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Snotnose writes:

Actor Anton Yelchin was killed in a freak accident this past Sunday. On first reading it sounded like Darwin claimed another dumass. But now information is coming out that the transmission UI may be the culprit.

NBC reports that the UI may be at fault, with Chrysler releasing videos on how to properly use the transmission.

I have been driving for over 40 years, starting with a manual transmission and 10 years ago going automatic. The only automatic training I had was the "put it in P when you park, D when you drive, and R when you want to back up".

The videos make it look like operating the transmission was like a modern car stereo. I can change the volume and radio station, but for anything else I need to pull over, press buttons, and read the display to see what's going on.

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Non Sequor writes:

Bloomberg covers the Libyan Investment Authority suing over an investment in a derivatives contract that clearly and definitively generated a pay out of $0 for a payment of $1.2b. The article also details the story of blockchain contract company Ethereum where investors lost $60m due to a smart contract exploit that allowed a hacker to control the funds.

Ethereum is generally taking the stance that anything allowed by the code embedded in its smart contracts is de facto legal. The code defines the terms of the contracts, if they take action to seize the hacker's funds, they may in fact be sued by the hacker.

At this time, they have in fact frozen the funds but are still discussing what steps to take next.

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Bias' 1986 cocaine overdose helped sparked a panic, stoked by false rumors and a high-stakes political campaign, that culminated in a law that swept thousands of low-level drug offenders — most of them young and black — into prison.

Thirty years later, America is still reeling from the impact.

The new law established mandatory minimum drug sentences, provisions that exacerbated racial disparities, led to an explosion in prison populations and helped lay the groundwork for grievances that erupted in anti-police riots in Baltimore last year and in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. Those effects are now fueling a bipartisan reform effort.

"The law that flowed from this completely destroyed the federal justice system and tarnished the reputation of the whole American justice system," said Eric Sterling, who as a young congressional aide helped draft the legislation and has since worked to unwind its effects.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/30-years-after-basketball-star-len-bias-death-its-drug-n593731

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takyon writes:

A U.S. surveillance "oversight" board may be limited even further by upcoming legislation:

The jurisdiction of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) would be restricted for the second year in a row by the Senate Intelligence Committee version of the FY2017 Intelligence Authorization Act (S.3017). Section 603 of the Act would specifically limit the scope of PCLOB's attention to the privacy and civil liberties "of United States persons."

Internal disagreements over the move were highlighted in the Committee report published last week to accompany the text of the bill, which was reported out of Committee on June 5.

"While the PCLOB already focuses primarily on U.S. persons, it is not mandated to do so exclusively," wrote Senators Martin Heinrich and Mazie K. Hirono in dissenting remarks appended to the report. "Limiting the PCLOB's mandate to only U.S. persons could create ambiguity about the scope of the PCLOB's mandate, raising questions in particular about how the PCLOB should proceed in the digital domain, where individuals' U.S. or non-U.S. status is not always apparent. It is conceivable, for example, that under this restriction, the PCLOB could not have reviewed the NSA's Section 702 surveillance program, which focuses on the communications of foreigners located outside of the United States, but which is also acknowledged to be incidentally collecting Americans' communications in the process," they wrote.

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AnonTechie writes:

For years, scientific studies suggested that smarts were mostly heritable and fixed through young adulthood—nothing one could willfully boost. But some recent studies hint that a segment of smarts, called fluid intelligence—where you use logic and patterns, rather than knowledge, to analyze and solve novel problems—can improve slightly with memory exercises. The alluring finding quickly gave life to a $1 billion brain training industry [Ad blocker needs to be turned off]. This industry, including companies such as Lumosity, Cogmed, and NeuroNation, has since promised everything from higher IQs to the ability to stay sharp through aging. The industry even boasts that it can help users overcome mental impairments from health conditions, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), traumatic brain injury, and the side effects of chemotherapy.

Those claims are clearly overblown and have been roundly criticized by scientists, the media, and federal regulators. Earlier this year, Lumosity agreed to pay $2 million to the Federal Trade Commission over claims of deceptive advertising. The FTC said Lumosity "preyed on consumers' fears about age-related cognitive decline." In the settlement, the FTC forbid the company from making any such claims that the training could sharpen consumers' minds in life-altering ways.

In a study designed to assess the experimental methods of earlier brain-training studies, researchers found that sampling bias and the placebo effect explained the positive results seen in the past. "Indeed, to our knowledge, the rigor of double-blind randomized clinical trials is nonexistent in this research area," the authors report. They even suggest that the overblown claims from brain training companies may have created a positive feedback loop, convincing people that brain training works and biasing follow-up research on the topic.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/billion-dollar-brain-training-industry-a-sham-nothing-but-placebo-study-suggests/

[Abstract]: Placebo effects in cognitive training

Has any of you tried brain training? If yes, what is your view of such training?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Microsoft will offer software hosted on its Azure cloud service that will help legal cannabis businesses comply with state laws:

Put this in your pipe and smoke it: Microsoft is offering pot growers software tools to help them stay on the right side of America's relaxed laws. Marijuana is legal in Microsoft's home state of Washington, as well as in Oregon, Colorado and Alaska, and is prescribed medicinally (with varying degrees of laxity) in California and many other states. Redmond isn't getting into the growing or dealing business, but wants to sell cloud services to companies that do.

To that end, it has signed up with LA-based upstart Kind Financial to offer seed-to-sale transaction software that keeps track of inventory and processes orders and sales. Crucially, the software is designed to be in compliance with state laws. The suite will be hosted on Microsoft's Azure Government cloud service.

[...] At stake is a growing new vertical sector for Redmond to sell Azure services to, and the company is not alone. Vengeful VC Peter Thiel has invested $75m in Privateer Holdings in Seattle, which bankrolls ganja group Marley Natural and Leafly.com – a Yelp-style website for pot strains and dispensaries.

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fork(2) writes:

Today is summer solstice here in the northern hemisphere....a good day for a solar energy announcement! Elon Musk's SolarCity is expanding its service into the Houston area. Currently SolarCity serves "tens of thousands of customers" in 20 states and Washington DC. More here and here where the following quote comes from:

SolarCity allows customers to purchase a solar power system outright or finance the purchase of a solar system via a customized solar loan, or lease the solar panel system for the benefit of all the solar power it provides. The company has leveraged its installation volume—SolarCity installed more residential solar in 2015 than the next 50 competitors combined—to negotiate extremely favorable terms with financing partners on behalf of its customers. SolarCity also provides battery storage systems to customers that can allow customers to continue to have access to electricity during storm-related power outages.

Although they don't yet have an installation center in the Houston area, SolarCity expects to hire 50-100 local staff in sales, installation, and other related areas this year.

Thinking about getting a solar energy system? This short article is a must-read.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

FOSS Force reports:

It's been about 2 1/2 years since GIMP began what became something of a mass exodus of large open source projects away from SourceForge, which at one time had been the go-to code repository for open source projects.

The site's reputation began to wane almost immediately after it was purchased from Geeknet in September, 2012, by Dice Holdings in a deal that included Slashdot and Freecode/Freshmeat. In July, 2013, Dice introduced DevShare, an optional profit sharing feature that included closed-source ad-supported content in the binary Windows installers and gave projects agreeing to use the feature a portion of the revenue.

[...] In January, Dice sold SourceForge, Slashdot, and Freecode to BIZX, LLC and the new owners began making moves almost immediately to regain the public's trust and to return relevancy to the site. [...] The DevShare program [was] ended [and] on May 17, it was announced that the malware issue brought up by GIMP a year earlier was being dealt with by implementing malware scans [...]

The new management has also been adding useful new features to the site, beginning with the introduction of Speed Test, an HTML 5-based application that supplies users with information about their Internet connections without the use of Java or Flash.

On [June 17], SourceForge's Logan Abbott told FOSS Force the site has also been diligently working to remove deceptive ads and has [implemented] a tool that can be used by users to report ads they think are deceptive.

"Our deceptive ad reporting tool is live", he said. "It allows users to report any ad they feel is deceptive or bad by clicking on the 'Report a problem with ad content' that appears under every ad on the site." [...] "This tool is just an extra safeguard for ads that sneak in through ad networks."

[...] The new owners have also made it easier for projects on GitHub to utilize the site as an additional resource. "We have a GitHub importer tool that will import projects from GitHub to SourceForge for developers who want an extra distribution channel", Abbott explained. "It will also sync new releases that are uploaded to GitHub over to SourceForge so your project is up to date."

Previously: Slashdot and SourceForge Sold by Dice to BIZX, LLC

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butthurt writes:

According to NBC News, four hikers have died due to hot weather in the U.S. state of Arizona.

The deaths occurred in separate incidents; one victim had "taken along plenty of water and [was] immediately treated by a doctor." Besides the four known to have died, another hiker, who was hiking with one of the victims, is missing.

Weather conditions are thought to be a factor in a wildfire in Arizona and four wildfires in the neighbouring states of New Mexico and California, one of which has burned 24 houses.

Temperatures in Phoenix were predicted to rise to 120° F (49° C) on Monday.

takyon: The heat wave has been blamed for starting large wildfires in California and elsewhere:

A stubborn wildfire stoked by triple-digit temperatures raged for a sixth day outside Santa Barbara in coastal Southern California on Monday as crews worked to keep the blaze some have called a "sleeping giant" in check, officials said. [...] The fire, which broke out last Wednesday in the Los Padres National Forest and was 54 percent contained by Monday, has been called a sleeping giant due to the triple-digit temperatures and dense, bone-dry brush in the area that has not burned in decades, he said.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

The AI Dashcam App That Wants to Rate Every Driver in the World:

If you've been out on the streets of Silicon Valley or New York City in the past nine months, there's a good chance that your bad driving habits have already been profiled by Nexar. This U.S.-Israeli startup is aiming to build what it calls "an air traffic control system" for driving.

[...] Using the smartphone's camera, machine vision, and AI algorithms, Nexar recognizes the license plates of the vehicles around it, and tracks their location, velocity, and trajectory. If a car speeds past or performs an illegal maneuver like running a red light, that information is added to a profile in Nexar's online database. Nexar estimates that if 1 percent of drivers use the app daily, it would take just one month to profile 99 percent of a city's vehicles.

[...] Although ranking the driving performance of every vehicle in the United States might sounds legally dubious, Lior Strahilevitz,a law professor at the University of Chicago, says that it is probably legal: "Courts generally say that people generally have little or no expectation of privacy in the movements of their cars on public roads, as long as cars aren't being tracked everywhere they go for a lengthy period of time."

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Celestial writes:

Did the railroads predict the end of an open Internet? That's the belief of Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor.

One of my favorite tech guys, Ev Williams, was recently featured in The Atlantic in a fascinating article about the challenges an open internet faces. Williams is cynical. His vision of a closing internet aligns with recent comments from other tech insiders about the consolidation of power and the end of startups' unicorn era.

One paragraph in the article raises a fascinating point: the internet's trend towards closed systems (social media networks, messaging platforms) mirrors the same trends that any form of communication technology has historically gone through:

"Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia University, argues in his book The Master Switch that every major telecommunications technology has followed the same pattern: a brief, thrilling period of openness, followed by a monopolistic and increasingly atrophied closedness. Without government intervention, the same fate will befall the internet, he says. Williams cites Wu frequently. 'Railroad, electricity, cable, telephone—all followed this similar pattern toward closedness and monopoly, and government regulated or not, it tends to happen because of the power of network effects and the economies of scale.'"

[Continues...]

Phoenix666 writes:

Natural rubber is an indispensible ingredient in tens of thousands of applications, from car and aircraft tyres to medical equipment. Nearly all this rubber currently has its origins in rubber tree plantations in Asia. In the European DRIVE4EU project, Wageningen UR is working with international companies and research institutes to develop a European alternative: natural rubber from the Russian dandelion.

Ingrid van der Meer from Wageningen UR is coordinator of DRIVE4EU (Dandelion Rubber and Inulin Valorization and Exploitation for Europe). She underlines the importance of a fully-fledged alternative to Hevea brasiliensis, the official name of the rubber tree. "At this time the world is totally reliant on Southeast Asia. In South America, where the first plantations were located, large-scale cultivation has become impossible due to a fungal disease. If the disease should spread to Asia the production of natural rubber would come to a halt. There needs to be an alternative."
...
Although natural rubber is found in at least 2,500 plant varieties, most of these are unsuitable for the large-scale production of good quality rubber. A previous project, EU-PEARLS, showed that the Russian dandelion, or Taraxacum koksaghyz, is a viable option. DRIVE4EU is now focused on the development of a successful production chain in Europe. And it is going well, according to Van der Meer: "We have made considerable progress across all links of the chain."

The poor, maligned dandelion. Wine can be made from its blossom, and salad from its leaves.

Original Submission

HughPickens.com writes:

Alan Minter writes at Bloomberg that between 1955 and 1975, the average volume of a container ship doubled -- and then doubled again over each of the next two decades. The logic behind building such giants was once unimpeachable: Globalization seemed like an unstoppable force, and those who could exploit economies of scale could reap outsized profits. But it is looking more and more like the economies of scale for mega-ships are not worth the risk. The quarter-mile-long Benjamin Franklin recently became the largest cargo ship ever to dock at a U.S. port and five more mega-vessels are supposed to follow. But today's largest container vessels can cost $200 million and carry many thousands of containers -- potentially creating $1 billion in concentrated, floating risk that can only dock at a handful of the world's biggest ports. Mega-ships make prime targets for cyberattacks and terrorism, suffer from a dearth of qualified personnel to operate them, and are subject to huge insurance premiums.

But the biggest costs associated with these floating behemoths are on land -- at the ports that are scrambling to accommodate them. New cranes, taller bridges, environmentally perilous dredging, and even wholesale reconfiguration of container yards are just some of the costly disruptions that might be needed to receive a Benjamin Franklin and service it efficiently. Under such circumstances, you'd think that ship owners would start to steer clear of big boats. But, fearful of falling behind the competition and hoping to put smaller operators out of business, they're actually doing the opposite. Global capacity will increase by 4.5 percent this year "Sooner or later, even the biggest operators will have to accept that the era of super-sized shipping has begun to list," concludes Minter. " With global growth and trade still sluggish, and the benefits of sailing and docking big boats diminishing with each new generation, ship owners are belatedly realizing that bigger isn't better."

Original Submission

"exec" writes (submitted from IRC):

3 N.Y.P.D. Commanders Are Arrested on Corruption Charges:

Three New York Police Department commanders, including a deputy chief, were arrested early Monday, along with a Brooklyn businessman, on federal corruption charges stemming from one of several continuing investigations into Mayor Bill de Blasio's campaign fund-raising, according to court papers.

The arrests, of a deputy chief, a deputy inspector and a sergeant, were one of the most significant roundups of police supervisors in the recent history of the department. In striking the top ranks, the case is a particular blow to the storied — and sometimes sullied — reputation of the nation's largest municipal police force.

The court papers in the case detail lavish gifts the two senior police officials are accused of receiving in exchange for taking official action, including expensive meals, free overseas and domestic trips, and the referral of business to a security company associated with one of the officials. The deputy inspector was also accused of receiving a trip on a private jet to Las Vegas for the Super Bowl weekend in 2013, and was said to be accompanied by a prostitute.

Also at Reuters, NY Daily News, and DNAinfo.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

When Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke describes his city's economic renewal, he points to the city's fiber network as a significant source of its new vibrancy.

In the past three years, the city's unemployment rate has dropped to 4.1 percent from 7.8 percent and the wage rate has also been climbing. Volkswagen's presence has boosted the manufacturing sector and 10-gigabit speed internet has fueled wage growth, Berke said, speaking at Fiber to the Home Council Americas conference at Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center on Tuesday.

Stats from politicians can be taken with a Saturn-sized grain of salt. Are there real reasons to believe that connectivity = economic growth?

Original Submission