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Censorship

Submission + - UK Government Changes Tack And Demands Default Porn Block (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by
judgecorp
judgecorp writes: "British Prime Minister David Cameron is set to reverse a policy announced last week, and demand that ISPs filter adult content by default. This system would require users to actively opt out of a filter designed to block adult content and material about self-harm. Last week, after consultation with parents, the Department for Education had said that an opt-in system would be sufficient and no default porn block would be required, but the Daily Mail has announced triumphantly that Cameron will be presenting the policy in the paper. MP Claire Perry, who has argued for the block, will be in charge — and freedom of speech campaigners have branded the sudden change of mind as "chaotic"."

Submission + - Germany hits 25% renewable power, transition going smoothly says government (nhk.or.jp)

Submitted by
AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: "The German government says the country's shift to renewable energy is going smoothly, with such energy now accounting for a quarter of all power consumption. German economics minister Philipp Roesler said the government has already taken 8 nuclear reactors offline, but this has had no impact on keeping the energy supply stable.

As well as increased capacity there has been a drive to save energy. Some Germans are opposed to price increases, although other countries are experiencing similar hikes."
Technology

Submission + - Using Technology To Make Guns Safer

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Farhad Manjoo writes that there are a number of technologies that gunmakers could add to their products that might prevent hundreds or thousands of deaths per year. One area of active research is known as the “smart gun”—a trigger-identification system that prevents a gun from being fired by anyone other than its authorized user with researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology creating a working prototype of a gun that determines whether or not to fire based on a user’s “grip pattern." Gunmakers been slow to add other safety technologies as well, including indicators that show whether a gun is loaded and “magazine safeties” that prevent weapons from being fired when their ammunition magazine is removed (PDF) that could save 400 lives a year. So why aren’t gunmakers making safer guns? Because guns are exempt from most of the consumer safety laws that have improved the rest of American life because the Consumer Product Safety Commission, charged with looking over thousands of different kinds of products, is explicitly prohibited from regulating firearms. In 2005, Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which immunizes gun makers against lawsuits resulting from “misuse” of the products. If they can’t be sued and can’t be regulated, gunmakers have no incentive to make smarter guns. A week before the Newtown massacre, Joseph Loughrey went to a gun store to sell some of his weapons. Loughrey had unloaded the magazine on his handgun, but he didn’t know there was a still a round in the chamber. When he set the gun down on the center console of his truck, it went off, killing his 7-year-old son. " A magazine safety would have prevented Loughrey’s gun from going off after he’d removed the magazine. A smart trigger would have prevented the gun from firing without Loughrey’s hand being on the grip," writes Manjoo. "But Loughrey’s gun lacked both those safety devices, because nobody has ever forced gun makers to live up to the same basic safety requirements as other American companies.""

Submission + - MIT research shows new magnetic state that could aid quantum computing (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Researchers at MIT and other institutions have demonstrated a new type of magnetism, only the third kind ever found, and it may find its way into future communications, computing and data storage technologies. Working with a tiny crystal of a rare mineral that took 10 months to make, the researchers for the first time have demonstrated a magnetic state called a QSL (quantum spin liquid), according to MIT physics professor Young Lee. He is the lead author of a paper on their findings, which is set to be published in the journal Nature this week. Theorists had said QSLs might exist, but one had never been demonstrated before. "We think it's pretty important," Lee said, adding that he would let his peers be the ultimate judges.
Government

Submission + - Obama Releases National Strategy for Information Sharing (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: President Obama on Wednesday released a national strategy designed to balance the sharing of information with those who need it to keep the country safe, while protecting the same data from those who would use it to cause harm. "The National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding" outlines how the government will attempt to responsibly share and protect data that enhances national security and protects the American people. The national strategy will define how the federal government and its assorted departments and agencies share their data. Agencies can also share services and work towards data and network interoperability to be more efficient, the President said.

The President aimed to address concerns over Privacy by noting, "This strategy makes it clear that the individual privacy, civil rights and civil liberties of United States persons must be — and will be — protected."

More on the strategy is available here and the full document is available here in PDF format from the White House website.
Games

Submission + - Steam for Linux is now an open beta (steamcommunity.com)

Submitted by jotaass
jotaass writes: In news that are guaranteed to make the Linux gaming community (in particular, but not exclusively) excited, Valve has just announced that
the Steam for Linux client Beta is now open to the public. A .deb package is available here. Interesting as well, they are using an empy GitHub repository solely as an issue tracker, open for anyone to submit, edit and track bugs, with no actual code in the repo.

Submission + - Drone made of Lego takes flight (suasnews.com)

Submitted by
TVmisGuided
TVmisGuided writes: "People have made UAVs out of wood, aluminum, even 3D-printed plastic. But now comes the tale of C#/C++ developer Ed Scott who, after damaging his Gaui 330x, got the idea of designing and building a Lego quadcopter. And it worked! "Most people go to their favourite hobby store to get parts for their UAV, I go to my kids playroom.""

Submission + - Makerbot Cracks Down On 3D-Printable Gun Parts (forbes.com) 1

Submitted by Sparrowvsrevolution
Sparrowvsrevolution writes: In the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut shootings, the 3D-printing firm Makerbot has deleted a collection of blueprints for gun components from Thingiverse, its popular user-generated content website that hosts 3D-printable files. Though Thingiverse has long banned designs for weapons and their components in its terms of service, it rarely enforced the rule until the last few days, when the company’s lawyer sent notices to users that their software models for gun parts were being purged from the site.

Gun control advocates were especially concerned about the appearance of lower receivers for semi-automatic weapons that have appeared on Thingiverse. The lower receiver is the the “body” of a gun, and its most regulated component. So 3D-printing that piece at home and attaching other parts ordered by mail might allow a lethal weapon to be obtained without any legal barriers or identification.

Makerbot’s move to delete those files may have been inspired in part by a group calling itself Defense Distributed, which announced its intention to create an entirely 3D-printable gun in August and planned to potentially upload it to Thingiverse. Defense Distributed says it's not deterred by Makerbot's move and will host the plans on its own site.

Submission + - Video game creator Eugene Jarvis is Player One (chicagotribune.com)

Submitted by
BigVig209
BigVig209 writes: "The Chicago Tribune has done a really nice profile on Eugene Jarvis, President of Raw Thrills, a.k.a. the man who invented Defender.

"Jarvis was born and raised in Silicon Valley.... Jarvis, who is responsible for a remarkable number of gaming innovations and an absurdly long list of successful titles stretching four decades...[has] witnessed (or had a hand in) a number of pivotal moments in the history of the medium.

Scrolling games, for instance. Jarvis pioneered scrolling. (Which is like being the first guy to say, "Hey, what would happen if we added pages to this stone tablet?") Also, dual joysticks — he created dual joysticks.""
Windows

Submission + - Dell, HP Windows 8 'Atom' Tablets Delayed Until 2013 (informationweek.com)

Submitted by
CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: "Dell and other vendors have pushed back until January the launch of Windows 8 tablets that use a new, energy-efficient Intel chip that was supposed to put Windows devices on an even footing with the iPad and Android tablets in terms of performance and battery life, but which is apparently causing big headaches for system builders. Most PC makers currently offer Windows 8 systems, such as the Dell XPS 12, that use Intel's older Core architecture instead of Clover Trail. Microsoft's Surface Pro tablet also runs an Intel Core chip. Core packs more power than Clover Trail, but does not support Connected Standby and consumes batteries more quickly."
Government

Submission + - FTC Strengthens Children's Privacy Protections Online (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Federal Trade Commission today updated the privacy standards that protect children's privacy online. The new rules say companies must gain parental consent before collecting a kid's geolocation data, photos, and videos. It also broadened existing language to include third parties and companies that collect data on users across multiple websites. 'While the new rule strengthens such safeguards, it could also disrupt online advertising. Web sites and online advertising networks often use persistent identification systems — like a customer code number in a cookie in a person’s browser — to collect information about a user’s online activities and tailor ads for that person. But the new rule expands the definition of personal information to include persistent IDs — such as a customer code number, the unique serial number on a mobile phone, or the I.P. address of a browser — if they are used to show a child behavior-based ads.'
Power

Submission + - Training Under Way for New Nuclear Plant Operators (go.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From abcnews: "Southern Co. in Georgia and SCANA Corp. in South Carolina are the first to prepare new workers to run a recently approved reactor design never before built in the United States. Training like it will be repeated over the decades-long lifetime of those plants and at other new ones that may share the technology in years to come. Both power companies are building pairs of Westinghouse Electric Corp. AP1000 reactors at Plant Vogtle near Augusta and SCANA Corp.'s Summer Nuclear Station northwest of Columbia, S.C. While the nuclear industry had earlier proposed a larger building campaign, low natural gas prices coupled with uncertainty after last year's disaster at a Japanese nuclear plant have scaled back those ambitions."

start thinking about getting your tinfoil hat radiation hardened
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Submission + - The Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents (eff.org)

Submitted by l2718
l2718 writes: The Electronic Frontiers Foundation announced today a large donation by Mark Cuban and Markus Persson to the EFF Patent Project. Notably, part of Cuban's donation is for the creation of the "Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents" (the first holder is current staff attorney Julie Samuels). Time will tell if the new title will help her advocacy work.
Technology

Submission + - 3D Printer Round-up: Cube 3D, Up! and Solidoodle (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "3D printing is a fascinating new technology and an exploding new market. The process involved is pretty basic actually. Heat up some plastic, and sort of like that Play-Doh Fun Factory you were so fond of as a kid, you extrude the melted plastic out to create objects. It all started back in 2007 when the first RepRap machine was built. The idea behind RepRap was to design a machine that could build complex parts in three dimensions using extruded molten plastic and that machine could also "self-replicate" or build a copy of itself. Since then, 3D printers of all types have emerged from the community and this round-up of machines covers a few of the more prominent names in 3D printing systems. The Cube 3D, the Up! Mini and the Solidoodle 2 can all get you into 3D printing at retail consumer price points with precision down to 100 microns. The technology has very much come of age and it's going to be interesting to see where these machines can take us."
Math

Submission + - TI-84+C-Silver Edition: That C stands for Color! (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by skade88
skade88 writes: Do you remember those large TI-8X line of calculators with a BW display from when you were growing up and learning all about math? Yeah well, you can still get them because TI has yet to update or change their line of TI-8X calculators from their 96x64 display, processors designed in the 1980s with just a few kilobytes of user accessible memory. They still cost in the $100.00 to $150.00 range.

Even XKCD made a great comic on this issue... a while ago.

That is all about to change now that the TI-8X line of calculators is 22 years old. Their new TI-84+C-Silver edition will come with a 320x240 16-bit color display, 3.5MB of flash ROM, and 21KB of RAM. I am going to dust off my graphics programming skills from 1994 and see what fun stuff I can make on this puppy!

Ars has a good preview of the device along with speculation on why it took so so so very long for TI to finally bring calculators up to a level of technology that could have been delivered a decade ago.
Businesses

Submission + - 6 Weird Habits Of Successful People (openforum.com)

Submitted by
Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: "With a title like 6 Weird Habits Of Successful People I bet you're expecting superstitions, like Charles Dickens insisting on sleeping facing north. (Gee, I thought you're supposed to face east?) But this short article really does have some useful advice, such as:

They are quitters. You know the saying “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” Not so much. In fact, that’s wrong. Winners quit a lot. They have a keen eye for what is not working and not supporting the finish line (check rule one again for that). Once they identify the thing sucking energy, money and resources from their business, they cut it out fast.

I liked it. I think you might, too."
Science

Submission + - IQ 'a myth,' study says (thestar.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The idea that intelligence can be measured by a single number — your IQ — is wrong, according to a recent study led by researchers at the University of Western Ontario. The study, published in the journal Neuron on Wednesday, involved 100,000 participants around the world taking 12 cognitive tests, with a smaller sample of the group undergoing simultaneous brain-scan testing.
KDE

Submission + - KDE Software Compilation 4.10 RC1 Released (kde.org)

Submitted by
jrepin
jrepin writes: "Today KDE released the first release candidate for its renewed Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. Thanks to the feedback from the betas, KDE already improved the quality noticably. Further polishing new and old functionality will lead to a rock-stable, fast and beautiful release in January, 2013. One particular change in this RC is an updated look to Plasma workspaces."

Submission + - Senator Introduces Bill to Study Impact of Violent Video Games (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by seepho
seepho writes: Senator Jay Rockefeller (D — WV) has introduced a bill directing the National Academy of Sciences to lead an investigation to determine what impact violent video games have on children. Senator Rockefeller commented, "Recent court decisions demonstrate that some people still do not get it. They believe that violent video games are no more dangerous to young minds than classic literature or Saturday morning cartoons. Parents, pediatricians, and psychologists know better. These court decisions show we need to do more and explore ways Congress can lay additional groundwork on this issue. This report will be a critical resource in this process."

Submission + - Intellectual Ventures Makes its Case For Patent Trolling (wired.com)

Submitted by
speedplane
speedplane writes: "How many stories have we read hating on the biggest patent troll of them all? Finally we see Intellectual Ventures making their case in a Wired op-ed, filled with everything you would would expect from a company suing the tech world on thousands of dubious patents: "the system needs intermediaries within the market – companies like Intellectual Ventures – to help sift through and navigate the published landscape. By developing focused expertise, these patent licensing entities and intermediaries can function as patent aggregators, assembling portfolios of relevant inventions and providing access through licensing." And my favorite gem: "Ultimately, the users of those products – you – are the ones who benefit.""

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