85% of autistic people are unemployed, though most are willing and able to work.

http://www.autism.org.uk/living-with-autism/employment.aspx

There are quite similar to the depressions in Moreux Crater (image PSP_010695_2225 ; 42 degrees N / 44.6 degrees E). They might be Kettle Holes, formed when a retreating ice sheet or glacial flood leaves behind huge chunks of debris rich ice that later melts (or sublimates) creating distinctive hollows in glacial sediment.

Moreux Crater Kettle Holes

Drugs are not legal in Portugal, they are decriminalised. Possession of less than 10 days supply (personal use) is a misdemeanor, involves a small fine and drug rehab. Offenders, young, first time, may have all record of their drug possession expunged after a few years, so it does not effect job prospects. The focus is on treatment not criminal prosecution. However, if you have more than 10 days supply you're deemed a dealer and treated as a criminal. Overall, decriminalisation has been a success, it has not resulted the fall of Portuguese society as some shrill conservatives claimed. Though, there are worries that the gains made in the last decade might slip given Portugal's dire economic situation, which has resulted in cuts to the heath budget.

"The definition of the jurisdiction of publication is not where it was published, but where it was read." - Tim Worstall

Worstall has an interesting blog post on Forbes, explaining the implications of the UK's new libel laws, brought in upon the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry. In particular, he points out that under UK law, publication happens where the article is read. It doesn't matter where your printing press, news station or internet servers are. Foreign websites could be sued for libellous for material "published" in the UK, on computer monitors and smart phones. This appears to be the line the French courts are taking.

The British Government Has Decided To Censor The Entire World's Press And Media

Varanoid.com has just posted an initial analysis of the malware, how it wipes the MBR, forces two popular South Korean anti-virus software programs to shut down and and scans the network for vulnerable systems. It also attempts to wipe the MBR on the Unix systems Linux, HP-UX, and SunOS. It overwrites the MBR with one of these three strings...

        PRINCPES
        PR!NCPES
        HASTATI.

From wiki: "Hastati (singular: Hastatus) were a class of infantry in the armies of the early Roman Republic who originally fought as spearmen, and later as swordsmen."

Varanoid preliminary analysis

Weatherley and Henley investigated a mesothermal gold deposit, the Revenge Mine in Australia (also known as orogenic gold deposits). These gold deposits form deep underground during mountain building events, generally 3 to 20 km deep, where greater hydrostatic pressures normally prevent fluids from boiling. Previously, geologists speculated that mesothermal gold ore was deposited when fluids cooled or interacted with other fluids with a different chemistry, not so it seems. Weatherley and Henley claim that, even at great depths and pressures, fluid pressure in a fault zone can momentarily approach zero during an earthquake, this is a great surprise. Also, the (normal) temperature and pressures during the formation of the Revenge Mine deposit was 1675 to 2075 bars and 425 to 525 C, this suggests the water was a Supercritical Fluid. I wonder if a phase change from supercritical fluid to a gas facilitated the precipitation of gold.

Also, it should be pointed out that role of Earthquakes in the formation of gold and other mineral deposits has been acknowledged for decades (in particular the near surface epithermal fault hosted gold-silver veins). Epithermal deposits are formed near the surface (generally less than 1 km), the frequent occurrence of breccias, broken rock fragments and voids in the faults attests to vigorous fluid boiling. One famous example of earthquake provoked mineralisation is the San Andreas fault, where hot springs issuing from the fault zone emit more arsenic and mercury after an earthquake, gold is presumably deposited at depth as well e.g.

Sibson, R.H. 1987. Earthquake rupturing as a mineralizing agent in hydrothermal systems. Geology 15(8), 701-704.

The technology for mapping subsurface voids has been around for decades, at least the 1960s, the most common method is Direct Current / Resistivity Surveying. An electric current is passed though the ground between four electrodes and the apparent resistivity (in Ohms/meter) of the subsurface is measured & mapped. Voids, filled water or clay or even empty space, have a completely different resistivity compared to the surrounding rock.

Modern survey instruments are automated, they use dozens of computer controlled electrodes (2 current and 2 voltage electrodes are active at any one time). On open ground, a survey covering an area football field could be carried out in a few days. Geophysicists were using Resistivity Surveying to map the sinkhole in Seffner, Florida.

However, I don't know if Florida state law quires a subsurface ground survey before homes are built, I wouldn't be surprised if lobbyists managed to keep such a law off the books (like the insurance lobbyists). Also, the home involved in this case might have been built before automated surveying became available in the 1990s, before then it was slower, more expensive, not widely used.

Engineers Conducing a Resistivity Survey"

2-DAND 3-D RESISTIVITY FOR LOCATING VOIDS BENEATH HIGHWAYS THREE CASE STUDIES"

And this reminds me of the Crowd Quake. Most crowd disasters are not due to Stampedes, where mass panic breaks out and people rush headlong into a choke point and get crushed. Researchers looking into the Love Parade Disaster discovered a hitherto unrecognised crowd dynamical process that can kill people in large crows - the Crowd Quake.

In normal crowds there's personal space between people, room to breath and move even a little bit. This personal space accommodates and cushions mass movement. However, at a critical point of density there's no personal space left and people are in full body contact. In this situation, mass movement efficiently transmits extreme forces through the crowd - the Crowd Quake. It's like changing a compressible gas into an incompressible solid, but people aren't incompressible. This is why crowd disasters happen so suddenly, it's like crystallisation from a gas.

See: Crowd Disasters as Systemic Failures: Analysis of the Love Parade Disaster http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.1886

Stellar evolution of sun like stars suggests our Sun was ca. 20% dimmer 4 billion years ago, and early opinions were the Sun was too dim and the Earth too cold for liquid water. In the 1970s, Carl Sagan proposed an Ammonia rich atmosphere that produced an efficient Greenhouse effect, but later work on the redox state of the Mantle indicated out gassed volatiles produced a hydrogen rich (mildly reducing atmosphere) that did not easily produce a strong greenhouse. Despite this later research, looking at stable isotopes, suggested the early earth was quite warm ~50 to 60 degrees Celsius. The reappraisal of the Habitable Zone may help dispel the "Faint Young Sun Paradox".

Here is a report for the European Parliament (Pdf) about cyber crime and privacy of Cloud services, co-written by Caspar Bowden, it discusses the ramifications of FISAAA. The salient section is "3.4. The inter-state/states/companies relation" on page 34.

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/studiesdownload.html?languageDocument=EN&file=79050

Furthermore, proposed changes to the EU's data protection regulations will facilitate FISAAA. Specifically, if a Security Companies' audit of a Cloud Service uncovers U.S. spying, they will be obligated not to inform an affected EU company. I wonder what pressure the U.S. is applying to get this passed...

US lobbying waters down EU data protection reform

"For example, IMCO voted to allow easier profiling of users by companies, and lessen the importance of reporting personal data breaches as soon as they occur. At the same time, most proposals to strengthen regulation were rejected.

Global temperature naturally varies by ±0.20 degrees each year, this "Noise" will swamp the "Signal" expected from 10-years of Global Warming. Thus, short time spans fail to show any convincing evidence of global warming. You haver to look at a longer time span, 17 years of temperature data is the minimum required to detect Global Warming with a degree of certainty.

"Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on globalmean tropospheric temperature."

Santer, B.D., Mears, C., Doutriaux, C., Caldwell, P., Gleckler, P.J., Wigley, T.M.L., Solomon, S., Gillett, N.P., Ivanova, D., Karl, T.R., Lanzante, J.R., Meehl, G.A., Stott, P.A., Taylor, K.E., Thorne, P.W., Wehner, M.F. & Wentz, F.J., 2011. Separating signal and noise in atmospheric temperature changes: The importance of timescale. Journal of Geophysical Research 116(D22), D22105.

Also, most anthropogenic SO2 stays in the troposphere (the lower atmosphere) where it contributes to smog and acid rain, playing little if any role in cooling the Earth. Volcanic SO2 on the other hand enters the high stratosphere, forming a persistent haze that efficiently reflects the Sun's heat. Anyone remember the milky blue skies in the months after Mt Pinatubo?

Finland's GDP was US$189.4 billion in 2010 v's Apple's revenue of US$156.508 billion in 2012. Hard to compete when you rival's revenue exceeds your own countries' GPD.