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canopic jug writes:

Peter N. M. Hansteen asks the question, "Does Your Email Provider Know What A "Joejob" Is?" in his blog and provides some data and discussion. He provides anecdotal evidence which seems to indicate that Google and possibly other mail service providers are either quite ignorant of history when it comes to email and spam, or are applying unsavory tactics to capture market dominance.

[Ed Note: I had to look up "joe job" to find out what it is. According to wikipedia:

A joe job is a spamming technique that sends out unsolicited e-mails using spoofed sender data. Early joe jobs aimed at tarnishing the reputation of the apparent sender or inducing the recipients to take action against them (see also e-mail spoofing), but they are now typically used by commercial spammers to conceal the true origin of their messages.

]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is calling out Twitter users who admit texting while driving:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is the federal body tasked with automotive safety, as its name implies — and sometimes, you just have to take your message straight to the people.

If you look at NHTSA's Twitter feed right now, you'll find that it's just a non-stop stream of burns aimed at people who admit — sometimes gleefully — that they text and drive.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A massive coral reef has been discovered in muddy waters at the mouth of the Amazon river:

Scientists say they have discovered a massive reef stretching for more than 600 miles at the mouth of the Amazon River in South America.

In total, the reef covers some 3,600 square miles — or, as Smithsonian notes, an area larger than the state of Delaware.

An article published today in the journal Science Advances [open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1501252] by a team of Brazilian and American scientists says the reef is unusual because it lies in muddy waters.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Some senior business people skillfully and consciously manage their sleep, emerging refreshed and alert after crossing multiple time zones or working late into the night. Yet we all know caffeinated and careworn executives who, after hours of wakeful slumber, struggle to recall simple facts, seem disengaged and uninspired, lack patience with others, and can't think through problems or reach clear-cut decisions. Sleep (mis)management, at one level, is obviously an individual issue, part of a larger energy-management challenge that also includes other forms of mental relaxation, such as mindfulness and meditation, as well as nutrition and physical activity. But in an increasingly hyperconnected world, in which many companies now expect their employees to be on call and to answer emails 24/7, this is also an important organizational topic that requires specific and urgent attention.

http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the-organizational-cost-of-insufficient-sleep

-- submitted from IRC

[Continues...]

takyon writes:

Solar Impulse 2, a fully electric plane, has landed in California after its team spent months fixing a problem with overheated batteries:

An experimental plane flying around the world without a single drop of fuel landed in California after a two-and-a-half day flight across the Pacific. Piloted by Swiss explorer and psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard, Solar Impulse 2 touched down in Mountain View just before midnight (3 a.m. ET). "It's a new era. It's not science fiction. It's today," Piccard told CNN from California after his successful voyage. "It exists and clean technologies can do the impossible."

While Borschberg set a new record for the solo flight, clocking in at 117 hours and 52 minutes, a chain of events caused the batteries to overheat. It was only after he landed that the team discovered how bad the damage was. "We made a mistake with our batteries," Piccard said after the plane touched down in July. "It was a human mistake." And a mistake that took more than nine months to fix. Fast forward to this spring, and the Solar Impulse 2 has new batteries, a new cooling system that can be manually operated by the pilot, and $20 million in fresh funding to keep the mission up and running.

[...] After several stops in the United States, the pilots hope to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and then Europe or northern Africa. They plan to return to the Middle East by late summer, completing a 35,000-kilometer (27,000-mile) trip around the world.

Original Submission

n1 writes:

Associated Press via NBC reports:

A suburban Denver school district is arming its security staff with military-style semiautomatic rifles in case of a school shooting or other violent attack, a move that appears unprecedented even as more schools arm employees in response to mass violence elsewhere.

The guards, who are not law enforcement officers, already carry handguns.

Douglas County School District security director Richard Payne said he decided to spend more than $12,000 on the Bushmaster brand rifles for the district's eight armed officers to give them the same tools as law enforcement, including the sheriff's deputies they train with. Payne said the rifles will be kept locked in patrol cars, not in the schools.

Original Submission

tonyPick writes:

According to Symmetry Magazine CERN has released more than 300TB of LHC data from the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment:

These include more than 100 TB of data from proton collisions at 7 TeV, making up half the data collected at the LHC by the CMS detector in 2011. This release follows a previous one from November 2014, which made available around 27 TB of research data collected in 2010.

The data are available on the CERN Open Data Portal and come in two types. The primary datasets are in the same format used by the collaboration to perform research. The derived datasets, on the other hand, require a lot less computing power and can be readily analyzed by university or high school students.

CMS is also providing the simulated data generated with the same software version that should be used to analyze the primary datasets.

The CMS experiment is one of two large general-purpose particle physics detectors built on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)... designed to measure the energy and momentum of photons, electrons, muons, and other products of the collisions.

This article references the CMS news article, and links to the data portal and a VM image which is preloaded with analysis software.

Originally spotted at HackerNews.

Original Submission

n1 writes:

BBC reports:

China has shut down Apple's online book and movie services as it imposes strict rules governing what can be published on the net.

Regulations were unveiled in March that outlawed foreign ownership of online publishing services. The rules also required that all content shown to Chinese people must be stored on servers based on the Chinese mainland.

Apple said it hoped access to the services would be restored soon.

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

The Orange County Register reports on an ongoing survey of the sea floor around Greenland.

The authors of Bathymetry data reveal glaciers vulnerable to ice-ocean interaction in Uummannaq and Vaigat glacial fjords, west Greenland (DOI: 10.1002/2016GL067832) measured "seafloor depths 100–1000 m deeper than in existing charts." They explain that, near Greenland, salty 2.5°C water lies beneath 1°C water with a lesser concentration of salt. Hence glaciers in deep water are likely to melt more, due to contact with warm sea water, than those in shallow water.

Further information:
Oceans Melting Greenland portal
UC Irvine press release
UC Irvine Magazine essay

Related stories:
Scientists: Greenland Ice Sheet is Melting Freakishly Early
Greenland Was Once Ice Free
In Greenland, Another Major Glacier Comes Undone
Vegetarianism Reflected in the Genes

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Research into fireflies found that micro- and nanostructures in the chitin cuticle covering these creatures' tail-end lantern organs help improve light transmission.

The refractive index of the structured cuticle more closely matches that of the air than smooth chitin does, helping fireflies make stronger beams of light. The structures also reduce internal reflection.

Now a group at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology has used these principles to make a cuticle-inspired, spherical lens to mount over an LED, boosting light transmission. For green wavelengths identical to the original insect's own bioluminescence the scientists have been able to achieve a 60% increase in efficiency and a wider angle of dispersal.

Akhlesh Lakhtakia, who develops biomimetic optics at the Pennsylvania State University, says it should be possible to make the bioinspired OLEDs at industrial scale for use in lighting and displays. But engineers now have to figure out whether the payoff in efficiency with a biomimetic design is worth the extra expense of redesigning how they make TV screens and light bulbs.

Biologically Inspired Organic Light-Emitting Diodes (open, DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b05183)

Original Submission

tonyPick writes:

According to an article at Mobiforge the average size of web page is now (roughly) the same as a Doom install image:

Recall that Doom is a multi-level first person shooter that ships with an advanced 3D rendering engine and multiple levels, each comprised of maps, sprites and sound effects. By comparison, 2016's web struggles to deliver a page of web content in the same size. If that doesn't give you pause you're missing something.

Doom, id software's classic first person shooter from 1993, has an install image size of 2393kB for the shareware MS-DOS version.

The article uses the information from The HTTP Archive on page sizes which shows an average size of 2301 kB for April of 2016, only 92kB smaller, and sizes are still increasing.

Originally seen at Hackernews and also at The Register.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

President Obama has urged the UK not to leave the EU, and has said that the UK will not automatically receive special treatment on trade (leaving the EU would allow the UK to reject TTIP):

Barack Obama has warned that the UK would be at the "back of the queue" in any trade deal with the US if the country chose to leave the EU, as he made an emotional plea to Britons to vote for staying in. The US president used a keenly awaited press conference with David Cameron, held at the Foreign Office, to explain why he had the "temerity to weigh in" over the high-stakes British question in an intervention that delighted remain campaigners.

Obama argued that he had a right to respond to the claims of Brexit campaigners that Britain would easily be able to negotiate a fresh trade deal with the US. "They are voicing an opinion about what the United States is going to do, I figured you might want to hear from the president of the United States what I think the United States is going to do. And on that matter, for example, I think it's fair to say that maybe some point down the line there might be a UK-US trade agreement, but it's not going to happen any time soon because our focus is in negotiating with a big bloc, the European Union, to get a trade agreement done".

He added: "The UK is going to be in the back of the queue."

n1: The UK would no longer be part of TTIP if a tangible UK exit from the EU happens, but the British political establishment is very supportive of the 'trade agreement' in principle.

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

Re/code reports that Microsoft and Google have agreed to withdraw complaints lodged against each other with regulators. The two companies will "try to work among themselves" before filing future complaints.

"Microsoft has agreed to withdraw its regulatory complaints against Google, reflecting our changing legal priorities," a Microsoft representative said in a statement to Re/code. "We will continue to focus on competing vigorously for business and for customers."

Google, meanwhile, offered up a similar statement, affirming that it too will withdraw any regulatory complaints it has made. "Our companies compete vigorously, but we want to do so on the merits of our products, not in legal proceedings."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

EFF and Mozilla's Let's Encrypt certificate authority has issued its two millionth certificate, about two months after issuing its one millionth certificate:

Earlier today, the Let's Encrypt certificate authority issued its two millionth certificate, less than two months after the millionth certificate. As we noted when the millionth certificate was issued, each certificate can cover several web sites, so the certificates Let's Encrypt has issued are already protecting millions and millions of sites.

This rapid adoption has already made Let's Encrypt one of the world's largest public certificate authorities by number of certificates issued, and almost all of them are protecting domains that never supported HTTPS before. The Internet needs to migrate away from the insecure HTTP protocol, and we're very pleased to be helping to make that possible.

Is this news? Has it fixed the issues you raised in the comments two months ago?

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

For many, Amazon is the go-to place to buy video games. Now, the company is using that influence to incentivise Prime by requiring a subscription for select game orders. As VideoGamer reports, this applies to top titles such as FIFA 16, Far Cry Primal and Battlefield Hardline on both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in the UK. Similar restrictions are also live in the US -- we've spotted the Amazon Prime label on Grand Theft Auto V , for instance. The requirement is only in place, however, if you want the order to be fulfilled by Amazon. At the moment, you can sidestep the problem by selecting a third-party merchant on the site instead.

These are big, popular games. When asked about the decision, the company told VideoGamer: "One of the many benefits of Amazon Prime is access to exclusive selection on a number of great products. Customers who are not Prime members can sign-up for a 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime, or they can purchase those items from a Marketplace seller." Amazon has taken a similar approach with other forms of media -- in the UK, for instance, you need a Prime subscription to buy Spectre on DVD.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/22/amazon-prime-game-restriction/

Original Submission