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Submission + - Hollywood Urged Cameron to Keep DVD Ripping Illegal (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A few months ago the UK Government legalized copying of MP3s, CDs and DVDs for personal use, as that would be in the best interest of consumers. A common sense decision for many, but leaked emails now show that Hollywood fiercely protested the changes behind the scenes.

To most consumers it’s common sense that they can make a backup copy of media they own, but in the UK this was illegal until late last year.

After consulting various stakeholders the Government decided that it would be in the best interests of consumers to legalize copying for personal use.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, not all copyright holders were in favor of the legal changes. In fact, emails published from the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack reveal that Hollywood wanted to stop the plans by urging UK Prime Minister David Cameron to keep Hollywood’s interests in mind.

Submission + - Rare African plant signals diamonds beneath the soil (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: A geologist has discovered a thorny, palmlike plant in Liberia that seems to grow only on top of kimberlite pipes—columns of volcanic rock hundreds of meters across that extend deep into Earth, left by ancient eruptions that exhumed diamonds from the mantle. If the plant is as choosy as it seems to be, diamond hunters in West Africa will have a simple, powerful way of finding diamond-rich deposits. Prospectors are going to “jump on it like crazy,” says Steven Shirey, a geologist specializing in diamond research at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C.

Submission + - Uber Office Raided by Police in China, Accused of Running 'Illegal' Car Business (techinasia.com)

Submitted by albert555
albert555 writes: Uber's curse keeps on striking after Uber’s office in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou was raided by authorities the 30th of April 2015. Uber is accused of running an “illegal” transport service, according to the Guangzhou Daily. Uber has been implanted in China since August 2013 and is suspected of not having the proper qualifications to run a private car business in the city. Following the recent German court ban 2 weeks ago, who will win the fight for private transportation? long-term established transportation companies with powerful lobbying power or the newcomer making use of disruptive technology? Does Schumpeter's creative destruction also apply to the transportation sector?

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Windows Media Center Won't Make It to Windows 10, Confirms Microsoft - NDTV (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

IBNLive
Windows Media Center Won't Make It to Windows 10, Confirms Microsoft
NDTV
Microsoft last week at its annual Build developer's conference made some major announcements ahead of Windows 10's summer release on PCs. A Microsoft executive at the side lines of the Build conference also confirmed that the venerable Windows...
Microsoft learns some humility as it seeks Windows 10 salvationThe Australian Financial Review
Microsoft abandons Windows Media CenterNew Vision
How Do You Solve A Problem Like Microsoft?TechCrunch

all 132 news articles

Submission + - WikiLeaks' Anonymous Leak Submission System Is Back After Nearly Five Years (wired.com)

Submitted by Sparrowvsrevolution
Sparrowvsrevolution writes: On Friday, WikiLeaks announced that it has finally relaunched a beta version of its leak submission system after a 4.5 year hiatus. That file-upload site, which once served as a central tool in WIkiLeaks' leak-collecting mission, runs on the anonymity software Tor to allow uploaders to share documents and tips while protecting their identity from any network eavesdropper, and even from WikiLeaks itself. In 2010 the original submission system went down amid infighting between WikiLeaks’ leaders and several of its disenchanted staffers, including several who left to create their own soon-to-fail project called OpenLeaks.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says that the new system, which was delayed by his legal troubles and the banking industry blockade against the group, is the final result of “four competing research projects" WikiLeaks launched in recent years. He adds that it has several less-visible submission systems in addition to the one it's now revealed. “Currently, we have one public-facing and several private-facing submission systems in operation, cryptographically, operationally and legally secured with national security sourcing in mind,” Assange writes.

Submission + - Two Gunman Killed Outside "Draw the Prophet" Event in Texas (go.com) 2

Submitted by cosm
cosm writes: ABC news reports that two armed gunman were shot and killed outside a "Draw the Prophet" event hosted in Garland Texas.

From the article: "The event, sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, featured cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and scheduled speakers included Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who has campaigned to have the Quran banned in the Netherlands. The winner of the contest was to receive $10,000."

In light of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks, the Lars Vilks Muhammad drawing controversies, and the American show South Park's satirical depiction of the state of Muhammad phobia in the US and elsewhere, is there an end in sight to the madness associated with the representation of this religious figure?

Submission + - SurveyMonkey's CEO dies while vacationing with wife Susan Sanberg (nytimes.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: Dave Goldberg, the chief executive of SurveyMonkey (https://www.surveymonkey.com) and spouse of Facebook COO Sheryl K. Sandberg, died on Friday night. He was 47.

“We are heartbroken by this news,” Facebook said in a statement. Mark Zuckerberg, a friend of the family, said that Mr. Goldberg died while on vacation abroad with Ms. Sandberg.

Goldberg built Surveymonkey into a provider of web surveys on almost every topic imaginable, with 500 employees and 25 million surveys created. News reports said it was valued at nearly $2 billion when it raised a round of funding last year.

Submission + - Microsoft's AI Insults People By Telling Them How Old They Are (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: A Microsoft Research project that lets users upload photos and estimates their age and gender has attracted more attention than expected — not all of it complimentary.
The How-Old.net site demonstrates of some of the capabilities of the Face API included in Microsoft's Project Oxford that was announced at Build.
It may have been expected to be a source of amusement but instead it backfired when people started to upload their own photos and discovered just how wrong its estimates could be. It demonstrates not only that machine learning has a long way to go before it's good at estimating age, but also that machine learning may not be the most politically correct way to go about answering the question "How Old Do I look". It might be better to employ and algorithm that built in all the rules of how to make a polite answer to that request — such as always knock a decade off the age of anyone over 28.
Perhaps this particular neural network needs to learn some social skills before pronouncing how old people look.
However it is capable of telling some truths — a photo of Barak Obama in 2005 gives an estimated age of 46, close to his real age of 44, but just 9 years later in 2014 the age guessing robot places him at 65. It seems that Mr President aged 20 years in less than 10 years of office.
Any one want to be President?

Feed Google News Sci Tech: NASA's Proposed Science Budget Slashed by House Science Committee - The Market B (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

The Market Business
NASA's Proposed Science Budget Slashed by House Science Committee
The Market Business
Republicans have voted to slash NASA's budget for the Earth Science division. With this cut, there was an approved budget authorization for this agency to use funding to see Orion and the Space Launch System continue. This was voted on after an earlier...
Republican Budget Cuts to NASA Earth Science Budget Get New Round of FlakModern Readers
GOP Attacks Earth Science At NASA, Climate Change Research In PerilThe Inquisitr
The GOP's New Budget Proposal is a Big Middle Finger to Earth ScienceGizmodo
The Hill
all 78 news articles

Submission + - Statues of Assange, Snowden And Manning Go Up in Berlin

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: RT Times reports that Alexanderplatz square in Berlin has become the stage for a provocative art piece which celebrates whistleblowers and encourages ordinary citizens to speak out. "They have lost their freedom for the truth, so they remind us how important it is to know the truth,” says sculptor Davide Dormino. The life-sized statues of the three whistleblowers stand upon three chairs, as if speaking in an impromptu public meeting. Next to them is a fourth, empty chair. "The fourth chair is open to anyone here in Berlin who wants to get up and say anything they want," says the artist. Dormino, who came up with the idea together with the US journalist Charles Glass, specifically chose a classical bronze statue for his depiction – and not an installation or abstract piece – since statues are usually made of establishment figures. According to Domino while men who order others to their deaths get immortalized, those who resist are often forgotten, so “the statue pays homage to three who said no to war, to the lies that lead to war and to the intrusion into private life that helps to perpetuate war.” Activists and members of Germany’s Green party unveiled the life-size bronze statues on May Day.

Submission + - Sea level rise on Northwest European Shelf caused by moon - not man

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This recent (free-access) paper from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland uses a 160-year tidal gauge series from 26 stations in the Baltic Sea to show that the (global) sea level is completely governed by multi-decadal oscillations of the lunar cycle — superimposed on a unchanging and slow (1.2 mm/yr) sea level rise during that long period. The upside of studying the Baltic is that the daily tidal difference is very low in this region, which gives data with low noise. The final correlation coefficient with the lunar influence was 0.997, so not much room for anthropogenic global warming there.

The authors note in the end: "If our theory is correct and no unprecedented sea-level changing mechanism occurs during the ongoing nodal cycle, then the region’s ongoing sea-level rise (quasi-oscillatory rise since 1971) would be expected to culminate around 2011 and thereafter be falling. At the earliest, this prognosis can be empirically documented when the ongoing lunar nodal period is complete in 2020–21, i.e. within the next 6–7 years."

According to the Danish weekly ‘Weekendavisen’) the article was turned down by Nature, Nature Geoscience, Nature Climate, and the Nature-affiliated Earth Science Review before the authors turned to Journal of Coastal Research who happily accepted it. One of the authors, Jens Morten Hansen, believes the reason for Nature's rejection is that it does not fit with the IPCC political agenda.

Submission + - Bill Gates Owes His Career to Steven Spielberg's Dad. You May, Too.

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: On the 51st birthday of the BASIC programing language, GE Reports decided it was finally time to give-credit-where-credit-was-long-overdue, reporting that Arnold Spielberg, the 98-year-old father of Hollywood director Steven Spielberg, helped revolutionize computing when he designed the GE-225 mainframe computer. The machine allowed a team of Dartmouth University students and researchers to develop BASIC, which quickly spread and ushered in the era of personal computers. BASIC helped kickstart many computing careers, include those of Bill Gates and Paul Allen, as well as Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.

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