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Submission + - Net neutrality-lovin' Sweden mulls law to censor the internet (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Swedish government is considering overturning its long-held opposition to internet filtering – so says one of the country's most high-profile ISPs.

According to Bahnhof and its CEO Jon Karlung, the ISP received an email from an investigator who said he had been appointed by the government to look into regulating the Swedish gambling market.

The investigation is looking into a new licensing system that would require any gambling site to get a license from the government. Critically, however, in order to make the system enforceable, gambling websites that did not have a license to operate in Sweden would be blocked. And ISPs of course would be responsible for blocking off access to their websites, right down to the IP level.
Networking

CERN Engineers Have To Identify and Disconnect 9,000 Obsolete Cables (vice.com) 169

Posted by Soulskill from the IT's-version-of-russian-roulette dept.
An anonymous reader writes: CERN, home to the Large Hadron Collider, has grand plans to update the world's largest particle accelerator complex in the next few years. But engineers have identified a barrier to the upgrade: there's no space for new cables in the injectors that accelerate particles before they enter the LHC. In the past, when parts of the accelerators have been upgraded or added to, engineers would often additionally replace the cables that connected them. In the process, they would leave in place the old cables that were no longer in use. Now, a heap of obsolete cables are blocking the way to install new ones needed for the accelerator’s next big upgrade. To make space, CERN engineers have set out to identify and remove the old, unused cables. All 9,000 of them.
Bug

Search Suggestions Causing Apple's Safari Browser To Crash on Many Devices (theverge.com) 83

Posted by Soulskill from the did-you-mean:-daisy-bell dept.
An anonymous reader writes: According to the Verge (and my wife) Apple Safari browsers are crashing left, right, and center due to Safari's search suggestions feature. "Simply disabling this feature will stop Safari crashing, or using the private mode option in the browser as a temporary workaround. Not everyone is affected, and this could be because some have the search suggestions cached locally or they're still able to reach Apple's servers thanks to a DNS cache."
Science

Why the Calorie Is Broken (arstechnica.com) 425

Posted by Soulskill from the consult-magic-8-ball-for-nutrition-information dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Nutrition is a subject for which everybody should understand the basics. Unfortunately, this is hard. Not only is there a ton of conflicting research about how to properly fuel your body, there's a multi-billion-dollar industry with financial incentive to muddy the waters. Further, one of the most basic concepts for how we evaluate food — the calorie — is incredibly imprecise. "Wilbur Atwater, a Department of Agriculture scientist, began by measuring the calories contained in more than 4,000 foods. Then he fed those foods to volunteers and collected their faeces, which he incinerated in a bomb calorimeter. After subtracting the energy measured in the faeces from that in the food, he arrived at the Atwater values, numbers that represent the available energy in each gram of protein, carbohydrate and fat. These century-old figures remain the basis for today's standards."

In addition to the measuring system being outdated, the amount of calories taken from a meal can vary from person to person. Differences in metabolism and digestive efficiency add sizable error bars. Then there are issues with serving sizes and preparation methods. Research is now underway to find a better measure of food intake than the calorie. One possibility for the future is mapping your internal chemistry and having it analyzed with a massive database to see what foods work best for you. Another may involve tweaking your gut microbiome to change how you extract energy from certain foods.

Submission + - High-Speed Firms Now Oversee Almost All Stocks at NYSE Floor (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Barclays, one of the biggest banking and financial services firms in the world, has sold its business on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to Global Trading Systems. This is significant because it marks a transition between human-based trading and high-speed trading. Now, humans on the NYSE floor have more of a supervisory role, making sure the automated systems don't go haywire. Barclays has been around for hundreds of years; GTS was founded in 2006. "There used to be dozens of specialist firms, as designated market makers were once known, at the NYSE floor. But profits from trading U.S. stocks dwindled, making it difficult to serve as market makers without automation. Although GTS, Virtu, IMC and KCG employ human traders at the floor, their businesses are driven by some of the industry’s most sophisticated computer systems."
Earth

Flat-Earth Argument Results in Rap Battle (npr.org) 235

Posted by Soulskill from the of-course-it-does dept.
New submitter mjjochen writes: A little something to make you smile (or cry). NPR reports on astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson calling out rapper B.o.B. in a Twitter (& rap) argument over the status of the earth (are we round or flat?). Rapper B.o.B. references the usual conspiracy theories to support his case in his throwdown (music). Neil deGrasse Tyson responds (actually, his nephew does), on why B.o.B.'s points are not very well-informed (music). As Tyson puts it, "Duude — to be clear: Being five centuries regressed in your reasoning doesn't mean we all can't still like your music." Shall we start leeching the four humors from the body again to achieve balance? Hrm.

Submission + - CERN Engineers Have to Identify and Disconnect 9,000 Obsolete Cables

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: CERN, home to the Large Hadron Collider, has grand plans to update the world’s largest particle accelerator complex in the next few years. But engineers have identified a barrier to the upgrade: there’s no space for new cables in the injectors that accelerate particles before they enter the LHC.

Submission + - Apple's Safari browser is crashing on iPhones and Macs worldwide (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to the Verge and my wife Apple Safari browsers are crashing left right and center due to Apples search suggestions servers suggesting that the browser crash and you beat your head on the ground in frustration. Work around in the attached link.

Submission + - 1 In 3 Home Routers Will Be Used As Public Wi-Fi Hotspots By 2017

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Juniper Research predicts that at least 1 in 3 home routers will be used as public Wi-Fi hotspots by 2017, and that the total installed base of such dual-use routers will reach 366 million globally by the end of 2020. Major broadband operators such as BT, UPC and Virgin Media in Europe and several of the biggest cable TV operators in the US such as Comcast and Cablevision have adopted the homespot model as a low-cost way of rapidly expanding their domestic Wi-Fi coverage.

Submission + - "Android for Drones" by ETH Zurich becoming standard (www.ethz.ch)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: ETH Zurich, the swiss federal institute of technology, plays a critical role in bringing rocket science to commercial drones. Its technology is a number shipping products, including Airdog, 3DR Solo, Fotokite, Skycatch and upcoming products like Lily, Fleye and many more. It is the reference flight control software for Snapdragon Flight, which will bring a lot of further adoption and products in 2016.
Entertainment

Drone Racing League Wants To Be the Next NASCAR (bloomberg.com) 91

Posted by Soulskill from the fly-fast-turn-left-fly-fast-turn-left dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The Drone Racing League has secured a series of significant investments that it hopes will be enough to turn drone races into a spectator sport. The quadcopter drone racing scene has only exists for a few years, so it's still fairly disjointed. Rules and standards vary between organizers, so it can be hard to have fair races. The DRL aims to fix that. In doing so, it hopes to take lessons from NASCAR and the growing e-sports leagues to find an audience. "Often, pilots wear virtual reality goggles that receive a feed from the camera embedded on the drone and maneuver as if they were in the craft itself. That first-person feed is also recorded and used as raw material for the content produced by the Drone Racing League." The high speeds combined with the ability to make interesting (and photogenic) courses may appeal to people who find car racing too boring.
Data Storage

Six Missing HDDs Contain Health Information of Nearly a Million Patients (corporate-ir.net) 87

Posted by Soulskill from the your-insurance-premiums-at-work dept.
Lucas123 writes: Health insurer Centene Corp. revealed that it is looking for six HDDs with information on 950,000 customers that went missing during a data project that was using laboratory results to improve the health outcomes of patients. The drives not only contain sensitive personal identification information, such as addresses, dates of birth and social security numbers, but they also contain health information. "While we don't believe this information has been used inappropriately," said Michael Neidorff, CEO of Centene.
Science

New Clues To How the Brain Maps Time (quantamagazine.org) 79

Posted by Soulskill from the implementing-a-stopwatch-in-neurons dept.
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from Quanta Magazine: Our brains have an extraordinary ability to monitor time. A driver can judge just how much time is left to run a yellow light; a dancer can keep a beat down to the millisecond. But exactly how the brain tracks time is still a mystery. Researchers have defined the brain areas involved in movement, memory, color vision and other functions, but not the ones that monitor time. Indeed, our neural timekeeper has proved so elusive that most scientists assume this mechanism is distributed throughout the brain, with different regions using different monitors to keep track of time according to their needs.

Over the last few years, a handful of researchers have compiled growing evidence that the same cells that monitor an individual's location in space also mark the passage of time. This suggests that two brain regions — the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex, both famous for their role in memory and navigation — can also act as a sort of timer.

Submission + - Consciousness may be the product of carefully balanced chaos (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Is my yellow the same as your yellow? Does your pain feel like my pain? The question of whether the human consciousness is subjective or objective is largely philosophical. But the line between consciousness and unconsciousness is a bit easier to measure. In a new study of how anesthetic drugs affect the brain, researchers suggest that our experience of reality is the product of a delicate balance of connectivity between neurons—too much or too little and consciousness slips away.
Government

The US Government and Open Standards: a Tale of Personal Woe (thevarguy.com) 256

Posted by Soulskill from the to-file-a-complaint-please-use-Netscape-Navigator-1.22 dept.
An anonymous reader writes: This article details a Linux user's struggles to submit a grant application when the process requires finicky, proprietary software. It also covers familiar ground made timely by the upcoming elections: the U.S. should prefer open source software and open standards over proprietary alternatives. The grant application required a PDF created by Adobe Acrobat — software Adobe no longer supports for Linux. Once the document was created, attempting to submit it while using Ubuntu fails silently. (On Windows 7, it worked immediately.) The reader argues, "By requiring Acrobat the government gives preference to a particular software vendor, assuring that thousands of people who otherwise would not choose to use Adobe software are forced to install it. Worse, endorsing a proprietary, narrowly supported technology for government data poses the risk that public information could become inaccessible if the vendor decides to stop supporting the software. Last but not least, there are privacy and fairness issues at stake. Acrobat is a totally closed-source program, which means we have to take Adobe's word for it that nothing sketchy is going on in its code. ... It would seem to be in the interest of the public for the government to prefer an open source solution, since it is much harder to hide nefarious features inside code that can be publicly inspected."

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