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eof writes:

Here is another example of self-inflicted (and deserved) trouble stemming from obsession with social media. The Lakeland, Florida, Ledger reports on a 23 year old woman who broadcast her drunk driving while acknowledging how "not cool" drunk driving is.[video included]

A Lakeland woman discovered that driving and streaming live videos on social media while intoxicated is an excellent way to get caught.

"I'm driving home drunk," Whitney Beall said in one of her videos Saturday. "Let's see if I get a DUI. I don't think I will."

She was wrong.

[...] Beall has gained national attention after using a social media application called Periscope to stream the entire incident on the Internet, said Lakeland Police Department Sgt. Gary Gross. The videos stay on the site for only 24 hours, but a detective was able to capture and use them as evidence.

[...When stopped] Beall refused the breathalyzer test and failed the field sobriety test — Gross said she fell over at one point during the test.

The police were alerted by some viewers and, after they figured out what Periscope is, they tracked her down using landmarks seen in the streaming broadcast.

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Phoenix666 writes:

It's a good time to be in a fear-based industry. Public comments from some of the planet's richest people reveal a strain of paranoia about insurrection. At the last annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, observers noticed elites growing more alarmed about the possibility of social unrest. Last year, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Nick Hanauer published an open letter to his "Fellow Zillionaires" in Politico Magazine that summed up the growing worry among the wealthy: "What do I see in our future now? I see pitchforks."

This matches what Vicino hears. "They're going to Patagonia, they're going to remote locations of the world," he says. "Their reasoning is more to be insulated from a revolution, rebellion, anarchy, or whatever, following an economic collapse."
...
Prepping can also be linked to the rise of libertarian strains of thought in American life that hold that the government is unable to properly address social and ills, or that any attempt on its part to do so would qualify as tyranny. It's a philosophy that at its most stark replaces love thy neighbor with a mystical faith in self-interest. Hiding in a bunker as the rest of humanity falls apart because they failed to prepare as you did is, in some ways, the ultimate libertarian fantasy.
...
At the end of my bunker visit, I thought of a new society Vicino was trying to enable. Some of the wealthy are not only refusing to read the real writing on the wall—such as inequality being a glaring problem that requires our whole society to confront it head-on—but are living in their fantasies. To some, an escape to gold-plated survival shelters is the answer when reality falls apart for everyone else.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Producing fresh drinking water from the sea - desalination - has always seemed to be the most obvious answer to water shortages.

Our oceans cover more than 70% of the earth's surface and contain 97% of its water.

But the energy needed to achieve this seemingly simple process has been costly.

Now, thanks to new technologies, costs have been halved and huge desalination plants are opening around the world.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

"Notspot" - according to one dictionary definition, "an area that has no broadband Internet or 3G mobile phone coverage, or where this is very slow and unreliable."

[...] The motion before the House [of Commons] notes variations in the effectiveness of superfast broadband and calls on the government to host a "not-spot summit." Matt Warman, a former Daily Telegraph technology correspondent who is now a Conservative MP, was instrumental in arranging the debate.

He says the focus will be on connecting the final 5% of households not reached either by the market or the government's rural broadband programme. But overshadowing the debate - and that notspot summit if it happens - will be the bigger question of whether the whole broadband strategy is working, and at the heart of that is the future of BT.

For the last five years, the government has effectively contracted out the job of making sure the UK has a decent superfast broadband network to one company. BT has won all of the contracts in the £830m programme to ensure 95% of households are hooked up by 2017.

How is 3G coverage in Britain on the ground? Is the country indeed on track to bring broadband to 95% of households by 2017?

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mendax writes:

The ever-reliable Ars has a story on a most unlikely and perhaps the first keylogger hack:

A National Security Agency memo that recently resurfaced a few years after it was first published contains a detailed analysis of what very possibly was the world's first keylogger—a 1970s bug that Soviet spies implanted in US diplomats' IBM Selectric typewriters to monitor classified letters and memos.

The electromechanical implants were nothing short of an engineering marvel. The highly miniaturized series of circuits were stuffed into a metal bar that ran the length of the typewriter, making them invisible to the naked eye. The implant, which could only be seen using X-ray equipment, recorded the precise location of the little ball Selectric typewriters used to imprint a character on paper. With the exception of spaces, tabs, hyphens, and backspaces, the tiny devices had the ability to record every key press and transmit it back to Soviet spies in real time.

And who says using a typewriter is any measure of safety? Read the article and be amazed at the ingenuity of engineers in the former Soviet Union.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

As someone who pays an inordinate amount of time pondering things, I noticed some recent milestones for SoylentNews and thought these might be of interest to the rest of the community. In round numbers we have:

• 20 Months since SoylentNews went live (on February 14th, 2014.)
• 20 Current staffers who keep things running.
• 200 150 Subscribers.[*]
• 5,900 Registered users.
• 8,400 Stories posted.
• 10,000 Stories submitted.
• 250,000 Comments posted (almost -- who will get it?)
• 166,770,000 page hits on the site (yes, 1/6 of a Billion!)

What started as a protest activity (The Slashcott) burgeoned into action in the form of taking a several-years-old, non-maintained code base and, through the alchemy of dedication and sleep deprivation, came to be known as SoylentNews. There were numerous site crashes and outages, but things gradually stabilized. We were incorporated (completed on July 4th, aptly enough). Other niceties started to make their way onto the site: moderation changes, User Interface (UI) enhancements, Unicode support, apache and mod-perl upgrades, and countless other behind-the-scenes tweaks and tunings to get things to where they are now.

Besides the main site, I would be remiss if I did not mention that we also have our own Wiki and an active Internet Relay Chat (IRC) community.

Most importantly, it is our community that drives us! Thank you for all the story submissions, for all the comments on those stories, and for your feedback on site improvement ideas.

[*] The original value of 200 for the number of subscribers was an estimate; the correct number was 150. Updated this story for posterity.

To those who have started or extended their subscription please accept our genuine and sincere thanks — we could NOT do it without you! -Ed.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Mandatory data retention is set to begin on October 13th in Australia, but it doesn't look like many telecoms/ISPs are compliant:

Today, October 13th, is the day on which Australian telecommunications service providers are required to start retaining customer metadata in an orderly fashion determined by law, but fewer than ten are ready to do so and some have asked the government if they can store the data without encryption.

The legislation, co-sponsored by attorney-general George Brandis and former communications minister (now Australia's "agile" prime minister) Malcolm Turnbull, officially applies as of today, but a survey of members conducted by industry group the Communications Alliance suggests it remains a shambles.

Out of the 63 providers who responded to a survey conducted by the Alliance, nearly nobody knows what's actually going on: 84 per cent of them aren't yet compliant, just under 58 per cent had submitted their data retention implementation plans (DRIPs) to the department, and of those, nearly 76 per cent don't know if their plans have been rubber-stamped by the Communications Access Coordinator. So: around nine providers, presumably starting at the top where legal and technical resources abound, are fully compliant.

ABC reports on the plight of a small ISP and variance in compliance costs:

Craig runs a small ISP in regional Australia and his business will not be ready to collect metadata.

He said he had begun the lengthy process to explain to the Government how the data will be retained, but it was taking too much time and was putting the business at risk. "We've now reached 400 pages of this document [the DRIP]. It's a very complicated process and it's eating into our profitability," he said. "The amount of time we're spending on it is so high that it has become an unviable thing to continue on. "We have to look after our clients, customers and keep working."

[...] There is a huge variance in estimates for the cost to business of implementing data retention - 58 per cent of ISPs say it will cost between $10,000 and $250,000; 24 per cent estimate it will cost over $250,000; 12 per cent think it will cost over $1,000,000; some estimates go as high as $10 million.

Previously: Data Retention in Australia: Still a Shambles Ahead of October Rollout

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Sage Microelectronics (SageMicro), a four-year-old company based in Hangzhou, China, plans to release an 8TB solid-state drive (SSD) next month as it attempts to break into the U.S. market.

The company, which emerged from quiet mode last year, already sells a 5TB SSD in a 2.5-in. form factor, along with SD cards and NAND flash memory controllers. The 8TB SSD simply adds another stack of eMMC flash memory crammed into a 9.5mm-high SSD.

What makes SageMicro different from most other SSD makers is that it uses eMMC, or embedded MultiMediaCard technology, which is the dense flash storage typically used in mobile devices such as smartphones.

Thank goodness, we were starting to run out of room for our HoloPor...educational software.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

An RNA editing technique called "exon skipping" has shown preliminary success in treating a rare and severe form of muscular dystrophy that currently has no treatment, based on a new study from Northwestern Medicine and the University of Chicago. Children with the disease lose significant muscle strength early in life.

The discovery stems from the persistence of a father -- Scott Frewing -- whose two sons were diagnosed with a rare and severe form of muscular dystrophy and his search for and partnership with the genetic scientist -- Dr. Elizabeth McNally -- who studies the disease. The rare form of the disease is Limb Girdle Muscular Dystrophy Type 2C.

[...] In 2010, Frewing, president of the Kurt+Peter Foundation, began proactively looking for scientists researching Limb Girdle Muscular Dystrophy Type 2C and similar forms of muscular dystrophy, with hope of supporting research to find a treatment. When Frewing approached McNally in 2010, she was one of the only researchers worldwide working on the disease. Frewing had heard of exon skipping and wondered if it would work for his boys. McNally didn't think that exon skipping would make the tiny relevant protein in the disease functional. But, after Frewing persisted, she did a predictive analysis, which showed that that less than half of the protein would be left, but that three key parts of the protein remained. The Kurt+Peter Foundation has provided annual grants to fund further evaluation and development of this potential therapy.

"There are always new ways to treat a disease, and sometimes it is the patients and families who push us to think of these," McNally said. "This partnership is a perfect example of how precision medicine can help address very rare diseases."

Echoes of Lorenzo's Oil.

Reengineering a transmembrane protein to treat muscular dystrophy using exon skipping

Original Submission

gman003 writes:

It has been over a year since Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, bound for Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam, crashed in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 crew and passengers. The Dutch Safety Board has released its complete findings.

News links for quicker reading: BBC, CNN, MSN

Key points:

1. The crash was caused by catastrophic structural failure of the airframe after a 70kg warhead detonated several meters off the left side of the aircraft, severing the forward cabin and cockpit from the rest of the aircraft
2. The specific warhead was identified as a 9N314M warhead, based on size of the blast, recovered fragments, and chemical analysis
3. The warhead was carried on a 9M38 series missile and launched by a Buk surface-to-air missile system

While the report does not specifically identify the missile launch site or operators, as they are outside the scope of the accident report, it does narrow down the launch site to a 320km² area in eastern Ukraine. A separate criminal case is also underway in the Netherlands, but Russia previously vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for a UN tribunal, and is working on their own report. Russia has also disputed many of the findings of the report, saying the evidence is insufficient to narrow it down to a specific warhead type. Their favored theory is an air-to-air missile, a theory soundly rejected by the Dutch report.

Although the blame for the missile is left unstated, the report does find fault with Ukraine for not fully closing the airspace to civilian flights (airspace below 32,000 feet was closed; MH17 was flying at 33,000ft). It was clear to the Ukrainian military that full-sized surface-to-air missile launchers were being operated by rebel forces, not just small man-portable launchers. SAM launchers have a much higher maximum altitude; the 9M38 has a maximum altitude of 46,000ft, above the 43,100ft service ceiling of the Boeing 777. Recommendations are made to more strictly define when airspace should be closed due to conflict, and suggesting that aircraft operators be more aware of military dangers to civilian flights.

Original Submission

SubiculumHammer writes:

The scoop: http://www.dailydot.com/politics/bernie-sanders-cisa-senate-2016-presidential-candidates/

It appears the Democratic Socialist and Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders came out against the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISA), a proposed law that has many privacy advocates alarmed.

Background from Wikipedia:

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA H.R. 3523 (112th Congress), H.R. 624 (113th Congress), H.R. 234 (114th Congress)) is a proposed law in the United States which would allow for the sharing of Internet traffic information between the U.S. government and technology and manufacturing companies. The stated aim of the bill is to help the U.S. government investigate cyber threats and ensure the security of networks against cyberattacks.

Privacy advocates and rebels may have a real friend in Senator Bernie Sanders.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A team in the UGA College of Engineering has designed and tested a prototype that employs ultrasound technology to help unmanned aircraft operators map the interior of large structures and guide their craft to specific locations. The team is led by assistant professor Zion Tse and includes graduate research assistants Stan Gregory and Kevin Wu.

"GPS technology isn't a good option for what we're trying to accomplish because it's not very accurate or reliable indoors," Wu said. "The margin of error can be up to 5 meters, which is fine if you're driving your car and dealing with a scale of miles, but we're dealing with much smaller areas and need a much higher degree of precision."

The system Wu and the other researchers have designed uses onboard ultrasound sensors to relay information on the aircraft's location to its operator. The sensor emits sound waves that bounce off walls or other structures and return to the device, in much the same way a bat navigates in dark spaces. The data is then transmitted to a computer where a software program plots the area and tracks the drone's location.

Original Submission

FatPhil writes:

Nature reports on advances in the genetic modification of pigs to create safer organs for human transplants:

For decades, scientists and doctors have dreamed of creating a steady supply of human organs for transplantation by growing them in pigs, as we have reported here. But concerns about rejection by the human immune system and infection by viruses embedded in the pig genome have stymied research. Now, by modifying more than 60 genes in pig embryos — ten times more than have been edited in any other animal — researchers believe they may have produced a suitable non-human organ donor.

The work was presented on 5 October at a meeting of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington DC on human gene editing. Geneticist George Church of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, announced that he and colleagues had used the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology to inactivate 62 porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs) in pig embryos. These viruses are embedded in all pigs' genomes and cannot be treated or neutralized. It is feared that they could cause disease in human transplant recipients.

There have been several CRISPR stories in the news in the last few years since, and there seems no reason to think that there won't be ever more intrusive modifications in the future. Which leads one to question whether there's will be a point down the road where we're literally building a new animal. Finding possible ethical issues is like shooting fish in a barrel - for example, if we can create pigs, or other animals, which regenerate organs, and then we can keep harvesting those organs for the entire life of the animal.

More on CRISPR here: https://www.addgene.org/crispr/guide/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

HP and SanDisk have announced the development of Storage-Class Memory, a technology with attributes similar to Intel and Micron's 3D XPoint ("crosspoint") memory:

HP and SanDisk are joining forces to combat the Intel/Micron 3D XPoint memory threat, and developing their own Storage-Class Memory (SCM) technology.

SCM is persistent memory that runs at DRAM or near-DRAM speed but is less costly, enabling in-memory computing without any overhead of writing to slower persistent data storage such as flash or disk through a CPU cycle-gobbling IO stack. It requires both hardware and software developments. Micron and Intel's XPoint memory is claimed to be 1,000 times faster than flash with up to 1,000 times flash's endurance. Oddly enough HP and SanDisk say their SCM technology is also "expected to be up to 1,000 times faster than flash storage and offer up to 1,000 times more endurance than flash storage."

[...] The partnership's aim is to create enterprise-class products for Memory-driven Computing and also to build better data centre SSDs. The Storage-Class Memory deal is more long-term: "Our partnership to collaborate on new SCM technology solutions is expected to revolutionise computing in the years ahead."

[...] It's not yet known what the XPoint cell process is, beyond being told it's a bulk change to the material but not a phase-change. Analyst Jim Handy has written an XPoint report which said HP had abandoned its Memristor technology. This SanDisk partnership implies that this point is incorrect.

The HP/SanDisk duo also intend to contribute to HP's Machine concept, "which reinvents the fundamental architecture of computers to enable a quantum leap in performance and efficiency, while lowering costs and improving security."

As we previously reported, Intel and Micron plan to release SSD and DIMM XPoint-based products in 2016, with Intel marketing them under the brand name "Optane".

Is HP's memristor partnership with Hynix obsolete? Will HP Enterprise finally give birth to "The Machine" and change supercomputing? Will Crossbar's ReRAM wither and die, or will the company join the fray and compete to produce the ultimate post-NAND memory?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Paraf was an adulterator. He made artificial versions of natural things and sought to pass them off as equivalent.
...
Oleomargarine was a purported adulterant of butter. In the century to come, many would think of it as a cheap substitute for butter. Margarine's evolution in public consciousness is so great that, rather than concealing the deception, by the later twentieth-century marketers took it as a point of pride that consumers could be tricked—they couldn't believe it's not butter. Yet in the decades after its invention in 1869, it would be cast instead as "the most gigantic swindle of our time." The charges against it were serious and severe. "The Cow Superseded," said the San Francisco Chronicle. "That atrocious insult to modern civilization," if we follow the Washington Post. It was puzzling and complicated because it was about far more than fake butter.

Interesting bio on the con-man that popularized margarine.

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darkfeline writes:

From Arstechnica:

While all new emoji options are welcomed, the Unicode 9.0 emoji class may not be as game changing as its predecessor based on this initial glance. This past June, Unicode 8.0 saw the consortium finally add skin tone modifiers for face emoji. That brought much needed diversity to the selection after Apple lobbied for such changes more than a year earlier.

Final decisions for what emoji are bundled with Unicode 9.0 won't be announced until June 2016. That's the end of a long journey for would-be emoji, a process that begins with submitters making sure any proposed Unicode addition isn't already in the expansive list of existing characters, the list of characters on track for inclusion, or the list of characters that have been rejected (among the forever deceased: Klingon script). You've then got to fill out a proposal form authoritatively establishing your character's significance, any relationships to current Unicode characters, and "the name and contact information for a company or individual who would agree to provide a computerized font... for publication of the standard." These proposals are then screened, sent to committee, and finally defended and revised by the original submitter as needed until they are accepted or rejected.

What do fellow SN users think about emoji in Unicode? Should Unicode contain emoji at all? Should Unicode only contain a handful of basic emoji like happy face and sad face? Or should Unicode contain every pictogram and hieroglyph known to man :wistful philosophical east asian male face indicating deep thought about trivial issues: ?

Original Submission