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Submission + - Canadian Internet Surveillance dies a quiet, lonely death. (theglobeandmail.com)

Submitted by
Dr Caleb
Dr Caleb writes: "The Internet surveillance legislation sponsored by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has disappeared down a dark legislative hole. For all intents and purposes, the bill is dead. If the Harper government still wants to pass a law that would make it easier for police to track people who use the web to commit crimes, it will have to start from scratch.

A follow up from the Minister of "Against Online Surveillance? You Must Be 'For' Child Porn""
Medicine

Submission + - Paralyzed Man Regains Hand Function after Breakthrough Nerve Rewiring Procedure (medicaldaily.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A 71-year-old man who became paralyzed from the waist down and lost all use of both hands in a 2008 car accident has regained motor function in his fingers after doctors rewired his nerves to bypass the damaged ones in a pioneering surgical procedure, according to a case study published on Tuesday.
ISS

Submission + - Psychedelic Star Trails and City Lights From Orbit (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "Streaks of psychedelic colors show the passage of cities below the International Space Station (ISS), airglow in Earth's atmosphere and the circling motion of stars in this stunning new image from Expedition 31 Flight Engineer Don Pettit. Pettit created the image by combining 18 long-exposure digital images taken with a camera mounted inside the ISS on March 16, 2012. Because of the limitations of digital imaging sensors, multiple exposures are needed to get such an image."
Science

Submission + - MIT Study: Prolonged Low-level Radiation Damage Heals (mit.edu)

Submitted by JSBiff
JSBiff writes: A new study from MIT scientists suggests that the guidelines governments use to determine when to evacuate people following a nuclear accident may be too conservative.

The study, led by Bevin Engelward and Jacquelyn Yanch and published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found that when mice were exposed to radiation doses about 400 times greater than background levels for five weeks, no DNA damage could be detected.
Canada

Submission + - Byron Sonne Cleared of Explosives Charges (thestar.com)

Submitted by davegravy
davegravy writes: Byron Sonne, the Toronto-based security consultant / chemistry hobbyist / geek who was arrested leading up to the Toronto G-20 for alleged plans to bomb the event, has been found not guilty of all charges.

Sonne was held in prison for 11 months without receiving bail and the ruling comes 2 years after his arrest. Sonne is considered by many in the Toronto security community as a champion of civil rights and a sharp critic of security theatre.
Privacy

Submission + - 'Big brother' lamp posts can hear, see and bark 'Obey!' at you (rt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: America welcomes a new brand of smart street lightning systems: energy-efficient, long-lasting, complete with LED screens to show ads. They can also spy on citizens in a way George Orwell would not have imagined in his worst nightmare.
Apple

Submission + - Mac Clone Maker Saga Ends as SCOTUS Denies Appeal (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "The four-year-old saga of Psystar, a Florida Mac clone maker that was crushed by Apple, ended Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear its appeal of a lower court ruling. The decision to not consider the case (download PDF) upheld a ruling last September by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. That ruling confirmed a permanent injunction against Psystar that prevented the company from copying, using or selling OS X, and blocked it from selling machines with Apple's operating system preinstalled. 'We are sad,' said K.A.D. Camera of the Houston firm Camera & Sibley LLP, in an email reply today to a request for comment. Camera represented Psystar in its bid to get its appeal heard. 'I expect the Supreme Court will eventually take a case on this important issue.' Last year, Camera had said, 'This is far from over,' after the Ninth Circuit's decision. Apparently, it is."
Facebook

Submission + - Google+ is a ghost town, study says (bgr.com)

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: Google’s emerging social network Google+ may boast big user numbers, but a new study suggests that social activity and user engagement are anything but impressive. Intended to give Google a stronger grip on the massive amount of data shared by users on social networks, Google’s answer to Facebook opened its doors to the public last September. After using some user acquisition methods that seemed a bit desperate, Google revealed in December that Google+ was then home to 62 million users. Google+ boasted an impressive 100 million users as of early April, but according to eCommerce analytics firm RJ Metrics, the social network is not the waterfall of data Google hoped it would be...
Games

Submission + - Android Apps You'll NEVER See On The iOS App Store (modojo.com)

Submitted by buffdaily247
buffdaily247 writes: If Android users have a leg up on iOS supporters, it's the openness of Google's platform, which gives developers a chance to release games and applications that would never see the light of day on the App Store. Some wouldn't make it simply because of legality reasons, while others deal with mature and at times disturbing subject matter that would make the eggheads in Cupertino (and the millions of parents that give their kids "i" devices to play with) cringe. That said, here's a small glimpse at Android's most controversial wares.
Security

Submission + - Fearmongering About Cyberwar And Cybersecurity Is Working: American Public Very, (techdirt.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "Well, it looks like all the fearmongering about hackers shutting down electrical grids and making planes fall from the sky is working. No matter that there's no evidence of any actual risk, or that the only real issue is if anyone is stupid enough to actually connect such critical infrastructure to the internet (the proper response to which is: take it off the internet), fear is spreading. Of course, this is mostly due to the work of a neat combination of ex-politicians/now lobbyists working for defense contractors who stand to make a ton of money from the panic — enabled by politicians who seem to have no shame in telling scary bedtime stories that have no basis in reality.

But it's all working. And, by working, I mean scaring the public unnecessarily. As reported by Wired, a new survey from Unisys finds that Americans are more worried about cybersecurity threats than terrorism, and they seem pretty worried about those threats. When asked about which security issues were the highest priority, survey respondents noted:"
Hardware

Submission + - DDR4 May Replace Mobile Memory For Less (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: The upcoming shift from Double Data Rate 3 (DDR3) RAM to its successor, DDR4, will herald in a significant boost in both memory performance and capacity for data center hardware and consumer products alike. Because of greater density, 2X performance and lower cost, with the upcoming specification and products will for the first time mean DDR may be used in mobile devices instead of LPDDR. Today, mobile devices use low-power DDR (LPDDR) memory, the current iteration of which uses 1.2v of power. While the next generation of mobile memory, LPDDR3, will further reduce that power consumption (probably by 35% to 40%), it will also likely cost 40% more than DDR4 memory.
Open Source

Submission + - Moving From CouchDB To MySQL (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Sauce Labs had outgrown CouchDB and too much unplanned downtime made them switch to MySQL. With 20-20 hindsight they wrote about their CouchDB experience. But Sauce certainly isn't the first organization to switch databases. Back in 2009, Till Klampaeckel wrote a series of blog posts about moving in the opposite direction — from MySQL to CouchDB. Klampaeckel said the decision was about 'using the right tool for the job.' But the real story may be that programmers are never satisfied with the tool they have."

Submission + - Air defence rockets left unguarded in London (philosophers-stone.co.uk)

Submitted by
Big Hairy Ian
Big Hairy Ian writes: ""Amateur video posted on the internet shows military rockets left unguarded outside a block of flats in Bow, East London, as Britain’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) prepares to deploy missiles on top of flats in London during the 2012 Olympics.

The video was posted by journalist Brian Whelan who lives in Bow Quarter, London. The video shows unguarded military rockets with nobody around.

The unguarded military rockets were part of the MoD’s security plans for the London Olympics. Earlier this week, the MoD confirmed that six sites, including two residential blocks of flats, would be tested as launch pads for missile systems in order to combat air threats during the Olympics.

Local residents have expressed their anger over the plans saying they were not consulted and questioning why the MoD did not build a missile base instead of using residential flats as a missile base.""
Windows

Submission + - Avira Premium causes premium problems (avira.com)

Submitted by Adesso
Adesso writes: Seem Avira is having difficulty with a update of all there Premium customers. A update that has been downloaded over 70 million times is causing the 32-bit version in Windows to block almost all critical application. Avira has responded promptly on a interim solution for this problem.

In most cases this causes Windows to not boot properly.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Custom home server with video capture

Submitted by gr3yh47
gr3yh47 writes: Fellow Slashdotters,
I am looking to build a home server to serve a few purposes — media server, backup/general storage, low to mid range gaming — but, most importantly (to me) I want to be able to capture video input from my consoles. I need to be able to run my component video and composite video systems through it. I need the same outputs as well so i can run the signal to the TV without splitting. And, Ideally, I'd like capture to happen automatically whenever the box detects a signal.

should I go intel or AMD? what OS? what video cap hardware and software? what other hardware should I grab?

I'd like to keep it under/around $1000
Science

Submission + - Iranian physics student from UT gets 10 years in jail for spying (nature.com)

Submitted by scibri
scibri writes: Omid Kokabee, a laser physics graduate student from the University of Texas who has been imprisoned in Tehran for the past 15 months, was sentenced to 10 years in jail on Sunday for allegedly conspiring with foreign countries against Iran.

Kokabee was arrested in February 2011 while on a trip home, and charged with “communicating with a hostile government” (ie Israel) and “illegal earnings”. He has consistently denied the charges, and refused to speak at his trial, where no evidence against him was presented.

Several international science groups, including the American Physical Society, have spoken up in his defence, and an online petition has been set up in support.
AMD

Submission + - AMD detonates Trinity: Behold Bulldozer's second coming (extremetech.com) 1

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "It’s been a turbulent 12 months for AMD. Since the company launched Llano, its first mainstream “Fusion” part, it has replaced its CEO, brought in multiple new executives, debuted a disappointing architecture, delayed its next-generation Brazos parts by a full year, and outlined a comprehensive vision of the future that de-emphasizes cutting-edge process node transitions in favor of re-useable IP blocks that can be shared between multiple SoCs (system-on-a-chip). When it launched last year, Bulldozer ran hot, scaled poorly, and was less efficient than its predecessor. When it came to building Llano’s successor, AMD clearly had its work cut out for it. How does Trinity do, then? Well, on the GPU side it comfortably holds its own against Intel's Ivy Bridge HD-4000, but the Piledriver CPU still doesn't come close to Sandy Bridge, let alone Ivy Bridge. But really, Trinity was never intended to compete directly with Ivy Bridge. AMD’s goal with Trinity is to position the CPU as a successor to Llano, a further fulfillment of the company’s “Fusion” vision, and as an anchor in the popular $400-$700 segment. Based on what we’ve seen today, and a few educated guesses, it’s got a fair chance of pulling it off — short term."
Politics

Submission + - Chile Threatens To Drop Out Of TPP Negotiations Due To Ridiculous US Demands Abo (techdirt.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "You may remember that some officials in Chile recently began wondering what benefit they would get from agreeing to be a part of TPP. It seems that view is going even further. There was just another negotiating round and it appears (as we've expected, but don't know for sure because the US negotiators, led by Ron Kirk refuse to be even remotely transparent) that the US's strong position on IP is scaring off Chile. A high level government official is now saying that the country is considering pulling out of the TPP negotiations unless the US "significantly moderates its intellectual property demands." The article suggests that Chile is willing to move forward with much of the rest of the agreement, but the ridiculous USTR position on IP is giving it reason to be concerned."

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