SoylentNews

n1 writes:

In the past two weeks, the Democratic presidential nominee has faced increased scrutiny from critics to take questions at a news conference — something she hasn't done in 273 days.

[...] New York Times columnist Jim Rutenberg criticized Clinton for her aversion toward the press in a searing piece on Sunday, and CNN senior media correspondent Brian Stelter has not been shy when offering his opinion.

"She is acting in some ways as if she is already president," Stelter said in a recent CNN appearance. "By not acknowledging the importance of a press conference, the uniqueness of a press conference — it makes me wonder how accessible she'd be in the White House as president."

[...] The campaign, which did not return requests for comment for this story, frequently cites a figure that asserts Clinton has granted more than 350 interviews this year.

[...] Holly Shulman, a former spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, told Business Insider that technology has changed the way candidates run for office and suggested there was less of a need to lean on the press to disseminate a message.

"Campaigns have changed," she said, noting that candidates can now reach voters directly through social media. "[T]his type of direct engagement has a much bigger impact on voters' decisions."

[...] Trump has continued to spotlight Clinton's refusal to take questions from the media in an open setting.

In recent weeks, the New York businessman's campaign has sent out an email each morning reminding reporters exactly how many days it has been since "hiding Hillary" last held a press conference.

[...] Brian Fallon, the campaign's top spokesman, seemed to acknowledge the importance of one on Friday. He promised ABC News that if elected, "Hillary Clinton will hold press conferences."

Source: Business Insider

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Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

AMD and its primary fab partner GlobalFoundries have signed an updated five-year wafer supply agreement that will extend through the end of 2020. The restructuring simultaneously deepens the commitment between the partners and gives AMD limited freedom to see other foundries. In exchange, GlobalFoundries will get some additional compensation.

Per the terms of the agreement, which pertains to AMD's microprocessor, graphics processor, and semi-custom products, AMD will make $25 million cash installments to GlobalFoundries over the next four quarters, for a total cash transfer of $100 million. Beginning in 2017, AMD will be required to make quarterly payments to GlobalFoundries based on the volume of certain wafers it is obtaining from another foundry.

The agreement also stipulates annual wafer purchase targets for the five-year period, sets fixed wafer prices for 2016, and provides a framework for yearly wafer pricing. If annual targets are not met, a penalty will be imposed based on the difference between actual wafer purchases and the target for that year.

takyon: Those are some of the costs of outsourcing your semiconductor fabrication. Let's hope AMD meets those targets.

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Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Replicant (AKA The Little Red Robot) is an Android-based OS whose mission is to stick to the Free Software Foundation's guidelines more closely than its parent project.

The Replicant OS project reports

At Replicant, things are moving again: Replicant is being updated from Android 4.2 to Android 6.0 by Wolfgang Wiedmeyer. The status and feedback takes place in the forums before it is reviewed and integrated [into] the official Replicant repositories. This work is currently being done for the Galaxy S 3 (I9300).

[...] Wolfgang Wiedmeyer is also working on [...] Graphics acceleration [...] Building the toolchains [...]full device encryption and SELinux support.

Future directions: [...] support the upstream Linux kernel for devices with a minimal amount of effort [...] support upstream bootloaders, such as U-Boot.

[...] Helping Replicant by contributing to F-Droid

Replicant is supported [by and] recommended by the FSF and listed as a fully free software distribution that respects the GNU Free System Distribution Guidelines.

[...] F-droid is committed to distributing only free software, and it does. However, some [F-Droid apps promote non-FOSS sortware and/or depend on non-FOSS software and do] not comply with the GNU Free System Distribution Guidelines.

While the list of such anti-features is displayed in red when selecting an application in F-Droid, applications with anti-features are still listed aside compliant ones. This is also quite confusing since free software isn't expected to contain such anti-features in the first place.

[...] The anti-feature display is confusing and [...] there was no clear smoking gun.

[...] If you're interested to jump-in and help resolve this issue, please get in touch with us or with F-Droid developers directly to get directions on how to get started.

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[Ed Note: Despite the significant number of "[...]" in this submission, after careful checking, they do not change the intent of the piece. This is something that we watch for in pieces that cut out parts of a quote, as leaving out words can be used to change the entire meaning of a piece, and effectively negate or intentionally confuse what is being said].

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Who will revive the electric car?

German carmaker Daimler plans to roll out at least six, and possibly as many as nine, electric car models as part of its push to compete with Tesla and Volkswagen's Audi, a person familiar with Daimler's plans told Reuters.

The maker of Mercedes-Benz cars remains on track to unveil a new electric car at the Paris motor show next month. In July, the German carmaker said it had accelerated development of premium electric cars, a segment currently dominated by United States-based rival Tesla. German trade magazine Automobilwoche earlier cited company sources as saying Daimler would bring to market more than six electric car models between 2018 and 2024.

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Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A. It appears that on or about August 28, 2016, unauthorized access was gained to our [TransmissionBT's] website server. The official Mac version of Transmission 2.92 was replaced with an unauthorized version that contained the OSX/Keydnap malware. The infected file was available for download somewhere between a few hours and less than a day. Additional information about the malware is available here and here.

A. The infected file was removed from the server immediately upon discovering its existence, which was less than 24 hours after the file was posted to the website. To help prevent future incidents, we have migrated the website and all binary files from our current servers to GitHub. Other services, which are currently unavailable, will be migrated to new servers in the coming days. As an added precaution, we will be hosting the binaries and the website (including checksums) in two separate repositories.

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Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The Tibetan Plateau, as the Earth's third pole, has long been of interest to science, especially in relation to its human history. Over the last few decades, our understanding of the history of human occupation of the Tibetan Plateau has significantly improved as a result of progress made in archaeological, genetic and earth science studies. However, arguments remain about major discrepancies that exist between the findings of studies based on different materials and using different approaches. A recent study did a comprehensive review of previous studies of the human history of the Tibetan Plateau and the nature of human adaptation to the high elevation environment.

The study is published in the latest issue of Science China: Earth Sciences, and is titled "History and possible mechanisms of prehistoric human migration to the Tibetan Plateau". The research is led by Lanzhou University, the Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeological Research, the Qinghai Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeological Research and the Tibetan Cultural Relic Conservation Institute.

Prehistoric human history on the Tibetan Plateau is a hotly debated topic. Recent studies have not only yielded a large amount of archaeological material and genetic information about the Tibetan people, but they have also proposed divergent hypotheses. A comprehensive analysis of this diverse material, and of the resulting conclusions, is urgently required.

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Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The Center for Biological Diversity reports via Common Dreams

Killing predators such as wolves, mountain lions and bears in order to protect livestock may have intuitive appeal, but a rigorous review of multiple studies that was published today shows little or no scientific support that it actually reduces livestock losses. In fact, in some cases it even leads to increases in livestock loss. These conclusions directly counter the reasoning behind the common practice of killing predators in response to livestock depredations--as carried out by the secretive federal program, Wildlife Services, and many state game agencies.

"This study [paywalled] shows that not only is Wildlife Services' annual killing of tens of thousands of wolves, coyotes, bears, bobcats, cougars, and other animals unconscionable--it's also ineffective", said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity. "Our government should ground the aerial snipers, pull the poisons and remove the steel leghold traps in response to these findings."

The unexpected finding that carnivore killings can increase depredations is likely based on disruption of the predators' social dynamics--namely, by removing dominant animals that maintain large territories, these killings release sub-adult animals that are less-skilled hunters and thus more likely to target domestic animals.

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Original Submission

JaKe writes:

In the time leading up to the next Kernel Summit topics are presented and discussed beforehand on the Ksummit-discuss mailing list. There [CORE TOPIC] GPL defense issues was introduced. Even though Linus is not subscribed to this list he speaks his mind, bluntly. A good read.

I'm not aware of anybody but the lawyers and crazy people that were happy about how the BusyBox situation ended up. Please pipe up if you actually know differently. All it resulted in was a huge amount of bickering, and both individual and commercial developers and users fleeing in droves. Botht he original maintainer and the maintainer that started the lawsuits ended up publicly saying it was a disaster.

So I think the whole GPL enforcement issue is absolutely something that should be discussed, but it should be discussed with the working title.

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Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

A confidential, 120-page catalogue of spy equipment, originating from British defense firm Cobham and circulated to U.S. law enforcement, touts gear that can intercept wireless calls and text messages, locate people via their mobile phones, and jam cellular communications in a particular area.

The catalogue was obtained by The Intercept as part of a large trove of documents originating within the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, where spokesperson Molly Best confirmed Cobham wares have been purchased but did not provide further information. The document provides a rare look at the wide range of electronic surveillance tactics used by police and militaries in the U.S. and abroad, offering equipment ranging from black boxes that can monitor an entire town's cellular signals to microphones hidden in lighters and cameras hidden in trashcans. Markings date it to 2014.

[...] "By design, these devices are indiscriminate and operate across a wide area where many people may be present," said Richard Tynan, a technologist at Privacy International, of the gear in the Cobham catalogue. Such "indiscriminate surveillance systems that are not targeted in any way based on prior suspicion" are "the essence of mass surveillance," he added.

Source: https://theintercept.com/2016/09/01/leaked-catalogue-reveals-a-vast-array-of-military-spy-gear-offered-to-u-s-police/

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Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Flakes of graphene welded together into solid materials may be suitable for bone implants, according to a study led by Rice University scientists.

The Rice lab of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan and colleagues in Texas, Brazil and India used spark plasma sintering to weld flakes of graphene oxide into porous solids that compare favorably with the mechanical properties and biocompatibility of titanium, a standard bone-replacement material.

The discovery is the subject of a paper in Advanced Materials.

The researchers believe their technique will give them the ability to create highly complex shapes out of graphene in minutes using graphite molds, which they believe would be easier to process than specialty metals.

"We started thinking about this for mechanical properties, density, porosity and biocompatibility."

Tiwary said spark plasma sintering is being used in industry to make complex parts, generally with ceramics. "The technique uses a high pulse current that welds the flakes together instantly. You only need high voltage, not high pressure or temperatures," he said. The material they made is nearly 50 percent porous, with a density half that of graphite and a quarter of titanium metal. But it has enough compressive strength—40 megapascals—to qualify it for bone implants, he said. The strength of the bonds between sheets keeps it from disintegrating in water.

"Engineering junctions and strong interfaces between nanoscale building blocks is the biggest challenge in achieving such goals, but in this case, spark plasma sintering seems to be effective in joining graphene sheets to produce strong 3-D solids," he said.

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Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://www.vox.com/2016/9/2/12746450/youtube-monetization-phil-defranco-leaving-site

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Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

This high-throughput reaction prediction (HTRP) idea has been tried several times before, and the paper provides a useful review of these. Broadly, these attempts have used either some sort of rule-based expert system framework, attempted to work out a logic or grammar of chemical reactivity to extrapolate with, or used outright machine learning techniques.

[...] As a number of other theoretical approaches to organic chemistry have done, they're shifting the world of organic chemistry over into a graph-theory problem. From this perspective, discovering new reactions becomes a search for new nodes and edges in the graph[...] let's say you have two molecules, A and B, and both of them are both known to react with a partner C to give some new product in each case. The program will note all these similarities, and searches for cases where compound A reacts with yet another molecule type D. Since A and B have been classed as having a similar reactivity pattern (they both reacted usefully with C), the program hypothesizes that B will do something with D as well

[...] They tested this approach by using everything up to 2013 to predict reactions, and the set of reactions published since then to check their results. Looking at 180,000 randomly selected reactions, the predictions were correct about 67% of the time.

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/08/31/predicting-new-reactions
http://arxiv.org/abs/1608.07117

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Original Submission

Gaaark writes:

On Oct. 31, 1926, Charles Vance Millar, a well-known and wealthy Canadian lawyer, died at age 73. Halloween was a fitting day for him to go; Millar loved practical jokes and spent far too much time doing silly things like dropping dollar bills on the sidewalk and then hiding to see who would pick them up. But that was just a warm-up. In death, Millar unleashed his biggest prank ever — a last will and testament that was basically a giant social experiment. By promising a vast sum of money to the Toronto family that could have the most babies in a 10-year period, Millar set off a race to give birth the moment he died.

Millar described his will as "necessarily uncommon and capricious" because he had "no dependents or near relations." What Millar lacked in heirs, though, he made up for in cash and property. In addition to his work as a lawyer, Millar amassed a net worth of more than $10 million (in today's Canadian dollars) through a series of investments, including the property that would eventually be used for the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, one of the busiest crossings between the United States and Canada. He wanted to give that wealth away.

But he wanted to do it in as roguish a way as possible. Millar started off by giving shares in a jockey club to gambling opponents and shares in a brewery to teetotalling religious leaders. Then he left his house in Jamaica to three men who hated one another, on the condition that they own it together. But those were just a prelude to the big finish. In clause 10, Millar revealed a biology and math challenge that would change the lives of dozens of Toronto families. The remainder of his fortune — about $9 million — would be bequeathed a decade later to "the mother who has since my death given birth in Toronto to the greatest number of children as shown by the registrations under the Vital Statistics Act." If there were a tie, he wanted his fortune to be divided equally among the winners.

[...] Of course, there's a shortcut to having lots of babies — have more of them at once. Nadya Suleman, for example, had 14 kids (including one set of octuplets) in just nine years, from 2001 to 2009, using in vitro fertilization. Back in the 1930s, though, there was no IVF and no Clomid or other fertility-increasing drugs. That meant that not only were there no chemical ways to increase the odds of getting pregnant, but women also were less likely to have twins (or triplets) than women are today. Based on pictures and newspaper articles from the time, very few of the Derby contenders appeared to have had multiple births.

And the winners are pictured here.

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Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Windows 10's market share continues to grow a point or two a month, but it's also cracked the milestone of being the most-used version of Windows on weekends.

That's The Register's conclusion after downloading the US Government Analytics service's latest 90-day dump recording over a billion visits to US government web sites. That's as big a sample as we can find anywhere, so we figure it's at least as newsworthy as the other two sources we track for market share, NetMarketshare and Statcounter.

We've remarked in the past that operating system usage rates change during the week. A mature OS like Windows 7 will do well Monday to Friday because business has embraced it. A new OS like Windows 10 will do okay during the working week, but will initially do rather better on weekends because consumers are faster to adopt new code than businesses.

Windows 10 has displayed that pattern of adoption and continues to do so. But over the last 90 days it has also won more market share over the weekend than Windows 7. Here's the latest graph we've cooked up showing the trend.

Its hardly surprising seeing that Microsoft have made it very difficult not to upgrade.

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Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://theconversation.com/are-us-antitrust-regulators-giving-silicon-valleys-free-apps-a-free-pass-63974

If the SCOTUS is willing to declare that money is speech, it should be no great leap to recognize that speech can also be money. Wall Street has clearly recognized the truth in that, giving multi-billion dollar valuations to companies that are entirely predicated on reselling their users' attention. How long until American courts catch up with reality?

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Original Submission