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Submission + - Cheaper Flow Batteries Using Vitamins Discovered (natureworldnews.com)

Submitted by William Robinson
William Robinson writes: Scientists from Harvard University have discovered how to create flow batteries using organic molecules inspired by vitamin B2, which helps store energy from food in the body. With a few tweaks to the original B2 molecule, the scientists discovered a new group of organic molecules that make good candidates for alkaline flow batteries. The result of the discovery was a redox flow battery that demonstrates an open-circuit voltage approaching 1.2V, with a current efficiency of 99.7 percent and a capacity retention over 99.98 percent per cycle.

Submission + - Oracle Issues Patch Bundle Fixing 276 Security Flaws (csoonline.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Oracle has released its largest Critical Patch Update (CPU) yet, fixing 276 vulnerabilities in more than 80 products. Assuming you've got lots of patching ahead of you, start with the Java patches, advises John Matthew Holt, CTO of application security firm Waratek. And Qualys adds that companies should quickly turn their attention to assets that can be directly attacked from the internet.

Submission + - How the Internet Helps Sex Workers Keep Customers Honest

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Mid-range prostitution is a relatively new market, enabled by technology. Before the internet, it was hard for escorts to find customers: They had to either walk the streets searching for customers, rely on word-of-mouth, or work with agencies. The internet changed all that as Allison Schrager writes at Quartz that if you work at Goldman Sachs in NYC and you want to tie up a woman and then have sex with her, you'll first have to talk to Rita. Rita will "insist on calling your office, speaking to the switchboard operator, and being patched through to your desk. Then she will want to check out your profile on the company website and LinkedIn. She’ll demand you send her message from your work email, and require a scan of either your passport or driver’s license."

Though some escorts rely on sex work-specific sites that maintain “bad date” lists of potentially dangerous clients, others make use of more mainstream sources to gather information about and verify the identities of potential johns. Rita is addressing a problem that every business, both legal and illegal, has. Before the internet, more commerce occurred locally—customers knew their merchants or service providers and went back to them repeatedly. As technology has expanded our transactional networks, it must also offer new ways of building trust and reputation. "The lesson here is that, while you’d think all the technological options for finding customers would make Rita’s job as a madam obsolete, it has actually made her services more critical," says Schrager. "One step ahead of the mainstream economy, Rita’s thriving business shows that some jobs won’t disappear. They just need to be recast in a way that capitalizes on what made them valuable in the first place."

Submission + - FDA Finally Approves Cavity-Fighting Liquid That Lets Kids Avoid Dentists' Drill

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Catherine Saint Louis writes in the NYT that silver diamine fluoride, available in Japan for decades, has now arrived in the United States after Food and Drug Administration cleared SDF for use as a tooth desensitizer for adults 21 and older. Studies show SDF can halt the progression of cavities and prevent them, and dentists are increasingly using it off-label for those purposes. “The upside, the great one, is you don’t need to drill and you don’t need an injection,” says Dr. Margherita Fontana. SDF is already used in hundreds of dental offices and and at least 18 dental schools have started teaching the next generation of pediatric dentists how to use it. “Being able to paint it on in 30 seconds with no noise, no drilling, is better, faster, cheaper," says Dr. Richard Niederman. "I would encourage parents to ask for it. It’s less trauma for the kid.” In Japan, Australia, Argentina and other nations, dentists have been placing SDF on caries lesions for more than 80 years. The value of silver ions to treat tooth decay has been known in this country for well over a century. Silver nitrate was commonly used by the forefathers of modern dentistry. When applied every six months, silver diamine fluoride arrests more than 90% of caries. In children, applying silver diamine fluoride on active lesions once per year prevents caries in other teeth better than fluoride varnish placed four times per year on all surfaces. Fillings, by contrast, do not cure an oral infection. Bacterial infections also cause acne, but a “dermatologist doesn’t take a scalpel and cut off your pimples,” says Dr. Jason Hirsch. Yet “that’s how dentistry has approached cavities.”

Submission + - NHK to begin 8k test broadcasts in August

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: NHK, Japan's national broadcaster, has decided to skip over 4k entirely and go straight to 8k broadcasts, starting on the 1st of August. (Japanese site, English site with some details). 8k "Super Hi-Vision" delivers 7680x4320 pixels, 16x that of standard HD, at 120Hz progressive scan and 12 bit colour. Sound is 22 channel surround. Initial broadcasts are on satellite channels, with a full service due in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Submission + - VPN Provider Removes Russian Presence After Servers Seized

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: VPN provider Private Internet Access has pulled out of Russia in the wake of new internet surveillance legislation in the country. The company claims that some of its Russian servers were seized by the government as punishment for not complying with the rules, which ask providers to log and hold all Russian internet traffic and session data for up to a year. Learning of the federal action, the company immediately removed its Russian availability and announced that it would no longer be operating in the region.

Submission + - Manjaro Linux,A Graphical and simplified Distribution of Arch Linux (techphylum.com)

Submitted by Themj001
Themj001 writes: Manjaro is based on Arch Linux with a beautiful user interface. Manjaro is a stable and reliable Linux Distribution. As many people know or think, Arch is absolutely a no joke distribution.Many newbies find it hard to install as Arch Linux doesn't have graphical installer.So Manjaro is the option for them.Unlike Arch Linux, Manjaro have a graphical installer which is easy to use.Latest version of Manjaro ships with Linux kernel 4.6.2.Manjaro is not only stable, but also it is bleeding edge.It is fast and user-friendly at the same time,in other words the power like Arch Linux but in a simplified way.The official desktop environments of Manjaro are Xfce and KDE.But it comes in variety of DEs(Desktop Environments) like Xfce, KDE, Deepin, BspWM, Budgie, i3, LXDE, Cinnamon, Enlightenment, Netbook, Fluxbox, Gnome, JWM, LXQT, MATE, Openbox and PekWM.

Submission + - Samsung Galaxy S7 Active Fails Consumer Reports Water-Resistance Test (consumerreports.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Samsung Galaxy S7 Active is apparently not-so-active. It should be the more durable version of the Galaxy S7 family but apparently it's not. Because of this, Consumer reports is not going to mark it as "Recommended" even though it performed very well in all the other tests it ran.

"Consumer Reports technicians placed a Galaxy S7 Active in a water tank pressurized to 2.12 pounds-per-square-inch, the equivalent of just under five feet of water, and set a timer for 30 minutes. When we removed the phone, the screen was obscured by green lines, and tiny bubbles were visible in the lenses of the front- and rear-facing cameras. The touchscreen wasn’t responsive.

Following our standard procedure when a sample fails an immersion test, we submitted a second Galaxy S7 Active to the same test. That phone failed as well. After we removed it from the tank, the screen cycled on and off every few seconds, and moisture could be seen in the front and back camera lenses. We also noticed water in the slot holding the SIM card.

For a couple of days following the test, the screens of both phones would light up when the phones were plugged in, though the displays could not be read. The phones never returned to functionality."

Submission + - Mesa 12.0 Brings Open-Source OpenGL 4.3 To Intel/AMD/NVIDIA, Open-Source Vulkan (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mesa3D developers have announced the release of Mesa 12.0. Mesa 12 notably adds open-source OpenGL 4.3 drivers for Intel / Radeon / NVIDIA on Linux and it also integrates the previously open-sourced Intel Vulkan graphics API driver. From the Phoronix analysis, "Mesa 12.0 is easily one of the biggest updates to this important open-source user-space OpenGL driver stack in quite some time and will offer much better support and features especially for Intel, Radeon, and NVIDIA open-source Linux desktop users/gamers."

Submission + - George Takei Opposes Gay Sulu in 'Star Trek Beyond'

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Seth Abramovitch reports in the Hollywood Reporter that actor and LGBT activist George Takei says Paramount's plans to have Sulu's character in the upcoming 'Star Trek Beyond' the first LGBTQ lead character in Star Trek history is out of step with what creator Gene Roddenberry would have wanted. [Roddenberry] "was a strong supporter of LGBT equality," says Takei, now 79. "But he said he has been pushing the envelope and walking a very tight rope — and if he pushed too hard, the show would not be on the air." Takei says he'd much prefer that Sulu stay straight. "I’m delighted that there’s a gay character," says Takei. "Unfortunately, it’s a twisting of Gene’s creation, to which he put in so much thought. I think it’s really unfortunate." The timeline logic of the new revelation is enough to befuddle even the most diehard of Trek enthusiasts, as the rebooted trilogy takes place before the action of the original series. In other words, assuming canon orthodoxy, this storyline suggest Sulu would have had to have first been gay and married, only to then go into the closet years later.

Simon Pegg, who has co-written the latest Star Trek movie, as well as starring as Scotty, has responded to criticism by the actor George Takei at the film-makers’ decision to make the character he used to play openly gay. “He’s right, it is unfortunate, it’s unfortunate that the screen version of the most inclusive, tolerant universe in science fiction hasn’t featured an LGBT character until now. We could have introduced a new gay character, but he or she would have been primarily defined by their sexuality, seen as the ‘gay character’, rather than simply for who they are, and isn’t that tokenism?” says Pegg. “Our Trek is an alternate timeline with alternate details. Whatever magic ingredient determines our sexuality was different for Sulu in our timeline. I like this idea because it suggests that in a hypothetical multiverse, across an infinite matrix of alternate realities, we are all LGBT somewhere."

Submission + - Researchers add software bugs to reduce the number of software bugs (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Researchers are adding bugs to experimental software code in order to ultimately wind up with programs that have fewer vulnerabilities. The idea is to insert a known quantity of vulnerabilities into code, then see how many of them are discovered by bug-finding tools. By analyzing the reasons bugs escape detection, developers can create more effective bug-finders, according to researchers at New York University in collaboration with others from MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and Northeastern University. http://www.ieee-security.org/T... They created large-scale automated vulnerability addition (LAVA), which is a low-cost technique that adds the vulnerabilities.

Submission + - We need a better Private Browsing Mode (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Miche67
Miche67 writes: Many browsers have some type of 'private' browsing. The settings aren't enough, though, to offer real protection.

As this writer says, Chrome's Incognito Mode "doesn't offer strong protection at all," and Firefox's Private Browsing with Tracking Protection — while stronger than Chrome — is an all-or-nothing option. "You can’t turn it off for sites you trust, but have it otherwise enabled by default."

Every single link to non-trusted websites should open, by default, in a Private/Incognito window. C'mon, browser makers, get this done.

Submission + - Why Google Stores Billions of Lines of Code in a Single Repository (acm.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google proves that distributed version control systems can't replace centralized ones. The centralized approach to source control has served Google well for more than 16 years, and today the vast majority of Google's software assets continues to be stored in a single, shared repository.

The Google codebase includes approximately one billion files and has a history of approximately 35 million commits spanning Google's entire 18-year existence. The repository contains 86TB of data, including approximately two billion lines of code in nine million unique source files.

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