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Submission + - Despite Pushback, Internet Freedom Deteriorates (freedomhouse.org)

Submitted by jrepin
jrepin writes: Freedom on the Net 2013 is the fourth report in a series of comprehensive studies of internet freedom around the globe and covers developments in 60 countries that occurred between May 2012 and April 2013. Over 60 researchers, nearly all based in the countries they analyzed, contributed to the project by researching laws and practices relevant to the digital media, testing the accessibility of select websites, and interviewing a wide range of sources, among other research activities. This edition's findings indicate that internet freedom worldwide is in decline, with 34 out of 60 countries assessed in the report experiencing a negative trajectory during the coverage period. Broad surveillance, new laws controlling web content, and growing arrests of social-media users drove this overall decline in internet freedom in the past year. Nonetheless, Freedom on the Net 2013 also found that activists are becoming more effective at raising awareness of emerging threats and, in several cases, have helped forestall new repressive measures.
The Military

Red Cross Wants Consequences For Video-Game Mayhem 288

Posted by timothy from the design-by-committee dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) wants developers to consider building "virtual consequences" for mayhem into their video games. 'Gamers should be rewarded for respecting the law of armed conflict and there should be virtual penalties for serious violations of the law of armed conflict, in other words war crimes,' read the ICRC's new statement on the matter. 'Game scenarios should not reward players for actions that in real life would be considered war crimes.' Like many a concerned parent or Congressional committee before it, the ICRC believes that violent video games trivialize armed conflict to the point where players could see various brands of mayhem as acceptable behavior. At the same time, the ICRC's statement makes it clear that the organization doesn't want to be actively involved in a debate over video-game violence, although it is talking to developers about ways to accurately build the laws of armed conflict into games. But let's be clear: the ICRC doesn't want to spoil players' enjoyment of the aforementioned digital splatter. 'We would like to see the law of armed conflict integrated into the games so that players have a realistic experience and deal first hand with the dilemmas facing real combatants on real battlefields,' the statement continued. 'The strong sales of new releases that have done this prove that integrating the law of armed conflict does not undermine the commercial success of the games.'"

Submission + - NSA's new Utah Data Center Suffering Meltdowns

Submitted by linuxwrangler
linuxwrangler writes: NSA's new Utah data-center has been sufferering numerous power-surges that have caused as much as $100,000 damage per event. The root cause is "not yet sufficiently understood" but may is suspected to relate to the site's "inability to simultaneously run computers and keep them cool." Frustrating the analysis and repair are "incomplete information about the design of the electrical system" and the fact that "regular quality controls in design and construction were bypassed in an effort to fast track the Utah project."

Submission + - Red Cross Wants Consequences for Video-Game Mayhem (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) wants developers to consider building “virtual consequences” for mayhem into their video games. “Gamers should be rewarded for respecting the law of armed conflict and there should be virtual penalties for serious violations of the law of armed conflict, in other words war crimes,” read the ICRC’s new statement on the matter. “Game scenarios should not reward players for actions that in real life would be considered war crimes.” Like many a concerned parent or Congressional committee before it, the ICRC believes that violent video games trivialize armed conflict to the point where players could see various brands of mayhem as acceptable behavior. At the same time, the ICRC’s statement makes it clear that the organization doesn’t want to be actively involved in a debate over video-game violence, although it is talking to developers about ways to accurately build the laws of armed conflict into games. But let’s be clear: the ICRC doesn’t want to spoil players’ enjoyment of the aforementioned digital splatter. “We would like to see the law of armed conflict integrated into the games so that players have a realistic experience and deal first hand with the dilemmas facing real combatants on real battlefields,” the statement continued. “The strong sales of new releases that have done this prove that integrating the law of armed conflict does not undermine the commercial success of the games.” In other words, no preachy in-game dialogue boxes explaining how most people would probably frown on your character’s decision to torture an antagonist with a pair of pliers and a Miley Cyrus song on repeat.
Businesses

Alcatel-Lucent To Cut 10,000 Workers, Calls It "Shift Plan" 75

Posted by timothy from the drop-the-f dept.
Dawn Kawamoto writes "Alcatel-Lucent is planning to cut 10,000 workers by 2015. The telecom equipment maker's newly minted CEO calls this restructuring part of his Shift Plan. Under this plan, Alcatel-Lucent wants to save 1 billion Euros in costs and refocus its operations on next-gen IP networking, cloud and ultra-broadband access and away from legacy technologies like its 2G and 3G wireless. In the meantime, Wall Street thinks it may be cleaning itself up for a sale of some of its assets or its operations to Nokia, which will need to bolster its telecom equipment business after selling its smartphone operations to Microsoft. But a Nokia-Microsoft deal may be too little, too late."

Submission + - New High Tech $100 Bills Start to Circulate Today 1

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Fox News reports that new $100 bills made their debut today that include high tech features designed to make it easier for the public to authenticate but more difficult for counterfeiters to replicate. Those measures include a blue, 3-D security ribbon, as well as color-shifting ink that changes from copper to green when the note is tilted (PDF). That ink can be found on a large "100" on the back of the bill, on one of the "100's" on the front, and on a new image of an ink well that's also on the front. "The $100 is the highest value denomination that we issue, and it circulates broadly around the world," says Michael Lambert, assistant director for cash at the Federal Reserve Board. "Therefore, we took the necessary time to develop advanced security features that are easy for the public to use in everyday transactions, but difficult for counterfeiters to replicate." The bill was originally due to reach banks in 2011 but three years ago the Federal Reserve announced that a problem with the currency's new security measures was causing the bills to crease during printing, which left blank spaces on the bills leading the Feds to shred more than 30 million of the bills in 2012. The image of Benjamin Franklin will be the same as on the current bill, but like all the other newly designed currencies, it will no longer be surrounded by an dark oval. Except for the $1 and $2 bill, all US paper currency has been redesigned in the last 10 years to combat counterfeiting. "The advanced security features we've included in the new $100 note will hinder potential counterfeiters from producing high-quality fakes that can deceive consumers and merchants," says Larry R. Felix. "Protect yourself — it only takes a few seconds to check the new $100 note and know it's real."

Submission + - 11-Year-Old Colorado Boy Will Brew Beer In Space (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by minty3
minty3 writes: An 11-year-old Colorado boy may have found a way to literally make a beer that’s out of this world.

Michal Bodzianowski, a sixth grader at Douglas County's STEM School and Academy in Highlands Ranch, Colo., recently won a national competition where his beer-making experiment will be flown to the International Space Station.

Submission + - ESA Set to Begin Mars Rover Tests in Chile (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: The Atacama desert in Chile is so dry that parts of it are utterly devoid of life down to bacteria. That and its sandy, rock-strewn terrain makes it so similar to Mars that it's a perfect spot for ESA to trial its Sample Acquisition Field Experiment with a Rover (SAFER), which will this week carry out tests related to navigation, remote control and the use of scientific instruments. The agency’s goal is the latest in a series of tests to develop technologies and gain practical experience in anticipation of ESA’s launch of the ExoMars rover to the Red Planet in 2018.

Submission + - Alcatel-Lucent to Cut 10,000 Workers - Calls it Shift Plan

Submitted by Dawn Kawamoto
Dawn Kawamoto writes: Alcatel-Lucent is planning to cut 10,000 workers by 2015. The telecom equipment maker's newly minted CEO calls this restructuring part of his Shift Plan. The employees who are getting axed, however, may think it's a typo and he should have dropped the "f" from Shift. Under this plan, Alcatel-Lucent wants to save 1 billion Euros in costs and refocus its operations on next-gen IP networking, cloud and ultra-broadband access and away from legacy technologies like its 2G and 3G wireless. In the meantime, Wall Street thinks it may be cleaning itself up for a sale of some of its assets or its operations to Nokia, which will need to bolster its telecom equipment business after selling its smartphone operations to Microsoft. But Nokia-Microsoft deal may be too little, too late.
AMD

AMD Intentionally Added Artificial Limitations To Their HDMI Adapters 256

Posted by timothy from the market-segmentation-works-best-on-the-sly dept.
An anonymous reader writes "NVIDIA was caught removing features from their Linux driver and days later Linux developers have caught and confirmed AMD imposing artificial limitations on their graphics cards in the DVI-to-HDMI adapters that their driver will support. Over years AMD has quietly been adding an extra EEPROM chip to their DVI-to-HDMI adapters that are bundled with Radeon HD graphics cards. Only when these identified adapters are detected via checks in their Windows and Linux Catalyst driver is HDMI audio enabled. If using a third-party DVI-to-HDMI adapter, HDMI audio support is disabled by the Catalyst driver. Open-source Linux developers have found this to be a self-imposed limitation and that the open-source AMD Linux driver will work fine with any DVI-to-HDMI adapter."

Submission + - AMD Intentionally Added Artificial Limitations To Their HDMI Adapters (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: NVIDIA was caught removing features from their Linux driver and days later Linux developers have caught and confirmed AMD imposing artificial limitations on their graphics cards in the DVI-to-HDMI adapters that their driver will support. Over years AMD has quietly been adding an extra EEPROM chip to their DVI-to-HDMI adapters that are bundled with Radeon HD graphics cards. Only when these identified adapters are detected via checks in their Windows and Linux Catalyst driver is HDMI audio enabled. If using a third-party DVI-to-HDMI adapter, HDMI audio support is disabled by the Catalyst driver. Open-source Linux developers have found this to be a self-imposed limitation and that the open-source AMD Linux driver will work fine with any DVI-to-HDMI adapter.
Medicine

Francois Englert and Peter W. Higgs Awarded Nobel Prize For Boson Discovery 83

Posted by timothy from the now-brew-some-boson-tea dept.
The 2013 Nobel season is underway. Reader rtoz writes "Francois Englert and Peter W. Higgs won the 2013 Nobel Prize For Physics. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited the two scientists for the 'theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles.'" Update: 10/08 13:18 GMT by T : More Nobel news: The New York Times reports that "Three Americans won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for discovering the machinery that regulates how cells transport major molecules in a cargo system that delivers them to the right place at the right time." The three are James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman; and Dr. Thomas C. Südhof, of Yale, UC Berkeley, and Stanford, respectively.

Submission + - As the digital revolution kills jobs, social unrest will rise, says Gartner (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: Gartner says new technologies are decreasing jobs. In the industrial revolution — and revolutions since — there was an invigoration of jobs. For instance, assembly lines for cars led to a vast infrastructure that could support mass production giving rise to everything from car dealers to road building and utility expansion into new suburban areas. But the "digital industrial revolution" is not following the same path. "What we're seeing is a decline in the overall number of people required to do a job," said Daryl Plummer, a Gartner analyst at the research firm's Symposium ITxpo. Plummer points to a company like Kodak, which once employed 130,000, versus Instagram's 13. The analyst believes social unrest movements, similar to Occupy Wall Street, will emerge again by 2014 as the job creation problem deepens.

Submission + - When Does The Universe Compute? (medium.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: The idea that every physical event is a computation has spread like wildfire through science. That has triggered an unprecedented interest in unconventional computing such as quantum computing, DNA computing and even the ability of a single-celled organism, called slime mould, to solve mazes. However, that may need to change now that physicists have worked out a formal way of distinguishing between systems that compute and those that don’t. One key is the ability to encode and decode information. “Without the encode and decode steps, there is no computation; there is simply a physical system undergoing evolution,” they say. That means computers must be engineered systems based on well understood laws of physics that can be used to predict the outcome of an abstract evolution. So slime mould fails the test while most forms of quantum computation pass.

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