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Submission + - Enzymes make electricity from jet fuel without ignition (scienceblog.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: University of Utah engineers say they've developed the first room-temperature fuel cell that uses enzymes to help jet fuel produce electricity without needing to ignite the fuel. These new fuel cells can be used to power portable electronics, off-grid power and sensors. A study of the new cells appears online today in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Catalysis. "The major advance in this research is the ability to use Jet Propellant-8 directly in a fuel cell without having to remove sulfur impurities or operate at very high temperature," says the study's senior author. "This work shows that JP-8 and probably others can be used as fuels for low-temperature fuel cells with the right catalysts."

Submission + - Terrorists used false DMCA claims to get personal data of anti-islamic youtuber

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: German newspaper FAZ reports (google translated version) that, after facing false DMCA claims by "FirstCrist, Copyright" and threatened by youtube with takedown, a youtuber running the german version of islam-critic Al Hayat TV had to disclose their identity in order to get the channel back online, in accordance with youtube policy. Later, the channel staff got a mail containing a death threat by "FirstCrist, Copyright", containing: "thank you for your personal data. [...] take care your house gets police protection!". As the staff had already suspected that "FirstCrist, Copyright" were in fact islamists, they had tried to convince youtube youtube to find another way, but in vain.

Submission + - Android 5.0 Makes SD Cards Great Again (androidpolice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Over the past couple of years, Google has implemented some changes to how Android handles SD cards that aren't very beneficial to users or developers. After listening to many rounds of complaints, this seems to have changed in Android 5.0 Lollipop. Google's Jeff Sharkey wrote, "[I]n Lollipop we added the new ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT_TREE intent. Apps can launch this intent to pick and return a directory from any supported DocumentProvider, including any of the shared storage supported by the device. Apps can then create, update, and delete files and directories anywhere under the picked tree without any additional user interaction. Just like the other document intents, apps can persist this access across reboots." Android Police adds, "All put together, this should be enough to alleviate most of the stress related to SD cards after the release of KitKat. Power users will no longer have to deal with crippled file managers, media apps will have convenient access to everything they should regardless of storage location, and developers won't have to rely on messy hacks to work around the restrictions."

Submission + - A computer that a seven-year-old can build and program. (instructables.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I've lost count of how many computers I've built over the years, but I think it is safe to say that the Kano Computer was the easiest build ever. So simple a child could do it. Kano founders, Yonatan Raz-Fridman, Alex Klein, and Saul Klein, wanted to figure out what the next generation’s computer would be like, so they asked Micah, Saul’s seven-year-old son. Micah advised that he wanted to build the computer himself but it “had to be as simple and fun as Lego,” and “no one teaches me how to do it.” The Kano is “a computer and coding kit, designed for all ages, all over the world.” It will get “you programming in minutes, with simple blocks that create real code.” It’s designed to “to give young people – and the young at heart – a simple, fun way to make and play with technology, and take control of the world around them.”

Submission + - Cern to generate 400PB a year from Large Hadron Collider experiments (v3.co.uk)

Submitted by DW100
DW100 writes: Cern has said it expects its experiments with the Large Hadron Collider to generate as much as 400PB of information per year by 2023 as the scope of its work continues to expand. Currently LHC experiments have generated an archive of 100PB and this is growing at 27PB per year. Cern infrastructure manager Tim Bell, speaking at the OpenStack Summit in Paris, said the organisation is using OpenStack to underpin this huge data growth, as it ensure it can handle such vast reams of potentially universe-altering information.

Submission + - HP Unveils Industrial 3D Printer 10X Faster, 50% Cheaper Than Current Systems (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: HP today announced an 3D industrial printer that it said will be half the cost of current additive manufacturing systems while also 10 times faster, enabling production parts to be built. The company also announced Sprout, a new immersive computing platform that combines a 23-in touch screen monitor and horizontal capacitive touch mat with a scanner, depth sensor, hi-res camera, and projector in a single desktop device. HP's Multi Jet Fusion printer will be offered to beta customers early next year and is expected to be generally available in 2016. The machine uses a print bar with 30,000 nozzles spraying 350 million drops a second of thermoplastic or other materials onto a print platform. The Multi Jet Fusion printer uses fused deposition modeling, an additive manufacturing technology first invented in 1990. the printer works by first laying down a layer of powder material across a build area. Then a fusing agent is selectively applied with the page-wide print bar. Then the same print bar applies a detailing agent at the parts edge to give high definition. The material is then exposed to an energy source that fuses it.

Submission + - Verizon Launches Tech News Site That Bans Stories On U.S. Spying 2

Submitted by blottsie
blottsie writes: The most-valuable, second-richest telecommunications company in the world is bankrolling a technology news site called SugarString.com. The publication, which is now hiring its first full-time editors and reporters, is meant to rival major tech websites like Wired and the Verge while bringing in a potentially giant mainstream audience to beat those competitors at their own game.

There’s just one catch: In exchange for the major corporate backing, tech reporters at SugarString are expressly forbidden from writing about American spying or net neutrality around the world, two of the biggest issues in tech and politics today.

Submission + - Stan Lee Media and Disney battle for ownership of Marvel characters (foxbusiness.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Stan Lee Media and The Walt Disney Co take their arguments to the U.S. Court of Appeals today over who owns the rights (and profits) to Marvel characters. Though Disney bought Marvel in 2009, Stan Lee Media (no longer associated with Stan Lee, himself) still claims copyright of the characters.

Submission + - OpenBSD Drops Support For Loadable Kernel Modules

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Interestingly the OpenBSD developers have decided to remove support for loadable kernel modules from the BSD distribution's next release. Several commits earlier this month stripped out the loadable kernel modules support from OpenBSD. Phoronix's Michael Larabel has scoured around but has not yet found an official reason for the operating system dropping the support. He wagers that it is due to security or code quality/openness ideals.

Submission + - What does it take to build a foundry?

Submitted by Tsolias
Tsolias writes: People working on I.T. have always been inventing new ways of offering cheap alternatives to expensive products, without compromising, sometimes, the quality of the end service/product; while sometimes the alternative was even better. A great example is the trend of 3D printing that has lead to very cheap solution, OSS designs, while several other examples are the RPI and Arduino/Arduino-like products that made technology available to everyone. I really wonder what is keeping chip manufacturing still a big deal to do it on your own. Is it possible to make an inexpensive fab that produces chips like USB controllers or simple CPUs like Atmels in your garage, even at technologies used 30 years ago?

Submission + - New Oculus SDK Adds Experimental Linux Support and Unity Free for Rift Headset (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Oculus, creator of the Rift VR headset, has released a new version of their SDK which brings with it long sought after support for Linux, which the company says is "experimental". Linux support was previously unavailable since the launch of the company's second development kit, the DK2 (http://www.oculus.com/dk2/). The latest SDK update also adds support for Unity Free (https://unity3d.com/unity/download), the non-commercial version of the popular game authoring engine. Previously, Unity developers needed the Pro version—costing $1,500 or $75/month—to create experiences for the Oculus Rift.

Submission + - What Do Americans Fear Most?

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Chapman University has initiated the first comprehensive nationwide study on what strikes fear in Americans and the top five things Americans fear the most are:1) Walking alone at night 2) Becoming the victim of identity theft 3) Safety on the internet 4) Being the victim of a mass/random shooting 5) Public speaking (PDF). "What initially lead us into this line of research was our desire to capture this information on a year-over-year basis so we can draw comparisons with what items are increasing in fear as well as decreasing," says Dr. Christopher Bader, who led the team effort. "We learned through this initial survey that we had to phrase the questions according to fears vs. concerns to capture the information correctly, so that is how we present it," The top five things Americans worry or are concerned about are: 1) Having identity stolen on the internet 2) Corporate surveillance of internet activity 3) Running out of money in the future 4) Government surveillance of internet activity 5) Becoming ill/sick. The remainder of The Chapman Survey on American Fears looks at factors that influence fear including: age, gender, race, work status, education, income, region of the country, urban vs. rural, political preference, religion, TV viewing, and gun ownership. Through their analysis two key factors emerged: having a lower level of education and also high frequency of television viewing were the most consistent predictors of fear.

Submission + - Yosemite Wi-Fi Problems

Submitted by Capt.Albatross
Capt.Albatross writes: Sophos' Naked Security blog is reporting that some users of Apple's OSX 10.10 (Yosemite) operating system are having problems with wi-fi: "Your network works fine for a while, typically between about 30 seconds and five minutes, and then fairly abruptly begins to suffer almost total traffic loss. The network shows up as active, and low-level packets such as PINGs can be sent and received as normal. But traffic such as UDP and TCP just doesn't get through."

Apple's own Support Community has much discussion, and some proposed workarounds, but no definite explanation or solution appears to have emerged yet.

Submission + - EU Sets Goal To Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions 40% by 2030 (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The 28 nations in the European Union agreed Friday to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40% (going by 1990 levels) by the year 2030. The deal received widespread criticism; industry bosses said the 2030 targets were too extreme, while many environmental groups said the goals weren't ambitious enough. The deal requires each nation to achieve the goal independently — earlier targets could use international offsets to avoid or reduce action. EU officials hope the deal will encourage the U.S. and China to take a more aggressive stance on fighting climate change.

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