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Phoenix666 writes:

Venus has an 'electric wind' strong enough to remove the components of water from its upper atmosphere, which may have played a significant role in stripping the planet of its oceans, according to a new study by NASA and UCL researchers.

"It's amazing and shocking," said Glyn Collinson, previously at UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory and now a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "We never dreamt an electric wind could be so powerful that it can suck oxygen right out of an atmosphere into space. This is something that definitely has to be on the checklist when we go looking for habitable planets around other stars."

The study, published today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, discovered that Venus' electric field is so strong that it can accelerate the heavy electrically charged component of water -- oxygen -- to speeds fast enough to escape the planet's gravity.

Yes, but where does the liberated atmosphere then go? Is it swept up by the Earth? Was Mars's atmosphere picked up by Jupiter, such that at some depth water forms where life can thrive? Inquiring minds want to know!

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

A Texas judge arrested for making a secret deal committing his county to a 10-year contract with a red-light camera company was suspended Tuesday for allegedly blowing right past the state's Sunshine Laws.

Judge Joel Patrick Baker of Smith County was arrested last week, after an activist group complained his 2014 meeting with American Traffic Solutions officials violated the Texas Open Meetings Act. Baker was charged with three misdemeanor counts of violating the act.

[...] Baker's alleged 10-year pact with ATS would have the Arizona compay exclusive rights to operate the lucrative, but deeply unpopular cameras in Smith County. The cameras are banned in Texas municipalities, but Baker apparently believed he could authorize them for the county.

Source: Fox News

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

United States Senators McCain and Burr have proposed that the FBI's use of National Security Letters should be expanded to include rummaging through email, web browsing, and other electronic communications. The proposed rider would also make permanent the surveillance of suspected potential terrorists with no ties to terrorist groups.

A vote is expected today, Wednesday, June 22. Fight for the Future has set up a site for U.S. residents to contact their senators by phone about this issue.

takyon: See also:

EFF Urges Senate Not to Expand FBI's Controversial National Security Letter Authority
We Made the Message Loud and Clear: Stop the Rule 41 Updates
DOJ Insists That Rule 41 Change Is Not Important, Nothing To See Here, Move On Annoying Privacy Activist People

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Martin Brinkmann reports from gHacks:

VLC 2.0 is available for all Android versions 2.2 and newer, and [is] already available on Google Play and various third-party stores.

Major new features

• Video Playlists
• Download subtitles
• Network Browsing
• Pop-out window
• Other features of note
• • Supports favorite folders and URLS
  • The history, notifications, and control have been rewritten
  • Faster decoding and playback for all video types

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes in with the following story:

Biologists from QMUL's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences will attach weather-resistant number tags on the backs of bees, and encourage the public to identify them and take photos for a competition.

Prizes of £100 Amazon gift vouchers will be awarded for the best photo of a QMUL-tagged bee on a flower, for the highest number of QMUL-tagged bees spotted and for the best photo of a London bee-friendly garden (as judged by the research team).

The London Pollinator Project aims to understand the bees' preferred patches in London, in particular their favourite flowers, which reward them with nectar and pollen.

Five hundred bees will be released on Tuesday 21 June, and then several hundred more each week over the coming month as bee colonies mature.

Project leader Professor Lars Chittka, from the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, said: "The fact that the bees have individual 'license plates' will allow anyone interested to develop their own science project, and ask scientific questions about the behaviour of bees.

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butthurt writes:

The Register (non-Cloudflare link) reports that police in Annapolis, Maryland unsuccessfully used a Stingray device in their investigation of a robbery "of 15 chicken wings and three sandwiches" from an employee of a restaurant. According to the police, a court order had been obtained for use of the device. Stingrays spoof cellular towers and collect the IMSIs of nearby mobile phones.

In that case, according to the police log, a court order was sought and received but in many other cases across the United States, the technology is being used with minimal oversight, despite the fact it is only supposed to be used in the most serious cases such as terrorism.

StingRay devices work by impersonating cellphone masts, so nearby phones connect to them and automatically hand over their unique ID numbers, allowing investigators to track the handsets and their owners by location.

Annapolis police never found the thief but he represented just one of 17 occasions on which the city of 40,000 people used the device in 2011.

Its use is far more prevalent in larger cities. The Philip Merrill College of Journalism's Capital News Service found that Maryland State police has used a StingRay at least 125 times since 2012. Howard Country, which lies to the south of Baltimore and with a population of 300,000, has used a StingRay 129 times since 2011. The police in Baltimore City have used its StingRay an extraordinary 4,300 times since 2007, sparking an investigation and review of 2,000 of them.

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martyb writes:

The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is having its annual Field Day this coming weekend:

ARRL Field Day is the most popular on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada. On the fourth weekend of June, more than 35,000 radio amateurs gather with their clubs, groups or simply with friends to operate from remote locations.

Objective: To work as many stations as possible on any and all amateur bands (excluding the 60, 30, 17, and 12-meter bands) and to learn to operate in abnormal situations in less than optimal conditions. Field Day is open to all amateurs in the areas covered by the ARRL/RAC Field Organizations and countries within IARU Region 2. DX stations residing in other regions may be contacted for credit, but are not eligible to submit entries.

Dates: Field Day is always the fourth full weekend of June, beginning at 1800 UTC Saturday and running through 2059 UTC Sunday. Field Day 2016 is June 25-26.

Bands: Any Amateur Radio band except 12, 17, 30 and 60 Meters.

I learned of the Field Day while reading the comments to a story appearing in Ars Technica: When everything else fails, amateur radio will still be there—and thriving which is subtitled: "Ham is now a full-fat fabric that can provide Internet access. Why aren't you using it?"

I found that article to be quite readable and informative. I did learn Morse Code as a teen, but never took it further than that. I understand that to get an initial ham license, the Morse code requirement has been dropped. Then I got to thinking about how hams and early computer hobbyists had a lot of overlap and thought there might be some hams in our community. Hence this story submission and now your chance to ham it up. =)

If you were or still are a ham: What got you started? What keeps you active? Or, if you have stopped, why? What are your thoughts on Software-Defined Radio (SDR) — do you use it and under what conditions would you recommend it? If you are in the USA/Canada, will you be participating in the ARRL Field Day?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Investors and finanical analysts have been baffled by a $2.86 billion bid by electric car manufacturer Tesla to acquire SolarCity:

Musk, the largest shareholder of both companies, said he and Antonio Gracias, who is also a member of both boards, will recuse themselves from voting on the takeover offer. The all-stock deal is worth $26.50 to $28.50 for each SolarCity share, Tesla said. That calculates to a premium of as much as 35 percent from Tuesday's closing price. The average 12-month price target among analysts surveyed by Bloomberg is $29.82. "In my personal opinion, this is obviously something that should happen," Musk, who is chief executive officer of Tesla and chairman of SolarCity, said in a conference call. "It's a no-brainer." With 100.2 million SolarCity shares outstanding, the offer is worth as much as $2.86 billion.

[...] Tesla fell as much as 12 percent in extended trading while SolarCity rose as much as 29 percent.

Original Submission

fork(2) writes:

Were you watching? On Sunday (Jun 19), Blue Origin again launched and landed a Shepard rocket...the same Shepard rocket that's been launched and landed 3 times before. If you didn't catch the webcast of the launch, you can catch it here.

Blue Origin made another leap forward on Sunday, too, by crash testing the portion of its spacecraft intended to carry people. The capsule landed safely even though one of its three parachutes intentionally malfunctioned upon descent." (From CNN) The company plans to be able to carry passengers into sub-orbital space by 2018.

Original Submission

n1 writes:

In a survey of 2,000 workers across the UK, only 46pc of people said they would accept a free piece of wearable technology if their employers had access to the data recorded.

This was despite the fact that two-thirds of respondents wanted their employer to take an active role in their health and well-being. The biggest barrier to adoption was trust, with 40pc saying they don't trust their employer to use it for their benefit, and in fact believe it will actively be used against them.

[...] "Employers haven't been able to overcome the 'big brother' reaction from people to sharing their personal data," said Anthony Bruce, people analytics leader at PwC. "If [they] want to overcome the trust gap they need to show that they are serious about data security and communicate openly with their staff about the benefits for them."

This is borne out by the survey, which found that if workplace benefits such as flexible hours and remote working were promised, 55pc (rather than 46pc) were willing to accept a free wearable device from work.

[...] Workplace surveillance has become far easier and more commonplace because of technology. This ranges from heart-rate monitors for NHS workers to GPS trackers for long-distance lorry drivers.

Misgivings about employers spying was further bolstered by a January ruling from the European Court of Human Rights confirming that companies are allowed to spy on employee data, if it is deemed work-related.

Source: The Telegraph

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takyon writes:

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/21/482955544/boeing-says-it-has-agreed-to-sell-passenger-jets-to-iranian-airline

Boeing says it has signed an agreement with Iran Air for the purchase of commercial passenger airplanes, making it the first major U.S. company to do business in Iran since sanctions were lifted earlier this year. Boeing stopped selling planes to Iran following the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The company is now permitted to sell planes to Iran as part of the recent Iranian nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions. But the Chicago-based aircraft manufacturer has to follow very specific guidelines laid out by the U.S. government, and any contracts will have to be approved by the administration.

In a statement, Boeing says it signed a Memorandum of Agreement with Iran Air, a state-owned airline, after the U.S. government confirmed Iran had met its obligations under the nuclear accord signed last summer. Boeing would not divulge details about the deal — not the number of aircraft involved, the specific models or the price tag. Reuters has reported that Iran was moving to buy more than 100 jetliners from Boeing.

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has a plan to free up spectrum for 5G wireless service.

The Federal Communications Commission next month will vote on a proposal to help identify and free up wireless spectrum at very high frequencies that could be used to power fifth-generation, or 5G, cellular networks. The agency will do as it did with the development of 4G LTE and stay out of the way of industry innovators as they define and develop 5G technology, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in announcing the proposal Monday.

"Turning innovators loose is far preferable to expecting committees and regulators to define the future," he said. "Instead, we will make ample spectrum available and then rely on a private sector-led process for producing technical standards best suited for those frequencies and use cases."

[...] 5G speeds could be 10 to 100 times higher than those of today's 4G networks. Even though standards for 5G have yet to be developed, the technology is expected to enable everything from self-driving cars to remote surgeries done via robots to school field trips through the human body made possible by virtual reality gear.

The hype around 5G has been building over the past year, with wireless operators like AT&T and Verizon already demonstrating the technology and promising a limited service roll out as soon as this year.

The FCC's proposal to free up additional spectrum is the first step in a long process to make sure wireless operators get the airwaves they need to make these services a reality. The chairman's promise to take a hands-off approach in developing policy is a welcome signal to wireless operators that the government won't be a roadblock.

[...] Very high frequency spectrum known as millimeter waves are key to the development of 5G because these frequencies can carry large amounts of data and transfer signals with low latency -- that is, with minimal delay. But there are technical challenges in using this spectrum. Signals transmitted over very high frequencies can only travel short distances and have difficulty penetrating obstacles, which makes designing such networks tricky.

Some of the spectrum that could be used for 5G is currently used for satellite communications and for navigation services like GPS. As part of this proposal, the FCC will work with satellite providers to ensure the spectrum can be shared with wireless broadband companies that want to use it to build terrestrial 5G networks.

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butthurt writes:

Motherboard reports on a press release by the University of California Davis, where researchers designed a multiple instruction, multiple data (MIMD) microprocessor. Unlike a GPU, each core can run distinct instructions on distinct data.

According to the researchers the chip has a greater number of cores than any other "fabricated programmable many-core [chip]," exceeding the 336 cores of the Ambric Am2045, which was produced commercially.

IBM was commissioned to fabricate the processor in 32 nm partially depleted silicon-on-insulator (PD-SOI). It is claimed that the device can "process 115 billion instructions per second while dissipating only 1.3 watts." or, when operating at greater supply voltage and clock rate, "execute 1 trillion instructions/sec while dissipating 13.1 W."

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

HughPickens.com writes:

NBC reports that Justice Sonia Sotomayor let loose a scorching dissent in a case involving the Fourth Amendment and police conduct. The case concerns Edward Strieff, who was stopped while leaving a house a police officer was watching on suspicion of drug activity. When the officer discovered Strieff had an outstanding warrant for a minor traffic violation, he searched Strieff and found methamphetamine. The court had to decide whether the drugs found on Strieff could be used as evidence or whether such evidence was disqualified by the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on "unreasonable searches and seizures." Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority, saying the evidence was "admissible because the officer's discovery of the arrest warrant attenuated the connection between the unlawful stop and the evidence seized incident to arrest."

Sotomayor refused to let the majority get away with this Fourth Amendment diminution without a fight. In a stunning dissent, Sotomayor explains the startling breadth of the court's decision. "This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants—even if you are doing nothing wrong," Sotomayor writes. "If the officer discovers a warrant for a fine you forgot to pay, courts will now excuse his illegal stop and will admit into evidence anything he happens to find by searching you after arresting you on the warrant." The Department of Justice, Sotomayor writes, "recently reported that in the town of Ferguson, Missouri, with a population of 21,000, 16,000 people had outstanding warrants against them." That means 76 percent of Ferguson residents have, under the court's decision, effectively surrendered their Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizure. "In the St. Louis metropolitan area," moreover, "officers 'routinely' stop people—on the street, at bus stops, or even in court—for no reason other than 'an officer's desire to check whether the subject had a municipal arrest warrant pending.' "

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Client lists are, by their very nature, likely to contain personally identifiable information protected by the Data Protection Act. The employer must comply with the eight principles under the DPA including ensuring that the data is processed fairly and lawfully and is protected against accidental loss or destruction.

These obligations also apply to the outgoing employee. In May 2016, the Information Commissioner’s Office successfully prosecuted Mark Lloyd (his real name), an ex-employee of Acorn Waste Management Ltd in Shropshire, for emailing the details of 957 clients to his personal email address along with purchase history and commercially sensitive information prior to taking a role with a rival. In that particular case, the individual in question pleaded guilty and was fined £300, ordered to pay £405.98 costs and a £30 victim surcharge.

In fact, although this is a criminal offence, the sanction is currently only a fine, but the ICO is pushing for a change in the law so it can carry a jail sentence. Steve Eckersley, head of enforcement at the ICO, commented: "Employees need to be aware that documents containing personal data they have produced or worked on belong to their employer and are not theirs to take with them when they leave."

Original Submission