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Sarasani writes:

Facebook's effort to provide Indians with free access to a limited number of internet services has run into trouble. India's telecoms regulator has asked the mobile network that partnered with the US firm to put their Free Basics offer on hold. Critics of the Free Basics service say it runs contrary to net neutrality principles.

India's telecoms regulator has asked the mobile network that partnered with the US firm to put their Free Basics offer on hold.

Data fees are relatively expensive in India, and the initiative aims to prevent this being a deterrent.

But critics of the Free Basics service say it runs contrary to net neutrality principles.

They suggest data providers should not favour some online services over others by offering cheaper or faster access.

A spokesman for Reliance Communications - the mobile network that had supported the scheme - confirmed it would comply with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's demand.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35169226

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theronb writes:

From the article on the WordFence security plugin web site (I have no iron in that fire):

There is currently a botnet that has been identified that is targeting WordPress websites with a password guessing attack... The botnet is powered by modem/router devices. ISP's are gradually patching the devices but many are left vulnerable or infected as some ISP's respond slowly to this issue...

What he discovered is that the IP's attacking his site were all devices. They were all Aethra modem/routers to be exact. By doing some further sleuthing he discovered that all the Aethra devices involved in the attack were using default login credentials (blank/blank).

The WordFence post also links to more information on Voidsec.com by the guy who discovered it.

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"exec" writes:

Google confirms data center for Clarksville, TN.

-- submitted from IRC

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. — Google corporate executives officially confirmed their entry into Clarksville-Montgomery County Tuesday morning in an exclusive phone interview with The Leaf-Chronicle.

The company ended all speculation, announcing it has acquired the former Hemlock Semiconductor site in northeastern Montgomery County and will be transforming it into a $600 million data center to serve Google's vast and rapidly growing Internet search engine and overall application capacity.

...

Thanks to an arrangement with TVA, Google said it will also be able to scout new renewable energy projects and work with the regional wholesale power distributor to bring that power onto their electrical grid. Ultimately, Google officials said their goal is to offset 100 percent of their energy use with renewable energy.

Already, Google has signed contracts to purchase more than 2 gigawatts of renewable energy, "equivalent to taking nearly 1 million cars off the road," and making it the largest corporate renewable energy purchaser in the world.

That re-use approach is even part of the 1,300-acre industrial land purchase.

"This (former Hemlock) site comes with the benefits of existing infrastructure, which we plan to reuse and recycle. For example, many of the office buildings will be used for Googlers when the data center is operational," said Kava. "At the same time, we have room to innovate and grow both as a data center and as a member of the Montgomery County community.

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steveha writes:

After two years of delays, the massive tunnelling machine called Bertha is finally starting to dig again. Bertha, the world's largest tunnelling machine, broke down after chewing through a pipe. Now Bertha is not just repaired but improved.

On Dec. 6, 2013, Bertha overheated after rubberized seals failed around the main drive bearing, so grit leaked in. Small metal pieces broke and chipped some gear teeth, contractors have said. Bertha had hit a steel pipe three days earlier, and STP [Seattle Tunnel Partners] blames the impact for triggering other problems, a theory the state disputes. STP's own insurers have asserted that the boring machine's design was inadequate.

Hitachi Zosen performed the multimillion-dollar repairs this year, deploying about 35 engineers, designers and repair specialists to Seattle as of November, the company says. Steel plates were added to stiffen the front end, along with more cutting teeth, and stronger rubber seals to protect the bearing.

The main partners, Dragados USA of Spain and Tutor-Perini of California, have said in court documents that overall costs for repair, including excavation of the giant repair-access vault, are expected to exceed $143 million. It could take years for STP, Hitachi Zosen, their insurers, and Washington state to sue or negotiate who pays for repairs and delays, beyond the basic $1.35 billion STP contract.

If Bertha encounters no other major problems, the four-lane tube could open to traffic in the spring of 2018.

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HughPickens.com writes:

NBC reports that defending World Cup champion Marcel Hirscher, who won silver in the slalom at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, had a lucky escape after he narrowly avoided being hit by a falling drone. Hirscher was on his second run in a World Cup slalom race at Madonna di Campiglio in Italy when a remote-controlled drone with a mounted camera slammed down on the piste inches behind him. "This is horrible," Hirscher said after the event. "This can never happen again. This can be a serious injury." The International Ski Federation (FIS) released a statement on its website apologizing for the "unfortunate accident." But some saw the lighter side announcing that the drone wars had shifted to the ski slopes. "Man, I'd watch a lot more winter sports if this was a standard part of the game," tweeted Marc Andreessen.

The company responsible for the drone, sports marketing agency Infront, said its initial investigation "indicates a malfunction of the drone." "The most likely reason is a strong and unforeseen interference on the operating frequency, leading to limited operability," Infront said in a statement. "The pilot followed the official security procedure, purposely flying the drone as close as possible to the ground before releasing it. The aim was to destroy the drone, in order to prevent it from losing control."

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einar writes:

Developers can order the final hardware of the Oculus Rift. There is no word about the price. Yet, a release for developers who are close to going productive hints that the general release might really happen in Q1/2016. Rejoice :-)

https://developer.oculus.com/blog/rift-sdk-1-0-shipping-to-developers-with-final-rift-hardware/

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AnonTechie writes:

In the past the nuclear balance between the US and the USSR helped to prevent war in space. The modern world is more complex and already some 60 countries are active in space. So is a war involving attacks on satellites now becoming more likely?

Space wars may not involve intergalactic empires or spacecraft zapping each other. If they occur they are likely to be focused on things that matter hugely to all of us - satellites. They are more and more crucial to the way we lead our lives. They help us tell the time or draw money from a bank, or work out where to go using a smartphone or satnav. And for the modern military too, life without satellites would be a nightmare. They are used for targeting weapons, or finding things that need targeting in the first place. They form the US military's "nervous system", according to Singer, used for 80% of its communications. And this includes the communications central to nuclear deterrence.

The satellites designed to secure these communications - and to detect any possible nuclear attack - sit in geostationary orbit high above earth in what was thought until recently to be a kind of sanctuary, safe from any attack. No longer, thanks to a Chinese experiment with a missile in 2013 which reached close to that orbit, some 36,000 km above the Earth. In a rare public statement earlier this year Gen John Hyten of US Space Command expressed his alarm at the implications of these Chinese tests. "I think they'll be able to threaten every orbital regime that we operate in," he told CBS news. "We have to figure out how to defend those satellites. And we're going to."

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35130478

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takyon writes:

Vilifying President Obama has become a routine for the National Rifle Association, but firearms manufacturers should be praising him for massively raising sales, even late into his second term:

If you're into gun stocks, then Merry Christmas to you: Smith & Wesson has more than doubled in market value, while Sturm, Ruger & Co. has jumped two-thirds. Both saw sharp gains last week in the wake of President Obama's speech on terrorism, a good chunk of which was devoted to guns.

Which leads me to the following statement: Barack Obama is the best friend the American gun industry has ever had, and it is going to miss him when he's gone. With Obama as a lightning rod, the gun industry has profited like never before during his presidency.

By now, the pattern is familiar: A terrible shooting. A movie theater. A schoolroom full of children. A church. The president comes into the briefing room, and we scribble down his words of sorrow, of indignation — and pleas for Congress to do something. He goes back to the Oval Office. Gun sales surge. A few weeks, or even days later, the cycle repeats.

[...] How good [is President Obama] for business? Some data from the pro-gun National Shooting Sports Foundation:

[More after the break.]

Phoenix666 writes:

A group of researchers led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Dina Katabi has developed software that uses variations in radio signals to recognize human silhouettes through walls and track their movements.

Researchers say the technology will be able to help health care providers and families keep closer tabs on toddlers and the elderly, and it could be a new strategic tool for law enforcement and the military.

"Think of it just like cameras, except that it's not a camera," said Fadel Adib, a researcher on the MIT team developing the device.

"It's a sensor that can monitor people and allow you to control devices just by pointing at them," he said.

Work began in 2012 to determine how wireless signals could be used to "see" what's happening in another room, said Katabi, who directs the MIT Wireless Center.

"At first we were just interested ... can you at all use wireless signals to detect what's happening in occluded spaces, behind a wall, couch, something like that," Katabi said.

"It turned out that we were able to detect that. And when we figured out we could detect that, we started asking more advanced questions: Could we use it to detect exactly how people are moving in a space if they are behind a wall?"

Using radio signals to see through walls: Cool. Handing new spying tools to government: Not Cool.

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Phoenix666 writes:

The world's first deep-sea mining robots are poised to rip into rich deposits of copper, gold, and silver 1,600 meters down at the bottom of the Bismarck Sea, near Papua New Guinea. The massive machines, which are to be tested sometime in 2016, are part of a high-stakes gamble for the Toronto-based mining company Nautilus Minerals.
...
The mining robots were built for Nautilus by Soil Machine Dynamics, based in the United Kingdom, which supplies construction equipment for laying undersea cables, servicing offshore oil platforms, and other heavy-duty deep-sea jobs. The main robots are a pair of tractor-trailer-size excavators. One uses 4-meter-wide counterrotating heads studded with tungsten carbide picks to chew through the metal-rich chimneys that form around superhot water spewing from sulfurous vents in the seafloor. Its partner adds brute strength, using a studded drum that is 2.5 meters in diameter and 4 meters wide to pulverize rock walls.

Dredge pumps built into these machines will push the smashed ore back to a central pile on the seafloor, where a third Nautilus robot will feed a slurry of crushed rock and water up a pipe dangling from the production vessel. There the water will be wrung out from the ore, which will be loaded on another ship and carried to China for processing.
...
Assuming all goes well, the robotic diggers will spend 30 months scouring the Solwara 1 site, bringing up 2.5 million metric tons of ore containing metals worth more than US $1.5 billion at today's prices. Next, the robots will likely set to work on one of Nautilus's 18 other prospects in the Bismarck Sea or one of its 19 discoveries off the shores of the Polynesian archipelago of Tonga.

seaQuest DSV can't be too far behind.

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AnonTechie writes in with this lucky loophole:

It's believed that over 3,200 Washington state prisoners were released from their sentences early because of a bug which miscalculated time credits for their good behaviour.

CNN reports that the bug was introduced into computer systems in 2002, when an updated version of court rulings about good behaviour credits were introduced. Apparently three percent of all releases made since then were given too much credit for their good behaviour.

Of those released prematurely, the median number of days of extra freedom granted clocked in at 49. Though the BBC claims that one prisoner had his sentence cut by a frankly amazing 600 days. Apparently authorities first learned of the bug in 2012. But for reasons that are apparently to be investigated, a solution to the problem was delayed.

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Phoenix666 writes:

All the various permutations of electron beam induced processing have provided fairly effective nanofabrication techniques for either etching or depositing material. As important as these processes have been for nanofabrication, there has been one big problem with them: they don't lend themselves to being scaled up.

Now researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a technique using a liquid precursor that provides fabrication at rates up to 5000 times faster than previous methods.

Traditionally, these methods have involved focusing an electron beam on a surface within a vacuum chamber. A precursor gas is introduced into this chamber and the molecules from this gas adsorb on the substrate. When the electron beam hits the adsorbed precursor the molecules brake[sic] into volatile and non-volatile components. Depending on the gas, either the non-volatile components stick to the surface and form a deposit, or the volatile components react with the surface and carve out an etching.

[...] "By allowing us to grow structures much faster with a broad range of precursors, this technique really opens up a whole new direction for making a hierarchy of complex three-dimensional structures with nanoscale resolution at the rate that is demanded for manufacturing scalability," said Andrei Fedorov, a professor at Georgia Tech, in a press release. "This could provide a fundamental shift in the way this field will go."

This 3-D nanofabrication technique should prove effective for building, according to the researchers: "new types of electrode topologies for batteries and fuel cells, vertically-stacked electronic memory, substrates for controlling cell differentiation, and tiny electrochemical conversion devices."

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Phoenix666 writes:

Costa Rica has shown the world what is possible this year by achieving 99 percent renewable energy generation. Michael wrote back in April that the country had not used any fossil fuels for electricity so far at that point in the year and, in fact, the Costa Rican Electricity Institute said in a statement that 285 days this year were fossil fuel-free.

Costa Rica is lucky to have a wealth of renewable energy sources to choose from. The bulk of its power generation comes from hydropower thanks to a large river system and heavy tropical rainfalls. The rest is made up of a mix of geothermal energy, which the country is also rich in, wind, biomass and solar power.

The institute said that even though 2015 was a very dry year, Costa Rica was still ahead of its renewable energy targets and goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2021. The country doesn't just want to hit 100 percent renewable energy, but it also wants to clean up energy consumption in general like moving the transportation sector away from fossil fuels and becoming less dependent on hydropower by adding more geothermal energy plants and harnessing energy from other sources.

The citizens of the country have benefited from the cost of energy actually falling by 12% this year and the institute expects it to keep falling in the future.

Imagine what a difference a 99% fossil-fuel free United States would make to geopolitics.

Prior coverage: Costa Rica Gets 100% of Its Power from Renewables for 1st Quarter of 2015.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Technology based on the use of high-performance lasers and sensors for the generation and detection of infrared light promises to be one of the key technologies of the 21st century. Realization of this goal will require the use of dyes that absorb light specifically in the near-infrared region of the spectrum, and such compounds are therefore of special interest to both researchers and commercial firms.

One class of chemicals that show great potential in this area are the so-called peri-arylenes which, thanks to their excellent stability properties, are already being used in a wide range of technical applications. A research team led by LMU [Loyola Marymount University] chemist Professor Heinz Langhals now reports the synthesis of the first peri-arylene consisting of six basic subunits, whose absorption spectrum is almost entirely confined to the near-infrared (NIR) region. In other words, the substance appears colorless to the human eye, and this makes it suitable for use as an inconspicuous labeling agent. The findings appear in the Journal of Organic Chemistry.

[...] The 6-member derivative absorbs essentially only in near-infrared region, which lies "below the red" and is therefore invisible to the human eye. "Fabrics dyed with the new compound appear colorless but the dyestuff can be detected with a suitable sensor," Langhals explains. One conceivable application for such a marker lies in the recycling of expensive textiles, since the compound would greatly simplify the sorting process. But in addition to the end-product of the synthesis, the shorter members of the series are also of considerable practical interest. This is because they exhibit intriguing light-induced responses, which may make them suitable for use in fluorescent solar collectors. "One other advantage of the new substances lies in their environmentally benign character: They consist entirely of organic materials that are biodegradable and fully combustible," Langhals adds.

Finally, a way for your mom to label your underwear without embarrassing you about it.

Sexterrylenetetracarboxylic Bisimides: NIR Dyes (DOI: 10.1021/acs.joc.5b02092)

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takyon writes:

Google reportedly believes that chatbots are necessary for the success of a new mobile messaging service in a crowded field:

Google is building a new mobile-messaging service that taps its artificial intelligence know-how and so-called chatbot technology to try to catch rivals including Facebook Inc. in the fast-growing arena, according to people familiar with the matter.

Messaging services are among the world's most popular mobile apps, with more than two billion users, according to Portio Research Ltd. But Google's two messaging services--Hangouts and Messenger--trail far behind Facebook's WhatsApp and Messenger and Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s WeChat, the most popular messaging app in China. Some services are adding other capabilities--WeChat, for instance, lets users shop, pay bills and book appointments.

For its new service, Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., plans to integrate chatbots, software programs that answer questions inside a messaging app, the people familiar with the matter said. Users will be able to text friends or a chatbot, which will scour the Web and other sources for information to answer a question, those people said.

If your user count is low, adding a billion chatbots may help. Also, how is a texting chatbot more useful than Google Now, Siri, or Cortana?

Original Submission