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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:45 | Votes:100

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday January 17 2018, @11:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the another-black-list-entry dept.

Exclusive: U.S. lawmakers urge AT&T to cut commercial ties with Huawei - sources

U.S. lawmakers are urging AT&T Inc, the No. 2 wireless carrier, to cut commercial ties to Chinese phone maker Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and oppose plans by telecom operator China Mobile Ltd to enter the U.S. market because of national security concerns, two congressional aides said.

[...] Earlier this month, AT&T was forced to scrap a plan to offer its customers Huawei handsets after some members of Congress lobbied against the idea with federal regulators, sources told Reuters.

The U.S. government has also blocked a string of Chinese acquisitions over national security concerns, including Ant Financial's proposed purchase of U.S. money transfer company MoneyGram International Inc.

The lawmakers are also advising U.S. firms that if they have ties to Huawei or China Mobile, it could hamper their ability to do business with the U.S. government, one aide said, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Related: NSA Spied on Chinese Government and Huawei
Kaspersky Willing to Hand Source Code Over to U.S. Government
Kaspersky Lab has been Working With Russian Intelligence
FBI Reportedly Advising Companies to Ditch Kaspersky Apps
Federal Government, Concerned About Cyberespionage, Bans Use of Kaspersky Labs Products


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday January 17 2018, @09:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the one-platform-to-rule-them-all dept.

New laptops are drawing upon features/attributes associated with smartphones, such as LTE connectivity, ARM processors, (relatively) high battery life, and walled gardens:

This year's crop of CES laptops -- which we'll define broadly to include Windows-based two-in-one hybrids and slates -- even show signs of a sudden evolutionary leap. The long-predicted PC-phone convergence is happening, but rather than phones becoming more like computers, computers are becoming more like phones.

The most obvious way this is happening is the new breed of laptops that ditch the traditional Intel (and sometimes AMD) processors for new Snapdragon processors from Qualcomm. So far, we've seen three of these Snapdragon systems announced: the HP Envy x2, the Asus NoveGo and the Lenovo Miix 630.

Laptops with lower-end processors have been tried before, with limited success. Why is now potentially the right time? Because these systems aren't being pitched as bargain basement throwaways -- and in fact, they'll cost $600 and up, the same as many mainstream laptops in the US. Instead, they promise some very high-end features, including always-on LTE connectivity (like a phone) and 20-plus hours of battery life with weeks of standby time, which also sounds more like a phone than a PC. The tradeoff is that these Snapdragon laptops run Windows 10 S, a limited version of Windows 10, which only allows apps from the official Microsoft app store. That's also similar to the walled garden of mobile OS apps many phones embrace.

[...] There's another take on phone-laptop convergence happening here at CES. Razer, the PC and accessory maker, always brings one or two inventive prototypes to CES, such as last year's triple-screen Project Valerie laptop. The concept piece for CES 2018 is Project Linda, a 13-inch laptop shell, with a large cutout where the touchpad would normally be. You drop a Razer Phone in that slot, press a button, and the two pieces connect, with the laptop body acting as a high-end dock for the phone. The phone acts as a touchpad and also a second screen, and it works with the growing number of Android apps that have been specially formatted for larger laptop screens or computer monitors.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Wednesday January 17 2018, @07:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the oughta-be-a-law dept.

Vox Media website theverge.com reports that Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA) wants answers about the recent computer chip chaos.

Congress is starting to ask hard questions about the fallout from the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. Today, Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA) sent a letter [(pdf)] requesting a briefing from Intel, AMD, and ARM about the vulnerabilities’ impact on consumers.

[...] The two vulnerabilities are “glaring warning signs that we must take cybersecurity more seriously,” McNerney argues in the letter. “Should the vulnerabilities be exploited, the effects on consumers’ privacy and our nation’s economy and security would be absolutely devastating.”

Privately disclosed to chipmakers in June of 2016, the Meltdown and Spectre bugs became public after a haphazard series of leaks earlier this month. In the aftermath, there have been significant patching problems, including an AMD patch that briefly prevented Windows computers from booting up. Intel in particular has come under fire for inconsistent statements about the impact of the bugs, and currently faces a string of proposed class-action lawsuits relating to the bugs.

Meltdown can be fixed through a relatively straightforward operating-system level patch, but Spectre has proven more difficult, and there have been significant patching problems in the aftermath. The most promising news has been Google’s Retpoline approach, which the company says can protect against the trickiest Spectre variant with little negative performance impact.

The letter calls on the CEOs of Intel, AMD, and ARM to answer (among other things) when they learned about these problems and what they are doing about it.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Wednesday January 17 2018, @06:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the actions-and-reactions dept.

Naval Commanders In 2 Deadly Ship Collisions To Be Charged With Negligent Homicide

The U.S. Navy announced Tuesday that the commanding officers of two vessels involved in separate collisions in the Pacific Ocean last year will face court-martial proceedings and possible criminal charges including negligent homicide.

The statement by Navy spokesman Capt. Greg Hicks says the decision to prosecute the commanders, and several lower-ranking officers as well, was made by Adm. Frank Caldwell.

[...] In the case of the USS Fitzgerald, the commander, two lieutenants and one lieutenant junior grade face possible charges of dereliction of duty, hazarding a vessel and negligent homicide.

The commander of the USS John S. McCain will face possible charges of dereliction of duty, hazarding a vessel and negligent homicide. A chief petty officer also faces one possible charge of dereliction of duty.

Previously: U.S. Navy Destroyer Collides With Container Vessel
10 Sailors Still Missing After U.S. Destroyer Collision With Oil Tanker
Chief of Naval Operations Report on This Summer's Destroyer Collisions


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday January 17 2018, @04:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the dont-be-puffin dept.

Deadly fugu fish flub prompts emergency warning in Aichi

The Aichi Prefecture city of Gamagori has activated an emergency warning system to alert residents to avoid eating locally purchased fugu (puffer fish) after a mix-up saw toxic parts of the delicacy go on sale.

A supermarket in the city sold five packages of the fish without removing the livers, which can contain a deadly poison.

Three of the potentially lethal specimens have been located, but the other two remain at large, local official Koji Takayanagi said.

"We are calling for residents to avoid eating fugu, using Gamagori city's emergency wireless system," which broadcasts over loudspeakers located around the city, he said.

Also at Asahi Shimbun, NPR, and Time.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday January 17 2018, @03:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the tip-your-hand dept.

Senate Democrats have put together 50 votes for a measure meant to block the Federal Communications Commission's December decision to end net neutrality rules put in place by the Obama administration.

Democrats are just one GOP vote shy of the 51-vote threshold for a Senate resolution of disapproval, which would strike down the FCC's December rules change.

"With full caucus support," Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said, "it's clear that Democrats are committed to fighting to keep the internet from becoming the Wild West where ISPs are free to offer premium service to only the wealthiest customers while average consumers are left with far inferior options."

The Democrats' effort won the support of its first Republican backer, Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), last Tuesday.

The Hill


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday January 17 2018, @01:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the new-1984-models dept.

Now that automobile manufacturers are almost more about software than hardware, your car company may know more about you than your spouse based on all the sensors in your car. The incentive to collect driver and passenger data is great. Every piece of data is used to increase revenue, especially if sold onward to third-parties.

Dunn may consider his everyday driving habits mundane, but auto and privacy experts suspect that big automakers like Honda see them as anything but. By monitoring his everyday movements, an automaker can vacuum up a massive amount of personal information about someone like Dunn, everything from how fast he drives and how hard he brakes to how much fuel his car uses and the entertainment he prefers. The company can determine where he shops, the weather on his street, how often he wears his seat belt, what he was doing moments before a wreck — even where he likes to eat and how much he weighs.

Though drivers may not realize it, tens of millions of American cars are being monitored like Dunn's, experts say, and the number increases with nearly every new vehicle that is leased or sold.

The result is that carmakers have turned on a powerful spigot of precious personal data, often without owners' knowledge, transforming the automobile from a machine that helps us travel to a sophisticated computer on wheels that offers even more access to our personal habits and behaviors than smartphones do.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Wednesday January 17 2018, @12:56PM   Printer-friendly

[Update: Reboot of beryllium was successful and our IRC services were restored without issue. Hat tip to our sysops who made this happen so smoothly! --martyb]

Linode, which hosts our servers, is rolling out fixes for the Meltdown/Spectre bugs. This necessitates a hard reboot of their servers, and that means any guest servers will be down while this happens. beryllium is scheduled for a reboot with a two-hour window starting at 2018-01-17 07:00 AM UTC (02:00 AM EST). The outage should be relatively brief — a matter of just a few minutes.

We expect this will cause our IRC (Internet Relay Chat) service to be unavailable. We do not anticipate any problems, but if things go sideways, I'm sure the community will find a way to let us know via the comments.

Planning ahead, we have learned that lithium, sodium, and boron are all scheduled for a reboot at on 2018-01-18 at 09:00 AM UTC.

We appreciate your understanding and patience as we strive to keep the impact to the site to a minimum.

[TMB Note]: Sodium is our currently configured load balancer and we weren't given enough notice to switch to Magnesium (DNS propagation can take a while), so expect ten minutes or less of site downtime. Or temporarily add 23.239.29.31 to your hosts file if ten minutes is more than you can wait.

Previously: Scheduled SN Reboots Due to Meltdown and Spectre; 2-Hour Window Starts: Fri 2018-01-12 @ 10:00:00UTC


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday January 17 2018, @12:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the kaboom dept.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/01/16/meteor-southeast-michigan-metro-detroit/1038911001/

Just about everybody is coming up with video about the meteor over the Detroit area.

"It looks like from videos and reports we've gotten (that it's a) meteor," said Jordan Dale, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in White Lake. "However, we cannot confirm it's a meteor. At this point, we're just sticking to what we know — and it was not thunder or lightning or weather-related."

The weather service by about 9 p.m. had already received dozens of reports, ranging from Flint to Toledo.

Multiple images were posted of night skies being lit up, as social media exploded with people reporting what they saw or heard.

Additional coverage at CBSNews, Click On Detroit, The Detroit News and Fox News.


Original Submission

posted by mrpg on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the AI-likes-k-pop dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

It's a commonly held grudge of listeners who are no longer pop's core demographic that the music of the moment is not what it once was [...] But [what] happens when science attempts to prove these claims? Here are some studies that suggest your parents might have been having a lot more pop fun than you are...

[...] This followed a similar study by a team from the Spanish National Research Council, lead by artificial intelligence specialist Joan Serrà, who examined nearly half a million pop songs over a similar period (in this case 1955-2010), and looked at their tonal, melodic and lyrical content. They concluded that pop has become melodically less complex, using fewer chord changes, and that pop recordings are mastered to sound consistently louder (and therefore less dynamic) at a rate of around one decibel every eight years.

[...] The Lempel-Ziv algorithm is a lossless way to compress data, by taking out repetitions, and Morris used it as a tool to examine 15,000 songs from the Billboard Hot 100 from 1958 to 2014, reducing their lyrics down to their smallest size without losing any data, and comparing their relative sizes. He found two very interesting things. The first was that in every year of study, the songs that reached the Top 10 were more repetitive than their competition. The second is that pop has become more repetitive over time, as Morris points out: "2014 is the most repetitive year on record. An average song from this year compresses 22% more efficiently than one from 1960."

Of course, none of this means that pop songs are any less fun. They may be slower and sadder than before, but if pop songs are now simpler and louder and more repetitive than they used to be, that might make up for it. In fact, a 2011 report called Music and Emotions in the Brain: Familiarity Matters, compiled by a team led by Carlos Silva Pereira suggests that the human brain enjoys knowing what is coming next in music. Having conducted fMRI scans on people listening to songs, the report concludes that, "Familiarity seems to be a crucial factor in making the listeners emotionally engaged with music."

Source: Has pop music lost its fun?


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday January 17 2018, @08:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the do-they-come-pre-tapped dept.

Google Cloud will add Montreal, the Netherlands, Los Angeles, Finland, and Hong Kong as new cloud computing regions. Google will also invest in three new undersea cables:

Google is extending its cloud computing infrastructure with the introduction of five new regions and plans to build its own undersea cable.

The advertising-to-cloud-computing giant said its new Netherlands and Montreal cloud computing regions will open in the first quarter of 2018, followed by Los Angeles, Finland, and Hong Kong.

Like other cloud infrastructure companies, Google orders its cloud computing resources into regions which are then subdivided into zones, which include one or more data centers from which customers can run their services. It currently has 15 regions made up of 44 zones.

The new cables will connect Los Angeles to Chile, the U.S. to Denmark and Ireland, and Hong Kong to Guam. The Los Angeles to Chile cable will be Google's first private undersea cable.

Google will be investing in a total of 11 undersea cables, although it would prefer not to be in the cable-building consortium business.

Also at WSJ, Reuters, and CNBC.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday January 17 2018, @07:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the chips-on-the-table dept.

Ford Motor Company plans to substantially increase its investment in electric vehicles:

Ford Motor Co's plan to double its electrified vehicle spending is part of an investment tsunami in batteries and electric cars by global automakers that now totals $90 billion and is still growing, a Reuters analysis shows.

That money is pouring in to a tiny sector that amounts to less than 1 percent of the 90 million vehicles sold each year and where Elon Musk's Tesla Inc, with sales of only three models totaling just over 100,000 vehicles in 2017, was a dominant player.

[...] "We're all in," Ford Motor Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr said of the company's $11 billion investment, announced on Sunday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. "The only question is, will the customers be there with us?"

[...] Investments in electrified vehicles announced to date include at least $19 billion by automakers in the United States, $21 billion in China and $52 billion in Germany.

Also at CNBC.

Related: Ford Pumps Cash Into Company Creating Maps for Self-Driving Cars
Ford Invests in Michigan's Autonomous Car Testing Grounds


Original Submission

posted by takyon on Wednesday January 17 2018, @05:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the faceblocked dept.

On January 15th, 2018, World Socialist Web Site reported that users are unable to share a promotional video for a January 16th online meeting, "Organizing Resistance to Internet Censorship."

Facebook has blocked users from sharing a social media video promoting the January 16 online meeting "Organizing resistance to Internet censorship," featuring World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges. The initial post of the video, uploaded Friday, cannot be shared by any user. Those who attempt to do so receive an error message that seems to imply a technical failure.

Users reported, however, that upon clicking "If you think you're seeing this message by mistake, please let us know," they were presented with a notice that clearly indicates the content had been blocked in the name of keeping Facebook "safe."

WSWS published an open letter about internet censorship and net neutrality on November 25. The FCC repealed net neutrality rules on December 14, 2017.

In this AC's opinion, Facebook is certainly within their rights to refuse to host any content for any reasons they choose. However, for many people, Facebook is the internet.

Should we worry about entrenched services such as Facebook and Google using their positions to suppress information? Does the presence or absence of net neutrality change one's analysis of the situation?


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Wednesday January 17 2018, @04:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the end-run dept.

[...] A work that might look infringing because it includes public domain material used elsewhere therefore runs the risk of being widely blocked.[...]

Although in theory those using public domain materials might be able to appeal against such an action, it would require them to know how to do that, and to have the time and the inclination to do so. One of biggest strengths of public domain materials is that they can be used without permission by anyone – especially by those who know nothing about the finer points of copyright law, and who have limited financial resources. It is precisely these individuals who will be unwilling or unable to challenge erroneous blocking by upload filters. Over time, people may even avoid drawing on public domain materials for fear that their posts will be blocked, and that they may be subject to other punishments by sites hosting their material because of their repeated copyright "offences".

Those pushing for upload filters will doubtless insist this outcome is not their intent, and that may be so. But given the impossibility of incorporating detailed legal knowledge about this famously complex area into online censorship systems, and the vulnerability of the public domain, which is particularly at risk because there is no organisation to defend it, it is inevitable that this rich resource, built up over three hundred years, will be badly affected by automated filters. If it adopts this approach, the EU will end up undermining the basic quid pro quo of copyright – that works can be used freely after a temporary monopoly has elapsed – and thus the public's acceptance that the current framework is in some sense "fair". Ironically, a draconian upload filter system brought in supposedly to defend copyright could end up leading to it being seriously de-legitimised.

Source : Don't Let Upload Filters Undermine the Public Domain


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Wednesday January 17 2018, @02:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the that-smell-again dept.

Nitrogen-fixing bacteria are a source of methane in the atmosphere:

An unexpected source of methane in the environment has been inadvertently discovered.

Nitrogen-fixing bacteria are the chief means by which nitrogen gas in the air is changed into a form that plants and animals can use. Roughly 10 percent of these nitrogen-fixing microorganisms contain the genetic code for manufacturing a back-up enzyme, called iron iron-only nitrogenase, to do their job.

Recent research reveals that this enzyme allows these microorganisms to convert nitrogen gas to ammonia and carbon dioxide into methane at the same time. The ammonia is the main product; the methane is only a sideline.

This enzymatic pathway is a previously unknown route for the natural biological production of methane.

A pathway for biological methane production using bacterial iron-only nitrogenase (DOI: 10.1038/s41564-017-0091-5) (DX)


Original Submission

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday January 17 2018, @12:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the get-on-the-blockchain-train dept.

BBC http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42630136 and many others are reporting this story,

The US firm said it was teaming up with London-based Wenn Media Group to carry out the initial coin offering (ICO).

It is part of a blockchain-based initiative to help photographers control their image rights.

Kodak also detailed plans to install rows of Bitcoin mining rigs at its headquarters in Rochester, New York.

Anyone have further details?

Kodak's Supposed Crytocurrency Entrance Appears To Be Little More Than A Rebranded Paparazzi Copyright Trolling Scheme... With The Blockchain

For a few years now I've debated writing up a post about why a "blockchain-based DRM" is an idea that people frequently talk about, but which is a really dumb idea. Because the key point in the blockchain is that it "solves"...

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

Also at Bloomberg, The Verge, and Futurism.


Original Submission #1   Original Submission #2