40181377
submission
Dupple writes:
Today, the European Parliament ordered new legislation to regulate credit card companies’ ability to refuse service. This regulation follows the unilateral and rightless cutoff of donations to WikiLeaks, as well as similar trampling on small entrepreneurs. The Pirate Party took the initiative to the new regulation.
It has become an increasingly large problem that Visa, MasterCard, and Paypal control the valve to any money flow on the planet. Today, the European Parliament established this as a clear problem, and initiated regulation of the companies, limiting and strictly regulating their right to refuse service. The Pirate Party was the initiator of this regulation, following the damaging cutoff of donations to WikiLeaks. after said organization had performed journalism that was embarrassing to certain governments.
40139843
submission
Dupple writes:
"I don't say that with a sense of bravado but there's really no way for that vehicle to compete with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. If I were in the position of Ariane, I would really push for an Ariane 6."
Ariane's future will be a key topic this week for European Space Agency (Esa) member states.
They are meeting in Naples to determine the scope and funding of the organisation's projects in the next few years, and the status of their big rocket will be central to those discussions.
40138869
submission
Dupple writes:
Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea has filed a lawsuit against LG Display Co., the world's No. 2 maker of liquid crystal displays, seeking the invalidation of some of the latter's patents on organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panel technologies, company officials said Monday.
In the suit filed with a local intellectual property tribunal, Samsung claimed that seven patents held by LG Display are invalid as they lack innovation.
40093735
submission
Dupple writes:
A technique that enables the nanopatterned layers that store data in hard disk drives to assemble themselves has been improved to better suit mass production, and could enable disks that store five times as much data as the largest available today.
Using self-assembly instead of machines that print or etch out features has long been considered a potential solution to a looming barrier to expanding the capacity of hard-disk designs. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have now worked out a solution to a problem that made self-assembly incompatible with existing factories.
39945631
submission
Dupple writes:
Plans to build one of the world's most secure laboratories in the heart of rural America have run into difficulties.
The National Bio and Agro defence facility (NBAF) would be the first US lab able to research diseases like foot and mouth in large animals.
But reviews have raised worries about virus escapes in the middle of cattle country.
For over fifty years the United States has carried out research on dangerous animal diseases at Plum Island, just off the coast of New York. However after 9/11 the Department of Homeland Security raised concerns about the suitability of the location and its vulnerability to terrorist attack.
They don't know any more about technology than a tomcat knows about baking gingerbread...
39916477
submission
Dupple writes:
Chandra McMahon, Lockheed vice president and chief information security officer, said about 20 percent of the threats directed at Lockheed networks were considered "advanced persistent threats," prolonged and targeted attacks by a nation state or other group trying to steal data or harm operations.
"The number of campaigns has increased dramatically over the last several years," McMahon told a news conference. "The pace has picked up."
She said the tactics and techniques were becoming increasingly sophisticated, and attackers were clearly targeting Lockheed suppliers. to gain access to information since the company had fortified its own networks.
39885763
submission
Dupple writes:
Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider have detected one of the rarest particle decays seen in Nature.
The finding deals a significant blow to the theory of physics known as supersymmetry.
Many researchers had hoped the LHC would have confirmed this by now.
Supersymmetry, or SUSY, has gained popularity as a way to explain some of the inconsistencies in the traditional theory of subatomic physics known as the Standard Model.
The new observation, reported at the Hadron Collider Physics conference in Kyoto, is not consistent with many of the most likely models of SUSY.
Prof Chris Parke, who is the spokesperson for the UK Participation in the LHCb experiment, told BBC News: "Supersymmetry may not be dead but these latest results have certainly put it into hospital."
39498299
submission
Dupple writes:
Five people, including the owner of an information technology-related company, were arrested Tuesday on suspicion of providing a virus built into smartphone applications that stole more than 10 million pieces of personal information from users' address books.
The Metropolitan Police Department said about 90,000 people's smartphones were infected with a virus lurking in applications they downloaded.
According to the MPD, this is the first case established to deal with such a large information theft in Japan.
Investigative sources said a man who runs an IT-related company allegedly created video applications for Android smartphones containing a virus that extracts personal information stored on the phone. In collusion with a woman who is the former president of another Tokyo-based IT-related firm, the man released the apps on Google Inc.'s official store for free in late March.
39461125
submission
Dupple writes:
Most recently the EC sent a statement of objections to Microsoft for failing to include the browser-choice screen as promised. Our data suggests that the absence of the browser choice screen had the following impact:
Daily Firefox downloads decreased by 63% to a low of 20,000 just prior to the fix;
After the fix, Firefox downloads increased 150% to approximately 50,000 per day; and
Cumulatively 6 to 9 million Firefox browser downloads were lost during this period.
More here
http://www.zdnet.com/firefox-lost-6-9-million-downloads-in-eu-browser-choice-glitch-7000006670/
39457479
submission
Dupple writes:
Powering cellular base stations around the world will cost $36 billion this year—chewing through nearly 1 percent of all global electricity production. Much of this is wasted by a grossly inefficient piece of hardware: the power amplifier, a gadget that turns electricity into radio signals.
The versions of amplifiers within smartphones suffer similar problems. If you’ve noticed your phone getting warm and rapidly draining the battery when streaming video or sending large files, blame the power amplifiers. As with the versions in base stations, these chips waste more than 65 percent of their energy—and that’s why you sometimes need to charge your phone twice a day.
It’s currently a lab-bench technology, but if it proves itself in commercialization, which is expected to start in 2013—first targeting LTE base stations—the technology could slash base station energy use by half. Likewise, a chip-scale version of the technology, still in development, could double the battery life of smartphones.
39455723
submission
Dupple writes:
Tests have been carried out to see whether military drones can mix safely in the air with passenger planes.
The tests involved a Predator B drone fitted with radio location systems found on domestic aircraft that help them spot and avoid other planes.
The tests will help to pave the way for greater use of drones in America's domestic airspace.
There is a press release from GA available here
http://www.ga.com/press-releases/135-ga-asi-news/558-ga-asi-successfully-tests-ads-b-surveillance-system-aboard-guardian
39363873
submission
Dupple writes:
Cambridge university students will attempt to prove or disprove the famous tag line from Alien.
This is a quote from the BBC article
Students at Cambridge University are hoping to disprove the phrase "in space no-one can hear you scream" by playing pre-recorded screams in orbit.
Members of the Spaceflight Society (CUSF) will transmit the screams via a mobile phone on board a satellite.
A sound file will be sent back to Earth which may or may not contain the screams in the vacuum of space.
A CUSF spokesman said they were not expecting much but hoped it might interest more people in space science.
The "scream in space" app is one of four that will be on board STRaND-1, a smartphone nanosatellite built by a team from Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd and the University of Surrey Space Centre.
Last year, the STRaND team ran a competition to find apps to go into orbit and CUSF's screaming app was one of the winners.
39224993
submission
Dupple writes:
Steve Ballmer told the BBC: "Is it fair to say we're going to do more hardware? Obviously we are... Where we see important opportunities to set a new standard, yeah we'll dive in."
The chief executive's comments came ahead of a Windows 8 launch event in New York, following which Microsoft's Surface tablet will go on sale.
News other devices are likely to follow may worry some of the firm's partners.
Mr Ballmer caused a stir when he revealed in June that his company was making its own family of tablet computers — one offering extended battery-life powered by an Arm-based chip, the other using Intel's technology to offer a deeper Windows experience.
39173629
submission
Dupple writes:
During last week's test, a CHAMP (Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project) missile successfully disabled its target by firing high power microwaves into a building filled with computers and other electronics.
On Oct. 16th at 10:32 a.m. MST a Boeing Phantom Works team along with members from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Directed Energy Directorate team, and Raytheon Ktech, suppliers of the High Power Microwave source, huddled in a conference room at Hill Air Force Base and watched the history making test unfold on a television monitor.
CHAMP approached its first target and fired a burst of High Power Microwaves at a two story building built on the test range. Inside rows of personal computers and electrical systems were turned on to gauge the effects of the powerful radio waves.
Seconds later the PC monitors went dark and cheers erupted in the conference room. CHAMP had successfully knocked out the computer and electrical systems in the target building. Even the television cameras set up to record the test were knocked off line without collateral damage.
39127559
submission
Dupple writes:
Here's a story from MIT Technology Review discussing a new method of extracting natural gas from coal reserves that were previously inaccessible
Fracking technology has already made it practical to exploit previously inaccessible natural gas and oil in the United States (see "Natural Gas Changes the Energy Map"). Now several companies are demonstrating a way to use microörganisms that eat coal and excrete methane—the main ingredient in natural gas—as a possible means of extracting fuel from coal resources that had been too expensive to mine.
Though the idea of microbial production is not new, says Julio Friedmann, chief energy technologist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the technology has taken great strides in recent years, in large part because researchers know more about the different microörganisms that work together to digest coal and produce methane. "I know a handful of companies working on those technologies that seem to have pretty good recovery of natural gas at pretty good cost," he says. That, he adds, creates a potentially significant market opportunity, and "I wouldn't have guessed that a couple of years ago."
