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Submission + - Glaciers in the Karakoram mountains do not melt - reason found (princeton.edu) 2

Submitted by Chipmunk100
Chipmunk100 writes: In a phenomenon known as the "Karakoram anomaly," glaciers in the Karakoram mountains, a range within the Himalayas, have remained stable and even increased in mass while many glaciers nearby — and worldwide — have receded during the past 150 years, particularly in recent decades. Researchers report in the journal Nature Geoscience that the ice is sustained by a unique and localized seasonal pattern that keeps the mountain range relatively cold and dry during the summer.

Submission + - IBM's chip business sale to UAE investor firm to get U.S. security review (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: IBM is an officially sanctioned trusted supplier to the U.S. Defense Dept., and the transfer of its semiconductor manufacturing to GlobalFoundries, a U.S.-based firm owned by investors in Abu Dhabi, will get U.S. scrutiny. Retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. John Adams, who authored a report last year for an industry group about U.S. supply chain vulnerabilities and national security, said regulators will have to look closely. "I don't want cast aspersions unnecessarily on Abu Dubai — but they're not Canada," said Adams "I think that the news that we may be selling part of our supply chain for semiconductors to a foreign investor is actually bad news."

Submission + - The Inevitable Death of the Internet Troll 4

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: James Swearingen writes at The Atlantic that the Internet can be a mean, hateful, and frightening place — especially for young women but human behavior and the limits placed on it by both law and society can change. In a Pew Research Center survey of 2,849 Internet users, one out of every four women between 18 years old and 24 years old reports having been stalked or sexually harassed online. "Like banner ads and spam bots, online harassment is still routinely treated as part of the landscape of being online," writes Swearingen adding that "we are in the early days of online harassment being taken as a serious problem, and not simply a quirk of online life." Law professor Danielle Citron draws a parallel between how sexual harassment was treated in the workplace decades ago and our current standard. "Think about in the 1960s and 1970s, what we said to women in the workplace," says Citron. "'This is just flirting.' That a sexually hostile environment was just a perk for men to enjoy, it's just what the environment is like. If you don't like it, leave and get a new job." It took years of activism, court cases, and Title VII protection to change that. "Here we are today, and sexual harassment in the workplace is not normal," said Citron. "Our norms and how we understand it are different now."

According to Swearingen, the likely solution to internet trolls will be a combination of things. The expansion of laws like the one currently on the books in California, which expands what constitutes online harassment, could help put the pressure on harassers. The upcoming Supreme Court case, Elonis v. The United States, looks to test the limits of free speech versus threatening comments on Facebook. "Can a combination of legal action, market pressure, and societal taboo work together to curb harassment?" asks Swearingen. "Too many people do too much online for things to stay the way they are."

Submission + - BitTorrent Performance Test: Sync Is Faster Than Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Now that its file synchronization tool has received a few updates, BitTorrent is going on the offensive against cloud-based storage services by showing off just how fast BitTorrent Sync can be. More specifically, the company conducted a test that shows Sync destroys Google Drive, Microsoft’s OneDrive, and Dropbox. The company transferred a 1.36 GB MP4 video clip between two Apple MacBook Pros using two Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapters, the Time.gov site as a real-time clock, and the Internet connection at its headquarters (1 Gbps up/down). The timer started when the file transfer was initiated and then stopped once the file was fully synced and downloaded onto the receiving machine. Sync performed 8x faster than Google Drive, 11x faster than OneDrive, and 16x faster than Dropbox.

Submission + - Deutsch Telecom Upgrades T-Mobile 2G Encryption in U.S. (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: T-Mobile, a major wireless carrier in the US and subsidiary of german Deutsch Telecom, is hardening the encryption on its 2G cellular network in the US, reports the Washington Post. According to Cisco, 2G cellular calls still account for 13% of calls in the US and 68% of wireless calls worldwide. T-Mobile's upgrades will bring the encryption of older and inexpensive 2G GSM phone signals in the US up to par with that of more expensive 3G and 4G handsets. Parent company Deutsche Telecom had announced a similar upgrade of its German 2G network after last year's revelations of NSA surveillance.

Comment I see a suspicious bag full of ebola-laced bombs (Score 1) 115

by timothy (#48205347) Attached to: Software Glitch Caused 911 Outage For 11 Million People

At least there are no current / recent worries what might make someone want to call 911 ...

Actually, it's an interesting question -- just what is the threshold? Suspected ebola vomit? Suspicious bag on suburban street? Seems like it would be a very easy system to game, or even to unintentionally render useless. Takes a lot of goodwill and good behavior, all around.

I took a CPR class last night, and the instructor (a firefighter in his dayjob) basically encouraged people to use 911 more, even for things about which the caller might be on the fence. "We'll sort it out. Don't call about your kid's math homework, but don't *not* call because you're not sure it's serious enough" was the gist.

I've called 911 quite a few times, or asked others to (hypothermia case, guy on railroad tracks, gun shots, more gunshots, drunk drivers, etc), now I wonder what the mean / mode is for that ;)

Submission + - Will the Google car turn out to be the Apple Newton of automobiles? (slate.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Actually, the better question may be whether it will ever be ready for the road at all. The car has vastly fewer capabilities than most people seem to be aware of. The notion that it will be widely available any time soon is absurd.

Submission + - "Calibration" error changes Illinois touchscreen votes (watchdog.org) 4

Submitted by BobandMax
BobandMax writes: In a truly shocking occurrence, a Cook County, Illinois touchscreen voting device changed votes from Republican to Democrat. Voting officials removed the machine and determined that a calibration error was at fault. The voter who brought the problem to their attention, Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan, was later "allowed" to vote for Republicans. Some things never change, regardless technology.

Submission + - FTDI is intentionally bricking devices using competitors' chips. (hackaday.com)

Submitted by janoc
janoc writes: It seems that FTDI has started an outright war on cloners of their popular USB bridge chips. At first the clones stopped working with the official drivers and now they are being intentionally bricked, rendering the device useless. The problem? These chips are incredibly popular and used in many consumer products. Are you sure yours doesn't contain a counterfeit one before you plug it in? What are you going to do if your device gets trashed?

The article is on Hackaday: http://hackaday.com/2014/10/22...

Submission + - Microsoft, Ask.com, Oracle Latest To Be Sued Over No-Poach Deal (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Oracle, Microsoft and Ask.com are facing suits alleging that they conspired to restrict hiring of staff. The suits appear to refer to a memo that names a large number of companies that allegedly had special arrangements with Google to prevent poaching of staff and was filed as an exhibit on May 17, 2013 in another class action suit over hiring practices. The former employees filing lawsuits against Microsoft, Ask.com and Oracle have asked that the cases be assigned to Judge Koh as there were similarities with the case against Google, Apple and others — and it maybe doesn't hurt that Judge Koh thought the $324.5 million settlement in that case was too low.

Submission + - U.K. Supermarkets Beta Test Full-Body 3D Scanners for Selfie Figurines (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Walmart-owned ASDA supermarkets in the UK. are beta testing 3D full-body scanning booths that allow patrons to buy 6-in to 9-in high "selfie" figurines. Artec Group, a maker of 3D scanners and software, said its Shapify Booth, which can scan your entire body in 12 seconds and use the resulting file to create a full-color 3D printed model, is making its U.S. debut this week. The 3D Shapify booths are equipped with four wide view, high-resolution scanners, which rotate around the person to scan every angle. Artec claims the high-powered scan and precision printing is able to capture even the smallest details, down to the wrinkles on clothes. The scanning process generates 700 captured surfaces, which are automatically stitched together to produce an electronic file ready for 3D printing. Artec offers to print the figurines for booth operators (retailers) for $50 for a 6-in model, $70 for a 7.5-in model, and $100 for a 9-in figurine.

Submission + - Two Exocomet Families Found Around Baby Star System (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: Scientists have found two families of comets in the developing Beta Pictoris star system, located about 64 million light-years from Earth, including one group that appears to be remnants of a smashed-up protoplanet. The discovery bolsters our theoretical understanding of the violent processes that led to the formation of Earth and the other terrestrial planets in the solar system. “If you look back at the solar system when it was only 22 million years old, you might have seen phenomena that’s a like more like what’s happening in Beta Pic,” astrophysicist Aki Roberge, with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., told Discovery News.

Submission + - Million of British Imperial Documents Being Digitised (bbc.com)

Submitted by Intrepid imaginaut
Intrepid imaginaut writes: A transgender singer hits stardom in Baghdad. Officials scramble to impose order after a Kuwaiti restaurant is found to be selling cat meat. Gulf royals on an official visit to London are left marooned in a drab south London suburb because of a shortage of hotel rooms in the West End.

These are some of the quirky stories hiding in nine miles of shelving at the British Library (BL) that hold the India Office Records — millions of documents recording Britain's 350-year presence in the sub-continent.

The India Office did not only administer India, it also exercised colonial rule over an area stretching west as far as Aden. That's why the files cover Persia and Arabia. And the reason the stories are coming to light is that the Qatar Foundation has paid £8.7m for nearly half a million documents relating to the Gulf to be digitised.

Work started in 2012, and many of those documents have now gone online at the Qatar National Library's digital library portal.

Submission + - Oldest human genome reveals when our ancestors had sex with Neandertals (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: DNA recovered from a femur bone in Siberia belongs to a man who lived 45,000 years ago, according to a new study. His DNA was so well preserved that scientists were able to sequence his entire genome, making his the oldest complete modern human genome on record. Like present-day Europeans and Asians, the man has about 2% Neandertal DNA. But his Neandertal genes are clumped together in long strings, as opposed to chopped up into fragments, indicating that he lived not long after the two groups swapped genetic material. The man likely lived 7000 to 13,000 years after modern humans and Neandertals mated, dating the mixing to 52,000 to 58,000 years ago, the researchers conclude. That’s a much smaller window than the previous best estimate of 37,000 to 86,000 years ago.

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