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Submission + - Oracle finally release Java MSI file. 1

Submitted by nosfucious
nosfucious writes: Oracle Corporation, one of the largest software companies and leading supplier of database and enterprise software quietly started shipping a MSI version of their Java Runtime (https://www.java.com/en/download/help/msi_install.xml). Java is the worlds leading software security vulnerability and keeping up with the frequent patches of nearly a job in itself. Added to this is the very corporate (read: Window on a large scale) unfriendly EXE packaging of the Java RTE. Sysadmins around the world should be rejoicing. However, nothing from Oracle is free. MSI versions of Java are only available to those with Java SE Advanced (and other similar products). Given that urgency and frequency of Java updates, what can be done to force Oracle release MSI versions publicly (and thereby reduce impact of their own bugs and improve Sysadmin sanity).
Medicine

"Advanced Life Support" Ambulances May Lead To More Deaths 112

Posted by timothy from the bring-the-machine-that-goes-beeeeeeeeeep dept.
HughPickens.com writes Jason Kane reports at PBS that emergency treatments delivered in ambulances that offer "Advanced Life Support" for cardiac arrest may be linked to more death, comas and brain damage than those providing "Basic Life Support." "They're taking a lot of time in the field to perform interventions that don't seem to be as effective in that environment," says Prachi Sanghavi. "Of course, these are treatments we know are good in the emergency room, but they've been pushed into the field without really being tested and the field is a much different environment." The study suggests that high-tech equipment and sophisticated treatment techniques may distract from what's most important during cardiac arrest — transporting a critically ill patient to the hospital quickly.

Basic Life Support (BLS) ambulances stick to simpler techniques, like chest compressions, basic defibrillation and hand-pumped ventilation bags to assist with breathing with more emphasis placed on getting the patient to the hospital as soon as possible. Survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients are extremely low regardless of the ambulance type with roughly 90 percent of the 380,000 patients who experience cardiac arrest outside of a hospital each year not surviving to hospital discharge. But researchers found that 90 days after hospitalization, patients treated in BLS ambulances were 50 percent more likely to survive than their counterparts treated with ALS. Not everyone is convinced of the conclusions. "They've done as much as they possibly can with the existing data but I'm not sure that I'm convinced they have solved all of the selection biases," says Judith R. Lave. "I would say that it should be taken as more of an indication that there may be some very significant problems here."

Submission + - Google Engineers - Renewable energy "simply won't work" to solve climate change

Submitted by _Sharp'r_
_Sharp'r_ writes: Two Standford PhDs, Ross Koningstein and David Fork, worked for Google on the RE<C project to figure out how to make renewables cheaper than coal and solve climate change. After four years of study they gave up, determining "Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach." As a result, is nuclear going to be acknowledged as the future of energy production?

Submission + - Tech Companies Stoking Fears of Talent Shortage to Get Cheaper Labor?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Things subject to the Tinkerbell effect, explains Wikipedia, exist only so long as we believe in them. Need a real-life example? Well, while President Obama believed it was necessary to take executive action to expand the controversial OPT STEM visa work program (his wealthy dining companions are still hungry for something more), Businessweek is reporting that The Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist. “There’s no evidence of any way, shape, or form that there’s a shortage in the conventional sense,” says Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers. So, why then would Tech Companies Stoke Fears of a Talent Shortage? “It seems pretty clear that the industry just wants lower-cost labor,” argues Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “We don’t dispute the fact at all that Facebook and Microsoft would like to have more, cheaper workers,” adds Daniel Kuehn, a research associate at the Urban Institute. “But that doesn’t constitute a shortage.” Asked what evidence existed of a labor shortage, a spokesperson for Facebook e-mailed a one-sentence statement: “We look forward to hearing more specifics about the President’s plan and how it will impact the skills gap that threatens the competitiveness of the tech sector.”
United States

Department of Justice Harvests Cell Phone Data Using Planes 202

Posted by samzenpus from the we-can-hear-you-now dept.
Tyketto writes The US Department of Justice has been using fake communications towers installed in airplanes to acquire cellular phone data for tracking down criminals, reports The Wall Street Journal. Using fix-wing Cessnas outfitted with DRT boxes produced by Boeing, the devices mimic cellular towers, fooling cellphones into reporting "unique registration information" to track down "individuals under investigation." The program, used by the U.S. Marshals Service, has been in use since 2007 and deployed around at least five major metropolitan areas, with a flying range that can cover most of the US population. As cellphones are designed to connect to the strongest cell tower signal available, the devices identify themselves as the strongest signal, allowing for the gathering of information on thousands of phones during a single flight. Not even having encryption on one's phone, like found in Apple's iPhone 6, prevents this interception. While the Justice Department would not confirm or deny the existence of such a program, Verizon denies any involvement in this program, and DRT (a subsidiary of Boeing), AT&T, and Sprint have all declined to comment.

Submission + - U.S. Justice Department Using Fake Towers on Planes to Gather Data from Phones

Submitted by Tyketto
Tyketto writes: The US Department of Justice has been using fake communications towers installed in airplanes to acquire cellular phone data for tracking down criminals, reports The Wall Street Journal. Using fix-wing Cessnas outfitted with DRT boxes produced by Boeing, the devices mimic cellular towers, fooling cellphones into reporting "unique registration information" to track down "individuals under investigation." The program, used by the U.S. Marshalls Service, has been in use since 2007 and deployed around at least five major metropolitan areas, with a flying range that can cover most of the US population. As cellphones are designed to connect to the strongest cell tower signal available, the devices identify themselves as the strongest signal, allowing for the gathering of information on thousands of phones during a single flight. Not even having encryption on one's phone, like found in Apple's iPhone 6, prevents this interception.

While the Justice Department would not confirm or deny the existence of such a program, Verizon denies any involvement in this program, and DRT (a subsidiary of Boeing), AT&T, and Sprint have all declined to comment.

Submission + - An armored battery you can swallow (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Scientists have found a simple solution to the danger of swallowed batteries: an armor that renders so-called button batteries harmless inside the gut. When a battery is ingested, it reacts with intestinal fluids to generate an electrical current and release hydroxide, a caustic ion that can severely damage gut tissue within just a few hours. So bioengineers took advantage of the fact that batteries experience a gentle pressure inside their housing, but not so much inside the digestive tract. They coated button batteries with a quantum tunneling composite, a rubberlike material made of silicone embedded with metal particles. Normally, the metal particles are too far apart to conduct electricity. But when the particles are compressed within a few nanometers of one another, the electrons burrow through the silicone through a process called quantum tunneling, turning the composite from an insulator into a conductor. The researchers calibrated the coating such that an armored button battery would function normally inside devices, but lose its conductivity inside the digestive tract. To test their design, the scientists placed a conventional button battery and a coated one inside a living pig’s esophagus. In vitro monitoring revealed that the conventional battery immediately began releasing hydroxide, whereas the coated battery remained intact, leaving no trace of damage. Because the coating is waterproof, it could also be used to make weather-resistant batteries suited for outdoor use, the researchers say.

Submission + - 3D Gun Designer, Cody Wilson, Has His Companies Booted from Stripe (reason.com) 1

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: Cody Wilson, famous for making the first usable fully plastic 3D printed handgun and for his new project "Ghost Gunner" which mills metal lower receivers (the milling machine itself is of course not a weapon, and what it makes is not itself legally a weapon) for AR-15s, informs me today that his online payment processor Stripe has decided that his companies, all of them, qualify as forbidden "weapons and munitions; gunpowder and other explosives" services. This includes the Ghost Gunner and Defense Distributed.

Submission + - LG's 0.7mm Smartphone Bezel is World's Narrowest, Almost Non-Existent

Submitted by SmartAboutThings
SmartAboutThings writes: LG Display has announced that it has developed a 5.3-inch Full HD LCD panel for smartphones with the world’s narrowest bezel at 0.7mm. It's even thinner than a credit card, making the screen give you the impression that it 'overflows'. This has been made possible thanks to the Neo Edge technology that uses an adhesive instead of double-sided tape to attach and completely seal the total area and edges of the panel’s circuit board and backlight unit.

Submission + - Retailers can win the war against ApplePay and the Banks (time.com) 10

Submitted by gbcox
gbcox writes: Credit card fees are a hidden tax on the economy — which amount to billions of dollars a year. These fees are passed onto end consumers one way or another. That is why CurrentC is an attractive solution for them. They want to design and control their own payment network. Are you going to boycott your favorite store because you are being asked to scan a code (or swipe a card) instead of wave your iPhone? Unlikely. People may gripe and say they aren't going to use it, but at the end of the day, discounts talk. As the article sums up, consumers when given the choice between cool and cash may ultimately opt for the latter.

Submission + - Researchers at Brown University Shattered a Quantum Wave Function

Submitted by Jason Koebler
Jason Koebler writes: A team of physicists based at Brown University has succeeded in shattering a quantum wave function. That near-mythical representation of indeterminate reality, in which an unmeasured particle is able to occupy many states simultaneously, can be dissected into many parts. This dissection, which is described this week in the Journal of Low Temperature Physics, has the potential to turn how we view the quantum world on its head.
Specifically, they found it’s possible to take a wave function and isolate it into different parts. So, if our electron has some probability of being in position (x1,y1,z1) and another probability of being in position (x2,y2,z2), those two probabilities can be isolated from each other, cordoned off like quantum crime scenes.
AT&T

FTC Sues AT&T For Throttling 'Unlimited' Data Plan Customers Up To 90% 179

Posted by timothy from the y'don't-say dept.
An anonymous reader writes The U.S. Federal Trade Commission today announced it is suing AT&T. The commission is charging the carrier for allegedly misleading millions of its smartphone customers by changing the terms while customers were still under contract for "unlimited" data plans that were, well, limited. "AT&T promised its customers 'unlimited' data, and in many instances, it has failed to deliver on that promise," FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said in a statement. "The issue here is simple: 'unlimited' means unlimited." How apropos.

Submission + - FBI: List of purchase order scam victims growing rapidly (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: The FBI today updated a warning issued last month: a Nigerian-based criminal group using e-mail account spoofing, phishing and a variety of social engineering attacks is amping up attacks that defraud retailers of everything from laptops and routers to industrial equipment.
Businesses

Can Ello Legally Promise To Remain Ad-Free? 153

Posted by timothy from the anyone-can-promise-anything dept.
Bennett Haselton writes: Social networking company Ello has converted itself to a Public Benefit Corporation, bound by a charter saying that they will not now, nor in the future, make money by running advertisements or selling user data. Ello had followed these policies from the outset, but skeptics worried that venture capitalist investors might pressure Ello to change those policies, so this binding commitment was meant to assuage those fears. But is the commitment really legally binding and enforceable down the road? Read on for the rest.

Submission + - Einstein's struggle with spooky quantum physics

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: You've no doubt heard of quantum entanglement before: the idea that if you create a mixed quantum state that consists of two particles, you can then know the properties of one by measuring the properties of the other. The odd — and counterintuitive — thing about this is that once these particles are entangled, you can move them an arbitrary distance apart from one another, measure the properties of one, and instantly know about the properties of the other! Does this violate the law of special relativity, which says the speed limit of everything in the Universe? As it turns out, the answer is no, but Einstein nevertheless thought this shouldn't be allowed to happen! Despite being the most brilliant mind of his generation, this is one of those times that Einstein got it completely wrong. Come learn about the ghostly physics that Einstein called "spooky action at a distance."

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