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Submission + - Techies hire witch to protect computers from viruses and offices from spirits (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Many people have had their computer or smartphone possessed by an evil demon — or at least that's what it can feel like when some mysterious bug keeps causing an app to crash, or your phone keeps shutting off for no reason.

But if you truly think your electronics have been invaded by an evil spirit, there's someone who will take your call — Reverend Joey Talley — a Wiccan witch from the San Francisco Bay Area who claims to solve supernatural issues for techies.

Submission + - Plastic Roads Sound Like a Crazy Idea, Maybe Aren't (ieee.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: America has an infrastructure problem. Part of that problem is our roads, which are either in terrible condition or in the process of being torn up by road crews who'll make them betterâ"until, that is, they're in terrible condition again. It's time to try something radical, and for that, we (as always) look to the Dutch for inspiration.

A Dutch construction company called VolkerWessels is partnering with the city of Rotterdam to create a prototype for a prefabricated plastic road. If it works, it would be durable, fast to construct, and way better for the environment than asphalt.

VolkerWessels' PlasticRoad concept is ambitious, to say the least. They envision pulling waste plastic out of the oceans, and then processing it into prefabricated sections of road with integrated utility channels and drainage. The composition and structure of the plastic makes it more durable than traditional asphalt, and VolkerWessels estimates that their plastic roads should last about three times as long as traditional roads.

Now make them out of photovoltaic material.

Submission + - Asteroid worth £3 TRILLION in precious metals set to pass Earth (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Fly-by will be streamed live on the internet at 11pm UK time on Sunday
Passes 1.5 million miles from Earth 30 times closer than nearest planet
The space rock has attracted the attention of asteroid mining company
Asteroid 2011 UW-158 is thought to have a 100 million ton core of platinum

Submission + - Bottom Line: GMO Foods are safe-and vitally necessary. (slate.com)

Submitted by TaleSpinner
TaleSpinner writes: Liberals love to criticize people they think "don't like science" but they are none too keen on it themselves, and the anti-GMO contingent of that population is now tuning up the outrage over a few simple truths. As UK sun researchers have shown we ARE heading into a "little Ice Age", and as the FDA tries to let the anti-vaccine people know that vaccines are safe, too, so comes along more evidence that Liberals really DON'T love science:

(Since there is a powerful liberal influence at Slashdot I expect that this story will be passed by the same as the previous one alluded to above were. Consider this: the truth will out, sooner or later. You do yourselves no favors by pretending "the science is settled" when it so clearly isn't)

"The war against genetically modified organisms is full of fearmongering, errors, and fraud. Labeling them will not make you safer."
By William Saletan

Is genetically engineered food dangerous? Many people seem to think it is. In the past five years, companies have submitted more than 27,000 products to the Non-GMO Project, which certifies goods that are free of genetically modified organisms. Last year, sales of such products nearly tripled. Whole Foods will soon require labels on all GMOs in its stores. Abbott, the company that makes Similac baby formula, has created a non-GMO version to give parents “peace of mind.” Trader Joe’s has sworn off GMOs. So has Chipotle.

Some environmentalists and public interest groups want to go further. Hundreds of organizations, including Consumers Union, Friends of the Earth, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Center for Food Safety, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, are demanding “mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods.” Since 2013, Vermont, Maine, and Connecticut have passed laws to require GMO labels. Massachusetts could be next.

Folks, it's time to look at the REAL science on these issues. The GMO nonsense if killing even more people annually than the DDT ban. The "environmentalists" have nothing to be proud of.

Submission + - OPM hack included fingerprints (nationaljournal.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The Office of Personnel Management announced last week that the personal data for 21.5 million people had been stolen. But for national security professionals and cybersecurity experts, the more troubling issue is the theft of 1.1 million fingerprints.

Much of their concern rests with the permanent nature of fingerprints and the uncertainty about just how the hackers intend to use them. Unlike a Social Security number, address, or password, fingerprints cannot be changedâ"once they are hacked, they're hacked for good. And government officials have less understanding about what adversaries could do or want to do with fingerprints, a knowledge gap that undergirds just how frightening many view the mass lifting of them from OPM.

"It's probably the biggest counterintelligence threat in my lifetime," said Jim Penrose, former chief of the Operational Discovery Center at the National Security Agency and now an executive vice president at the cybersecurity company Darktrace. "There's no situation we've had like this before, the compromise of our fingerprints. And it doesn't have any easy remedy or fix in the world of intelligence."

Submission + - Hadron Collider Scientists Stumble Upon 'Pentaquark' Particle (wsj.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Scientists using Europe's Large Hadron Collider atom-smashing machine have stumbled on the existence of an exotic particle known as the pentaquark, a discovery that could shed light on how everyday matter is constituted.

Physicists have been seeking the pentaquark for five decades, a search marked by several dramatic claims of discovery that all turned out to be false. But scientists at the LHC say they have now established the existence of the particle with an extremely high level of certainty.

"We have made very detailed checks to verify that there can be no other explanation," said Guy Wilkinson, a physicist at Oxford University and spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, which runs the collider.

More than half a century ago, American physicist Murray Gell-Mann showed that every proton and neutron is made from combinations of three elementary particles known as quarks, research that won him the Nobel Prize. At the same time, he proposed that it should theoretically be possible to make matter from five quarks as well.

Submission + - Facebook's new chief security officer wants to set a date to kill Flash

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook’s new chief security officer, Alex Stamos, has stated publicly that he wants to see Adobe end Flash. This weekend Stamos tweeted: "It is time for Adobe to announce the end-of-life date for Flash and to ask the browsers to set killbits on the same day. Even if 18 months from now, one set date is the only way to disentangle the dependencies and upgrade the whole ecosystem at once."

Submission + - Fish oil pills: A $1.2 billion industry built, so far, on empty promises (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: For anyone wondering about whether to take a fish oil pill to improve your health, the Web site of the National Institutes of Health has some advice.

Yes. And no.

One page on the Web site endorses taking fish oil supplements, saying they are likely effective for heart disease, because they contain the "beneficial" fatty acids known as omega-3s.

But another page suggests that, in fact, the fish oil pills seem useless: "Omega-3s in supplement form have not been shown to protect against heart disease."

Submission + - A bit too much transparency for journalists? (washingtonpost.com) 2

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: From The Washington Post's Lisa Rein comes news that the federal government is launching a six-month pilot program with seven agencies to post online documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). "So if a journalist, nonprofit group or corporation asks for the records, what they see, the public also will see," writes Rein. . . .

"As a matter of regular practice, EPA notifies the requester at the time that the response is posted on the foiaonline website. We believe that the posting of the information advances transparency."

And, perhaps, penalizes those who go to great lengths to fetch it. "I do share the concern of other journalists that this could hurt the journalist who made the original request," writes Washington Post Investigations Editor Jeff Leen via e-mail. "It could also affect long-term investigations built on a number of FOIA requests over time."

"FOIA terrorist" Jason Leopold has big issues with the approach. "It would absolutely hurt journalists' ability to report on documents they obtained through a FOIA request if the government agency is going to immediately make records available to the public," writes the Vice News reporter via e-mail. Leopold has already experienced the burn of joint release, he says, after requesting information on Guantanamo Bay. The documents were posted on the U.S. Southern Command's Web site. âoeI lost the ability to exclusively report on the material even though I put in all of the work filing the requests,â he notes.

Submission + - NASA names its astronauts for the first Dragon and CST-100 flights

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: NASA today named the four government astronauts that will fly on the first manned demo flights to ISS of SpaceX's Dragon and Boeing's CST-100.

Bob Behnken, Eric Boe, Doug Hurley and Sunita Williams are veteran test pilots who have flown on the shuttle and the International Space Station.

NASA said the four astronauts will train with both companies and have not yet been assigned to flights. Two-person crews will fly the first test flights by each capsule, after they have completed an orbital test flight without people on board. Company proposals anticipate an all-NASA crew flying SpaceX's Dragon test flight, with Boeing's CST-100 carrying a split NASA-Boeing crew. Boeing has not yet identified its astronaut.

Submission + - OPM Director Resigns in Wake of Massive Data Breach

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The ever-expanding data breach at the Office of Personnel Management has now spread to include the Social Security numbers and other personal data of a total of 21.5 million people, and the toll also now includes the agency’s director, Katherine Archuleta, who resigned Friday morning.

Archuleta had been under an increasing amount of pressure ever since the hack came to light last month. Legislators last month took Archuleta and CIO Donna Seymour to task for not addressing security deficiencies and failing to implement controls such as database encryption and two-factor authentication agency wide. Archuleta said during the hearing before the House Committee on Oversight Government Reform that protecting users was her highest priority.

“You have completely and utterly failed, if that was your mission,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said during the hearing.

Archuleta informed President Barack Obama on Friday that she was resigning.

Submission + - Boeing patents a jet engine powered by lasers and nuclear explosions (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Last week, the US Patent and Trademark Office approved an application from Boeing's Robert Budica, James Herzberg, and Frank Chandler for a laser- and nuclear-driven airplane engine.

Shouldn't everything be powered by lasers and nuclear explosions? Technically, though, these are thermonuclear explosions, which of course only makes it cooler. . .

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