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takyon writes:

Staples wants to merge with Office Depot, which recently acquired Office Max. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has other plans:

Staples and Office Depot face anti-trust lawyers for the Federal Trade Commission in U.S. District Court on Monday. The companies are fighting to complete their $6.3 billion proposed merger — an acquisition by Staples that follows Office Depot's acquisition of competitor Office Max. The FTC argues that allowing the remaining no. 1 and no. 2 office-supply chains in America to hitch up will create monopoly market conditions and restrict competition.

Last week, the CEOs of Staples and Office Depot issued an open letter saying the FTC's analysis is "flawed" and reflects "a deep misunderstanding of the competitive landscape." They argued that after they merge, they will still face significant competition to sell office supplies at the lowest price, and promised that they will pass those savings on to customers.

Efraim Levy, equity analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence, agreed with the CEOs' assertion that the market for office supplies has been transformed in recent years by ubiquitous online-commerce opportunities. "You just have to make an electronic click on your screen," Levy said. "If Staples or Office Depot or the combination doesn't have the best prices compared to Amazon or others, consumers have an easy opportunity to make their purchases elsewhere."

More coverage at Reuters.

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takyon writes:

The Supreme Court has refused to hear a challenge to Colorado's recreational cannabis law from neighboring states:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out a lawsuit filed by the states of Nebraska and Oklahoma against their neighbor Colorado over a law approved as a ballot initiative by Colorado voters in 2012 that allows the recreational use of marijuana. The court declined to hear the case filed by Nebraska and Oklahoma, which said that marijuana is being smuggled across their borders and noted that federal law still prohibits the drug. Two conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, said they would have heard the case.

Nebraska and Oklahoma contended that drugs such as marijuana threaten the health and safety of children and argued that Colorado had created "a dangerous gap" in the federal drug control system. Colorado stands by its law. It noted that the Obama administration has indicated the federal government lacks the resources and inclination to enforce fully the federal marijuana ban.

Also at The Washington Post, NYT.

See the Plaintiffs' brief, and Colorado's brief in opposition.

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takyon writes:

A Jupiter-like exoplanet has been discovered orbiting its star with an eccentricity more similar to a comet than a planet:

Led by SF [San Francisco State University] astronomer Stephen Kane, a team of researchers has spotted an extrasolar planet about 117 light-years from earth that boasts the most eccentric orbit yet seen.

What's more, Kane and his colleagues were able to detect a signal of reflected light from the planet known as HD 20782 — a "flash" of starlight bouncing off the eccentric planet's atmosphere as it made its closest orbital approach to its star. The discovery was announced online Feb. 28 in The Astrophysical Journal. [...] HD 20782 has the most eccentric orbit known, measured at an eccentricity of .96. This means that the planet moves in a nearly flattened ellipse, traveling a long path far from its star and then making a fast and furious slingshot around the star at its closest approach.

[...] At the furthest point in its orbit, the planet is separated from its star by 2.5 times the distance between the sun and Earth. At its closest approach, it ventures as close as .06 of that same Earth-sun distance — much closer than Mercury orbits the sun, said Kane, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy. "It's around the mass of Jupiter, but it's swinging around its star like it's a comet."

Evidence for reflected light from the most eccentric exoplanet known

[The distance between the sun and the Earth is one Astronomical Unit (AU). So, this planet's orbit about its star varies from 0.06AU to 2.5AU — about 5.6 to 232 million miles (9 to 375 million km.) For comparison, here are some average orbits about the sun in AU: Mercury: 0.39; Venus 0.72; Earth: 1; Mars: 1.52; Ceres: 2.77; Jupiter: 5.2. -martyb]

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bitstream writes:

The HDMI connector has shrunk to mini, then micro. USB has shrunk to mini, then micro. The wired Ethernet connector has stayed the same since 1988. On the Raspberry PI, it's the largest of the standardized connectors. Is the time ripe to for a smaller version? What would be a good complement to the clunky 8P8C port? It should not be easily dislodged, but the 8P8C locking mechanism can be really fragile. And forget "RJ45" it's a telephone system connector. Not a networking connector for computers.

This size sometimes becomes a problem when designing really small or flat devices. Sometimes one can (ab)use other connectors that has a similar impedance. One could however take a hint from how VGA cabling works. Where the source, cable and destination are all 75 ohm. But the common VGA connector DE-15 is 30 ohm (ouch!) so it's reflection galore.. Thus it's possible to cut some corners. With a smaller connector the highest speeds of 40 Gbit/s should perhaps not be expected. The point is to enable a really thin but still sturdy and versatile connector.
(DB13W3 is really the only properly designed connector besides BNC for a 75 ohm VGA connection)

One solution that is used is the RJ.5, another is the micro SFP.

The current status of copper media Ethernet is 10GBASE-T that were released in 2006 and allows for a 100 meter length using Cat.6a. 40GBASE-T is to be released in spring 2016 to allow a 30 m length over a Cat.8 cable.

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takyon writes:

Strong smog is big business:

Sales at the engineering firm Dyson rose by more than a quarter in 2015, helped by a tripling of sales in China. Total revenue rose 26% to £1.7bn, including a 222% increase in China.

Dyson opened in China three years ago, selling vacuum cleaners and humidifiers but expanded its range to include purifiers in the last 12 months. In December, Beijing was forced to issue two "red" warnings over hazardous smog levels, which boosted demand for Dyson's products the firm said. Dyson said total sales of its environmental control products grew by 35% over the year, underpinned by strong growth in Asia, and it expects demand for purifiers to increase in 2016.

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bitstream writes:

There's a crowdfunding project to create a global network of open source, software defined (SDR) radio receivers. This will enable anybody to scan the 0 - 30 MHz radio spectrum from the comfort of a web browser capable of HTML5. Built on top of the single computer board Beaglebone. The "KiwiSDR" RF board includes a GPS receiver frontend that makes it possible to correlate timing between receivers giving options for projects like long baseline interferometry and lightning detection. Prototypes are already deployed and have been used by one user to RXing in Sweden, Australia and New Zealand.

The hardware is designed using KiCad is a 6-layer PCB mostly because of the difficulty to provide all the required power planes to the FPGA BGA using a 4-layer design. The frontend consist of a antenna, filter, amplifier, 14-bit A/D, 65 MHz oscillator and FPGA.
(schematic source)

Note that www.jks.com is under serious load from "that site" so it loads slowly (1.5 kByte/s). Any you may need your cache-fu and perhaps link to them in the comment section.

[ed: here is a google cache link.]

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bitstream writes:

The whistleblower at NSA, Edward Snowden spoke at the Free Software Foundation's LibrePlanet 2016 on the topic of free software, privacy, and security. In which he credited free software for the ability to help him disclose the U.S. government's far-reaching surveillance projects. Snowden said, "What happened in 2013 couldn't have happened without free software,". In particularly he citing projects like Tor (onion network), Tails (a highly secure Linux distribution) and Debian (OS). "I didn't use Microsoft machines when I was in my operational phase, because I couldn't trust them,". "Not because I knew that there was a particular back door or anything like that, but because I couldn't be sure."

So keep on the FOSS..
(despite blob-bios, chipset backdoors and CPU die spy engines)

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bitstream writes:

A team of researchers from the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab has announced a working UAV that can take off from under water into the air. It's dubbed the Corrosion Resistant Aerial Covert Unmanned Nautical System (CRACUNS). The drone can reside for months underwater without deteriorating or decaying due to a coating on exposed parts and water tightening others. Given a signal, the CRACUNS will rise to the water surface and begin flight, capable of undertaking a variety of missions. Watch the demonstration video at 1:39 that also says that it's capable to handle a depth of several "hundreds of feet" (many people must have sacrificed their precious body parts :p).

To accomplish this, the body has to do without any structural metal parts or machined surfaces. The composite body has to be extremely lightweight, handle salt water and constant water pressure without leaks. The project manager says the engineers at APL have long worked on both Navy submarine systems and autonomous UAVs. Due to evolving sponsor challenges they were inspired to develop a vehicle that could operate both underwater and in the air.

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takyon writes:

Two black boxes from the FlyDubai crash near Rostov-on-Don in Russia may not yield much information due to damage:

Aviation experts are examining two black boxes from the FlyDubai flight that crashed in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, killing all 55 passengers and seven crew on board. But officials say the cockpit voice and data recorders have been badly damaged and are unlikely to reveal much data. The FlyDubai Boeing 737-800, coming from Dubai, missed the runway as it attempted to land on Saturday.

Officials say it is not clear what caused the crash 950km south of Moscow. But poor visibility and high winds are being considered as factors. A criminal investigation has been launched into whether pilot error, a technical fault or the bad weather was the cause. [...] The black boxes are being examined by experts from Russia, the United Arab Emirates, the US and France, AP reported, because the American-made Boeing had French-manufactured engines.

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stormwyrm writes:

Tom Warren at The Verge reports that Microsoft has once again broken its promise to upgrade Windows Phones. From the article:

Microsoft has screwed up its Windows Phone upgrades once again. While the software maker promised that all Lumia Windows Phone 8 devices would be upgraded to Windows 10, it's breaking that promise. Microsoft started rolling out Windows 10 Mobile to existing Lumia devices this week, and revealed that handsets like the Lumia 920 and Lumia 1020 will be stuck on Windows Phone 8.

[...] Windows Phone fans aren't necessarily angry at the lack of upgrade for their chosen devices, it's more the broken promises. Windows Phone 7 handsets were never upgraded to Windows Phone 8, and Microsoft set the expectation this time that history wouldn't repeat itself. Another broken promise is bad news for a mobile operating system that is practically dead, and once again Microsoft has angered its small but loyal base of Windows Phone users.

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takyon writes:

Uber may be looking to purchase thousands of autonomous cars, but it seems that no deal has been finalized:

Ride-hailing service Uber has sounded out car companies about placing a large order for self-driving cars, an auto industry source said on Friday. "They wanted autonomous cars," the source, who declined to be named, said. "It seemed like they were shopping around."

Loss-making Uber would make drastic savings on its biggest cost -- drivers -- if it were able to incorporate self-driving cars into its fleet. Volkswagen's Audi, Daimler's Mercedes-Benz, BMW and car industry suppliers Bosch and Continental are all working on technologies for autonomous or semi-autonomous cars.

Earlier on Friday, Germany's Manager Magazin reported that Uber had placed an order for at least 100,000 Mercedes S-Class cars, citing sources at both companies. The top-flight limousine, around 100,000 of which Mercedes-Benz sold last year, does not yet have fully autonomous driving functionality.

Another source familiar with the matter said no order had been placed with Mercedes-Benz. Daimler and Uber declined to comment.

Auto industry executives are wary of doing deals with newcomers from the technology and software business who threaten to upend established business models based on manufacturing and selling cars. "We don't want to end up like Nokia's handset business, which was once hugely profitable...then disappeared," a second auto industry source said about doing a deal with Uber. [...] Earlier this week Mercedes rival BMW said it was considering launching its own ride hailing service in what would amount to a rival business to Uber.

An order of 100,000 Mercedes S-Class cars would cost billions, even with a steep discount. Reuters hasn't removed the reference to the 100,000 Mercedes-Benz cars, as seen above.

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HughPickens.com writes:

The American presence at the Guantanamo Prison Camp has been deeply contentious since even before terrorism suspects began to be housed there beginning in 2002. Now as President Obama prepares to make the first presidential visit to Cuba in almost 90 years, ecologists Joe Roman and James Kraska have published their case in the influential journal Science for creating a Guantanamo-based research center to study biodiversity in the Caribbean. The primary benefit of a Guantanamo Bay research station is symbolic. "The main goal is trying to take Guantanamo and make it an inspiring place, and redeem it," says Roman. But the case for Guantanamo Bay as a science lab goes beyond political optics. According to Roman and Kraska the land and the sea offer an ecosystem uniquely worthy of study. The research hub of Roman's dreams would be a state-of-the art facility to help understand how biodiversity loss can be prevented across the Caribbean. "A parcel of the land, perhaps on the developed southeastern side of the base, could become a 'Woods Hole of the Caribbean,' housing research and educational facilities dedicated to addressing climate change, ocean conservation, and biodiversity loss. With genetics laboratories, geographic information systems laboratories, videoconference rooms — even art, music, and design studios — scientists, scholars, and artists from Cuba, the United States, and around the world could gather and study. The new facilities could strive to be carbon neutral, with four 80-meter wind turbines having been installed on the base in 2005, and designed to minimize ecological damage to the surrounding marine and terrestrial ecosystems"

According to Roman the main idea is that science can be healing: a way to bring diverse nations together, a way to rectify a complicated history, and a way to help better the lives of all people through research. The biggest roadblock won't be the Obama administration but Congress. Republican lawmakers have derided Obama's preliminary framework for closing the prison so for the foreseeable future, the status quo will remain. But Roman can still dream. "At a certain point, I don't know when, that base is going to close. It's going to return to Cuba at some point. This is a great use of that property. You don't have many places in the world like that."

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Common Dreams reports

Consider Iceland, the country that supported Wikileaks, welcomed refugees when its [government] wouldn't, boasts[1][2] a warm fuzzy police Instagram, and alone chose to jail corrupt bankers (with 26 sentenced to 74 years in prison).

Now, a new survey has found[1] that the activism-based Pirate Party--which touts civil rights, collective effort, transparency, net neutrality, and "the wisdom of the masses"--has grown into by far that country's most popular political party. As proof of their newfound popularity, they're attracting the usual derisive press from the powers that be; a recent Bloomberg story calls them "Iceland's next scare".

The Pirates now have 38% support from Icelandic voters, up dramatically from the 5% they started with a few years ago. Their support vastly outweighs both the conservative Independence Party's 27.6% and the center-right increasingly-distrusted Progressive Party's 12.8% (about half what it had when it became ruler of the current coalition). The new numbers mean that, if elections were held today, the Pirates' current three seats would soar to 26 seats, no government could be formed without them, and they would dominate whatever coalition resulted.

[...] The first priority proclaimed in its platform[3] [is] "We want you in charge." Among the issues they advocate for are increased and online voter participation, net neutrality and copyright reform, further breaking up big banks, greater health care access, a 35-hour work week, and ecologically sound fishing quotas.

[1] In the Icelandic language
[2] Content is behind scripts. archive.is fixes that.
[3] Malformed link in TFA; corrected in summary.

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Celestial writes:

Sony is rumored to be developing the "PlayStation 4.5," a more powerful version of the PlayStation 4 capable of playing games at 4K Ultra HD resolution.

"Sony is working on a "PlayStation 4.5," a more powerful version of the PlayStation 4 that will be able to play games at 4K resolution, according to a report from Kotaku.

Kotaku cited multiple "developers who have spoken with Sony" about the purported console. Those sources indicated that the "PS4.5" — no word on whether that's the official name — will include improved graphics hardware to power 4K games, and additional processing power for PlayStation VR, the virtual reality headset that Sony is releasing in October.

The PS4 cannot currently output 4K content, and its optical drive cannot read 4K Blu-ray discs. Masayasu Ito, executive vice president at Sony Computer Entertainment, said in an interview with 4Gamer in October (via Siliconera) that Sony was considering an enhanced PS4 that could support 4K Blu-ray discs. Neil Hunt, Netflix's chief product officer, told Huffington Post UK in January that Sony had "promised" Netflix that a new revision of the PS4 hardware with 4K support was coming. And Netflix told Forbes in February that it expected hardware refreshes this fall from both Sony and Microsoft with 4K video playback for the PS4 and Xbox One, respectively.

If Sony is indeed considering a mid-cycle hardware upgrade, the company may not be alone. During a presentation to the media last month, Xbox head Phil Spencer posited a future in which Microsoft will "come out with new hardware capability during a [console] generation."

Hello, console gaming fragmentation? If this rumor is accurate, one of the biggest advantages of console gaming would be gone.

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takyon writes:

President Obama has become the first U.S. president to visit Cuba since long before the Cuban embargo began:

President Barack Obama embarked on Sunday on a historic trip to Cuba where a Communist government that vilified the United States for decades prepared a red-carpet welcome. Lifting off from Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, Obama headed for Havana where the sight of Air Force One, America's iconic presidential jet, touching down on Cuban soil would have been unimaginable not long ago.

The three-day trip, the first by a U.S. president in 88 years, is the culmination of a diplomatic opening announced by Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro in December 2014, ending a Cold War-era estrangement that began when the Cuban revolution ousted a pro-American government in 1959. Obama, who abandoned a longtime U.S. policy of trying to isolate Cuba internationally, now wants to make his shift irreversible. But major obstacles remain to full normalization of ties.

Ahead of Obama's arrival, plainclothes police blanketed the capital with security while public works crews busily laid down asphalt in a city where drivers joke they must navigate "potholes with streets." Welcome signs with images of Obama alongside Castro popped up in colonial Old Havana, where the president and his family will tour later on Sunday.

Also at The Guardian and live at The Washington Post. Voice of America reports that dozens of protesters were arrested hours before Obama's visit.

Extras:

How Canada played pivotal role in Obama's history-making trip to Cuba
How Raúl Castro broke with firebrand brother Fidel to jump start Cuba-U.S. relations
US hotel firm Starwood strikes historic Cuba deal

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