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Submission + - Enough Whining. San Francisco is the new Renaissance Florence. (xconomy.com)

Submitted by waderoush
waderoush writes: Despite legitimate concerns over sky-high rents, Ellis Act evictions, Google Bus traffic, and the like, the San Francisco Bay Area is perhaps the most prosperous, comfortable, enlightened, stimulating, and generative place to live in Western history. For satisfying parallels, you'd have to look to a place like Florence and a time like the Renaissance, argues an Xconomy essay entitled From Cosimo to Cosmos: The Medici Effect in Culture and Technology. Today's coder-kings are working to reinvent economic structures in much the same way Renaissance painters, poets, architects, and scientists were trying to extend the framework they'd inherited from classical Greece and Rome. And in the role of the Medici family, long Florence's most powerful rulers and art patrons, we have people like Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, and Seth MacFarlane. Wait, what — Seth MacFarlane? Yes, the reboot of Carl Sagan's Cosmos starring Neil deGrasse Tyson (itself a tribute to the rise of science) wouldn't have happened without the involvement of a California media mogul. It's true that Silicon Valley can feel like Dante's Inferno if you're stuck in traffic on 101, or working 70-hour weeks as a code monkey at a doomed startup. But 'It would be unthinking, and ungrateful, to overlook the surplus we’re reaping from the tech boom,' the essay argues.

Submission + - NYPD Denies Freedom of Information Request for Freedom of Information Handbook (freebeacon.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Journalist Shawn Musgrave filed a records request under New York’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) for the police department’s FOIL handbook, the guide officers use to apply public record law.

However, the NYPD told Musgrave its Freedom of Information handbook is not covered by FOIL, arguing it is protected under attorney-client privilege.

Submission + - Judge shuts down DVDFAB and anybody whom they have ever spoken with... (techdirt.com)

Submitted by realized
realized writes: AACS (Advanced Access Content System), a a consortium that includes Disney, Intel, Microsoft, Panasonic, Warner Bros., IBM, Toshiba and Sony sued Chinese-based DVDFab from distributing its software that enabled users to circumvent the AACS Technology.

Federal judge however felt like overreaching and making sure people know he means real business.

From the court order:

Any third party service providers providing services to Defendants in connection with any of the DVDFab Domain Names, the DVDFab Websites or the DVDFab Social Media Accounts, and who receive actual notice of this Order, including without limitation, web hosting providers, social media or other online service providers (including without limitation, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+), back-end service providers, web designers, distributors, search-based online advertising services (such as through paid inclusion, paid search results, sponsored search results, sponsored links, and Internet keyword advertising), and any banks, savings and loan associations, merchant account providers, payment processors and providers, credit card associations, or other financial institutions which receive or process payments or hold assets on Defendants' behalf (including without limitation, Avangate Inc., Avangate B.V., PayPal, Western Union, PayEase, IPS Ltd., Realypay, WorldPay, Opus Payments, Amazon Payments, WorldPay, Money Gram International, WebMoney, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, Visa Electron, Maestro, Solo, Laser, and Carte Bleue) for any Defendant or any of the DVDFab Domain Names or the DVDFab Websites, and who receive actual notice of this Order, shall, within three (3) days of receipt of this Order, cease or disable providing such services to: a) Defendants in relation to the DVDFab Software and/or any other products or services that circumvent the AACS Technology; andb) any and all of the DVDFab Domain Names, the DVDFab Websites or DVDFab Social Media Accounts.

Submission + - Third Law of Thermodynamics discovered in spin ice films

Submitted by doctorfaustus
doctorfaustus writes: Interesting science news.... A crazy material that breaks the probabilities of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, at least temporarily, as it cools down. But once it gets cold enough, it validates the 3rd Law. Wild stuff.... I'm hoping someone here can explain the stuff better than the article does. The article's at http://why.knovel.com/all-engi... found by way of http://www.dailyrotation.com/

Submission + - Elephants Have Learned to 'Understand Human' (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Whether we realize it, African elephants are listening to us. The pachyderms can tell certain human languages apart and even determine our gender, relative age, and whether we’re a threat, according to a new study. The work illustrates how elephants can sometimes protect themselves from human actions. The work may be helpful in preventing “human-elephant conflicts where the species co-exist,” says Joshua Plotnik, a behavioral ecologist at Mahidol University, Kanchanaburi, in Thailand. For instance, elephants might be deterred from entering farmland or encouraged to stick to the corridors designed for their use. “The trouble is elephants are too smart to be fooled by us for long.”

Submission + - Stanford bioengineer develops a 50-cent paper microscope (stanford.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scope: A Stanford bioengineer has developed an ultra-low-cost print-and-fold microscope and is now showing others how to make one themselves. The 50-cent lightweight, paper "Foldscope" — which "can be assembled in minutes, [and] includes no mechanical moving parts" — was designed to aid disease diagnosis in developing regions.

Submission + - How Engineers Are Building A Power Station At The South Pole

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: One of the more ambitious projects at the South Pole is the Askaryan Radio Array, a set of radio antennas under the ice that will listen for the tell tale signals of high energy neutrinos passing by. This array will eventually be over a thousand times bigger than the current largest neutrino detector: Icecube, which monitors a cubic kilometre of ice next door to the planned new observatory. But there's a problem. How do you supply 24/7 power to dozens of detectors spread over such a vast area in the middle of the Antarctic? The answer is renewable energy power stations that exploit the sun during the summer and the wind all year round. The first of these stations is now up and running at the South Pole and producing power. It is also helping to uncover and iron out the various problems that these stations are likely to encounter. For example; where to put the batteries needed to supply continuous power when all else fails. The team's current approach is to bury the battery to protect it from temperature extremes. That works well but makes maintenance so difficult that scaling this approach to dozens of power stations doesn't seem feasible. That's a problem for the future but for the moment, green power has finally come to the white continent.

Submission + - Best Idea for a Universal Translator (FreeSpeech tm) (avazapp.com)

Submitted by gurps_npc
gurps_npc writes: An Indian company developed an all picture based software to help speech impaired (autistic, mute, etc.) children communicate fully formed ideas. Then he developed translator engines to convert the all picture based system into English — and other verbal languages. The interesting part is that his system consists of 2-dimensional pictures, not 1-dimensional sound. This makes it much simpler and intuitive grammatically and therefore be much simpler to translate into any language. It is just as easy to convert his pictures into English as it is to convert it into Chinese, Arabic, Swahili, whatever. It gets rid of most of the problems that plague Google and similar computer based translation programs. Note the solution is one way, from his pictures to all other languages, because other languages do not have the exactness offered by the 2-dimensional advantage of his software (FreeSpeech)

In effect, he has created a far superior core translation engine for a Universal Translator. Their web site includes a link to his TED talk.

Submission + - How to Avoid Being Tasered: Wear Carbon-Fibre Clothing (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Hackaday user Shenzhen cut open a suit jacket and lined it with strip after strip of carbon-fibre tape together with iron-on interfacing.

When he tried to shock himself with a Taser, the carbon-fibre conducted the 50,000-volt electrical charge but he did not receive a shock. He also attempted to shock himself with the Taser needle piercing through the suit into his skin — and still came out unscathed.

Submission + - orgasms for women at the push of a button.

Submitted by turkeydance
turkeydance writes: CHARLOTTE, N.C. (CBS Charlotte) – Scientists have patented a new machine that will provide orgasms for women at the push of a button.
A little smaller than a packet of cigarettes, the machine is designed to be a medical implant that uses electrodes to trigger an orgasm. The device would help some women who suffer from orgasmic dysfunction.
http://charlotte.cbslocal.com/...

that's sex discrimination!

Submission + - BP Finds Way to Bypass US Crude Export Ban

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Bloomberg reports that the oil industry is pressuring President Barack Obama to end the 41-year-old ban on most crude exports but British Petroleum (BP) isn’t waiting for a decision. The British oil giant has signed on to take at least 80 percent of the capacity of a new $360 million mini-refinery in Houston that will process crude just enough to escape restrictions on sales outside the country. “It’s a relatively inexpensive way around the export prohibition,” says Judith Dwarkin “You can lightly ruffle the hydrocarbons and they are considered processed and then they aren’t subject to the ban.” Amid a flood of new US oil, the demand for simple, one-step plants capable of transforming raw crude into exportable products such as propane is feeding a construction boom along the Gulf Coast. The first such mini-refinery, built for 1/10 the cost of a complex, full-scale refinery, is scheduled to open the first phase of its 100,000 barrel-a-day crude processing plant in July, The mini-refineries take advantage of the law that allows products refined from oil to be sold overseas, though not the raw crude itself. "The international buyers of these products will likely need to refine them further, so this is basically a veiled form of condensate exports,” says Leo Mariani.

Submission + - Create A Botnet By Abusing Free Cloud Services (darkreading.com)

Submitted by rudy_wayne
rudy_wayne writes: Last week at the RSA Conference, a pair of researchers demonstrated how it was possible to legally create a botnet for free by abusing trial accounts made available by high-powered platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings.

The question they asked themselves was how hard would it be to automate the process of signing up for an unlimited number of free accounts from these sites and then developing a central control system from which an attacker could potentially launch malicious activities. The answer: not hard at all.

The project was made possible through the development of a process to automate the creation of unique email accounts on free email services, and then special scripting to automate the process of clicking on email verification links sent to those accounts.

Submission + - Jewish school removes evolution questions from exams

Submitted by Alain Williams
Alain Williams writes: Religious sponsored ignorance is not just in the USA, a school in Hackney, England is trying to hide the idea of evolution from its pupils. Maybe they fear that their creation story will be seen for what it is if pupils get to learn ideas supported evidence. The girls are also disadvantaged since they can't answer the redacted questions, thus making it harder to get good marks.

Submission + - Robot Law Is The New Cyberlaw (ssrn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ten or so years in, Facebook, Google, and Amazon are starting to get a handle on some of their legal responsibilities as internet companies. But then they go and buy a lot of robots for billions of dollars. Law professor Ryan Calo explains what new legal challenges robotics may bring for today's giant internet companies.

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