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lhsi writes:

The UK's Pirate Party are celebrating 6 years since forming the party by launching a campaign retrospective; a series of blogs, posters, podcasts and videos.

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c0lo writes:

Deutsche Welle reports on failed round of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) negotiations:

Sticking points were said to have included differences over protecting regional food specialties, the auto trade, and protection for drug makers.

Among other things, New Zealand, the world's largest dairy exporter, has said it will not back a deal that does not significantly open dairy markets.

The question of data protection for drug manufacturers was also a bone of contention, with the US wanting data on biological drug development to remain monopolized for 12 years, as compared with Australia's five years.
The deputy trade minister from Chile, which has no protection at all for drugmakers, said any deal must reconcile public needs with commercial interest. "For us it's vital to have an agreement that balances public policy goals for intellectual property in medicines," Minister Andres Rebolledo said.

The New Zealanders are upset about their distant Canadian cousins protecting their dairy industry, the NZ stuff reports:

The heavily protected Canadian dairy industry has earned the wrath of Federated Farmers president Dr William Rolleston for standing in the way of a good deal for dairy in the Trans- Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks in Hawaii.
Rolleston said the public position of the Canadians was "unacceptable".

A 2014 paper written by Canadian academic and former Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay says it costs a Canadian family about $300 a year to prop up the dairy industry.
The Canadian government slaps on quotas of 246 percent for cheese, and almost 300 percent for butter.
Outside key dairy electorates, the supply management system that protects farmers is not popular.

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AnonTechie writes:

Research Scientists to Use Network ("Pacific Research Platform") Much Faster Than Internet

A series of ultra-high-speed fiber-optic cables will weave a cluster of West Coast university laboratories and supercomputer centers into a network called the Pacific Research Platform as part of a five-year $5 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation.

The network is meant to keep pace with the vast acceleration of data collection in fields such as physics, astronomy and genetics. It will not be directly connected to the Internet, but will make it possible to move data at speeds of 10 gigabits to 100 gigabits among 10 University of California campuses and 10 other universities and research institutions in several states, tens or hundreds of times faster than is typical now.

The challenge in moving large amounts of scientific data is that the open Internet is designed for transferring small amounts of data, like web pages, said Thomas A. DeFanti, a specialist in scientific visualization at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, or Calit2, at the University of California, San Diego. While a conventional network connection might be rated at 10 gigabits per second, in practice scientists trying to transfer large amounts of data often find that the real rate is only a fraction of that capacity.

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Phoenix666 writes:

the push towards V2I—vehicle to infrastructure—communications systems is meant to help solve this problem, timing traffic signals for optimum traffic flow. V2I is still some years away, but in the meantime BMW has released an iOS app that achieves some of the same functions, at least for drivers in Oregon (Portland and Eugene) or Salt Lake City.

The EnLighten app—which has actually been available as a standalone iOS and Android app for a while now—lives on a driver's iOS phone but runs through BMW's iDrive infotainment system. When running, the iDrive screen shows the status of the nearest traffic signal ahead, along with a real-time prediction of when the light will change.

EnLighten, which has been developed by a company called Connected Signals, works by interfacing with the city's traffic management system, then combines that data with the car's location (via GPS). And although the BMW version of Enlighten currently only works in three cities in the US, the standalone app (which doesn't integrate with a car's infotainment system) will also function in Las Vegas, Arcadia and Walnut Creek in California, and Christchurch, New Zealand, with more cities planned for the near future.

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tonyPick writes:

According to Reuters the former CEO of the collapsed Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, Mark Karpeles, has been arrested:

Mark Karpeles, the former head of defunct bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, was arrested on Saturday in connection with the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the virtual currency, Japanese media reports said.

The French-born Karpeles, 30, is suspected of falsifying data on the outstanding balance of the exchange, at one point the world's largest hub for trading the digital currency, they added.

Police were unable to immediately confirm the reports.

The story is also covered at International Business Times, The New York Times and The BBC.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found this on Phys.Org:

'This breakthrough is very exciting for us. In just six months we have developed a truly unique demonstration which is able to use standard IP end-points and translate the IP flow into an IP-over-ICN abstraction (publish/subscribe model), where a single hop within the ICN network used SDN switches with pre-installed forwarding rules for the ICN flows,' says Dirk Trossen, Principal Scientist at InterDigital and POINT's Technical Manager. The POINT project kicked off in January 2015 and is supported by the EU to the tune of EUR 3.5 million.

ICN, which stands for Information Centric Network, has been the focus of many research teams since 2006 for its potential to replace the IP-based Internet as we know it. ICN notably allows for content to be fetched from multiple servers and caches, for savings in the synchronous and quasi-synchronous delivery of popular content, for securing the content rather than the endpoint, and for allowing operators to apply traffic engineering rules.

However the requirements of such a switch – including heavy standardisation, strong stakeholder support and the fact that viable methods to create a truly scalable internetworking of individual ICN highlands has not yet been found – have cast doubt on its feasibility.

To overcome this obstacle, POINT tries another approach. Instead of seeking to replace Internet Protocol (IP)-based networks, the project aims to harness the innovation potential of IP-based applications and solutions, while benefitting from specific ICN solutions in terms of their potential for better performance compared to their IP-based counterparts. At its core is the fundamental question: Is an IP-over-ICN system a better solution for IP-based services than pure IP-based networks?

A customer use case in the project's presentation flyer helps to illustrate the POINT approach: John, a London priest wanting to reach out to older parishioners whose health doesn't allow them to attend services in person, would like to set up a live video streaming service to fulfil this need. Unfortunately his bandwidth is not high enough, and paid streaming services are too expensive. He reluctantly chooses to use YouTube despite his fear of losing his content rights and sends over the data, thereby enabling a high number of users to view the video simultaneously. With the POINT software, John could have created a unicast stream received by users as a multicast stream, meaning he wouldn't have to worry about his bandwidth anymore, and could do without both paid and free streaming services.

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darkfeline writes:

Just like the title says, ISPs are once again trying to take down net neutrality by claiming that because the Internet uses computers, it is not a telecommunications service, but rather an information service, which would make it subject to lighter regulation.

Internet service providers yesterday filed a 95-page brief (PDF) outlining their case that the Federal Communications Commission’s new net neutrality rules should be overturned.

One of the central arguments is that the FCC cannot impose common carrier rules on Internet access because it can’t be defined as a “telecommunications” service under Title II of the Communications Act. The ISPs argued that Internet access must be treated as a more lightly regulated “information service” because it involves “computer processing.”

“No matter how many computer-mediated features the FCC may sweep under the rug, the inescapable core of Internet access is a service that uses computer processing to enable consumers to ‘retrieve files from the World Wide Web, and browse their contents’ and, thus, ‘offers the ‘capability for... acquiring,... retrieving [and] utilizing... information.’ Under the straightforward statutory definition, an ‘offering’ of that ‘capability’ is an information service," the ISPs wrote.

Internet providers are now common carriers, and they're ready to sue. "If broadband providers provided only pure transmission and not information processing, as the FCC now claims, the primitive and limited form of 'access' broadband customers would receive would be unrecognizable to consumers," the ISPs also wrote. "They would be required, for example, to know the IP address of every website they visit. But, because Domain Name Service ('DNS') is part of Internet access, consumers can visit any website without knowing its IP address and thereafter 'click through' links on that website to other websites."

Since all of the ISPs are trying so hard to stop net neutrality, these laws are probably worth keeping on the books.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/isps-net-neutrality-rules-are-illegal-because-internet-access-uses-computers/

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Phoenix666 writes:

An international team of researchers led by scientists at the University of Georgia has discovered how parasitic plants, which steal their nutrients from another living plant, evolved the ability to detect and attack their hosts. Their findings, published recently in the journal Science, could lead to new techniques to control the thieving weeds.
...
As plant roots grow, they release hormones called strigolactones into the soil. This is a signal that normally helps fungi form a beneficial connection to the plant, in which they each trade nutrients. But the seeds of parasitic plants also possess the ability to sense strigolactones, which prompt them to germinate, attach to the host root and syphon off nutrients.

"It's kind of like root radar," said Nelson, who is also a member of UGA's Plant Center. "But the incredible thing is that this strigolactone detection system seems to have evolved from plant genes that normally control a seed's ability to detect fire."

When a forest burns, compounds in the smoke and ash leach into the soil. Many plants have evolved the ability to detect these compounds, which signal that their competition--large shady trees or dense ground cover--has been destroyed and it might be an opportune time to grow.

The findings could lead to new weed control strategies.

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CoolHand writes:

Yesterday, it was announced that Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor GOTY edition was officially released on Linux and MacOS. This is one of the first truly great games in its prime to see the light of day on Linux in recent years. This is largely due to the influence of Valve and it's gaming machine push. It is largely to be seen if Valve can continue this trend and make Steam machines viable enough for the masses upon release. Here is some great Linux specific coverage of the release. If you wish to support Linux gaming and the porting house directly responsible, you should buy it directly from them (and receive a steam key to redeem). With the state of gaming on Linux being one reason many have given for years regarding the lack of Linux desktop acceptance, this excuse may be starting to disappear. If Valve sees its dream come to fruition, we will see whether that point has been valid all along or not.

From a Gamasutra article:

Feral Interactive today announced that the open-world action adventure game Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year Edition is out now on Mac and Linux via Steam, and will be released on the Mac App Store by early August. Developed by Monolith Productions and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for consoles and Windows, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor received high praise for its innovative gameplay and immersive setting. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor delivers a dynamic game environment where the player orchestrates their personal plan of vengeance as they bend Mordor to their will. The game begins on the night of Sauron's return to Mordor, as his Black Captains brutally execute the Rangers of the Black Gate. Players become Talion, a ranger who loses his family and everything he holds dear, only to be returned from death by a mysterious Spirit of vengeance.

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darkengine writes:

In addition to a another TPP dossier, WikiLeaks has released a set of documents detailing NSA targets in the Japanese government and in influential Japanese companies:

The list indicates that NSA spying on Japanese conglomerates, government officials, ministries and senior advisers extends back at least as far as the first administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which lasted from September 2006 until September 2007. The telephone interception target list includes the switchboard for the Japanese Cabinet Office; the executive secretary to the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga; a line described as "Government VIP Line"; numerous officials within the Japanese Central Bank, including Governor Haruhiko Kuroda; the home phone number of at least one Central Bank official; numerous numbers within the Japanese Finance Ministry; the Japanese Minister for Economy, Trade and Industry Yoichi Miyazawa; the Natural Gas Division of Mitsubishi; and the Petroleum Division of Mitsui.

Today's publication also contains NSA reports from intercepts of senior Japanese government officials. Four of the reports are classified TOP SECRET. One of the reports is marked "REL TO USA, AUS, CAN, GBR, NZL", meaning it has been formally authorised to be released to the United States' "Five Eyes" intelligence partners: Australia, Canada, Great Britain and New Zealand.

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Phoenix666 writes:

One of the things Apple was supposed to announce at WWDC in June was a new version of the Apple TV, the company's now more than three-year-old set-top box. Days before the keynote, though, the New York Times reported that those plans had been postponed at the last minute because "the product was not ready." Today, a report from Buzzfeed, the same outlet that originally reported on the WWDC plans, says that a refined version of the same box will actually be coming out in September alongside Apple's next-generation iPhones and the final version of iOS 9.

The basic hardware sounds pretty much the same as it did back in March when the original rumors made the rounds. The new box will include a version of the A8 SoC included in the iPhone 6 and sixth-generation iPod Touch, more internal storage, Siri support, and a new remote control with some kind of integrated touchpad (I'd take anything that would save us from the endless clicking the current Apple TV requires).

Most importantly, the new Apple TV would be released alongside an SDK and app store that would open the platform up. Currently, content providers have to work with Apple to create channels which are then pushed out to everyone with an Apple TV. An app store could increase the amount and variety of content available on the device, and (alongside the gamepad APIs introduced back in iOS 7) could make the set-top box into a sort of mini game console in its own right.

Is Apple too late to this party, with Roku already doing well, or will they come dominate this the way they did MP3 players? Can anyone with Apple TV comment?

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Phoenix666 writes:

A small, but notable moment in baseball history occurred this week. In a US minor-league game between the San Rafael Pacifics and Vallejo Admirals, the home plate umpire did not call balls and strikes. Instead, a computerized video system was used to make the determinations, which were relayed by the game's announcer to the crowd cheering on the home team—and checking out the system's performance—at Albert Park in San Rafael, California.

The system, Pitchf/x from Chicago-based Sportvision, isn't new to baseball. It already provides data for evaluating players and umpires, and it helps TV viewers see where a pitch lands relative to the strike zone. But on July 28 it was used to make actual calls, marking the first time that's happened in professional baseball.

Maybe if Major League Baseball can save money on umpires they can lower ticket prices.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket marvels at how high distilling has come:

Japanese whisky will be sent into space next month to test how time in a zero-gravity environment affects its flavour, one of the country's biggest drinks makers said Friday.

Samples of whisky produced by Suntory will be stored in the Japanese laboratory facility of the International Space Station for at least a year, with some flasks staying longer.

Researchers for the company believe that storing the beverage in an environment with only slight temperature changes and limited liquid movement could lead to a mellower flavour. [...] Once they are returned to Earth, blenders will assess their flavours while researchers subject the liquids to scientific analysis, the company said. "For the moment, we're not thinking about applying the study results to commercial products," a Suntory spokeswoman told AFP.

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AnonTechie writes:

In contemporary science fiction, we often see robots passing themselves off as humans. According to a [University of Stavanger] researcher, the genre problematises what it takes to be accepted as a human being and provides a useful contribution to the debate about who should have the right to reproduce.

Science fiction culture has prospered and gone from being for nerds only in the 1970s and 1980s to becoming part of popular culture in the last two decades. This particularly applies to the TV series genre, which has become mainstream with Battlestar Galactica (2004), Heroes (2006) and Fringe (2008).

"The genre has evolved from depicting technology as a threat, to dealing with more intimate relations between humans and machines", says Ingvil Hellstrand. In her doctoral thesis, she points out that science fiction today is often about humanoid androids that are trying to become "one of us". According to Hellstrand, this is not incidental.

What is SN take on this issue??

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Arthur T Knackerbracket offers the following:

Scientists say the Philae space probe has gathered data supporting the theory that comets can serve as cosmic laboratories in which some of the essential elements for life are assembled.

Philae, which is part of the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission, used two separate instruments to 'sniff' for molecules during its bumpy landing on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko last November.

"Comets are loaded with all the raw materials like water, CO2, methane, ammonia, needed to assemble more complex organic molecules, perhaps sparked by UV-photons from the Sun or cosmic rays, or in the shock that occurs when a comet hits the surface of a planet like the young Earth," said Mark McCaughrean, a senior scientific adviser at the European Space Agency. It's not yet known whether the complex molecules found in 67P were made in the early solar system and then incorporated into the comet or formed there later, he said. "Either way, it seems that comets are pretty good places to find the building blocks of molecules which later on could be used for life."

McCaughrean, who wasn't directly involved in the study, dismissed recent reports that evidence of life itself had been found on the comet. But he said the prebiotic compounds that were detected might be coaxed into even more complex molecules such as amino acids, including by a planetary impact.

Proteins, fundamental to living organisms, are made from long chains of amino acids, and the simplest one, glycine, was even detected in material collected from the tail of another comet by NASA's Stardust mission a few years ago. The Philae scientists have not found any amino acids on 67P yet, but that's not to say they aren't there. As Philae was only able to perform experiments for 60 hours before its batteries were depleted, scientists were unable to complete some of the work they had hoped to carry out.

Organic compounds on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko revealed by COSAC mass spectrometry [abstract]

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Arthur T Knackerbracket finds this worrying piece:

Who would have felt comfortable in these circumstances?

A Massachusetts man was driving in the town of Medford last Saturday night. He admits he took a wrong turn and ended up going the wrong way down a traffic circle. The angry man steps out of a truck and approaches him. Michael, seemingly -- and perhaps understandably -- frightened, reverses. The angry man follows him and Michael stops.

The angry man appears to show his badge and identifies himself as a police officer. Some, though, might be troubled by the officer's greeting: "I'll put a hole in your head." Michael is apologetic and explains to the officer -- now identified as Det. Stephen LeBert -- that he is being recorded. LeBert suggests that he will seize the camera.

"I'm a f***ing Medford detective and you went through that f***ing rotary," says LeBert. As Michael insists he didn't see a sign, LeBert demands his license. "You're lucky I'm a cop, otherwise I'd be beating the f***ing piss out of you right now," LeBert adds, shortly after calling the driver an a**hole. LeBert ultimately calls for on-duty cops who at least do a little to calm the situation. However, the fact that Michael posted his video to YouTube has led to an investigation.

Medford Police Chief Leo Sacco told MyFoxBoston: "It's not the proper behavior, but we only know about it when people tell us. And unfortunately, we had to get up this morning and see it on a YouTube video."

In the days before cameras proliferated, you had to rely on witnesses and hearsay. The police were more likely to be believed by those in authority. Cameras have begun to change that -- on both sides.

Sacco told the Medford Transcript: "The video is troubling enough, and it requires investigation just based on what we see here. The driver does not have to file his own complaint. He may, but he does not have to."

[...] Sacco told the Medford Transcript that LeBert was a good policeman. He added, perhaps unfortunately: "If you work hard you do step on people's toes, which generates complaints."

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Phoenix666 writes:

Security researchers have refined a long-theoretical profiling technique into a highly practical attack that poses a threat to Tor users and anyone else who wants to shield their identity online.

The technique collects user keystrokes as an individual enters usernames, passwords, and other data into a website. After a training session that typically takes less than 10 minutes, the website—or any other site connected to the website—can then determine with a high degree of certainty when the same individual is conducting subsequent online sessions. The profiling works by measuring the minute differences in the way each person presses keys on computer keyboards. Since the pauses between keystrokes and the precise length of time each key is pressed are unique for each person, the profiles act as a sort of digital fingerprint that can betray its owner's identity.

The prospect of widely available databases that identify users based on subtle differences in their typing was unsettling enough to researchers Per Thorsheim and Paul Moore that they have created a Chrome browser plugin that's designed to blunt the threat. The plugin caches the input keystrokes and after a brief delay relays them to the website in at a pseudo-random rate. Thorsheim, a security expert who organizes the annual PasswordsCon conference, and Moore, an information security consultant at UK-based Urity Group, conceived the plugin after thinking through all the ways the typing profiles could be used to compromise online anonymity.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Russia on Wednesday set a date for the first Proton rocket launch since an engine failure in May saw a Mexican satellite destroyed.

Authorities said a Proton-M rocket would blast off from the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan on August 28 carrying a British Inmarsat-5F3 commercial communications satellite.

A similar rocket bearing a Mexican satellite fell back to earth on May 16 after suffering an engine malfunction, in one of a string of embarrassing failures for Russia's troubled space programme.

The state-run Khrunichev Centre spacecraft maker said that a probe into the disaster showed it was due to a construction flaw in one of the engines.

"A plan to eradicate the reasons for the engine failure has been fulfilled," it said in a statement.

The Proton-M failure in May came exactly a year after the same model of rocket carrying Russia's most advanced communications satellite fell back to Earth minutes after lift-off. That accident was later blamed on a damaged ball bearing.

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Phoenix666 writes:

With just one final Wolverine movie left, Hugh Jackman turned to social media to get some ideas on what to do with it. On Monday, he shared the following request on Twitter:

        My last time putting on the claws. What do you want to see happen? 50 words or less. I'll read as many as I can. pic.twitter.com/ksA1Gii5tf

        — Hugh Jackman (@RealHughJackman) July 27, 2015

"The Wolverine," the last movie, portrayed a Japan that would feel familiar to fans of "The Barbarian and the Geisha," "You Only Live Twice," and "The Karate Kid, Part II". What would Soylent fans of Wolverine like to see?

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