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Government

Zoe Lofgren Wants To Slow Down Domain Seizures By ICE & DOJ 46

Posted by timothy from the but-seizure-is-fun dept.
GovTechGuy writes "Rep. Zoe Lofgren sat down with Roll Call to discuss her proposal to slow down the seizure of domain names accused of piracy by the federal government. Lofgren turned to Reddit for help formulating the bill, and also discussed whether her colleagues in Congress know enough about technology to make informed decisions on tech policy."
Moon

Twin Probes Crash Into the Moon 79

Posted by timothy from the as-promised dept.
SchrodingerZ writes "After their yearlong mission to map the Moon's gravitational field, twin probes Ebb and Flow crashed into the lunar surface, ending the GRAIL mission. The crashes were controlled events, each impacting 30 seconds apart from each other. The twin spacecraft were running low on maneuvering fuel and NASA, not wanting the craft to fall on historical sites such as the Apollo landing sites, redirected their flight patterns to impart the far (dark) side of the moon. Their impact sites were named after Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. 'During the news conference last week, Maria T. Zuber, the principal investigator, said the probes would be crashing into a "non-sunlit" part of the surface.' When the site becomes sunlit again in several weeks, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will attempt to take pictures of the craters the probes undoubtedly made in the lunar soil."
Facebook

Instagram Wants To Sell Users' Photos Without Notice 313

Posted by timothy from the oh-and-by-the-way dept.
DavidGilbert99 writes "Many Instagram users have reacted angrily to a proposed change to the apps terms of service by owner Facebook, which would give the social network 'perpetual' rights to all photos on Instagram, allowing it to sell the photos to advertisers without notice — or payment to the user. The new policy will come into effect on 16 January, just four months after Facebook completed its $1bn acquisition of Instagram. It states that Facebook has a right to distribute any content posted on Instagram without paying the user royalties:" Also worth reading Declan McCullagh's take on it.
Japan

Ask Slashdot: Should Scientists Build a New Particle Collider In Japan? 292

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the cue-godzilla-jokes dept.
gbrumfiel writes "The world's most powerful particle collider ended an epic proton run yesterday morning, and researchers are already looking to the future. They want to build a 31-kilometer, multi-billion-dollar International Linear Collider (ILC) to study the recently-discovered Higgs boson in more detail and to look for new things as well. Japan has recently emerged as the front-runner to host the new collider. The Liberal Democratic Party, which won this weekend's elections, actually support the ILC in its party platform. But it's not yet clear whether real money will be forthcoming, or whether European and American physicists will back a Japanese bid. What do Slashdotters think? Does particle physics need a new collider? Should it go to Japan?"
The Internet

Australian ISP iiNet Walks Out of Piracy Warning System Talks 120

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the good-luck-pirating-with-data-caps dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Torrent Freak: "A leading Australian Internet service provider has pulled out of negotiations to create a warning notice scheme aimed at reducing online piracy. iiNet, the ISP that was sued by Hollywood after refusing to help chase down alleged infringers, said that it can't make any progress with rightsholders if they don't make their content freely available at a reasonable price. The ISP adds that holding extra data on customers' habits is inappropriate and not their responsibility."
Science

Single Microbe May Have Triggered the "Great Dying" 171

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the get-your-flu-shot dept.
An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from Medical Daily about a new theory for what triggered the "Great Dying: " "Researchers believe that they may finally know why the event occurred, but the theory is not without controversy. There are several theories, including the possibility of a meteorite hitting the planet. Previously, most researchers believed that the Permian mass extinction was a result of a series of volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia. ... However, Daniel Rothman from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is floating around a different theory. As he presented in a meeting for the American Geophysical Union, he believes that the mass extinction could have been caused by something much smaller. His theory is that the extinction was caused by a single strain of bacteria."
Facebook

Facebook Ordered To End Its Real Name Policy In Germany 471

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the semi-anonymous-cowards dept.
An anonymous reader writes with a blow to Facebook's policy banning accounts under pseudonyms. From the article: "A German privacy regulator ordered Facebook to stop enforcing its real name policy because it violates a German law that gives users the right to use nicknames online. 'We believe the orders are without merit, a waste of German taxpayers' money and we will fight it vigorously,' a Facebook spokeswoman said in an emailed statement."
AMD

AMD Unveils Preliminary Radeon HD 8000M Series Mobile GPU Details 51

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the faster-better-includes-integrated-egg-cooker dept.
MojoKid writes "AMD has just released some preliminary information regarding the company's upcoming Radeon HD 8000M series of mobile GPUs. Based on the naming convention alone, it may obvious that the Radeon HD 8000M series is AMD's second generation of products featuring the GCN (Graphics Core Next) architecture, which debuted in the Radeon HD 7000 series. Like its predecessors, the Radeon HD 8000M series targets gamers with full DirectX 11.1 support and improved gaming performance over the previous-gen, but the architecture also lends itself to GPU compute applications as well. The Radeon HD 8500M sports 384 Stream Processors with an Engine Clock up to 650MHz. Memory clocks will vary based on the use of GDDR3 or GDDR5 memory. The Radeon HD 8600M is essentially the same, but with a slightly higher Engine Clock up to 775MHz. The Radeon HD 8700M is also based on the same GPU, but will be clocked at up to 850MHz, for a further increase in performance over the 8600M. The Radeon HD 8800M series, however, is based on a larger, more powerful chip and will sport 640 Stream Processors with an engine clock of up to 700MHz. GDDR5 memory will be used exclusively with 8800M, at speeds up to 1125MHz. It will be interesting to see how these new GPUs stack up versus NVIDIA's latest GeForce 600M series of mobile chips."
The Almighty Buck

Swedish Pirate Party Presses Charges Against Banks For WikiLeaks Blockade 234

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the obey-the-law dept.
davecb writes "Rick Falkvinge reports today that the Swedish Pirate Party has laid charges against at least Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal before the Finansinspektionen for refusing to pass on money owed to WikiLeaks. The overseer of bank licenses notes (in translation) that 'The law states, that if there aren't legal grounds to deny a payment service, then it must be processed.'"
Google

Gmail Drops Support for Connecting To Pop3 Servers With Self -Signed Certs 299

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the security-through-redefinition dept.
DECula writes "In a move not communicated to its users beforehand, Google's Gmail servers were reconfigured to not connect to remote pop3 servers that have self-signed certificates, leaving folks with unencrypted connections, or no service when getting email from other services. Not good for the small folks. One suggestion was to allow placing the public keys on Google's side in the user configuration. That would be a heck of a lot better than just dropping users into never never land." Apparently, "valid" now means "paid someone Google approves to sign the certificate." It's not like commercial CAs have the best security track record either.
Hardware Hacking

Open Hardware and Software Laptop 152

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the just-the-way-you-like-it dept.
New submitter mihai.todor85 writes "It looks like Andrew 'bunnie' Huang has been quite busy lately, developing a nice open hardware laptop. He was even kind enough to provide all the schematics without NDA. For anybody interested in owning such a device, he says that he 'might be convinced to try a Kickstarter campaign in several months, once the design is stable and tested' if enough people are interested."
Earth

NASA On Full Court Press To Deflate Doomsday Prophecies 286

Posted by samzenpus from the don't-worry dept.
coondoggie writes "Insidious unknown planets lurking behind the sun ready to slam into Earth, supernova set to engulf the planet and giant, unseen asteroids screaming toward our globe are all theories espoused across the Internet as to how we will meet our demise on 12/21/2012. Do any of these theories even remotely hold out a scintilla of evidence they could happen? Not even remotely if you look at the material NASA has put out which pretty much debunks any and all of the notions being floated in across the cybersphere."
Google

5 More Google Fiberhoods Coming To Kansas City 80

Posted by samzenpus from the more-the-merrier dept.
skade88 writes "If you live in KC, Google is doing their part to make sure you get your daily fiber. They are launching their gigabit home internet service in five new areas in KC. From the article: '"In 2013, we're going to hit the ground running, finishing installations in Dub's Dread, and then quickly moving on to five more fiberhoods," the company wrote, using its invented term for zones where Google Fiber will be deployed. "Based on pre-registration results, the next fiberhoods on the list are Piper Schools, Delaware Ridge, Painted Hills, Open Door, and Arrowhead. And we have some more good news for folks in some of these areas—we've extended a few fiberhood boundaries slightly, so that more people can get Google Fiber. You can see the new boundaries below and on our website, where you can check to see if your home is now eligible."'"
Programming

W3C Finalizes the Definition of HTML5 113

Posted by samzenpus from the setting-the-standard dept.
hypnosec writes "The Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) has announced that it has finalized the definition of HTML5 and that it is ready for interoperability testing. HTML5 hasn't been given the status of standard yet but it is feature complete now, giving developers a stable target to develop their web applications. The W3C said in the announcement 'HTML5 is the cornerstone of the Open Web Platform" and that it provides an environment which can utilize all of a device's capabilities like videos, animations, graphics and typography. The HTML5 specifications still have a long way to go before they hit the Recommendation status. HTML5 will have to go through a round of testing that looks specifically into interoperability and performance after which time it will be given a Candidate Recommendation title."
Cloud

Wozniak's Predictions For 2013: the Data Center, Mobility and Beyond 70

Posted by samzenpus from the future-is-now dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "Tech icon Steve Wozniak has come forward with several predictions for 2013, with data center technologies an important part of the list. Wozniak's predictions are based on a series of conversations he had recently with Brett Shockley, senior vice president and general manager of applications and emerging technologies at Avaya. They trace an arc from the consumer space up through the enterprise, with an interesting take on the BYOD phenomenon: Woz believes that mobile devices will eventually become the 'remote controls,' so to speak, of the world. Although he's most famous as the co-founder of Apple, Wozniak currently serves as chief scientist at Fusion-io, a manufacturer of enterprise flash storage for data centers and other devices."

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