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Submission + - Global Nuclear Power Supply At Lowest Level Since 1980s (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: Atomic power's share of global electricity supply is at the lowest level since the 1980s following the shutdown of Japan's reactors after the Fukushima disaster, and may fall further without major new plant construction.

The forecast is one of the main conclusions of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2014, a draft copy of which was passed to Reuters before general release later on Tuesday.

The report paints a bleak picture of the industry more than three years after three reactors melted down at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima Daiichi station north of the Japanese capital after an earthquake and tsunami.

Rising costs, construction delays, public opposition and aging fleets of reactors will make it difficult for nuclear to reverse the decline in its share of global energy supply, even after two reactors in Japan won provisional approval to restart earlier this month.

Submission + - Hardkernel Releases Raspberry Pi Compatible ODROID-W (makezine.com)

Submitted by kodiaktau
kodiaktau writes: Hardkernel released a new Raspberry Pi compatible board based on the Samsung Exynos SoC. The board is smaller than a typical Pi, keeping basic HDMI, USB and CSI interfaces. It also has 26 pin expansion board with more GPIO available, however it lacks an Ethernet jack. Initial prices as estimated around $30.

Interesting to note that the author calls out that the Pi Foundation is likely to run into similar name retention problems as Arduino has had as competitors call their boards "Pi Compatible".

Video overview on YouTube can be found here. http://youtu.be/rIZvsgXNWSc

Submission + - Netflix Pays AT&T with new Peerage Deal to Improve Streaming Performance (geeky-gadgets.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Few things are more annoying than when you sign onto Netflix to watch some movies or TV shows and the video keeps buffering randomly while you watch. Netflix is working with ISPs to improve the streaming speeds that are offered to customers. Much of the time improving the speed means paying the ISP or cable firm in a peerage deal to reduce buffering in the video

Submission + - Black Hat Researchers Actively Trying to Deanonymize Tor Users (torproject.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Last week, we discussed news that a presentation had been canceled for the upcoming Black Hat security conference that involved the Tor Project. The researchers involved hadn't made much of an effort to disclose the vulnerability, and the Tor Project was scrambling to implement a fix. Now, the project says it's likely these researchers were actively attacking Tor users and trying to deanonymize them. "On July 4 2014 we found a group of relays that we assume were trying to deanonymize users. They appear to have been targeting people who operate or access Tor hidden services. The attack involved modifying Tor protocol headers to do traffic confirmation attacks. ...We know the attack looked for users who fetched hidden service descriptors, but the attackers likely were not able to see any application-level traffic (e.g. what pages were loaded or even whether users visited the hidden service they looked up). The attack probably also tried to learn who published hidden service descriptors, which would allow the attackers to learn the location of that hidden service." They also provide a technical description of the attack, and the steps they're taking to block such attacks in the future.

Submission + - UK to allow driverless cars by 2015

Submitted by rtoz
rtoz writes: The UK government has announced that driverless cars will be allowed on public roads from January next year.

It also invited cities to compete to host one of three trials of the tech, which would start at the same time.

In addition, ministers ordered a review of the UK's road regulations to provide appropriate guidelines.

The debate now is whether to allow cars, like the prototype unveiled by Google in May, to abandon controls including a steering wheel and pedals and rely on the vehicle's computer.

Or whether, instead, to allow the machine to drive, but insist a passenger be ready to wrest back control at a moment's notice.

Submission + - Observation of a quantum Cheshire Cat in a matter-wave interferometer experiment (nature.com)

Submitted by Dupple
Dupple writes: From its very beginning, quantum theory has been revealing extraordinary and counter-intuitive phenomena, such as wave-particle duality, Schrödinger cats and quantum non-locality. Another paradoxical phenomenon found within the framework of quantum mechanics is the ‘quantum Cheshire Cat’: if a quantum system is subject to a certain pre- and postselection, it can behave as if a particle and its property are spatially separated. It has been suggested to employ weak measurements in order to explore the Cheshire Cat’s nature. Here we report an experiment in which we send neutrons through a perfect silicon crystal interferometer and perform weak measurements to probe the location of the particle and its magnetic moment.

Submission + - "I accidentally started a Wikipedia hoax" 5

Submitted by Andreas Kolbe
Andreas Kolbe writes: The Daily Dot's EJ Dickson reports how she accidentally discovered that a hoax factoid she added over five years ago as a stoned sophomore to the Wikipedia article on “Amelia Bedelia, the protagonist of the eponymous children’s book series about a ‘literal-minded housekeeper’ who misunderstands her employer’s orders”, had not just remained on Wikipedia all this time, but come to be cited by a Taiwanese English professor, in “innumerable blog posts and book reports”, as well as a book on Jews and Jesus. It's a cautionary tale about the fundamental unreliability of Wikipedia. And as Wikipedia ages, more and more such stories are coming to light.

Submission + - The Terrifying Truth About How The Drugs You Take Get Tested (medium.com)

Submitted by gallifreyan99
gallifreyan99 writes: Every drug you take will have been tested on people before it—but that testing process is meant to be tightly controlled, for the safety of everyone involved. Two chilling investigations document the horrifying extent—and that lack of oversight the FDA seems to have over the process. First, drugs are increasingly being tested on homeless, destitute and mentally ill people. Second, it turns out many human trials are being run by doctors who have had their licenses revoked for drug addiction, malpractice and worse.

Submission + - LinkedIn spam lawsuit can continue (pcworld.com)

Submitted by Charliemopps
Charliemopps writes: A lawsuit filed in September 2013 in the Northern District of California alleged that LinkedIn mislead its users about the number of times it would attempted to invite their contacts using their name. LinkedIn tried to get the suit dismissed but Thursday Judge Lucy Koh ruled the suit can continue.

Submission + - Court records reveal moment society became more civilized (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Trial transcripts from London’s oldest court, the Old Bailey, chronicle 239 years of criminal history ranging from scandalous murders to sheep theft. A research team wondered if these documents reflect Western society’s “civilizing process,” a centuries-long period when violence levels plummeted and the modern justice system took shape. To find out, the team analyzed more than 20 million words of testimony recorded during trials held at the Old Bailey, illustrated above, between 1760 and 1913. The researchers crunched the frequency of different words used to describe violent and nonviolent crimes, such as synonyms of “blood,” “stab,” and “strike.” The language used during violent and nonviolent trials was nearly indistinguishable prior to the end of the 18th century, the team reports . During this period, references to knives and blood were almost as common in trials for stolen silk handkerchiefs as for vicious murders. During the early 1800s, the researchers observed an emerging distinction between the two crime types, reflecting society’s changing tone toward even mild violence. The team says the results showcase how public perception can spark major changes in government and society.

Submission + - FWD.us: GOP Voters to be Targeted by "Pissed Off" Data Scientists

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "We are excited to announce that FWD.us and Hackers/Founders are joining forces to host the 'DEBUG DC' Growthathon on June 21st & June 22nd," reads the blog over at FWD.us, the PAC whose Founders and Major Contributors include current and former CEOs from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and LinkedIn. "This is a unique opportunity to push the envelope in online advocacy for immigration reform." The blog entry explains, "The machine of government is wedged, and is in desperate need of debugging. How do we DEBUG DC? Step One: Target critical legislative districts. Step Two: Data mine these districts to find registered voters who are registered Republicans who we think are likely to support immigration reform. Step Three: Growth hack ways to motivate these people to effectively engage their legislators to tell them they want them to call for a vote on immigration reform. Step Four: Measure results. Step Five: Iterate." The Eventbrite invitation for the event includes a call for Data Scientists who are "pissed off about immigration and want to fix it," are "well versed in statistics and data analysis," and can "infer voter sentiment from sparse data." So, how does this jibe with the outrage expressed by the FWD.us supporters' companies over unauthorized government surveillance?

Submission + - No Cell Phone Tracking Without Warrant (digitaltrends.com)

Submitted by kodiaktau
kodiaktau writes: The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that requires law enforcement to obtain a search warrant before tracking cell phones. The court ruled on a case involving violent crimes committed by Quartavius Davis, who was convicted using tracking records collected over 67 days. Prosecutors showed evidence that 11,606 location points, including recorded calls and location of towers was enough to determine the Davis' whereabouts. Defense attorneys cited 4th Amendment rights of privacy were violated in the warrantless search.

The police originally got authority to use a "D-Order", which allows them to gather records and is easier to obtain than a subpoena. In Judge Sentell's opinion paper, he notes, that the police effectively did an end-run around typical requests for this information. Choosing to treat the request as on-going investigative data instead of the precedent set in previous cases. The judge goes on to say, "...it cannot be denied that the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures shields the people from the warrantless interception of electronic data or sound waves carrying communications." His follow-on argument suggests that by using the location information the police gathered and the manner in which they gathered it is effectively monitoring an individual, which does require a warrant.

Davis was still found guilty, but the court effectively put law-enforcement on notice about the manner in which is obtains this data for future cases.

Submission + - Microsoft runs out of US IPv4 addresses (azure.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: IPv4 address space has been fully assigned in the United States, meaning there is no additional IPv4 address space available. This requires Microsoft to use the IPv4 address space available to us globally for the addressing of new services. The result is that we will have to use IPv4 address space assigned to a non-US region to address services which may be in a US region. It is not possible to transfer registration because the IP space is allocated to the registration authorities by Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.

At times your service may appear to be hosted in a non-US location.

Service and Data are located where deployed

It is important to note that the IP address registration authority does not equate to IP address physical location (i.e., you can have an IP address registered in Brazil but allocated to a device or service physically located in Virginia). Thus when you deploy to a U.S. region, your service is still hosted in U.S. and your customer data will remain in the U.S. as detailed in our Trust Center: http://www.windowsazure.com/en...

We are currently working with a few major IP geo-location database companies to update the location of these IPs which should help alleviate the issues this may be causing.

Submission + - US Government OKs Sale Of Sharper Satellite Images (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: The U.S. government has lifted a long-standing restriction that meant companies like Google and Microsoft didn't have access to the most accurate pictures taken by imaging satellites. Satellite operator DigitalGlobe said that it received approval from the U.S. Department of Commerce this week to sell sharper images to its clients. Until now, satellite operators like DigitalGlobe were prevented by law from selling images to foreign or commercial organizations in which features smaller than 50 centimeters were visible. The restriction was meant to ensure that foreign powers didn't get access to satellite images that were too good.
AT&T

AT&T Charges $750 For One Minute of International Data Roaming 321

Posted by timothy from the canadian-dollars-count dept.
reifman (786887) writes 'Last week, AT&T shut down my data service after I turned roaming on in Canada for one minute to check Google maps. I wasn't able to connect successfully but they reported my phone burned through 50 MB and that I owed more than $750. Google maps generally require 1.3 MB per cell. They adamantly refused to reactivate my U.S. data service unless I 'agreed' to purchase an international data roaming package to cover the usage. They eventually reversed the charges but it seems that the company's billing system had bundled my U.S. data usage prior to the border crossing with the one minute of international data roaming.'

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