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Submission + - Is Verizon Already Slowing Netflix Down? (davesblog.com)

Submitted by hondo77
hondo77 writes: From Dave's Blog: "I’ve since tested this almost every day for the last couple of weeks. During the day – the bandwidth is normal to AWS. However, after 4pm or so – things get slow. In my personal opinion, this is Verizon waging war against Netflix. Unfortunately, a lot of infrastructure is hosted on AWS. That means a lot of services are going to be impacted by this."

Submission + - Weight gain in ex-smokers may be due to changes in gut bacteria (bytesizebio.net)

Submitted by Shipud
Shipud writes: Smokers who quit often gain weight. This has usually been attributed to decreased metabolism, and /or food replacing smoking as a reward system. New research shows that changes in gut bacteria may explain weight gain in those who quit smoking. The changes in the gut bacteria in people who quit smoking are startling. Moreover, the type of bacteria that emerge in the gut after smoking cessation are the same type that have been shown to cause obesity.

Comment Universal Acclaim? (Score 4, Funny) 378

by RCGodward (#44882359) Attached to: Obama Asks FCC To Make Carriers Unlock All Mobile Devices
Let's look at some potential headlines:

Obama Bans Cell Phone Subsidies
Apple stock plummets as iPhone is no longer affordable
Is this the beginning of a national cell plan?
Antichrist makes power play in mobile sector

Had to throw in one from FauxNews. Anyway, there's lots people could complain about here. Some of it might even be reasonable.

Submission + - Microbes to Make You Thin (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: What makes some people slender and others full-figured? It's not quite as simple as calories in and calories out. Besides diet and genetics, the community of microbes that lives inside us may be partially responsible for what we weigh. New research on twins suggests that lean people harbor bacteria that their obese counterparts don't have. And, given the chance, those bacteria may be able to prevent weight gain in others.

Submission + - NRA Joins ACLU Lawsuit Against NSA (thehill.com)

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: The Hill reports, "The National Rifle Association joined the American Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit on Wednesday to end the government's massive phone record collection program. In a brief filed in federal court, the NRA argues that the National Security Agency's database of phone records amounts to a "national gun registry." "It would be absurd to think that the Congress would adopt and maintain a web of statutes intended to protect against the creation of a national gun registry, while simultaneously authorizing the FBI and the NSA to gather records that could effectively create just such a registry," the group writes. ... In its filing, the gun-rights group claims that the NSA's database would allow the government to identify and track gun owners based on whether they've called gun stores, shooting ranges or the NRA. "Under the government’s reading of Section 215, the government could simply demand the periodic submission of all firearms dealers’ transaction records, then centralize them in a database indexed by the buyers’ names for later searching," the NRA writes."

Submission + - TSA is officially allowed to lie to you in order to cover itself

Submitted by zoan2013
zoan2013 writes: Blogger Johnathan Corbett reports that the remaining claims of his lawsuit against the TSA were dismissed on Tuesday with US District Judge Joan A Lenard basically saying the TSA doesn't have to tell the truth in TSA-related FOIA requests. (Full dismissal order here) Judge Lenard also refused to allow the 19 previously dismissed charges to be appealed while the rest were being decided. Corbett is now appealing to the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, and is considering filing a complaint of judicial misconduct against Lenard.

Submission + - CEO of National Black Chamber of Congress says America's Internet is the Best (newsok.com)

Submitted by dywolf
dywolf writes: Harry Alford, the CEO of the National Black Chamber of Congress in Washington, D.C., wrote into The Oklahoman newspaper to rebut a previous letter to the editor decrying the stat of America's Internet. He tells tell us not to fear, that America's Internet is the best in the world. Apparently "85% of Americans enjoy 100MBps internet, blowing away Europe where only 50 percent of households can access even one-third of that speed". And not only is our system the envy of the world, thanks to the deregulations of the Clinton Era telecommunications reforms, but Europe's internet access is a complete failure due to overregulation. The letter can be found here: http://newsok.com/free-market-system-worked-for-americas-internet/article/3879006

Submission + - Amazon hiring more than a 100 who can get top secret clearances (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: Amazon has more than 100 job openings for people who can get a top secret clearance, which includes a U.S. government administered polygraph examination. It needs software developers, operations managers and cloud support engineers, among others. Amazon's hiring effort includes an invitation-only recruiting event for systems support engineers at its Herndon, Va., facility on Sept. 24 and 25. Amazon is fighting to win a contract to build a private cloud for the CIA. The project is being rebid after IBM filed a protest. In a recent federal lawsuit challenging the rebid, Amazon took a shot at IBM, describing the company as "a traditional fixed IT infrastructure provider and late entrant to the cloud computing market." Among the things IBM says in response, is that the government didn't look at Amazon's outage record. An analyst firm, Ptak Noel & Associates, concluded, in a report about the dispute, that CIA officials "too casually brush off Amazon's outages" in evaluating the proposals.

Submission + - Mystery Alignment of Planetary Nebulae Discovered (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: Astronomers have discovered something weird in the Milky Way's galactic bulge — a population of planetary nebula are all mysteriously pointing in the same direction. They noticed the mysterious alignment in the long axes of bipolar planetary nebulae. "This really is a surprising find and, if it holds true, a very important one," said Bryan Rees of the University of Manchester, co-author of the paper to appear in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "Many of these ghostly butterflies appear to have their long axes aligned along the plane of our galaxy." The team of astronomers, who used data from Hubble and the European Southern Observatory's New Technology Telescope (NTT) to survey 130 nebulae, posit that powerful magnetic fields may be behind the phenomenon.

Submission + - Xbox One Set To Launch On November 22

Submitted by Dave Knott
Dave Knott writes: Microsoft announced today that its upcoming Xbox One console will launch later this year on November 22 in 13 territories, including Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States. This is exactly one week after the announced street date for Sony's PlayStation 4, ending speculation about whether Microsoft would try to launch ahead of their closest rival's next-generation console. It is also notably the same day that the Xbox 360 launched in 2005, a date which Microsoft had called "a special day in Xbox history."

Submission + - Google Earth black out areas? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I was having a random look over different areas of desert using Google Earth after hearing about the patterns in the Chinese desert. For some reason I ended up in the Mongolian desert near Darkhan. Can anyone explain why, on near full zoom, there is a "blackout" area at these co-ordinates: 46.652052,109.496596 ? Not only here but if you zoom out a little, you can see a number of these black dots and getting a closer look they are sections which have been blacked out. I would, initially, have put these down as small lakes but the one I've given co-ordinates for isn't just a "blob", there definitely appears to be something to it's shape. If you move to the North East of this area, you'll also note a section which appears to have no updated aerial photography for a considerable amount of time in comparison to the area around.
Can anyone shed light on this stuff for me?

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