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Comment Designed to offset Section 230 legal issues (Score 2) 77

by robbyyy (#60169478) Attached to: New Twitter Feature Nags You For Sharing Articles Without Opening Them
The timing of this is interesting. It could be simply about *helping* users understand the issues/topics/news. It could also be designed to help journalists and publishers generate more traffic, thus motivating them to post. Alternatively, it could also be about offsetting the coming trouble that platform will have with Section 230. This move could potentially influence legal proceedings by showing that Twitter helps publishers and is not the defacto publisher. Out of all the social networks (including Snap) I think Twitter is the least viable.

Comment Data will help with climate change modelling (Score 4, Interesting) 72

The data garnered from this will significantly help with the long-term understanding (and modelling) of the human impact on climate. Something similar happened post Sep 11, 2001 when flights were grounded for a time. The data that yielded helped researchers model impacts of pollution. One of the few silver linings.......

Submission + - Federal appeals court says Facebook must face renewed privacy lawsuit

Submitted by robbyyy
robbyyy writes: Facebook has been accused of violating its users rights by tracking users internet activity even after they have logged out of the platform. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said that users could now pursue them under various privacy and wiretapping laws.

This move opens the door for a potential class action lawsuit against the social media giant, which is still dealing with the legal ramifications of the Cambridge Analytica scandal both in Australia and around the world.

Comment My last visit to the region (earlier this year) (Score 3, Interesting) 46

I have visited the region on countless occasions over the last decade, staying on various islands on the reef, in Port Douglas and Cairns. Its a complicated subject matter locally. Some say that it is struggling. Others, especially those reliant upon the reef for a living say that its better than it used to be and criticise the surveys as being based on flyovers from too high up. However, visually, to my mind we do seem to be seeing more damage, at least around the cities and shipping lanes, compared to my first visits. We now don't visit the reef itself. Lots of other things to do in Far North Queensland. Great weather too (most of the time).
Businesses

Submission + - How WikiLeaks gags its own staff (leaked document) (newstatesman.com)

Submitted by
robbyyy
robbyyy writes: "The New Statesman has just revealed the extent of the legal eccentricity and paranoia that exists at tthe WikiLeaks organisation. The magazine publishes a leaked copy of the draconian and extraordinary legal gag which WikiLeaks imposes on its own staff.

Clause 5 of the "Confidentiality Agreement" (PDF) imposes a penalty of £12,000,000 (approx $20,000,000) on anyone who breaches this legal gag. Sounds like they dont trust their own staff..."
Microsoft

Submission + - Open source foiled the Microsoft antitrust case (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: The U.S. Department of Justice remedies supervision in the Microsoft antitrust case ends Thursday, closing the landmark case, which began in 1998. But the questions posed by trial federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's attempted remedy remain, Did tech innovation suffer over the last 10 years because Microsoft wasn't broken up? "Not really," said Vinton Cerf, Google's chief Internet evangelist, "It has to do with the fact that open source has become such a strong force in the software world."
Cloud

Submission + - Google Storage is Now Available to All Developers (infoq.com)

Submitted by aabelro
aabelro writes: Google has announced at I/O 2011 the availability of their Storage service to all developers without the need for an invitation. The service has been enhanced with OAuth 2.0 support, simplified account management through the API Console, a new EU storage region, and a new API version.
Books

Neal Stephenson Unveils His Digital Novel Platform 157

Posted by CmdrTaco from the snow-crash-or-diamond-age-discuss dept.
pickens writes "The NY Times reports that Neal Stephenson's company Subutai has released the first installment of Stephenson's new novel, Mongoliad, about the Mongol invasion of Europe, using what it calls the PULP platform for creating digital novels. The core of the experience is still a text novel, but authors can add additional material like background articles, images, music, and video and there are also social features that allow readers to create their own profiles, earn badges for activity on the site or in the application, and interact with other readers. Stephenson says the material is an extension of what many science fiction and fantasy novels already offer. 'I can remember reading Dune for the first time, and I started by reading the glossary,' Stephenson says. 'Any book that had that kind of extra stuff in it was always hugely fascinating to me.' Jeremy Bornstein says Subutai is experimenting with a new model for publishing books and says the traditional model of paying for content may not hold up when the content can 'be canned and sent around to your friends for free,' but that people will hopefully still pay for content if 'the experience is so much more rich, so much more involving.'"
NASA

Submission + - America versus the UFO Hacker (newstatesman.com)

Submitted by
Rob
Rob writes: "Gary McKinnon, still suffering from Asperger’s syndrome, has one last chance to avoid extradition to the US to face charges of hacking into NASA and Pentagon computers in search of information on UFO's. Will the new UK government keep its word and help him avoid a savage punishment? The New Statesman looks at the issue."
IBM

Submission + - IBM Opens New Cloud Computing Laboratory (infogrok.com)

Submitted by Rob
Rob writes: InfoGrok is reporting that IBM is in the process of opening a new cloud computing laboratory, based out of Singapore. The new labs primary aim is to help business, government and research institutions to design, adopt and reap benefits of cloud technologies. The lab will help IBM's clients deploy first-of-a-kind solutions that increase business responsiveness and performance.
Biotech

Scientists Demonstrate Mammalian Tissue Regeneration 260

Posted by Soulskill from the wolverine-explained dept.
telomerewhythere writes "A quest that began over a decade ago with a chance observation has reached a milestone: the identification of a gene that may regulate regeneration in mammals. The absence of this single gene, called p21, confers a healing potential in mice long thought to have been lost through evolution and reserved for creatures like flatworms, sponges, and some species of salamander. 'Unlike typical mammals, which heal wounds by forming a scar, these mice begin by forming a blastema, a structure associated with rapid cell growth and de-differentiation as seen in amphibians. According to the Wistar researchers, the loss of p21 causes the cells of these mice to behave more like embryonic stem cells than adult mammalian cells, and their findings provide solid evidence to link tissue regeneration to the control of cell division. "Much like a newt that has lost a limb, these mice will replace missing or damaged tissue with healthy tissue that lacks any sign of scarring," said the project's lead scientist.' Here is the academic paper for those with PNAS access."

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