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Comment Re:Why is this even news? (Score 2) 25

by garyisabusyguy (#49388813) Attached to: Cetaceans Able To Focus Sound For Echolocation

Yes, and from the Encarta article that I linked:
  "are focused into a narrow beam as they pass through the melon, a waxy, lens-shaped body in the forehead"

So, there is your focusing, and apparent scientific understanding of it in 2000
The linked article is a summary, what other in depth knowledge was brought forward by their study, that it can be aimed by turning the head?

Submission + - Einstein and Schrödinger didn't believe in quantum indeterminism

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: When it comes to the very nature of quantum mechanics — about the inherent uncertainty and indeterminism to reality — it’s one of the most difficult things to accept. Perhaps, you imagine, there’s some underlying cause, some hidden reality beneath what’s visible that actually is deterministic. After all, a cat can’t simultaneously be dead and alive until someone looks can it? That’s one of the problems that both Einstein and Schrödinger wrestled with during their lives. An investigation of that story, their work on that front, and their friendship that ensued as both pursued that same end is thoroughly investigated here by physicist Paul Halpern.

Submission + - Focusing on tech alone, you miss how autonomous driving will change society (robohub.org)

Submitted by Hallie Siegel
Hallie Siegel writes: The way that consumers interact with and operate cars will transform most functions in commuting, travel, communications, car ownership, and many other as-yet unknown ways. Dieter Zetsche, chairman of Daimler and head of Mercedes-Benz Cars, said at this year’s CES in Las Vegas: “Anyone who focuses solely on the technology has not yet grasped how autonomous driving will change our society.” Robotics watcher Frank Tobe writes about how imagination is overtaking the ethics debate around autonomous cars.

Submission + - Obama authorizes penalties for foreign cyber attackers (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: President Barack Obama has today signed an executive order [https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/04/01/our-latest-tool-combat-cyber-attacks-what-you-need-know] extending the U.S. administration’s power to respond to malicious cyberattacks and espionage campaigns. The order enforces financial sanctions on foreign hackers who action attacks against American businesses, institutions and citizens. The new legislation will enable the secretary of the Treasury, along with the attorney general and secretary of State, to inflict penalties on cyber criminals behind hacking attacks which “create a significant threat to U.S. national security, foreign policy or economic health or financial stability of the United States,” Obama said. Sanctions could include freezing of assets or a total ban on commercial trade. The authorities will be limited to imposing the new sanctions solely in cases where the attacks are considered significant enough to warrant a penalty. Punishable attacks could include malicious security breaches of critical infrastructure, DDoS campaigns against computers and networks, or those that result in the “significant misappropriation of funds or economic resources, trade secrets, personal identifiers..."

Submission + - Petulant Penguin Hackers use Antarctica as Base (securityledger.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: Security Ledger reports on a new and sophisticated cyber crime campaign dubbed “Petulant Penguin” that is using compromised computers at Antarctic research bases to launch targeted attacks on government agencies in the U.S. and Europe. (https://securityledger.com/2015/04/petulant-penguin-attacks-use-antarctica-as-base/)

“To say we were surprised is an understatement,” said Matt Flinders, a security researcher at the firm Crowdstrike, which was among a handful to identify the attack. “We’re used to seeing attacks with ties back to countries like Russia, China – even Brazil. But Antarctica? Nobody expected that.”

Crowdstrike issued a report (http://goo.gl/26Demt) that provides information on the attacks Wednesday. Its profiles of sophisticated hacker groups include names like “Deep Panda” (a Chinese hacking crew with links to the People’s Liberation Army), “Energetic Bear,” (a group with its base in the Russian Federation) and “Flying Kitten” (with links to the Islamic Republic of Iran).

Antartica is connected to the Internet and even has its own top-level domain, .AQ. But data access for the icy continent is spotty and heavily reliant on satellites. Internet access to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is provided by access via NASA’s TDRS-F1, GOES & Iridium satellite constellation. The South Pole’s TDRS relay (named South Pole TDRSS Relay or SPTR) was upgraded recently to support a data return rate of 50 Mbit/s. That accounts for more than 90% of the South Pole’s data capability and is primarily used to relay scientific data from the many research stations.

Working through NASA and other agencies, researchers were eventually able to trace the malicious traffic back to research installations at the South Pole including the Amundsen-Scott base, Concordia Station (a joint Italian and French research base) and Japan’s Dome Fuji station. Interestingly, the attackers were apparently able to work around the continent’s spotty access to the Internet and limited bandwidth: scheduling their malicious activities for seasons and periods in which the stations enjoyed strong and reliable Internet access.

Submission + - Verizon Subscribers Can Now Opt Out Of 'Supercookies' (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Verizon said in January that it would allow subscribers to opt out of having a unique identifier placed on their phones that critics have labelled a ‘supercookie’ because it’s almost impossible to remove, but it didn’t say when. On Tuesday, Verizon said the identifier won’t be inserted for customers who opt out of its mobile advertising program: 'Verizon Wireless has updated its systems so that we will stop inserting the UIDH after a customer opts out of the relevant mobile advertising program or activates a line that is ineligible for the advertising program,” such as as a government or business line,' Verizon said in a change to its policies Tuesday.

Submission + - UK forces Microsoft to adopt Open document standards (itproportal.com)

Submitted by Barsteward
Barsteward writes: Microsoft has confirmed it will start supporting the Open Documents Format (ODF) in the next update to Office 365, following a lengthy battle against the UK government. In 2014, Microsoft went against the government’s request to support ODF, claiming its own XML format was more heavily adopted. The UK government refutes the claim, stating that ODF allows users to not be boxed into one ecosystem.

Comment Re:This is going to go over well. (Score 1, Informative) 397

by garyisabusyguy (#49379907) Attached to: Why America's Obsession With STEM Education Is Dangerous

Yep, AC had me at, 'as important as have a good understanding'...

FWIW, I learned as much about economics from 'The System of the World' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_System_of_the_World_%28novel%29) as I did an MBA program

Interjecting knowledge transfer into entertainment, instead of foisting ridiculous misunderstandings and bullshit, would go a long way to bettering our society

Comment Re:Oh the humanity! (Score 5, Insightful) 397

by garyisabusyguy (#49379553) Attached to: Why America's Obsession With STEM Education Is Dangerous

All I know is that I tested out of all of my humanities credits when working towards a degree

My daughter is going to college to become an English teacher.
I think that it is to spite me, but I bet that she'll be working as a tech trainer before long

To be honest, the sheer mass of the US student body pretty much guarantees that even the hardest push towards STEM education will only result in a small percentage of students really moving in that direction.

I only wish that most of the HR and Sales types that I gather requirements from had some baseline exposure to logic :/

Comment Why is this even news? (Score 1) 25

by garyisabusyguy (#49379493) Attached to: Cetaceans Able To Focus Sound For Echolocation

What did they do, look up the wikipedia article?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

Or maybe this Encarta article from 2000
"The echolocation sounds of toothed whales, produced in their nasal passages, are focused into a narrow beam as they pass through the melon, a waxy, lens-shaped body in the forehead. The echoes are received by the lower jaw and pass through oil-filled sinuses to the inner ear, which is insulated from the skull by a foamlike pad that cuts out irrelevant noise. Upon closing in on their prey, both sperm whales and killer whales can produce pulses strong enough to stun their prey."
http://autocww.colorado.edu/~f...

Stories about using it to stun fish have been around for over a decade
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

Maybe the real news is that /. fell into a wormhole during the last outage and is reposting stories from 1999

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