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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Elise Worthington and the ICIJ reports via ABC news Australia that John Doe, released a manifesto expressing desire to assist law enforcement, but also stating:

"Until governments codify legal protections for whistleblowers into law, enforcement agencies will simply have to depend on their own resources or ongoing global media coverage for documents."

John Doe has a lot more to say in the maifesto, uploaded by the ABC over at documentcloud.org in this link to the txt version of statement.

takyon: Don't worry submitter, it's a story. The Panama Papers leaker has offered to aid law enforcement in cracking down on money laundering and tax evasion if granted immunity. Also at DW, Washington Post, Vice.

Original Submission

pen-helm writes:

MIT researchers have discovered a hitherto unknown attractive force pulling together spinning particles suspended in liquid. It "is not chemical, it is not magnetic, it is not electrostatic". But the particles are attracted to another. It only seems to happen if there are non-spinning particles mixed in.

Moving bodies can be attracted to each other, even when they're quite far apart and separated by many other objects: That, in a nutshell, is the somewhat unexpected finding by a team of researchers at MIT.

Scientists have known for a long time that small particles of matter, from the size of dust to sand grains, can exert influences on each other through electrical, magnetic, or chemical effects. Now, this team has found a new kind of long-range interaction between particles, in a liquid medium, that is based entirely on their motions. And these interactions should apply to any kind of particles that move, whether they be living cells or metal particles whirled by magnetic fields.

The discovery, which holds for both living and nonliving particles, is described in a paper by Alfredo Alexander-Katz, the Walter Henry Gale Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, and his co-researchers, in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

Original Study Abstract

Original Submission

Walzmyn writes:

CNET has a short report on the settlement of the lawsuit. Basically, Honeywell accused Google of violating their patents, and now they are playing nice. But, they're not telling us the details.

The The Wall Street Journal might have more, but it's pay-walled.

The giants fiddling with each other in court is everyday fare, but this is of interest to me because I was looking at automation options for my new house. We decided against using Nest or similar products because of the security issue of having Big Brother Google watching my house. I'm interested to see how the future of this market shapes up as it seems most of the populace has no such concerns.

Additional coverage:
IT World,
phys.org,
The Register.

Original Submission

b0ru writes:

This coming Monday, 9th of May, the planet Mercury will transit our Sun. Transition should start at approximately 11:12 UTC, and end at 18:42 UTC. The last such transit occurred in 2006, and transition shall occur, again, in 2019 and 2032; it is an infrequent event and very much worth watching.

Transits are unlike solar eclipses in that Mercury is much further away from the Earth than our moon, and so will appear as a small dot on the solar disc itself. There will be no perceivable decrease in the Sun's brightness during the event.

Warning: If you plan to observer the transit, one should never observe the Sun directly without the proper safety precautions, such as using white light power filters, or a combination of power and narrowband filters. Another option is to project the solar disc onto a flat, non-flammable surface with an optical instrument.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Nvidia revealed key details about its upcoming "Pascal" consumer GPUs at a May 6th event. These GPUs are built using a 16nm FinFET process from TSMC rather than the 28nm processes that were used for several previous generations of both Nvidia and AMD GPUs.

The GeForce GTX 1080 will outperform the GTX 980, GTX 980 Ti, and Titan X cards. Nvidia claims that GTX 1080 can reach 9 teraflops of single precision performance, while the GTX 1070 will reach 6.5 teraflops. A single GTX 1080 will be faster than two GTX 980s in SLI.

Both the GTX 1080 and 1070 will feature 8 GB of VRAM. Unfortunately, neither card contains High Bandwidth Memory 2.0 like the Tesla P100 does. Instead, the GTX 1080 has GDDR5X memory while the 1070 is sticking with GDDR5.

The GTX 1080 starts at $599 and is available on May 27th. The GTX 1070 starts at $379 on June 10th. Your move, AMD.

Original Submission

Skullcoder writes:

The legendary hacker, cracker and phreaker zine, Phrack, is back with a new issue: #69

Phrack is sticking to the classic 7-bit ASCII release format, and introduces a new article submission process so the hacking community at large can help build #70 and beyond.

One new addition to Phrack is the "Paper Feed" feature. The way it works is
that you submit a paper, we review it and it gets published. No need to
wait a month (or two years ;-) until you see your article in the next
Phrack issue. When the time has come, we'll decide to compile a new issue
from the articles that have been submitted. The usual rules do however
still apply: we are proud of being one of the longest-running magazines and
we're especially proud of presenting quality content to our readers (yes,
that's you). Papers submitted to the paper feed are no exception!

Phrack #69 brings you three new technical articles in addition to paper
feed and the standard Linenoise, Loopback and International Scenes philes.
The Firefox hater code-named argp presents advanced exploitation techniques
and attempts to build abstract primitives for taking advantage of various
memory-related vulnerabilities on your "favorite" multi-heap browser ;>

Happy Hacking!

Original Submission

D2 writes:

The IoT is shifting us into yet-another realm where networked devices are again being sold without security designed in. Over on TechCrunch, Mike Gault deconstructs the flaws to past tech boom cycles (ignoring data at rest, crypto strategies that can't scale or be updated, etc.). Rather than trying to shoehorn security into IoT after the fact, Mike Gault writes, we should reexamine how we handle security (and the lifespan) of data, and design to do this.

http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/06/rethinking-security-for-the-internet-of-things/

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://www.nature.com/news/stem-cell-plan-aims-to-bring-rhino-back-from-brink-of-extinction-1.19849
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/zoo.21284/abstract

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

A few news outlets reported on a statement by Microsoft Corp. concerning the company's Windows 10 operating system:

The free upgrade offer will end on July 29 and we want to make sure you don't miss out. After July 29th, you'll be able to continue to get Windows 10 on a new device, or purchase a full version of Windows 10 Home for $119.

coverage:

• International Business Times
• The Inquirer
• Engadget
• PC Gamer

related story:

Windows 10 Nagware Interrupts Live TV Weather Forecast

Original Submission

CoolHand writes:

This imaging breakthrough seems as if it will fundamentally improve our ability to understand and monitor chemical processes at the molecular level.

Every process that sustains life is carried out by proteins, but understanding how these complex molecules do their jobs depends on learning the arrangement of their atoms -- and how this structure changes -- as they react. No imaging method for observing molecular movement in such detail and speed had been available, until now.

A team of biochemists and physicists, led by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Imperial College London, have documented for the first time the fundamental processes of a chemical reaction unfolding in real time. They captured images -- 25 trillion per second -- of a tiny crystalized protein as it reacted to light.

This allowed them [to] build up a picture of what the protein was doing every few femtoseconds -- quadrillionths of a second. The results are published in the journal Science.

Previously, scientists had relied on a method called X-ray crystallography, which could only take a static image of a protein. Now, they have been able to build up a series of crystallographic snapshots into a molecular movie over extremely short timescales.

Study co-author Dr Jasper van Thor from Imperial's Department of Life Sciences said: "Usually, we can only image the structure after the reaction, and infer what has happened. This is the first time we have been able to image crystal structures on timescales where the proteins are still undergoing the reaction.

"What happens during these timescales determines the outcome of the reaction, so knowing exactly what's going on is vital. Previously our information and images of how the reactions work have been based on theory and spectroscopy. Now we can see it in reality."

Original Submission

U.S. to Crack Down on Tobacco, Electronic Cigarettes

butthurt writes:

NBC News and the Providence Journal report that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published a rule which will classify cigars, chewing tobacco and nicotine-containing fluid for electronic cigarettes as tobacco products. Under the rule, sale of those items to people under 18 years of age is to be prohibited. The electronic parts of electronic cigarettes are not covered by the rule. According to NBC News, the rule "will be open for public comment before it becomes final." The FDA regulates cigarettes and loose tobacco for smoking.

[Continues...]

butthurt writes:

Through 12 June, a flock of "more than 2000 pigeons" fitted with LED lamps will be released from the Baylander , a small aircraft carrier docked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York City's Brooklyn borough. The flights are called Fly By Night and are intended to honour New York City's tradition of pigeon-keeping, which is in decline. According to the artist arranging the programme:

Some will do figure-eights, others will fly high, or maybe they will all stay in one flock. Ultimately, the birds will do what they want to do. It's not a circus show. It's more of a collaboration than a performance.

coverage:

• The New York Times
• Reuters
• Telegraph
• CBS New York
• UPI
• AP via CTV News
• Christian Science Monitor
• Mother Nature Network
• Wall Street Journal (has a biography of the artist)

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/world-s-largest-chimpanzee-research-facility-release-its-chimps

Original Submission

HughPickens.com writes:

Tucows began as a software downloads site nearly 25 years ago and has since evolved beyond that early core business and into domain names, mobile phone service (Ting) and symmetrical gigabit fiber Internet in select towns and cities in the US (Ting Internet). Now Tucows has announced that as a gesture of goodwill, Tucows has banned deceptive ads, hidden download buttons, pop-ups, flypaper, toolbars and other such Internet nastiness from the the nearly 40,000 software titles it hosts for users on it's download sites. "On the Tucows downloads site today, you'll find no flashing ads. No toolbars. No pop-ups," says CEO Elliot Noss. "You might see a few plugs for other Tucows services, but nothing too egregious... and certainly not anything that's pretending to be a download button." With Tucows' success in domain names, mobile phone service (Ting) and fiber Internet (Ting Internet), Tucows' revenue from downloads has become less relevant when looking at the balance sheet. "We don't lightly walk away from opportunities or revenue," says Noss. "In the end, though, we'd rather have the Tucows name associated with good; with a belief in the power of the Internet to affect positive change. An ad-heavy site that packages browser toolbars along with every download isn't something we want people to think of when they hear 'Tucows,'."

Original Submission

CoolHand writes:

An interesting discovery could lead to more methods for battling some diseases and prolonging life.

Researchers at IMBA – Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences have discovered that an enzyme called HACE1 is the key regulator of the death receptor TNFR1. The TNF receptor 1 is located on the cell membrane and decides whether a cell will live or die.

In the human body there is a constant balance between cell growth and cell death. Cells that are old or diseased must be eliminated. The destruction of diseased cells plays a major role especially in infectious diseases, chronic inflammatory diseases, and cancer.

The enzyme HACE1 acts like a railway switch. It decides whether a cell will live or die.

Signals coming from death receptors located on the cell surface tell the cells whether they can continue to live and divide, or if they must take the path of destruction. The orderly path is apoptosis, in which the cell dismantles itself into its individual components and is taken up by phagocytes.

But there is another path to cell destruction. It is regulated by distinct signals, and is called necroptosis. It starts via the same signals as apoptosis, but then the cells commence self-digestion. As in pathological necrosis, the cell components make their way into the extracellular space, causing an inflammatory reaction in the surrounding tissue.

The Tumor Suppressor Hace1 Is a Critical Regulator of TNFR1-Mediated Cell Fate (open, DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2016.04.032)

Original Submission