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Submission + - North Korea Warned Of Possible Prosecution For 'Crimes Against Humanity' (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Telegraph reports, "North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has been warned that he could face prosecution for crimes against humanity after a United Nations inquiry accused him of some of the worst human rights abuses since the Second World War. In some of the harshest criticism ever unleashed by the international community against the Pyongyang regime, a UN panel branded it “a shock to the conscience of humanity”. Michael Kirby, a retired Australian judge who has spent nearly a year taking testimony from victims of the regime, said much of it reminded him of atrocities perpetrated by Nazi Germany and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Yesterday his team published a 374-page report detailing allegations of murder, torture, rape, abductions, enslavement, and starvation, describing North Korea as a dictatorship “that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world”. In a bid to put pressure on Kim Jong-un, 31, Mr Kirby has taken the unusual step of writing to the North Korean leader to warn him that both he and hundreds of his henchmen could one day face prosecution. " — More at BBC, including a cache of report.

Submission + - Floor Sensors that Ape iPad Touch Screens Could Save Elderly from Falls (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Falls are the leading cause of injury for older adults, causing more than 20,000 deaths a year in the United States alone. Now, a team of researchers is using the same technology found in smartphone touch screens to detect these dangerous tumbles as soon as they happen. To accomplish this, the researchers embedded long sheets of flexible padding with so-called capacitive sensors. The sensors detect when a person walks or lies nearby, even when conventional flooring is installed on top. This information is wirelessly beamed to a computer, which crunches the data looking for evidence of a fall. If the system, called SensFloor, senses something is amiss, it automatically calls for help. The technology has already found use in a French nursing home where it detected 28 falls in 4 months. The researchers say the same technology could be used outside the assisted living community, including home security monitoring and customer tracking in stores.

Submission + - Hard Silicon Wafers Yield Flexible Electronics (acs.org)

Submitted by MTorrice
MTorrice writes: By shaving off an ultrathin layer from the top of a silicon wafer, researchers have transformed rigid electronic devices into flexible ones. The shaving process could be used to fabricate parts for wearable electronics or displays that can roll up. Compared to similar techniques to make bendable silicon electronics, the new method is more cost-effective and produces more flexible devices, its developers say.

Submission + - Elephants Console Each Other, Show Empathy Rare in Animal Kingdom (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Elephants, both African and Asian, have long been considered empathetic animals. They help baby elephants stuck in mud holes, use their trunks to lift other elephants that are injured or dying, and even reportedly reassure distressed individual elephants with a gentle touch of their trunk. But it’s one thing to witness something that looks like consolation, and another to prove that this is what elephants are doing. Now, scientists have shown that African elephants do indeed get distressed when they see others in trouble, and they reach out to console them—just as we do when we see someone suffering. Elephants, thus, join a short list of other animals, including great apes, canines, and some birds, that scientists have shown to reassure others.

Submission + - Darker Arctic boosting global warming (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by The Grim Reefer
The Grim Reefer writes: The Arctic isn't nearly as bright and white as it used to be because of more ice melting in the ocean, and that's turning out to be a global problem, a new study says.

With more dark, open water in the summer, less of the sun's heat is reflected back into space. So the entire Earth is absorbing more heat than expected, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

That extra absorbed energy is so big that it measures about one-quarter of the entire heat-trapping effect of carbon dioxide, said the study's lead author, Ian Eisenman, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California.

The Arctic grew 8 per cent darker between 1979 and 2011, Eisenman found, measuring how much sunlight is reflected back into space.

"Basically, it means more warming," Eisenman said in an interview.

Submission + - Samsung Could Have Bought Android but Laughed Idea out of the Boardroom (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: According to Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution by Wired's contributing editor Fred Vogelstein, engineer Andy Rubin, who started the Android project in 2003, pitched the mobile operating system idea to Samsung.

"I pitch the whole Android vision to them like they are a venture capitalist. And at the end and I am out of breath, with the whole thing laid out ... there is silence. Literally silence, like there are crickets in the room," said Rubin, who had flown out to Seoul with his team in 2004 to pitch to the electronics giant.

Google acquired Android for $50m two weeks after the Samsung presentation and the icing on the cake for Rubin, was receiving a call from Samsung the day after the acquisition was announced, demanding that Rubin meet with them to discuss his "very, very interesting proposal".

Submission + - 500,000 Belkin WeMo Users Are Wide Open To Attackers

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: IOActive has uncovered multiple vulnerabilities in Belkin WeMo Home Automation devices that could affect over half a million users and give attackers the ability to remotely control WeMo Home Automation attached devices over the Internet, remotely monitor the devices, perform malicious firmware updates, and access an internal home network.

The vulnerabilities found within the Belkin WeMo devices expose users to several potentially costly threats, from home fires with possible tragic consequences down to the simple waste of electricity. The reason for this is that, after attackers compromise the WeMo devices, they can be used to remotely turn attached devices on and off at any time. Given the number of WeMo devices in use, it is highly likely that many of the attached appliances and devices will be unattended, thus increasing the threat posed by these vulnerabilities.

Submission + - NVIDIA Launches GTX 750 Ti with New Maxwell Architecture (pcper.com)

Submitted by Vigile
Vigile writes: NVIDIA is launching the GeForce GTX 750 Ti today which would normally just be a passing mention for a new $150 mainstream graphics card. But the fact that the company is using this as the starting point for its Maxwell architecture is actually pretty interesting. With a new GPU design that reorganizes the compute structure into smaller blocks, Maxwell is able to provide 66% more CUDA cores with a die size that is just 25% bigger than the previous generation all while continuing to use the same 28nm process technology we have today. Power and area efficiency were the target design points for Maxwell as it will eventually be integrated into NVIDIA's Tegra line too. As a result the GeForce GTX 750 Ti is able to outperform AMD's Radeon R7 260X by 5-10% while using 35 watts less power at the same time.

Submission + - French, German Leaders: Keep European Email Off US Severs (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: In her weekly podcast, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she'd be discussing European email security with French President Francois Hollande. Specifically, in the wake of the NSA spying revelations, the two leaders will try to keep European email off of American servers altogether to avoid snooping. This comes as Merkel's government faces criminal complaints for assisting aspects of the NSA's programs.
Government

Submission + - Yet another costly government software upgrade failure (latimes.com)

Submitted by g01d4
g01d4 writes: "California's computer problems, which have already cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, have mounted as state officials cut short work on a $208-million DMV technology overhaul that is only half done. Last week, the controller's office fired the contractor responsible for a $371-million upgrade to the state's payroll system, citing a trial run filled with mishaps. More than $254 million has already been spent." It's hard not to feel like the Tokyo man in the street watching the latest round of Godzilla the state vs. Rodan the big contractor.

Comment Re:openSUSE members (Score 1) 210

by sjbcfh (#30672240) Attached to: Ubuntu "Memberships" Questioned
Members get to vote on the board

Yes.

and get a free boxed/retail copy of each openSUSE release.

No. I've been a member since the first day applications for membership were accepted and have never received a free box. Those normally go to people who make contributions to the distribution or community (consistently good bug reports, heavy involvement in the development cycle via bug reports and feedback, quality packaging, translations, advocacy, community involvement, etc.) above and beyond the usual, and not just to members but to non-members, as well.

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