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The family of Ahmed Mohamed, the Texan schoolboy who was arrested after taking a homemade clock to school, has demanded $15m in compensation and written apologies from the local mayor and police chief.

In letters sent on Monday, the lawyers said if the City of Irving and Irving School District did not agree to the apologies and compensation, they would file a civil action.

"Ahmed never threatened anyone, never caused harm to anyone, and never intended to. The only one who was hurt that day was Ahmed, and the damages he suffered were not because of oversight or incompetence," said the letter to the city authorities.

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Phoenix666 writes:

A Slovakian company is attempting to raise $70,000 to get its "Drone n Base" fleet of battling mini UAVs off the ground.

According to the tin-rattlers down at Indiegogo, Drone N Base is the "ultimate multiplayer drone game", enabling smartphone-controlled racing or aerial combat. The basic kit includes a lightweight (46g with battery, and therefore suitable for unregistered use in Ireland) quadcopter, base station, two batteries (seven minutes flying time on one battery), charger and spare props.

Naturally, there's an app – iOS or Android – enabling remote vehicle control via Bluetooth, and the drones interact with each other and the base station via infrared.

They should shoot BBs at least.

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takyon writes:

ARM Announces New Cortex-A35 CPU - Ultra-High Efficiency For Wearables & More

... as part of the volley of announcements at ARM's TechCon conference we discover ARM's new low-power application-tier CPU architecture, the Cortex-A35. [...] As such, the A35 is targeted at power targets below ~125mW where the Cortex A7 and A5 are still very commonly used. To give us an idea of what to expect from actual silicon, ARM shared with us a figure of 90mW at 1GHz on a 28nm manufacturing process. Of course the A35 will see a wide range of implementations on different process nodes such as for example 14/16nm or at much higher clock rates above 2GHz, similar to how we've come to see a wide range of process and frequency targets for the A53 today.

Most importantly, the A35 now completes ARM's ARMv8 processor portfolio with designs covering the full range of power and efficiency targets. The A35 can also be used in conjunction with A72/A57/A53 cores in big.LITTLE systems, enabling for some very exotic configurations (A true tri-cluster comes to mind) depending if vendors see justification in implementing such SoCs.

ARM Announces ARMv8-M Instruction Set For Microcontrollers – TrustZone Comes to Cortex-M

Previously only available to ARM-A architecture CPUs, TrustZone is now being extended to ARM based microcontrollers. And like their bigger siblings, ARM's aim here with TrustZone is to lay the groundwork for their customers to build highly secure devices, for all the benefits and drawbacks such a device entails. This includes protecting cryptography engines and certain stored assets (e.g. the secure enclave) against attack, locking down systems to prevent userland applications from breaking into the operating system itself, and various degrees of DRM (one example, as ARM gives is, is firmware IP protection).

Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Experience: HMP Kryo and Demos

In power, Qualcomm published a slide showing average power consumption using their own internal model for determining days of use. In their testing, it shows that Snapdragon 820 uses 30% less power for the same time of use. Of course, this needs to be taken with appropriate skepticism, but given the use of 14LPP it probably shouldn't be a surprise that Snapdragon 820 improves significantly over past devices. The other disclosures of note were primarily centered on the CPU and modem. On the modem side, Qualcomm is claiming 15% improvement in power efficiency which should eliminate any remaining gap between LTE and WiFi battery life.

Imagination Announces New P6600, M6200, M6250 Warrior CPUs

Starting off with the P6600, this is Imagination's new MIPS flagship core succeeding the P5600. The P5600 was a 3-wide out-of-order design with a pipeline depth of up to 16 stages. The P6600 keeps most of the predecessor's characteristics such as the main architectural features or full hardware virtualization and security through OmniShield, but adds compatibility for MIPS64 64-bit processing on top. Imagination first introduced a mobile oritented 64-bit MIPS CPU back with the I6400 a little more than a year ago but we've yet to see vendors announce products with it.

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HughPickens.com writes:

Everyone seems to agree that the key to the success of Jackson's Lord Of The Rings trilogy was years of careful planning before production ever began. Now Bryan Bishop writes at The Verge that in what can only be described as the most honest promotional video of all time, we find out why the Hobbit trilogy turned out to be such a boring mess.

In the clip, Peter Jackson, Andy Serkis, and other production personnel confess that due to the director changeover — del Toro left the project after nearly two years of pre-production — Jackson hit the ground running but was never able to hit the reset button to get time to establish his own vision. Once the new director was hired, the harried crew members had to scramble to redesign everything to suit Jackson's vision, but they could barely even keep up with the production schedule, let alone prepare anything in advance. At some junctures in the process, Jackson found himself essentially having to improvise on set because there was nothing really prepared for his actors to do. "You're going on to a set and you're winging it, you've got these massively complicated scenes, no storyboards and you're making it up there and then on the spot," said Jackson. "I spent most of The Hobbit feeling like I was not on top of it ][...] even from a script point of view Fran [Walsh], Philippa [Boyens] and I hadn't got the entire scripts written to our satisfaction so that was a very high pressure situation."

But wait. "Peter has never made a secret of the fact that he took over the Hobbit directing job with very little preparation time remaining before shooting had to begin. It was a challenge he willingly took on. His comments are an honest reflection of his own personal feelings at times during the movie's production." says a spokeman for Jackson. "Somebody has decided to create this cut-down, using only the sections of The Gathering Clouds that discuss the difficulties faced, not the positive ways they were addressed and overcome – which are also covered in this and other featurettes."

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takyon writes:

China is investing an additional $45 billion in a megacity project that will merge Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei provinces:

China on Friday earmarked 290 billion yuan ($45.45 billion) for manufacturing and industrial park projects to support its efforts to integrate Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province into a megacity, state media reported.

The government hopes to ease pressures on its crowded capital by transferring industries further out into the integrated metropolis, which it says has a combined population of about 110 million people. It dubbed the area "Jing-Jin-Ji" last year, using shortened versions of the names of the cities and province.

Demographia World Urban Areas lists the fastest growing cities as Batam, Mogadishu, Burkina Faso, Xiamen, and Yinchuan. Megacities and the impending 70% urbanization of the world's population have their proponents, such as architect Lord Foster:

Design plays a huge part. Cities that are consistently rated highly by the public in terms of quality of life are relatively compact and pedestrian-friendly, with good public transport and generous parks and civic spaces. These more desirable cities are comparatively dense and have evolved historically from a traditional European concept. They consume less energy than the more recent suburban model of cities – like LA with its low-density housing and a dependence on car travel. A new study suggests that urban sprawl costs the US economy more than $1 trillion annually.

Across the globe, people are likely to live longer and healthier lives in cities. In most countries in the world, cities provide better access to education and health services. The longest life expectancies today can be found in high-density, highly developed cities like Hong Kong or Singapore. Unlike cumbersome national governments and international organisations, cities can act quickly and decisively. When it comes to the future of life on Earth, cities are not the problem – they are the solution.

Via NextBigFuture.

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takyon writes:

Just days after the release of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, Ronald W. Pelton is set to be released. In 1986, Pelton was convicted for selling classified information from his work at the National Security Agency to the Soviet Union. According to Secrecy News:

Tomorrow Ronald W. Pelton, a National Security Agency communications specialist who was convicted in 1986 of spying for the Soviet Union, will be released from prison.

Like Jonathan J. Pollard, who was convicted of spying for Israel and released last week, Pelton was apprehended in 1985, which became known as the Year of the Spy because so many espionage arrests and prosecutions took place during or around that time.

A search of the Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator indicates that Pelton's release, which has not been widely noted, is set for Tuesday, November 24. It further identifies Pelton as a 74 year old white male (Register Number 22914-037).

The Pelton case had several distinctive features.

Unlike most spies of the time, he did not steal U.S. government documents and turn them over to a foreign government. Instead, he was able to sell the Soviets information based on his "excellent memory and [...] encyclopedic knowledge of intelligence activities." Among the U.S. intelligence projects he compromised was IVY BELLS, an effort to secretly tap Soviet undersea communications cables.

Operation Ivy Bells tapped Soviet submarine cables during the Cold War.

Original Submission

Anonymous Coward writes with an article from the BBC:

Which makes me wonder if we can get those anti-piracy ads pulled for offending audiences. Offensive to those who paid for the movie, and to those with the Kopimism religion: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16424659

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takyon writes:

Pfizer has agreed to buy Allergan, Plc for $160 billion:

US drugs giant Pfizer has agreed a deal to buy Botox-maker Allergan for $160bn (£106bn), making this the biggest pharmaceuticals deal in history. The merger will create the world's biggest drugmaker, to be called Pfizer.

Allergan shareholders will receive 11.3 shares in the merged company for each of their Allergan shares. Analysts have suggested the deal will allow Pfizer to escape relatively high US corporate tax rates by moving its headquarters to Dublin. Last year, Pfizer made an offer to buy UK drugs group AstraZeneca, which rejected the offer, arguing it undervalued the company.

Aside from Botox, Allergan also makes the Alzheimer's drug Namenda and dry-eye medication Restasis. Pfizer makes that-which-cannot-be-named, nerve pain treatment Lyrica, and pneumonia treatment Prevnar. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Pfizer said it expects to buy back about $5 billion in shares in the first half of next year under an accelerated program.

The merger will create a pharmaceutical behemoth, with top-selling products including Pfizer's Prevnar pneumonia vaccine and Allergan's anti-wrinkle treatment Botox and industry-topping R&D budget. The company's drugs and vaccines would cover a range of diseases, from Alzheimer's to cancer, eye health to rheumatoid arthritis.

The deal brings together two pharmaceutical powerhouses with more than $60 billion in combined sales. Last year, Actavis, which bought Allergan and took its name, had more than $13 billion in sales, while Pfizer had nearly $50 billion in revenue.

[...] Pfizer and Allergan said that after the deal closes, the combined company will decide on splitting into two businesses, one focused on patent-protected products and the other on drugs that have lost their patent protection or are close to losing it. It expects to make that decision by the end of 2018.

Related: Judge Rules Drug Maker Cannot Halt Sales of Alzheimer's Medicine - Drug maker Actavis, Plc tried to replace Namenda with a new, patented form. The company changed its name to Allergan, Plc by June 15, 2015.

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takyon writes:

CNN reports on the downing of a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 fighter-bomber jet that reportedly violated Turkish airspace:

One of the world's most volatile regions was roiled further Tuesday when a Russian warplane was shot down near the Turkish-Syria border. Turkey said it shot down a plane after the aircraft repeatedly violated its airspace and ignored several warnings.

Turkey's semi-official Anadolu news agency quoted Turkish presidential sources in reporting that the Russian SU-24 was "hit within the framework of engagement rules" in Syria's Bayirbucak area, near the border with Turkey.

But Russia's state-run Sputnik news agency said that "According to preliminary reports, the plane was gunned down from the ground."

Russian officials denied that the plane had violated Turkish airspace. Both pilots ejected from the plane, but their fate is unknown, Sputnik said.

NYT, Reuters. Also BBC Live Reporting and The Guardian live updates:

Turkey has released flight radar images appearing to show that the Russian jet briefly flew over southern Turkey before it as shot down, CNN Turk reports.

[...] Graphic video purporting to show a dead Russian pilot is being widely circulated, but we cannot verify its authenticity. BrookingsDoha analyst Charles Lister says the video shows the dead pilot wearing Russian uniform and equipment. He says the dead pilot is now reported to be in the hands of anti-Assad rebels from the Alwiya Al-'Ashar group.

Update #1

Reuters reports:

A video sent to Reuters by a Syrian rebel group on Tuesday appeared to show a Russian pilot immobile and badly wounded on the ground, and an official from the group said he was dead.

"A Russian pilot," a voice is heard saying as a group of men gather around him. "God is great," a voice is heard saying.

The video was sent to Reuters by a rebel group operating in the northwestern area of Syria, where groups including Free Syrian Army are operating but Islamic State has no known presence.

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patella.whack and an Anonymous Coward both wrote in with this story:

Mashable and the BBC report:

Yahoo is angering the dwindling number of people who still use its email service with a test run of a feature that locks out anyone who has an ad blocker installed.

Several Yahoo users complained that they encountered an error message when trying to open their mail account on Thursday in an AdBlock Plus forum thread first spotted by Digiday . The screen ordered them to first disable ad blockers in order to access their emails.

Yahoo said it was testing a "new product experience" in the US.

Members of one ad-blocking forum said they had already managed to circumvent the restriction.

Yahoo joins a growing number of media sites to experiment with barring ad block users altogether as the technology available to do so becomes more widespread. The Washington Post tested out a feature that directed ad block users to a subscription page in September, and the London-based newspaper City AM started a similar trial this week.

New York Times CEO Mark Thompson also said in a recent earnings call that the paper is looking into "technical solutions" to combat blockers.

"At Yahoo, we are continually developing and testing new product experiences," Yahoo said. "This is a test we're running for a small number of Yahoo Mail users in the U.S."

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The Mighty Buzzard writes:

Because Separate But Equal worked out so well last time it was tried, Princeton has given in to protesters and agreed to create "Affinity Housing" rooms. Read as "we don't want no crackers in our room".

On the second demand concerning the creation of Affinity Housing:

• Immediately designate four rooms in the Carl A. Fields Center that will be used by Cultural Affinity Groups. This promise was verbalized by VP Calhoun.
• BJL [Black Justice League] members will be involved in a working group with the staff of the Residential Colleges to begin discussions on the viability of the formation of Affinity Housing for those interested in black culture. This promise was verbalized by Dean Dolan.

Because nothing says diversity like excluding people based on race.

Original Submission

"gewg_" writes:

With Slackware Linux, it had always been necessary to install the distro to your hard drive to try it out. That is changing.

Eric Hameleers blogged

I have been irritated by past distro reviews where the reviewer complained that Slackware did not have a Live version. Meaning, to give it a test run they would have to install the distro to an actual computer--which would lead to the usual moaning about the arcane installer and "Slackware not keeping up with time".

[...] I am far from done [building the ISOs] and I would consider the current state of things at most to be "Beta Quality".

[...] When I feel confident enough I will probably upload the XFCE and Plasma 5 versions, and when the feedback is OK (and I fixed all the glaring bugs you guys will surely uncover) I will also release the scripts.

A week later, Eric continues with some details of what is in the release, more background on its development, and links to where you can download it:

[More after the break.]

novak writes:

CRUX version 3.2, a simple, unix-like linux distro released on November 22nd.

CRUX was the distro that inspired Arch, but is even more simple and uses BSD style init scripts and a ports system for package management (full disclosure: it has been my primary desktop since 2010). eudev is also the default.

From the release notes:

I know there are a lot of people on soylent who are fleeing from systemd- if you're still looking for a refuge you might look at CRUX.

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fritsd writes:

The BBC reports that Morocco has built a large parabolic trough solar thermal plant in Ouarzazate, between the Atlas mountains and the Sahara desert.

Presumably real-estate prices in this province are not very high, and there's lots of sunlight.

This plant is designed to deliver electricity to Morocco in the early evening. After this phase of the project is completed and tested, the plan is to expand its capacity in order to sell electricity to Europe.

Here's another link (in French): http://lnt.ma/complexe-solaire-de-ouarzazate-le-maroc-sur-le-point-de-marquer-lhistoire-banque-mondiale/ (picture doesn't match the type of solar plant that this is).

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takyon writes:

Various Dell laptops and desktops are shipping with a pre-installed root certificate:

The US IT titan installs a powerful root CA certificate, including its private key, on its Windows notebooks and desktops. These can be abused by eavesdropping miscreants to silently decrypt encrypted web browser traffic without victims noticing.

If you try to remove the dodgy certificate, the file is automatically reinstalled during or after the next boot up. The root CA cert appears to have been created in early April this year, and expires in the year 2039.

How can this certificate be abused? Well, an attacker could, for example, set up a malicious Wi-Fi hotspot in a cafe or hospital, intercept connections from Dell machines, and then automatically strip away the encryption – a classic man-in-the-middle attack, all enabled by Dell's security blunder. The decrypted traffic will include usernames, passwords, session cookies, and other sensitive information. The root CA certificate – eDellRoot – can even be used to sign programs, allowing scumbags to dress up malware as legit apps.

The problem was spotted by Joe Nord (Reddit). Reaching this page without a privacy error means your machine is affected, and this page includes a test for the certificate. Mozilla Firefox ignores (does not trust) the Dell certificate, and thus should be safe to use. To remove:

According to an analysis [PDF] by Duo Security, a bundled plugin reinstalls the root CA file if it is removed. First, you must delete Dell.Foundation.Agent.Plugins.eDell.dll from your system (search for it) and then remove the eDellRoot root CA certificate.

Dell has admitted the mistake and will provide its own guide to fixing it soon (the above information):

The recent situation raised is related to an on-the-box support certificate intended to provide a better, faster and easier customer support experience. Unfortunately, the certificate introduced an unintended security vulnerability.

How about a little comedy courtesy of Reuters?

Dell said it would provide customers with instructions to permanently remove the certificate by email and on its support website, a process that will likely be highly technical.

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tonyPick writes:

Make has an article on the "Solar OSE" project, a DIY solar concentrator that can heat steam to 250º Celcius:

Solar concentrators work by focusing the sun's rays on a water pipe to generate steam. The Solar OSE uses Arduino-controlled motors to pivot the array of mirror strips at the base of the structure to track the sun, automatically maintaining optimal solar concentration on the pipe.

The build instructions are fully documented on Instructables, quoting a 2000€ material cost with about 150 hours of fabrication time.

The design presented is developed by Open Source Ecologie France, a French group, which "fits into a[n] international movement, called Open Source Ecology, created in the USA in 2003".

Original Submission

takyon writes:

SpaceX has received its first mission order from NASA to fly astronauts to the International Space Station in 2017:

This is the second in a series of four guaranteed orders NASA will make under the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts. The Boeing Company of Houston received its first crew mission order in May.

"It's really exciting to see SpaceX and Boeing with hardware in flow for their first crew rotation missions," said Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. "It is important to have at least two healthy and robust capabilities from U.S. companies to deliver crew and critical scientific experiments from American soil to the space station throughout its lifespan."

Determination of which company will fly its mission to the station first will be made at a later time. The contracts call for orders to take place prior to certification to support the lead time necessary for missions in late 2017, provided the contractors meet readiness conditions.

[More after the break.]

An Anonymous Coward writes:

At least three new episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 will be filmed, thanks to over $2 million in online contributions from fans. Responding to a Kickstarter plea by series creator Joel Hodgson, fans contributed over $1.5 million within just two days, and after five more they'd push Hodgson over the first $2 million threshold.

"We've got movie sign!" Hodgson posted on Twitter, noting that for each additional $1.1 million raised over the next 20 days, three more new episodes would be filmed. And this Thursday he'll be hosting a grateful online marathon of classic episodes on Thanksgiving Day, a tradition which dates back nearly 25 years, when "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" first began its 8-year run on Comedy Central and the Sci-Fi channel.

Original Submission