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Fnord666 writes:

Adjacent to SpaceX headquarters, 25 teams gathered for another Hyperloop Pod Competition. This time the winner would be judged by how quickly they could go down the 1.25 kilometer (about .77 miles) track. On the final day of competition, three teams advanced to the finals and had the chance to push their pod to the limit.

With a speed of just over 200 miles per-hour, the Warr (pronounced Varr) team from the Technical University of Munich handily beat the two other finalists with its small, but quick pod. Weighing just 80 kg (176 pounds) and powered by a 50kw motor, the vehicle was essentially a small electric car built specifically for winning the competition.

[...] At the end of the competition, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk mused that there's no reason why future pods in the competition couldn't hit 500 to 600 miles per-hour on the 1.25 kilometer track. Of course that means that there will be another Hyperloop Pod Competition sometime next year and who knows, maybe we'll see pods hitting the speeds that'll make the mode of transportation truly rival air travel.

Source: https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/27/hyperloop-pod-competition-winner-hits-200-mph/

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

President Donald Trump has selected Andrei Iancu, the managing partner of a major Los Angeles law firm, to be the next head of the US Patent and Trademark Office [USPTO].

His most notable work in the tech sector is likely his representation of TiVo Corp. in its long-running patent battles with companies like EchoStar, Motorola, Microsoft, Verizon, and Cisco. TiVo ultimately succeeded in compelling those defendants to pay up for its pioneering DVR patents, and payments to TiVo ultimately totaled more than $1.6 billion, according to Iancu's biography page.

Iancu also had a hand in Immersion Corp's $82 million jury verdict against Sony Computer Entertainment in which a jury found that Immersion's patent claims on tactile feedback technology were valid and infringed.

[...] Iancu earned his JD, along with an MS in mechanical engineering and a BS in aerospace engineering, from UCLA. He worked as an engineer at Hughes Aircraft before attending law school.

Handling the business of a large and successful law firm like Irell & Manella means that Iancu is no slouch when it comes to management skills. And his varied set of clients could help him avoid the tug of war that often pops up between tech and pharma over how to manage the patent system.

If confirmed by the Senate, Iancu will replace Michelle Lee, the outgoing USPTO director who left shortly after Trump's inauguration. Lee, a former Google attorney, was a favorite of the tech sector.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/ip-lawyer-who-represented-tivo-is-trumps-pick-as-uspto-chief/

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Kids have always been a little difficult.

Technology may have made things worse, as the young tend to know more about tech than their parents do.

They know, for example, how to ignore mom and dad and do whatever they like.

Nick Herbert found this a touch frustrating.

Kids have a habit of simply not replying to texts. Not because they're bad kids, but, well, they're doing something more interesting on the phone -- like playing a game.

So, as CBS News reports, Herbert conceived ReplyASAP. This is an app (currently available only on Android) that forces your child to address your texts.

By annoying the living hell out of them.

[...] Herbert insists that ReplyASAP is meant to be used only in emergencies. This isn't about annoying your kids all the time, however tempting that might be.

Indeed, he told me that it's not about forcing your child to reply. Instead, he said: "It is simply a means of getting an important message to the child, even when they have their phone on silent, and for the parent to know they have seen it."

[Ed Note - Updated Google Play link to correct a typo]

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Some more good news on the Fourth Amendment front, even if it's somewhat jurisdictionally limited: the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has (sort of) decided [PDF] the Supreme Court's Riley decision isn't just for cellphones. (via FourthAmendment.com)

In this case, the search of a robbery suspect's backpack while he was being questioned yielded a ring, a digital camera, and other items. The police warrantlessly searched the digital phone¹, discovering a photo of the suspect next to a firearm later determined to have been stolen. This led to two convictions: one for the stolen property and one for carrying a firearm without a license.

The defendant challenged all of the evidence resulting from the warrantless search of the backpack, but the state got to keep most of what it found, along with the conviction for theft. But it didn't get to keep the firearm conviction, as the court here sees digital cameras to be almost no different than cellphones when it comes to warrantless searches and the Riley decision. From the opinion:

The Commonwealth counters that Riley does not apply because digital cameras, lacking the ability to function as computers, are not analogous to cell phones for Fourth Amendment purposes. We decline to address the constitutionality of the search of the digital camera on Fourth Amendment grounds, but we apply the reasoning in Riley in holding that the search of the camera violated art. 14 [of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights].

[1] [I suspect the author meant digital camera, not digital phone - Ed]

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170821/10485338053/state-supreme-court-says-digital-phones-cant-be-searched-without-warrant.shtml

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

tonyPick writes:

It's being reported on HackerNews that the Pale Moon Browser is blocking the AdNauseum extension, an ad blocking extension designed to obfuscate browsing data and protect users from tracking by advertising networks.

The main story link is to the Pale Moon Forum which summarises the issue as follows:

After investigating the AdNauseam extension's behavior and the results for web publishers, the extension has been added to the Pale Moon blocklist with a severity level of 2 (meaning you won't be able to enable it unless you increase the blocking level in about:config to 3). For those unfamiliar with this extension: it generates false ad "clicks" to ad servers in an attempt to generate "noise" for the ad networks in a protest against the advertising network system as a whole.

While the premise behind this is similar to poisoning trackers with false fingerprints (which we are proponents of, ourselves), and we normally let users decide for themselves what they want to do with their browser, we are strictly against allowing extensions that cause direct damage (including damage to third parties). There is a subtle but important difference between blocking content and generating fake user interaction.

[...] Because this extension causes direct and indirect economic damage to website owners, it is classified as malware, and as such blocked.

From the forum threads this decision has been slightly controversial with some users.

If you're not familiar with Pale Moon, it is an Open Source web browser, forked from a mature Mozilla code release, and has been covered on SN before.

[Update: Added text re: blocking level; bolded text that was bold in the original posting. --martyb]

Original Submission

mrpg writes:

Individuals who have a high level of moral reasoning show increased activity in the brain's frontostriatal reward system, both during periods of rest and while performing a sequential risk taking and decision making task according to a new study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Shanghai International Studies University in Shanghai, China and Charité Universitätsmediz in Berlin, Germany. The findings from the study, published this month in Scientific Reports, may help researchers to understand how brain function differs in individuals at different stages of moral reasoning and why some individuals who reach a high level of moral reasoning are more likely to engage in certain "prosocial" behaviors -- such as performing community service or giving to charity -- based on more advanced principles and ethical rules.

[...] The researchers' previous work found an association between high levels of moral reasoning and gray matter volume, establishing a critical link between moral reasoning and brain structure. This more recent study sought to discover whether a link exists between moral reasoning and brain function.

https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2017/august/high-moral-reasoning-associated-with-increased-activity-in-the-human-brains-reward-system

Original Submission

mrpg writes:

Why DO teens do THAT? Raging hormones? Prefrontal cortex fully developed? Thrill Seeking? New research from The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania has released a report explaining Why Teens Take Risks: It's Not a Deficit in Brain Development:

The authors propose an alternative model that emphasizes the role that risk taking and the experience gained by it play in adolescent development. This model explains much of the apparent increase in risk taking by adolescents as "an adaptive need to gain the experience required to assume adult roles and behaviors." That experience eventually changes the way people think about risk, making it more "gist-like" or thematic and making them more risk averse.

"Recent meta-analyses suggest that the way individuals think about risks and rewards changes as they mature, and current accounts of brain development must take these newer ideas into account to explain adolescent risk taking," said co-author Valerie Reyna, Ph.D., director of the Human Neuroscience Institute at Cornell University.

Romer[1] added, "The reason teens are doing all of this exploring and novelty seeking is to build experience so that they can do a better job in making the difficult and risky decisions in later life – decisions like 'Should I take this job?' or 'Should I marry this person?' There's no doubt that this period of development is a challenge for parents, but that's doesn't mean that the adolescent brain is somehow deficient or lacking in control."

[1] Daniel Romer, Ph.D

Daniel Romer, Valerie F. Reyna, Theodore D. Satterthwaite. Beyond stereotypes of adolescent risk taking: Placing the adolescent brain in developmental context. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 2017; 27: 19 DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2017.07.007 (Javascript required).

Alternate Link: Science.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes in with a story from The Intercept:

Sarahah, a new app that lets people sign up to receive anonymized, candid messages, has been surging in popularity; somewhere north of 18 million people are estimated to have downloaded it from Apple and Google’s online stores, making it the number three most downloaded free software title for iPhones and iPads.

Sarahah bills itself as a way to “receive honest feedback” from friends and employees. But the app is collecting more than feedback messages. When launched for the first time, it immediately harvests and uploads all phone numbers and email addresses in your address book. Although Sarahah does in some cases ask for permission to access contacts, it does not disclose that it uploads such data, nor does it seem to make any functional use of the information. Sarahah did not respond to requests for comment.­

"Zachary Julian, a senior security analyst at Bishop Fox, discovered Sarahah's uploading of private information when he installed the app on his Android phone, a Galaxy S5 running Android 5.1.1. The phone was outfitted with monitoring software known as BURP Suite, which intercepts internet traffic entering and leaving the device, allowing the owner to see what data is sent to remote servers. When Julian launched Sarahah on the device, BURP Suite caught the app in the act of uploading his private data.

"As soon as you log into the application, it transmits all of your email and phone contacts stored on the Android operating system," he said. He later verified the same occurs on Apple's iOS, albeit after a prompt to "access contacts," which also appears in newer versions of Android. Julian also noticed that if you haven't used the application in a while, it'll share all of your contacts again. He did some testing on the app on a Friday night, and when he booted the app on a Sunday morning, it pushed all of his contacts again."

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

SUSE has decided to let the world know it has no plans to step away from the btrfs filesystem, and plans to make it even better.

The company's public display of affection comes after Red Hat decided not to fully support the filesystem in its own Linux.

Losing a place in one of the big three Linux distros isn't a good look for any package even if, as was the case with this decision, Red Hat was never a big contributor or fan of btrfs.

[Matthias G. Eckermann] also hinted at some future directions for the filesystem. "We just start to see the opportunities from subvolume quotas when managing Quality of Service on the storage level" he writes, adding "Compression (already there) combined with Encryption (future) makes btrfs an interesting choice for embedded systems and IoT, as may the full use of send-receive for managing system patches and updates to (Linux based) 'firmware'." ®

Mmmmmm... butter-fs

Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/25/suse_btrfs_defence/

Original Submission

mrpg writes:

From mrpg comes an interesting story about how communicating in a foreign language can influence decision making.

If you could save the lives of five people by pushing another bystander in front of a train to his death, would you do it? And should it make any difference if that choice is presented in a language you speak, but isn't your native tongue?

Psychologists at the University of Chicago found in past research that people facing such a dilemma while communicating in a foreign language are far more willing to sacrifice the bystander than those using their native tongue. In a paper published Aug. 14 in Psychological Science, the UChicago researchers take a major step toward understanding why that happens.

"Until now, we and others have described how using a foreign language affects the way that we think," said Boaz Keysar, the UChicago psychology professor in whose lab the research was conducted. "We always had explanations, but they were not tested directly. This is really the first paper that explains why, with evidence."

[...] "We discovered that people using a foreign language were not any more concerned with maximizing the greater good," said lead author Sayuri Hayakawa, a UChicago doctoral student in psychology. "But rather, were less averse to violating the taboos that can interfere with making utility-maximizing choices."

Journal Reference: Sayuri Hayakawa, David Tannenbaum, Albert Costa, Joanna D. Corey, Boaz Keysar. Thinking More or Feeling Less? Explaining the Foreign-Language Effect on Moral Judgment. Psychological Science, 2017; 095679761772094 DOI: 10.1177/0956797617720944

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Original article in Deutsches Zentrum für Diabetesforschung e.V. (DZD):

In mice that are given a high-fat diet, an increased production of the enzyme DPP4* by the liver promotes an increase in body fat, the development of fatty liver disease and insulin resistance. These were the findings of a current study by DZD-researchers in Potsdam and Tübingen. "In combination with our observations from additional human and cell studies, these results indicate that increased DPP4 production by the liver is the cause rather than the consequence of a fatty liver and insulin resistance," says the head of the study, Annette Schürmann from the German Institute for Human Nutrition Research (DIfE), a partner of the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD). The research team led by Schürmann has now published its findings in Molecular Metabolism.

"DPP4 inhibitors** are well known from the treatment of diabetes. Therefore, in our opinion, they could be used in the future not only to improve the sugar metabolism but also to treat non-alcoholic fatty liver disease***," adds the lead author of the study, Christian Baumeier from DIfE.

[...] In addition, the scientists observed that human beings suffering from insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease have a greater amount of active DPP4 in their blood than healthy people.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story on CNET:

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is offering a clowns-only screening of Stephen King's "It," the classic horror story featuring Pennywise the murderous clown.

There are three clowns-only showings, all at Austin, Texas theaters on Sept. 9, the day after "It" opens in the US.

"For this special clown screening of IT, all attendees should arrive dressed as a clown in order to attend," the Alamo Drafthouse website explains. "Please arrive early and join us in the Barrel O' Fun (CNET note: The whaaat, now?) beginning at 5:30pm for an IT pre-party where we will have face-painters available for clown touch-ups, a photo booth, raffles for prizes, and other terrifying merriment. Please arrive in your own Pennywise best and be ready to float with us."

[Ed Note: The fear of clowns is Coulrophobia. The wikipedia page does NOT have pictures, which I find mildly amusing.]

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

From ArsTechnica

General Mills argued that it deserved to be awarded the trademark status because "consumers have come to identify the color yellow" on boxes of oats cereal with "the Cheerios brand." It has been marketed in yellow packaging since 1945, with billions in sales.

The board noted that "there is no doubt that a single color applied to a product or its packaging may function as a trademark and be entitled to registration under the Trademark Act." But that's only if those colors have become "inherently distinctive" in the eyes of consumers. Some of those examples include UPS "Brown;" T-Mobile "Magenta;" Target "Red;" John Deere "Green & Yellow;" and Home Depot "Orange." It goes without saying that anybody can still use those colors predominately in their marketing, but not direct competitors.

Regarding the box of Cheerios, however, the court ruled that consumers don't necessarily associate the yellow box of cereal with Cheerios, despite General Mills' assertion to the contrary. Consumers are confronted with a multitude of yellow boxes of oats cereal, the appeal board noted. By comparison, T-Mobile has only a handful of competitors, and none of them uses the magenta color as a distinctive mark, the appeal board said.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

On Friday, Qantas Chief Executive Officer Alan Joyce issued a public "challenge" to the companies to extend the range of Boeing's new 777X, which is slated for 2020, and the planned "Ultra-Long Range" version of Airbus's A350, which rolls out next year. Qantas hopes to take delivery of such a plane and begin its Sydney to London service in 2022, the company said as part of its full-year income results.

Qantas noted that both planes "can get close" to the requirements needed for London and New York missions. The public prodding is designed to make one or both manufacturers revisit technical schemes to edge out even greater range.

A nonstop flight from Sydney to London would shave almost four hours off current travel times that involve a stopover; for New York, travelers could save nearly three hours. Airbus, in an emailed statement, said it was equal to the challenge.

[...] Qantas flew its first so-called "Kangaroo Route" from Sydney to London in December 1947, flying a Lockheed Constellation. The trip took four days. In a few years, the kangaroo-flagged carrier hopes to do it in just over 20 hours.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A federal judge in Detroit sentenced former engineer James Liang to 40 months in prison on Friday for his role in Volkswagen AG's (VOWG_p.DE) multiyear scheme to sell diesel cars that generated more pollution than U.S. clean air rules allowed.

U.S. District Court Judge Sean Cox also ordered Liang to pay a $200,000 fine, 10 times the amount sought by federal prosecutors. Cox said he hoped the prison sentence and fine would deter other auto industry engineers and executives from similar schemes to deceive regulators and consumers.

Liang was part of a long-term conspiracy that perpetrated a "stunning fraud on the American consumer," Cox said, as the defendant's family looked on in the courtroom. "This is a very serious and troubling crime against our economic system."

Liang pleaded guilty earlier this year to misleading regulators, and had cooperated with U.S. law enforcement officials investigating Volkswagen.

Prosecutors last week recommended that Liang, 63, receive a three-year prison sentence, reflecting credit for his months of cooperation with the U.S. investigation of Volkswagen's diesel emissions fraud. Liang could have received a five-year prison term under federal sentencing guidelines. Liang's lawyers had asked for a sentence of home detention and community service.

Liang can appeal the sentence, Cox said.

Volkswagen pleaded guilty in March to three felony charges under an agreement with prosecutors to resolve the U.S. criminal probe of the company itself. It agreed to spend as much as $25 billion in the United States to resolve claims from owners and regulators and offered to buy back about 500,000 vehicles.

Volkswagen has admitted that it used software to deceive regulators in the United States and Europe from 2006 to 2015.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission