Tony Abbott says food importers deserve help denied to telcos

Australia's government decided this week to impose two major new regulations on business.


The first was announced on Thursday, in the form of new labelling requirements for food importers. This regulation has been introduced after some imported frozen berries were found to be contaminated with Hepatitis A.


Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the new labelling laws need to be as “business-friendly” as possible, because government regulation is unwelcome. So food importers will get a break, he told ABC Rural, as follows:


“If there's a modest increase in regulatory costs in one area, it's got to be more than compensated by a reduction in regulatory costs in another area."

The second new regulation is the all-but-certain passage of laws requiring carriers of voice and data to retain extensive records of their customers' activities.


The government says this new regulation will cost industry “between $188.8 million and $319.1 million” to implement. No operational costs have been mentioned.


The communications industry has not been told that there should be a compensatory reduction in other regulations. Instead, the government's line has been that as the implementation costs of metadata retention “is less than 1 per cent of the $43 billion in revenue generated by the telecommunications industry annually” it can easily carry the burden after an initial cash grant.


By now you've probably spotted the glaring inconsistency in these approaches: carriers just aren't going to “be more than compensated by a reduction in regulatory costs in another area.”


Yet, bizarrely, both carriers and food importers are being asked to wear extra regulation for essentially the same outcome: improving Australians' security.


Metadata retention is advanced as a way to stop Australians being harmed, or killed, by terrorists or criminals. Food labelling is advanced as a way to stop Australians being harmed, or killed, by food whose provenance they cannot understand.


I've written before that Australia's technology industries are routinely humiliated by government.


When one considers the promised favours coming food importers' way, it looks like the technology industries' humiliations will continue. ®


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You Can't Burn Yourself With This Teapot

You Can't Burn Yourself With This Teapot


Someone at OSHA probably has a terrifying stat about the number of workplace injuries caused by teapots. But if everyone rushes out and buys this gorgeous glass hot beverage receptacle, we can do something about this critical national issue.


The Ora teapot uses a double-wall glass construction to insulate your tea from the outside, just like a Thermos flask. As a result, the tea stays hot on the inside, whilst the cool outside also means you can do away with a handle, giving this pot a decidedly unique design. It's also made of tempered borosilicate glass — the same material used in lab glassware, which was the inspiration for the whole design — meaning that your tea will be scientific levels of sterile.


The pot runs $45 with free shipping, or you can add the matching tea cup set for an extra 30 bucks. Just try not to drop anything, or you'll need to be filling out an accident report for a million glass splinters instead. [Kikkerland via Design Milk]






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The U.S. Doesn't Like It When China Wants To Build Encryption Backdoors

Tim Cook chills the spines of swingers worldwide

Apple boss Tim Cook has claimed that Cupertino's Watch, which will be wheeled out on 9 March, will replace car keys.


Speaking in a puff piece interview with the Telegraph on Saturday, ahead of the company's latest event, Cook said that – among other things – the wrist-wearing gizmo would nag sedentary people once an hour to remind them to stand up and walk around.


It will closely monitor a customer's heart rates – data which would be considered extremely lucrative to many in the private health business, if Apple were to go down that route.


On top of that, Cook vowed that the Apple Watch would replace car keys and large fobs that many manufacturers now use to lock vehicles. Its battery life will also apparently last an entire day.


The Apple chief, who told the right-wing British newspaper that he gets out of bed at 3:45 every morning, also rattled out a few gripes about user privacy online.


"One day [consumers] ... will be very offended," he said. Cook added:



None of us should accept that the government or a company or anybody should have access to all of our private information. This is a basic human right. We all have a right to privacy.


We shouldn't give it up. We shouldn't give in to scaremongering or to people who fundamentally don’t understand the details.



Cook, in a clear attack on the likes of Google and its "trove of data", said:



We don’t make money selling your information to somebody else. We don’t think you want that. We don’t want to do that. It’s not in our values system to do that. Could we make a lot of money doing that? Of course. But life isn’t about money, life is about doing the right thing. This has been a core value of our company for a long time.



Cook added that spooks' demands for tech outfits to withhold encryption services from consumers "fundamentally doesn't work." ®


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An Incredibly Touching Leonard Nimoy Tribute From The ISS

An Incredibly Touching Leonard Nimoy Tribute From The ISS


Since Leonard Nimoy passed away yesterday, tributes have been pouring in from around the web. But this one, posted without comment from NASA astronaut Terry Virts aboard the ISS, is probably the most touching. LLAP.



pic.twitter.com/ErjTLgCIrL


— Terry W. Virts (@AstroTerry) February 28, 2015








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Blurred vision: Google dreams of a campus mixing nature with buildings

Google has submitted plans to redevelop four sites at its headquarters in Mountain View, California.


The Chocolate Factory asked the city council to consider its application on Friday.


Google hopes to design and build the offices from scratch, said the ad giant's real estate veep David Radcliffe said in a blog post.



The idea is simple. Instead of constructing immoveable concrete buildings, we’ll create lightweight block-like structures which can be moved around easily as we invest in new product areas. (Our self-driving car team, for example, has very different needs when it comes to office space from our Search engineers.)


Large translucent canopies will cover each site, controlling the climate inside yet letting in light and air. With trees, landscaping, cafes, and bike paths weaving through these structures, we aim to blur the distinction between our buildings and nature.



Google also promised to give something back to the local community as part of its proposed campus overhaul. Owls will get enhanced burrowing habitats and creek beds will apparently be widened as part of the sweetners offered to the city council.


But there's no guarantee Google's plans will be waved through. ®


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Adam Savage's Replica Hedge Maze From The Shining Is Scarily Accurate


When Mythbusters' Adam Savage isn't, uh, busting myths, he spends his time crafting amazing replicas of movie props, among other hobbies. This time around it's the hedge maze from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, prompted by Savage's disappointment in what should have been the "official" version.


The video here, which describes the build process in detail, starts with Savage's explanation for embarking on the endeavour in the first place. After visiting the Kubrick exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), he discovered the hedge maze architectural model on display is completely different from the one in the movie, not to mention the quality is not the greatest. From that point, Savage was determined to create a more accurate one.


The project was not as straightforward as you might think.


Because movies are movies, there are several representations of the maze in The Shining, with varying degrees of detail: the architectural model in the Colorado room; the façade you see during the day; the top-down map in front of the maze, the quarter-sized one for the movie's finale and another for a zoom-out shot in the Colorado room. Of course, none of them are the same, though Savage decided to use the map for the basis of his model, as it provided the best reference material.


The walls are made of a lightweight particle board, with spray paint and flocking to provide colour and texture. After that, it was just a matter of putting the time in — just the outside edges and the central section took 16 hours do to.


Hopefully he can convince LACMA to use his model instead. [YouTube, via Blastr]




Republished from our cousins at Gizmodo Australia. Check it out for all of your other-side-of-the-equator tech news.






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These R/C Cars Drift So Much Better Than You Ever Will

These R/C Cars Drift So Much Better Than You Ever Will


Drifting R/C cars isn't a completely new pasttime, but there's still something magical about watching a trio of R/C cars go flying off a jump — sideways. It's everything you ever wasted your childhood trying to achieve, but done by grown-ups with far more skill.



The video was filmed by the Kuma Films team at the WARU circuit in Yokohama, Japan. The actual drifting video is great, but the behind-the-scenes footage is what makes this great — I'll never get bored of watching an adult with a Steadicam rig chasing a remote-control car. [YouTube via Laughing Squid]




Contact the author at chris@gizmodo.com.






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The Craziest Designs For London's Newest Pedestrian Bridge

BOFFINS: Oxygen-free, methane-based ALIENS may EXIST on icy SATURN moon

Scientists believe they have come up with a solid model for a new type of methane-based, oxygen-free life form that could thrive in the harsh, icy conditions of Saturn's mysterious freezing moon, Titan.


The researchers at Cornell University reckon they have come up with "the first concrete blueprint of life not as we know it."


Chemical engineering graduate, James Stevenson, said he had been partly inspired by sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov, who wrote the essay Not as We Know It about the concept of non-water based life in 1962.


Stevenson worked with chemical molecular dynamics boffin, Paulette Clancy, and Cornell's director for radiophysics and space research, Jonathan Lunine, on the project.


As The Register previously reported, Saturn's giant moon Titan is the only other planetary body in the Solar System that has naturally occurring surface liquids – it contains vast seas of methane.


The university's researchers theorised that such a celestial body "could harbour methane-based, oxygen-free cells."


The boffins came up with a cell membrane that they said was composed of small organic compounds and capable of functioning in liquid methane temperatures of 292 degrees below zero.


"We're not biologists, and we're not astronomers, but we had the right tools," Clancy said. "Perhaps it helped, because we didn't come in with any preconceptions about what should be in a membrane and what shouldn't."


Many alien-hunting scientists look for clues of extraterrestrial life in the so-called circumstellar habitable zone, which is the narrow band around the sun where it is believed water can exist.



"We just worked with the compounds that we knew were there and asked, 'If this was your palette, what can you make out of that?' – Clancy



The Cornell bods, who named their membrane an "azotosome", considered what would happen if the cells were based on methane instead of water.


Grad James Stevenson, astronomer Jonathan Lunine and chemical engineer Paulette Clancy, with a Cassini image of Titan in the foreground of Saturn, and an azotosome, the theorised cell membrane on Titan. Credit: Cornell University

Stevenson, Lunine and Clancy with a Cassini image of Titan in the foreground of Saturn,

and an azotosome, the theorised cell membrane on Titan. Image credit: Cornell University



The university said:



The azotosome is made from nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen molecules known to exist in the cryogenic seas of Titan, but shows the same stability and flexibility that Earth's analogous liposome does.



Clancy and Stevenson were surprised by that outcome because they had never previously considered the mechanics of cell stability prior to their study.


Cornell added:



The engineers employed a molecular dynamics method that screened for candidate compounds from methane for self-assembly into membrane-like structures.


The most promising compound they found is an acrylonitrile azotosome, which showed good stability, a strong barrier to decomposition, and a flexibility similar to that of phospholipid membranes on Earth.


Acrylonitrile – a colourless, poisonous, liquid organic compound used in the manufacture of acrylic fibres, resins and thermoplastics – is present in Titan's atmosphere.



The researchers' paper was published in the Science Advances journal on Friday. More "life not as we know it" details this way. ®


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Thanks For the Net Neutrality, Oligarchs

Happy 3rd birthday Raspberry Pi!

3rd birthday


Raspberry Pi celebrates its third birthday today. Well actually it doesn’t, as the super-affordable ARM GNU/Linux computer was launched on February 29 2012, in what was (obviously) a leap year, but it’s close enough.


In that time the Raspberry Pi has achieved staggering success. Two months ago it was revealed total sales had surpassed 5 million (and the Raspberry Pi Foundation says another half a million have been sold in this month alone), with new and updated models launched in the past year.


Eight months ago the Model B+ was announced, followed four months later by an improved and cheaper Model A+. And then, at the start of this month, the Raspberry Pi 2 appeared, promising 6x faster speeds and even the ability to run Windows 10 (if you’ve bought one of the new models you might want to check out my colleague Brian Fagioli’s getting started guide).


One thing has remained constant in all that time though -- the price.


While commercial companies look to charge as much as they can get away with for new models, the non-profit Raspberry Pi Foundation sells its devices for as cheaply as it’s possible to do. The Raspberry Pi 2 might be a huge step up from the Model B and B+, but it’s still just $35/£25.


We’re huge fans of the Raspberry Pi at BetaNews as you can tell from past coverage, and we’re thrilled by the success it. So much has been achieved in three short years we can’t wait to see what comes next.


Two years ago I chatted to Liz Upton, Head of Communications at Raspberry Pi Foundation (and wife of the foundation’s Executive Director Eben), about their eventful first year, and plans for the future and it's worth revisiting some of those early questions:


BN: How did the idea of Raspberry Pi come about?


LU: Back in 2006, when Eben was teaching at the University of Cambridge he started to notice a decline in both the numbers of kids applying to read Computer Science, and in the level of knowledge that those kids arrived at the university with. We talked about it with our friends in the pub, like you do. And plenty of them thought it was a real problem too -- some of them thought it was such a problem that we came together and decided we'd try to do something about it. We had a hypothesis: that the fall in numbers and skills had to do with the disappearance of programmable machines in kids' lives. Computers like the BBC Micro or the Amiga had been replaced from the bottom end by sealed-unit, black-box consoles, whose whole business model is that you shouldn't be able to program them. And from the top, there was the PC. Of course, a PC is a wonderfully programmable machine; but in most families it's also a very vital tool for family life. It's where you do your banking or your homework. And many kids aren't allowed to mess around with the family PC for fear of breaking it. We felt a very cheap, programmable unit that kids could buy with their own pocket money, so they had a sense of ownership, was a possible solution. It's still early days, but on seeing some of the kids who've had a Pi for some months now, I've a feeling we were on to something.


BN: Where did the name come from?


LU: "Raspberry" comes from the tech industry's fondness for fruit names (there are lots of fruit-named computer companies, like Apricot, Tangerine…those, of course, are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head). And "Pi" is for Python, which has always been our first choice of teaching language (it was even before we knew what the hardware would look like). We initially thought that using Pi rather than Py would make for a really nice logo in the shape of the Greek letter, but as you can see, we didn't actually end up going that way!


BN: You’ve just sold your millionth Pi. Are you surprised by its success?


LU: Around the end of 2011, just before we started selling Pis, we started to worry that perhaps we'd bitten off more than we could chew. We'd managed to raise enough capital among ourselves to produce 20,000, and the plan was to use the profits from those Pis to seed the next batch (which would have taken a couple of months to make), and so on. We realized that we might have a problem on the day when we made a pre-released OS available for the Pi, well before anyone actually had one -- all of a sudden 60,000 people arrived on our website and downloaded this buggy software for a platform that didn't even exist yet. It suggested that the demand was much, much bigger than we'd anticipated. We decided that we'd need to revise the business model, because there was no way we could make enough fast enough with the resources we had to satisfy the sort of demand we were seeing. So we approached RS and Farnell, two British components companies which already had world-wide distribution networks in place, to see if they'd be interested in manufacturing the Pis for us under license so we could build up to a workable level of stock immediately. That was an enormous help in trying to deal with the demand we were seeing, but as you're probably aware, we've still been running to keep up, even though there is currently one Pi coming off the production line in Wales every few seconds!


BN: Raspberry Pi seems like a very British project, a modern day BBC Micro, but it's been well received in America. Why do you think that is?


LU: I think that a need for access to tools is universal. And those problems of introducing kids to programming -- the ubiquity of the family PC and the games console -- are universal too, at least in the developed world. Industry is starting to notice a decline in standards in young people too; we work with a number of industry bodies in the UK and in the US which are also promoting proper computing for young people, because they don't want to see a situation where the skills base dries up and blows away either. Eben and I will be at Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix in a couple of months, to do some work with the kids there. I love doing this stuff; and it's always so much fun in the US, with the American tradition of science fairs (which we don't have a real equivalent of in the UK).






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Huawei Already Revealed Its First Android Watch

Huawei Already Revealed Its First Android Watch


All the cool kids are peddling Android wearables these days, and it looks like Huawei is no exception: in advance of the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, it looks like the Chinese phone giant has revealed its upcoming watch in an (accidental?) ad.


First spotted by Android Central , the ad gives it the original name 'Huawei Watch', with a choice of three designs — silver or black metal, or a leather band — and a circular display topping things off. There's no details on fancier specs like heart-rate monitors or processor, but it is clear that the watch will run Android Wear, so the bulk of the functionality will likely be identical to the other circular Android watches we've seen so far.


Huawei Already Revealed Its First Android Watch


Image credit: Android Central


Huawei has a press conference scheduled for tomorrow morning, so if this looks like the digital timepiece that could finally push you over the smartwatch fence, you won't have long to wait. [Android Central via The Verge]



Update: Huawei has also gone ahead and posted a series of videos of improbably handsome people using the watch in its natural environment, like snowshoeing and dogsledding. There is also an Apple-style design video (complete with British person!), if you have four minutes doing nothing else. Seriously, though, this looks like a well-made and refreshingly small take on Android Wear.






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I Never Realized I Need A Bluetooth Wallet

I Never Realized I Need A Bluetooth Wallet


When a new Kickstarter launches for an everyday item with (Bluetooth/NFC/WiFi/solar panels/CNC'd aluminium unibody — delete as appropriate) capabilities on board, I'm normally first in the line of jeering sceptics. But a wallet with built-in Bluetooth actually makes a lot of sense. Pass the Kool-Aid, please.


Woolet is a fairly classy-looking leather wallet with a Bluetooth chipset and a speaker built in. The idea is to buzz your phone if the wallet gets too far away, like if you've left it behind, or someone's stolen it. There's also the option to have your wallet make noise, so you can track it down in the disorganized mess that masquerades as a home office.


The only thing that gives me any cause for hesitation is the project's description of self-charging batteries. According to the Kickstarter, that means either kinetic or body-heat charging technology, meaning you'll never have to plug the wallet in. That's vital — because, honestly, do you really want to have to charge your friggin' wallet? — but it's also a difficult trick to pull off successfully. Still, Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy chips only need a sip of electricity to work, so with any luck, it's an achievable goal.


I Never Realized I Need A Bluetooth Wallet


At $99, it's a reasonable price for a leather wallet with some smarts. You can probably make your own version from a standard wallet and a commercially available Bluetooth fob, but there's something pleasantly simple about Woolet's integration. Someone stop me before I get into the 3-D printing drones. [Kickstarter]




Contact the author at chris@gizmodo.com.






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Elon Musk plans to plonk urban Hyperloop subsonic tube on California

Billionaire space baron Elon Musk has inked a deal with land developers in California to allow his company to begin installing an over-hyped, loopy new transport system appropriately dubbed Hyperloop.


Previous mutterings from Musk had suggested that the first railgun-like tube-way would be constructed by Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Inc (HTT) in Texas as a trial track.


On Thursday, his outfit struck an agreement with developers of Quay Valley, California.


HTT said in a statement that it planned to build a Hyperloop "along a five-mile stretch of the town running alongside the Interstate 5 freeway."


Construction will kick off next year, apparently.


HTT, which said it was mulling a public offering near the end of this year, promised it would be "the first working passenger-ready Hyperloop in an urban area."


Musk's company added:



The Quay Valley Hyperloop track will be built using HTT’s tube, capsule, and station models. It will be instrumental in optimising passenger system needs – such as loading, departure and safety considerations – to ensure Hyperloop is ready for larger-scale operation. Running speed will be reduced on the shortened track from Hyperloop’s full potential.



®


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At night, scary wildlife comes out to play in the chemical factory

On-call Welcome to On-Call, our semi-regular-ish weekend feature in which readers share experiences that happened late at night, in odd places.


This week, the tale of reader "IT Gnome" who tells us "I work on call for a chemical factory, and it wouldn't look out of place at night in a zombie film."


"It's perhaps the bleakest scariest place I have ever visited," he says. "As you can imagine it's dangerous."


How scary?


"I cannot convey how scary wondering around a large three plant site is, especially at night as you only tend to see one or two people at the very most," says IT Gnome. "I have scared myself senseless on more than one occasion reading the labels on various tankers that can only convey death."


Which brings us to one particular night on which our hero was asked to replace a switch in a small brick built substation.


IT Gnome says the building "housed the usual scary looking big switch operated electrical things like you see in cold war submarine bases, as well as a rickety old comms cabinet."


"When I started the job it was dark outside, replacing the switch took ages, the old one seemingly welded into place. As the clock ticked on I started to feel I was been watched."


"And I was, by massive gulls. The kind that steal children [or your bag of fish 'n' chips -Weekend Ed] off the beach."


Gulls do that? Yikes. IT Gnome continues:


"Five of them had managed to shuffle into this brick shed and were now advancing on me. I was panicky and was pinned to the wall. No matter what I did they stood there hissing at me."


"The good news is I had fixed the switch, the bad news is I had no phone signal and the site radio was behind the angry gulls. It took about forty five mins to negotiate with the scary birds."


IT Gnome now has an interesting item in his go-bag for night-time jobs.


"I now take bread with me on site," he told us.


What's happened to you in odd places and/or at odd times? Share your story by sending me a mail and we'll make you a star. A G-list star. ®






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MEGA PATENT DUMP! Ericsson, Smartflash blitz Apple: iPhone, iPad menaced by sales block

Linkfest Emboldened by its $533m patent-infringement win against Apple just a few days ago, Smartflash is suing the iPhone maker AGAIN – and Ericsson is joining the fray.


Ericsson v Apple


The Swedish telecoms giant has filed two complaints to the US International Trade Commission (ITC) – one accusing Apple handhelds of ripping off Ericsson's patents on 2G and 4G mobile broadband connectivity, and the other claiming the California giant is using Ericsson's patents on Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, radio electronics, and other technology without permission.


Ericsson wants the ITC to ban imports of Apple's China-built iPhones and iPads, which are allegedly infringing the Swedes' patents, into America. The Euro giant has sued Apple in the patent-holder-friendly eastern district court of Texas in the US, again alleging patent infringement, demanding jury trials, and calling for injunctions against Apple hardware.


The 2G/4G patents are so-called essential patents, meaning they describe technology that everyone has agreed is needed for modern communications, and are thus supposed to be licensed on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms to all manufacturers.


Ericsson, which has offices in Texas, says Apple had coughed up cash to license its patented technology, but that agreement, we're told, expired and wasn't renewed by Apple. Now Ericsson's upset iPhones and iPads continue to roll into America without permission and with no royalties checks in the mail to Ericsson. Thus the Swedes want damages from Apple, and a ban on imports until the matter is settled.


Here's the list of the complaints filed to the Texas court, including the patents allegedly infringed:



  • 2:15-cv-17: Ericsson alleges breach of contract, claiming Apple...
    globally licensed Ericsson Essential Patents in 2008, but its license has now expired. During the past two years of negotiations for a renewal agreement, Ericsson extended multiple offers to Apple to renew its portfolio license on FRAND terms. These negotiations have been unsuccessful for the simple reason that Apple refuses to pay a FRAND royalty for a license to Ericsson’s Essential Patents.


  • 2:15-cv-288: Ericsson claims Apple infringed the following:

    • US patent 6,037,798: "Line Receiver Circuit Having Termination Impedances with Transmission Gates Connected in Parallel."

    • US patent 6,100,770: "MIS Transistor Varactor Device and Oscillator Using Same"

    • US patent 6,597,787: "Echo Cancellation Device For Cancelling Echos in a Transceiver Unit"

    • US patent 7,151,430: "Method of and Inductor Layout for Reduced VCO Coupling"

    • US patent 7,580,683: "Radio Transceiver on a Chip"

    • US patent 8,626,086: "Radio Transceiver on a Chip"



  • 2:15-cv-289: Ericsson claims Apple infringed the following:

    • US patent 6,026,293: "System for Preventing Electronic Memory Tampering"

    • US patent 6,400,376: "Display Control for Hand-Held Data Processing Device"

    • US patent 6,857,068: "System and Method for Data Processing by Executing a Security Program Routine Initially Stored in a Protected Part of Irreversibly Blocked Memory Upon Start-Up"

    • US patent 6,901,251: "Portable Communication Apparatus Having a Man-Machine Interface and a Method for its Operation:

    • US letters patent RE43,931: "Radiotelephones Having Contact-Sensitive User Interfaces and Methods of Operating Same"



  • 2:15-cv-290: Ericsson claims Apple infringed the following:

    • US patent 6,360,102: "System and Method for Defining A Subscriber Location Privacy Profile"

    • US patent 6,433,735: "Mobile Terminal and System and Method for Determining the Geographic Location of a Mobile Terminal"

    • US patent 6,535,815: "Position Updating Method for a Mobile Terminal Equipped with a Positioning Receiver"

    • US patent 6,553,236: "On Demand Location Function for Mobile Terminal"

    • US patent 6,993,325: "Method for Facilitating Electronic Communications"

    • US patent 7,149,534: "Peer to Peer Information Exchange for Mobile Communications Devices"



  • 2:15-cv-291: Ericsson claims Apple infringed the following:

    • US patent 7,149,510: "Security Access Manager in Middleware"

    • US patent 7,286,823: "Mobile Multimedia Engine"

    • US patent 7,415,270: "Middleware Services Layer for Platform System for Mobile Terminals"

    • US patent 7,536,181: "Platform System for Mobile Terminals"

    • US patent 7,707,592: "Mobile Terminal Application Subsystem and Access Subsystem Architecture Method and System"

    • US patent 8,079,015: "Layered Architecture for Mobile Terminals"



  • 2:15-cv-292: Ericsson claims Apple infringed the following:

    • US patent 6,433,512: "Power Consumption Reporting by an Accessory of an Electronic Device"

    • US patent 6,763,247: "Portable Telecommunication Apparatus for Controlling an Electronic Utility Device"

    • US patent 6,968,365: "Device and a Method for Operating an Electronic Utility Device From a Portable Telecommunication Apparatus"

    • US patent 8,170,472: "Arrangement and a Method in a Telephony System"



  • 2:15-cv-293: Ericsson claims Apple infringed the following:

    • US patent 6,633,550: "Radio Transceiver on a Chip"

    • US patent 6,157,620: "Enhanced Radio Telephone for Use In Internet Telephony"

    • US patent 6,029,052: "Multiple-Mode Direct Conversion Receiver"

    • US patent 8,812,059: "Radiotelephones Having Contact-Sensitive User Interfaces and Methods of Operating Same"

    • US patent 6,291,966: "Method and an Apparatus For Storing and Communicating Battery Information"

    • US patent 6,122,263: "Internet Access For Cellular Networks"



  • 2:15-cv-287: Ericsson claims Apple infringed the following:

    • US essential patent 8,102,805: "HARQ in Spatial Multiplexing MIMO System"

    • US essential patent 8,331,476: "Method for Detecting Transmission Mode in a System Using Multiple Antennas"

    • US essential patent 6,301,556: "Reducing Sparseness in Coded Speech Signals"

    • US essential patent 8,607,130: "Computationally Efficient Convolutional Coding With Rate-Matching"

    • US essential patent 8,717,996: "Uplink Scrambling During Random Access"

    • US essential patent 8,660,270: "Method and Arrangement in a Telecommunication System"

    • US essential patent 8,837,381: "Using an Uplink Grant as Trigger of First or Second Type of CQI Report"

    • US essential patent 6,058,359: "Speech Coding Including Soft Adaptability Feature"




"Apple's products benefit from the technology invented and patented by Ericsson's engineers," said Ericsson chief intellectual property officer Kasim Alfalahi.


"Features that consumers now take for granted - like being able to livestream television shows or access their favorite apps from their phone - rely on the technology we have developed."


The two companies have been at a legal impasse for some time. Apple has accused Ericssson of demanding excessive payments for the use of its patents, while Ericsson maintains it is only seeking fair compensation.


Smartflash v Apple


Meanwhile, Texan patent-hoarder Smartflash has filed a lawsuit in the eastern district of Texas, US, against Apple accusing the iTunes goliath of infringing its patents, a day after landing a $500m judgment against the Cupertino moneybags.


The new suit [PDF] alleges that Apple's iTunes infringes seven Smartflash patents relating to the processing of payments and the download of music files from an online service. The specific patents allegedly infringed are:



  • US patent 7,334,720: "Data Storage and Access Systems"

  • US patent 7,942,317: "Data Storage and Access Systems"

  • US patent 8,033,458: "Data Storage and Access Systems"

  • US patent 8,061,598: "Data Storage and Access Systems"

  • US patent 8,118,221: "Data Storage and Access Systems"

  • US patent 8,336,772: "Data Storage and Access Systems"

  • US patent 8,794,516: "Data Storage and Access Systems"


"Apple’s acts of infringement have caused damage to the plaintiffs ... as a result of Apple’s wrongful acts," Smartflash's court documents allege. Smartflash wants a judge-granted injunction banning Apple from shipping any more software and/or hardware allegedly infringing Smartflash' patents – plus damages.


Apple refuses to comment to The Register. ®


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Facebook lets you choose a custom gender, now it's time to drop real names

Facebook lets you choose a custom gender, now it's time to drop real names


Facebook found itself under fire last year for imposing a real name policy. Drag artists, the LGBT community, musicians and other groups were among those who felt they should be able to use a name other than the one that appears on their birth certificate. The social network ultimately backed down, but the whole debacle left something of a bad taste in the mouth.


People are able to use "the authentic name they use in real life" to identify themselves on the site, and Facebook has opened up gender options further. There's no need to feel limited by the male or female labels, or even make a selection from a readymade list -- you can now specify whatever gender you want. But is this enough?


Facebook diversity heralded the feature and also announced that users can use up to ten different gender identities, and can choose the audiences they would like to share each one with. A choice of pronoun is also available, so when birthday time rolls around, friends can be invited to "wish him a happy birthday", "wish her a happy birthday", or the gender-neutral "wish them a happy birthday". The move came about after consultation with LGBT advocacy organizations.



Now, if you do not identify with the pre-populated list of gender identities, you are able to add your own. As before, you can add up to ten gender terms and also have the ability to control the audience with whom you would like to share your custom gender. We recognize that some people face challenges sharing their true gender identity with others, and this setting gives people the ability to express themselves in an authentic way.



Facebook gender identity options


But gender identity is just a portion of anyone's make up. It's time that Facebook offered the same flexibility for names. The social network has accepted the idea that some people find it difficult to share their gender identity with all of their contacts -- the same is true of names. The debate about Facebook's real names policy has a tendency to center around the LGBT community, but this is far from being the only group affected by Facebook imposing the rule surrounding names. Think victims of abuse, victims of crime and so on. These are people who might well want to use a different identity online -- it's not good enough to say that such people should not use Facebook.


One's name is no more or less part of one's identity than one's gender, and just as one may have more than one gender identity according to audience and circumstances, the same is true of names. It has been argued that people who find themselves using different name identity for different parts of their life should set up business pages, but this is not an acceptable solution.


There is the argument that one's real name need to be used to ensure that you are identifiable in case of illegal activity, harassment or the like -- but unless someone using a fake name does something to draw attention to themselves, or is reported by another user, who is to know? It makes as much sense as it would to force people to use a government-verified photo for this profile image.


Of course ultimately, Facebook is free to impose whatever rules and restrictions it likes, and anyone who disagrees strongly enough with them is free to avoid using the site. But that's not the point. Facebook is very keen to be seen as a company that is accepting of everyone -- something it was boastful of when talking about its diverse workforce -- but that's missing the point and giving Facebook too easy a time. The abomination that is Ello sprang to (minor) popularity in protest at Facebook's real name policy and it's clear that the real names policy is something that people care about deeply.


There's no getting away from the fact that Facebook's embracing of different gender identities is a positive thing, but there's still more that can be done. Logically, it makes no sense for Facebook to 'permit' users to express part of their identity in whatever way they wish, but not all of it. Just allow people to identify however the hell they like on the social network; there really is no good reason not to. Judging by the comments that appear beneath Facebook's announcement of the new gender options, I'm far from being alone in my view about the need to eliminate the real name policy. Who's with me?


Photo credit: fieldwork / Shutterstock






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Xbox One selling badly in China

China red xbox


It was big news last year when Microsoft announced that it would officially start selling the Xbox One in China. The original September launch date came and went ("Despite strong and steady progress, we are going to need a bit more time to deliver the best experiences possible for our fans in China"), but eventually the next gen console made it on sale.


Although China gave the green-light for the sale of 5 million Xbox units, actual sales have been way, way below that. Launch numbers (including pre-orders) were just 100,000 units, and the company responsible for Xbox One sales in China has posted huge losses.


Techweb reports that the BesTV subsidiary lost 17.24 million yuan (US$2.75 million) in 2014.


While there are no current sales figures for the console, it’s been observed that Chinese online retailer Tmall shipped fewer than 200 units in January.


There are several reasons behind the lukewarm response to Microsoft's console including price (despite a post-launch price cut it’s still very expensive), the fact that only a limited number of games are available -- some of which have been censored -- and the console is region locked so games from elsewhere won’t play. Plus Chinese gamers simply aren’t used to paying for games.


Although the Xbox One was the first western games console to be sold officially in China since the ban on production and sales of such devices was lifted, it has been widely available through the gray market, so anyone interested in purchasing the console likely did so before it arrived officially.


It is of course too early to write off the Xbox One in China, but it’s far from an encouraging start for Microsoft which was banking on Chinese sales to help in its battle against Sony’s PS4. Recent predictions claim there will be 40 percent more PlayStation 4s in use than Xbox Ones by 2019.






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'The troll stats saddened me as a human, but didn't surprise me as a boffin'

QuoTW This week, we saved the internet, screwed up our smart TVs and made absolutely no money from our YouTube accounts. In the process, we uttered some memorable lines.


By far, the big story of the week was the FCC's net neutrality decision. In opting to invoke Title II, the commission will force telcos to treat all internet traffic the same way. The decision, and the implication that the government could hone in on private companies, drew no shortage of comment.


Among those to give their two cents was U.S. President Barak Obama, who offered up the following:


Today's FCC decision will protect innovation and create a level playing field for the next generation of entrepreneurs. I ran for office because I believed that nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's Charles Morris made the case for scrubbing old versions of Internet Explorer and starting from scratch with Project Spartan:


Our rallying cry for Windows 10 became 'the web just works'.

Yes. Mostly because nobody uses Microsoft's browser any more.


Moving on … there are two things Salesforce chief Marc Benioff does extremely well: run his company, and troll rival tycoon Larry Ellison. This week, he announced a $5.3bn quarter and took the opportunity to jab at his former boss:


Oracle keeps saying they’re growing more quickly than anyone else in the cloud. Well, that’s very easy to do when you’re starting at zero.

For those of us who don't currently sit on the receiving end of a financial firehose, there is always security research. Google recently announced that it was going to lift the limit on payouts for its Pwnium research outfit. The Chocolate Factory's own Tim Willis said:


For those who are interested in what this means for the Pwnium rewards pool, we crunched the numbers and the results are in: it now goes all the way up to $∞ million.

Elsewhere this week, researchers at Ohio State University figured out what Reg commentards knew long ago: the internet can be a very nasty place. A study found that, more often than not, users will sit idly by and watch while their peers are bullied and harangued by others. Researcher Kelly Dillon said:


The results disappointed me as a human, but they didn't surprise me as a scientist.

Let's close on a brighter note, shall we? Reg contributor Mark Pesce shared with us the story of finding out his aunt was a human computer for NASA back in the early days of the space race. The hero auntie said of her time crunching numbers with the astronauts:


This was back in the early days of the space program, and they needed to run a lot of calculations to assist with the design of the early spacecraft. It was very interesting work, but also quite difficult. They’d give us these formulas, and we’d have to translate the mathematics into instructions for the computer. That took a lot of time.

®






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Start Your Weekend With The Hubble Space Telescope's Planetarium Clips

Start Your Weekend With The Hubble Space Telescope's Planetarium Clips


You may not own your own private planetarium — or if you do, can we come over to your house? But you can still experience a journey through the wonders of space, thanks to four new "fulldome" planetarium clips, released by the Hubble Space Telescope. They're available in 4K and 8K resolution.


According to the Hubble site:



ESA/Hubble is releasing a series of stunning fulldome clips, freely available to planetariums across the globe as part of the 25th anniversary celebrations. The clips are in 4k and 8k fulldome format and rendered for uni-directional domes.



Check out the four newly released clips below, and go to the Space Telescope site to download them in high resolution. And don't forget to check back — because new clips will be released every month around the 24th of the month.


You're going to want to view the clips below in fullscreen and HD, because that's the only way to appreciate them properly.



RS Puppis encroaches on the viewer in this fulldome clip of the Cepheid variable star. The star's pulsation creates the concentric circles of blue light present in the surrounding gas and dust; an example of an unusual phenomenon known as light echo.



More info, and original image, here.



An enormous cluster of galaxies known as Abell 2218 appears in this fulldome clip. The cluster is so massive and compact that the gravitational field it produces bends, distorts and magnifies light from objects that lie behind it. This produces a useful kind of cosmic lens that allows astronomers to peer at very distant objects which would otherwise be too faint to see. The strange arcs of light which seem to be smeared across the lens in this video are actually examples of such remote galaxies; their appearance having been distorted almost beyond recognition by the powerful effects of the foreground cluster.



Start Your Weekend With The Hubble Space Telescope's Planetarium Clips


More info, and original image, here.



This fulldome clip provides a look at the kaleidoscopic chaos of the Carina Nebula. The radiation and energetic streams of particles being emitted by nearby stars eat away at the pillars as baby stars are born within them.



More info, and original image, here.






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He Led The CIA To Bin Laden-And Unwittingly Fueled A Vaccine Backlash

An Outspoken Voice For Women In Tech, Foiled By His Tone

Fork me! Uber hauls GitHub into court to find who hacked database of 50,000 drivers

Uber has subpoenaed GitHub to unmask netizens suspected of hacking its database of taxi drivers.


The ride-booking app maker is trying to force GitHub [PDF] to hand over the IP addresses of anyone who visited a particular gist post between March and September last year.


That gist is believed to have contained a login key used by a hacker to access an internal Uber database of 50,000 drivers. Github refused to hand over the information, leading to Friday's subpoena filing.


Uber has also launched a John Doe lawsuit [PDF] in the district court of northern California against the mystery hacker. Uber and GitHub are both headquartered in San Francisco, California.


"On or around May 12, 2014, from an IP address not associated with an Uber employee and otherwise unknown to Uber, John Doe used the unique security key to download Uber database files containing confidential and proprietary information from Uber’s protected computers," the lawsuit's paperwork reads.


In a blog post on Friday, Uber admitted the database of driver names and license plates was accessed by the hacker way back in May, but the startup only noticed in September.


Uber's security team knows the public IP address used by the database invader, and wants to link that number against the IP addresses and usernames of anyone who looked at the GitHub-hosted gist in question – ID 9556255 – which we note today no longer exists.


It's possible the gist contained a leaked login key, or internal source code that contained a key that should not have been made public. We won't speculate further.


Uber wants GitHub to provide...


all records, including but not limited to transactional or other logs, from March 14, 2014 to September 17, 2014, identifying the IP addresses or subscribers that viewed, accessed, or modified these posts and the date/time of access, viewing, or modification, as well as any records or metadata relating to the browser (i.e., logged HTTP headers, including cookies) or device that viewed, accessed, or modified the posts.

In other words, Uber hopes it will find an online breadcrumb trail from the gist to whoever hacked its systems. Quite why Uber has waited more than five months to subpoena GitHub is unclear, and the taxi-booking biz has refused to explain the delay.


In its statement, Uber's Managing Counsel of Data Privacy Katherine Tassi said the breach covered "current and former Uber driver partner names and driver’s license numbers," and is offering a year of credit monitoring for free to those whose details were leaked.


In keeping with its image as a gas tank of ethics running on empty, Uber does not provide an explanation for why it did not inform its drivers their details had been swiped until it decided to file a lawsuit five months later.


The post noted that the company had "not received any reports of actual misuse of information as a result of this incident." ®


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New Xen vuln triggers Amazon, Rackspace reboot panic redux

Newly discovered vulnerabilities in the open source Xen virtualization hypervisor have once again sent major public cloud companies scurrying to patch and reboot their systems before attackers can pull off a massive exploit.


Amazon and Rackspace have both announced that they will need to reboot some of their servers to address the issue before March 10, when the Xen Project plans to disclose the latest bugs. Details of the vulns are being withheld for now, to give the cloud vendors time to patch.


In a FAQ about the upcoming maintenance, Amazon Web Services said that only some of its earliest Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) customers should be affected.


"We have built the capability to live-update the vast majority of our fleet; however, we have not yet enabled this capability on some of our older hardware," the online retail giant said. "This older hardware is what’s being rebooted."


Rackspace also said that only a portion of its machines will be affected, but it cautioned customers to be prepared for potential outages.


"We understand that any downtime impacts your business and we do not make this decision lightly," Rackspace said. "In preparation for a potential reboot, we recommend that you take proactive steps to ensure your environment is configured to return to proper operations."


Like Amazon, Rackspace says it plans to have all of its affected First Generation and Next Generation cloud servers patched and rebooted by Monday, March 9, and that the first reboots will on Monday, March 2.


This isn't the first time cloud vendors have been bitten by bugs in Xen. In fact, the last time was less than six months ago, when a vuln that allowed unauthorized memory access forced a similar mass reboot.


Other cloud vendors are likely to be affected, but not all of them. Microsoft, for example, uses a homegrown hypervisor for its Azure cloud. But IBM's SoftLayer cloud reportedly also had to reboot systems to address last year's Xen bugs, so it likely will this time, too (although we haven't heard anything yet).


Admins who run Xen on their own machines should likewise be on the lookout for patches from their OS vendors in the next couple of weeks. ®


Sponsored: Prevent costly outages due to expired SSL certificates






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NoMoreRack - Any size Nature's Sleep 8" Cool Gel Memory Foam Mattress $299 (Reg. Retail $1,700)

thermor-bios-bullet-action-camera.jpg

HOT! Posted 1 day, 14 hours ago


Head off on that next great adventure and catch it all in detail with this Thermor Bios 1080p Bullet Action Camera from Staples. For a short time, the've reduced this camcorder to just $99.99. Features include a wearable, mountable design CMOS image sensor for crystal-clear visuals and it's waterproof up to 33", making it perfect for capturing underwater footage. This deal is good through 03/03/2015.



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A gun machine that shoots dumplings together would be the greatest thing

A gun machine that shoots dumplings together would be the greatest thing


The world should put together all their brain power and weapons experts and artillery and dumpling ammo so that we can make this dumpling gun machine happen. Imagine a world where at a push of a button we can shoot out the perfect amount of meat, spice it, wrap it and cook it in less than 2 seconds.


That's the world I want to live in. Those are the guns I want in my house. NTT Docomo continues to dream up the best make believe cooking inventions in their faking cooking show ad spots.




SPLOID is delicious brain candy. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.






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Best Buy - Sauder Beginnings Writing Table $36 shipped (reg. $60)

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HOT! Posted 1 day, 14 hours ago


Head off on that next great adventure and catch it all in detail with this Thermor Bios 1080p Bullet Action Camera from Staples. For a short time, the've reduced this camcorder to just $99.99. Features include a wearable, mountable design CMOS image sensor for crystal-clear visuals and it's waterproof up to 33", making it perfect for capturing underwater footage. This deal is good through 03/03/2015.



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Walmart - Gibson Home Tolleson 1.32 Gal. Glass Drink Dispenser w/Square Basket Base $15 (reg. $25)

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HOT! Posted 1 day, 14 hours ago


Head off on that next great adventure and catch it all in detail with this Thermor Bios 1080p Bullet Action Camera from Staples. For a short time, the've reduced this camcorder to just $99.99. Features include a wearable, mountable design CMOS image sensor for crystal-clear visuals and it's waterproof up to 33", making it perfect for capturing underwater footage. This deal is good through 03/03/2015.



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FCC says cities should be free to run decent ISPs. And Republicans can't stand it

Analysis A decision by the FCC has opened up a partisan chasm by quashing US state laws that hamper the rollout of city-owned broadband.


The commission declared on Thursday that laws passed in North Carolina and Tennessee were unfair barriers to broadband deployment. In so doing has put itself in the middle of two classic American fights: state versus federal; and corporate might versus public interest.


In response, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) and House rep Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) proposed legislation to Congress on Friday to undo the FCC's decision.


“It is disturbing, yet not surprising, that the FCC and Chairman [Tom] Wheeler are attempting to deny the sovereign right of states to make their own laws,” said Senator Tillis. He was speaker of North Carolina's House of Representatives when the state passed a law that restricted the building of high-speed broadband networks owned by individual cities.


Representative Blackburn took much the same line: "We don't need unelected bureaucrats in Washington telling our states what they can and can't do with respect to protecting their limited taxpayer dollars and private enterprises."


Meanwhile, in the wake of the FCC decision's on city-run internet, telcos and ISPs are mounting a legal challenge to the ruling – and have been playing to a Republican base.


"If you allow municipalities to expand their networks beyond their footprints, it is very similar to Obamacare where you allow government to step in and invest untold amounts of money into something that already exists while stifling further private investment and threatening further private sector job creation opportunities," Bruce Mottern, manager of state government affairs for TDS Telecom in Kentucky and Tennessee, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press.


Same as the FCC


A split was equally evident within the FCC itself. The vote by the watchdog's commissioners on city broadband laws was divided by party lines: the chairman and two Democratic commissioners strongly in support of allowing cities to build their own networks, and the two Republicans commissioners strongly opposed.


The arguments are the same too: on one side, internet providers are abusing their influence and financial might to get laws passed that restrict competition from state-run companies; on the other, the federal government is interfering in state issues, and municipalities should not be messing in the free market. Both sides also share compelling arguments.


Democrat-backed Commissioner Mignon Clyburn highlighted that the restrictive laws – which are on the books in 21 states in one form or another – are suspiciously similar. "What is striking," she said yesterday, "is that the language in all of these bills is nearly identical. The only thing that has changed is the lack of bipartisan support."


The implication, of course, being that ISPs are running a concerted campaign and using partisan politics to cloud their commercial imperative.


Democrat Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel talked competition: "Today we tear down barriers that prevent [municipal ISPs] from expanding their broadband service and offering more consumers more competitive choice."


On the other side, Republican-backed Commissioner Michael O'Rielly sees it as unwelcome entry into both the free market and state law: "Let me start by expressing my profound opposition to the offering of broadband or any communications service by a government entity, in this case a municipality. Some people like to talk about the principles of network compacts, but this issue goes to the core of more important principles: the foundations of the US economy and free enterprise."


The real issues


Getting to the heart of the matter, many of the state laws passed appear designed to undermine municipal ISPs.


For example, one restricts a municipal supplier from charging less than the market rate – which is set by the commercial ISPs – regardless of whether they can do so while still making a profit. Another restricts the municipal supplier from selling anywhere that it does not provide electricity, i.e. limiting its expansion beyond its current reach.


Others impose a range of bureaucratic hurdles, such as having to run a special referendum, and organize public hearings, pilot projects and cost-benefit analyses before setting up a broadband service.


Each law is justifiable within itself: it prevents the free market from being undermined; stops government creep; protects taxpayer money, etc – but together the rules form a patchwork that effectively make it impossible for municipal ISPs to compete.


It has not been hard for people to find examples of where the laws create stark discrepancies.


"What we're looking at here in Tennessee are people who are literally a tenth of a mile off of our system who have no Internet access," Harold DePriest, chief exec of EPB, Chattanooga's city-owned power utility, told the Washington Post.


FCC chairman Tom Wheeler started his statement with a quote from Mayor Gary Fuller of Opelika, Alabama: "How does Opelika, a city of fewer than 30,000 people, offer internet speeds 100 times faster than the national average?"


The local news station in Chattanooga discovered Richard and Brenda Thornton, who pay $316 a month for their internet access, but could get the exact same services for $133 a month from a municipal supplier. And what’s more, the local cable company refused to extend its broadband service to their house.


Poor competition


All of this comes following the publication of stats that show competition in broadband services, especially at higher speeds, is very limited across the United States, and that the US continues to lag much of the rest of the developed world in broadband provision.


At the macro level, it is the combination of the United States' huge size and its inherent distrust of government in favor of the free market that has led to the current situation.


While most Americans would view the collapse of a commercial ISP as a minor consequence of a free market, loses made by a municipal supplier, funded by taxpayer dollars and then possibly requiring a taxpayer bailout is unacceptable.


As Senator Tillis highlighted today in his legislation, the City of Wilson – whose petition to the FCC started the ball rolling – only made a profit of $720,000 in 2013, having lost nearly $7m over the previous five years of operation.


The bigger issue, and one that played out decisively and very publicly at the Federal Communication Commission on Thursday, is that internet access has become so essential to many people that the vagaries and tough realities of the business world seem somehow out of place.


While the comparison to Obamacare may seem ridiculous, it points to a bigger philosophical split: how far should the government go in aiding society?


The current majority in the FCC clearly believes that the internet is a service that we should make sure is provided to as many people are possible at the lowest cost possible. The possible future majority of the FCC will almost certainly see things differently. ®


Sponsored: Protecting mobile certificates






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This Unusually Short-Lived Fish Could Hold the Secrets to Getting Old

This Unusually Short-Lived Fish Could Hold the Secrets to Getting Old


The turquoise killifish is largely unremarkable except for how fast it ages . In just three months, it goes from a spry, young fish (left) to a decrepit, old one (right). For scientists who study aging, the turquoise killifish could be the key to their future experiments.


The fish is one of the shortest lived vertebrates in the world. Originally found in temporary ponds that form in East Africa's rainy season, it doesn't have much reason to live long. After a few months, writes Carl Zimmer inthe New York Times , they lose muscle, become infertile, and get sick more often—not unlike humans.


The vast majority of scientific research is done in a few model organisms: mice, rats, fruit flies, and a little nematode worm called Caenorhabditis elegans. Fruit flies and C. elegans are invertebrates, making many questions about aging in humans—such as why our bones get frail as we get older–impossible to study. Mice and rats are closer to humans, but they live for years rather than months.


Enter the turquoise killifish, where rapid aging is a plus rather than a minus. A Stanford lab has spent years developing it into a model organism. In a paper published recently in Cell , they detail a genetic toolkit that includes the fish's entire sequenced genome as well as the locations of several aging-related genes. New genetic tools like CRISPR are helping scientist identify relevant genes more easily than ever. Anti-aging drugs could also be tested on the fish. The turquoise killifish could usher in a new, uh, age of anti-aging research. [New York Times, NIH]


Image credit: Itamar Harel




Contact the author at sarah@gizmodo.com.






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How Video Gamers Are Reinventing Golf

Last October more than 40,000 people poured into Seoul's World Cup Stadium to watch teams of professionals compete in a battle-arena video game called League of Legends.


Millions more tuned in online through the live-streaming website Twitch, which Amazon had purchased two months earlier for $970 million.


It all marked a seminal moment in gaming—the moment it ascended from the fringe to the mainstream. South Korea was the first to fall, and soon, experts predict, will the United States. More than 1.2 billion people worldwide spend more than three billion hours a week playing video games. Colleges are establishing e-sports teams within their athletic departments, and last year, professional gamers competed for more than $34 million in prize money.


Could it be that golf's future grassroots movement rests not on the fairway of the local muny, but within the confines of a virtual reality?


Espen Pedersen had been waiting for this day for two years. It was 2012, and he'd practiced almost every evening. If he put too many hours in, he'd get sore. Behind his shoulder blades mostly, but sometimes he felt it in his wrists, too. His first hole started well, but not unusually: A deep drive down the middle and a cool pitch that checked up and dropped into the hole. Eagle.


The par-5 third required a little more imagination. Because Espen knew he couldn't carry the trees on the right, he entrusted a knockdown approach shot he'd taught himself a few months earlier. The ball scooted low and rolled onto the green, and a few moments later, he made the putt. Eagle.


Espen, 42, was born and raised in Trondheim, a large, coastal city in Norway. His older brother was one of the 17 million people in the 1980s to own a Commodore 64—one of those big, bulky machines that resembled a washing machine more than a computer. His brother taught himself how to program, and pretty soon he was building games that they could play together.


Espen's interest in golf came at about the same time. It wasn't a playing interest—"I'm still a beginner after 25 years," he says—but more as a fan. He was seduced by Greg Norman's flock of blond hair and long drives. He loved how Seve Ballesteros always managed to find a way to get the ball in the hole.


"Golf never ceases to amaze me," Espen says, "like how your favorite golf hole can turn into a nightmare in a second." Espen was 13 under when he made the turn. If he played his next nine holes in 11 under, he'd shoot 24 under—then the lowest 18-hole score ever recorded on a Nintendo Wii.


Espen got his Wii in 2010, four years after the console first launched and captured the attention of the masses. A dad with three small children, he didn't have the desire to overcome the traditional time/money barriers surrounding the game, but he still needed his golf fix. Wii filled that void, and it gave him something to do when he wasn't busy with the kids.


He played a lot, and it took him only a couple months to set the world record for lowest 18-hole score on Nintendo Wii— the one he was now trying to beat. He shot 24 under, submitted it to Wii-Records.com, and promptly stopped playing. But as the game's audience grew, he watched others dilute his record. A few others joined him at 24 under, and with a number of others in pursuit, he came out of retirement.


Espen started analyzing his rounds by propping a video camera up on the back of his sofa. Swinging back and through on the same plane is vitally important in Wii, so that dominated his attention. For two years he memorized angles, studied wind direction and scrutinized green undulations. He practiced once his kids went to bed, restarting rounds each time he made a mistake. Sometimes, he'd play until the early rays of sunlight crept into his living room. Espen was almost shaking with nerves by the time he got to the tee of the 18th, the sixth par 5 of the round, and his practice swings had grown increasingly methodical. He knocked his drive into the fairway, his second onto the green, and his third into the hole. Eagle.


The world's most absurd round was in the record books: nine birdies, nine eagles, 14 one-putts, 45 strokes, 27 under par. After two years, Espen had done it. He took a deep breath and let it all sink in, and when the scorecard flashed onto the screen a few moments later, tears came to his eyes.


Look in the corner of your local dive bar, and you'll likely see the video game that began it all. Golden Tee quickly developed a cult following after it was brought to market in 1989. People would fly in to play official tournaments at a Golden Tee bar in Illinois. The prize money at its Chicago Open once eclipsed $30,000. "You don't understand," one Golden Tee addict told Golf World in 2003, "there's something about this game that grabs hold of you and won't let go." The games might have changed since then, but that kind of addictiveness has hardly diminished.


Buzz Swenson is 31 years old and a 9-handicap. When he switches to Xbox golf with friends, they play for dollar-a-hole skins with $1 bets on both nines to make it an even $20. Buzz came up with the system one day after he and friends were rained off the golf course, but it has since turned into a tradition.


"My friends and I are serious competitors," he says. "It doesn't matter if it's a bet about who will chug their beer the fastest, or who can hit the 100-yard sign on the range first, there will be money involved. Video games allow for skins, so it's a natural transition."


In 1998, EA Sports signed Tiger Woods to be the face of its PlayStation and Xbox golf games, a deal that lasted 15 years and brought Tiger as much as $20 million a year. Every detail of his swing was computerized through the use of a skin-tight, motion-capture suit, as was every slight undulation of the courses featured in the game.






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