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Submission + - Earth Has 52 Percent Fewer Wild Animals Today Than in 1970

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Since 1970, more than half of the world's population of wild vertebrate animals have died off, according to a biennial report from the World Wildlife Fund.
The organization's "Living Planet Report" studies the populations of more than 10,000 populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. According to the study, 52 percent of the overall total population of wild animals died between 1970 and 2010.

Submission + - California Gov Brown Vetoes Bill Requiring Warrants for Drone Surveillance (latimes.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Brown, a Democrat facing re-election in November, sided with law enforcement and said the legislation simply granted Californians privacy rights that went too far beyond existing guarantees. Sunday's veto comes as the small drones are becoming increasingly popular with business, hobbyists, and law enforcement.

"This bill prohibits law enforcement from using a drone without obtaining a search warrant, except in limited circumstances," the governor said in his veto message(PDF). "There are undoubtedly circumstances where a warrant is appropriate. The bill's exceptions, however, appear to be too narrow and could impose requirements beyond what is required by either the 4th Amendment or the privacy provisions in the California Constitution."

At least 10 other states require the police to get a court warrant to surveil with a drone. Those states include Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, and Wisconsin.

California's drone bill is not draconian. It includes exceptions for emergency situations, search-and-rescue efforts, traffic first responders, and inspection of wildfires. It allows other public agencies to use drones for other purposes—just not law enforcement.

Submission + - Analyzing Silk Road 2.0 (lau.im)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After a recent article about breaking the CAPTCHA on the latest incarnation of Silk Road (the darknet-enabled drug market place), Darryl Lau decided to investigate exactly what narcotics people were buying and selling online. He found roughly 13,000 separate listings. Some sellers identify the country they're in, and the top six are the U.S., Australia, England, Germany, and the Netherlands, and Canada. The site also has a bunch of product reviews. If you assume that each review comes from a sale, and multiply that by the listed prices, reviewed items alone represent $20 million worth of business. Lau also has some interesting charts, graphs, and assorted stats. MDMA is the most listed and reviewed drug, and sellers are offering it in quantities of up to a kilogram at a time. The average price for the top 1000 items is $236. Prescription drugs represent a huge portion of the total listings, though no individual prescription drugs have high volume on their own.

Comment Re:What about Pro-Biotics, though? (Score 1) 294

Gut flora can certainly be difficult to deal with, there is much we don't know about how it all works.
Here's an example of a gut bacteria that kills 14,000 people a year in the US alone: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Someone I know was infected with it and was in and out of the hospital for a few months - sometimes staying weeks at a time. Every time the doctors thought the infection was recessing, it would return a day or two later. The doctors tried half a dozen different medications for it, including a long course of IV antibiotics, apparently the "last line of defense" before you die. Thankfully that last treatment took care of it.

Comment Re:Then I guess you could say... (Score 4, Interesting) 222

by sound+vision (#47915425) Attached to: Schizophrenia Is Not a Single Disease
From the people I've known with schizophrenia (three diagnosed, a couple others probably undiagnosed) the audio hallucinations can either be recognized as hallucinations, or accepted as real, depending on the severity of the disorder at the time. If they are in a less severe mode they usually recognize the voices are not real (not to imply they can stop or control them). The recorder would do no good there. In more severe conditions, they may be unable to tell the difference between the hallucinations and reality, and the hallucinations can be not just auditory but also visual and (most importantly) cognitive. With cognitive delusions, reasoning capacity goes out the window - any kind of "evidence" presented to them would be disregarded. In the really bad cases, when they are ducking out of view of windows so the snipers outside can't get a clear shot, you won't be able to get them to look at any computer program really.

Comment Re:PCs are the problem (Score 1) 111

by sound+vision (#47859869) Attached to: Home Depot Confirms Breach of Its Payment Systems
In 2012 I worked at a discount retailer whose cash registers ran Windows 98. (Yes, the registers sucked.) The "office computer" ran Windows 2000. The Win2k machine (an subsequently all registers) were internet-connected, and the 2k machine had data from all the cash registers. I'd like to think the Win2k machine was strictly used on a properly secured VPN with the corporate office... but I doubt it.

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