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Submission + - Australian team working on engines without piston rings

Submitted by JabrTheHut
JabrTheHut writes: An Australian team is seeking funding for bringing an interesting idea to market: cylinder engines without piston rings. The idea is to use small groves that create a pressure wave that acts as a seal for the piston, eliminating the piston ring and the associated friction. Engines will then run cooler, can be more energy efficient and may even burn fuel more efficiently, at least according to the story at http://www.motoring.com.au/news/2013/aussie-invention-eliminates-piston-rings-40773. Mind you, they haven't even built a working prototype yet. If it works I'd love to fit this into an older car...

Submission + - Relapse of 'cured' HIV patients spurs AIDS science on (orlandosentinel.com)

Submitted by spineas
spineas writes: Though the two 'Boston patients' have relapsed and have had to resume antiretroviral drug treatments to keep the HIV virus at bay, researchers have a wealth of new information from the temporary remission in the two patients which can be applied towards finding a more permanent cure for the disease.

Submission + - China: The Next Space Superpower (ieee.org)

Submitted by the_newsbeagle
the_newsbeagle writes: "As 2014 dawns, China has the most active and ambitious space program in the world," says this article. While it's true that the Chinese space agency is just now reaching milestones that the U.S. and Russia reached 40 years ago (its first lunar rover landed in December), the Chinese government's strong support for space exploration means that it's catching up fast. On the agenda for the next decade: A space station to rival the ISS, a new spaceport, new heavy-lift rockets, a global satellite navigation system to rival GPS, and China's first space science satellites.

Submission + - Unhappy with your government? Start a new one. 11

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Stories like the NSA revelations (among many others) suggest that modern governments may be getting the sense that they exist of their own right and independent of the people who allegedly democratically control them. When faced with trying to "fix" this situation, individuals are daunted by the scope of the task. The institutions of government are huge and difficult to imagine changing. However, apart from changing from the inside or revolting against the system, there is a very different alternative: just set up a new government. Of course current governments frown on that, but there are ways around it. Seasteading advocates creating new nations in newly-created lands (i.e., on the seas). Open source governance advocates setting up new, internet-based communities with their own governance system and allowing those communities to gradually push out the antiquated systems. What's your plan for living in democracy in the coming year?

Submission + - The Shadowy Darknet will be the Only Truly World-wide Web (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: “The shadowy Darknet then will be the only truly world-wide web” — this is the view of Alexander Gostev, chief security expert at Kaspersky Lab who believes the fallout from Edward Snowden's leaks may lead at some point to the "collapse of the current Internet, which will break into dozens of national networks."

Submission + - Increasing Number of Books Banned in the USA (npr.org)

Submitted by vikingpower
vikingpower writes: Isabel Allende's The House of The Spirits. Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man.

What do all these titles have in common with each other ? Exactly, they are banned somewhere, on some school, in the USA. . Yes, in 2013. A project named The Kids' Right to Read ( by the National Coalition Against Censorship ) investigated three times the average number of incidents, adding to an overall rise in cases for the entire year, according to KRRP coordinator Acacia O'Connor. To date, KRRP has confronted 49 incidents in 29 states this year, a 53% increase in activity from 2012. During the second half of 2013, the project battled 31 new incidents, compared to only 14 in the same period last year.

"It has been a sprint since the beginning of the school year," O'Connor said. "We would settle one issue and wake up the next morning to find out another book was on the chopping block."

The NCAC also offers a Book Censorship Toolkit on its website. If such a toolkit is needed at all, does this indicate that intellectual freedom and free speech are ( slowly ) eroding in the USA ?

Submission + - You Are Your Metadata (theguardian.com)

Submitted by sidemouse
sidemouse writes: We are asked to accept invasions of privacy based on a distinction between information we deem personal and private and the cyber-techno term metadata. I'm not sure this distinction exists. Imagine the pre-internet world again: what is your metadata? The pub you frequent, the friends you talk to, the duration of your conversation with an attractive stranger, where you go afterwards and for how long. I think the metadata of my life *is* my life.

Comment A device means nothing without relevant content. (Score 1) 234

by pillageplunder (#45817795) Attached to: Is a Super-Sized iPad the Future of Education?

No one device is the future of education. In today's classroom, with the various programs the Feds have put in place (No Child left Behind, etc.) what a device like this will do is make it so very easy to define each student on how well/poorly they do in "learning" mandated curriculum by how well they do on "standardized" testing. One size does NOT fit all when it comes to being able to learn, and, as importantly, being able to apply that learned knowledge in a productive manner. Simply being able to regurgitate what you have been taught doesn't give a student the skill-set and tools needed needed to make it in the world we live in today. Take a look at the current problems with College "educated" folks who have graduated and are upset because their perfect 4.0 GPA doesn't translate to a well-paying tech job. A 4.0 GPA means you've learned how to excel in the environment known as college. That ain't what the real world is all about.

Submission + - Stanford Researchers: It Is Trivially Easy to Match Metadata to Real People (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We knew this already, but now it's been done via research:

In defending the NSA's telephony metadata collection efforts, government officials have repeatedly resorted to one seemingly significant detail: This is just metadata—numbers dialed, lengths of calls. "There are no names, there’s no content in that database," President Barack Obama told Charlie Rose in June. No names; just metadata. New research from Stanford demonstrates the silliness of that distinction. Armed with very sparse metadata, Jonathan Mayer and Patrick Mutchler found it easy—trivially so—to figure out the identity of a caller.

Now, if the judicial system would actually apply the 4th amendment, and stop mass spying...

Submission + - Apple's Newest Mac Pro Costs Less than DIY PC Build - Thanks to AMD

Submitted by Deathspawner
Deathspawner writes: Word’s out that Apple’s latest Mac Pro costs less than an equal-configured do-it-yourself PC, but as Techgage has discovered, there's more than meets the eye in this particular case. While it might seem at first that Apple has loosened up on its famed "Apple Tax", the reason the company's latest Mac Pro costs less than the DIY equivalent owes its thanks to AMD. The reason? The $3,200 GPUs required for a DIY 1:1 build cost just ~$750 to those who purchase one of the latest Mac Pros.

Submission + - Next Carsharing Advance: Electric Cars From A Vending Machine

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: When you're in a waiting room and get hungry, what do you do? You hit the vending machine for a candy bar or some salty snack food. Now, if you're in China and you need to borrow an electric car from the local car-sharing service, you can do exactly the same thing: go and get one from the vending machine. Just like the Smart-car dispensers seen across Europe, the Kandi car-sharing service dispenses two-seat electric cars with a 75-mile range from a big tower that looks like a huge vending machine full of candy, errrrr, cars. It costs $3.25 an hour to rent one, and China hopes it'll help cut emissions from transportation. So the next time you're in China, and you need a car, just hit up the biggest vending machine you can find.

Submission + - X.Org Server 1.15 Brings DRI3, Lacks XWayland Support (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A belated holiday gift for Linux users is the X.Org Server 1.15 "Egg Nog" release. X.Org Server 1.15 presents new features including DRI3 — a big update to their rendering model — a rewrite of the GLX windowing system code, support for Mesa Mega Drivers, and many bug fixes plus polishing. The release goes without though any mainline support for XWayland to ease the adoption of the Wayland Display Server while maintaining legacy X11 application support.

Submission + - Facebook is Dead and Buried: Survey (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by retroworks
retroworks writes: A study of how teenagers use social media has found that Facebook is “not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried”, but that the network is morphing into a tool for keeping in touch with older family members

Submission + - EBay Vulnerable to Account Hijacking via XSRF (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: eBay users remain vulnerable to account hijacking nearly five months after it was initially informed of a cross-site request forgery flaw by a U.K. security researcher. Ebay has three times communicated to the researcher that the code causing the XSRF situation has been fixed, but it still remains vulnerable to his exploit.

The attack allows a hacker who lures a victim to a website hosting the exploit to change the user's contact information necessary to perform a password reset. The hacker eventually is able to log in as the victim and make purchases on their behalf.

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