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Submission + - Free Law Casebook Project: Starts with IP Coursebook (duke.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Duke Law School's James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins just published a CC licensed, freely downloadable textbook called "Intellectual Property Law and the Information Society." http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/o... (Which includes a discussion of whether and when the term "intellectual property" is a dangerous misnomer). The book is apparently part of an attempt to lower what the authors describe as the "obscene cost" of legal textbooks. "This is the first in a series of free digital/low cost print legal educational materials to be published by Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain—starting with statutory supplements aimed at the basic classes. The goal of this project... is to improve the pricing and access norms of the world of legal textbook publishing, while offering the flexibility and possibility for customization that unfettered digital access provides. We hope it will provide a pleasant, restorative, competitive pressure on the commercial publishers to lower their prices and improve their digital access norms."
The book's "problems range from a video of the Napster oral argument to counseling clients about search engines and trademarks, applying the First Amendment to digital rights management and copyright or commenting on the Supreme Court’s new rulings on gene patents.. [The book] includes discussions of such issues as the Redskins trademark cancelations, the Google Books case and the America Invents Act."

Submission + - Hackers Will Leak Syrian Stock Exchange Database Unless Assad Tackles ISIS (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: A group of hackers took down the website of Syria's only stock exchange this afternoon and are threatening to leak the exchange's database unless president Bashar al-Assad takes military action against the Islamic State.

The group, called Project Viridium, says that over the last several weeks, they've infected several Islamic State operatives' computers and have provided the Assad government with information about their whereabouts.

Submission + - How Facebook could accidentally make its engineers into military targets (thebulletin.org) 1

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Adam Henshke and Patrick Lin write that because of a lack of clear rules for cyberwarfare, technology workers could find themselves fair game in enemy attacks and counterattacks. 'If they participate in military cyberoperations—intentionally or not—employees at Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Sprint, AT&T, Vodaphone, and many other companies may find themselves considered “civilians directly participating in hostilities” and therefore legitimate targets of war, according to the legal definitions of the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols.' This is a fascinating read about the myriad questions that cybersecurity raises--among them: Would nations ever target Google engineers if a cyberattack was launched with gmail? Could a company be justified in launching it's own military operations if it were under cyberattack from a hostile country? Great read.

Submission + - How Facebook, Google could accidentally make its engineers into military targets (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Adam Henshke and Patrick Lin write that because of a lack of clear rules for cyberwarfare, technology workers could find themselves fair game in enemy attacks and counterattacks. 'If they participate in military cyberoperations—intentionally or not—employees at Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Sprint, AT&T, Vodaphone, and many other companies may find themselves considered “civilians directly participating in hostilities” and therefore legitimate targets of war, according to the legal definitions of the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols.' This is a fascinating read about the myriad questions that cybersecurity raises--among them: Would nations ever target Google engineers if a cyberattack was launched with gmail? Could a company be justified in launching it's own military operations if it were under cyberattack from a hostile country? Great read.

Submission + - Northrop Grumman Gives Early Look at its XS-1 Experimental Spaceplane Design (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Northrop Grumman, in partnership with Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic, has unveiled the preliminary design it is developing as part of DARPA’s XS-1 Spaceplane project. Looking like a windowless update of a 1960s Dyna Soar orbiter, it’s the next step in producing launch systems that will dramatically reduce the costs of getting into orbit.

Submission + - gcc LTO reduces firefox package size by 50% (gnu.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Link Time Optimization used to be a lot of promise for little gain, and typically unable to deal with packages in the MSLOC range. Seemingly no longer. Reported in gcc's bugzilla is an impressive result for firefox:
'Firefox since version 30 as well as Thunderbird since version 31 both compile fine with LTO enabled without the need of any additional patches. The package size was reduced by 51% (firefox ~420MB -> ~207MB) and 59% (thunderbird ~480MB -> ~200MB). Both programs work as intended, no crashes or unexpected behaviour so far.'
Has time come to rebuild the world using LTO ?

Submission + - California passes law mandating smartphone kill switch

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Smartphones sold in California will soon be required to have a kill switch that lets users remotely lock them and wipe them of data in the event they are lost or stolen. The demand is the result of a new law, http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/... into effect on Monday, that applies to phones manufactured after July 1, 2015, and sold in the state. While its legal reach does not extend beyond the state’s borders, the inefficiency of producing phones solely for California means the kill switch is expected to be adopted by phone makers on handsets sold across the U.S. and around the world.

Submission + - Sydney University creates waves with investment ban on coal (smh.com.au)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: The University of Sydney has become the first institution of its type in Australia to halt further investments in coalmining, a move likely to send ripples through the funds industry.

On Monday, the university said it had halted investments in Whitehaven Coal, the miner developing the controversial Maules Creek open-cut coalmine, which is the largest such project in the country.

As part of a review being undertaken by the Mercer Group, however, Sydney University told Fairfax Media the bar on investments extended beyond Whitehaven.

"The university has issued an instruction to its Australian equities managers to make no further investments in the coal and consumable fuels subsector of the ASX," a spokeswoman for the university said.

The institution is yet to decide what to do with existing coal investments in its $1 billion portfolio, although divestment of its $900,000 holding in Whitehaven is one of "various options" being considered, she said.

The spokeswoman declined to detail the reason for stopping purchases of coal stocks, which other companies are affected and when the halt kicked in.

The current consultation "over our investment in coal and consumable fuels is part of our ongoing review to ensure we meet our responsibilities to students, staff and donors", the spokeswoman said.

Submission + - How The Ancient Egyptians (Should Have) Built The Pyramids 2

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: The Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt is constructed from 2.4 million limestone blocks, most about 2.5 tonnes but some weighing in at up to 80 tonnes, mostly sourced from local limestone quarries. That raises a famous question. How did the ancient Egyptians move these huge blocks into place? There is no shortage of theories but now a team of physicists has come up with another that is remarkably simple--convert the square cross section of the blocks into dodecadrons making them easy to roll. The team has tested the idea on a 30 kg scaled block the shape of a square prism. They modified the square cross-section by strapping three wooden rods to each long face, creating a dodecahedral profile. Finally, they attached a rope to the top of the block and measured the force necessary to set it rolling. The team say a full-sized block could be modified with poles the size of ships masts and that a work crew of around 50 men could move a block with a mass of 2.5 tonnes at the speed of 0.5 metres per second. The result suggests that this kind of block modification is a serious contender for the method the Egyptians actually used to construct the pyramids, say the researchers.

Submission + - Princeton nuclear fusion reactor will run again (nj.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: Tucked away from major roadways and nestled amid more than 80 acres of forest sits a massive warehouse-like building where inside, a device that can produce temperatures hotter than the sun has sat cold and quiet for more than two years.

But the wait is almost over for the nuclear fusion reactor to get back up and running at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

“We’re very excited and we’re all anxious to turn that machine back on,” said Adam Cohen, deputy director for operations at PPPL.

The National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) has been shut down since 2012 as it underwent a $94 million upgrade that will make it what officials say will be the most powerful fusion facility of its kind in the world. It is expected to be ready for operations in late winter or early spring, Cohen said.

Submission + - Robo Brain Project Wants To Turn the Internet into a Robotic Hivemind (popsci.com) 1

Submitted by malachiorion
malachiorion writes: Researchers are force-feeding the internet into a system called Robo Brain, to make the world's robots smarter. Weirder still: Every word in that sentence is true. Robo Brain has absorbed a billion images and 120,000 YouTube videos so far, and aims to digest 10 times that within a year, in order to create machine-readable commands for robots—how to pour coffee, for example. I spoke to one of the researchers about this ridiculously ambitious, and pretty ingenious project, which could finally make household bots viable (in about 5 years...which is still pretty great). My story for Popular Science.

Submission + - Systems that can secretly track where cellphone users go around the globe (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: The Washington Post reports, "Makers of surveillance systems are offering governments across the world the ability to track the movements of almost anybody who carries a cellphone, whether they are blocks away or on another continent. The technology works by exploiting an essential fact of all cellular networks: They must keep detailed, up-to-the-minute records on the locations of their customers to deliver calls and other services to them. Surveillance systems are secretly collecting these records to map people’s travels over days, weeks or longer ... It is unclear which governments have acquired these tracking systems, but one industry official ... said that dozens of countries have bought or leased such technology in recent years. This rapid spread underscores how the burgeoning, multibillion-dollar surveillance industry makes advanced spying technology available worldwide. “Any tin-pot dictator with enough money to buy the system could spy on people anywhere in the world,” said Eric King, deputy director of Privacy International, ... “This is a huge problem.” "

Submission + - Amazing New Invention: A Nail Polish That Detects Date Rape Drugs (geek.com)

Submitted by stephendavion
stephendavion writes: Checking to see if your drink has been tampered with is about to get a whole lot more discreet. Thanks to the work of four North Carolina State University undergrads, you’ll soon be able to find out without reaching for a testing tool. That’s because you’ll already have five of them on each hand. The team — Ankesh Madan, Stephen Gray, Tasso Von Windheim, and Tyler Confrey-Maloney — has come up with a creative and unobtrusive way to package chemicals that react when exposed to Rohypnol and GHB. They put it in nail polish that they’re calling Undercover Colors.

Submission + - What I learned from debating science with trolls (theconversation.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I often like to discuss science online and I’m also rather partial to topics that promote lively discussion, such as climate change. This inevitably brings out the trolls.

“Don’t feed the trolls” is sound advice, but I’ve ignored it on occasion and been rewarded. Not that I’ve changed the minds of any trolls, nor have I expected to.

But I have received an education in the tactics many trolls use. These tactics are common not just to trolls but to bloggers, journalists and politicians who attack science.

Some techniques are comically simple. Emotionally charged, yet evidence-free, accusations of scams, fraud and cover-ups are common. Such accusations may be effective at polarising debate and reducing understanding.

The full article is available at The Conversation.

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