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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:46 | Votes:103

posted by takyon on Friday July 13 2018, @11:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-dead-yet dept.

Prominent whistleblowers and journalists defend Julian Assange at online vigil

Over the weekend, dozens of public figures, including prominent whistleblowers and journalists, took part in a 36-hour international online vigil in defence of WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange. The event was the third "Unity4J" vigil organised by independent journalist and New Zealand Internet Party leader, Suzie Dawson, since Assange's communications were cut-off by Ecuadorian authorities at their London embassy last March.

[...] Daniel Ellsberg, whose release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 exposed the extent of US criminality in Vietnam, drew a parallel between his own activities and those of WikiLeaks. Referring to WikiLeaks' 2010 publication of US war logs in Iraq and Afghanistan, he stated: "I really waited almost 40 years, after the Pentagon Papers had come out, for someone to do what I had done."

Ellsberg pointed to similarities between the attacks that had been levelled against him, and the persecution of Assange. "I was charged with 12 felony counts, a possible 150 years in prison. Nixon had in mind for me what Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have had in mind for Julian Assange," he said.

takyon: #Unity4J. See also: Why I Stand With Julian Assange at The American Conservative.

Related: FBI Whistleblower on Pierre Omidyar and His Campaign to Neuter Wikileaks
Julian Assange has His Internet Access Cut Off by Ecuador
Ecuador Spent $5 Million Protecting and Spying on Julian Assange


Original Submission

posted by mrpg on Friday July 13 2018, @08:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the hack-the-planet-the-elections-and-the-world dept.

A dozen Russian intelligence officers have been charged with conspiring to hack Democrats during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to a new indictment in the probe led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

The 12 were members of Russian military intelligence, known as the GRU, and are accused of engaging in a sustained effort to hack the computer networks of Democratic organizations and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein detailed the new charges at a mid-day press conference. Mueller, as has been his practice, did not attend the announcement. Court records show a grand jury Mueller has been using returned an indictment Friday morning.

The announcement comes days before President Trump is due to meet with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin in Finland. Rosenstein said he briefed Trump earlier this week on the charges

[...] Rosenstein said the suspects worked to "hack into computers, steal documents, and release those documents with the intent to interfere with the election."

Mueller probe indicts 12 Russians for hacking Democrats in 2016


Original Submission

posted by mrpg on Friday July 13 2018, @07:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the fabless-semiconductor-company dept.

Intel To Acquire eASIC: Lower Cost ASICs in FPGA Design Time

Intel is [...] announcing that it will acquire a company called eASIC which develops FPGA-like design tools to roll out 'structured ASICs'. These structured ASICs an intermediary between a full FPGA and a full ASIC that allow for a quick roll out time and cheaper production cost. Technically Intel has been using eASIC technology since at least 2015 in its custom Xeons, however today's announcement means that the eASIC team will become part of Intel's Programmable Solutions Group (PSG). The deal is expected to close within the next month.

eASIC.

Press release. Also at TechCrunch.


Original Submission

posted by mrpg on Friday July 13 2018, @05:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the 11111100001 dept.

Observatories Team Up to Reveal Rare Double Asteroid

New observations by three of the world's largest radio telescopes have revealed that an asteroid discovered last year is actually two objects, each about 3,000 feet (900 meters) in size, orbiting each other.

Near-Earth asteroid 2017 YE5 was discovered with observations provided by the Morocco Oukaimeden Sky Survey on Dec. 21, 2017, but no details about the asteroid's physical properties were known until the end of June. This is only the fourth "equal mass" binary near-Earth asteroid ever detected, consisting of two objects nearly identical in size, orbiting each other. The new observations provide the most detailed images ever obtained of this type of binary asteroid.

On June 21, the asteroid 2017 YE5 made its closest approach to Earth for at least the next 170 years, coming to within 3.7 million miles (6 million kilometers) of Earth, or about 16 times the distance between Earth and the Moon. On June 21 and 22, observations by NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar (GSSR) in California showed the first signs that 2017 YE5 could be a binary system. The observations revealed two distinct lobes, but the asteroid's orientation was such that scientists could not see if the two bodies were separate or joined. Eventually, the two objects rotated to expose a distinct gap between them.

2017 YE5.

Related: Binary Asteroid May Have Been Torn Apart by "Planet Nine"
NASA to Redirect an Asteroid's Moon With Kinetic Impact
Hubble Telescope Observes Binary Asteroid With Comet-Like Features
ESA Plans "Hera" Follow-Up Mission to NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday July 13 2018, @04:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the for-real-or-for-show? dept.

The Wall Street Journal (archive) reports:

"The Justice Department is trying to undo AT&T Inc.'s purchase of Time Warner Inc., appealing the ruling that last month struck down one of the era's highest-profile antitrust challenges.

The government initiated the appeal Thursday with a two-page notice in federal court, a month after U.S. District Judge Richard Leon rejected Justice Department arguments that the more than $80 billion cash-and-stock deal would suppress competition in the pay-TV industry.

[...] The matter now goes to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where a three-judge panel will consider the Justice Department's claims that Judge Leon was incorrect. The appeals process could take many months, leaving lingering uncertainty over AT&T's plans.

[...] In a more typical antitrust case, the government challenges horizontal deals involving two companies in the same business that compete head to head. The AT&T case marked the first time in 40 years that a court had seen a fully litigated challenge to a vertical merger. And it was the first major enforcement action by President Donald Trump's antitrust chief at the Justice Department, Makan Delrahim, who filed the lawsuit two months after receiving Senate confirmation."


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday July 13 2018, @02:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the very-tiny-thing-going-really-REALLY-fast dept.

A 4 Billion Light-Year Journey Ends At The South Pole

Scientists for the first time have been able to pinpoint the source of an extremely powerful version of a neutrino, a ghostly particle that can travel virtually unimpeded through space. It's an achievement that opens a whole new way of looking at the universe. The neutrino was detected by a South Pole observatory called IceCube that was specifically designed to catch the particles. It consists of a cubic kilometer of ice festooned with more than 5,000 detectors.

[...] This time, as Botner and her colleagues report [open, DOI: 10.1126/science.aat1378] [DX] in the journal Science, two observatories, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov telescope, saw a burst of gamma energy coming from the same location as the neutrino. Gamma rays are the kind of radiation one would expect to see from an object generating neutrinos. The object, known colloquially as TXS 0506+056, was something called a blazar approximately 4 billion light-years from Earth. "Blazars are very special objects," Botner says. "They are intensely bright galaxies harboring a black hole at the center."

To confirm that TXS 0506+056 was indeed the source of the single energetic neutrino detected in September, Botner and her colleagues went back through nearly a decade of data IceCube had collected. They found that other energetic neutrinos had been detected from the same location but had not been previously associated with a celestial object. Those results appear in a second Science paper [open, DOI: 10.1126/science.aat2890] [DX].

Wikipedia entry on blazar:

A blazar is a very compact quasar (quasi-stellar radio source) associated with a presumed supermassive black hole at the center of an active, giant elliptical galaxy. Blazars are among the most energetic phenomena in the universe and are an important topic in extragalactic astronomy.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday July 13 2018, @12:58PM   Printer-friendly
from the pass-it-on dept.

On a python developers' mailing list for the core developers, Python Committers, Benevolent Dictator for Life Guido van Rossum has announced that he is stepping down effective immediately and with out appointing a successor.

Now that PEP 572 is done, I don't ever want to have to fight so hard for a
PEP and find that so many people despise my decisions.

I would like to remove myself entirely from the decision process. I'll
still be there for a while as an ordinary core dev, and I'll still be
available to mentor people -- possibly more available. But I'm basically
giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL, and you all will be on
your own.

After all that's eventually going to happen regardless -- there's still
that bus lurking around the corner, and I'm not getting younger... (I'll
spare you the list of medical issues.)

I am not going to appoint a successor.

[...] I'll still be here, but I'm trying to let you all figure something out for
yourselves. I'm tired, and need a very long break.


Original Submission

posted by mrpg on Friday July 13 2018, @11:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the who-knew-what-when? dept.

SEC asking if Facebook properly warned investors of data issue -- WSJ

The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into whether Facebook gave investors enough warming about the possible misuse and improper gathering of users' data, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday (paywalled).

[...] The SEC has requested information from Facebook in an effort to learn how much the social networking company knew about Cambridge Analytica's data use, according to the Journal. In addition, the SEC reportedly wants to learn how Facebook analyzed its risk as developers shared data with others against Facebook's policies.

[...] The SEC is also looking into whether Facebook should have told shareholders about Cambridge Analytica's policy violation when it found out in 2015.

Also at MarketWatch and NYT.


Original Submission

posted by mrpg on Friday July 13 2018, @09:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the better-to-lose-a-minute-in-life dept.

A team of researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia report disturbing rates of cell phone use while driving with children in the vehicle:

A new study from a team of researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing) found that in the previous three months, about half of parents talked on a cellphone while driving when their children between the ages of 4 and 10 were in the car, while 1 in 3 read text messages and 1 in 7 used social media.

The study also found a correlation between cellphone use while children were in the car and other risky driving behaviors, such as not wearing a seat belt and driving under the influence of alcohol whether or not children were present in the car.

The findings were published in the Journal of Pediatrics.

Journal Reference:

McDonald et al. Factors Associated with Cell Phone Use While Driving in a Survey of Parents and Caregivers of Children ages 4-10 Years. Journal of Pediatrics, 2018 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2018.06.003


Original Submission

Crash fatalities and injuries caused by distracted driving constitute a public health crisis in the U.S., resulting in about 1 in 4 motor vehicle crashes. Previous research suggests that causes of distracted driving by parents and caregivers include talking on hand-held or hands-free cellphones or using phones to text, email, or access the internet.

Researchers wanted to identify specific factors associated with cellphone-related distracted driving in parents and caregivers of children between the ages of 4 and 10.

"Technology has become increasingly intertwined with our daily lives," said lead author Catherine McDonald, PhD, RN, FAAN, a Senior Fellow with CHOP's Center for Injury Research and Prevention and an Assistant Professor of Nursing in the Family and Community Health Department at Penn Nursing. "The results from this research reinforce that risky driving behaviors rarely occur in isolation, and lay the groundwork for interventions and education specifically aimed at parents who drive with young children in their cars."

The study was conducted using an online sample of 760 adults from 47 U.S. states. The respondents had to be at least 18 years old, a parent or routine caregiver of a child between the ages of 4 and 10, and had driven their oldest child between those ages at least six times in the preceding three months.

In the preceding three months, 52.2 percent of parents had talked on a hands-free phone while driving with a young child in the car, while 47 percent had done so with a hand-held phone. The study also found that 33.7 percent of parents read text messages while 26.7 percent sent text messages while driving with children. Social media also contributed to distracted driving, with 13.7 percent of respondents reporting using social media while driving with children.

The study also looked at child restraint system (CRS) use for children in the same age group. The study found that 14.5 percent of parents did not consistently use their typical CRS when driving with their children. Drivers who did not consistently use their typical CRS were more likely to engage in cellphone use while driving.

Finally, the study looked at parent and caregiver risky behavior associated with driving, including not wearing a seat belt as a driver and driving under the influence of alcohol, whether or not their children were in the car. The researchers saw a direct correlation between a history of driving under the influence and increased likelihood of all types of cellphone use while driving with children in the car. All cellphone-related distracted driving behaviors other than talking on a hands-free phone increased if a person did not always wear their seat belt while driving with children.

"When clinicians are discussing child passenger safety with families, they can use the opportunity to ask and educate about parental driving behaviors such as seat belt use and cellphone use while driving," McDonald said. "This type of education is especially pivotal today, as in-vehicle technology is rapidly changing and there is increased — and seemingly constant — reliability on cellphones. However, it is also important to note that even parents who did not engage in risky behaviors, such as not wearing a seat belt as a driver or driving under the influence of alcohol, still used their cellphones while driving."

posted by chromas on Friday July 13 2018, @08:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the glove-snap dept.

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

In a 2-1 vote, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners were not "investigative or law enforcement officers," and were therefore shielded from liability under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA).

The majority said it was "sympathetic" to concerns that its decision would leave fliers with "very limited legal redress" for alleged mistreatment by aggressive or overzealous screeners, which adds to the ordinary stresses of air travel.

"For most people, TSA screenings are an unavoidable feature of flying," but it is "squarely in the realm" of Congress to expand liability for abuses, Circuit Judge Cheryl Ann Krause wrote.

The FTCA generally affords the government sovereign immunity when employees commit intentional torts, a type of civil wrong.

Wednesday's decision was the first by a federal appeals court on whether a waiver of immunity for investigative and law enforcement officers extended to screeners.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tsa-lawsuit/tsa-screeners-win-immunity-from-abuse-claims-appeals-court-idUSKBN1K125W


Original Submission

posted by chromas on Friday July 13 2018, @06:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the fake-views dept.

Twitter has been following through on its plans to purge locked accounts:

President Donald Trump's yuge Twitter following has taken a whack.

Since Twitter started purging locked accounts on Thursday, the tweeter-in-chief has lost 300,000 followers. The president now has 53.1 million followers, according to his account page.

[...] The drop comes as Twitter follows through on its Wednesday statement that it's removing locked accounts from users' follower counts. The purge is part of an ongoing effort to clean up the social media platform after reports that some companies benefited by inflating their follower totals.

[...] In May, a US district court found that Trump couldn't block Twitter users from following his account. Seven people sued the president for blocking them after they criticized or mocked him on Twitter, citing a violation of their First Amendment rights.

The president isn't the only high-profile tweeter to lose followers in the purge. Justin Bieber shed roughly 2.7 million followers; Rihanna dropped 605,000; Katy Perry lost 1.6 million; and Taylor Swift lost 2.3 million. Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, also lost followers, seeing a fall of 1.6 million.

The president's follower count can be tracked in real time on Social Blade.


Original Submission

posted by chromas on Friday July 13 2018, @04:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the NASA-calls-the-shots dept.

NASA Needs Backup Plan To Maintain U.S. Presence At Space Station, Watchdog Says

A government watchdog agency wants NASA to come up with a contingency plan for getting American astronauts to the International Space Station.

The recommendation is one of the major takeaways in a 47-page report from the Government Accountability Office on what is known as the Commercial Crew Program.

[...] Under the Commercial Crew Program, NASA chose SpaceX and Boeing to develop the next generation of crew capsules to take the place of the shuttle. The two companies are competing to see which one will be the first private company to launch American astronauts into space.

The GAO's report acknowledges that SpaceX and Boeing have made "progress developing their crew transportation systems," but that "both contractors have further delayed the certification milestone to early 2019." The companies had initially been required to prove to NASA that their spacecraft would meet the agency's requirements for human space flight by 2017.

Also at Space News and Ars Technica.


Original Submission

posted by chromas on Friday July 13 2018, @03:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the nesticle dept.

Ars Technica is reporting on a recent discovery which may bring new life to an old system:

Fans of the early-2000s era GameCube version of the original Animal Crossing likely remember the game including a handful of emulated NES titles that could be played by obtaining in-game items for your house. What players back then didn't know is that the NES emulator in Animal Crossing can also be used be used to play any generic NES ROM stored on a GameCube memory card.

Security researcher James Chambers discovered the previously unused and undocumented feature buried in the original Animal Crossing game code and detailed his methodology and findings in a technically oriented Medium post this week.

The key to opening Animal Crossing's NES emulator is the game's generic "NES console" item. Usually, this item simply tells players who try to use it that "I want to play my NES, but I don't have any software" (separate in-game items are used to play the NES ROMs that are included on the Animal Crossing disc).

While searching the Animal Crossing code for access to hidden developer menus, though, Chambers discovered that activating this in-game NES actually causes the game to mount and search the player's memory card for valid NES ROM files, using functions like "famicom_get_disksystem_titles" and "memcard_game_list." After a good deal of debugging through an emulator, Chambers deciphered the specific file format needed to get Animal Crossing to recognize NES ROM files stored on the memory card, which involves inserting specific checksum, file name, and ROM header values in specific locations before the game data itself.

After a bit of metadata and emulator tweaking, Chambers says he was able to load Mega Man, Pinball and Battletoads onto the GameCube through the in-game emulator, as well as a homebrew test ROM created years after Animal Crossing was made.

[...] And if you want to make use of Nintendo's unused GameCube-to-NES emulation features today, Chambers has released GitHub source code that lets you generate your own Animal Crossing-friendly NES ROM files. You can test out those files for yourself using a virtual memory card loaded into the Dolphin emulator or on an actual GameCube using special memory card hardware.


Original Submission

posted by chromas on Friday July 13 2018, @01:23AM   Printer-friendly
from the yoink dept.

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

Hackers have breached the website of VSDC, a popular company that provides free audio and video conversion and editing software.

Three different incidents have been recorded during which hackers changed the download links on the VSDC website with links that initiated downloads from servers operated by the attackers.

[...Chinese security firm] Qihoo experts said the first and third hijacks were the ones at a larger scale and affected the most users.

Users who downloaded VSDC software on those days have been infected with three different malware strains. Qihoo says victims received a JavaScript file disguised as VSDC software. This file would download a PowerShell script, which, in turn, would download three other files —an infostealer, a keylogger, and a remote access trojan (RAT).

[...] To its credit and unlike many companies nowadays, VSDC admitted to the hacks in an email to Bleeping Computer.

"Unfortunately, we did have hacker attacks, but they have already been stopped and all the vulnerabilities detected and removed," Alexander Galkin, a VSDC Project Manager told us.

Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/popular-software-site-hacked-to-redirect-users-to-keylogger-infostealer-more/


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Thursday July 12 2018, @11:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the Maybe-Don't-Try-this-at-home dept.

For those in the US with a combined interest in 3D-Printers, intersections of the 1st and 2nd Amendments, and legal precedents; Cody Wilson has been fighting the US Government for half a decade.

Short version: after Wilson uploaded his 3D pistol plans to his site, over 100,000 people downloaded it - this drew the attention of the US authorities, who tried to use the International Trade in Arms Regulations (ITAR) to force a take-down.

The authorities argued that by posting the 3D printer plans for a firearm, Mr. Wilson was effectively exporting firearms, and subject to federal regulation. Eventually the Department of Justice dropped the case, paving the way for DIY'ers to publish such things freely.

The article cites 'promises' made by DoJ to move the regulations to another department.

Wired's article: A Landmark Legal Shift Opens Pandora's Box for DIY Guns (archive)

Related: The $1,200 Machine That Lets Anyone Make a Metal Gun at Home
Japanese Gun Printer Goes to Jail
Suspected 3D-Printed Gun Parts and Plastic Knuckles Seized in Australia
FedEx Refuses to Ship Defense Distributed's Ghost Gunner CNC Mill
Man Who Used CNC Mill to Manufacture AR-15 "Lowers" Sentenced to 41 Months
Ghost Gunner Software Update Allows the Milling of an M1911 Handgun


Original Submission