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Submission + - Fight Against Uber Gets Physical

Submitted by EzInKy
EzInKy writes: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mexico-city-uber-drivers-attacked-at-taxi-drivers-protest/>CBS News and others are reporting on violent protests against Uber in Mexico. According to the article:

"A raucous crowd attacked Uber drivers and their vehicles with clubs and stones outside the Mexico City airport, the company said Wednesday, as licensed taxi drivers demonstrated to demand a "total halt" to app-based rideshare services in the capital.

Video of the incident showed people throwing eggs and flour inside the windows of vehicles, kicking doors and trying to rip off side mirrors. One man destroyed a sedan's rear window with a large rock."

Uber has responded to the attacks:

""What happened is a very grave attack on everyone's freedom and right to make a living in a dignified manner," Uber said in a statement. "Incidents like this are completely unacceptable, and we trust that authorities will act so that justice is done."

Could justice being done include all cars for hire being required to follow the same regulations?

Submission + - Robotic insect mimics Nature's extreme moves

Submitted by jan_jes
jan_jes writes: Water striders, a semi-aquatic insects that not only skim along water’s surface but also generate enough upward thrust with their legs to launch themselves airborne from it. The researchers analyze the mechanics that enable the insects to skim on and jump off water’s surface. By mimicking these mechanics, the robotic insect is built by the team can exert up to 16 times its own body weight on the water’s surface without breaking through, and can do so without complicated controls. The body of the robotic insect is produced by the “pop-up” manufacturing which was used to create folded composite structures that self-assemble much like the foldable components that “pop–up” in 3D books.

Submission + - 3DS and Wii U Getting Terraria in Early 2016, Playable at Gamescom (vgchartz.com)

Submitted by on4play
on4play writes: 505 Games has released a statement on its website today announcing the release of Terraria on Nintendo platforms. Both 3DS and Wii U versions will feature touch controls and will offer different ways to play.



"The 3DS version offers local WiFi play supported for up to 4 friends, while the Wii U takes that even further, with up to 8-player online multiplayer or 4-player splitscreen using classic Wii Remotes," wrote 505's Community Manager, Justin Reynolds.

Terraria will be playable for the 3DS for the first time during Gamescom. Both Wii U and 3DS versions are set to release early next year.

Full Article — http://www.vgchartz.com/article/260245/3ds-and-wii-u-getting-terraria-in-early-2016-playable-at-gamescom/

Submission + - Undergraduates Discover Densest Ultracompact Dwarf Galaxies (azoquantum.com)

Submitted by Applehu Akbar
Applehu Akbar writes: This discovery, using imaging data from several large telescopes, identifies two new ultracompact dwarf galaxies (UCD), M59-UCD3 and M85-HCC1.

UCDs are small galaxies that have stellar densities of, in the case of M85-HCC1, up a million times higher than Earth's stellar neighborhood. That would mean stars averaging one twentieth of a light year apart. In such a place our own Oort cloud would contain other stars.

Furthermore, these galaxies are considerably older than our own and contain an abundance of heavy elements.

Submission + - Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May making show for Amazon

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Former Top Gear hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May have signed up to present a new show on Amazon's streaming video service. The trio will front three series of a new motoring programme for Amazon Prime, with the first season to be made available worldwide in 2016. The move follows their departure from the hit BBC Two show earlier this year. Clarkson's contract was not renewed following an "unprovoked physical attack" on a Top Gear producer. His co-hosts then followed him in leaving the show. They will now make the unnamed new programme with former Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman, who also quit the BBC following the "fracas". In a statement from Amazon, Clarkson said: "I feel like I've climbed out of a biplane and into a spaceship."

Submission + - How the Media and You Are Misled by False Data (thefiscaltimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Edward Morrissey writes at the Fiscal Times, "The most obfuscating and misleading arguments made in debate of any kind usually begin with the words, “Studies say .” People passionately arguing for a favored position will resort to these citations of assumed authority, and will often fail to comprehend the scope or underlying data ... Even on line, where writers usually link to the source data, the studies either prove to be limited in application, poorly researched, or entirely wrong. Sometimes that has serious consequences. A study published in the British medical journal Lancet more than a decade ago started a panic about a supposed causal connection between vaccinations and autism. It fueled an anti-vaccination movement that has resulted in the return of diseases once thought stamped out in the West ... The study was later exposed as a fraud, based on only twelve subjects handpicked by its author ... with the data even further manipulated. The Lancet later withdrew the study and admitted it was “an elaborate fraud.” By then, it was far too late to undo the damage done to uncounted children over several years. Most questionable studies, and questionable claims made from them involve less malice and intent to defraud but matter nonetheless for public policy. ... Claims of support from “studies” for extraordinary and yet oh-so-convenient claims need much more careful scrutiny – and perhaps much more pointed skepticism."

Submission + - Windows 10 Service Release 1 may launch next week (betanews.com)

Submitted by Mark Wilson
Mark Wilson writes: We know that Windows 10 is the last version of Windows ever — and this is really another way of saying that Windows will never be finished. Over the coming weeks, months, and years, we can expect to see a near-endless stream of updates to the operating system.

But while a trickle of updates was anticipated, few would have expected that a huge update would be just around the corner. Despite having launched just 24 hours ago, it seems as though the first big update to Windows 10 — and it's shaping up to be a huge one — is already looming on the horizon. Windows 10 Service Release 1 (SR1) could be released as early as next week!

According to The Verge, Microsoft's developers have not stopped working on Windows 10 just because the OS has been pushed out of the door. Windows 10 SR1 is a massive collection of patches, fixes, and updates that address the issues that Windows Insiders have complained about, and continue to plague non-Insiders in the RTM build.

Submission + - Critical BIND denial-of-service flaw could disrupt large portions of Internet (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Attackers could exploit a new vulnerability in BIND, the most popular Domain Name System (DNS) server software, to disrupt the Internet for many users. The vulnerability affects all versions of BIND 9, from BIND 9.1.0 to BIND 9.10.2-P2, and can be exploited to crash DNS servers that are powered by the software. The vulnerability announced and patched by the Internet Systems Consortium https://www.isc.org/blogs/cve-... is critical because it can be used to crash both authoritative and recursive DNS servers with a single packet.

Submission + - Oldest rock crystals point to ancient magnetic shield for Earth (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Faint remnants of ancient Earth’s magnetic field have been found imprinted on the oldest rock crystals in the world—evidence that the magnetic dynamo in our planet’s core was alive and kicking more than 4 billion years ago, more than half a billion years earlier than scientists had thought. An early dynamo would have helped life gain a fingerhold: Earth’s magnetic field shields it from the solar wind, a stream of energetic particles from the sun that could strip the planet’s atmosphere of water vapor and other gases necessary for life. “If we know when the magnetic field starts, we have a good sense of how long the Earth has been habitable,” says Rory Cottrell, a paleomagnetist at the University of Rochester (U of R) in New York.

Submission + - Germany won't prosecute NSA, but bloggers (netzpolitik.org)

Submitted by tmk
tmk writes: After countless evidence the on German top government officials German Federal Prosecutor General Harald Range has declined to investigate any wrongdoings of the secret services of allied nations like NSA or the British GCHQ. But after plans of the German secret service "Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz" to gain some cyper spy capabilities like the NSA were revealed by the blog netzpolitik.org, Hange started an official investigation against the bloggers and their sources. The charge: treason.

Submission + - Why Micron/Intel's New Cross Point Memory Could Virtually Last Forever (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: As they announced their new 3D XPoint memory this week, Micron and Intel talked a lot about its performance being 1,000X that of NAND flash, but what they talked less about was how it also has the potential to have 1,000X the endurance of today's most popular non-volatile memories. NAND flash typically can sustain from 3,000 to 10,000 erase-write cycles — more with wear-leveling and ECC. If Micron and Intel's numbers are to be believed, 3D XPoint could exceed one million write cycles. The reason for that endurance involves the material used to create the XPoint architecture, which neither company will disclose. Unlike NAND flash, cross point resistive memory does not use charge trap technology that wears silicon oxide over time or a typical resistive memory filamentary architecture, which creates a statistical variation in how the filaments form each time you program them; that can slow ReRAM's performance and make it harder to scale. Russ Meyer, Micron's director of process integration, said 3D XPoint's architecture doesn't store electrons or use filaments. "The memory element itself is simply moving between two different resistance states," which means there's virtually no wear.

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