Submission + - IMF warns of fresh financial crisis (theguardian.com)
JadeBlanne writes: The International Monetary Fund has highlighted risks of a new financial crisis, warning that global output could be cut by 4% over the next five
Submission + - Google joins Uber, Lyft and Ford in driverless car coalition (cbronline.com)
janenichols writes: Google has formed a driverless car coalition with automakers and taxi-hailing firms. The coalition, dubbed the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, includes Ford, Volvo, Uber and Lyft.Former US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration official David Strickland will serve as the coalition's counsel and spokesperson.The group plans to work with policymakers to identify the appropriate solutions that support the deployment of self-driving vehicles.It will work with civic organisations, municipalities and businesses to help make driverless cars a reality.
Submission + - Language Creation Society filed amicus against Paramount Klingon copyright claim
saizai writes: The LCS has filed an amicus brief in Paramount v. Axanar, opposing Paramount’s claim to copyright in the Klingon language.
The brief itself uses copious amounts of Klingon to make the point that a language cannot be copyrighted.
(Disclosure: I'm founder of the LCS, directed the litigation, and am press contact for this story. Marc Randazza wrote the brief, pro bono.)
Submission + - PVS-Studio Team: Analysis of PHP7
Andrey_Karpov writes: It's quite amusing to hear the news about new trending programming languages and the debates about the most useful ones. Nevertheless, C and C++ are still there, quietly doing their job. For example, PHP7 is written in C, so there is a cause to run the PVS-Studio analyzer and see which bugs can be found in the PHP Interpreter.
Submission + - Smart Antenna Could Double Smartphone Battery Life By 2018
Mickeycaskill writes: Scottish startup Sofant has received €2m from the EU to commercialise smart antenna technology that promises to significantly improve Wi-Fi performance and halve energy consumption.
The antenna, a product of a programme to create miniaturised satellites, uses software to 'steer' the antenna to the best available signal. Conventional antennas use power less efficiently by simply seeking all channels.
“We call this a smart antenna because it has been designed to seek out the strongest signal and focus on it, rather than the current model that constantly radiates energy in all directions,” said COO Ahmed El-Rayis.
The company says the EU funding will help it bring its technology to mobile devices as early as 2018.
The antenna, a product of a programme to create miniaturised satellites, uses software to 'steer' the antenna to the best available signal. Conventional antennas use power less efficiently by simply seeking all channels.
“We call this a smart antenna because it has been designed to seek out the strongest signal and focus on it, rather than the current model that constantly radiates energy in all directions,” said COO Ahmed El-Rayis.
The company says the EU funding will help it bring its technology to mobile devices as early as 2018.
Submission + - Sweden's Mastery of Technology Addiction (bloomberg.com)
pacopico writes: How did Sweden end up as a nation of unicorns? That's what this mini-documentary from Bloomberg tries to answer. Despite having only 9 million people, Sweden has emerged as Europe's premiere technology powerhouse. It produced a ton of torrent sites and Skype and then later things like Spotify and Minecraft. Sweden also has a massive Internet infrastructure fueled by cheap power produced near the Arctic Circle where Facebook has one of its largest data centers. The country's economy is booming thanks to tech, but its culture is also undergoing painful changes as millionaires flood Stockholm.
Submission + - Former Tox Developer Created Malware To Hack Tox Users For The FBI (github.com) 1
An anonymous reader writes: Tox is located in tox.chat website https://tox.chat/ .
Former Tox Developer, known as Anonymous, are asking for name list to know
all developers related to Tox Project.
Tox is a replacement for Skype, and they are hiding most of developers from
their webpage, with this message:
"Those listed without names have chosen to keep themselves anonymous (for now)"
How can we trust Anonymous contribution?
Do you want to know about Tox Developers? If not, why did you blindly trust masked guy?
Also archive https://archive.is/zYV4q
Former Tox Developer, known as Anonymous, are asking for name list to know
all developers related to Tox Project.
Tox is a replacement for Skype, and they are hiding most of developers from
their webpage, with this message:
"Those listed without names have chosen to keep themselves anonymous (for now)"
How can we trust Anonymous contribution?
Do you want to know about Tox Developers? If not, why did you blindly trust masked guy?
Also archive https://archive.is/zYV4q
Intel Wants To Eliminate The Headphone Jack And Replace It With USB-C (9to5mac.com) 382
An anonymous reader writes: With rumors circulating about how Apple may do away with the 3.5 mm headphone jack on its upcoming iPhone 7, Intel has shared a similar desire, citing "industry singling a strong desire to move from analog to digital." Intel believes USB-C is the future audio jack. They believe USB-C has more potential than the 3.5mm audio jack as it allows users to add additional smart features to headphones in the future. For instance, a future pair of headphones could monitor one's pulse or inner-ear temperature for fitness tracking, something that could only be possible if the headphones were connected to a smartphone via a USB-C cable. What's also worth mentioning [quoted from 9to5Mac]: USB-C already supports analog audio transfer through sideband pins simplifying the engineering steps necessary to swap 3.5mm with USB-C in device designs. In the second quarter, Intel should have a finalized USB-C standard for digital audio transfer. Intel does note that the transition from analog to digital will be expensive as the headphones have to include amplifiers and DACs, but scale will offset the early costs over time.
Submission + - Flaw allowed anyone to modify & take control over .as domains (wordpress.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A 20-year old serious flaw in the .as (American Samoa) domain registry exposed plain-text passwords of owners, administrators, technical and billing contacts for .as domains, and furthermore allowed ANYONE to make changes to .as domain records!
Submission + - These Birds Learn Their Mother's Calls Before They Hatch (forbes.com)
grrlscientist writes: A recently-published study reveals that nestlings of Australia’s Red-backed Fairy-wrens learn their mother’s calls before they hatch. These calls are a “vocal password” that the parents rely upon to identify their chicks. Thus, parent birds invest more effort into raising nestlings whose calls are most similar to their own.
Submission + - Hertha Marks Ayrton Google Doodle (youtube.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Today, the Search Engine Google is showing this Doodle in few countries for celebrating Hertha Marks Ayrton’s 162nd birthday.
Hertha Marks Ayrton was a British engineer, mathematician, physicist, and inventor. She was awarded the Hughes Medal by the Royal Society for her work on electric arcs and ripples in sand and water.
Ayrton's interest in vortices in water and air inspired the Ayrton fan, or flapper, used in the trenches in the First World War to dispel poison gas. Ayrton fought for its acceptance and organized its production, over 100,000 being used on the Western Front. Read more from https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Hertha Marks Ayrton was a British engineer, mathematician, physicist, and inventor. She was awarded the Hughes Medal by the Royal Society for her work on electric arcs and ripples in sand and water.
Ayrton's interest in vortices in water and air inspired the Ayrton fan, or flapper, used in the trenches in the First World War to dispel poison gas. Ayrton fought for its acceptance and organized its production, over 100,000 being used on the Western Front. Read more from https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Child Porn Suspect Jailed Indefinitely For Refusing To Decrypt Hard Drives (arstechnica.com) 796
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A Philadelphia man suspected of possessing child pornography has been in jail for seven months and counting after being found in contempt of a court order demanding that he decrypt two password-protected hard drives. The suspect, a former Philadelphia Police Department sergeant, has not been charged with any child porn crimes. Instead, he remains indefinitely imprisoned in Philadelphia's Federal Detention Center for refusing to unlock two drives encrypted with Apple's FileVault software in a case that once again highlights the extent to which the authorities are going to crack encrypted devices. The man is to remain jailed "until such time that he fully complies" with the decryption order. The government successfully cited a 1789 law known as the All Writs Act to compel (PDF) the suspect to decrypt two hard drives it believes contain child pornography. The All Writs Act was the same law the Justice Department asserted in its legal battle with Apple.
Submission + - French Secretary of State says encryption backdoors are 'not the right solution' (dailydot.com)
Patrick O'Neill writes: The French Parliament on Wednesday rejected a proposal to ban strong encryption by requiring tech companies to build backdoors in their code so police and intelligence agencies could access encrypted data. But French Secretary of State Axelle Lemaire criticized the proposal, saying that while the debate was healthy, "this is not the right solution according to the Government's opinion." Lemaire called backdoors "vulnerability by design" and "inappropriate."
Submission + - EU Companies Can Monitor Employees' Private Conversations While at Work (softpedia.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A recent ruling of the European Court of Human Rights has granted EU companies the right to monitor and log private conversations that employees have at work while using the employer's devices. The ruling came after a Romanian was fired for using Yahoo Messenger back in 2007, while at work, to have private conversations with his girlfriend. He argued that his employer was breaking his right for privacy and correspondence. Both Romanian and European courts disagreed.
Submission + - Kentucky considering banning some social media comments (digitaltrends.com)
Taco Cowboy writes: A bill targeting social media content that is already being labelled unconstitutional has been put before the Kentucky General Assembly
If passed, the bill would prohibit social media users to wait an hour before posting content related to a “traumatic event” or “accident” online. Those who violate the proposed bill would face a fine anywhere between $20 to $100 depending on the incident. The bill would not apply to members of the news media, victims of the event, and emergency responders at the site of the accident
According to the sponsor of the bill, Republican State Representative John “Bam” Carney of Campbellsville, the speed at which users can access social media to post about a tragic event can be both disruptive for police officers and insensitive to the families of the victims
Carney believes that abstaining from social platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter in the wake of a serious accident would allow the police and first responders time to notify families of those involved in the incident before they find out elsewhere
Legal experts argue that the bill won’t stand up to scrutiny under the First Amendment, regarding freedom of speech. And, apparently, Carney agrees, stating, “this probably would have First Amendment problems”
If passed, the bill would prohibit social media users to wait an hour before posting content related to a “traumatic event” or “accident” online. Those who violate the proposed bill would face a fine anywhere between $20 to $100 depending on the incident. The bill would not apply to members of the news media, victims of the event, and emergency responders at the site of the accident
According to the sponsor of the bill, Republican State Representative John “Bam” Carney of Campbellsville, the speed at which users can access social media to post about a tragic event can be both disruptive for police officers and insensitive to the families of the victims
Carney believes that abstaining from social platforms such as Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter in the wake of a serious accident would allow the police and first responders time to notify families of those involved in the incident before they find out elsewhere
Legal experts argue that the bill won’t stand up to scrutiny under the First Amendment, regarding freedom of speech. And, apparently, Carney agrees, stating, “this probably would have First Amendment problems”
