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Nebraska regulators approved an alternative route Monday for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. It was the last major regulatory hurdle facing project operator TransCanada Corp., though opponents say another round of federal approval may now be needed.

The Nebraska Public Service Commission's ruling was on the Nebraska route TransCanada has proposed to complete the $8 billion, 1,179-mile (1,897-kilometer) pipeline to deliver oil from Alberta, Canada, to Texas Gulf Coast refineries. The proposed Keystone XL route would cross parts of Montana, South Dakota and most of Nebraska to Steele City, Nebraska.

The long-delayed project was rejected by President Barack Obama in 2015, citing concerns about carbon pollution. President Donald Trump revived it in March, approving a permit.

[...] The five-member Nebraska Public Service Commission was forbidden by law from factoring pipeline safety or the risk of spills into its decision because pipeline safety is a federal responsibility. So, it couldn't take into account a spill of 210,000 gallons (790,000 liters) of oil on the existing Keystone pipeline in South Dakota announced on Thursday.

Also at Alternative Keystone XL route gets approved in Nebraska

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Phoenix666 writes:

Scientist's lives matter:

The tasty Japanese seaweed nori is ubiquitous today, but that wasn't always true. Nori was once called "lucky grass" because every year's harvest was entirely dependent on luck. Then, during World War II, luck ran out. No nori would grow off the coast of Japan, and farmers were distraught. But a major scientific discovery on the other side of the planet revealed something unexpected about the humble plant and turned an unpredictable crop into a steady and plentiful food source.
...
Fortunately, on an island at the other end of Eurasia, Kathleen Drew-Baker had recently gotten fired. She had been a lecturer in botany at the University of Manchester where she studied algae that reproduced using spores rather than flowers. But the university did not employ married women. So when she got married to fellow academic Henry Wright-Baker she was kicked off the faculty and relegated to a job as an unpaid research fellow.

Drew-Baker focused on a type of nori unfamiliar to nearly everyone: Porphyra umbilicalis. It's a leafy seaweed that grows off the coast of Wales. Locals harvest it, grind it up, and use it to make bread or soup. Known colloquially as laver, it's still eaten in Britain but has not attained the international standing of nori.
...
Thanks to Drew-Baker's work, Segawa was able to invent the industrial process that lead to the stable, predictable production of nori, for which everyone with a taste for sushi should be grateful.

If not for her work, sushi rolls would probably not be eaten today.

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takyon writes:

Uber plans to purchase 24,000 Volvo XC90 SUVs between 2019 and 2021. The number is set to change:

Uber has entered into an agreement with carmaker Volvo to purchase 24,000 of its XC90 SUVs between 2019 and 2021 to form a fleet of autonomous vehicles, according to Bloomberg News. The XC90 is the base of Uber's latest-generation self-driving test car, which features sensors and autonomous driving computing capability installed by Uber after purchase on the XC90 vehicle.

The deal is said to be worth around $1.4 billion, per the Financial Times, with the XC90 starting at $46,900 in the U.S. in terms of base model consumer pricing. Uber is already testing the XC90 in Arizona, San Francisco and Pittsburgh in trials with safety drivers on board to help refine and improve their software. Uber also paired up with Volvo to jointly develop autonomous driving and a vehicle ready for self-driving implementation, with investment from both sides committed last year.

Also at NYT.

Previously: Uber Testing Driverless Car in Pittsburgh
Uber to Begin Picking Up Passengers With Autonomous Cars Next Month
Uber's Self-Driving Cars to be Tested in San Francisco

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takyon writes:

Four billion passenger pigeons vanished. Their large population may have been what did them in

Four billion passenger pigeons once darkened the skies of North America, but by the end of the 19th century, they were all gone. Now, a new study reveals that the birds' large numbers are ironically what did them in. The pigeons evolved quickly, but in such a way to make them more vulnerable to hunting and other threats.

[...] In 2014, Wen-San Huang, an evolutionary biologist at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) in Taipei, and colleagues turned to DNA in an attempt to solve the mystery. Genetic material from four 19th century museum specimens revealed that the species had relatively low genetic diversity—meaning that most individuals were remarkably similar to each other—and that its numbers had fluctuated 1000-fold for millions of years. Hunting and habitat loss came during a time when the species was already declining, the team concluded, which pushed the birds over the edge.

But the new study lays the lion's share of the blame back on people. Beth Shapiro, a paleogenomicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and colleagues sequenced the complete genomes of two passenger pigeons, and analyzed the mitochondrial genomes—which reside in structures that power cells—of 41 individuals. The specimens came from throughout the bird's range. In addition, they reanalyzed data from Hung's group, and, for comparison, sequenced the bird's closest living relative, the band-tailed pigeon.

The Secret Correspondence Between Donald Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks

maxwell demon writes:

The Atlantic writes:

The transparency organization asked the president's son for his cooperation—in sharing its work, in contesting the results of the election, and in arranging for Julian Assange to be Australia's ambassador to the United States.

[...] The messages, obtained by The Atlantic, were also turned over by Trump Jr.'s lawyers to congressional investigators. They are part of a long—and largely one-sided—correspondence between WikiLeaks and the president's son that continued until at least July 2017. The messages show WikiLeaks, a radical transparency organization that the American intelligence community believes was chosen by the Russian government to disseminate the information it had hacked, actively soliciting Trump Jr.'s cooperation. WikiLeaks made a series of increasingly bold requests, including asking for Trump's tax returns, urging the Trump campaign on Election Day to reject the results of the election as rigged, and requesting that the president-elect tell Australia to appoint Julian Assange ambassador to the United States.

Its a quite long, but interesting article.

Kushner Failed to Hand Over Emails

takyon writes:

Senators: Kushner Didn't Disclose Emails On WikiLeaks, 'Russian Overture'

Senior White House adviser and son-in-law to the president Jared Kushner failed to hand over to Senate investigators emails concerning contacts with WikiLeaks and a "Russian backdoor overture," according to a letter sent by two senior lawmakers.

The letter, released Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and its ranking Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, says Kushner failed to turn over "September 2016 email communications to Mr. Kushner concerning WikiLeaks" and other emails pertaining to a "Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite."

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Fnord666 writes:

A Pentagon contractor left a vast archive of social-media posts on a publicly accessible Amazon account in what appears to be a military-sponsored intelligence-gathering operation that targeted people in the US and other parts of the world.

The three cloud-based storage buckets contained at least 1.8 billion scraped online posts spanning eight years, researchers from security firm UpGuard's Cyber Risk Team said in a blog post published Friday. The cache included many posts that appeared to be benign, and in many cases those involved from people in the US, a finding that raises privacy and civil-liberties questions. Facebook was one of the sites that originally hosted the scraped content. Other venues included soccer discussion groups and video game forums. Topics in the scraped content were extremely wide ranging and included Arabic language posts mocking ISIS and Pashto language comments made on the official Facebook page of Pakistani politician Imran Khan.

[...] In Friday's post, UpGuard analyst Dan O'Sullivan wrote:

Massive in scale, it is difficult to state exactly how or why these particular posts were collected over the course of almost a decade. Given the enormous size of these data stores, a cursory search reveals a number of foreign-sourced posts that either appear entirely benign, with no apparent ties to areas of concern for US intelligence agencies, or ones that originate from American citizens, including a vast quantity of Facebook and Twitter posts, some stating political opinions. Among the details collected are the web addresses of targeted posts, as well as other background details on the authors which provide further confirmation of their origins from American citizens.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/vast-archive-from-pentagon-intel-gathering-operation-left-open-on-amazon/

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mrpg writes:

http://radaronline.com/celebrity-news/charles-manson-deathbed/

The end could be near for Charles Manson.

The legendary mass murderer is on his death bed at a Bakersfield, Ca. hospital, according to reports.

[...] Manson, 83, has spent much of the past year dealing with the aftermath of internal bleeding from a lesion on his intestines.

Insiders say he was admitted three days ago and "it's not going to get any better for him."

See also: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/charles-manson-grave-condition-california-hospital-article-1.3635813
http://kron4.com/2017/11/15/report-cult-leader-charles-manson-hospitalized-in-bakersfield/

Update: Charles Manson, Cult Leader Behind Tate-LaBianca Murders, Dead at 83
Charles Manson dies aged 83 after four decades in prison
The terrible charisma of Charles Manson
The human side of Charlie Manson
Charles Manson, whose cult slayings horrified world, dies
Cult leader Charles Manson dead at age 83 (2:13 video)

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Fnord666 writes:

A New York state judge has concluded that a powerful police surveillance tool known as a stingray, a device that spoofs legitimate mobile phone towers, performs a "search" and therefore requires a warrant under most circumstances.

As a New York State Supreme Court judge in Brooklyn ruled earlier this month in an attempted murder case, New York Police Department officers should have sought a standard, probable cause-driven warrant before using the invasive device.

The Empire State court joins others nationwide in reaching this conclusion. In September, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals also found that stingrays normally require a warrant, as did a federal judge in Oakland, California, back in August.

According to The New York Times, which first reported the case on Wednesday, People v. Gordon is believed to be the first stingray-related case connected to the country's largest city police force.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/if-nypd-cops-want-to-snoop-on-your-phone-they-need-a-warrant-judge-rules/

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Fnord666 writes:

The US Navy and NASA have joined the search for an Argentine Armada (navy) diesel-electric attack submarine—the ARA San Juan (S-42)—and its crew of 44 sailors missing in the Southern Argentine Sea. The last contact with the TR-1700 class sub, built in 1983 by the German shipbuilder Thyssen Nordseewerke, was on November 15.

NASA has dispatched a modified P-3 Orion patrol plane—previously used by the Navy for submarine hunting—to aid in the search. The P-3 is equipped with a magnetic anomaly detector (or magnetometer), a gravimeter for detecting small fluctuations in the Earth's gravity, infrared cameras, and other sensors for measuring ice thickness. With that array, the P-3 may be able to detect the submerged submarine.

[...] The NASA P-3 joins three Argentine Armada ships in the search—the destroyer ARA Sarandí (D-13) and two corvettes, ARA Rosales (P-42) and ARA Drummond (P-31). Reuters reports that Argentine naval spokesman Enrique Balbi told reporters today, "We are investigating the reasons for the lack of communication [with the submarine]. If there was a communication problem, the boat would have to come to the surface." The submarine was traveling from Ushuaia to Mar del Plata, and it was expected to stay on course regardless of communications. The lack of any sighting or contact led to a request for assistance from NASA.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/nasa-icebridge-flying-lab-aids-in-search-for-missing-argentine-navy-sub/

The search has been hampered by bad weather and 20-foot waves.

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takyon writes:

Have you seen headlines that look like the following?

Nibiru BLACKOUT: Fears Planet X could knock out power worldwide
Nibiru PROOF: Footage sparks claims Planet X spotted over UK
Governments 'ALREADY preparing for Planet X apocalypse'
Could the end of the world come TODAY? Mysterious planet Nibiru 'set to wipe out all life with apocalyptic earthquakes'
Nibiru Apocalypse Upon Us Again—Here's How Yellowstone, Nuclear War and Asteroids Could Actually End the World

NASA scientist David Morrison has taken the time to debunk Nibiru... repeatedly (archive):

"I assumed that Nibiru was the sort of Internet rumor that would quickly pass," Morrison wrote in 2008, after his "Ask an Astrobiologist" website had become inundated with predictions that Nibiru was going to cross paths with Earth in 2012. "I now receive at least one question per day, ranging from anguished ('I can't sleep; I am really scared; I don't want to die') to the abusive ('Why are you lying; you are putting my family at risk; if NASA denies it then it must be true.')" he wrote.

Morrison laid out a detailed explanation, which he would repeat in years to come: There is no evidence that Nibiru exists; if it did exist, it would have screwed up the outer planets' orbits long ago; and people have predicted its arrival before and been wrong.

But to no avail:

Fnord666 writes:

Facebook is no stranger when it comes to open sourcing its computing knowledge. Over the years, it has consistently created software and hardware internally, then transferred that wisdom to the open source community to let them have it. Today, it announced it was open sourcing its modular network routing software called Open/R, as the tradition continues.

"Open/R is a distributed networking application platform. It runs on different parts of the network. Instead of relying on protocols for networking routing, it gives us flexibility to program and control a large variety of modern networks," Omar Baldonado, Engineering Director at Facebook explained.

[...] "This goes along with movement toward disaggregation of the network. If you open up the hardware and open up the software on top of it, it benefits everyone," Baldonado said.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/15/facebook-open-sources-open-r-distributed-networking-software/

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takyon writes:

India, Japan working on lunar sample return mission

India plans to visit the moon a third time and also return, with Japan for company this time.

Their lander and rover mission will bring samples back from moon, the chiefs of the two space agencies said on Friday.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have started to work out the contours of their joint trip — which will be the third for both countries.

They did not say when it would be sent. The plans are in the early stages: Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman and Secretary, Department of Space, A.S.Kiran Kumar, and JAXA president Naoki Okumura said the 'implementation arrangements' are likely be reached in a couple of months.

Related: Japan Planning to Put a Man on the Moon Around 2030
Enter the Moon Cave
India's Chandrayaan-2 Moon Mission Planned for 2018

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takyon writes:

Even small black holes emit gravitational waves when they collide, and LIGO heard them

LIGO scientists say they have discovered gravitational waves coming from another black hole merger, and it's the tiniest one they've ever seen.

The findings, submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters, could shed light on the diversity of the black hole population — and may help scientists figure out why larger black holes appear to behave a little differently from the smaller ones.

"Its mass makes it very interesting," said Salvatore Vitale, a data analyst and theorist with the LIGO Lab at MIT. The discovery, he added, "really starts populating more of this low-mass region that [until now] was quite empty."

The black holes had estimated masses of around 12 and 7 solar masses.

Related: LIGO May Have Detected Merging Neutron Stars for the First Time
First Joint Detection of Gravitational Waves by LIGO and Virgo
"Kilonova" Observed Using Gravitational Waves, Sparking Era of "Multimessenger Astrophysics"

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realDonaldTrump writes:

"The world's longest aircraft dubbed the 'Flying Bum' was seriously damaged on Saturday after it slipped its moorings and crashed into a field....
'The aircraft has a safety system which operates automatically in circumstances of the aircraft breaking free of its mast, and is designed to rip open the hull and deflate the aircraft.'"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5095481/

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canopic jug writes:

The Inquirer writes about research carried out by Google and the University of California which found over than 1.9 billion usernames and passwords available on the black market, many of which provide access to active Google accounts.

The researchers used Google's proprietary data to see whether or not stolen passwords could be used to gain access to user accounts, and found that an estimated 25 per cent of the stolen credentials can successfully be used by cyber crooks to gain access to functioning Google accounts.

Source:
Google: 25 per cent of black market passwords can access accounts
Data breaches, phishing, or malware? Understanding the risks of stolen credentials

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