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Businesses

Submission + - Sharp Overwhelmed By Volunteers For Early Retirement (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "Sharp, the Japanese LCD supplier in dire financial straits, is trying to cut staffing by offering an early retirement package. Unfortunately, it seems Sharp employees are eager to scuttle off the sinking ship. The company was planning on cutting its headcount by about 2,000 employees with the move; instead, it had to cut short the program after getting nearly 3,000 applicants."
Microsoft

Submission + - Poop Powers Experimental Microsoft Data Center (slashdot.org)

Submitted by
Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: "Microsoft, FuelCell Energy and a collection of local Cheyenne, Wyoming companies are collaborating on a project to supply one of Microsoft’s local data centers with biogas, in a bid to determine if what we poop can be turned into power. FuelCell and Microsoft will test a small 200-kilowatt data center with a fuel cell that can produce up to 300 kilowatts in a carbon-neutral manner. Microsoft estimates the total carbon savings at about 1,833 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) per megawatt-hour, compared to a typical fossil fuel plant. Although other data centers rely on biogas as a power source, Microsoft claims this is the first time a biogas source—specifically, a wastewater treatment facility—will be integrated directly with a data center."
Your Rights Online

Submission + - Pirate MEP Christian Engström helps draft new Credit Card Company controls (falkvinge.net)

Submitted by Dupple
Dupple writes: Today, the European Parliament ordered new legislation to regulate credit card companies’ ability to refuse service. This regulation follows the unilateral and rightless cutoff of donations to WikiLeaks, as well as similar trampling on small entrepreneurs. The Pirate Party took the initiative to the new regulation.

It has become an increasingly large problem that Visa, MasterCard, and Paypal control the valve to any money flow on the planet. Today, the European Parliament established this as a clear problem, and initiated regulation of the companies, limiting and strictly regulating their right to refuse service. The Pirate Party was the initiator of this regulation, following the damaging cutoff of donations to WikiLeaks. after said organization had performed journalism that was embarrassing to certain governments.
Television

Submission + - Giant Boxing Robots Reality Show Unveiled (ew.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It looks like the next generation of "Battle Bots" is here:

Syfy has greenlit and shot the first season of a new show where eight-foot-tall state-of-the-art humanoid robots will rock ‘em and sock ‘em in a boxing cage until one is defeated. The future-shock new series is called Robot Combat League and the project has been kept under wraps until today. The action resembles a real-life version of last year’s hit movie Real Steel, with large menacing robots pounding away at each other in a satisfying shower of sparks and gushing hydraulic fluid.

There's pics with the story.
Science

Submission + - Harvard develops drug-filled, injectable sponge that expands inside the body (geek.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Harvard bioengineers have perfected injecteing us with a drug-filled sponge instead of just a liquid.

It may seem strange to want to inject a piece of sponge into your body, but it does actually help solve a number of invasive problems. For example, sometimes it is necessary to have drugs released slowly into our bodies, and/or some kind of bio-scaffold is required to be positioned so that it can help support a damaged organ or to engineer new tissue.

This new, injectable sponge is incredibly useful because not only can it be filled with drugs that then are slowly released, it also has a memory and can be collapsed down to a tiny fraction of its original size.
Data Storage

Submission + - Facebook condemns European data protection fines (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Facebook claims companies could start court battles with data protection authorities if the regulators are given powers to levy fines of 2% of global turnover for data protection law breaches.

Facebook said the European Commission's proposed sanctions regime — which is contained in its draft General Data Protection Regulation — could also put off US and other businesses from trading within the EU, meaning less jobs being created.
Privacy

Submission + - Why big data could sink Europe's "right to be forgotten" (gigaom.com)

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "Europe’s proposed ‘right to be forgotten’ has been the subject of intense debate, with many people arguing it’s simply not practical in the age of the internet for any data to be reliably expunged from history.

Well, add another voice to that mix. The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) has published its assessment of the proposals, and the tone is sceptical to say the least. And, interestingly, one of the biggest problems ENISA has found has to do with big data."
Government

Submission + - Senate bill rewrite lets Feds read your e-mail without warrants (cnet.com) 1

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans' e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law.

Leahy's rewritten bill would allow more than 22 agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission — to access Americans' e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant. It also would give the FBI and Homeland Security more authority, in some circumstances, to gain full access to Internet accounts without notifying either the owner or a judge."
Government

Submission + - Jail Looms for Man Who Revealed AT&T Leaked iPad User E-Mails (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "AT&T screwed up in 2010, serving up the e-mail addresses of over 110,000 of its iPad 3G customers online for anyone to find. But today Andrew Auernheimer, an online activist who pointed out AT&T’s blunder to Gawker Media, which went on to publicize the breach of private information, is the one in federal court this week.

Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) worry that should that charge succeed it will become easy to criminalize many online activities, including work by well-intentioned activists looking for leaks of private information or other online security holes. Weev’s case hasn’t received much attention so far, but should he be found guilty this week it will likely become well known, fast."
Encryption

Submission + - Quantum cryptography conquers noise problem (nature.com)

Submitted by
ananyo
ananyo writes: "Quantum-encryption systems that encode signals into a series of single photons have so far been unable to piggyback on existing telecommunications lines because they don't stand out from the millions of others in an optical fiber. But now, physicists using a technique for detecting dim light signals have transmitted a quantum key along 90 kilometres of noisy optical fibre. The feat could see quantum cryptography finally enter the mainstream.
The researchers developed a detector that picks out photons only if they strike it at a precise instant, calculated on the basis of when the encoded photons were sent.
The team’s ‘self-differentiating’ detector activates for 100 picoseconds, every nanosecond. The weak charge triggered by a photon strike in this short interval would not normally stand out, but the detector measures the difference between the signal recorded during one operational cycle and the signal from the preceding cycle — when no matching photon was likely to be detected. This cancels out the background hum. Using this device, the team has transmitted a quantum key along a 90-kilometre fiber, which also carried noisy data at 1 billion bits per second in both directions — a rate typical of a telecommunications fiber."
Security

Submission + - Hosting provider automatically fixes vulnerabilities in customers' websites (antagonist.nl) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Dutch hosting provider Antagonist today announced their in-house developed technology that automatically detects and fixes vulnerabilities in their customers’ websites. The service is aimed at popular software such as WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. Antagonist is the first hosting provider on the planet to offer this service, and plans to license the technology to other hosting providers as well.
Mars

Submission + - What has Curiosity found that is "earth-shaking"? (npr.org)

Submitted by Randym
Randym writes: NASA scientists have some exciting new results from one of the rover's instruments. On the one hand, they'd like to tell everybody what they found, but on the other, they have to wait because they want to make sure their results are not just some fluke or error in their instrument.

The exciting results are coming from an instrument in the rover called SAM. "We're getting data from SAM as we sit here and speak, and the data looks really interesting," says John Grotzinger. He's the principal investigator for the rover mission. SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) is a suite of instruments onboard NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity.

Grotzinger says they recently put a soil sample in SAM, and the analysis shows something Earth-shaking. "This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good," he says.
Firefox

Submission + - Mozilla Makes Prototype of Firefox OS Available (ostatic.com)

Submitted by Thinkcloud
Thinkcloud writes: Even though the operating system hasn't arrived in a version for smartphones and tablets just yet, it is available as a prototype module that you can run on Windows, Mac or Linux computers. The initial Firefox OS phones are expected to arrive in 2013, and it's been reported that Alcatel and ZTE are the first manufacturers on board.

Submission + - Should conferences embrace diversity? (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Register is reporting how Josh Susser has managed to get a Ruby conference in the UK cancelled as the speakers are 100% white male.

Should conferences embrace diversity from the start or should they put the best speakers up even if they are all white and male or should we have quotas, say 10% need to be non-white, 50% women, 6% gay to better reflect the mix of your local population? How far do we have to go to ensure we are diverse? Do we need to ensure that all minorities are represented?

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