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Submission + - Mega-mergers. The fight isn't over yet.. AT&T + DirecTV may go through (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hot on the heals of Comcast's failed attempt to swallow-up Time Warner Cable, AT&T's pursuit of satellite provider DirecTV is plowing forward. What would be the result of a wireline and cellular mega-monopoly buying one of only two subscription satellite TV providers? Has to be worse than a Comcast/TWC marriage.. at least there, the territories and services offered didn't overlap at all, but AT&T offers voice, data, and television in many markets already.. adding satellite would stifle competition for television services (and to a lesser extent, because satellite is only best suited for rural installations, data).

http://www.wsj.com/articles/di... (paywalled)
http://arstechnica.com/busines... (readable)
Transportation

The Engineer's Lament -- Prioritizing Car Safety Issues 247

Posted by Soulskill from the backseat-engineering dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Malcolm Gladwell has an article in The New Yorker about how automotive engineers handle issues of safety. There have been tons of car-related recalls lately, and even before that, we'd often hear about how some piece of engineering on a car was leading to a bunch of deaths. Sometimes it was a mistake, and sometimes it was an intentional design. But we hear about these issues through the lens of sensationalized media and public outrage — the engineers working on these problems understand better that it's how you drive that gets you into trouble far more than what you drive.

For example, the Ford Pinto became infamous for catching fire in crashes back in the 1970s. Gladwell says, "That's a rare event—it happens once in every hundred crashes. In 1975-76, 1.9 per cent of all cars on the road were Pintos, and Pintos were involved in 1.9 per cent of all fatal fires. Let's try again. About fifteen per cent of fatal fires resulted from rear collisions. If we look just at that subset of the subset, Schwartz shows, we finally see a pattern. Pintos were involved in 4.1 per cent of all rear-collision fire fatalities—which is to say that they may have been as safe as or safer than other cars in most respects but less safe in this one. ... You and I would feel safer in a car that met the 301 standard. But the engineer, whose aim is to maximize safety within a series of material constraints, cannot be distracted by how you and I feel."
Space

Holographic Principle Could Apply To Our Universe 129

Posted by Soulskill from the too-cool-for-the-third-dimension dept.
New submitter citpyrc sends this news from the Vienna University of Technology: The "holographic principle" asserts that a mathematical description of the universe actually requires one fewer dimension than it seems. What we perceive as three dimensional may just be the image of two dimensional processes on a huge cosmic horizon. Up until now, this principle has only been studied in exotic spaces with negative curvature. This is interesting from a theoretical point of view, but such spaces are quite different from the space in our own universe. Results obtained by scientists at Vienna (abstract) now suggest that the holographic principle even holds in a flat spacetime, like ours.
Wikipedia

An Open Ranking of Wikipedia Pages 39

Posted by Soulskill from the citation-needed dept.
vigna writes: The Laboratory for Web Algorithmics of the Università degli studi di Milano did it again: after creating the first open ranking of the World Wide Web they have put together the first entirely open ranking of Wikipedia, using Wikidata to categorize pages. The ranking is based on classic and easily explainable centrality measures or page views, and it is entirely open — all data (Wikipedia and Wikidata dumps) and all software used is publicly available. Just in case you wonder, the most important food is chocolate, the most important band are the Beatles and the most important idea is atheism.
The Courts

Texas Admonishes Judge For Posting Facebook Updates About Her Trials 95

Posted by samzenpus from the was-that-wrong? dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Michelle Slaughter, a Galveston County judge, says she will appeal a public admonition from state officials that criticized her Facebook posts about cases brought before her court. From the article: "The State Commission on Judicial Conduct ordered Michelle Slaughter, a Galveston County judge, to enroll in a four-hour class on the 'proper and ethical use of social media by judges.' The panel concluded that the judge's posts cast 'reasonable doubt' on her impartiality. At the beginning of a high-profile trial last year in which a father was accused of keeping his nine-year-old son in a six-foot by eight-foot wooden box, the judge instructed jurors not to discuss the case against defendant David Wieseckel with anyone. 'Again, this is by any means of communication. So no texting, e-mailing, talking person to person or on the phone or on Facebook. Any of that is absolutely forbidden,' the judge told jurors. But Slaughter didn't take her own advice, leading to her removal from the case and a mistrial. The defendant eventually was acquitted of unlawful-restraint-of-a-child charges."

Submission + - More Broadband Competition for Comcast and Verizon (xconomy.com)

Submitted by gthuang88
gthuang88 writes: Just days after Comcast and Time Warner Cable abandoned their mega-merger plans, wireless Internet service provider Webpass is expanding to Boston, its fifth major market. The region can boast of MIT, a rich history in Internet and Web, and lots of networking companies---but very little in the way of broadband competition, until now. Webpass’s very high-speed service, which is currently available in the Bay Area, San Diego, Miami, and Chicago, should be up and running in downtown Boston in three or four weeks. The company joins NetBlazr, Monkeybrains, and other broadband tech companies that are finding a niche as more people opt to “cut the cord” from big cable and telecom providers.
Privacy

Supreme Court To Consider Data Aggregation Suit Against Spokeo 62

Posted by samzenpus from the getting-the-numbers-right dept.
BUL2294 writes: Consumerist and Associated Press are reporting that the Supreme Court has taken up the case of Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins — a case where Spokeo, as a data aggregator, faces legal liability and Fair Credit Reporting Act violations for providing information on Thomas Robins, an individual who has not suffered "a specific harm" directly attributable to the inaccurate data Spokeo collected on him.

From SCOTUSblog: "Robins, who filed a class-action lawsuit, claimed that Spokeo had provided flawed information about him, including that he had more education than he actually did, that he is married although he remains single, and that he was financially better off than he actually was. He said he was unemployed and looking for work, and contended that the inaccurate information would make it more difficult for him to get a job and to get credit and insurance." So, while not suffering a specific harm, the potential for harm based on inaccurate data exists. Companies such as Facebook and Google are closely watching this case, given the potential of billions of dollars of liability for selling inaccurate information on their customers and other people.

Submission + - 'Tom and Jerry syndrome' causes seizures in old cats (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Mice and rats communicate in the ultrasonic frequency range, and it’s thought that cats evolved the ability to hear those high-pitched squeaks to better hunt their prey. Now, a new study suggests that sensitivity to higher pitched sounds may cause seizures in some older cats. After receiving reports of the problem, nicknamed the “Tom and Jerry syndrome” because of how the cartoon cat is often startled by sounds, researchers surveyed cat owners and examined their pets’ medical records, looking for insight into the types and durations of seizures and the sounds that provoked them. In 96 cats, they found evidence of the syndrome they call feline audiogenic reflex seizures. The most common types of seizure-eliciting sounds included crinkling tinfoil, clanking a metal spoon on a ceramic feeding bowl, and clinking glass. The severity of the seizure ranged from brief muscle jerks to more serious episodes where the cat lost consciousness and stiffened and jerked for several minutes.

Submission + - "Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine" gets Air Force nod (theengineer.co.uk)

Submitted by LeadSongDog
LeadSongDog writes: The US Air Force Research Lab has been looking at the SABRE concept from the UK maker Reaction Engines, which has already been endorsed by the European Space Agency. The hybrid runs as a jet from stationary to Mach 5.5, then it becomes a rocket for all the way up to Mach 25. The magic is all in keeping the heat exchanger from icing up. This now clears the way for funding the next step: build and test demonstrator engines.

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