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Submission + - FAA Scans the Internet For Drone Users; Sends Cease and Desist Letters (governmentattic.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The FAA has released a set of cease and desist letters sent in 2012 and 2013 to people operating drone vehicles for a variety of purposes including: tornado research, inspecting gas well stacks, aerial photography, journalism education, and other purposes. Drone cease and desist letters sent during 2014 are available from the FAA upon request.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Silicon Valley fights order to pay bigger settlement in tech talent hiring case (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

Reuters
Silicon Valley fights order to pay bigger settlement in tech talent hiring case
Worcester Telegram
Last month, a federal judge ordered four leading tech companies to come up with more money to settle a class-action lawsuit that accuses them of conspiring against their own employees. But Thursday, the companies challenged the ruling, saying the judge...
Four Technology Companies appeal Judge's Rejection of a $324.5 Million ... Uncover California
Blasting Koh, Defense Asks Ninth Circuit to Restore 'No-Poach' DealThe Recorder
Apple, Google Appeal Hiring Settlement, Accuse Judge Koh of Making MistakeThe Mac Observer
Washington Post-Madame Noire
all 171 news articles

Submission + - Home Security Cameras 1

Submitted by Insipid Trunculance
Insipid Trunculance writes: Having been burgled recently , I have been shocked out of my complacency and going all the way to secure my home. I am happy with the quote for the burglar alarm and going ahead ; I am not satisfied with the camera setup they have proposed , essentially its an old style cctv setup with a very clunky web accessible capability. What I have decided to have is Day/Night capable IP cameras which can email/text me whenever they detect motion. I didn't want to particularly setup a dedicated PC to record the video , so direct recording to a NAS and/or inbuilt storage is a requirement. I have been amazed at the number or solutions and the variability in their quality. What setup do fellow slashdotters have?

Submission + - Twitch Shuts Down Justin.tv, Google Acquisition To Blame?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Twitch today announced that the Justin.tv website, mobile apps, and APIs are no longer in service. A very simple explanation is given for the shutdown: since rebranding the company to Twitch Interactive in February 2014, all resources are now focused on Twitch.tv. The news today will almost certainly further fuel the rumors that Google is acquiring, or has already acquired, Twitch. Purchases are often followed by consolidation, as well as cutting off any excess limbs.

Submission + - Google Play Store Now Allows App Refunds Within 2 Hours Instead of 15 Minutes (techfeasta.com)

Submitted by TechFeasta
TechFeasta writes: Sometimes we mistake the description and purchase the App which doesn’t satisfy us. Has same happens with you?
Google play use to allows app refunds within 15 Minutes, For the convenience of users Google has reportedly but not officially increased the time to 2 Hours. Users can now ask for App refunds within 2 Hours of purchasing a paid app and game

Submission + - Gang Amasses Over a Billion Internet Passwords (nytimes.com)

Submitted by rotorbudd
rotorbudd writes: The New York Times reports that Hold Security has discovered that a Russian crime ring has amassed over a billion unique records.

" A Russian crime ring has amassed the largest known collection of stolen Internet credentials, including 1.2 billion user name and password combinations and more than 500 million email addresses, security researchers say."

Submission + - NASA Successfully Tests The 'Impossible' Microwave Thruster (valuewalk.com) 1

Submitted by Joe_NoOne
Joe_NoOne writes: NASA has achieved a breakthrough in space propulsion technology, albeit at a small experimental level. Researchers at the space agency have successfully tested the microwave thrusters that can work without any propellant. It was considered impossible because the propulsion system violates the law of conservation of momentum.

NASA said the electric propulsion device generated a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomena. The amount of thrust generated was only 30-50 MicroNewtons (mN), even less than the weight of an iPhone. But the fact that the system generated even a small amount of thrust without any onboard source of fuel clearly violates the law of conservation of momentum

Submission + - Why is Sun's Corona 300 times hotter than its surface ? (scienceworldreport.com) 4

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: There has been a phenomenon that has puzzled scientists for decades. Sun's Corona has been measured to be 300 times hotter than Sun's surface

"That's a bit of a puzzle," said Jeff Brosius, space scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "Things usually get cooler farther away from a hot source. When you're roasting a marshmallow you move it closer to the fire to cook it, not farther away."

Only recently Scientists have gathered some of the strongest evidence to explain what makes the sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than its surface.

The new observations come from just six minutes worth of data from one of NASA's least expensive type of missions, a sounding rocket. The EUNIS mission, short for Extreme Ultraviolet Normal Incidence Spectrograph, was launched on April 23, 2013 to gather a new snapshot of data every 1.3 seconds to track the properties of material over a wide range of temperatures in the complex solar atmosphere

The sun's visible surface, called the photosphere, is some 6,000 Kelvins, while the corona regularly reaches temperatures which are 300 times as hot and EUNIS was able to pick up a wavelength of light corresponding to that 10 million degree material

The culprit is known as " Nanoflares " — a constant peppering of impulsive bursts of heating, none of which can be individually detected — provide the mysterious extra heat

"The fact that we were able to resolve this emission line so clearly from its neighbors is what makes spectroscopists like me stay awake at night with excitement," said Brosius. "This weak line observed over such a large fraction of an active region really gives us the strongest evidence yet for the presence of nanoflares"

Submission + - Battery-free Wi-Fi connectivity could fuel 'Internet of Things' (washington.edu)

Submitted by vinces99
vinces99 writes: Imagine a world in which your wristwatch or other wearable device communicates directly with your online profiles, storing information about your daily activities where you can best access it – all without requiring batteries. Or, battery-free sensors embedded around your home that could track minute-by-minute temperature changes and send that information to your thermostat to help conserve energy. This not-so-distant “Internet of Things” reality would extend connectivity to perhaps billions of devices. Sensors could be embedded in everyday objects to help monitor and track everything from the structural safety of bridges to the health of your heart. But having a way to cheaply power and connect these devices to the Internet has kept this from taking off.

Now, University of Washington engineers have designed a new communication system that uses radio frequency signals as a power source and reuses existing Wi-Fi infrastructure to provide Internet connectivity to these devices. Called Wi-Fi backscatter, this technology is the first that can connect battery-free devices to Wi-Fi infrastructure. The researchers will publish their results at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Data Communication‘s annual conference this month in Chicago. The team also plans to start a company based on the technology.

Submission + - The hacking of NASDAQ (businessweek.com)

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes: Businessweek has an account of the 2010 hacking of the NASDAQ exchange. From the article, "Intelligence and law enforcement agencies, under pressure to decipher a complex hack, struggled to provide an even moderately clear picture to policymakers. After months of work, there were still basic disagreements in different parts of government over who was behind the incident and why. “We’ve seen a nation-state gain access to at least one of our stock exchanges, I’ll put it that way, and it’s not crystal clear what their final objective is,” says House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican from Michigan, who agreed to talk about the incident only in general terms because the details remain classified. “The bad news of that equation is, I’m not sure you will really know until that final trigger is pulled. And you never want to get to that.”"

Submission + - Star Trek "warp drive" crushes diamonds to dust (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: The world’s largest laser, a machine that appeared as the warp core in "Star Trek into Darkness", has attained a powerful result: It's squeezed diamond, the least compressible substance known, 50 million times harder than Earth's atmosphere presses down on us. The finding should help scientists better understand how material behaves at the great pressures that prevail deep inside giant planets.

Submission + - Microsoft CEO to slash 18,000 jobs, 12,500 from Nokia to go (v3.co.uk)

Submitted by DW100
DW100 writes: Satya Nadella has taken an axe to Microsoft's 127,000-strong workforce by announcing a whopping 18,000 job cuts, including 12,500 from the recently integrated Nokia division. At least 13,000 jobs will go within the next six months.

Submission + - Australia repeals carbon tax (wsj.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: After almost a decade of heated political debate, Australia has become the world's first developed nation to repeal carbon laws that put a price on greenhouse gas emissions.

In a vote that could highlight the difficulty in implementing additional measures to reduce carbon emissions ahead of global climate talks next year in Paris, Australia's Senate on Wednesday voted 39-32 to repeal a politically divisive carbon emissions price that contributed to the fall from power of three Australian leaders since it was first suggested in 2007.

Australia, the world's 12th largest economy, is one of the world's largest per capita greenhouse gas emitters due to its reliance on coal-burning power stations to power homes and industry. In 2011, daily emissions per head amounted to 49.3 kilograms (108 pounds), almost four times higher than the global average of 12.8 kilograms, and slightly ahead of the U.S. figure of 48.2 kilograms.

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