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Government

The Feds Accidentally Mailed Part of A $350K Drone To Some College Kid 157

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the finders-keepers dept.
Jason Koebler (3528235) writes "A Redditor got more than he bargained for in the mail today: He was accidentally mailed parts to a $350,000 environment and wildlife monitoring drone owned by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration. 'We sent a set of about eight boxes for this one aircraft system, and one was misdelivered by UPS. We're working with UPS to find it,' the federal agency says."
Medicine

Elderly Mice Perk Up With Transfused Blood 178

Posted by timothy from the price-of-mouse-blood-skyrockets dept.
Some exciting news, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, might make you glad that human blood is a renewable resource: "Giving old mice blood from young ones makes them smarter and improves such functions as exercise capacity, according to reports from two research teams that point to new ways to study and potentially treat diseases of aging. In one study, researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco found that blood transfusions from young mice reversed cognitive effects of aging, improving the old mice's memory and learning ability. The report was published Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine. Two other reports appearing in Science from researchers at Harvard University found that exposing old mice to a protein present at high levels in the blood of young mice and people improved both brain and exercise capability. An earlier report by some of the same researchers linked injections of the protein to reversal of the effects of aging on the heart. ... What isn't known from all this research, said Buck Institute's Dr. [Brian] Kennedy, is whether young blood might also increase the life span of mice and, if so, what such implications for humans might be."

Submission + - Pirate Bay Uploader Faces $32m Lawsuit over UFC Sports Content (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: A New York online pirate who uploads live sporting events to torrent such as the Pirate Bay and Kickass Torrents is being sued for $32m (£19m).

Zuffia, the parent company of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) pay-per-view cable channel which shows boxing and wrestling events, has launched a civil lawsuit against Steven Messina, 27, of Great Kills, Staten Island.

Messina is known online as "Secludedly" and numerous torrent files bear his name on the internet. On Kickass Torrents, he is considered to be a "verified uploader", meaning that the files he uploads are safe to download and do not contain malware or adware.

Secludedly updated his profile on Kickass Torrents to say: "My apologies to Zuffa and the UFC. All files deleted in respect for my favorite MMA organisation."
Security

Born In the NSA: These Former Spies Are Starting Companies of Their Own 57

Posted by samzenpus from the we-did-it-our-way dept.
First time accepted submitter ElyKahn (3637855) writes "The diaspora of startups with an NSA pedigree is rapidly growing. These startups, such as Sqrrl, Virtru, and Synack, are typically security-focused and often are commercializing technology projects from the NSA. However, coming from the NSA is a dual-edged sword... the technology is world-class and cutting-edge, but they must also fight the viewpoint of some that the startups are merely a front for the NSA."

Submission + - Building a PC in the Year 1998

Submitted by roelbj
roelbj writes: Maximum PC has posted a free PDF archive of their premiere issue, dating back to September 1998. Anyone who has been building computers for a while will appreciate gems such as "When will we get to use our USB ports? (p.13); overclocking a CPU to a blistering 225 Mhz (p.64); reviews of cutting-edge CD-ROM drives, PhotoShop 5.0, the Iomega Buz, and Final Fantasy VII; and and of course the Intel/AMD debate which existed even then (p.10). If you are offended by beige, look away.
United States

How the USPS Killed Digital Mail 338

Posted by Soulskill from the my-mailbox-might-as-well-be-a-recycling-bin dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In 2013, a startup called Outbox drew a lot of attention for its ambitious goal: digitizing everybody's snail mail. It was a nice dream; no more walking down your driveway six days a week to clear out the useless junk it contained. But less than a year later, Outbox shut down. This article explains how the United States Postal Service swiftly crushed their plan to make mail better. The founders were summoned to a meeting with the Postmaster General, who told them. 'We have a misunderstanding. You disrupt my service and we will never work with you. You mentioned making the service better for our customers; but the American citizens aren't our customers—about 400 junk mailers are our customers. Your service hurts our ability to serve those customers.' The USPS's Chief of Digital Strategy said Outbox's business model 'will never work anyway. Digital is a fad.' The USPS wouldn't work with Outbox to forward customers' mail, and that eventually destroyed the business."
Businesses

Setback For Small Nuclear Reactors: B&W Cuts mPower Funding 165

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the invest-in-canned-air dept.
mdsolar (1045926) writes with news that funding for the mPower, a Small Modular [Nuclear] Reactor, has been cut due to the inability to find investors interested in building a prototype. From the article: "The pullback represents a major blow to the development of SMRs, which have been hailed as the next step forward for the nuclear power industry. ... All told, B&W, the DOE, and partners have spent around $400 million on the mPower program. Another $600 million was needed just to get the technology ready for application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for licensing. ... B&W plans to continue low-level R&D on the mPower technology with a view to commercial deployment in the mid-2020s, said CEO James Ferland. But without a major shift in the business environment and in investor perceptions of the risks and rewards associated with nuclear power, that seems fanciful."
Star Wars Prequels

Lucasfilm Announces Break With Star Wars Expanded Universe 157

Posted by Soulskill from the if-you-strike-me-down-now-etc. dept.
RogueyWon writes: "A recent blog post from Lucasarts had confirmed that the new Star Wars movies planned for release by Disney will formally break continuity with the Expanded Universe novels, comics and video games. They say, 'In order to give maximum creative freedom to the filmmakers and also preserve an element of surprise and discovery for the audience, Star Wars Episodes VII-IX will not tell the same story told in the post-Return of the Jedi Expanded Universe.' The news is unlikely to be a surprise, given George Lucas's previous pronouncements on the issue."

Comment Re:Backport\Upstream? Seems unlikely (Score 2) 304

by MrBingoBoingo (#46759171) Attached to: OpenBSD Team Cleaning Up OpenSSL
With something as big and messy as crufty as OpenSSL, there probably isn't a sane way to approach the problem of decrapifying it that doesn't involve first stripping it down to the minimum.The OpenBSD devs aren't Windows devs, Apple Devs, or Linux Devs. There is no "greater evil" in making something more secure in less time for your own platform when contorting themselves to maintain compatiility keeps junk that slows them in their task to the point they don't every get to the clean secure rewrite.

Submission + - Starting on intermediate maths?

Submitted by hughbar
hughbar writes: I haven't done any 'real' maths since university about 40 years ago. I wasn't useless, but not that great either, I had to do some elementary quantum mechanics and the kind of arithmetic that an empirical scientist always needs.

I'd like to start on a little more, but every entry in Wikipedia seems to lead to another entry. Can't find the end of this piece of string. Should I specialise? Is there a book or course that covers university entry and first year maths for non-mathematicians [for example, people switching major subject]? Any ideas on this welcome, I'm ready to start but just don't know where to start.

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