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Submission + - Untried murder accusations weigh on Ross Ulbricht's Silk Road sentencing (dailydot.com)

Submitted by Patrick O'Neill
Patrick O'Neill writes: Ross Ulbricht has never been tried for murder but tomorrow, when the convicted Silk Road creator is sentenced to prison, murder will be on the mind of the judge. Despite never filing murder for hire charges, New York federal prosecutors have repeatedly pushed for harsh sentencing because of, they told the judge, Ulbricht solicited multiple murders. The judge herself recently referred to Ulbricht's "commission of murders-for-hire" in a letter about the sentencing, painting an even grimmer picture of Ulbricht's sentencing prospects.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: UPDATE 1-Google shows off virtual reality collaboration with GoPro - Reuters (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

TIME
UPDATE 1-Google shows off virtual reality collaboration with GoPro
Reuters
(Adds details on GoPro and Google plans for photo app). By Julia Love. SAN FRANCISCO May 28 (Reuters) - Action camera maker GoPro Inc and Google Inc introduced a virtual reality system using 16 cameras and Google software, sending GoPro shares...
YouTube will support virtual reality video this summerWashington Post (blog)
Google Intensifies Focus on Its Cardboard Virtual Reality DeviceNew York Times
Google teams with GoPro in broad virtual reality pushPCWorld
TIME-Mashable-The Verge
all 145 news articles

Submission + - DARPA wants you to verify software flaws by playing games (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: Researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) think so and were so impressed with their first crowdsourced flaw-detecting games, they announced an new round of five games this week designed for improved playability as well as increased software verification effectiveness.

Submission + - Higgs Boson Mass Explained in New Theory (quantamagazine.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Three physicists who have been collaborating in the San Francisco Bay Area over the past year have devised a new solution to a mystery that has beleaguered their field for more than 30 years. This profound puzzle, which has driven experiments at increasingly powerful particle colliders and given rise to the controversial multiverse hypothesis, amounts to something a bright fourth-grader might ask: How can a magnet lift a paperclip against the gravitational pull of the entire planet?

Submission + - SF Says AdWare Bundled with Gimp Is Intentional (google.com) 5

Submitted by tresf
tresf writes: In response to a Google+ post from the Gimp project claiming that "[Sourceforge] is now distributing an ads-enabled installer of GIMP", Sourceforge had this response:

In cases where a project is no longer actively being maintained, SourceForge has in some cases established a mirror of releases that are hosted elsewhere. This was done for GIMP-Win.

Editor's note: Gimp is actively being maintained and the definition of "mirror" is quite misleading here as a modified binary is no longer a verbatim copy. Download statistics for Gimp on Windows show SourceForge as offering over 1,000 downloads per day of the Gimp software. In an official response to this incident, the official Gimp project team reminds users to use official download methods. Slashdotters may remember the last time news like this surfaced (2013) when the Gimp team decided to move downloads from SourceForge to their own FTP service.

Therefore, we remind you again that GIMP only provides builds for Windows via its official Downloads page.

Note: SourceForge and Slashdot share a corporate parent.

Submission + - This Handgun is 3D Printed and Powered by Condoms (3dprint.com)

Submitted by ErnieKey
ErnieKey writes: Designer and maker James R. Patrick has tried his hand at developing a 3D printed gun. He was successful, but then the folks at FOSSCAD were intrigued by the idea and as part of testing it, substituted condoms for rubber bands. It appears to be equally effective and a whole heck of a lot more entertaining.

Submission + - Russian rocket now garden furniture in England

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A British businessman has purchased a discarded Russian rocket and installed it in his garden as decoration.

Almost 40ft long and weighing five tonne, the rocket was first flown in 1991 after being built by the Russians in collaboration with NASA at a cost $10 million. For ten years it held the record for the fastest ever made-made machine before it was jettisoned as archaic.

Somehow it ended up at a car auction at South Marston where it was spotted by Mr Sweet while checking out vintage motors. Mr Sweet, who runs the Cirencester-based computer company Zycko, said: "I saw it for sale at a car auction and decided to buy it, not really knowing what I was going to do with it."

I am curious how the rocket had ended up being owned and offered for sale by a UK company that "specializes in car restorations." I also wonder if this might be a major new profit center for the struggling Russian rocket industry.

Submission + - Carl Sagan's solar-powered spacecraft is in trouble (engadget.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The test flight of Carl Sagan's LightSail craft is in jeopardy after a computer problem left it unable to communicate with its mission controllers. According to the Planetary Society, the hardware was launched into space with an older version of its Linux-based operating system, which shipped with a serious glitch. As the vehicle circuits the planet, it's meant to send back a packet of data, but over the first two days, this file grew too big for the system to handle. As such, it crashed, although we mean that in the software sense, rather than the coming-back-to-Earth-with-a-bump sense.

Submission + - IRS cut its cybersecurity staff by 11% over four years (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: The Internal Revenue Service, which disclosed this week the breach of 100,000 taxpayer accounts, has been steadily reducing the size of its internal cybersecurity staff as it increases its security spending. In 2011, the IRS employed 410 people in its cybersecurity organization, but by 2014 the headcount had fallen to 363 people. In 2012, the IRS earmarked $129 million for cybersecurity, which rose to $141.5 million last year, an increase of approximately 9.7%. This increase in spending, coupled with the reduction in headcount, is an indicator of outsourcing, said Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute. Paller sees risks in that strategy. "Each organization moves at a different pace toward a point at which they have outsourced so much that the insiders do little more than manage contracts, and lose their technical expertise and ability to manage technical contractors effectively," he said.

Submission + - Drone Detection: What Works And What Doesn't

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Another drone was discovered flying in restricted air space around the White House two weeks ago. The Secret Service found the pilot simply because they happened to see him. In other words, there is no indication that the Secret Service would have found the pilot if he had not been in plain view. This person didn’t have bad intentions, but one day someone will. A little drone-detection education is in order.

Submission + - Journalist fools media into publishing chocolate weight loss story (io9.com)

Submitted by dinfinity
dinfinity writes: "“Slim by Chocolate!” the headlines blared. A team of German researchers had found that people on a low-carb diet lost weight 10 percent faster if they ate a chocolate bar every day. [...] It was discussed on television news shows. [...] My colleagues and I recruited actual human subjects in Germany. We ran an actual clinical trial, with subjects randomly assigned to different diet regimes. And the statistically significant benefits of chocolate that we reported are based on the actual data. It was, in fact, a fairly typical study for the field of diet research. Which is to say: It was terrible science. The results are meaningless, and the health claims that the media blasted out to millions of people around the world are utterly unfounded."

Submission + - Billboard advertising banned products in Russia hides if it recognizes cops

Submitted by m.alessandrini
m.alessandrini writes: In response to a ban of food imported from the European Union, an Italian grocery in Russia hired an ad agency to create a billboard with a camera and facial recognition software, that's able to change to a different ad when it recognizes the uniform of Russian cops. Link: http://gizmodo.com/this-ad-for...

Submission + - More than fifty vulnerabilities in D-Link NAS and NVR devices (search-lab.hu)

Submitted by ebux
ebux writes: SEARCH-LAB performed an independent security assessment on four different D-Link devices. The assessment has identified altogether 53 unique vulnerabilities in the latest firmware (dated 30-07-2014). Several vulnerabilities can be abused by a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code and gain full control over the devices.

Submission + - Population Control is a Taboo Subject - Should it Be?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "In the world of solutions to environmental problems," writes Adele Peters, "one topic rarely gets any discussion: Birth control. By 2050, the U.N. estimates that the human population will hit 9.6 billion, putting unprecedented pressure on the planet's energy and agriculture systems. But that estimate tends to be accepted as inevitable, rather than as a number that could (or should) change." Peters continues, "The subject of population control wasn't always taboo. "The bestselling environment-related book of the '60s and '70s was not Silent Spring, it was Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb," says [Foundation for Deep Ecology's Tom] Butler. "So this was a huge and integrated topic of conversation decades ago, and then it fell off the radar screen." Part of the challenge is that the topic is now politically fraught both for the right and left. "On the right, if we're talking about the demographic trajectory of the human family, inevitably, this brings up questions of sexuality, abortion, immigration, women's rights, gender equity—all kinds of hot button issues," he says. "And then on the far ends of the left spectrum, there's a radical fringe that has tried to portray family planning as equal to coercion."" So, should we continue to ignore the 9.6 billion elephants in the room?

Submission + - Silk Road founder begs judge to 'please leave me my old age' ahead of sentencing (bgr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If federal prosecutors have their way, Ross Ulbricht, the mastermind behind Silk Road, will be sentenced to an extremely long prison term: we’re talking 20 years at the very minimum.

According to the New York Times, the prosecution handling the case has opted not to seek a life sentence for Ulbricht, but will instead try to convince the presiding judge that Ulbricht deserves a sentence that is “substantially above the mandatory minimum of 20 years.” Three months ago, a jury convicted the 30-year old Ulbricht on seven criminal counts, including narcotics trafficking and money laundering.

Ulbricht’s sentencing is scheduled for Friday.

Meanwhile, Ulbricht late last week begged the court for leniency in the form of a 1.5 page letter he sent to Judge Katherine Forrest.

The letter reads in part: "Even now I understand what a terrible mistake I made. I’ve had my youth, and I know you must take away my middle years, but please leave me my old age. Please leave a small light at the end of the tunnel, an excuse to stay healthy, an excuse to dream of better days ahead, and a chance to redeem myself in the free world before I meet my maker."

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