56424701
submission
retroworks writes:
Cracked.com is increasingly setting itself apart from the 1970s B-Movie-Mad-Magazine days, with some interesting online writing and a huge following on Facebook. Today, Cracked posted an article on the top ten "geek" gifts for Valentines Day, going to tired old staples like "one ring to rule them all" and a "chunk of gallium". Ok, I'd dig the gallium. But can Slashdot suggest another valentines day gift besides "non-BETA" /.? (The answer may be "NO")
56372571
submission
retroworks writes:
The Washington Post has an interesting article about the public release of depositions by former EPA Bigwig John Beale, who was arrested for misuse of millions of dollars in EPA funds. The story describes how Beale at first was merely abusing travel junkets, claiming to promote "efficient wood stoves" in Africa. Within the EPA, the rumors started that Beale was actually working undercover for the CIA. Beale explains that he didn't think of that cover, but it definitely helped that his colleagues (including Gina McCarthy, who worked under Beale, and is now the Head of the EPA) believed he was up to something top secret.
“People would ask me, and I would either say no, or I would slough it off as a joke or deny it, and then it became such a common kind of thing that was talked about that I just stopped responding to it at all,” Beale said in a 263-page transcript of his deposition that was released by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “So I began the fraud and I was looking for some cover for it,” he added. “... I took advantage of the rumors, but the rumors didn’t inspire me or impel me to begin the fraud.” Last year Beale, 65, entered a plea agreement that will send him to prison for 32 months and require him to pay nearly $1.4 million in fines and restitution. (link address to deposition https://docs.google.com/viewer...)
Those of us who lived in Africa in the 1980s were pretty familiar with the "efficient wood stoves", they were nothing special, typically sold in open markets. Had he been going Bahamas, claiming to represent microwave ovens, he would have been caught much sooner.
56275573
submission
retroworks writes:
Located in Noordwijk, Netherlands, and part of ESA's ESTEDC Test Center, is the Large European Acoustic Facility (LEAF). I09, Gizmodo Australia, and The Mail Online run stories about the awesome power of sound amplification system "powerful enough to kill a human being".
LEAF is capable of generating more than 154 decibels, the sound equivalent to standing next to several jets taking off. It is used to blast satellites and spacecraft with sound. Large horns are housed in a sound-proofed room that is 16.4metres tall. One wall of horns stands 11 m wide by 9 m deep and 16.4 m high. The nitrogen that's shot through the horns can produce a range of noise up to more than 154 decibels.
LEAF requires all the doors to be closed, operating in steel-reinforced concrete walls to contain the noise. The walls are coated with an epoxy resin to reflect noise, producing a uniform sound field within the chamber. The article doesn't say whether the knobs go past 11.
55673687
submission
retroworks writes:
Dr. Gary Becker (University of Chicago) and Julio Elias (Universidad CEMA, Argentina) wrote a thought provoking editorial in last week's WSJ, arguing that the prohibition on voluntary sale and trade of human organs is probably killing people. In 2012, 95,000 American men, women and children were on the waiting list for new kidneys. Yet only about 16,500 kidney transplant operations were performed that year.
"The altruistic giving of organs might decline with an open market, since the incentive to give organs to a relative, friend or anyone else would be weaker when organs are readily available to buy. On the other hand, the altruistic giving of money to those in need of organs could increase to help them pay for the cost of organ transplants."
Paying for organs would lead to more transplants, the article maintains. "Initially, a market in the purchase and sale of organs would seem strange, and many might continue to consider that market "repugnant." Over time, however, the sale of organs would grow to be accepted, just as the voluntary military now has widespread support."
55474741
submission
retroworks writes:
NY Times has an interesting story on how NSA put transistors into the USB input devices of PC, allowing computers unplugged from the internet to still be monitored, via radiowaves, from up to 8 miles away. The article mainly reports NSA's use of the technology to monitor Chinese military, and minor headline reads "No Domestic Use Seen". A link inside the story leads to a Dutch news article which maps placement of the monitoring system in 50,000 PCs. The source of the data was evidently the leak from Edward J. Snowden.
55455293
submission
retroworks writes:
A federal appeals court has struck down Federal Communications Commission rules that prohibit Internet service providers (ISPs) from restricting access to legal Web content. he ruling is the latest development in the long-running battle over net neutrality — the principle that all sites on the Internet be equally accessible. Net neutrality advocates want to preserve the Web's status quo, in which providers such as Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) and Time Warner Cable (TWC, Fortune 500) can't auction off priority traffic rights to one site over another, or impose tolls for high-bandwidth sites such as video streamers Netflix (NFLX) and Hulu. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Verizon's favor Tuesday. The court said that because the FCC had previously placed broadband Internet service in a separate regulatory category from phone service, it lacked the legal justification to impose the Open Internet rules.
Related: What your wireless carrier knows about you
But the ruling did affirm the FCC's authority in principle to regulate broadband Internet service, leaving open the possibility for the commission to rewrite its rules within a new legal framework. FCC Chairman Thomas Wheeler said in a statement Tuesday that the commission "will consider all available options, including those for appeal, to ensure that these networks on which the Internet depends continue to provide a free and open platform for innovation and expression."
Broadband provider Comcast (CMCSA, Fortune 500) said Tuesday that it supported the FCC's Open Internet rules, and would continue to abide by them for at least six more years regardless of how they are judged in the court system.
55168901
submission
retroworks writes:
Several news outlets, CBS, Verge, Engadget, National Geographic, MarketWatch, etc. report on Intel's announcement that the chips it produces will avoid purchases of rare earth minerals and metals, such as tantalum, sourced from high conflict areas such as Congo basin. Will recycled content follow? Will manufacturers begin stating the percentage of their boards which are made from recycled boards, like recycled paper greeting cards, closing the loop on the environmental conflict-mine-to-ewaste chain? Or is another De Caprio "Blood Diamonds" film in our future?
http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/06/all-intel-microprocessors-conflict-mineral-free/
54753589
submission
retroworks writes:
A study of how teenagers use social media has found that Facebook is “not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried”, but that the network is morphing into a tool for keeping in touch with older family members
54633921
submission
retroworks writes:
The MIT Materials Systems Laboratory, EU's StEP, and the U.S. National Center for Electronics Recycling (NCER) have released a study, Quantitative Characterization of Domestic and Transboundary Flows of Used Electronics, that analyses collection and export of obsolete electronics generated in the United States. It is the fifth study to debunk a widely reported statistic that "80 percent" of used electronics are dumped abroad. Last year, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) released studies of 279 sea containers, seized as "e-waste" in African ports of Lagos and Accra, and found 91% of the goods were reused. According to the UN, most of the junk at Chinese and African dumps was generated in African cities (Lagos had 6.9M households with TV in 2007, World Bank). The UNEP study also bolsters African traders claims that used product purchased from nations with strong warranty laws outperform "affordable" new product imported from Asia.
Where did the "original" widely reported statistic of 80% dumping (see /. slashdot dumping story) originate? Last May, in response to an editorial by Junkyard Planet author Adam Minter in Bloomberg, the source of dumping accusations (Basel Action Network) claimed "never, ever" to have cited the statistic.
The new studies have not slowed USA legislation aimed at banning trade of used electronics for repair, reuse and recycling overseas. This month, the Coalition for American Electronics Recycling (CAER.org) announced 13 republicans and 5 democrats had signed on to support the bill 2791 to criminalize exports of non-shredded displays, cell phones, and computers. Interpol announced a new "Project Eden" targeting African geek importers in November 2013.
54553669
submission
retroworks writes:
US scientists have performed a dramatic reversal of the ageing process in animal studies.
They used a chemical to rejuvenate muscle in mice and said it was the equivalent of transforming a 60-year-old's muscle to that of a 20-year-old — but muscle strength did not improve. Their study, in the journal Cell, identified an entirely new mechanism of ageing and then reversed it. http://www.cell.com/retrieve/pii/S0092867413015213
Other researchers said it was an "exciting finding".
54350493
submission
retroworks writes:
Some of this looks real, some of it looks like stock footage. None of it looks like Roswell, NM. USA. Looks like China made history on Dec. 14, 2013 with the successful landing of its Chang'e 3 lander carrying the Yutu rover. The mission is the first soft-landing on the moon since 1976 and made China only the third country ever perform the lunar feat.
52475309
submission
retroworks writes:
Brooke Greenberg, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooke_Greenberg) who baffled scientists because she never aged, has died at the age of 20, never having developed beyond the physical size of an infant or the mental capacity of a 2-year-old. Brooke has been pushed around in a stroller all her life. In 2009, when her family was interviewed on ABC's "20/20," Brook weighed 16 pounds and was 30 inches tall. She didn't speak, but she laughed when she was happy, and clearly recognized her three sisters.
"In some people, something happens to them and the development process is retarded," said medical researcher Richard F. Walker. "The rate of change in the body slows and is negligible. "In one of the girls Walker has studied, he found damage to one of the genes that causes developmental inertia, a finding that he said is significant. He also suspects the mutations are on the regulatory genes on the second female X chromosome.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/girl-ages-unravel-secret-eternal-youth/story?id=19974247
So /. is this News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters? Or a popcorn sideshow?
52475077
submission
retroworks writes:
Two scientists have formalized a theorem regarding the existence of God penned by mathematician Kurt Gödel. But unsurprisingly, there is a rather significant caveat to that claim. In fact, what the researchers in question say they have actually proven is a theorem put forward by renowned Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel — and the real news isn't about a Supreme Being, but rather what can now be achieved in scientific fields using superior technology. Using an ordinary MacBook computer, Berlin Free University researchers have shown that Gödel's proof was correct — at least on a mathematical level — by way of higher modal logic. The initial submission on the arXiv.org research article server is called "Formalization, Mechanization and Automation of Gödel's Proof of God's Existence."
51277989
submission
retroworks writes:
After years of policy driven by photos of poor African and Asian children posed against piles of electronic debris, researchers in a major $469,000 study by Memorial University, USC, and UCP Peru are raising questions about the arrests of Asian and African Tech Importers. The former Executive Director of the Basel Convention is quoted in today's USA Today article saying "There's a strong perception in the United States that the Basel Convention prohibits exports. That's not the case. At this point there is relatively little awareness in my perception that discarded electronics are not always a problem, but can be useful.". The study director, Josh Lepawsky, questions "Bans are going to do something along the lines of the following," Lepawsky said. "They will harm people's livelihoods who are already at the margins in terms of economic survival. On that account, they may not be the best thing to do."
But the chief proponent for the Export Ban, Jim Puckett of BAN.org, "contends countries in Africa and elsewhere trying to get the electronic hand-me-downs of the industrialized world — reusable computers, stereos and more — instead are shipped up to 80% useless e-waste."
Curiously, BAN applauded the 2012 report by the United Nations Environmental Programme, which examined 279 seized sea containers at African ports, and found 91% legitimate reuse. Puckett wrote to Bloomberg in May 2013 that "Never has BAN ever stated that 80% of USA e-waste is exported" (http://slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=basel). Though that has not stopped the UK from implementing the same export ban, a move the NGO applauds. Perhaps what's most interesting about the USA Today article is that the reporter, Dan D'Ambrosio, actually interviews Wahab Odoi Muhammed, an importer from Ghana. During the past ten years, it may be the first time one of the accused has ever been asked the question, do they buy 80% junk, ship it overseas to burn it, and why? Here's an interesting youtube video of a Nigerian, Joe Benson of BJ Electronics , who was arrested in the UK under the anti-export law now proposed in the USA. (31 views)
51020725
submission
retroworks writes:
Slashdot has recently covered the bad news about demand for cell phones in poor countries -the effects of conflict metal mining (coltan/tantalum). Today, a Wall Street Journal op-ed cites an opposite effect. Without negating the "resource curse" in economies stuck in mining, professor Daniel Fletcher (UC Berkeley, Blum Center for Development Studies) points out the blessings of tinkerers. "New phones with larger screens and better cameras ... the push for more powerful devices — and manufacturers' willingness to respond to demand— is on track to improve the lives of millions of people living in extreme poverty. ... the latest, greatest smartphones are driving a dramatic decrease in cost and increase in functionality that will benefit people whose total annual income is often less than the cost of a single phone. The reason for this odd coupling between affluent smartphone purchasers and the poor is simple: The enormous capabilities of smartphones are being repurposed and redirected for use in the developing world."
Is it possible to be proud to be an "e-waste exporter?" Or is this simply an excuse to externalize the costs of WEEE recycling, and to ship the wealthy's junk as "toxics along for the ride?" See photos covering both sides of the emerging markets recycling story in new book by Adam Minter, Junkyard Planet, or read an excerpt in Bloomberg BusinessWeek..
