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Censorship

Submission + - Tor Researchers' Tool Aims To Map Out Internet Censorship (forbes.com) 1

Submitted by Sparrowvsrevolution
Sparrowvsrevolution writes: Tor developers Arturo Filasto and Jacob Appelbaum have released OONI-probe, an open-source software tool designed to be installed on any PC and run to collect data about local meddling with the computer’s network connections, whether it be website blocking, surveillance or selective bandwidth slowdowns. Unlike other censorship tracking projects like HerdictWeb or the Open Net Initiative, OONI will allow anyone to run the testing application and share their results publicly. The tool has already been used to expose censorship by T-Mobile of its prepaid phones' browser and also by the Palestinian Authority, which was found to be blocking opposition websites. The minister responsible for the Palestinian censorship was forced to resign last week.
Technology

Submission + - Alcoa Announces "Smog-Eating" Architectural Panels (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Last week that giant multinational of aluminum production Alcoa announced its new "smog-eating" architectural panels — in other words cladding stuck to a building's exterior that can remove pollutants from the surrounding air. The aluminum panels, branded Reynobond with EcoClean technology, have a titanium dioxide coating which breaks down pollutants in direct sunlight.

Submission + - Nanoscientists find long-sought Majorana particle (tudelft.nl) 5

Submitted by boner
boner writes: In a follow-up of an earlier Slashdot story (http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/03/01/1915236/majorana-fermion-may-have-been-spotted-at-tu-delft), scientists at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands, today published their findings that they have indeed found the Majorana particle.

The announcement on the university website provides both a summary and background of this groundbreaking discovery. The page is available in both dutch and english : http://tudelft.nl/en/current/latest-news/article/detail/nanowetenschappers-vinden-langgezocht-majorana-deeltje/
Mars

Submission + - New study show Mars Viking robots found life (tech-stew.com)

Submitted by
techfun89
techfun89 writes: "New analysis of data, now 36 years old, from the Viking robots, shows that NASA had found life on Mars. This conclusion was published by an international team of mathematicians and scientists this week.

The Labeled Release experiment looked for signs of microbial metabolism in soil samples in 1976. The general thinking was that the experiment had found geological not biological activity

However, the new study approached things differently. Researchers broke the data into sets of numbers and analyzed the results for complexity. What they found were close correlations between the Viking results' complexity and those of terrestrial biological data sets. Based on this they concluded that the Viking results were more biological in nature than just geological processes."
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook reveals what data it collects on users (examiner.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From the article:
"Today, Facebook announced that they will provide its users with a download of all of the data it collects on them. In this data, it includes: chat logs, photos, friends. friend's emails, wit all posts, IP Addresses you have used, the previous names you have used, friend requests you have made, and more will be added soon. For the friend's emails, they only show users the emails that their friends have shared with them(so, if their email is listed as only viewable to them, or group you're not in, you can't see it). They also stated that this expanded archive will slowly roll out to all of the sites 845 million users.
"
Censorship

Submission + - Atheist in India charged with blasphemy for exposing "miracle" (wordpress.com)

Submitted by
bhagwad
bhagwad writes: "When a statue in Mumbai began to "miraculously" drip tears, huge crowds began to gather, pray, and collect the water in vials. Sanal Edamaruku has exposed such bogus miracles before, and when he was called in, his investigations showed that it was nothing more than a nearby drainage. The entire investigation was caught on tape. The priests were outraged and demanded an apology. When he refused, a case of "blasphemy" was registered at the police station who now want to have him arrested. Incidents like this show that India has freedom of expression only in name. In reality, it's more like Pakistan where religious thugs can keep controversial people under control in the name of their "offended sentiments"."
Privacy

Submission + - Polish Authorities Abuse Access to Users Data

Submitted by bs0d3
bs0d3 writes: In 2011, Polish authorities requested users' traffic data retained by telcos and ISPs over 1.85 million times-half a million times more than in 2010. Poland's data retention law allows authorities to use the retained data in an almost limitless range of scenarios, including petty civil offenses and minor criminal investigations. Moreover, Polish authorities-ranging from law enforcement to intelligence agencies-can access the retained data without independent oversight and at no cost. Law enforcement agencies have no obligation to inform citizens that their privacy has been compromised.

The Polish data retention law mirrored the 2006 European Data Retention Directive and is very similar to some aspects of CISPA. As in Poland, people everywhere are constantly relying on mobile companies and cloud services to communicate and store their most precious information on the network. We are leaving digital footprints at every moment that reveal the most sensitive information of our daily lives. As a result, governments are increasingly interested to access this vast amount of information.
Japan

Submission + - Japanese ATMs to use palm readers in place of cash cards (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: A Japanese bank this week said it will introduce ATMs that use palm scanners in place of cash cards. Ogaki Kyoristu Bank said the new machines will allow customers to withdraw or deposit cash and check their balances by placing their hand on a scanner and entering their birthday plus a pin number. The ATMs will initially be installed at 10 banks, as well as a drive-through ATM and two mobile banks. Ogaiki announced the new ATMs with the slogan "You are your cash card."
Biotech

Submission + - Can the Hottest Peppers in the World Kill You? 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Katharine Gammon writes that last week, the Kismot Indian restaurant in Edinburgh, Scotland, held a competition to eat the extra-hot Kismot Killer curry and several ambulances were called after some of the competitive eaters were left writhing on the floor in agony, vomiting and fainting. Paul Bosland, professor of horticulture at New Mexico State University and director of the Chile Pepper Institute, says that chili peppers can indeed cause death — but most people's bodies would falter long before they reached that point. "Theoretically, one could eat enough really hot chiles to kill you," says Bosland adding that a research study in 1980 calculated that three pounds of the hottest peppers in the world — something like the Bhut Jolokia — eaten all at once could kill a 150-pound person. Chili peppers cause the eater's insides to rev up activating the sympathetic nervous system — which helps control most of the body's internal organs — to expend more energy, so the body burns more calories when the same food is eaten with chili peppers. But tissue inflammation could explain why the contestants in the Killer Curry contest said they felt like chainsaws were ripping through their insides. As for the contest, restaurant owner Abdul Ali admitted the fiery dish may have been too spicy after the Scottish Ambulance Service warned him to review his event. ‘I think we’ll tone it down, but we’ll definitely do it next year.’"
Hardware

Submission + - Throwable 36-camera ball takes perfect panoramas (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Jonas Pfeil, a student from the Technical University of Berlin has created a rugged, grapefruit-sized ball that has 36 fixed-focus, 2-megapixel digital camera sensors built in. The user simply throws the ball into the air and photos are simultaneously taken with all 36 cameras to create a full, spherical (360-degree?) panorama of the surrounding scene. The ball itself is made with a 3D printer, and the innards (which includes 36 STM VS6724 CMOS camera sensors, an accelerometer, and two microcontrollers to control the cameras) are adequately padded, so presumably it doesn’t matter if you suck at throwing and catching. You can see from the video below that the ball is too big (but not too heavy) for single-handed use — but considering this is the work of a master’s degree student, it’s safe to assume that the same hardware could be miniaturized into something like a tennis ball — at which point, this ball would probably revolutionize holiday snapshots, wedding photos, and more."

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