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+ - 3D-Printable Gun Downloaded 100k Times In Two Days (Thanks To Kim Dotcom)->

Submitted by Sparrowvsrevolution
Sparrowvsrevolution writes "The promise of a fully 3D-printable gun is that it can spread via the Internet and entirely circumvent gun control laws. Two days after that digital weapon's blueprint first appeared online, it seems to be fulfilling that promise. Files for the printable gun known as that "Liberator" have been downloaded more than 100,000 times in two days, according to Defense Distributed, the group that created it. Those downloads were facilitated by Kim Dotcom's startup Mega, which Defense Distributed is using to host the Liberator's CAD files. And it's also been uploaded to the Pirate Bay, where it's one of the most popular files in the filesharing site's uncensorable 3D printing category."
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+ - Tool reveals iPad and iPhone user locations->

Submitted by mask.of.sanity
mask.of.sanity writes "A researcher has found that Apple user locations can be potentially determined by tapping into Apple Maps and he has created a Python tool to make the process easier.

iSniff GPS accesses Apple's database of wireless access points, which is collected by iPhones and iPads that have GPS and wifi location services enabled.

Apple uses this 'crowd-sourced' data to run its location services, however the location database is not meant to be public.

You can download the tool via Giuthub."
Link to Original Source

+ - New Zealand set to prohibit software patents->

Submitted by Drishmung
Drishmung writes "The New Zealand Commerce Minister Craig Foss today (9 May 2013) announced a significant change to the Patents Bill currently before parliament, replacing the earlier amendment with far clearer law and re-affirming that software really will be unpatentable in New Zealand.

An article on the Institute of IT Professionals web site by IT Lawyer Guy Burgess looks at the the bill and what it means, with reference to the law in other parts of the world such as the USA, Europe and Britain (which is slightly different from the EU situation)."
Link to Original Source

+ - Colassal hydrogen bridge between galaxies could be fuel line for new stars->

Submitted by SternisheFan
SternisheFan writes "The Christian Science Monitor: Pete Spotts reports: New observations of a bridge of tenuous hydrogen gas stretching between two nearby galaxies may help solve a longstanding puzzle: Billions of years after star formation peaked in the universe, what continues to fuel the formation of new stars in spiral galaxies like the Milky Way.

Newly published radiotelescope observations of this segment of what researchers have dubbed the “cosmic web” reveal that about half of the neutral hydrogen gas in the bridge is contained in rotating clumps the size of dwarf galaxies. Neutral hydrogen – atoms with one proton and one electron – represents the raw material for new stars.

“If this gas is being accreted by the galaxies, then we need to understand how they're doing that. That information could, in principle, help us understand how galaxies like Andromeda, like our own Milky Way, can acquire gas to form new stars,” says Spencer Wolfe, a PhD candidate in astronomy at West Virginia University and the lead scientist on the project.

Over the past decade, astronomers have come to appreciate the potential of gas between galaxies to provide fresh fuel for making stars in spiral galaxies.

Star formation in the universe appears to have peaked some 10 billion to 11 billion years ago. Stellar birthrates these days are less than 10 percent of what they were then, notes Robert Braun, an astronomer at the Australia Telescope National Facility in Epping, New South Wales.

Left to their own devices, galaxies have on average about 1 billion to 2 billion years worth of gas in the cosmic tank, a condition that has existed throughout most of the universe's history, Dr. Braun writes in an e-mail. Many of them, therefore, should have stopped forming stars billions of years ago. Moreover, the total mass of stars in the universe today is about five times higher than the amount of neutral hydrogen available 12 billion years ago, suggesting that the universe's larger inventory of ionized hydrogen kept star formation going in some way.

Researchers have identified other mechanisms for the galactic equivalent of in-flight refueling. For instance, gas gets recycled for a time through successive generations of stars. Collisions, mergers, and even near-misses between galaxies can trigger bursts of star formation. But filaments of ionized hydrogen appear to be the only features persistent enough to keep galaxies stocked with stars over billions of years of cosmic history. Somehow, within those filaments, enough of the ionized gas condenses into the neutral form to serve as new stellar nurseries.

The filament or bridge Mr. Wolfe and his team studied appears between the Milky Way's nearest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, and the Triangulum Galaxy. Andromeda is some 2.5 million light-years from Earth, while the Triangulum is roughly 3 million light-years away.

The presence of neutral hydrogen in the bridge was first reported in 2004 and confirmed in follow-up observations published last year. But it's fiendishly difficult to detect. One way neutral hydrogen betrays its presence is via radio waves, with a tell-tale signal at about the same frequency that a typical cell-phone uses. But the clumps are so wispy that their radio emissions were too faint for detailed studies with the radio telescopes used in the early work."
Link to Original Source

+ - Ancient DNA Found Hidden Below Sea Floor->

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes "In the middle of the South Atlantic, there's a patch of sea almost devoid of life. There are no birds, few fish, not even much plankton. But researchers report that they've found buried treasure under the empty waters: ancient DNA hidden in the muck of the sea floor, which lies 5000 meters below the waves. The DNA, from tiny, one-celled sea creatures that lived up to 32,500 years ago, is the first to be recovered from the abyssal plains, the deep-sea bottoms that cover huge stretches of Earth. The researchers say that the ability to retrieve such old DNA from such large stretches of the planet's surface could help reveal everything from ancient climate to the evolutionary ecology of the seas.
 "
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:Handcuffs (Score 4, Interesting) 156

by Drishmung (#43576387) Attached to: MPAA Executive Tampers With Evidence In Piracy Case

Once again, prison is to isolate dangerous people from the rest of society, not for harmless fraudsters.

harmless fraudsters?

In Dante's Inferno, Fraud is the 2nd most serious sin:

  • Circle 1: Limbo
  • Circle 2: Lust
  • Circle 3: Gluttony
  • Circle 4: Greed
  • Circle 5: Anger
  • Circle 6: Heresy
  • Circle 7: Violence
  • Circle 8: Fraud
  • Circle 9: Treachery

It's worthwhile considering why he thought that way. Who does more harm to society: a mugger or a corrupt banker? How many people do you know who have been mugged? How many people do you know who have been hurt by corruption?

Comment: Re:fiber is fragile (Score 1) 242

by Drishmung (#43521139) Attached to: USB SuperSpeed Power Spec To Leap From 10W To 100W

Fiber optic is pretty fragile - far more so than a copper cable. Can't bend it past a certain radius, much less kink it.

Most copper data cables, including UTP, STP and co-ax react very poorly to sharp bends or kinking. If you take a Cat5 cable and kink it or stretch it, it's not going to work any more, at least not at Gbps rates.

Optical's main benefit is distance, not speed...

TOSlink and all that jazz worked because you connect stuff and that's it- the cable rarely gets disturbed. Think of your average business traveler - they'd go through optical cables like candy.

Good point, though I think the problem would more likely be the connector than the cable. Optical does not cope well with dust, grime etc.

This 100w power standard is pretty stupid, though. We're talking power levels where fires will definitely be possible from damaged USB cables.

Unless (and I have no idea if such is being implemented) a smart, bidirectional power protocol is in place that monitors the power sent vs the power received and shuts it down if there is a discrepancy---sort of like a super RCD.

Comment: Re:Oh good, undersea mining (Score 2) 189

So which weighs more, a pound of lead or a pound of aerogel? Who cares, my question is how did you fit an entire pound of aerogel in that room?

A pound of lead. No, really, unless you are weighing in a vacuum.

Think of weighing a pound of lead and a pound of wood underwater. The lower density of the wood and the weight of the water displaced makes for the difference. The same holds for air, but for most substances the difference is undetectable. However, lead vs aerogel is easily detectable. By my rough calculations, at room temperature, 1lb of lead weighs 0.99989418lb allowing for air displacement and 1lb of aerogel (at 1.9kg/m^3) weighs 0.368421053lb (and occupies 0.238732632m^3, so it'll fit in the room quite easily)

(Of course, to be ultra pedantic, I'm assuming you mean pound mass rather than pound force here)

Comment: Re:I think what they should do is (Score 3, Insightful) 113

by Drishmung (#43086555) Attached to: Vint Cerf: Google Shouldn't Require Real Names
Your name is what you say it is.

Well, since the purpose of a name is to interact with other people, it is more accurate to say that your name is what other people call you. If 'Bud' is what everybody calls you every day in 'real life', then that is you real name.

Now is maybe a good time to post the link to the falsehoods that people[programmers] believe about names.

It's quite normal to have multiple names: one of my relatives was called by one name by half the family and another name by the other half. Was one of those names not her 'real' name?

If I am known by a nym in a community---a community that I interact with only using that name, then that is my name----in that community.

Comment: Re:Resistance and temperature (Score 4, Insightful) 133

by Drishmung (#43065073) Attached to: Man-Made Material Pushes the Bounds of Superconductivity

The question -- as it always is -- is: What is the operating temperature range for this material?

They don't say. The most we know from the article is

its effective operating temperature is higher than that of conventional superconducting materials such as niobium, lead or mercury.

which means higher than 9.3K (Nb critical temperature).

The article also says:

Currently, even unconventional high-temperature superconductors operate below -369 degrees Fahrenheit.

or about 50K. Still below the magic 77K of liquid Nitrogen at which point things become economically interesting---and I can't see any statement in the article that the substance is even as good as, never mind better than 50K, although there is an implication that it is.

All in all, the article says remarkably little, at some length.

Comment: Re:MS Offfice 2013 - Javascript apps (Score 5, Funny) 332

by Drishmung (#42900937) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Spreadsheet With Decent Programming Language?
Javascript is not too bad, but I suspect that it won't help in this case because the problem is not merely the language but the mind-rottingly horrible object model.

If you can keep it to rslt = function(cell1, cell2, cell3) then it's OK, but in practice it seems to involve rslt = use.of.some.object.you.didnt.expect where goat.sacrifice(was.successful) [but.I.lied.to.you]

Comment: Re:Buy a harmonica (Score 2) 279

by Drishmung (#42892425) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Really Short Time Wasters?
Bagpipes were given by the Irish to the Scots---who haven't gotten the joke yet.

I'd suggest taking up the Bodhran. Don't worry too much about learning to play it---most people can't, so that doesn't matter, and if anyone gives you grief just explain that you made it yourself and that the skin is wearing out, which should ensure isolation.

Comment: Re:Legit uses for legalized spyware (Score 1) 240

So, they do understand that means the Chinese government can install rootkits on their servers, because they bought kit with chips made in China, and packets passing through them need to be investigated to ensure there are no dissidents using them, in violation of Chinese law (that would be the contravention of the laws of a foreign state mentioned)?

The only cultural advantage LA has over NY is that you can make a right turn on a red light. -- Woody Allen

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