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butthurt writes:

From 2001 to 2007, and again since 2012, people seeking asylum in Australia have been taken to the Manus Regional Processing Centre in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and held there. On 26 April 2016, the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea found that a constitutional amendment made to permit such detentions violates the PNG constitution. The amendment had permitted "holding a foreign national under arrangements made by Papua New Guinea with another country"; the court said the provision was at odds with the guarantee of "the right to personal liberty" elsewhere in the constitution.

A lawyer representing over 900 "current and former" detainees said he would file on 2 May a request for A$125,000 per person and would be "seeking to enforce the judgment against the Commonwealth of Australia."

coverage:

• BBC News on the ruling
• ABC on the ruling
• ABC Pacific Beat (audio)
• ABC on the lawsuit
• Radio New Zealand
• Neos Kosmos
• stuff.co.nz editorial
• Daily Mail
• AAP via The Daily Telegraph

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright has publicly identified himself as Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

His admission ends years of speculation about who came up with the original ideas underlying the digital cash system.

Mr Wright has provided technical proof to back up his claim using coins known to be owned by Bitcoin's creator.

Prominent members of the Bitcoin community and its core development team have also confirmed Mr Wright's claim.

Will the real Satoshi Nakamoto please stand up? Seriously, though, how deep and dark will be the hole that this guy is thrown into?

takyon writes:

Craig Wright has declared himself to be "Satoshi Nakamoto," the alias of the creator behind Bitcoin:

I have been staring at my screen for hours, but I cannot summon the words to express the depth of my gratitude to those that have supported the bitcoin project from its inception – too many names to list. You have dedicated vast swathes of your time, committed your gifts, sacrificed relationships and REM sleep for years to an open source project that could have come to nothing. And yet still you fought. This incredible community's passion and intellect and perseverance has taken my small contribution and nurtured it, enhanced it, breathed life into it. You have given the world a great gift. Thank you.

Be assured, just as you have worked, I have not been idle during these many years. Since those early days, after distancing myself from the public persona that was Satoshi, I have poured every measure of myself into research. I have been silent, but I have not been absent. I have been engaged with an exceptional group and look forward to sharing our remarkable work when they are ready.

Satoshi is dead. But this is only the beginning.

Phoenix666 writes:

Airlander 10, the world's largest and longest aircraft, is preparing to gently glide out of its gargantuan shed—which is incidentally the largest hangar in the UK—at Cardington Airfield in Bedfordshire.

Earlier this month, Airlander 10, which is being built by Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), was officially named Martha Gwyn by the duke of Kent. HAV is now in the "final stages of testing" before it can exit the hangar, which will be a "matter of weeks" rather than months.

The Martha Gwyn is an odd beast. At its most basic, it's a 92-metre (302ft) blimp filled with 38,000 cubic metres of helium. There are four propellers—two at the back, one on the front left, one on the front right—that provide vectored thrust from four V8 turbo-diesel engines. But in addition to those rather mundane elements, the envelope (the bit that holds all the helium) has an aerofoil silhouette that reportedly increases lift efficiency by 40 percent. Tucked in just below the front of the envelope is a tiny cockpit capsule with space for a pilot and a handful of personnel. The Airlander 10 will theoretically be able to carry payloads of up to 10 tonnes (thus the name), though that has never been tested. HAV has future plans to build an Airlander 50 with five times the capacity. It will be presumably be about the same size as Wales.
...
Whether it will actually fly, and land, and then fly again with a 10-tonne payload remains to be seen. Hybrid Air Vehicles maintains that there's strong demand for giant airships from myriad sectors, ranging from communications and surveillance, through to logistics, militaristic settings, and scientific endeavour.

"Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," here we come!

Original Submission

n1 writes:

When I posted my scepticism that we would be given the full truth about the content of the Panama Papers by the mainstream media outlets who were controlling them, it went viral and became the first individual article to be read by half a million people on this blog alone, and a multiple of that as it was posted all round the web, translated into several languages.

I also attracted some derision from establishment propagandists. I had contended that the fact the papers themselves were not made available, but we were rather fed selected information by the western and corporate state media, would limit and slant what the public was told. The initial concentration on Russia, Iran, Syria etc seemed to confirm this. But it was urged that more was to come, and I should wait, and it was suggested I would look foolish when they finished publishing. "Wait and see" tweeted the editor of the lead newspaper, the Suddeutsche Zeitung, in response to my post.

Well I waited, and what happened? The story fizzled out.

[...] I have a clue what is going on. A young lady contacted me from Le Monde newspaper. She was one of the journalists working on the Panama Papers. She had been allocated the task of researching a Russian oligarch, and not knowing I had made any comment on the Panama Papers, she contacted me as I had background information on the man. Her email made plain that the "International Consortium of Investigative Journalists" in Washington was closely controlling the process, and that what she wrote would have to go back to them for "checking" before publication. The ICIJ is funded, as I pointed out, by corporate America.

[....] So, in one stroke, the argument that the data was not being controlled because it was "shared with hundreds of journalists around the world" falls. That argument was repeatedly thrown at me but it appears not to be true; hundreds of journalists did not have unfettered access to the entire database or free publication of their findings. It was very much a controlled leak.

[Continues...]

butthurt writes:

Variety reports that Valve Corp. is to distribute "more than 100 films" owned by Lionsgate on Valve's Steam platform. Among the Lionsgate productions in the catalogue (which includes the Divergent series, The Hunger Games, Saw, and Twilight) some appear to be offered internationally:

• Leprechaun
• Leprechaun 2
• Leprechaun 3
• Leprechaun 4: Lost in Space
• Leprechaun 4 Film Collection
• Natural Born Pranksters
• Blue Mountain State: The Rise of Thadland
• Return of the Living Dead 3
• Russkies
• Two Family House
• Deck the Halls
• 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown

further information:
Valve press release

Original Submission

n1 writes:

A U.S. Senate panel is examining whether a global aid group funded partly by billionaire Bill Gates and rock star Bono misled U.S. officials about its anti-corruption practices to retain government funding.

The inquiry stems from the handling of allegations of corruption that surfaced four years ago at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a multibillion-dollar charity with private and public support. Seth Faison, a Global Fund spokesman, categorically rejected any implication that the aid organization had engaged in misconduct.

In the Senate, the staff of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations recently questioned at least one former official of the Global Fund, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The questions relate to the firing of an inspector general for the charity who published reports alleging corruption and to subsequent affirmations by the charity that it had an independent inspector general.

A nonprofit advocacy group separately sent a letter this week criticizing the Global Fund for what it called efforts to muzzle the inspector general as a whistle-blower and asking for disciplinary action against those involved. In its letter to the fund's chairman, the Government Accountability Project added that the State Department, then led by Hillary Clinton, failed to provide adequate oversight of the charity.

Source: Bloomberg

Original Submission

HughPickens.com writes:

Andrew Rosati writes at Bloomberg that you know things are bad when a country can't print new bills fast enough to keep up with the torrid pace of price increases and it's so broke that it may not have enough money to pay for any new money. Last month, De La Rue, the world's largest currency maker, sent a letter to the central bank of Venezuela complaining that it was owed $71 million and would inform its shareholders if the money were not forthcoming. Late last year, the central bank ordered more than 10 billion bank notes, surpassing the 7.6 billion the U.S. Federal Reserve requested this year for an economy many times the size of Venezuela's. "It's an unprecedented case in history that a country with such high inflation cannot get new bills," said Jose Guerra. Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, who has studied hyperinflation for decades, says that to maintain faith in the currency when prices spiral, governments often add zeros to bank notes rather than flood the market. "It's a very bad sign to see people running around with wheelbarrows full of money to buy a hot dog," says Hanke. "Even the cash economy starts breaking down."

Original Submission

q.kontinuum writes:

Apparently, Greenpeace got their hands on a version of the TTIP documents and plans to release them to the public at today, Monday 2nd of May, 11:00am (UTC+2) from Netherlands, while at the same time giving a press conference at the re:publica. While Greenpeace is apparently mainly concerned about the loss of the precautionary principle (in Europe, if a product is thought to pose a risk to the population or environment, it is prohibited until proven safe, as opposed to the US where it is permitted until proven harmful. According to Greenpeace (sorry, only in German), this is a reason that in US, 170 genetically manipulated plants are in the agricultural market, while in Europe it is only one.

While these mainly environmental concerns deserve some consideration, the more fundamental issue is that such a far-reaching contract, invalidating many of hard fought-for consumers rights in one coup and affecting half a billion people alone in Europe, is negotiated secretly. This is entirely unworthy of any democratic government system.

The documents are available for download.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has ruffled some feathers online by "live-tweeting" the killing of Osama bin Laden for its fifth anniversary:

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been criticised online for live-tweeting the killing of Osama Bin Laden as it happened five years ago. It has shared details of the mission and intelligence that led to America's most wanted man being found. But reaction has been largely negative, with one Twitter user calling the move "grotesque and embarrassing". Others posted memes and gifs of people rolling their eyes and putting their heads in their hands. The CIA's other tweets mostly concern historical trivia and artefacts.

The CIA's twitter feed currently contains the pat-me-on-the-back statement "Daring #UBLRaid was an IC team effort & in close collaboration with our military partners" followed by a twelve tweet timeline of the Osama bin Laden raid, from 1:25 PM to 7:01 PM EDT on May 1st.

Meanwhile, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is still poking holes in the official story, nearly a year after he wrote "The Killing of Osama bin Laden" in the London Review of Books.

Original Submission

Gaaark writes:

From the sorry-that-just-keeps-popping-out dept.

The Indian transport ministry is experimenting with 3D paintings on highways to make motorists slow down: your jaw will drop when you see these pics! (Sorry... couldn't resist)

3D paintings of crosswalks are being placed on roads in order to try to slow drivers down and save lives.
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160429-how-optical-illusions-can-save-lives

The article has some cool pics that would DEFINITELY make me slow down at first, but how long will it take before the traffic speeds up again as drivers get used to seeing them.
The article also made me think of Dazzle camouflage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage

Original Submission

n1 writes:

The secretive U.S. Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court did not deny a single government request in 2015 for electronic surveillance orders granted for foreign intelligence purposes, continuing a longstanding trend, a Justice Department document showed.

The court received 1,457 requests last year on behalf of the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for authority to intercept communications, including email and phone calls, according to a Justice Department memo sent to leaders of relevant congressional committees on Friday and seen by Reuters. The court did not reject any of the applications in whole or in part, the memo showed.

The total represented a slight uptick from 2014, when the court received 1,379 applications and rejected none.

Source: Reuters

Original Submission

http://www.drwindows.de/content/9946-nutzungsanteile-windows-10-stagniert-chrome-besteigt-thron.html

Slowly Mozilla should find a new strategy, and with the most big changes yet to come (XUL removal and Webextensions arriving) which will impact fans of the old powerful Firefox add-on system and theme system very much, it does not look like things would improve in the future.

It was a matter of time, now it has happened: Google Chrome is the world's leading browser and has the "rule" of Internet Explorer ended. Even if one expects the shares of Edge to it is not enough for Microsoft in total, in order to claim 1st place for themselves. Firefox has now arrived at its permanent retreat in the single digits.

Browser market share April 2016
Google Chrome 41.66% + 2.57%
Internet Explorer 36.96% -2.14%
Mozilla Firefox 9.76% -0.78%
Safari 4.91% + 0.04%
Microsoft Edge 4.39% + 0.09%
Opera 1.89% + 0.33%

See also: Microsoft's IE loses top browser spot to Google's Chrome

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Mapping with the stars: Nuns instrumental in Vatican celestial survey

Sisters Emilia Ponzoni, Regina Colombo, Concetta Finardi and Luigia Panceri, all born in the late 1800s and from the northern Lombardy region near Milan, helped map and catalog nearly half a million stars for the Vatican's part in an international survey of the night sky.

Top astronomers from around the world met in Paris in 1887 and again in 1889 to coordinate the creation of a photographic "Celestial Map" ("Carte du Ciel") and an "astrographic" catalog pinpointing the stars' positions.

Italian astronomer and meteorologist, Barnabite Father Francesco Denza, easily convinced Pope Leo XIII to let the Holy See take part in the initiative, which assigned participating observatories a specific slice of the sky to photograph, map and catalog.

Father Maffeo, an expert in the observatory's history and its archivist, said Pope Leo saw the Vatican's participation as a way to show the world that "the church supported science" and "was not just concerned with theology and religion."

The Vatican was one of about 18 observatories that spent the next several decades taking thousands of glass-plate photographs with their telescopes and cataloging data for the massive project.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

HughPickens.com writes:

The news media has long been accused of turning mass shooters into celebrities. As the nation endures an ongoing stream of mass shootings, criminologists, police and even the FBI are turning to virus epidemiology and behavioral psychology to understand what sets off mass shooters and figure out whether, as with the flu, the spread can be interrupted. Now Michael S. Rosenwald writes at The Washington Post that the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence wants to wipe mass killers off the internet with a browser plug-in that replaces the names and pictures of mass shooters in news stories with the names and pictures of their victims.

"The fact is, notoriety serves as a reward for these killers and as a call-to-action for others who would seek to do similar harm in the name of infamy," says Dan Gross. Researchers says mass shooters intensely study their forbears. They often reference each other in their online ramblings and attempt to honor — or surpass — them in their own rampages. Until the news media agrees to stop naming mass shooters, their notoriety will continue to spread, particularly to disturbed people susceptible to those images. "The media also has a role to refrain from memorializing monsters by splashing the names and faces of shooters all over television, newspapers, and the Internet," says Gross.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

The Geographical Oddity of Null Island. A blog post at "Worlds Revealed: Geography & Maps at The Library Of Congress" on 2016-04-22.

It doesn't seem like much of a place to visit. Granted, I've never actually been there, but I think I can imagine it: the vastness of ocean, overcast skies, a heavy humidity in the air. No land in sight, with the only distinguishing feature being a lonely buoy, bobbing up and down in the water. It almost seems like a "non-place," but it may surprise you to learn that this site is far from anonymous. This spot is a hive of activity in the world of geographic information systems (GIS). As far as digital geospatial data is concerned, it may be one of the most visited places on Earth! This is Null Island.

Null Island is an imaginary island located at 0°N 0°E (hence "Null") in the South Atlantic Ocean. This point is where the Equator meets the Prime Meridian. The concept of the island originated in 2011 when it was drawn into Natural Earth, a public domain map dataset developed by volunteer cartographers and GIS analysts. In creating a one-square meter plot of land at 0°N 0°E in the digital dataset, Null Island was intended to help analysts flag errors in a process known as "geocoding."

Geocoding is a function performed in a GIS that involves taking data containing addresses and converting them into geographic coordinates, which can then be easily mapped. For example, a data table of buildings in Washington, DC could include the Madison Building of the Library of Congress (where I'm reporting from) as a feature and include its address: 101 Independence Avenue SE, Washington, DC, 20540. This address typically makes sense to the layperson, but to put the address on a map using a GIS, the computer needs a translation. A "geocoder" converts this address into its location as set of coordinates in latitude and longitude, a format that a GIS understands. In this case, the Madison Building's geographic location becomes 38° 53′ 12″N, 77° 0′ 18″W (38.886667, -77.005 in decimal degree format). Anyone who has ever typed in an address on Google Maps or looked up driving directions on Mapquest has been a beneficiary of this tool: type in an address, get a pin on a map.

Unfortunately, due to human typos, messy data, or even glitches in the geocoder itself, the geocoding process doesn't always run so smoothly. Misspelled street names, non-existent building numbers, and other quirks can create invalid addresses that can confuse a geocoder so that the output becomes "0,0". While this output indicates that an error occurred, since "0,0" is in fact a location on the Earth's surface according to the coordinate system, the feature will be mapped there, as nonsensical as the location may be. We end up with an island of misfit data.

https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2016/04/the-geographical-oddity-of-null-island/

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission