its rival Google, which earns in excess of 90 per cent of its revenue from its various ad businesses, Microsoft tucks its online ad sales into its "Devices and Consumer Other" reporting segment, which itself accounts for only about a tenth of the software giant's revenue.

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

Spiders sprayed with water containing carbon nanotubes and graphene flakes have produced the toughest fibers ever measured, say materials scientists.

Spider silk is one of the more extraordinary materials known to science. The protein fiber, spun by spiders to make webs, is stronger than almost anything that humans can make.

The dragline silk spiders use to make a web's outer rim and spokes is amazing stuff. It matches high-grade alloy steel for tensile strength but is about a sixth as dense. It is also highly ductile, sometimes capable of stretching to five times its length.

This combination of strength and ductility makes spider silk extremely tough, matching the toughness of state-of-the-art carbon fibers such as Kevlar.

No word in the article on how close to the necessary tensile strength for a space elevator they come. Or how quickly the spiders got cancer. But at least it's a simple process. I wonder if the same technique will work with silkworms, which are commercially viable (something that spiders aren't).

slash2phar writes:

From the Guardian:

Discovery has paid $1.45 billion for the European (excluding Russia) rights to the Olympic Games starting in 2018, bumping off national broadcasters including the BBC, which have long held them. It's a major coup for the U.S. broadcaster as it looks to take a bigger part of the foreign TV market.

The Discovery chief executive, David Zaslav, told the Guardian that it would negotiate with the BBC and other broadcasters in the UK, France and Germany over potentially sub-licensing some of the rights.

"Part of our approach will be to strive to work with some of the best Olympic broadcast players. The BBC will have the chance to sub-licence some of the rights. We'll open up those discussions in every market," he said.

This sizable deal builds on a $7.5 billion no-bid contract signed last year by the US based NBC to broadcast the Olympics through 2032 in the United States.

Anonymous Coward writes:

In a major setback for President Obama and for people who like to breathe, the court (in a 5-4 decision split along party lines) struck down a set of recent EPA regulations aimed at limiting pollution from coal-fired power plants.

Quoth the Guardian:

takyon writes:

TechCrunch reports that Uber is acquiring imaging/mapping assets and talent from Microsoft's Bing search engine division:

Uber will acquire assets from Microsoft Bing, including roughly 100 employees focused on the product's image collection activities. In short, Uber is absorbing data-collection engineers from Microsoft to bolster its own mapping work. The companies confirmed the transaction with TechCrunch, but each declined to name the terms of the agreement. Microsoft handing Uber part of its operating expenses is minor, given the financial scale of the firms. The technology transfer is far more interesting.

The move also underscores Uber's ambition. A firm doesn't hire 100 specific-focus engineers in a single move if it doesn't have large product aspirations. The new Uber kids are the folks who worked to get image data into Bing, meaning that the search engine's 3D, aerial and street footage is in large part their doing. You can therefore start to presume what Uber has in mind.

The deal continues a recent Uber splurge on mapping technology:

Although most Uber services rely on digital maps, much of its interest in mapping is focused on how to improve its carpooling service, UberPool. While Uber relies heavily on mapping technology from Apple, Baidu and especially Google, the company has taken strides to bring as much mapping expertise in-house as possible.

In March, Uber acquired deCarta, a mapping technology start-up. Uber has also aggressively pursued mapping engineering talent throughout Silicon Valley. And for months, Uber has been avidly competing to buy Nokia Here, the mapping division of the Finnish technology giant, in a deal that could be valued at up to $4 billion, according to several people with direct knowledge of the matter. A small number of bidders are still circling Nokia's business, according to these people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the negotiations were not public.

In other news, two Uber managers were arrested in France and questioned over the firm's ongoing "illicit activity," following protests by taxi drivers and the ban of UberPOP by France's interior minister.

AnonTechie writes:

A year after Iraqi officials ordered the shutdown of Internet access in nearly a quarter of the country to limit the ability of ISIS to communicate, the government ordered a complete shutdown of Internet service in the country for three hours on Saturday, June 27. A shorter interruption followed today. At least one of these outages was apparently intended to block a different sort of message traffic: the sharing of answers for national exams for entry into junior high school.

The outage began at 5:00 am in Iraq and lasted until 8:00 am, based on data from Dyn Research.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/iraqi-government-shut-down-internet-to-prevent-exam-cheating/

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.