Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

+ - BP Finds Way to Bypass US Crude Export Ban

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Bloomberg reports that the oil industry is pressuring President Barack Obama to end the 41-year-old ban on most crude exports but British Petroleum (BP) isn’t waiting for a decision. The British oil giant has signed on to take at least 80 percent of the capacity of a new $360 million mini-refinery in Houston that will process crude just enough to escape restrictions on sales outside the country. “It’s a relatively inexpensive way around the export prohibition,” says Judith Dwarkin “You can lightly ruffle the hydrocarbons and they are considered processed and then they aren’t subject to the ban.” Amid a flood of new US oil, the demand for simple, one-step plants capable of transforming raw crude into exportable products such as propane is feeding a construction boom along the Gulf Coast. The first such mini-refinery, built for 1/10 the cost of a complex, full-scale refinery, is scheduled to open the first phase of its 100,000 barrel-a-day crude processing plant in July, The mini-refineries take advantage of the law that allows products refined from oil to be sold overseas, though not the raw crude itself. "The international buyers of these products will likely need to refine them further, so this is basically a veiled form of condensate exports,” says Leo Mariani."

+ - Hubble Witnesses Mysterious Breakup of Asteroid->

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes "Hubble has observed some weird things since it was launched in 1990, but this is probably one of the strangest. In September 2013, the Catalina and Pan-STARRS sky surveys spotted a mysterious object in the asteroid belt, a region of rocky debris that occupy the space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Follow-up observations by the Keck Observatory in Hawaii resolved three separate objects within the fuzzy cloud. It was so strange that Hubble mission managers decided to use the space telescope to get a closer look. And what they saw has baffled and thrilled astronomers in equal measure. “This is a really bizarre thing to observe — we’ve never seen anything like it before,” said co-author Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany. “The break-up could have many different causes, but the Hubble observations are detailed enough that we can actually pinpoint the process responsible.”"
Link to Original Source

+ - Patented new implant stimulates orgasms in women->

Submitted by SpankiMonki
SpankiMonki writes "A US patent has been granted for a new machine that stimulates orgasms for women at the push of a button. The device, which is a little smaller than a packet of cigarettes, is designed as a medical implant that uses electrodes to trigger an orgasm. The device could help some women who suffer from orgasmic dysfunction."
Link to Original Source

+ - Computing a Winner, Fusion a Loser in U.S. Science Budget->

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes "President Barack Obama this morning released a $3.901 trillion budget request to Congress, including proposals for a host of federal research agencies. Science Magazine has the breakdown, including a big win for advanced computing, a big cut for fusion, and status quo for astronomy."
Link to Original Source

+ - Legal motion: hyperlinks are protected by the First Amendment ->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Lawyers acting for Barrett Brown, the activist-journalist facing more than 100 years in prison for having posted a hyperlink to hacked material, have called for his case to be dismissed on grounds that it violates his First Amendment rights to free speech and would chill the internet. The main allegation against him – spanning 12 counts — is that he posted a hyperlink on an internet chat room to a website containing material hacked from the private intelligence firm Stratfor. The hack included email addresses of 860,000 Stratfor subscribers as well as 60,000 credit card details.

In a legal motion lodged with a federal court in Dallas, Texas on Tuesday, Brown’s lawyers argued that the charges against him should be dropped ahead of trial because they were too vague and were in breach of his constitutional right to free speech. By hyperlinking to the hacked material, Brown did not “transfer” the stolen information as he arguably would have done had he embedded the link on his web page, but merely created a path to files that had already been published elsewhere that were in the public domain. Brown’s case is being closely watched by First Amendment lawyers, publishers and activists who fear that a conviction could set a precedent that would criminalise the very act of linking on the internet."
Link to Original Source

+ - Comcast turning Chicago homes into Xfinity hotspots... 1

Submitted by BUL2294
BUL2294 writes "The Chicago Tribune is reporting that, over the next few months in Chicago, Comcast is turning on a feature that turns customer networks into public Wi-Fi hotspots. After a firmware upgrade is installed, "visitors will use their own Xfinity credentials to sign on, and will not need the homeowner's permission or password to tap into their Wi-Fi signal. The homegrown network will also be available to non-subscribers free for several hours each month, or on a pay-per-use basis. Any outside usage should not affect the speed or security of the home subscriber's private network. [...] Home internet subscribers will automatically participate in the network's growing infrastructure, although a small number have chosen to opt out in other test markets." The article specifically mentions that this capability is opt-out, so Comcast is relying on home users' property, electricity, and lack of tech-savvy to increase their network footprint..."

If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine, you won't get any ice. If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get ice, but no cup.

Close