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Comment A trainwreck (Score 1) 241

As I was reading this article, I saw the trainwreck happening before I reached the end of the story. The age of the child wasn't part of the description but yes... taking pictures of the groin area of your kid, even well-intended is child porn.
At least in the eyes of the service providers.

Playing devil's advocate here, they (the service provider) do not and cannot have the context. Imagine if a child predator could argue that their sick pictures are for diagnostic purposes.
Imagine that the only thing you have to go on is the picture. Is it appropriate to take this picture, to have it on your phone? How would you decide? Should you allow a discourse? Should it be possible to argue that the picture is not child pornography?

I don't know the answer to many of these questions, but. Google saw a problem, Google reported the problem to the authorities and the authorities said "nothing to see here"

At the very least, Google should be taking into account the answer from the police and reinstate the accounts. Google should also not unilaterally revoke all means of contact.
Remove the offending content, by all means. Block user from deleting content, yes, but restore the account after the police clears them.

Submission + - Studies Keep Showing That the Best Way to Stop Piracy Is to Offer Alternatives (vice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Study after study continues to show that the best approach to tackling internet piracy is to provide these would-be customers with high quality, low cost alternatives. That idea was again supported by a new study this week out of New Zealand first spotted by TorrentFreak. The study, paid for by telecom operator Vocus Group, surveyed a thousand New Zealanders last December, and found that while half of those polled say they’ve pirated content at some point in their lives, those numbers have dropped as legal streaming alternatives have flourished.

The study found that 11 percent of New Zealand consumers still obtain copyrighted content via illegal streams, and 10 percent download infringing content via BitTorrent or other platforms. But it also found that users are increasingly likely to obtain that same content via over the air antennas (75 percent) or legitimate streaming services like Netflix (55 percent). “In short, the reason people are moving away from piracy is that it’s simply more hassle than it’s worth,” says Vocus Group NZ executive Taryn Hamilton said in a statement. “The research confirms something many internet pundits have long instinctively believed to be true: piracy isn’t driven by law-breakers, it’s driven by people who can’t easily or affordably get the content they want,” she said.

Submission + - Scientists turn CO2 'back into coal' in breakthrough experiment

Submitted by bbsguru
bbsguru writes: As reported in The Independent:
Scientists have managed to turn CO2 from a gas back into solid “coal”, in a breakthrough which could potentially help remove the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.

The research team led by RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, developed a new technique using a liquid metal electrolysis method which efficiently converts CO2 from a gas into solid particles of carbon.

Published in the journal Nature Communications, the authors say their technology offers an alternative pathway for “safely and permanently” removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

To convert CO2, the researchers designed a liquid metal catalyst with specific surface properties that made it extremely efficient at conducting electricity while chemically activating the surface.

Submission + - Four new DNA letters double life's alphabet (nature.com)

Submitted by Joe_NoOne
Joe_NoOne writes: The DNA of life on Earth naturally stores its information in just four key chemicals — guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine, commonly referred to as G, C, A and T, respectively. Now scientists have doubled this number of life’s building blocks, creating for the first time a synthetic, eight-letter genetic language that seems to store and transcribe information just like natural DNA.

Benner’s team, which includes researchers from various US companies and institutions, created the synthetic letters by tweaking the molecular structure of the regular bases. The letters of DNA pair up because they form hydrogen bonds: each contains hydrogen atoms, which are attracted to nitrogen or oxygen atoms in their partner. Benner explains that it’s a bit like Lego bricks that snap together when the holes and prongs line up. By adjusting these holes and prongs, the team has come up with several new pairs of bases, including a pair named S and B, and another called P and Z2. In the latest paper, they describe how they combine these four synthetic bases with the natural ones. The researchers call the resulting eight-letter language ‘hachimoji’ after the Japanese words for ‘eight’ and ‘letter’. The additional bases are each similar in shape to one of the natural four, but have variations in their bonding patterns.

The researchers then conducted a series of experiments that showed that their synthetic sequences shares properties with natural DNA that are essential for supporting life.

Comment Re:Analogs (Score 3, Insightful) 724

by x_terminat_or_3 (#21898034) Attached to: Cocaine Vaccine In the Works
I agree with your ``It`s my body and I fuck it up if I want to'' slogan, only from the point of view of the government, the reason they ban certain substances is that abuse of it leads to either a) illegal behavior because of the cost to keep you in ``business'', b) generates a significant increase in medical care due to after (side) effects of the abuse, c) a+b

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