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takyon writes:

Yesterday, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said he would leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London to face arrest if a United Nations panel ruled against his claim that he is being "arbitrarily detained". Now, the BBC reports that the UN's Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has ruled in Assange's favor:

A UN panel has ruled Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is being "arbitrarily detained", the BBC understands. Mr Assange claimed asylum in London's Ecuadorean embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over sex assault claims, which he denies. The Met Police said he will still be held if he does leave the embassy. He earlier tweeted he would accept arrest if the panel ruled against him, but called for his arrest warrant to be dropped if the decision went his way.

While the BBC understands the panel will find in Mr Assange's favour, Wikileaks tweeted it was waiting for "official confirmation". The UK government said it would not "pre-empt" the ruling, saying Mr Assange still faced one allegation of rape while a European Arrest Warrant remained in place. "We have been consistently clear that Mr Assange has never been arbitrarily detained by the UK but is, in fact, voluntarily avoiding lawful arrest by choosing to remain in the Ecuadorean embassy," a spokesman added. "The UK continues to have a legal obligation to extradite Mr Assange to Sweden."

[...] The panel's decision is not legally binding on the UK or Sweden, Clive Coleman, BBC legal affairs correspondent said. Mr Assange will argue the decision is significant and adds considerable legal and moral force to the argument he is being arbitrarily detained, he said. But our correspondent added the UK government is likely to argue that Mr Assange's detention follows "an entirely lawful process".

takyon writes:

A Google engineer has been testing USB Type-C cables, which can provide power to devices, and has found one that destroys connected hardware:

Googler Benson Leung has been on a quest to try out the latest USB Type-C cables and find those that aren't up to snuff. Properly configured Type C connectors should be able to provide power and very high data rates, but most of those on the market have serious flaws, he has found. His findings have already caused one manufacturer to make a public mea culpa. In his latest review, for a Surjtech 3M USB A-to-C cable, Leung found that the cable had been wired up incorrectly and was actively harmful.

He reported that he plugged the cable into his 2015 edition Pixel via a USB power delivery analyzer and connected it to an Apple 12W iPad charger. The second the connection was made it fried both the analyzer and the Pixel laptop. The analyzer, and a second unit he tried, both died on contact with the cable and not even a firmware reinstall would get them working. As for the Pixel, both USB ports died as the current fired the embedded controller, meaning the laptop couldn't be charged or linked to another device.

"I directly analyzed the Surjtech cable using a Type-C breakout board and a multimeter, and it appears that they completely miswired the cable. The GND pin on the Type-A plug is tied to the Vbus pins on the Type-C plug. The Vbus pin on the Type-A plug is tied to GND on the Type-C plug," he wrote. "This is a total recipe for disaster and I have 3 pieces of electronics dead to show for it – my Pixel 2015 and two USB PD analyzers. Needless to say, this cable is fundamentally dangerous. Do not buy this under any circumstances."

Chromebook Pixel (2015) is a $999 laptop.

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Phoenix666 writes:

In 2013, SoftBank took control of Sprint in a $21.6 billion acquisition. Sprint was already in trouble, but Son announced his intention to merge the company with T-Mobile to challenge Verizon and AT&T. One of the first things he did was put Claure on Sprint's board. When the plan to merge with T-Mobile ran into regulatory objections and failed, Son bought Claure's company and named his protégé Sprint's CEO.

In the 17 months since, Claure (pronounced CLAW-ray) and Son have had hundreds of phone chats, exchanged thousands of texts and e-mails, and sat through dozens of midnight meetings. They've slashed prices—Sprint offered iPhones for $1 a month last year—and replaced much of the old executive team. This week people familiar with the situation said the company would eliminate 2,500 jobs, bringing total cuts under SoftBank to more than 4,000.

It hasn't helped much. The stocks of SoftBank and Sprint plummeted to multiyear lows in mid-January, though both recovered some with Sprint's report of third-quarter subscriber gains and lower-than-expected losses. SoftBank has plowed more than $22 billion into Sprint, and yet all of Sprint is now valued at $11.8 billion. The company's $2.2 billion in cash is about the same as its 2016 debt obligations.

A decade ago, Sprint had a $69 billion market value and a chance to dominate the U.S. wireless business. The company is now No. 4 in essentially a four-player business. It hasn't posted an annual profit since 2006.

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AnonTechie writes:

Why does some research lead to changes in public policy, while other studies of equal quality do not? That crucial question—how science impacts policy—is the focus of a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The paper suggests the most effective way environmental scholars can boost their policy influence—from protecting wildlife to curbing pollution—is to consult widely with stakeholders during the research process.

Surprisingly, the study finds that stakeholder engagement is a better predictor of future policy impacts than perceived scientific credibility. The study is the first quantitative analysis of how environmental knowledge impacts the attitudes and decisions of conservation policymakers. Researchers from the University of Vermont, World Wildlife Fund and Natural Capital Project analyzed 15 policy decisions worldwide, with outcomes ranging from new coastal preservation laws to improved species protections.

http://phys.org/news/2016-02-secret-scholars-impact-policy.html

[Abstract]: Policy impacts of ecosystem services knowledge

[Research]: http://scholarworks.uvm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1412&context=graddis [PDF]

Left unasked is the question: How much, if any, do we want scientists to try to change policy?

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The Register reports on privately held Perforce[*] selling out to private equity firm Summit Partners.

In a blog post, Perforce founder and former CEO Christopher Seiwald said, "like Steven Seagal in the movie Under Siege ("I'm just the cook"), under it all I'm still just the programmer, all dressed up. And all the while I've been looking for the real CEO to step in so I can get back to my programming in the basement."

In a more official statement via Summit, Seiwald said, "I have always been committed to doing the right thing for our customers and for the company, and I believe Janet Dryer is the right person to take Perforce forward while maintaining its unique culture and values. I'm thrilled to see Perforce enter this next phase of growth."

Fluff quotes from Seiwald and Summit managing director Peter Rottier are also included in the article, but El Reg's Joe Fay cuts straight to the chase: "What exactly that next phase of growth will be isn't detailed. However, groups like Summit aren't exactly in the businesses of building communities for the greater good. Presumably it will be looking to ramp up the firm's revenues – while keeping a tight rein on costs – with a view to offloading it at some point in the future, either through an IPO or by selling it on." Before attempting to squeeze revenues from Perforce customers, perhaps Summit is best served looking at the creation resulting from when BitKeeper tried to squeeze more money out of open-source developers who wanted to see metadata.

[*] Perforce is a commercial, proprietary revision control system developed by Perforce Software.

Which [distributed] version control systems do YOU use? What have you found to be their biggest pitfalls and pluses? Do you have any 'horror stories' to share?

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isostatic writes:

For the last 10 years my company (not an IT company) has built about 2000 linux machines, all based on a common preseed file and ubuntu server, which installs a home-grown auditing tool, basic configuration, and an internal apt repository of about 200 home spun and other useful debs. About 1000 of these machines are still on the network somewhere in the world (none in Antarctica, at least no permanent installs). We have zero professional linux administrators, just people that dabble.

However in addition to that we have at least 2 dozen rpm-based machines, which lack auditing or management — they just get installed and forgotten about. These are typically for horrible purposes like running Oracle, but we also have a fair number of Xen nodes too. I was going to build a yum repository for these machines with hopes of aliening in some of the tools we have (things like auto-registering into nagios).

Being an old fart, I consider "yum" to be quite new compare with apt, so I was surprised to see that it was being replaced with DNF. There's also a push from the youngling developers to run everything on docker on something like Redhat Atomic, or Ubuntu Core - which are redhat and ubuntu in name only, and lack any traditional package tools.

Given that the hipster millennial agile cupcakes are the future, is there a future in old fashioned RPMs or Debs distributed by yum/dnf and apt, or will the future be "snappy"? How have you managed to cope with the move to a containerised environment? Or do you think it's all a fad and we'll swiftly move to traditional metal-OS-Application (rather than metal-OS-container-vm-OS-container-OS-Application).

What package manager(s) do fellow Soylentils use? What shortcomings have you encountered?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The physics of the folding process that creates the wrinkled surface of the human brain has been replicated using a gel model:

Scientists have reproduced the wrinkled shape of a human brain using a simple gel model with two layers. They made a solid replica of a foetal brain, still smooth and unfolded, and coated it with a second layer which expanded when dunked into a solvent. That expansion produced a network of furrows that was remarkably similar to the pattern seen in a real human brain.

This suggests that brain folds are caused by physics: the outer part grows faster than the rest, and crumples. Such straightforward, mechanical buckling is one of several proposed explanations for the distinctive twists and turns of the brain's outermost blanket of cells, called the "cortex". Alternatively, researchers have suggested that biochemical signals might trigger expansion and contraction in particular parts of the sheet, or that the folds arise because of stronger connections between specific areas.

[...] Humans are one of just a few animals - among them whales, pigs and some other primates - that possess these iconic undulations. In other creatures, and early in development, the cortex is smooth. The replica in the study was based on an MRI brain scan from a 22-week-old foetus - the stage just before folds usually appear. A 3D printout of that scan was used to make a mould, which in turn was filled with a silicon-based gel to make the "gel brain". Finally, a 1mm-thick layer of slightly different gel was added to the surface - to play the role of the cortex.

On the growth and form of cortical convolutions (DOI: 10.1038/nphys3632)

Older study: Gyrification from constrained cortical expansion (open, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1406015111)

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Why does a great dane have a shorter lifespan than a pug? The answer lies in a complex relationship between energy usage and lifespan. That relationship is quickly being unraveled through the use of numerical modeling by a researcher at Missouri University of Science and Technology.

By using the principles of energy conservation and allometric scaling laws, Dr. Chen Hou has developed a theoretical model that can measure aging on the basis of energy expenditure. Hou has found that growth carries a tradeoff with health maintenance, and that previous research in the area is not as straightforward as once thought.

"Past studies of metabolic rates have yielded conflicting results when comparing different species and introducing diet restrictions," says Hou, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Missouri S&T. "My model shows that energy used during growth is the key to understanding longevity."

Hou's research shows that oxidative metabolism affects cellular damage and longevity in different ways in animals with different life histories and under varying experimental conditions. For example, he compares the birth mass of a greater Swiss mountain dog to that of a silky terrier as an example. A greater Swiss is born at only one percent of its final weight, whereas the terrier already weighs in at eight percent of its final weight at birth. That percentage difference means that the greater Swiss must use more energy to grow to full adulthood, relatively less energy for health maintenance and therefore have a shorter lifespan than the terrier.

On the complex relationship between energy expenditure and longevity: Reconciling the contradictory empirical results with a simple theoretical model (DOI: 10.1016/j.mad.2015.06.003)

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Three months after she introduced the Internet Swatting Hoax Act in US Congress, Representative Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) found herself at the end of an apparent swatting attempt on Sunday night.

Melrose, Massachusetts police press spokesperson John Guilfoil confirmed to Ars Technica that the department received a phone call from "a computerized voice, not a natural voice" alleging "shots fired" and an "active shooter" at the address of Clark's home. The resulting police report confirmed an incident time of 9:57pm for a "life alert alarm" and "automated call reporting shooter."

This type of police report—using a disguised voice to allege false threats at a residence—is known as "swatting," due to the likelihood that police departments will react by sending SWAT teams to respond to serious-sounding threats. In the case of the Sunday night call, however, Guilfoil confirmed that Melrose police followed "established protocols" to choose a de-escalated response of normal police officers, though the officers in question blocked traffic on both ends of Clark's street with patrol cars. Guilfoil was unable to clarify whether weapons were drawn at the scene, and he did not answer our other questions about the incident, particularly those about the nature of the phone call received, "due to the ongoing nature of the investigation."

Original Submission

Marissa Mayer to Make Case That Yahoo Can Be Turned Around

Phoenix666 writes:

Marissa Mayer is gearing up for yet another turnaround plan for Yahoo! Inc. Given the company's persistent growth slump, even a sweeping overhaul may do little to fend off activist investors threatening to wage a proxy war aimed at her removal.

Yahoo's chief executive officer, who has overseen falling sales in 7 of the past 10 quarters, promised to detail a plan to cut costs and boost growth. The effort, set to be announced with quarterly earnings Tuesday, will probably include job cuts, a person with knowledge of the matter has said.

Once a major gateway to the wealth of information, communities and entertainment on the Internet, people have in recent years ditched Yahoo in favor of Google, Facebook Inc. and other companies at the center of people's digital lives. Since her hiring in 2012, Mayer has made scant headway in efforts to restore growth at the Web pioneer. Now, she's mired in a complex project to decouple Yahoo's main business from its $25 billion stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Activist investors dissatisfied with progress have all but threatened a proxy war.

"She's almost out of time," said Ryan Jacob, who manages Yahoo shares as part of his Jacob Internet Fund. "At this point, it's hard to imagine a proxy fight being averted. I would welcome it, given the changes at Yahoo have just been incremental. That's what's been frustrating shareholders for years."

Yahoo to Lay Off 15%, Consider Reverse Spin-Off

Phoenix666 writes:

Yahoo on Tuesday announced it would consider a reverse spinoff and cut about 15 percent of its workforce as part of a restructuring to boost a sluggish core business.

The tech company also posted quarterly results broadly in line with analysts' expectations. Yahoo reported adjusted fourth-quarter earnings of 13 cents per share on $1.27 billion in revenue.

Analysts expected Yahoo to report earnings of about 13 cents per share on $1.19 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters. Yahoo shares fell nearly 3 percent in after-hours trading.

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takyon writes:

The outbreak of the Zika virus has reached the U.S., and the virus was likely transmitted through sexual contact rather than a mosquito bite:

The first known case of Zika virus transmission in the United States was reported in Texas on Tuesday by local health officials, who said it likely was contracted through sex and not a mosquito bite, a day after the World Health Organization declared an international public health emergency.

The virus, linked to severe birth defects in thousands of babies in Brazil, is spreading rapidly in the Americas, and WHO officials on Tuesday expressed concern that it could hit Africa and Asia as well. Zika had been thought to be spread by the bite of mosquitoes of the Aedes genus, so sexual contact as a mode of transmission would be a potentially alarming development.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed it was the first U.S. Zika case in someone who had not traveled abroad in the current outbreak, said CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden on Twitter. However, the CDC has not investigated how the virus was transmitted.

After this case, the CDC advised men to consider using condoms after traveling to areas with the Zika virus. Pregnant women should avoid contact with semen from men exposed to the virus.

CDC Zika page.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A flat optical lens just a billionth of a metre thick will let us see living creatures as small as a single bacterium better than ever before. The new lens, developed by researchers at Swinburne University of Technology, promises to revolutionize much of the technology around us.

Driven by developments in photonic chips and nano-optics, the global race to create a practical ultrathin lens that breaks the diffraction limit — enabling a focus less than half the wavelength of light — had been gathering pace since the turn of the millennium.

[...] Just over two years ago, PhD student at Swinburne's Centre for Micro-Photonics, Xiaorui Zheng, tried fashioning a lens using graphene oxide — a variation of the super-strong, atom-thick carbon material, graphene. The team, led by Associate Professor Baohua Jia, developed a three-dimensional printer that could quickly and cheaply produce the lens using a sprayable graphene oxide solution. Lasers were used to precisely pattern the surface, creating three concentric rings of reduced graphene oxide, which enabled its extraordinary focus.

The result is a very strong and flexible flat optical lens that is 300 times thinner than a sheet of paper and weighs a microgram — next to nothing. At the same time, it has a precise and adjustable three-dimensional focus that allows a detailed view of objects as small as 200 nanometres long at wavelengths ranging from visible to near infrared.

Highly efficient and ultra-broadband graphene oxide ultrathin lenses with three-dimensional subwavelength focusing (open, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9433)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google gave a former employee over $12,000 for discovering a bug that allowed him to purchase and briefly own the "google.com" domain back in September:

Last fall, Sanmay Ved thought he bought the world's most heavily trafficked site for $12, after playing around with a website registration service called Google Domains. He was amazed when his order was verified, his credit card charged, and a confirmation e-mail sent. It was a short-lived triumph. One minute later, another e-mail, telling him his order had been canceled, popped into his inbox.

Now, Google, through a posting on its online security blog, has revealed the company gave Ved more than $12,000 for pointing out the bug that allowed him to buy the site.

The reward was doubled from $6,006.13 after Sanmay decided to donate the money to charity. Other highlights from Google's Security Reward Program year in review:

We launched our Android VRP in June, and by the end of 2015, we had paid more than $200,000 to researchers for their work, including our largest single payment of $37,500 to an Android security researcher.

Last year, we began to provide researchers with Vulnerability Research Grants, lump sums of money that researchers receive before starting their investigations. The purpose of these grants is to ensure that researchers are rewarded for their hard work, even if they don't find a vulnerability. We've already seen positive results from this program; here's one example. Kamil Histamullin a researcher from Kasan, Russia received a VRP grant early last year. Shortly thereafter, he found an issue in YouTube Creator Studio which would have enabled anyone to delete any video from YouTube by simply changing a parameter from the URL. After the issue was reported, our teams quickly fixed it and the researcher was was rewarded $5,000 in addition to his initial research grant. Kamil detailed his findings on his personal blog in March.

[...] Tomasz Bojarski found 70 bugs on Google in 2015, and was our most prolific researcher of the year. He found a bug in our vulnerability submission form.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

European and US legislators have hammered out a last-minute deal to allow data flows across the Atlantic to continue without breaking the law. Under the terms of the new deal, which has yet to be ratified by EU members, the US will give an annual written commitment that it won't indulge in mass surveillance of EU citizens, and this will be audited by both sides once a year.

US companies wishing to import EU citizens' data must give "robust obligations on how personal data is processed," and comply to the same standards as European data protection laws. If EU citizens want to complain about how their data is being used, companies must respond within a deadline and at no cost to the complainant.

The so-called Privacy Shield deal replaces the Safe Harbor agreement that stood for more than 15 years before being struck down by a court in October. It's the result of three months of frantic and sometimes fraught negotiations between the two trade blocks, with tech firms in both zones pushing hard for a deal.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/02/safe_harbor_replaced_with_privacy_shield/

[Press Release]: EU Commission and United States agree on new framework for transatlantic data flows: EU-US Privacy Shield

[Related]: The Commission issued guidance for companies on the possibilities of transatlantic data transfers following the ruling until a new framework is put in place [PDF]

Original Submission

Demose writes:

From http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/felons-lifetime-gps-monitoring-upheld-by-us-federal-appeals-court/

A federal appeals court is upholding lifetime G.P.S. monitoring of a convicted felon, in this instance a Wisconsin pedophile who served time for sexually assaulting a boy and a girl. The court upheld the constitutionality of a Wisconsin law that, beginning in 2008, requires convicted pedophiles to wear GPS ankle devices for the rest of their lives.

Opinion:
I can't imagine this not going to the US Supreme Court and, if upheld, steadily being expanded to everyone "for the public good". Though my soul is set ablaze with rage at this, I can't help but think this overall has little impact on the populous in general as we all carry tracking devices willingly for the convenience of contacting loved ones and business associates anywhere. Do you believe there will come a day when everyone's positions will be monitored at all times by law? Do you have an alternative to cellphones that don't track your position?

Original Submission