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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Solar Industry Magazine reports

Following a long local--and national--campaign, Florida voters overwhelmingly approved a pro-solar ballot measure during the state's primary election on [August 30].

Passed with 73% of the vote, Amendment 4 implements a change to the state constitution and clears the way for the legislature to implement new tax laws that advocates say will end prohibitive tax liabilities and help boost Florida's fledgling distributed solar market.

According to Vote Solar, a big proponent of the measure, Amendment 4 was placed on the ballot after garnering unanimous support from state policymakers in March. Specifically, the amendment authorizes the state legislature to abate ad valorem taxation and exempt tangible personal property tax on solar or renewable energy source devices installed on commercial and industrial property. This reflects an extension of the existing ad valorem abatement for solar and renewable energy devices on residential property. Once implemented by the legislature, the tax incentives of the amendment will begin in 2018 and extend for 20 years.

[...] The ballot summary says, "This amendment establishes a right under Florida's constitution for consumers to own or lease solar equipment installed on their property to generate electricity for their own use. State and local governments shall retain their abilities to protect consumer rights and public health, safety and welfare, and to ensure that consumers who do not choose to install solar are not required to subsidize the costs of backup power and electric grid access to those who do."

The Florida Supreme court narrowly approved the amendment's language in a 3-4 vote, and in her dissenting opinion[PDF][1], Justice Barbara Pariente deemed the ballot measure a "wolf in sheep's clothing".

[1] Unable to resolve host address.

Previous: Florida Supreme Court Removes Barrier to Widespread Solar Power

Original Submission

We thought aliens were making first contact, but it looks like Earth has been caught out by a case of phantom phone vibration on a cosmic scale.

The latest radio signal picked up by SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) had excited some folks, but it turns out the signal came from Earth.

Earlier this week, our SETI senses were tingling over news that Russian scientists had discovered a "strong signal" coming out of a star system 95 light-years away. The signal was reportedly picked up by the Russian RATAN-600 radio telescope more than a year ago, coming from the direction of the star HD 164595.

While news sites around the world started calling Jodi Foster for comment on this real-life "Contact" situation, the rest of us (CNET included) were pretty skeptical. For starters, the Russians reportedly only picked up the signal once in 39 tries, and they'd sat on the seemingly exciting news for a year.

Original Submission

A very anonymous AC submits the following:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/new-attack-steals-private-crypto-keys-by-corrupting-data-in-computer-memory/

"Virtual Inception" could be a good name for this specific use of "Flip Feng Shui" :).

I wonder how well ECC protects from such attacks: http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/03/once-thought-safe-ddr4-memory-shown-to-be-vulnerable-to-rowhammer/

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Cook blasted an EU ruling that Apple used Irish subsidiaries to avoid billions in taxes, but his defense is only one side of the story.

Apple's business structure and tax practices in Europe were around long before Tim Cook became CEO. He didn't invent those things, but he's vigorously defending them. His arguments in media interviews sound compelling, but they present only one side of a hot-button issue that's easily relatable to the overarching wealth distribution and fair taxation themes of election cycles in both the U.S. and Europe this year.

The European Union, after a lengthy investigation, ruled Tuesday that Apple's use of Irish subsidiary companies to avoid paying taxes amounts to the tech giant receiving "illegal state aid" from Ireland. As a result, Apple may be required to pay around $14.5 billion in back taxes dating back to 2004.

Cook had a carefully worded—and, at times, sharply worded—open letter ready to publish when the judgment was officially announced. He opens the letter by describing Apple's history in Ireland dating back to 1980, when Steve Jobs set up the company's first factory there. Apple employed 60 people in Cork county then, and employs more than 6,000 there now, Cook says. He points out that Apple's Irish operations have helped create and sustain millions of app development, manufacturing, supplier, and small business jobs across Europe.

To get the other side of the argument I went to Matt Gardner, the director of the [US] Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (the research umbrella for Citizens for Tax Justice). The CTJ is nonpartisan and nonprofit, and it's funded by some of the same foundations that fund NPR. As it turns out, Gardner energetically disagrees with many of the statements in Cook's letter.

Here are his responses to Cook's main points. [Continues...]

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The European Union's interoperability page reports:

Austria published a call for projects on 27 July. The deadline for submitting proposals is 4 October. Information regarding requirements and selection criteria are available at Austria's Research Promotion Agency (FFG).

This is the second call for AT:NET projects. The first round, launched in April, received 50 proposals out of which 31 projects will now be funded with [a] total [of] €3.6 million.

The AT:NET project promotes innovative digital start-ups and small and medium-sized businesses. The project is calling for companies and projects that deal with digitisation of products or services. Topics can include eGovernment, eHealth, eLearning, and eInclusion, as well as commercial products and services.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Previously, Maru OS, an operating system for mobiles that senses the peripherals connected and will switch from handheld to desktop mode, was closed-source and would only run on a Nexus 5.

LWN (formerly Linux Weekly News) has published a message they received from the Maru OS Project.

I'm happy to announce that Maru has been fully open-sourced under The Maru OS Project!

There are many reasons that led me to open-source Maru, but a particularly important one is expanding Maru's device support with the help of the community.

If you'd like to help out with a device port (even just offering to test a new build helps a lot), let the community know on the device port planning list.[1]

We currently have a few Nexus, LG, and Motorola builds being planned. If you don't see your device on there and would like to help with development or testing, please do chip in and we'll get it added to the list.

If you're interested in contributing in general, please check out the project's GitHub, get up and running with the developer guide, and join the developer group.[2]

Our previous discussions of Maru OS.

[1][2] archive.li will run the scripts for you.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Scientists have found evidence of microbial life in a fossil dated to 3.7 billion years ago:

Rapid emergence of life shown by discovery of 3,700-million-year-old microbial structures (DOI: 10.1038/nature19355) (DX)

Biological activity is a major factor in Earth's chemical cycles, including facilitating CO₂ sequestration and providing climate feedbacks. Thus a key question in Earth's evolution is when did life arise and impact hydrosphere–atmosphere–lithosphere chemical cycles? Until now, evidence for the oldest life on Earth focused on debated stable isotopic signatures of 3,800–3,700 million year (Myr)-old metamorphosed sedimentary rocks and minerals from the Isua supracrustal belt (ISB), southwest Greenland. Here we report evidence for ancient life from a newly exposed outcrop of 3,700-Myr-old metacarbonate rocks in the ISB that contain 1–4-cm-high stromatolites—macroscopically layered structures produced by microbial communities. [...] The ISB stromatolites predate by 220 Myr the previous most convincing and generally accepted multidisciplinary evidence for oldest life remains in the 3,480-Myr-old Dresser Formation of the Pilbara Craton, Australia.

Reported at BBC, Ars Technica, and Reuters.

Original Submission

isostatic writes:

The BBC are reporting an explosion at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where SpaceX company was readying a rocket for launch.

The cause of the blast is not clear and it is not known if anyone was hurt. Nasa said SpaceX was test-firing a rocket which was due to take a satellite into space this weekend.

Pictures from the scene show a huge plume of smoke rising above the Cape Canaveral complex.

The force of the blast shook buildings several miles away.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Kratom, an herbal drug made of ground-up tree leaves, is "temporarily" joining other natural substances such as cannabis, psilocybin, and peyote on the schedule I list of the Controlled Substances Act. The active ingredients in kratom, the indole alkaloids mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine, are both being added to the list for up to three years, after which they can be added permanently.

Prior to this move, the U.S. has already been seizing shipments of kratom:

In 2014, the FDA issued an import alert that allowed US Customs agents to detain kratom without a physical examination. "We have identified kratom as a botanical substance that could pose a risk to public health and have the potential for abuse," said Melinda Plaisier, the FDA's associate commissioner for regulatory affairs. According to the DEA, between February 2014 and July 2016, nearly 247,000 pounds of kratom were seized.

Advocates say that kratom is a natural treatment for opioid addiction, an application that the Drug Enforcement Agency dismisses. Meanwhile, the heroin/opioid epidemic continues with "unprecedented" events like the recent 174 heroin overdoses in just six days in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Check out the implosion of this kratom subreddit, which is attempting to get 100,000 signatures on the White House petition site:

APATHY WILL GET US NOWHERE. IF THERE WAS EVER A TIME FOR US TO BAND TOGETHER, ITS NOW. stand with me brothers and sisters. hope is not lost.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A nanotube-based non-volatile RAM product could give Intel/Micron's 3D XPoint some competition:

Fujitsu announced that it has licensed Nantero's carbon nanotube-based NRAM (Non-volatile RAM) and will participate in a joint development effort to bring a 256Gb 55nm product to market in 2018. Carbon nanotubes are a promising technology projected to make an appearance in numerous applications, largely due to their incredible characteristics, which include unmatchable performance, durability and extreme temperature tolerance. Most view carbon nanotubes as a technology far off on the horizon, but Nantero has had working prototypes for several years.

[...] Other products also suffer limited endurance thresholds, whereas Nantero's NRAM has been tested up to 10^12 (1 trillion) cycles. The company stopped testing endurance at that point, so the upper bounds remain undefined. [...] The NRAM carbon nanotubes are 2nm in diameter. Much like NAND, fabs arrange the material into separate cells. NAND employs electrons to denote the binary value held in each cell (1 or 0), and the smallest lithographies hold roughly a dozen electrons per cell. NRAM employs several hundred carbon nanotubes per cell, and the tubes either attract or repel each other with the application of an electrical current, which signifies an "on" or "off" state. NRAM erases (resets) the cells with a phonon-driven technique that forces the nanotubes to vibrate and separate from each other. NRAM triggers the reset process by reversing the current, and it is reportedly more power efficient than competing memories (particularly at idle, where it requires no power at all).

NRAM could be much faster than 3D XPoint and suitable as universal memory for a concept like HP's "The Machine":

NRAM seems to be far faster than XPoint, and could be denser. An Intel Optane DIMM might have a latency of [7-9 µs] (7,000-9,000ns). Micron QuantX XPoint SSDs are expected to have latencies of [10 µs] for reading and [20 µs] for writing; that's 10,000 and 20,000ns respectively. A quick comparison has NRAM at c50ns or less and XPoint DIMMs at 7,000-10,000ns, 140-200 times slower. We might imagine that an XPoint/ReRAM-using server system has both DRAM and XPoint/ReRAM whereas an NRAM-using system might just use NRAM, once pricing facilitates this.

Another company licensing with Nantero is already looking to scale the NRAM down to 28nm.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Labor Notes reports:

It's called the Independent Drivers Guild--but the new organization for New York City's estimated 35,000 Uber drivers is "independent" in name only. Co-founded by Uber and the Machinists union, it's not a union, it has no collective bargaining rights, and it receives financial support from Uber. Just how much support, we don't know, since Uber and the Machinists won't release their agreement--not even to drivers.

If the shroud of secrecy isn't enough to raise your eyebrows, consider who's heaping praise on this cozy new partnership. The Mackinac Center--a Koch-backed anti-union mouthpiece that pushed for "right to work" in Michigan--calls it a "model that could bring unionization into the 21st century".

What will it do? The Guild gives drivers a process to appeal their terminations (which Uber calls "deactivations"). Ten union-selected drivers will attend monthly meetings of a "works council."

[...] Bhairavi Desai has a more critical view. She heads the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a worker center that represents 19,000 drivers in the city, including several thousand who drive for Uber. The Guild is an "immoral, illegal, unconscionable company union", Desai said.

[...] This dodge allows Uber to weasel out of Social Security and Medicare taxes and to cheat drivers of legal guarantees to minimum wage, overtime protections, health insurance, workers' compensation, and the right to organize and bargain collectively.

The truth is, Uber's astronomical valuation of $68 billion shouldn't be chalked up to its innovative app so much as to its success at skirting regulations and employment laws. If its drivers were reclassified as employees, Fortune estimated, the combined costs to Uber would top $4 billion a year.

An army of lobbyists and lawyers makes it all possible. Uber employs one-third more of these influence-peddlers than even Walmart does.

[...] Before all this, the Taxi Workers and the Machinists were planning a joint campaign to organize Uber drivers in New York. "What we didn't know was that, behind the scenes, they were engaging with Uber to sell everyone out", Desai said.

[...] The Guild will never transform Uber's business model. At best, such secret agreements and partnerships with management are doomed strategies. At worst, a defanged union becomes a partner in exploitation.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Former Texas Agriculture Commissioner, creator of the Doug Jones Average, and perennially witty guy Jim Hightower writes via The Union Democrat of Sonora, California:

If tiny groups of Wall Street bankers, billionaires, and their political puppets are allowed to write the rules that govern our economy and elections, guess what? Only bankers, billionaires, and puppets will profit from those rules.

[...] They've rigged the rules to let them feast freely on our jobs, devour our country's wealth, and impoverish the middle class.

"Take On Wall Street" is both the name and the feisty attitude of a nationwide campaign that a coalition of grassroots groups has launched to do just that: Take on Wall Street. The coalition, spearheaded by the Communication Workers of America, points out that there is nothing natural or sacred about today's money-grabbing financial complex. Far from sacrosanct, the system of finance that now rules over us has been designed by and for Wall Street speculators, money managers, and big bank flim flammers. So--big surprise--rather than serving our common good, the system is corrupt, routinely serving their uncommon greed at everyone else's expense.

[...] A growing grassroots coalition of churches, unions, civil rights groups, citizen activists, and many others are organizing and mobilizing us to crash through those closed doors, write our own rules, and reverse America's plunge into plutocracy. The "Take On" campaign has the guts and gumption to say enough!

[...] The campaign has laid out a five-point [sic] people's reform agenda and are now taking it to the countryside to rally the voices, anger, and grassroots power of workers, consumers, communities of color, Main Street, the poor, people of faith... and just plain folks.

• Getting the corrupting cash of corporations and the superrich out of our politics by repealing Citizens United and providing a public system for financing America's elections.
• Stopping "too big to fail" banks from subsidizing their high-risk speculative gambling with the deposits of us ordinary customers--make them choose to be a consumer bank or a casino, but not both.
• Institute a tiny "Robin Hood Tax" on Wall Street speculators to discourage their computerized gaming of the system, while also generating hundreds of billions of tax dollars to invest in America's real economy.
• Restore low-cost, convenient "postal banking" in our Post Offices to serve millions of Americans who're now at the mercy of predatory payday lenders and check-cashing chains.

There's an old truism about negotiating that says: "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu". The "Take On Wall Street" campaign intends to put you and me--the People--at the table for a change.

Original Submission

bob_super writes:

Since many people are claiming that small noises are a pain, Logitech set out to design mices which are about 10dB less clicky than the usual ones.
At around 25dB, the M220 Silent/M330 Silent Plus are probably near the noise floor of most office spaces, and surprisingly not a premium product (under US$30).

That doesn't sound like a bad thing for people with small places and light-sleeping partners either. Are Soylentils really bothered by Joe-the-spreadsheet-clicker, or do you believe in counter-offensive?

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

Several sites have articles about the PocketCHIP, a handheld computer that was funded through Kickstarter. It seems to have shipped to its sponsors, or at least to review sites, but the company's Web site displays "Estimated Shipping October 2016" for the rest of us.

The device is built around the CHIP computer, which has a 1 GHz ARM Cortex-R8 processor, Mali 400 GPU, 4 GB of flash, 512 MB of RAM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4, and USB 3.0. The PocketCHIP adds a plastic case, keyboard, lithium polymer battery and 480-by-272-pixel touch screen. It comes with Debian Linux and the PICO-8 software suite, which allows one to create and play video games.

The PocketCHIP is being sold for $69 ($49 for those who sponsored it), and the CHIP for $9.

Accessories are also offered to add VGA or HDMI output to the CHIP. It appears that owners of the PocketCHIP would have to take it apart to use those.

Articles:

• The Inquirer
• PC World
• The Verge
• hackerboards.com (alternate link)

Further information:
  manufacturer's blog

Original Submission

quietus writes:

Net neutrality is a hot topic, apparently.

When BEREC, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, launched a six week public consultation on the issue this June, they sure as heck didn't expect 481,547 responses. Somewhat miraculously, they managed to sift, analyze and classify through all of them in another 6 weeks. That's 16,051 requests, and a couple of paragraphs, for the mathematically challenged amongst you, per day. Which makes for a first observation: European holidays aren't what they're presumed to be, anymore.

Second observation: the turd of an end product is a whopping mere 45 pages, which you will no doubt be delighted to read in a jiffy.

And third, final observation: something funny on page 20 [para 78]:

To give some context: at least one telecom provider in the EU is toying with the idea of attracting customers by doing the ad-blocking for them. This little para does block this as a general business practice. There is, however, a small opening though, in exception (b) mentioned (grey area, Article 3(3) (b), page 21):

If malware can be associated with a particular ad provider, the published guidelines allow blocking of all its ads from the telecom provider's network.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

El Reg reports

For-profit college chain ITT Technical Institute is facing further sanctions as the US government and the state of California have ordered the school to stop accepting new students.

Citing ongoing financial problems with the school, the US Department of Education (DOE) has barred the school from taking any new students who rely on federal aid money, out of concerns that the school will go under before those funds can be repaid.

"To protect prospective students and taxpayers, we're no longer allowing ITT to enroll new students with federal aid", the DOE said.

"In addition, in case the school's actions cause it to close, we're increasing the amount of cash reserves it must send us and we're ending its installment payment plan for the amount previously required."

This, after the DOE said it has spent the past two years working with ITT to get its financial matters in order and address concerns from creditors that the school may not be able to stay afloat and pay back its debts.

[...] Students who are already enrolled at ITT with financial aid will be allowed to continue courses and will have the option to transfer to another school that accepts ITT course credits.

The DOE added that those who have already graduated from ITT will continue to have their certifications recognized as valid credentials.

[...] The state of California, meanwhile, is taking things a step further by ordering the school [PDF] to stop accepting any new enrollments at its 15 California locations as of September 1.

The decree, issued by the Department of Consumer Affairs, Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education, cites the financial issues and says "there is a substantial failure by the Institution to meet institutional minimum operating standards related to financial resources and accreditation standards".

We have previously discussed other for-profits in hot water.

Original Submission