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butthurt writes:

The OpenIndiana wiki announces the operating system's Hipster 2017.04 snapshot, which supports USB 3.0 and includes

OpenIndiana is based on Illumos, which is in turn based on OpenSolaris, the open source version of Solaris.

Does anyone still use Solaris these days?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Japanese trains have long been known for their speed and efficiency. Now, if the East Japan Railway Company has its way, luxurious may soon be added to the list with the May 1 debut of its Train Suite Shiki-shima. Designed by famed industrial designer Ken Okuyama and inspired by the popularity of the Seven Stars Cruise Train that began service in 2013, the super exclusive Shiki-shima train offers passengers traveling from Tokyo's Ueno station to eastern areas on the main island of Honshu a cruise ship-like experience on rails.

The 10-car train can accommodate no more than 34 passengers per trip, with 15 suites in five regular sleeper cars, and two suites in a deluxe sleeper. All suites come with their own private dining area and two twin beds. Besides a dining car and lounge car, the two domed observation cars at both ends are a highlight of the feature-rich train, with large windows along the walls and roof and sofas that run the length of the car for passengers to relax and take in the mountain or coastal scenery. To that end, the company is offering trips of two to four days that emphasize seasonal landscapes and events, with sightseeing stops by bus along the way.

[...] The cost of a trip on Shiki-shima starts at ¥320,000 (US$2,850) per person when sharing a room, and goes up to ¥950,000 (US$8,450) per person sharing the deluxe suite. Demand for the inaugural trip was such that passengers were chosen by lottery, while subsequent trips on Shiki-shima are already booked through March 2018. Luxury train travel seems to be catching on in Japan, with the West Japan Railway Company, based out of Osaka, to begin its Twilight Express Mizukaze cruise train service in June.

Also reported at the South China Morning Post.

Looks like a lovely, if expensive, way to travel.

There are some great pictures in the original article.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Velonews has this story, http://www.velonews.com/2017/05/news/legally-speaking-brought-justice_437651 which describes an incident of road rage against a bicyclist. Turns out, this was the wrong cyclist to buzz, he was a lawyer and eventually settled with the cager's insurance company for USD $4500 -- setting a price for cyclist harassment in Louisiana.

The road-raging driver had just endangered the life of the cyclist and his toddler, and now he was spoiling for a fight. It began on a calm Sunday morning in New Orleans. Charlie Thomas had gone for a ride with his young daughter Colette, towing her in a Burley trailer, enjoying the ride and time together. But on the edge of the iconic French Quarter, their peaceful Sunday morning was violently interrupted when a speeding car buzzed them, passing within a foot of Charlie and Colette.

[...] "I'm not trying to start anything," Charlie said, "but you passed way too close to my daughter and me."

And that's when the driver, motioning that he was about to get out of his car, responded with his tough-guy threat: "How about I get out and f—k you up in front of your kid?" Charlie's emotions surged, but he knew that any further engagement would be unproductive, and with his daughter there, unsafe. So he broke off the encounter, and the driver sped away.

[...] Although the incident didn't involve a physical impact, Louisiana has both a three-foot passing law and a non-harassment law on the books. Charlie filed suit seeking damages for the driver's harassment. There had never been a case setting the value of damages for a harassed bicyclist under Louisiana's law, so Charlie and the driver's insurance company were in uncharted negotiating territory.

Eventually, Charlie negotiated a settlement that established a value of $4,500 damages in a civil case for cyclist harassment in Louisiana; the proceeds were donated to Bike Easy, the New Orleans-area bike advocacy group. The official case on the books is Thomas v. Arbona, Case No. 16-03127; First City Court for the City of New Orleans. Now, any other cyclist who sues a driver for harassment in Louisiana can use the value for damages established in this case.

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takyon writes:

A bill in the California Senate would allow drivers to cover their license plates when parked to prevent automated license plate readers from reading them. Law enforcement (or somebody else) would have to manually lift the cover to obtain the license plate number:

If the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a San Diego-based Republican state senator have their way, it will soon become legal for Californians to cover their license plates while parked as a way to thwart automated license plate readers.

[...] As written, the new senate bill would allow for law enforcement to manually lift a cover, or flap, as a way to manually inspect a plate number. The idea is not only to prevent dragnet license plate data collection by law enforcement, but also by private companies. A California company, Vigilant Solutions, is believed to have the largest private ALPR database in America, with billions of records.

Ars is unaware of a commercially available product that would allow a license plate to be easily blocked in this fashion. A man in Florida was arrested earlier this year for using a miniature black screen that could be activated via remote control as a way to block his plate number when he passed through automated toll booths.

The new bill will come up before the California State Senate Transportation and Housing Committee on Tuesday, May 9—the first stop in the legislative process.

The California Police Chiefs Association has already filed its opposition to the bill. In a letter to Sen. Joel Anderson, the group argued that the bill would only benefit one group: "those who are trying to evade law enforcement and detection." Similarly, the bill has faced resistance from the California Public Parking Association, among other groups.

Related:
DHS Wants a National License Plate Tracking System
Debt Collectors Fight Privacy Advocates Over License Plate Readers
Arizona City Using Fake Cacti to Hide License Plate Cameras
Louisiana Governor Vetoes License Plate Reader Bill, Citing Privacy Concerns.
Open Source License Plate Reader: Little Brother Strikes Back!
Federal Agents Enlisted Local Police to Scan License Plates at Gun Shows
Amazon Wants to Scan Your License Plate

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butthurt writes:

Various media outlets report that a trailer for the upcoming film Blade Runner 2049 has been released. A CNET story (Javascript required) warns that the trailer contains spoilers. The trailer promises a 6 October release date in the USA.

For our click-averse readers, Wikipedia summarizes:

Blade Runner 2049 is an upcoming American neo-noir science fiction film directed by Denis Villeneuve and written by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green. It is the sequel to Blade Runner, starring Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford, who is reprising his role as Rick Deckard, with Ana de Armas, Mackenzie Davis, Sylvia Hoeks, Lennie James, Carla Juri, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista and Jared Leto in supporting roles. The film is set for release in the United States on October 6, 2017, in 2D, 3D and IMAX 3D.

IMDb's coverage lists release dates on October 4 for France and Italy. There are 12 countries seeing release on October 5. Including the USA, there are 14 countries seeing release on October 6. Hong Kong and Japan will have to wait until October 26th and 27th, respectively.

Coverage:

• Wired
• Los Angeles Times
• The Verge
• Rolling Stone
• Fox News (archived copy)
• Gizmodo
• Variety
• Variety
• The Guardian
• Slate blog
• The Verge
• USA Today
• A.V. Club
• Hollywood Reporter
• Hollywood Reporter
• GQ
• Vox

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Common Dreams reports

Last Week Tonight host John Oliver on [May 7] issued another powerful rallying cry to save net neutrality protections, and, repeating the outcome of his 2014 plea, his viewers flooded the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) site, causing it to temporarily crash.

[...] Oliver said it's worth noting that [FCC Chairman Ajit] Pai is "a former lawyer for Verizon", a company which "won a lawsuit which meant that if the FCC wanted strong, enforceable protection, its only real option was to reclassify the ISPs, and yet he cheerily insists under questioning that there is just not evidence that cable companies were engaging in rampant wrongdoing".

"Title II is the most solid legal foundation we have right now for a strong, enforceable net neutrality protections", Oliver said, and urged "we, the people, [to] take this matter into our own hands".

To that end, Last Week Tonight bought the domain name gofccyourself.com, which redirects users to the official FCC page[1] where open internet advocates can leave a comment and call for these protections to remain in place. (Oliver notes that it simplifies the commenting process the FCC "has made more difficult since three years ago".)

"Everyone needs to get involved. Comment now, and then maybe comment again when the FCC makes its proposal official. Even call you representative and your senators", Oliver urged.

So successful was the start of his campaign, according to Motherboard, that there was such a high volume of traffic flooding the Federal Communications Commission that the site temporarily went down. As of this writing, it is up and running again.

[1] The fcc.gov page is almost entirely behind scripts.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Criminals are using eBay to sell stolen and cloned cars, a BBC investigation has revealed.

The vehicles were being sold in Greater Manchester via at least three accounts after having their details switched with legitimate cars.

Among the victims was a retired police officer who lost £17,000 buying a Mercedes from a seller in Rochdale.

He said he reported the incident to the police, but no action was taken. Police said the decision is being reviewed.

Former police officer Graham Murray lost his money after buying a Mercedes C-class in Rochdale two months ago, leaving him "devastated".

He said he reported the case to police and has questioned why the fraudulent eBay sellers have not yet been caught.

It's safer to buy used Yugos.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-tribune-media-m-a-sinclair-idUSKBN1841HR

U.S. broadcaster Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc said on Monday it would buy Tribune Media Co, one of the largest U.S. television station operators, for about $3.9 billion cash and stock, and assume about $2.7 billion in debt.

[...] The announcement of the deal comes weeks after the U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted to reverse a 2016 decision that limits broadcasters owning stations serving no more than 39 percent of U.S. television households.

A combined Tribune and Sinclair could surpass this cap and face some regulatory challenges which could result in divestitures, analysts said.

Tribune Media. The newspaper assets were spun off years ago into Tribune Publishing, aka Tronc.

Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Related: Gannett Ends Pursuit of Rival Newspaper Publisher Tronc

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Christophe Deschamps was watching a basketball game with his wife and three children when he received an alert on his smartphone.

The home security system told him something was wrong, so he quickly accessed the video feed on his phone.

"I could see smoke," he says. Their home, in the Wallonia region of southern Belgium, was on fire.

The family's thoughts immediately turned to their two Bernese Mountain dogs - Lisbonne and Hawaii - locked in the garage. A terrible family tragedy was threatening to unfold.

The video images now showed the smoke getting thicker and brightness coming from flames off-camera.

The fire alarm had already alerted the firefighters, so the Deschamps family rushed home as quickly as they could.
...
Fortunately, Lisbonne and Hawaii were saved with just 20cm of air left to breathe above the floor of the smoke-filled garage. But the fire damage to the house took six months to repair.

The dogs' lucky escape was due to the indoor security camera Christophe had installed.

So, the Internet of Things (IoT) is really a good thing.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Researches have made another step along the path to an 'exercise pill'. The latest discovery is a compound which 'switches' muscles into metabolizing fats instead of sugars without the usual aerobic training. This helps delay "hitting the wall", significantly. In a mouse study sedentary mice increased the amount of time spent on endurance exercise from 160 minutes to 270, without additional aerobic training. It is hypothesized the drug 'encourages' muscles to use fats for energy even when sugars are available. This is thought to mimic one of the adaptions brought on by aerobic exercise training. The results were published in the journal of Cell Metabolism PPARδ Promotes Running Endurance by Preserving Glucose. For those without an organic chemistry background, CBC Radio's science program has an interview accompanying article with the study author.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

If the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a San Diego-based Republican state senator have their way, it will soon become legal for Californians to cover their license plates while parked as a way to thwart automated license plate readers.

Those devices, now commonly in use by law enforcement nationwide, can capture license plate numbers at a very high rate of speed, as well as record the GPS location, date, and time that a particular plate is seen. Those plates are then run against a "hot list" of stolen or wanted cars, and a cop is then alerted to the presence of any vehicle with a match on that list.

As written, the new senate bill would allow for law enforcement to manually lift a cover, or flap, as a way to manually inspect a plate number. The idea is not only to prevent dragnet license plate data collection by law enforcement, but also by private companies. A California company, Vigilant Solutions, is believed to have the largest private ALPR database in America, with billions of records.

Do we have a reasonable expectation of privacy in public?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Though the past winter was the hottest on record, it was chilly enough on the East Coast to send seasonal sheets of ice creeping across the Great Lakes. Now that that ice has cleared with spring, Lake Michigan is clear enough that shipwrecks lying on the lake bottom can be seen from the air.

The U.S. Coast Guard Air Station in Traverse City noted the crystal clear water conditions and the lost ships during a routine patrol. Last week, they posted a handful of pictures to their Facebook page. The images come from the area near Sleeping Bear Point known as the Manitou Passage Underwater Preserve, which is "one of the richest areas in Michigan for shipwreck diving," according to the preserve's website. The lumber industry put the area on a shipping route. The North and South Manitou Islands, just north of the point, provided a somewhat sheltered area for ships hiding from storms. 

Original Submission

AthanasiusKircher writes:

The Atlantic has an extended piece on the realities of internet pricing:

Phoenix666 writes:

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has chosen to replace half of the members on one of its key scientific review boards, the first step in a broader effort by Republicans to change the way the agency evaluates the scientific basis for its regulations.

The move could significantly change the makeup of the 18-member Board of Scientific Counselors, which advises EPA's key scientific arm on whether the research it does has sufficient rigor and integrity. All of the members being dismissed were at the end of serving at least one three-year term, although these terms are often renewed instead of terminated.

EPA spokesman J.P. Freire said in an email that "no one has been fired or terminated," and that Pruitt had simply decided to bring in fresh advisers. The agency informed the outside academics on Friday that their terms would not be renewed.

[...] These moves came as a surprise to the agencies' outside advisers, with several of them taking to Twitter to announce their suspensions.

Members of EPA's Board of Scientific Counselors had been informed twice — in January, before Barack Obama left office, and then more recently by EPA career staff members — that they would be kept on for another term, adding to their confusion.

We cannot allow Beijing's air quality to beat ours.

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

Fedora Magazine reports:

Previous stories:
The MP3 Format is now Patent Free
0-Days Hitting Fedora and Ubuntu Open Desktops to a World of Hurt

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Emboldened by success, Foxtel has fired off a new round of suballs with the aim of blocking more pirate sites from Australian users.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation says TPG, Optus, and Vocus are the respondents in a case filed late last week in the Federal Court.

Foxtel wants the ISPs to bring down the boom on the sites Yes Movies, Los Movies, Watch Series, and Project Free TV, all of which it describes as piracy sites for letting users watch TV shows in Web browsers.

A successful action would see those four services join The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, Torrent Hound and ISOHunt as sites ISPs are obliged to block.

Time to turn off the TV and go outside.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The cloud just got cloudier:

As part of the IBM Q System, IBM has released a new API (Application Program Interface) for the IBM Quantum Experience that enables developers and programmers to begin building interfaces between its existing five quantum bit (qubit) cloud-based quantum computer and classical computers, without needing a deep background in quantum physics. IBM has also released an upgraded simulator on the IBM Quantum Experience that can model circuits with up to 20 qubits. In the first half of 2017, IBM plans to release a full SDK (Software Development Kit) on the IBM Quantum Experience for users to build simple quantum applications and software programs.

The IBM Quantum Experience enables anyone to connect to IBM's quantum processor via the IBM Cloud, to run algorithms and experiments, work with the individual quantum bits, and explore tutorials and simulations around what might be possible with quantum computing.

The quantum revolution will be pythonized.

Meanwhile: China Races to Show Quantum Advantage

The Chinese team said their prototype quantum computing machine is 10 to 100 times faster than the first electronic computer, ENIAC, and the first transistor computer, TRADIC, and could "one day could outperform conventional computers."

University of Texas at Austin Professor Scott Aaronson, who proposed the boson sampling machine, reported that the research showed "exciting experimental progress." "It's a step towards boson sampling with say 30 photons or some number that's large enough that no one will have to squint or argue about whether a quantum advantage has been attained," he told the South China Morning Post.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

If Uber Technologies Inc. ever collapses, historians may trace its undoing not to its troubles with labor relations, intellectual property, regulatory conflicts or sexual-harassment allegations, but to technological disruption.

This would be the same technological disruption the company itself pledged to use to upend the auto industry and the $2 trillion a year tied to it.

Less than a year ago, Uber Chief Executive Travis Kalanick described self-driving cars as an "existential" threat to his company, saying that his team must get the technology to market before competitors do, or at least at around the same time. Self-driving vehicles would ultimately be much cheaper to operate than ones requiring human drivers—robots work tirelessly and don't demand raises. The first companies to roll out fleets of automated taxis could quickly drive their human-powered competition into oblivion.

Bye-bye Uber, hello Johnny Cab?

Original Submission