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Submission + - Cassini probe sees plastic ingredient on Titan moon (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Ron024
Ron024 writes: The Cassini probe has detected propene, or propylene, on Saturn's moon Titan. It is the first definitive detection of the plastic ingredient on any moon or planet, other than our home world, says the US space agency (Nasa). The discovery, made by Cassini's infrared spectrometer, is reported in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Submission + - Cybercrime Service Providers Arrested in Europe

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The European Cybercrime Centre at Europol has supported Spanish National Police in arresting two Ukrainian criminals in Madrid who sold cybercriminals access to a huge number of compromised computer servers for anonymizing their Internet activities. They are also suspected of laundering the illicit proceeds of police ransomware. The criminals ran an online shop where the compromised machines were ‘sold’ to 450 of their cybercriminal ‘customers’ who were able to choose the location (country) of their preferred servers.

Submission + - Snowden Shortlisted as One of Three for EU's Sakharov Award 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: BBC reports Snowden has been shortlisted as one of three for this year's Sakharov Prize — EU's top human rights award. Quoting BBC:

"Mr Snowden was nominated by Green politicians in the European Parliament for leaking details of US surveillance."

"Mr Snowden's nomination recognised that his disclosure of US surveillance activities was an "enormous service" to human rights and European citizens, the parliament's Green group said."

Submission + - Google's offer may settle the EU antitrust case (yahoo.com)

Submitted by Phoeniyx
Phoeniyx writes: The EU competition chief has indicated that the most recent offer by Google in how it displays Internet search results may settle the EU antitrust case. According to the article:

Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told lawmakers in the European Parliament on Tuesday he believed the company's offer made it easier for web users to see results from Google's rivals in Internet searches.

The question is, if I am using Google to search for results, why in the world would I want to see results from "Google's rivals"? Is this article misleading or is there something wonky in what the EU is forcing on users?

Submission + - Shutdown could test IT security at federal agencies (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A government shutdown that lasts more than a few days could test the ability of federal agencies to protect their information systems against security threats. Several agencies, over the past few days, have released contingency plans showing that they will have to heavily scale down their IT teams to maintain, manage and protect IT infrastructure during a shutdown.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs , for instance, said it will furlough more than 40%, or 3,267, of its 8,026 IT employees in the event of an appropriations lapse. Those remaining will be responsible for functions such as network maintenance and protection, information security and for keeping the data center and enterprise infrastructure running.

Submission + - Text Analyser Reveals Emotional 'Temperature' of Novels and Fairy Tales (medium.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: Stories are a powerful channel for communicating emotions. But while they have been studied in detail by generations of critics, there is little in the way of objective tools for analysing and comparing their emotional content. That looks set to change thanks to one data mining researcher who has applied the process of sentiment analysis to novels and fairy tales that have been digitised on Project Gutenburg and the Google Books Corpus. The results show the density of emotions in different parts of a story and how the emotional 'temperature' changes throughout the tale. For example, this guy has used the technique to compare the emotional content of the entire collection of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales to reveal that the darkest story is a tale called Gambling Hansel ; clearly a lesson to us all.

Submission + - Former Qwest CEO out prison, blames NSA for troubles (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Revelations made by NSA leaker Edward Snowden would have given former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio a fighting chance to beat insider-trading charges that garnered him a 70-month jail term, says Nacchio, who was released this month after serving four and a half years. Had he been able to provide testimony that the government brought the charges in retaliation of Nacchio’s refusal to let Qwest participate in a warrantless surveillance program sought by the NSA without approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court – a program that came to light with the NSA documents Snowden leaked, Nacchio told the Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303983904579093173797712780.html

Submission + - French Military Saves 40% by Switching to Open Source (geek.com) 1

Submitted by Karashur
Karashur writes: After switching 37,000 PCs to Ubuntu, French Armed Forces says open source cuts costs 40 percent. The French Gendarmerie, a branch of the French Armed Forces in charge of public safety, has been a leader in moving away from proprietary software in recent years.

Submission + - Adults Make Riskier, More Inconsistent Decisions As They Get Older, Study Finds (businessinsider.com.au)

Submitted by schliz
schliz writes: People aged over 65 make poorer financial decisions and inconsistent choices than younger individuals with the same IQ, an international research group has found.

The study had 135 healthy participants aged 12-90 make a series of decisions: for example, choosing between gaining $5 and the chance to win $20 in a lottery. On average, over-65s earned 26-39% less than all other age groups, including adolescents — a finding that could partially explain their susceptibility to problem gambling and scams.

Comment Eating beetle larvae for protein? No, to get drunk (Score 5, Interesting) 110

by G3ckoG33k (#44910151) Attached to: Extreme Microbe Brewing: the Curse of Auto-Brewery Syndrome

In Nigeria people have been eating beetle larvae for centuries. Anthropologists have explained this as a rich nutrient source which could help mankind in the future. Now it turns out the little buggers (weevils) have an ethanol-content of more than 6 %! So, food or protein my ass. Those Nigerians were just getting some cheap booze!

The authors, Ogbonda & Kiin-Kabari (2013, http://www.academicjournals.org/SRE/PDF/pdf2013/11Feb/Ogbonda%20and%20Kiin-Kabari.pdf) write "Result will help to explain the observed intoxicating (auto-brewery syndrome) property of the larva".

Life is fantastic.

Comment Already exists, in CFO Financial Attachment... (Score 2) 194

by G3ckoG33k (#44890871) Attached to: Emotional Attachment To Robots Could Affect Battlefield Outcome

This already exists, in Financial Attachment... Ask any CFO, and you will see that his Financial Attachment to 'his' equipment may have even more far-reaching impact than any short-term attachment.

You wan't to win the war? Make sure your enemy starts arguing over the military budget.

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