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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Chrome Story reports

Back in 2014, Google announced that they would be officially updating Chromebooks for 5 years after their release date.

This seemed reasonable [and] the CR-48 is still receiving updates despite the fact that [its] official EOL date was December of last year.

[...] While every model has a date, the vast majority of them aren't "official", meaning support could extend beyond those dates. So far, the only two devices to have been "Officially announced" are the CR-48 (December 2015) and the Samsung Series 5 (June 2016)--and remember the CR-48 is still receiving updates, so even official doesn't mean official.

[...] Perhaps [Google is] supporting the CR-48 for nostalgia purposes. But it stands to reason that if the CR-48 is still receiving updates that maybe the Samsung Series 5 will too.

[...] Just please don't complain if your device stops receiving updates. You've officially been warned. Your best bet is to assume that your device is going to stop receiving updates when it hits [its] official EOL date and any subsequent updates after that are just bonus.

Another device to keep an eye on is the Acer AC700, which has an EOL date of August 2016.

Linux advocate and blogger Robert Pogson writes about Liberating Crippled Chromebooks

He points to How to Install Any Linux Distro on a Chromebook

the devices are hopelessly hamstrung by their ChromeOS operating system which both cuts down on the number of apps the device can run and makes it dependent on an Internet connection to get anything done.

Pogson says

This [pave-over notion] seems like a great idea for anyone already confident in their use of GNU/Linux. Liberate the Chromebook from the straight-jacket of Chrome OS [which] is a GNU/Linux OS but anchored to the browser. This procedure should permit full use of the hardware to run general applications.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

The Ministry of Health plans to urgently immunise around 3 lakh children against the crippling polio virus by setting up vaccination booths, after a strain of the highly contagious disease was detected in sewage in Hyderabad.

India was declared polio free by the World Health Organization in March 2014 after an almost two-decade long, multi-million dollar effort -- lauded as one of the country's biggest public health achievements in recent times.

[...] "as a precautionary measure" a special immunisation drive would be held from June 20 in the high-risk districts of Hyderabad and Rangareddy, targeting around 300,000 children between the ages of six weeks and three years, it said.

Vaccination booths will be set up, the ministry said, and parents encouraged to get their children injected with the Inactivated Polio Vaccine which will provide additional protection against all types of polio.

Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only countries left in the world where the virus remains endemic.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/3-lakh-children-to-be-vaccinated-after-polio-strain-found-in-sewage/articleshow/52769427.cms

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956 is this snippet from a story at Fox News:

Some 1,800 years ago, Roman troops used whistling sling bullets as a terror weapon against their barbarian foes, according to archaeologists who found the cast lead bullets at a site in Scotland.

[...] "You don't just have these silent but deadly bullets flying over; you've got a sound effect coming off them that would keep the defenders' heads down," Reid told Live Science. "Every army likes an edge over its opponents, so this was an ingenious edge on the permutation of sling bullets."

[...] These holes converted the bullets into a "terror weapon," said archaeologist John Reid of the Trimontium Trust, a Scottish historical society directing the first major archaeological investigation in 50 years of the Burnswark Hill site.

[...] Reid's brother, a keen fisherman, offered some insight into their possible purpose when he suggested the bullets were designed to make noise in flight.

"I said, 'Don't be stupid; you've no idea what you're talking about. You're not an archaeologist,'" Reid joked. "And he said, 'No, but I'm a fisherman, and when I cast my line with lead weights that have got holes in them like that, they whistle.'"

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2016/06/15/whistling-sling-bullets-were-roman-troops-secret-terror-weapon.html

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

The head of the Upper House's Regulations Committee has proposed to amend Russian laws with provisions that would relieve motorcycle drivers of transport tax if they agree to become organ donors after death.

https://www.rt.com/politics/346735-senator-offers-tax-for-organs/

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

A video recorded in Yellowstone National Park shows the shocking moment humans have feared for years when a bear effortlessly opens the door of a car. Next time you go to bed and think you're OK leaving the door unlocked, bear that in mind.

https://www.rt.com/viral/346751-yellowstone-bear-opens-door/

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Planetary Resources, Inc., a company that would like to be known for asteroid mining at some point in the future, has signed a funding agreement with the government of Luxembourg:

Planetary Resources, Inc., the asteroid mining company, announced today that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the banking institution Société Nationale de Crédit et d'Investissement (SNCI). This partnership with Luxembourg's SpaceResources.lu initiative will advance technologies and lines of business toward the exploration and utilization of resources from asteroids. Just as Luxembourg accelerated the satellite communications industry through its investments, this funding for Planetary Resources Luxembourg will accelerate the space resources industry.

Also at SpaceNews and Mining.com:

[Last] month, the government reached an agreement with another US-based company, Deep Space Industries, which will be conducting missions to prospect for water and minerals in outer space. Both parties are currently developing Prospector-X, a small and experimental spacecraft that test technologies for prospecting and mining near Earth asteroids after 2020.

Luxembourg's administration is also working on a legal frame for exploiting space resources so that private companies can be entitled to the resources they mine from asteroids, but not to own the celestial bodies themselves.

Previously: Planetary Resources Finally Deploys First Spacecraft After Explosive Setback

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

The idea of high schools providing birth control options to students is controversial, and new research from the University of Notre Dame may make the debate even livelier: Access to condoms on campus can increase teen births, the study finds.

The study notes that there are typically two routes for providing access to condoms. In one case, they are made available through a faculty or medical staffer which offers an opportunity to discuss proper use, likelihood of failure due to misuse, etc. as well as other birth control options. In the other case, condoms are made available through baskets or vending machines:

"Programs with counseling may have seen no change or perhaps a decline in teen fertility," Kasey Buckles and Daniel M. Hungerman, authors of the study, wrote.

Vox poses the theory that perhaps making condoms available means that girls are less likely to look for better, more reliable contraception.

Source: https://www.rt.com/usa/346859-teen-condoms-pregnancy-rates/

The Incidental Fertility Effects of School Condom Distribution Programs

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The U.S. Senate has passed a provision that would require women to register for the draft, but don't expect any changes soon:

On Tuesday, the Senate passed a defense authorization bill that would require young women to register for the draft — the latest development in a long-running debate over whether women should sign up for the Selective Service. The provision would apply to women turning 18 in 2018 or later and would impose the same requirements and rules that currently apply to men.

The policy is still far from being law. The House, after considering a similar provision earlier this spring, ultimately passed an authorization bill that omitted it; the two branches of Congress now must resolve the differences between their bills. And the bill faces a veto threat from President Obama over other elements of the legislation, such as the prohibition on closing down the Guantanamo Bay military prison. But the bill's passage brings women a step closer to Selective Service registration — a historic change that has bipartisan support in Congress but is firmly opposed by some conservative lawmakers.

For decades, the U.S. policy of having a draft for men, and not women, was approved as constitutional by the Supreme Court. But as NPR's David Welna reported last year, the court's reasoning relied on the fact that women were barred from combat roles. Now that women are eligible for combat duty, "Congress seems to have lost its court-endorsed rationale for limiting Selective Service registration to males only," David wrote.

Previously: Women Warriors Coming Soon to US Forces

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

A Muslim radical who was being investigated for terror ties stabbed a French police chief to death outside his home, then tortured the man's wife in front of their toddler son -- all while livestreaming his rampage on Facebook.

The shocking attack in Magnanville, 35 miles north of Paris, ended after a three-hour standoff, when French commandoes stormed the home, rescuing the boy and killing Larossi Abballa, 25.

Later in the day, police carried out several hours of raids in the Paris suburb of Mantes-la-Jolie, where Abballa lived. A young pregnant woman wearing a hijab and an Islamic robe said her husband had been taken into custody from the building in the Musiciens neighborhood as police searched her home. The woman, who refused to be identified, said her husband knew Abballa, though police at the scene would not say whether the raids were linked directly to the police attack.

The Islamic State's Amaq news agency released a video that showed Abballa confessing, "I just killed a police officer and his wife," warning that attackers would launch other "surprises" during the ongoing Euro 2016 soccer tournament. The video appears to have been recorded inside the home of the couple as security forces closed in.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/06/14/muslim-terrorist-kills-french-cop-wife-while-livestreaming-on-facebook.html?intcmp=hpbt3

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Sony has announced the PlayStation Neo, formerly referred to as "PS4.5" or "PS4K", and Microsoft has announced the Xbox "Project Scorpio". Both will be "mid-cycle refreshes" of the preceding consoles that will significantly boost graphics power, supposedly allowing for existing games to be played at a minimum of 1080p/60FPS, using virtual reality headsets, or at 4K (2160p):

And so gamers have been promised a console for release in 2017 that packs a whopping 6 teraflops of processing power (compared to the current Xbox One's mere 1.31), along with a much improved 320GB/s of memory bandwidth. Even ignoring some of Microsoft's more questionable claims (uncompressed pixels anyone?), those are some impressive specs. Forget 1080p/60fps: Microsoft says that this system is more than enough hardware to push a VR headset (the company isn't saying which one yet, but I'd bet on Oculus), and run regular games at 4K resolution with support for High Dynamic Range (HDR).

[...] The PlayStation Neo has it even harder. Leaked specs put its performance at somewhere around 4.2 teraflops, while its 36 GCN compute units clocked at 911MHz strongly suggest it's using a form of AMD's upcoming Polaris architecture, most likely a down-clocked RX 480. Memory bandwidth is up compared to the PS4 at 218GB/s but far behind that of Scorpio. At this stage, those specs are unlikely to change, particularly as developer kits have already gone out to developers. A radical redesign to match Scorpio's GPU—which, given what we know about AMD's GPU lineup and the cooling setup in Project Scorpio, is likely to be a down-clocked version of Vega rather than an overlocked Polaris—is pretty much off the table.

The two consoles should be available sometime in 2017. Sony is also launching a PSVR head-mounted display on October 13th.

If nothing else, the enhanced capabilities of these new consoles will help relieve "consolitis" (PC games being held back by weak consoles). Both consoles are likely to feature another 8-core AMD CPU: either a higher-clocked Jaguar or possibly a Zen processor.

Previously: Sony Rumored to Be Developing PlayStation 4.5

Original Submission

datapharmer writes:

In what can only be assumed to be a cost-cutting measure, Google has begun notifying customers of its Google Apps that it is replacing its third party phone and email support provider TELUS Communications with 3 international call centers located in Canada, Malaysia and Bulgaria.

Google has long been criticized for its lack of or poor customer support (see http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-needs-to-rethink-its-customer-service-strategy/ and http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/05/your_call_is_not_important_to_us.html ), but I somehow don't get a warm and fuzzy feeling that this will be improving their level of service any time soon judging by similar moves by other tech companies.

The full context of the Google notice reads as follows:

Dear Customer,

This notification is to keep you up to date regarding third-party subprocessors who support the Google Apps Core Services. No action is required on your part.

To meet the support needs of our growing customer base, we've engaged with a select group of trusted support service providers. Like our customers, these service providers are diverse, they speak many languages and are strategically located to ensure we can support you when you need help. Each service provider goes through a rigorous selection process to ensure they have the required technical expertise, and we maintain an appropriate level of security and privacy so that together, we can provide you with a consistent support experience.

The following entities will soon be added to our list of third-party subprocessors:

TELUS International™ (CDA) Inc. (located in Canada)
SELLBYTEL™ Services Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. (located in Malaysia)
Sutherland® Bulgaria EOOD (located in Bulgaria)
These additional third-party subprocessors will assist us in providing customer and technical support for Google Apps. Their services may include phone and email support, response, diagnosis and resolution services, incident tracking, and responding to customer queries.

The following entity will be removed from our list of third-party subprocessors:

TELUS Communications Company
For further information, you may want to review our Help Center article. You can view the current list of third-party subprocessors at any time from your Admin console.

Best regards,
The Google Apps for Work Team

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The National Aquarium has decided to dump its captive dolphins somewhere far away in the ocean. The Aquarium claims that the move has nothing to do with recent announcements by SeaWorld, and has been in planning for five years. From the FAQ:

Q: Why is the National Aquarium creating a dolphin sanctuary?

A: Our decision to build a sanctuary is rooted in what we believe to be best for the eight dolphins in our care. Over the past five years, we have studied the issue and explored multiple solutions, ranging from rebuilding our existing tanks in a more naturalistic style to moving the dolphins to other accredited facilities. After careful consideration, we've concluded that the best way forward is to create a protected, year-round seaside refuge.

[...] Q: How will the dolphins be moved to the sanctuary? Is it safe for them?

A: The safety of the dolphins is our highest priority. A team of experts is already in place to evaluate all associated risks and provide our colony of dolphins with the safest possible transport and transition to the sanctuary. We are allowing four to five years for this process.

NPR reports that animal rights activists may have played a part in the decision, and that it is unclear whether guests will be able to see any of the dolphins in their new habitat, which is likely to be located as far away as Florida or the Caribbean:

Animal rights activists have staged protests over the dolphins' captivity for years, The New York Times reports. "The aquarium stopped offering shows in which the dolphins performed a few years ago, but tourists and visitors can still watch them in captivity," according to the Times. The aquarium attracts some 1.3 million tourists annually, the Sun reports.

[...] The aquarium envisions a new habitat with a vegetated shoreline featuring mangroves and sea grapes, with "pools that can be customized to meet individual dolphin needs." It's unclear what kind of interaction guests to the habitat will be able to have with the dolphins, though the aquarium says they will "continue to offer our guests a dynamic and engaging experience."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The CIA has declassified documents related to its Bush-era waterboarding program, and the efficacy was not impressive:

Medical personnel who aided in the CIA's first simulated drowning found that the detainee who endured it was probably willing to cooperate before his torture. They even mocked agency defenses of waterboarding as "creative but circular", according to an extraordinary declassified document.

In an assessment devastating years of CIA and allied insistences that waterboarding was a critically important intelligence-gathering technique, the undated and heavily redacted document attributed to the chief of the CIA's Office of Medical Services (OMS), states that detainee Abu Zubaydah's cooperation with interrogators in 2002 "did not correlate that well with his waterboard sessions".

The Abu Zubaydah waterboarding was the wellspring from which the CIA's infamous former torture program, which it refers to euphemistically as "enhanced interrogation", emerged. Contractor psychologists Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, now the subject of a federal lawsuit, used it as a test case to implement a program they designed that yielded international human-rights condemnations and an extensive Senate committee inquiry. Eighty-three times in the span of a month, CIA interrogators subjected Abu Zubaydah to waterboarding, a technique the body processes as drowning-induced suffocation. But writing in "retrospect", OMS concluded that Abu Zubaydah "probably reached the point of cooperation even prior to the August [2002] institution of 'enhanced' measures – a development missed because of the narrow focus of questioning".

One conflict of interest: psychologists who had a say in whether interrogation should continue were paid $1,800 per day.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

LIGO has announced a second detection of gravitational waves from a collision of two black holes. The discovery was announced at the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting and will be published at a later date in Physical Review Letters:

Scientists announced today that they have once again detected ripples in space and time from two black holes colliding far away in the universe. The discovery comes just months after the first-ever detection of such "gravitational waves," and it suggests that smaller-sized black holes might be more numerous than many had thought. "It looks like there are going to be more of these black holes out there than we imagined," says David Reitze, the executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which recorded the latest rattle on Dec. 26, 2015.

[...] Upgrades completed in 2014 finally allowed the LIGO detectors to see gravitational waves. Last fall, they snagged their first signal — from two black holes colliding. Then in December, the detectors saw another collision, which occurred around 1.4 billion light-years from Earth. This time, researchers say, the black holes were about 14 and 8 times the mass of our sun. They combined to create a black hole, 21 times as massive as the sun. An entire sun's worth of mass was also converted into gravitational waves that passed through the Earth.

Original Submission

GreatAuntAnesthesia writes:

A British businessman serving a 10-year jail term for making bogus bomb detectors has been ordered to forfeit cash and assets worth nearly £8m:

McCormick would buy novelty "golf ball detectors", which were little more than radio aerials, from the US for less than $20 each (£14), before selling them as bomb detectors for $5,000 each (£3,500), his trial heard.

At the time, Judge Hone told him: "The device was useless, the profit outrageous, and your culpability as a fraudster has to be considered to be of the highest order."

Note that the amount of money he has taken from this scam is thought to be around £50 million.

Original Submission