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Submission + - Court says you must prove you're broke in order to get court appointed lawyer (boston.com)

Submitted by
Mass Overkiller
Mass Overkiller writes: "Just read an article (ok just read the majority of an article) regarding your court appointed lawyer. The Massachusetts Judicial Supreme Court ruled that defendants must prove they are indigent in order to receive a court-appointed attorney. The court goes on to say that financial assets of your spouse, girlfriend and/or parents will be considered when deciding whether you are "unable to afford an attorney". Is this a violation of your 5th amendment rights? If I get arrested and need an attorney, is it my parents responsibility to provide financial assistance? What about my girlfriend? My spouse, I suppose, would be legally obligated to help fund my lawyer, but a non-legally-binded girlfriend? What does slashdot think of this?"
The Internet

Submission + - Wikipedia Surpasses 4 Million Pages (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by RO83RT
RO83RT writes: Wikipedia, the world's largest and online encyclopedia, has surpassed four million articles after more than a decade of work from people like you. Wikipedia is the largest centralized source of information on the web (Google is just a knowledge aggregator, not a source). Congratulations to the internet for such a large accomplishment.
Science

Submission + - Scientists Investigate Possible Radiation Murder 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Christian Science Monitor reports that tests carried out at the Institut de Radiophysique on Yasser Arafat’s final personal belongings – his clothes, his toothbrush, even his iconic kaffiyeh — found that there was a high level of polonium inside his body when he died suggesting Arafat may have been poisoned with the same radioactive element that Russian agents used to kill Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. Polonium is a rare element, hard for anyone but a national government to get its hands on and dangerous to handle. "Its presence on Arafat's belongings is certainly suggestive," writes Dan Murphy. "But it's also not out of the realm of possibility that it was added to his effects after his death (though, again, it's very difficult to obtain). Only if his body is exhumed — carefully, under supervision by professionals guarding against tampering — can suspicion congeal into fact." Suha Arafat, who was 27 years old when she married the 61-year-old Arafat in in 1990, told Francois Bochud, who heads the Institute of Radiation Physics in Lausanne, Switzerland that she'd kept the clothing and other items tested at her lawyer's office in Paris until early this year, when she asked Al Jazeera to have the items tested on her behalf. Now Suha is calling for the Palestinian Authority to exhume Arafat's body for further testing. "When Arafat died there was an avalanche of speculation that it was foul play," writes Murphy. "If solid evidence does emerge he was murdered, after a proper autopsy is done, then a storm could start to break.""
Power

Submission + - Bacteria converts carbon dioxide into liquid fuel (extremetech.com) 1

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "A team at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) have genetically engineered a microorganism that converts carbon dioxide into isobutanol and 3-methyl-1-butanol, both of which could be used as a fuel source for cars, or other combustion engines. Called Ralstonia eutropha H16, the bacterium uses electricity to fixate carbon dioxide into alcohols (which are merely carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen arranged in a different order). In theory the hydrogen atoms could be produced by solar panels, but for safety reasons the team instead created formic acid using electricity, and then the bacteria feasts on the formic acid to produce alcohol. Ultimately, what the UCLA researchers have built is an electro-bioreactor that turns electricity into liquid fuel — which in a world that wants to use electricity instead of gasoline, but where the infrastructure just isn’t there yet, this bacterium could be the perfect stepping stone. Imagine a car that converts CO2 into fuel as it drives along, either as a hybrid setup or as the primary power source. It also opens up the possibility of near-infinite fuel cells that could replace lithium-ion batteries."
Science

Submission + - Locusts in Lotuses (youtube.com)

Submitted by perp
perp writes: While locusts aren't driving around in Lotuses quite yet, a team of researchers at Carleton University have found a new way to track how the insects fly ... by seeing how they drive.
Crime

Submission + - Urban explorers: you can't talk to each other for a decade (guardian.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Trapezium Artist
Trapezium Artist writes: Four friends apprehended exploring the disused Aldwych station in London's Underground are faced with an "anti-social behaviour order" (ASBO) which would forbid them from talking to each other for a full 10 years. The so-called "Aldwych four", experienced urban explorers, were discovered in the tunnels under the UK's capital city a few days before last year's Royal Wedding and the greatly increased security measures in place led to their being interviewed by senior members of the British Transport Police. Nevertheless, once their benign intentions had been established, they were let off with a caution. However, following an accident caused by another, unrelated group of urban explorers in the tunnels a few months later, Transport for London applied to have ASBOs issued to the Aldwych four. These would forbid them from any further expeditions, from blogging or otherwise publicly discussing any exploits, and even from talking with each other for the 10 year duration of the order. One could argue about the ethics of urban exploration, but this nevertheless seems like an astonishingly heavy-handed over-reaction by TfL.
Canada

Submission + - How to Fix Canada's Internet Snooping Law (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The fight over Internet surveillance legislation has generated massive public attention in Canada with the government now indicating that it is "parking" the bill for now. While many believe the bill is beyond repair and should be scrapped, it is not going to die anytime soon. With that in mind, Michael Geist has posted 12 amendments that are needed to begin to address the massive public concern with the legislation.

Submission + - Popular eBook Site Shuts Doors For Good (bibliotik.org)

Submitted by ve6ay
ve6ay writes: According to the homepage on Bibliotik.org — a popular site for ebooks and other digital reading materials, they are shutting down effective immediately, due to the risks involved.

From their homepage: "Bibliotik has shutdown all operations. We are no longer able to assume the risks involved. The staff would like to apologize for the sudden (but necessary) decision and thank everyone that participated and made Bibliotik such a great place for so long. We love you guys!"
Cellphones

Submission + - 3G vs. 4G: Difference Explained

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: Despite the fact that terms '3G' and '4G' are used relentlessly to sell phones and tablets; to an average consumer they are the most mysterious terms in the mobile technology dictionary. In an attempt to explain these, PCMag's mobile analyst sheds some light on the history of the technology, discusses some misconceptions and explains when to go for 4G and when to buy 3G phones.
Science

Submission + - Multicellular life made in months (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: The origin of multicellular life, one of the most important developments in Earth’s history, could have occurred with surprising speed, US researchers have shown. In the lab, a single-celled yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) took less than 60 days to evolve into many-celled clusters that behaved as individuals. The clusters even developed a primitive division of labour, with some cells dying so that others could grow and reproduce.

Multicellular life has evolved independently at least 25 times, but these transitions are so ancient that they have been hard to study.

The researchers wanted to see if they could evolve multicellularity in a single-celled organism, using gravity as the selective pressure. In a tube of liquid, clusters of yeast cells settle at the bottom more quickly than single cells. By culturing only the cells that sank, they selected for those that stick together. After many rounds of selection over 60 days, the yeast had evolved into 'snowflakes' comprising dozens of cells.

Many single-celled organisms, including yeast, often form clumps of genetically distinct cells. But Ratcliff’s snowflakes were made up of genetically identical cells that had budded off and stuck together. Many other multicellular organisms may well have evolved through a similar 'divide-and-stick' process.
Firefox

Submission + - Notes on Reducing Firefox's Memory Consumption (mozilla.com)

Submitted by Skuto
Skuto writes: At yesterdays linux.conf.au Browser miniconference in Ballarat, Australia, Mozilla engineer Nicholas Nethercote gave a detailed presentation about the history of Firefox's memory consumption. The 37 slides-with-notes explain in gritty detail what caused Firefox 4's memory usage to be higher than expected, how many leaks and accidental memory use bugs were tracked down with Valgrind plugins, as well as the pitfalls of common memory allocation strategies. Current work is now focused on reducing the memory usage of popular add-ons such as AdBlock, GreaseMonkey and Firebug.
Required reading for people working on large software projects, or those who missed that Firefox is now one of the most memory-efficient browsers in heavy usage.

Submission + - In pictures: Nasa's next Mars rover (wired.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In August 2012, the Nasa rover Curiosity is scheduled to touch down on the surface of Mars. The size of a small car, it's four times as heavy as predecessors Spirit and Opportunity, and comes with a large robot arm, a laser that can vaporise rocks at seven metres, a percussive drill and a weather station. Oh, and 4.8kg of plutonium-238. Wired has some high-resolution photographs from lab that is putting the next rover together.
United States

Submission + - America - Like it or Unfriend It

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "As we celebrate America's birthday today, head over the to the NY Times and take a look at a very clever "op-art" creation, "Like it or Unfriend It" by Teddy Wayne, Mike Sacks, and Thomas Ng that represents what "America's Wall" would look like through our history. Beginning with "Christopher Columbus wrote on America's wall: 'This IS India, right?", through "America added Great Britian to Kingdoms I am Fighting With", through "The South has changed its privacy settings to accept carpetbaggers," and finishing with " America stopped playing the game Wild-Goose Chase While Nation-Building," and "America has joined the China Network" the wall includes dozens of invitations, likes, posts and changes to privacy settings that shows a summary of American history as seen from a Facebook perspective. Our favorite from the 1980's: "Ronald Reagan created a page: "Trickle-Down Economics" followed by "Half a million upper-income people like this.""
Power

Submission + - Giant Fluid Batteries Store Energy for 2,000 Homes (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by PeteRoss
PeteRoss writes: A consortium of scientists is developing a new type of large fluid battery that will be able to store enough renewable energy to power 2,000 homes. One of the roadblocks to large-scale renewable energy adoption is that it is intermittent — if the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing power can’t be generated, so there is a tremendous need for systems that store excess power to be released as needed. These new batteries are based on redox flow technology — which converts chemical energy to electrical currents very quickly — and each one will be the size of a handball court.

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