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Submission + - Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems (newsweek.com)

Submitted by oxide7
oxide7 writes: In June 2011, Julian Assange received an unusual visitor: the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt. They outlined radically opposing perspectives: for Assange, the liberating power of the Internet is based on its freedom and statelessness. For Schmidt, emancipation is at one with U.S. foreign policy objectives and is driven by connecting non-Western countries to Western companies and markets. These differences embodied a tug-of-war over the Internet’s future that has only gathered force subsequently. Assange describes his encounter with Schmidt and how he came to conclude that it was far from an innocent exchange of views.

Submission + - Humans were living at extreme altitudes 1000 years earlier than thought (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: After 5 years of scouring the Andes mountains, two graduate students have found the oldest solid evidence that humans were living at extreme elevations by 12,800 years ago. These early settlers of the Americas, known as Paleoindians, camped in a rock shelter and manufactured stone tools in an open-air workshop almost 4500 meters above sea level, indicating that humans lived at least for part of the year at high elevations 1000 years earlier than previously thought.

Submission + - Leaked documents reveal behind-the-scenes Ebola vaccine issues (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Extensive background documents from a meeting that took place today at the World Health Organization (WHO) have provided new details about exactly what it will take to test, produce, and bankroll Ebola vaccines, which could be a potential game changer in the epidemic. ScienceInsider obtained materials that vaccinemakers, governments, and WHO provided to the 100 or so participants at a meeting on “access and financing” of Ebola vaccines. The documents put hard numbers on what until now have been somewhat fuzzy academic discussions. And they make clear to the attendees—who include representatives from governments, industry, philanthropies, and nongovernmental organizations—that although testing and production are moving forward at record speed, knotty issues remain.
Ubuntu

Ubuntu 14.10 Released With Ambitious Name, But Small Changes 110

Posted by timothy from the I'd-hoped-for-ubiquitous dept.
Ubuntu 14.10, dubbed Utopic Unicorn, has been released today (here are screenshots). PC World says that at first glance "isn't the most exciting update," with not so much as a new default wallpaper — but happily so: it's a stable update in a stable series, and most users will have no pressing need to update to the newest version. In the Ubuntu Next unstable series, though, there are big changes afoot: Along with Mir comes the next version of Ubuntu’s Unity desktop, Unity 8. Mir and the latest version of Unity are already used on Ubuntu Phone, so this is key for Ubuntu's goal of convergent computing — Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu desktop will use the same display server and desktop shell. Ubuntu Phone is now stable and Ubuntu phones are arriving this year, so a lot of work has gone into this stuff recently. The road ahead looks bumpy however. Ubuntu needs to get graphics drivers supporting Mir properly. The task becomes more complicated when you consider that other Linux distributions — like Fedora — are switching to the Wayland display server instead of Mir. When Ubuntu Desktop Next becomes the standard desktop environment, the changes will be massive indeed. But for today, Utopic Unicorn is all about subtle improvements and slow, steady iteration.

Submission + - Microsoft exec opens up about Research lab closure, layoffs (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: It's been a bit over a month since Microsoft shuttered its Microsoft Research lab in Silicon Valley as part of the company's broader restructuring that will include 18,000 layoffs. This week, Harry Shum, Microsoft EVP of Technology & Research, posted what he termed an "open letter to the academic research community" on the company's research blog.http://blogs.msdn.com/b/msr_er/archive/2014/10/21/harry-shum-open-letter-to-academic-research-community.aspx In the post, Shum is suitably contrite about the painful job cut decisions that were made in closing the lab, which opened in 2001. He also stresses that Microsoft will continue to invest in and value "fundamental research".
The Media

German Publishers Capitulate, Let Google Post News Snippets 95

Posted by timothy from the ja-ja-gut dept.
itwbennett writes German publishers said they are bowing to Google's market power, and will allow the search engine to show news snippets in search results free of charge — at least for the time being. The decision is a step in an ongoing legal dispute between the publishers and Google in which, predictably, publishers are trying to get compensation from the search engine for republishing parts of their content and Google isn't interested in sharing revenue. The move follows a Google decision earlier this month — and which was to go into effect today — to stop using news snippets and thumbnails for some well-known German news sites.

Submission + - Detritus from cancer cells may infect healthy cells (nature.com)

Submitted by bmahersciwriter
bmahersciwriter writes: Tiny bubbles of cell membrane — called exosomes — are shed by most cells. Long thought to be mere trash, researchers had recently noticed that they often contain short, regulatory RNA molecules, suggesting that exosomes may be one way that cells communicate with one another. Now, it appears that RNA in the exosomes shed by tumor cells can get into healthy cells and 'transform' them, putting them on the path to becoming cancerous themselves.

Submission + - German Publishers Capitulate, Let Google Post News Snippets (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: German publishers said they are bowing to Google's market power, and will allow the search engine to show news snippets in search results free of charge — at least for the time being. The decision is a step in an ongoing legal dispute between the publishers and Google in which, predictably, publishers are trying to get compensation from the search engine for republishing parts of their content and Google isn't interested in sharing revenue. The move follows a Google decision earlier this month — and which was to go into effect today — to stop using news snippets and thumbnails for some well-known German news sites.
Facebook

We Need Distributed Social Networks More Than Ello 269

Posted by timothy from the pick-your-battles dept.
Frequent contributor Bennett Haselton writes: Facebook threatened to banish drag queen pseudonyms, and (some) users revolted by flocking to Ello, a social network which promised not to enforce real names and also to remain ad-free. Critics said that the idealistic model would buckle under pressure from venture capitalists. But both gave scant mention to the fact that a distributed social networking protocol, backed by a player large enough to get people using it, would achieve all of the goals that Ello aspired to achieve, and more. Read on for the rest.

Comment Re:Not just women (Score 2) 571

by lgw (#48214615) Attached to: The Inevitable Death of the Internet Troll

If you're not going in harm's way, you shouldn't call yourself a "warrior" of any kind. Malala Yousafzai got shot for daring to advocate that girls should be taught to read. The Canadian parliament attracted a shooter for giving her Canadian citizenship (or so it's presumed -the timing suggests it strongly).

Internet death threats from pathetic losers just aren't the same thing as taking on the Taliban. The risk may be non-0, but iit's problebly lower than the risk of driving to the event.

Submission + - Ubuntu 14.10 Released (ubuntu.com)

Submitted by linuxscreenshot
linuxscreenshot writes: Ubuntu 14.10, the latest desktop release is today available for download from Canonical. This release focuses on the developer experience, overall quality, and brings a number of important features and security enhancements. The Ubuntu desktop continues to be intuitive, easy to use and reliable for users all over the world.

Screenshots: http://www.linuxscreenshots.or...

Comment Re:A bit???? (Score 0) 168

by smooth wombat (#48214265) Attached to: Austin Airport Tracks Cell Phones To Measure Security Line Wait

But this involves TECHNOLOGY so it must be evil because without TECHNOLOGY there would be other possible way for the folks at the airport to calculate how long you might be waiting in line.

No siree, no way at all. You standing there, in full view of every person, in a public space. No way to check. None at all.

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