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takyon writes:

Three federal judges have rejected an attempt to have redrawn congressional districts in Florida thrown out. The case would have to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to continue:

Florida's long, twisted legal drama over its congressional districts may finally be reaching its end after a panel on federal judges on Monday rejected a push by U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown to throw out the current district boundaries.

Brown, a veteran member of Congress, argued that the current map, which dramatically altered her Jacksonville district, violates federal voting laws because it diluted the voting rights of minorities. But the panel of three judges disagreed sharply and said that Brown and her attorneys had not produced evidence to prove her case. Brown, who had previously vowed to keep up the fight as long as she could, said in a brief statement that she was "extremely disappointed" and is reviewing the ruling with her attorneys. Any appeal, however, would go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court since a three-judge panel handled the initial decision.

The decision could have immediate reverberations because the new map upends the state's political landscape and could lead to the defeat of several incumbents. The current map was approved by the state Supreme Court in December after a lengthy battle. The new map, for example, puts U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham, who has been viewed as a rising star for Democrats, in a north Florida district that leans Republican and splits her home of Tallahassee. She has refused to make a decision on her political future because of the ongoing lawsuit. Brown's district has been shifted from one that stretches south to Orlando to one that now runs west to Tallahassee. She has already drawn challengers.

Also at Sunshine State News, and the Miami Herald.

Wikipedia: "In the process of setting electoral districts, gerrymandering is a practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries."

Original Submission

Demose writes:

OpenMW is a GPLv3 game engine that aims to be compatible with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind's assets. As it stands you can complete all of the main quest lines without issues. This release brings such exciting features as background cell loading and object shaders. You can view a complete change log on the project's website or see the progress via the release video for the engine and construction set (the construction set is a program for modding and creating plugins for the Morrowind engine).

Opinion: I'm quite excited about the future of this engine. Although any major improvements have been put off until the engine reaches 1.0.0, there's talk of what might come after such as virtual reality headset support and physically-based rendering support.

takyon: Additionally, several sites are reporting on Holds: The City Overhaul, a "better cities" mod for TES V: Skyrim that renovates many locations in the game. There's also a recent update about the progress of the XL Engine, which aims to modernize TES II: Daggerfall along with a few other games.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Peter Mensch, the manager of bands including Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Muse, says YouTube is killing the record industry.

"YouTube, they're the devil," he told a BBC Radio 4 documentary on the music business. "We don't get paid at all."

He said the site's business model, in which artists make money by placing ads around their music, was unsustainable.

"If someone doesn't do something about YouTube, we're screwed," he said. "It's over. Someone turn off the lights."

Peter Mensch is right. Nobody should ever see or hear those bands lest they be tempted to buy merchandise or go to see concerts.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A US Congressman has learned first-hand just how vulnerable cellphones are to eavesdropping and geographic tracking after hackers were able to record his calls and monitor his movements using nothing more than the public ten-digit phone number associated with the handset he used.

The stalking of US Representative Ted Lieu's smartphone was carried out with his permission for a piece broadcast Sunday night by 60 Minutes. Karsten Nohl of Germany-based Security Research Labs was able to record any call made to or from the phone and to track its precise location in real-time as the California congressman traveled to various points in the southern part of the state. At one point, 60 minutes played for Lieu a crystal-clear recording Nohl made of one call that discussed data collection practices by the US National Security Agency. While SR Labs had permission to carry out the surveillance, there's nothing stopping malicious hackers from doing the same thing.

The representative said he had two reactions: "First it's really creepy," he said. "And second it makes me angry. They could hear any call. Pretty much anyone has a cell phone. It could be stock trades you want someone to execute. It could be a call with a bank."

The hack was done by accessing Signalling System No. 7, or SS7, a telephony signalling language used by more than 800 telecommunication companies around the world to allow their networks to interoperate. SS7 is the routing protocol that, for instance, allows a T-Mobile subscriber to connect to the Deutsche Telekom network while traveling in Germany. It also provides a way for someone on one continent to send text messages to a phone located on another continent. SS7 also makes individuals' subscriber data available to anyone with access to SS7.

Original Submission

frojack writes:

King5 TV (Seattle) reports:

The annulus is the area between the two walls of the double walled tanks. Images here. The tanks are more than 45 years old, and were only ever intended for short term storage.

takyon: Wikipedia has a featured article about the Hanford Site.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

New analysis of an image taken by the ALMA telescope in Chile reveals evidence that a dwarf dark galaxy—a tiny halo companion of a much larger galaxy—is lurking nearly 4 billion light-years away.

This discovery paves the way for ALMA to find many more such objects, which could help astronomers address important questions on the nature of dark matter.

In 2014, as part of ALMA's Long Baseline Campaign, astronomers studied a variety of astronomical objects to test the telescope's new high-resolution capabilities. One of these experimental images was that of an Einstein ring, which was produced by a massive foreground galaxy bending the light emitted by another galaxy nearly 12 billion light-years away.

This phenomenon, called gravitational lensing, was predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, and it offers a powerful tool for studying galaxies that are otherwise too distant to observe. It also sheds light on the properties of the nearby lensing galaxy because of the way its gravity distorts and focuses light from more distant objects.

Also at Stanford University.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/18/5g_is_looming_but_network_innovations_are_needed_far_more_urgently/

In all the excitement about 5G, it is easy to forget that the most intensive innovations of 2016-2020 will go on in "4.5G" – in Release 13 and 14, of course, but more importantly in the way the carriers and their vendors reinvent their cellular networks with new approaches like virtualization and HetNet, in the desperate bid to keep up with capacity, coverage and efficiency demands.

Nokia's Bell Labs' R&D unit published a report this week warning that the capacity of mobile and Wi-Fi networks is not growing nearly quickly enough to satisfy the rise in that demand, especially when it comes to content and video. Of course, such a conclusion, coming from an equipment vendor, is predictable and self-serving, but nonetheless, Bell Labs' figures are compelling.

It calculates that, by 2020, Wi-Fi and cellular networks, taken together, will be able to carry just 81 per cent of the projected mobile content traffic, leaving almost one-fifth of demand unsatisfied. "Network operators will need to accelerate their path to 5G and cloud technologies, such as network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN), and adopt new business models to address the demand gap," Nokia said.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The U.S. military has spoken out against the landing of a Chinese military aircraft on a manmade island in the South China Sea. According to the Chinese government, a Y-8 maritime patrol aircraft landed to evacuate three seriously ill workers who would have otherwise required a time-consuming trip at sea:

China's apparent landing of a military jet on a man-made island in the disputed waters of the South China Sea drew protest from the United States military Monday. "We're aware that a Chinese military aircraft landed at Fiery Cross Reef on Sunday in what China described as a humanitarian operation to evacuate three ill workers," Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told CNN in a statement. "It is unclear why the Chinese used a military aircraft, as opposed to a civilian one."

The United States, along with the Philippines have voiced continued concern over China's establishment of man-made islands in portions of the South China Sea, one of the world's busiest sea lanes for commerce, in areas claimed by the Philippines and thousands of miles from the Chinese mainland. There has been particular apprehension over Fiery Cross Reef -- one of China's man-made islands in the Spratly Island chain -- after the Chinese constructed a runway long enough to accommodate large military aircraft.

This was reportedly the first time that China has publicly admitted landing a military aircraft on the Fiery Cross Reef.

Britain has called on China to respect the outcome of an upcoming ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. However, the court has no enforcement powers.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

University of Tokyo researchers have developed an ultrathin, ultraflexible, protective layer and demonstrated its use by creating an air-stable, organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display. This technology will enable creation of electronic skin (e-skin) displays of blood oxygen level, e-skin heart rate sensors for athletes and many other applications.

Integrating electronic devices with the human body to enhance or restore body function for biomedical applications is the goal of researchers around the world. In particular, wearable electronics need to be thin and flexible to minimize impact where they attach to the body. However, most devices developed so far have required millimeter-scale thickness glass or plastic substrates with limited flexibility, while micrometer-scale thin flexible organic devices have not been stable enough to survive in air.

The research group of Professor Takao Someya and Dr. Tomoyuki Yokota at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Engineering has developed a high-quality protective film less than two micrometers thick that enables the production of ultrathin, ultraflexible, high performance wearable electronic displays and other devices. The group developed the protective film by alternating layers of inorganic (Silicon Oxynitrite) and organic (Parylene) material. The protective film prevented passage of oxygen and water vapor in the air, extending device lifetimes from the few hours seen in prior research to several days. In addition, the research group were able to attach transparent indium tin oxide (ITO) electrodes to an ultrathin substrate without damaging it, making the e-skin display possible.

It will be used for advertising.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

YouTube is adding support for live streaming while using a 360-degree video camera, as well as "immersive audio" features:

For a little over a year now, YouTube creators have had the ability to share 360-degree video content, but those videos didn't offer proper immersive audio formats, and you couldn't do a live stream with a 360-degree camera. As of today, YouTube is offering both of those features, although you can't use both features at the same time.

The company plans to broadcast its first large scale event using this feature this coming weekend at the Coachella music festival. You will be able to watch select artists' performances live during the festival in spherical video.

[...] The spatial audio feature is currently limited to on-demand content. Live-streamed content does not support spatial audio cues. YouTube said that the addition of spatial audio to immersive video content enhances the experience with "depth, distance and intensity all playing a role." The company put together a small playlist of sample videos that have spatial audio enabled, but you'll need an Android device to take advantage of the technology.

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

Physiscs World reports:

Physicists in Germany have taken mechanical miniaturization to the ultimate limit by producing a heat engine – one of the key inventions of classical thermodynamics – made of only one atom, and have measured its output. While microscale heat engines have been proposed and built in the past, this single-atom design is the smallest to date.

...The classical thermodynamic definition of temperature involves the average energy of a large number of particles, and is therefore not directly applicable to a single atom. However, a well-defined, classical thermodynamic temperature can still be obtained for such a particle, using the so-called ergodic theorem, which states that the average energy of a large number of particles in a region of space is equal to the energy of a single particle over a period of time.
...
The solution was to confine the particle – which in this case was a calcium ion (40Ca+) – in a funnel-shaped trap, allowing it to undergo Brownian motion in a radial direction. The researchers then heated the ion using electrical noise, and as its temperature increased, its oscillations in the radial direction became larger, causing it to sample regions of higher potential, sending the particle towards the end of the trap at which it was less tightly confined. "You can think of it like a balloon in a funnel," explains team member Johannes Roßnagel, who is Singer's PhD student. "When you inflate the balloon, it will move towards the larger end of the funnel."

When the electrical noise was switched off, however, the ion cooled, causing it to sink back towards the narrower, steeper end of the trap. By turning the noise on and off periodically, the researchers set up axial oscillations of the ion between the two ends of the trap. If left undamped, these oscillations would have become increasingly large until the particle escaped the trap. However, the researchers applied another laser to damp the oscillations, thus maintaining the particle in steady harmonic oscillations.

[Continues...]

jdavidb writes:

Amazon has offered their streaming video service, Amazon Prime Video, as a feature of their Amazon Prime service for the last few years. Today Amazon announces that Prime Video can be purchased separately for $8.99. In addition to streaming licensed content, Amazon Prime Video has created original content in the last year such as The Man in the High Castle (an adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel of the same name). Prime Video is also the exclusive U.S. source of Catastrophe.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google has won a long-running court battle with the Authors Guild:

The US Supreme Court has ruled in favour of Google in its 11-year legal battle with an authors group. The Court said it would not hear an appeal from the Authors Guild, which claimed Google breached copyright laws by scanning books without permission. The technology giant began the process in 2004, so it could include extracts in a searchable database, and it was sued by the Authors Guild in 2005. The Supreme Court's judgement is the final ruling on the matter.

[...] Google said its database was a "fair use" of protected works, describing it as "a card catalogue for the digital age". The firm could have faced billions of dollars in damages claims from authors if it had lost the case. The Authors Guild said it was "disappointed" that the Supreme Court would not hear its appeal.

EFF.

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

Herald Scotland reports that the Ministry of Defence has inadvertently e-mailed a NATO document to members of the public. The file, marked "NATO RESTRICTED," contains details about the Joint Warrior 161 and Griffin Strike 16 military exercises* now in progress around the UK. It was sent to "fishing and ferry operators" who were meant to receive a different document regarding the effect of the exercises on shipping.

* further information on Griffin Strike 16:
http://www.army.mod.uk/news/28518.aspx
https://publicapps.caa.co.uk/modalapplication.aspx?catid=1&pagetype=65&appid=11&mode=detail&id=7260

further information on Joint Warrior 161:
http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/qhm/clyde/jw
https://publicapps.caa.co.uk/modalapplication.aspx?catid=1&pagetype=65&appid=11&mode=detail&id=7261
http://www.mc.nato.int/PressReleases/Pages/SNMG1-and-SNMCMG1-participate-in-Joint-Warrior-16-1.aspx (mirror)

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/sifter/new-tumbleweed-species-taking-over-california
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/wild-things/new-species-tumbleweed-just-bad-its-parents

Original Submission