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tonyPick writes:

Spotted at Hackernews, Lifehacker and Good E-Reader is the report that the publisher Springer Science+Business Media has made more than 50,000 digital textbooks available for free download:

Springer has made all digital textbooks more than 10 years old available for free on their website. This equates to thousands of important texts that range in disciplines from cognitive learning to pattern recognition through mathematics.

There has been a ton of conjecture on what free actually means, Springer has cleared the air by updating their terms of service. The company states they are for "You may solely for private, educational, personal, scientific, or research purposes access, browse, view, display, search, download and print the Content.

The book downloads appear to be plain, DRM-free pdf files and the site also works without javascript, offering direct download links. More information on Springer is available on Wikipedia.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

On Christmas Day, a thousand mile wide storm front rounded the tip of Greenland and started heading for Iceland and the Northern Arctic.

On the morning of December 30th, it dropped a low pressure zone of 930mb on the Northern part of Iceland -- an unprecedented deep low, comparable to Hurricane Sandy. This is only the storm center -- linked up with it are two more strong lows of 965 to 975mb and numerous other low pressure zones.

In short, this thing is shaping up to be one heck of a daisy-chained extreme storm system.

All along its eastern side, the system is sucking in warm winds originating to the west of Spain, and hurling them towards the North Pole. By Wednesday (aka today), that North Pole region is expected to see average temperatures of 1 to 2 degrees Celsius, or between 30 and 40 degrees Celsius above the annual mean temperature.

According to the latest weather data, one buoy [NPEO 2015 SVP-7 Buoy 558750 ] already indicates a temperature of minus 0.1 degrees Celsius.

This heating up follows a November month which itself was strongly anomalous compared to the average over the period 1985-2010 (figure 2b, figure 3); unusually high pressure differences, and an unusually small ice zone.

Hypothesis about what's really behind this here, but feel free to chime in with your own resources.

Original Submission

cmn32480 writes:

Debian mourns the passing of Ian Murdock:

With a heavy heart Debian mourns the passing of Ian Murdock, stalwart proponent of Free Open Source Software, Father, Son, and the 'ian' in Debian.

Ian started the Debian project in August of 1993, releasing the first versions of Debian later that same year. Debian would go on to become the world's Universal Operating System, running on everything from embedded devices to the space station.

Ian's sharp focus was on creating a Distribution and community culture that did the right thing, be it ethically, or technically. Releases went out when they were ready, and the project's staunch stance on Software Freedom are the gold standards in the Free and Open Source world.

Ian's devotion to the right thing guided his work, both in Debian and in the subsequent years, always working towards the best possible future.

Ian's dream has lived on, the Debian community remains incredibly active, with thousands of developers working untold hours to bring the world a reliable and secure operating system.

The thoughts of the Debian Community are with Ian's family in this hard time.

His family has asked for privacy during this difficult time and we very much wish to respect that. Within our Debian and the larger Linux community condolences may be sent to in-memoriam-ian@debian.org where they will be kept and archived.

Docker, Murdock's employer, has this statement (cache).

Ian Murdock: How I came to find Linux, from August.

Previous coverage.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

One company in Texas is looking to bring Japanese technology to a potential 240-mile high-speed rail route between Dallas and Houston:

Texas Central Partners LLC, a U.S. company aiming to build a high-speed rail link in the southern state, is envisaging Japanese companies potentially providing vehicles and technologies for its planned bullet train service connecting Dallas and Houston.

In a recent phone interview with Kyodo News, Texas Central CEO Tim Keith reiterated that the shinkansen technology of Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Central), Japan's lead bullet train operator, will be employed for linking the two major cities, about 385 kilometers apart.

"Texas Central Partners is one hundred percent committed to the shinkansen system with JR Central as our life-of-system partner," Keith said.

Nearly 50,000 Texans, sometimes called "super-commuters," travel back and forth between Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth more than once a week. Many others make the trip very regularly. The approximately 240-mile high-speed rail line will offer a total travel time of less than 90 minutes, with convenient departures every 30 minutes during peak periods each day, and every hour during off-peak periods – with 6 hours reserved each night for system maintenance and inspection.

Kyodo reprint at The Japan Times.

A study commissioned by Texas Central Partners estimates a $36 billion economic impact through 2040 from its $10 billion Dallas-Houston rail project. Proposed measures by the state legislature to prevent the project failed in 2015. Skeptics doubt the company will meet its goal of selling tickets starting in 2021, and point to the necessity of using eminent domain to acquire land needed for the project, which the company claims is a "last resort". Kyle Workman, president of Texans Against High Speed Rail, has created a group of Texans opposed to the use of eminent domain and taxpayer funding for the high-speed rail project.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Bloomberg reports that a state bank used to pay for "special projects" in Russia may require an $18 billion bailout due to the effects of sanctions and low oil prices:

For years, Vladimir Putin used Vnesheconombank (VEB) to pay for "special projects," from the Sochi Olympics to covert acquisitions in Ukraine to oligarch bailouts. Now, the state bank needs a rescue of its own and it could be the Kremlin's costliest yet. VEB was supposed to be the financial supercharger of the Russian president's state-directed capitalism, using its government backing to raise billions at low rates on western markets and pumping them into ventures the Kremlin wanted funded, some concealed from public view with code names like "Lily of the Valley."

Hit by Western sanctions last year, VEB has stopped new lending. The cost of its bailout could reach 1.3 trillion rubles ($18 billion), according to several senior government officials, ballooning the budget deficit at a time when plunging oil prices are forcing spending cuts. "The government can't just leave it alone to face the problems caused by the financial and economic situation in the country, speaking directly, by various kinds of sanction pressures," Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told a VEB board meeting discussing rescue options on Dec. 22.

The Finance Ministry has submitted proposals to aid VEB in 2016 to the government for approval, with some measures ready to be carried out in the first quarter, Svetlana Nikitina, an aide to the finance minister, said in Moscow on Tuesday. The plan provides for boosting capital to ensure the bank's ability to pay creditors, as well as supporting liquidity and cleaning up assets, she said.

Over the past eight years, VEB came to epitomize Putin's hybrid system that combined elements of market financing with tight Kremlin control, funding billions in industrial and infrastructure projects back in the days when oil prices were high and foreign credit was easy.

But U.S. and EU sanctions imposed in 2014 over the Ukraine crisis cut off VEB's access to international financial markets, leaving it without a source of cheap funding and facing as much as $16 billion in foreign-currency debt just as the ruble began its plunge. At the same time, falling oil prices accelerated Russia's slide into recession, pushing many of VEB's projects deeper into the red.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A survey by FiveThirtyEight has found that pollsters believe their public reputations are declining:

No votes have been cast yet in the 2016 election, but there may already be one set of losers in the campaign: pollsters' reputations. And that's according to the pollsters themselves.

We asked people working at some of the nation's most prominent polling outfits whether pollsters' public image has improved or declined since the 2012 election. Of the 21 who answered, none said their public image had improved, and two-thirds said it had declined.

That was one of a few dozen questions we posed to 76 of the most prolific and prominent political pollsters. And we found that the people who are measuring and shaping public perception of the election — as well as Donald Trump's Twitter account — are feeling much more positive about the work they do than they think everyone else does. (You can find the questionnaire in this PDF, all the responses on GitHub, and a list of the pollsters who responded in the footnotes.)

Using a classic tactic in politics, many pollsters blamed the media. There were three strands to their criticism. The first is that the media make too much of bad moments for the industry, when its polls miss election results badly. (We've covered those moments in last year's midterms, as well as in Israel, the U.K., Greece and Kentucky.) The second is that media organizations that aggregate polls combine the bad with the good, tarnishing all for the sins of a few. (Four pollsters said aggregators are doing badly or very badly at filtering out polls from bad polling organizations, four said they were doing OK and four said they were doing well.) And the third is that uncritical media reports of outlandish claims — such as Ben Carson's that Egypt's pyramids were used to store grain — leads many Americans to believe outlandish things, which pollsters are blamed for quantifying.

"Polls are wrong is a more interesting story than when the polls do well," said Barbara Carvalho of Marist College. "Lumping all methods together distorts the accuracy of polling."

But several respondents acknowledged that the media wouldn't have a story if pollsters were nailing election results. "Obviously, there were several high-profile calamities in the past three years," said Matthew Towery of Opinion Savvy. "The best I can say is this: The field is evolving, and some pollsters are succumbing to natural selection."

Related: Political Polls Become Less Reliable As We Head into 2016 Presidential Election

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Hiroshima University researchers have reported the use of a new genetic engineering method called PITCh:

A streamlined protocol for an alternative gene insertion method using genome editing technologies, the PITCh (Precise Integration into Target Chromosome) system, has been reported in Nature Protocols by Specially Appointed Lecturer Tetsushi Sakuma, Professor Takashi Yamamoto, Specially Appointed Associate Professor Ken-Ichi T Suzuki, and their colleagues at Hiroshima University, Japan.

The PITCh system is more convenient and effective than existing methods for inserting foreign DNA into targeted genomic loci by using genome-editing tools. This new versatile technique can aid the rapid progression of research in fields such as screening of new drug candidates and creating cell or animal models of human diseases.

Genome editing is an innovative technique used in genetic engineering that enables researchers to modify the genome not at random but at a particular target. In this technique, researchers employ engineered nucleases as "molecular scissors", which create DNA breaks at desired locations in the genome. When DNA breaks are repaired by repair pathways, genetic modifications including insertion of foreign DNA into the genome (knock-in) and replacement or removal of a targeted genomic locus are induced.

"The PITCh system is an alternative knock-in method that is independent of homologous recombination (HR), one of DNA-break repair pathways, unlike existing knock-in techniques that use genome editing tools like TALEN or CRISPR-Cas9, which mainly utilize HR", said Dr. Sakuma. "The existing knock-in techniques cannot be applied to every cell type and organism owing to variable HR frequencies. Therefore, we aimed at another repair pathway, microhomology-mediated end-joining (MMEJ), and developed the PITCh system."

Via NBF. Also reported at Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News blog.

MMEJ-assisted gene knock-in using TALENs and CRISPR-Cas9 with the PITCh systems (DOI: 10.1038/nprot.2015.140)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google bought robotics company Boston Dynamics a little over two years ago. Now, a potential customer for the hulking "BigDog" quadruped pack mule is balking due to noise concerns:

The US military's flirtation with robotic pack animals looks set to end: the Marine Corps has halted further testing of the BigDog contrivance from Google stablemate Boston Dynamics.

BigDog, aka the Legged Squad Support System, has been under development at a cost of $32m, with the goal of making a four-legged machine capable of carrying 400lb (181kg) of supplies. The final design did just that, but painted a target on the troops it was supporting.

"As Marines were using it, there was the challenge of seeing the potential possibility because of the limitations of the robot itself. They took it as it was: a loud robot that's going to give away their position," Kyle Olson, a spokesman for the Marine's Warfighting Lab, told Military.com.

BigDog's carrying power wasn't disputed, and the robot dealt well with clambering over rough terrain without a human controlling it during the 2014 Rim of the Pacific war games. But the power needed to do all this required a petrol engine, which was so loud that the enemy could hear soldiers approaching before they saw them.

Boston Dynamics did develop a smaller, electric-powered robotic dog called Spot. This was also tried out by the Marines at its massive Quantico base in Virginia, but Spot could only carry 40lb (18kg) of equipment and needed a human to guide it.

Two YouTube videos accompanying the article.

Related: Pentagon Scientists Show Off Robot And Prosthetics
Marines give Google's latest robot a tryout as "working dog"

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google has prevented the automatic installation of AVG's Web TuneUp Google Chrome extension after conducting a Project Zero audit that found the software compromised the security of its 9 million users:

Tavis Ormandy – a Google Project Zero researcher who has been auditing antivirus software – found the extension was riddled with vulnerabilities. Web TuneUp is automatically installed with AVG's antivirus package, and attempts to stop Chrome users from surfing to websites hosting malware. It is used by 9,050,432 people.

According to Ormandy, the extension leaked "browsing history and other personal data to the internet." Malicious websites could exploit the toolbar's programming blunders to access other websites a user was logged into. In other words, a script running on a webpage in a tab could invisibly access, say, mail.google.com as the user, and hijack the victim's webmail inbox. And, we're told, man-in-the-middle miscreants could abuse Web TuneUp to inject any JavaScript they liked into webpages fetched over the network, effectively rendering any SSL encryption useless.

"Apologies for my harsh tone, but I'm really not thrilled about this trash being installed for Chrome users," Ormandy told AVG's engineers in his security bug report. "The extension is so badly broken that I'm not sure whether I should be reporting it to you as a vulnerability, or asking the extension abuse team to investigate if it's a PuP [potentially unwanted program aka malware]."

AVG nuked the reported vulnerabilities in version 4.2.5.169 of Web TuneUp, which was released last week, we're told. However, it is understood AVG is no longer allowed to install the extension automatically – it must be fetched manually from the Chrome Web Store if users really want it – and that the store team is investigating the widget for "possible policy violations."

Original Submission

CoolHand writes:

The Intercept has an article on Windows 10 and how it automatically uploads encryption keys to MS servers.

One of the excellent features of new Windows devices is that disk encryption is built-in and turned on by default, protecting your data in case your device is lost or stolen. But what is less well-known is that, if you are like most users and login to Windows 10 using your Microsoft account, your computer automatically uploaded a copy of your recovery key – which can be used to unlock your encrypted disk – to Microsoft's servers, probably without your knowledge and without an option to opt-out.

During the "crypto wars" of the nineties, the National Security Agency developed an encryption backdoor technology – endorsed and promoted by the Clinton administration – called the Clipper chip, which they hoped telecom companies would use to sell backdoored crypto phones. Essentially, every phone with a Clipper chip would come with an encryption key, but the government would also get a copy of that key – this is known as key escrow – with the promise to only use it in response to a valid warrant. But due to public outcry and the availability of encryption tools like PGP, which the government didn't control, the Clipper chip program ceased to be relevant by 1996. (Today, most phone calls still aren't encrypted. You can use the free, open source, backdoorless Signal app to make encrypted calls.)

The fact that new Windows devices require users to backup their recovery key on Microsoft's servers is remarkably similar to a key escrow system, but with an important difference. Users can choose to delete recovery keys from their Microsoft accounts (you can skip to the bottom of this article to learn how) – something that people never had the option to do with the Clipper chip system. But they can only delete it after they've already uploaded it to the cloud.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

There are only two places for Amazon and Alphabet/Google to go from here:

A record-breaking 2015 for Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. is closing with more of the same.

Both web giants closed at record prices Tuesday as investors balanced their portfolios for the end of the year. Amazon reached a high of $696.44 and closed with a 2.8% gain at $693.97, topping its Dec. 1 closing record of $679.06. Both publicly traded classes of stock in Google parent company Alphabet topped record closing prices also established on Dec. 1: Class A shares increased 1.5% to $793.96 after moving as high as $798.69, and Class C shares added 1.9% to $776.70 after an intraday top of $779.98.

Record prices for the two high-flying tech companies aren't new phenomena, as both have enjoyed such a strong year that they have been suggested as the next tech companies to join the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average. With just a couple trading days to go in the year, Amazon has jumped nearly 125% in 2015 while Alphabet has added more than 45%. By comparison, the S&P 500 has gained about 1% in the same amount of time.

Amazon hit its new highs after e-commerce performed well in holiday sales, and the Seattle company was a big reason for the strong holiday season. Macquarie analysts said last week that Amazon will account for more than half of the growth for online shopping in 2015.

Original Submission

Absolutely.Geek writes:

I have recently switched back to chromium after running firefox for a few years. I have some basic privacy extensions (AdBlock Plus; Privacy Badger; HTTPS everywhere and uBlock Origin). I was getting annoyed with a bunch of stuff so decided to switch; I may switch back at some point.

I want to know which extensions the Soylent crowd uses and more importantly why. If someone hasn't heard of an extension before having a brief description of what it does and why it is better then the "other" extension can really help out.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

A recent issue of Nautilus has an interesting story about "Nuclear Pasta": What Neutron Stars, Lasagna, and Waffles Have in Common

Hot fluids of neutrons that flow without friction, superconductors made of protons, and a solid crust built of exotic atoms—features like these make neutron stars some of the strangest objects we've found in the cosmos so far. They pack all the mass of a star into a sphere the size of a city, resulting in states of matter we just don't have on Earth.

And yet, despite their extreme weirdness, neutron stars contain a mishmash of vaguely familiar features, as if seen darkly through a funhouse mirror. One of the weirdest is the fact that deep inside a neutron star you can find a whole menu full of (nuclear) pasta.

The pasta is made of protons and neutrons, held together by the extreme pressures. These oddball nuclei arrange themselves into weird configurations that Matt Caplan of Indiana University and his colleagues call "nuclear pasta."[1] The pasta layer lies in the inner crust, a transitional zone between a neutron star's outer crust and core. In the top of this layer, the nuclei form blobs called "gnocchi." Deeper down, they join together into cylindrical shapes called "spaghetti." More pressure, and the spaghetti compresses into "lasagna": flattish sheets of nuclear matter. Then the pasta transitions into "anti-pasta": The sheets of lasagna form cylindrical hollows where neutrons begin leaking out, which Caplan calls "anti-spaghetti." And finally, when the pressure is high enough, those hollows break into small bubbles, the "anti-gnocchi" phase.

The Nautilus goes on to explain how the researchers came to these conclusions based on the observation of a variety of neutron stars known as magnetars which, when undergoing a "star quake", cast off vast amounts of gamma rays. I found the article to be very readable and understandable by a lay person.

And now for the age old question: What do you put on your pasta — "sauce" or "gravy"?

References:
[1] Article: Pasta nucleosynthesis: Molecular dynamics simulations of nuclear statistical equilibrium. (pdf)
[2] Abstract: Nuclear Waffles (http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.2551) and full article (pdf)
[3] Abstract: Magnetically driven crustquakes in neutron stars.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Bruce Schneier writes in The Atlantic:

In theory, the Internet of Things—the connected network of tiny computers inside home appliances, household objects, even clothing—promises to make your life easier and your work more efficient. These computers will communicate with each other and the Internet in homes and public spaces, collecting data about their environment and making changes based on the information they receive. In theory, connected sensors will anticipate your needs, saving you time, money, and energy.

Except when the companies that make these connected objects act in a way that runs counter to the consumer's best interests...

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A misconfigured database has resulted in the exposure of around 191 Million voter records including: voters' full names, their home addresses, unique voter IDs, date of births and phone numbers.

The database was discovered on December 20th by Chris Vickery, a white hat hacker, who was able to access over 191 Million Americans' personal identifying information (PII) that are just sitting in the public to be found by anyone looking for it.

Vickery is the same security researcher who uncovered personal details of 13 Million MacKeeper users two weeks ago, which included names, email addresses, usernames, password hashes, IP addresses, phone numbers, and system information.

http://thehackernews.com/2015/12/us-voter-database-hacked.html

[The above story links to: http://www.databreaches.net/191-million-voters-personal-info-exposed-by-misconfigured-database/, but is currently (2015-12-29 07:08:18 UTC) generating "Error 524 A timeout occurred." -Ed.]

Original Submission