Slashdot Mirror

mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "BBC Reports: 'Computer and Video Games, which in 1981 was the world's first magazine dedicated to gaming, is facing closure. The title, which has been online-only since 2004, may stop publishing at the end of a 45-day consultation period that began on 14 May, sources said. However, its publishers, Future, are also believed to be looking into selling off the brand. The magazine is behind the gaming industry's Golden Joystick Awards, a yearly event held since 1983. Early issues of the magazine were seen as being instrumental in helping small-time games developers to get their titles out there, said Mr Henderson — a trend that he thought was beginning to re-emerge as apps and mobile gaming have taken off.'"

mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "BBC Reports: 'Computer and Video Games, which in 1981 was the world's first magazine dedicated to gaming, is facing closure. The title, which has been online-only since 2004, may stop publishing at the end of a 45-day consultation period that began on 14 May, sources said. However, its publishers, Future, are also believed to be looking into selling off the brand. The magazine is behind the gaming industry's Golden Joystick Awards, a yearly event held since 1983. Early issues of the magazine were seen as being instrumental in helping small-time games developers to get their titles out there, said Mr Henderson — a trend that he thought was beginning to re-emerge as apps and mobile gaming have taken off.'"

AT&T is acquiring satellite TV provider DirecTV in a deal worth $48.5 billion. This will bring 20 million more U.S. television subscribers under AT&T's roof, making it the second biggest TV provider, behind Comcast. The deal is subject to regulatory approval, and to help that along, AT&T says it will sell its 8% stake in America Movil, which is a competitor to DirecTV in some areas. "By acquiring the country’s biggest satellite television operator, AT&T will help bolster its competitive position against Comcast. Though pay television is considered a mature market whose subscriber growth has slowed dramatically in recent years, the business nonetheless generates billions of dollars in cash. ... Part of the attraction may be DirecTV’s ample cash flow. While its business has shown little growth in recent years, it generated about $8 billion in earnings last year. Much of that will go toward future investments in growth, AT&T said, including bidding at least $9 billion for wireless network capacity that the government plans to auction off soon. By gaining satellite TV, AT&T may also be able to free up capacity on its existing broadband network."

An anonymous reader writes "The Tux3 file-system that's been in development since 2008 as the public replacement to the patent-blocked Tux2 file-system is now under review for inclusion into the Linux kernel. Tux3 tries to act as a 'light, tight, modern file-system. We offer a fresh approach to some ancient problems,' according to its lead developer, Daniel Phillips. Tux3 strives for minimal resource consumption but lacks enterprise-grade reliability at this point. Tux3, at the end of the day, tries to be 'robust, fast, and simple' with the Linux FS reportedly being as fast as other well known file-systems. Details on the project are at Tux3.org."

KentuckyFC writes: "In behavioral psychology, the theory of operant conditioning is the notion that an individual's future behavior is determined by the punishments and rewards he or she has received in the past. It means that specific patterns of behavior can be induced by punishing unwanted actions while rewarding others. While the theory is more than 80 years old, it is hard at work in the 21st century in the form of up- and down-votes — or likes and dislikes — on social networks. But does this form of reward and punishment actually deter unwanted actions while encouraging good behavior? Now a new study of the way voting influences online behavior has revealed the answer. The conclusion: negative feedback leads to behavioral changes that are hugely detrimental to the community. Not only do authors of negatively-evaluated content contribute more but their future posts are of lower quality and are perceived by the community as such. What's more, these authors are more likely to evaluate fellow users negatively in future, creating a vicious circle of negative feedback. By contrast, positive feedback does not influence authors much at all. That's exactly the opposite of what operant conditioning theory predicts. The researchers have a better suggestion for social networks: 'Given that users who receive no feedback post less frequently, a potentially effective strategy could be to ignore undesired behavior and provide no feedback at all.' Would Slashdotters agree?"

An anonymous reader quote the BBC: "Fossilised bones of a dinosaur believed to be the largest creature ever to walk the Earth have been unearthed in Argentina, palaeontologists say. Based on its huge thigh bones, it was 40m (130ft) long and 20m (65ft) tall. Weighing in at 77 tonnes, it was as heavy as 14 African elephants, and seven tonnes heavier than the previous record holder, Argentinosaurus. Scientists believe it is a new species of titanosaur — an enormous herbivore dating from the Late Cretaceous period. A local farm worker first stumbled on the remains in the desert near La Flecha, about 250km (135 miles) west of Trelew, Patagonia."

An anonymous reader writes with some snippets pulled from a lengthy Q&A session at The New Yorker with former NSA head Keith Alexander, in which Alexander defends the collection of metadata by U.S. spy agencies both abroad and within the United States: "The probability of an attack getting through to the United States, just based on the sheer numbers, from 2012 to 2013, that I gave you—look at the statistics. If you go from just eleven thousand to twenty thousand, what does that tell you? That's more. That's fair, right? [..] These aren't my stats. The University of Maryland does it for the State Department. [...] The probability is growing. What I saw at N.S.A. is that there is a lot more coming our way. Just as someone is revealing all the tools and the capabilities we have. What that tells me is we're at greater risk. I can't measure it. You can't say, Well, is that enough to get through? I don't know. It means that the intel community, the military community, and law enforcement are going to work harder."

Curtis Peterson says admins who hang onto their servers instead of moving into the cloud are 'Server Huggers,' a term he makes sound like 'Horse Huggers,' a phrase that once might have been used to describe hackney drivers who didn't want to give up their horse-pulled carriages in favor of gasoline-powered automobiles. Curtis is VP of Operations for RingCentral, a cloud-based VOIP company, so he's obviously made the jump to the cloud himself. And he has reassuring words for sysadmins who are afraid the move to cloud-based computing is going to throw them out of work. He says there are plenty of new cloud computing opportunities springing up for those who have enough initiative and savvy to grab onto them, by which he obviously means you, right?

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "BBC reports that Autodesk — the leading 3D modelling software-maker — is going into hardware with its own 3D printer and in addition to selling the machine, Autodesk will also allow other manufacturers to make their own versions of the printer or power their own models off its software at no cost. 'The printer is a bona fide attempt to prove the interoperability and open source nature of Autodesk's platform,' says Pete Basiliere. 'And by sharing its design we could see a second wave of small start-ups creating stereolithography machines just as the makers did when the early material extrusion patents expired.' Chief executive Carl Bass likened the new printer to Google's first Nexus smartphone, a product meant to inspire other manufacturers to install Android on their handsets rather than become a bestseller itself. In Autodesk's case the idea is to drive the adoption of its new Spark software, a product it likens to being an 'operating system for 3D-printing'. Although Autodesk is giving away both Spark and the printer's design, the company should still profit because the move would drive demand for the firm's other products. 'If 3D printing succeeds we succeed, because the only way you can print is if you have a 3D model, and our customers are the largest makers of 3D models in the world.'

Instead of the extrusion technique most commonly used by existing budget printers, Autodesk's printer uses a laser to harden liquid plastic to create the objects delivering smoother, more complex and more detailed objects. 'We're making a printer that, rather than just being able to load in proprietary materials, you can load in any material you want. You can formulate your own polymers and experiment with those. That's an important next step because we think material science is a breakthrough that has to happen to make [the industry] go from low-volume 3D-printed stuff to where it really starts changing manufacturing.' Bass said, its printer is targeted at more professional users–for creating small objects like medical devices or jewelry–and will likely end up closer to the $5,000 range, though exact pricing has not been set."

Daniel_Stuckey (2647775) writes with news that we may soon learn which countries were sold the FinFisher malware package to spy on their own citizens. "The UK's High Court ruled yesterday that HM Revenue and Customs acted 'unlawfully' when it declined to detail how it was investigating the export of digital spy tools created by a British company. Human rights group Privacy International is celebrating the decision of Mr. Justice Green, which means HMRC now has to reconsider releasing information on its investigation into controls surrounding the export of malware known as FinFisher, created by British supplier Gamma International. The widespread FinFisher malware family, also known as FinSpy, can carry out a range of surveillance operations, from snooping on Skype and Facebook conversations to siphoning off emails or files sitting on a device. It is supposed to benefit law enforcement in their investigations, but has allegedly been found in various nations with poor human rights records, including Bahrain and Ethiopia."

KentuckyFC (1144503) writes "There is growing evidence that the center of the Milky Way contains a mysterious object some 4 million times more massive than the Sun. Many astronomers believe that this object, called Sagittarius A*, is a supermassive black hole that was crucial in the galaxy's birth and formation. The thinking is that about 100 million years after the Big Bang, this supermassive object attracted the gas and dust that eventually became the Milky Way. But there is a problem with this theory--100 million years is not long enough for a black hole to grow so big. The alternative explanation is that Sagittarius A* is a wormhole that connects the Milky Way to another region of the universe or even a another multiverse. Cosmologists have long known that wormholes could have formed in the instants after the Big Bang and that these objects would have been preserved during inflation to appear today as supermassive objects hidden behind an event horizon, like black holes. It's easy to imagine that it would be impossible to tell these objects apart. But astronomers have now worked out that wormholes are smaller than black holes and so bend light from an object orbiting close to them, such as a plasma cloud, in a unique way that reveals their presence. They've even simulated what such a wormhole will look like. No telescope is yet capable of resolving images like these but that is set to change too. An infrared instrument called GRAVITY is currently being prepared for the Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile and should be in a position to spot the signature of a wormhole, if it is there, in the next few years."

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Adrienne LaFrance reports at the Atlantic that if you've tried listening to any of the old CDs lately from your carefully assembled collection from the 1980's or 1990's you may have noticed that many of them won't play. 'While most of the studio-manufactured albums I bought still play, there's really no telling how much longer they will. My once-treasured CD collection — so carefully assembled over the course of about a decade beginning in 1994 — isn't just aging; it's dying. And so is yours.'

Fenella France, chief of preservation research and testing at the Library of Congress is trying to figure out how CDs age so that we can better understand how to save them. But it's a tricky business, in large part because manufacturers have changed their processes over the years and even CDs made by the same company in the same year and wrapped in identical packaging might have totally different lifespans. 'We're trying to predict, in terms of collections, which of the types of CDs are the discs most at risk,' says France. 'The problem is, different manufacturers have different formulations so it's quite complex in trying to figure out what exactly is happening because they've changed the formulation along the way and it's proprietary information.' There are all kinds of forces that accelerate CD aging in real time. Eventually, many discs show signs of edge rot, which happens as oxygen seeps through a disc's layers. Some CDs begin a deterioration process called bronzing, which is corrosion that worsens with exposure to various pollutants. The lasers in devices used to burn or even play a CD can also affect its longevity. 'The ubiquity of a once dominant media is again receding. Like most of the technology we leave behind, CDs are are being forgotten slowly,' concludes LaFrance. 'We stop using old formats little by little. They stop working. We stop replacing them. And, before long, they're gone.'" You can donate CDs to be tested for aging characteristics by emailing the Center for the Library's Analytical Science Samples. I haven't had much trouble ripping discs that were pressed in the 80s (and acquired from used CD stores with who knows how many previous owners), but I'm starting to get nervous about not having flac rips of most of my discs.

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Adrienne LaFrance reports at the Atlantic that if you've tried listening to any of the old CDs lately from your carefully assembled collection from the 1980's or 1990's you may have noticed that many of them won't play. 'While most of the studio-manufactured albums I bought still play, there's really no telling how much longer they will. My once-treasured CD collection — so carefully assembled over the course of about a decade beginning in 1994 — isn't just aging; it's dying. And so is yours.'

Fenella France, chief of preservation research and testing at the Library of Congress is trying to figure out how CDs age so that we can better understand how to save them. But it's a tricky business, in large part because manufacturers have changed their processes over the years and even CDs made by the same company in the same year and wrapped in identical packaging might have totally different lifespans. 'We're trying to predict, in terms of collections, which of the types of CDs are the discs most at risk,' says France. 'The problem is, different manufacturers have different formulations so it's quite complex in trying to figure out what exactly is happening because they've changed the formulation along the way and it's proprietary information.' There are all kinds of forces that accelerate CD aging in real time. Eventually, many discs show signs of edge rot, which happens as oxygen seeps through a disc's layers. Some CDs begin a deterioration process called bronzing, which is corrosion that worsens with exposure to various pollutants. The lasers in devices used to burn or even play a CD can also affect its longevity. 'The ubiquity of a once dominant media is again receding. Like most of the technology we leave behind, CDs are are being forgotten slowly,' concludes LaFrance. 'We stop using old formats little by little. They stop working. We stop replacing them. And, before long, they're gone.'" You can donate CDs to be tested for aging characteristics by emailing the Center for the Library's Analytical Science Samples. I haven't had much trouble ripping discs that were pressed in the 80s (and acquired from used CD stores with who knows how many previous owners), but I'm starting to get nervous about not having flac rips of most of my discs.

An anonymous reader writes "You might recall the Debian port that is coming to OpenRISC (which is by the way making good progress with 5000 packages building) — Olof, a developer on the OpenRISC project, recently posted a lengthy status update about what's going on with OpenRISC. A few highlights are upstreamed binutils support, multicore becoming a thing, atomic operations, and a new build system for System-on-Chips."

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Daniel Gilbert reports at the WSJ that Oklahoma oil man George Kaiser is breaking with fellow energy executives in asking the state to raise taxes on oil companies, including his own. 'Oklahoma is in desperate financial circumstances,' says the billionaire who controls Kaiser-Francis Oil Co. Kaiser says a higher tax on oil-and-gas production could help the state pay for education and much needed infrastructure improvements, and is asking legislators to return the state's gross production tax to 7 percent, challenging a plan proposed by fellow oil company executives who want to see the rate settle at 2 percent for the first four years of production.

Several energy companies and the State Chamber of Oklahoma say that lower tax rates for the costliest oil and gas wells are necessary to continue drilling at a pace that has stimulated economic activity and created other sources of revenue. Berry Mullennix, CEO at Tulsa-based Panther Energy, credits the tax program for helping his company grow to more than 90 employees, up from 18 a few years ago. 'I would argue the tax incentive is a direct reason we have so much horizontal drilling in the state today,' Mullennix says ... When companies decide to drill a well, they make their best guesses on how much it will cost to drill the well, how much the well will produce and what the commodity price will be. All of those estimates can vary widely, Kaiser says. 'With ad valorem taxes, the difference among states is 2 or 3 or 4 percent. The other factors can vary by 50 or 100 percent.' Compared with those other factors, Kaiser says the tax rate is incidental. 'It's a rounding error.'"

sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Things were looking up for Earth about 12,800 years ago. The last Ice Age was coming to an end, mammoths and other large mammals romped around North America, and humans were beginning to settle down and cultivate wild plants. Then, suddenly, the planet plunged into a deep freeze, returning to near-glacial temperatures for more than a millennium before getting warm again. The mammoths disappeared at about the same time, as did a major Native American culture that thrived on hunting them. A persistent band of researchers has blamed this apparent disaster on the impact of a comet or asteroid, but a new study concludes that the real explanation for the chill, at least, may lie strictly with Earth-bound events."

You think you have problems getting a bank loan? It's much harder for a small-town woman in Uganda or India. But Indian microfinance provider ASOMI has more than 50 branches and over 40,000 clients, and is an active Mifos user. The loans ASOMI makes are absurdly small by U.S. bank (or Indian bank) standards. Ugandans in the same "I just need a little bit of money to start (or expand) my business" predicament can turn to RedMutual Microfinance. And so on around the world, with the bulk of microfinance operators who use open source Mifos concentrated in S. and S.E. Asia and India. "But," you say, "I'm an IT person. I don't want to go into the microfinance business, and one of the little loans (often less than $100) they deal with wouldn't help me." True. But you can become a Mifos Specialist, which Mifos defines as "a consulting firm that provides technical support and consultation for microfinance institutions evaluating and deploying Mifos, and for ongoing use and customization." You won't get rich doing this, but it looks like there's a decent living (by Kenyan or Indonesian standards) in working with Mifos. They can use volunteer help, too. So check out Mifos and see if it has anything to offer you -- or if you have anything to offer Mifos. Either way, you can help poor people in poor countries become entrepreneurs and break the cycle of poverty that holds them down. (Alternate video link)

An anonymous reader writes "Lost amid the disappointment of the Star Wars prequels were the unfortunate edits George Lucas has made to the original trilogy when he re-released them. Lee Hutchinson points out a few of the worst: 'In Return of the Jedi, Jabba's palace gains an asinine CGI-filled song-and-dance interlude. Dialogue is butchered in Empire Strikes Back. And in the first movie, perhaps most famously, Han no longer shoots first.' Lucas flat-out refused to spend time and money remastering the original versions of the movies. But now Disney is in control of the franchise (and the business case for releasing different versions of the same films has been proven). So there's hope, right? According to Hutchinson: maybe, but not for a while. While technological advances have reduced the price tag for such an endeavour, lawyers will keep it expensive. It turns out 20th Century Fox still owns distribution rights to the Star Wars films. Because of complex and irritating legal reasons, Disney was not able to acquire those as well. Thus, Disney will have to get Fox's approval and probably cut Fox in for some of the profits, if they were to re-release the series."

necro81 writes: "The FDA today approved the Luke prosthetic arm for sale. The Luke Arm, created by Dean Kamen's DEKA R&D Corp., was a project initiated by DARPA to develop a prosthetic arm for wounded warriors more advanced than those previously available. The Arm can be configured for below-the-elbow, above-the-elbow, and shoulder-level amputees. The full arm has 10 powered degrees of freedom and has the look and weight of the arm it replaces. Through trials by DEKA and the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, the Arm has been used by dozens of amputees for a total of many thousands of hours. Commercialization is still pending."

KentuckyFC (1144503) writes "One of the most profound advances in science in recent years is the way researchers from a variety of fields are beginning to formulate the problem of consciousness in mathematical terms, in particular using information theory. That's largely thanks to a relatively new theory that consciousness is a phenomenon which integrates information in the brain in a way that cannot be broken down. Now a group of researchers has taken this idea further using algorithmic theory to study whether this kind of integrated information is computable. They say that the process of integrating information is equivalent to compressing it. That allows memories to be retrieved but it also loses information in the process. But they point out that this cannot be how real memory works; otherwise, retrieving memories repeatedly would cause them to gradually decay. By assuming that the process of memory is non-lossy, they use algorithmic theory to show that the process of integrating information must noncomputable. In other words, your PC can never be conscious in the way you are. That's likely to be a controversial finding but the bigger picture is that the problem of consciousness is finally opening up to mathematical scrutiny for the first time."

First time accepted submitter systemDead (3645325) writes "I looked mostly with disinterest at Debian's decision last February to switch to systemd as the default init system for their future operating system releases. The Debian GNU/Linux distribution is, after all, famous for allowing users greater freedom to choose what system components they want to install. This appeared to be the case with the init system, given the presence of packages such as sysvinit-core, upstart, and even openrc as alternatives to systemd.

Unfortunately, while still theoretically possible, installing an alternative init system means doing without a number of useful, even essential system programs. By design, systemd appears to be a full-blown everything-including-the-kitchen-sink solution to the relatively simple problem of starting up a Unix-like system. Systemd, for example, is a hard-coded dependency for installing Network Manager, probably the most user-friendly way for a desktop Linux system to connect to a wireless or wired network. Just this week, I woke up to find out that systemd had become a dependency for running PolicyKit, the suite of programs responsible for user privileges and permissions in a typical Linux desktop.

I was able to replace Network Manager with connman, a lightweight program originally developed for mobile devices. But with systemd infecting even the PolicyKit framework, I find myself faced with a dilemma. Should I just let systemd take over my entire system, or should I retreat to my old terminal-based computing in the hope that the horde of the systemDead don't take over the Linux kernel itself?

What are your plans for working with or working around systemd? Are there any mainstream GNU/Linux distros that haven't adopted and have no plans of migrating to systemd? Or is migrating to one of the bigger BSD systems the better and more future-proof solution?"

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Joan Lowy writes for AP that the Department of Transportation has issued an emergency order requiring that railroads inform state emergency management officials about the movement of large shipments of crude oil through their states and urged shippers not to use older model tanks cars that are easily ruptured in accidents, even at slow speeds. The emergency order follows a warning two weeks ago from outgoing National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman that the department risks a 'higher body count' as the result of fiery oil train accidents if it waits for new safety regulations to become final. There have been nine oil train derailments in the U.S. and Canada since March of last year, many of them resulting in intense fires and sometimes the evacuation of nearby residents, according to the NTSB. The latest was last week, when a CSX train carrying Bakken crude derailed in downtown Lynchburg, Va., sending three tank cars into the James River and shooting flames and black smoke into the air. Concern about the safe transport of crude oil was heightened after a runaway oil train derailed and then exploded last July in the small town of Lac-Megantic in Canada, just across the border from Maine. More than 60 tank cars spilled more than 1.3 million gallons of oil. Forty-seven people were killed and 30 buildings destroyed in the resulting inferno. Hersman says that over her 10 years on the board she has 'seen a lot of difficulty when it comes to safely rules being implemented if we don't have a high enough body count. That is a tombstone mentality. We know the steps that will prevent or mitigate these accidents. What is missing is the will to require people to do so.'"

You know who maddog is, right? He's one of our favorite speakers on what we might call the Linux/FOSS circuit. So you know, despite the Noel Coward song that says, "Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun," Jon prefers shade much of the time when he's in a tropical climate, based on personal observations at Linux conferences in Florida and Hawaii. But sun or shade, maddog is an eloquent and interesting speaker. We'd like to take you all to hear him in person, but we can't, so this video is the next best thing. (Alternate Video Link)

KentuckyFC (1144503) writes "Last year, astronomers announced that a small ball of ice and rock heading towards the inner Solar System could turn out to be the most eye-catching comet in living memory. They calculated that Comet Ison's orbit would take it behind the Sun but that it would then head towards Earth where it would put on a spectacular display of heavenly fireworks. Sure enough, Ison brightened dramatically as it headed Sunwards. But as astronomers watched on the evening of 28 November, the brightly flaring Ison moved behind the Sun but never emerged. The comet simply disappeared. Now a new analysis of the death of Ison suggests that the comet was doomed long before it reached the Sun. Images from several Sun-observing spacecraft that had a unique view of events, indicate that Ison exhausted its supply of water and other ice in the final flare-ups as it approached the Sun. The new study shows that all that was left in its last hours were a few hundred thousands pebbles glowing brightly as they vaporized in the Sun's heat. In fact, Comet Ison died in full view of the watching hordes of astronomers on Earth who did not realize what they were watching at the time."

msm1267 (2804139) writes with a bit of news from last week that seems to have slipped under the radar. The IETF TLS working group has reached consensus on dropping static RSA cipher suites from TLS 1.3, instead requiring the use of Diffie-Hellman Exchange (or the faster ellipitic curve variant). Static DH and not just ephemeral DH key exchange will be supported, so not all connections will have forward secrecy. The consensus is subject to change before the final TLS 1.3 specification is released, and there are still details to be worked out. The changes to the draft are pending as a git pull request.

msm1267 (2804139) writes with a bit of news from last week that seems to have slipped under the radar. The IETF TLS working group has reached consensus on dropping static RSA cipher suites from TLS 1.3, instead requiring the use of Diffie-Hellman Exchange (or the faster ellipitic curve variant). Static DH and not just ephemeral DH key exchange will be supported, so not all connections will have forward secrecy. The consensus is subject to change before the final TLS 1.3 specification is released, and there are still details to be worked out. The changes to the draft are pending as a git pull request.

msm1267 (2804139) writes with a bit of news from last week that seems to have slipped under the radar. The IETF TLS working group has reached consensus on dropping static RSA cipher suites from TLS 1.3, instead requiring the use of Diffie-Hellman Exchange (or the faster ellipitic curve variant). Static DH and not just ephemeral DH key exchange will be supported, so not all connections will have forward secrecy. The consensus is subject to change before the final TLS 1.3 specification is released, and there are still details to be worked out. The changes to the draft are pending as a git pull request.

Last week you had the chance to ask chef, travel writer, reality TV star, and all around food geek Ben Starr about sustainable farming, brewing, and building the perfect kitchen. Read below to see what he had to say. Kitchen Knives
by cphilo

What knives do you recommend? I use Chicago Cutlery, but I have been told that Wusthof is worth the money.

Ben: I have a collection of many different brands of knives, mostly gifts from other people, so I don't have a strict brand loyalty. I can tell you that the best knives I've ever worked with were Globals, which we used on MasterChef. They are as sharp as razor blades, you have to be very careful with them! My favorite knives in my home kitchen are Shun knives, made in Japan and of excellent quality, but they are breathtakingly expensive. (All were gifts!) When it comes to me, a cheapskate, buying knives for myself, I invariably fall to the IKEA Slitbar series. Their 6" full tang chef's knife is $24 with a nice wood inlay, sharp, heavy, balanced, and I don't have to worry about a dinner guest tossing them into the dishwasher, like I do with my expensive knives. If you're looking for a great knife series at a great price that you won't constantly worry about, you can't go wrong with IKEA Slitbar. And while we're on the subject, NEVER buy a set of knives. You don't need them all. Buy knives individually. You need a paring knife, a couple of 6" or 8" chef's knives (I have five), a bread knife, and possibly a boning knife if you like working with whole fish or breaking down your own meats (in which case you'll also need a cleaver). You can do pretty much anything with that.



How do I (slowly) assemble my own awesome kitchen
by krotscheck

What is the most efficient, and ordered, way to assemble a world-class kitchen? Many of us don't have the budget (especially when coming out of college) to buy all the crazy-awesome tools that make for a world class kitchen in one go, so we have to slowly purchase items as our budget allows and/or old cheaper items get used up. Do you have a recommended order, from a batchelor/ette's first egg pan to elaborate computerized sous-vide, in which someone can build their own world-class kitchen over several years?

Ben: 15 years ago when I first got out of college, my answer was totally different than it is today, because of one word: Craigslist. Back when I was out of college, my only option for getting a good Kitchenaid stand mixer was at full retail, brand new, at Williams Sonoma. Now I can pick one up for half that price or less, gently used, on Craigslist almost any day of the week. So don't be afraid to buy quality used kitchen items, these things are built to last 20-30 years if not longer. Start with pans, and you don't have to spend a pretty penny here. You need only one inexpensive nonstick pan, a small egg/omelet pan, and I recommend a ceramic coating rather than conventional nonstick surfaces, as they pose less health risk. Don't spent lots of dough on a nonstick pan, its surface will wear out eventually. Get the heaviest one you can find for cheap. I have only one "clad-type" saute pan, those expensive layered stainless steel pans with a copper core. Again, you can get them used, and a good one lasts forever. All the rest of my cookware is cast iron, which is cheap even when you buy it brand new. I love cast iron: a well-seasoned pan is almost as nonstick as Teflon, but sears beautifully in a way that nonstick pans never could. Check thrift stores and garage sales for used cast iron, it is easily rehabilitated even if it's crusty or rusty. Keep it in shape with a gentle hand washing after use (a well seasoned pan will clean up almost instantly), then dry it well, give it a light spray of cooking oil, and put it back in your pantry. The only time you'll ever regret your cast iron collection is when it comes time to move!

For appliances, start with the indispensable basics: a quality stand mixer (avoid the Artisan model Kitchenaids, they are underpowered, go for the bigger, stronger ones), a decent stick blender, and a food processor with a large capacity and plenty of attachments. As your technique becomes more sophisticated (and hopefully your income more lucrative) you can begin saving up for the biggies: a Vitamix blender, an immersion circulator (ie "sous vide") with vacuum sealer, and any additional equipment necessary for the food hobbies you'll inevitably acquire, like beer brewing, cheesemaking, charcuterie, etc. And, again, all these things can be acquired used on Craigslist, often for a song, with many, many years of life left. After that, specialty attachments for your Kitchenaid can follow, like pasta extruders, meat grinders, etc. Don't forget that companies OTHER than Kitchenaid manufacture attachments for it, and are often of much higher quality. I'm currently enamored with an all-stainless steel, fully dishwasher-safe meat grinder attachment made by a small Texas company called Smokehouse Chef, which actually cost me LESS than Kitchenaid's poorly-reviewed model.



The Presentation Layer
by Dissenter

As a chef that embraces modern technology, do you think that the 3D printed food technology is something you will have in your kitchen some day or is it just a fad?

Ben: Just as we've seen the movement of laboratory equipment into the commercial kitchens of Modernist chefs (cryovacs, immersion circulators, liquid nitrogen, rotary evaporators, etc.), we're going to be seeing 3D printed food pop up in those same kitchens in no time. I don't think Modernist cooking is going anywhere, but it most certainly represents the minority of chefs and restaurants. Most of us have no desire to eat foie gras cotton candy, citrus dust, and scallop foam on a regular basis...though on occasion it can be an intriguing, inspiring, and expensive curiosity. When it comes down to it, people in all cultures around the world invariably gravitate towards the honest, straightforward comfort foods they've enjoyed since childhood, so the home kitchen and the restaurant industry will always be dominated by authentic foods with a long heritage and a story behind them. High-tech food will never be more than a solid but rare corner of the industry that has a larger impact on its culture than its size belies, in the same way that a single groundbreaking artist may impact generations of artists after him/her...though their own body of work and those they influence still represent a tiny fraction of the whole body of human art.



Innovations in Brewing
by KermodeBear

What are some of the most interesting and promising recent innovations available to the home brewer?

Ben: I'm stoked about new ways of achieving barrel-aged flavors without the need for barrels. Ageing on wood chips was the old method, but new products from companies like Black Swan Cooperage are allowing a much faster maturation time and can be inserted right into the secondary fermentation bottle. As a chef and brewer, I'm also VERY excited to see more culinary beers on the market. I've been brewing beers with grapefruit and tamarind and bananas and cardamom for years, and for awhile, the purist community stuck their nose up at any beer that contained anything more than water, barley, hops and yeast. Not any longer!! Go hogwild, people. Brew me a beer with bacon fat and maple syrup! I'm excited to see a generation of highly drinkable gluten free beers emerging, so that beer lovers with gluten sensitivities can enjoy quality beer again. (There are now innovations in the mashing process that can remove most of the gluten from a full barley grain bill, so it's no longer necessary to resort to sorghum!)

Also, with the skyrocketing micro-brew trend, professional-quality equipment for brewing in larger-than-5-gallon batches is coming down in price and becoming more readily available (especially when small breweries go out of business and sell their equipment), making it possible for serious homebrewers to make the jump to brewing larger batches at home, and possibly even going professional, without having to sign away your firstborn child. But still, homebrewing is dominated by the do-it-yourself spirit of ordinary folks, rather than manufacturers and industry innovators, and beer innovation comes as we build and tweak our own mash tuns, wort chillers, and climate-controlled fermentation chambers in our garages. WE are the innovators.



Industrial Livestock and the High Meat Diet
by Sir_Eptishous

Do you agree with the following statement, and would you comment? Industrial livestock production and the high meat consumption diet of the industrialized world are unsustainable and are causing great damage to the Earths ecosystems, and that the only real solution being that the amount of meat being consumed must drop considerably.

Ben: I'm not sure how any rational human being could disagree with that statement. Our population is soaring. Developing nations are making the leap closer to becoming industrialized. This means more and more affluent meat eaters coming online each day. Our commercial meat production methods are already unsustainable, inhumane, and imminently susceptible to disaster, either from natural or engineered pathogens. Still, some nations meet their demands for meat on a smaller, localized scale without massive, industrialized, intensive production facilities...like France or Finland...where the majority of their population still enjoy meat on as regular a basis as Americans (though certainly in smaller portions), but the majority of animals are still raised on smaller, non-factory farms. I believe the biggest meat problems in America (other than poor animal husbandry) are portion size, with so much cooked meat going to waste, and low meat cost, which leads to mass spoilage and waste in the grocery store or the home fridge. If meat were more expensive, we would be more careful with it, not eat as much of it in one sitting, and be less likely to walk away from a grill full of chicken breasts (we can always throw some more on if they burn, right?) And meat raised on small farms most certainly costs more to produce, and therefore demands a higher retail price, in addition to being much higher quality. Raise the price of gas? People will use less of it and be more cautious with it. (Look at Portland.) It works the same with meat.



Re:Soylent Green
by HappyHead

More importantly, what do you think about Soylent, the food substitute?

Ben: Horrific name choice, to be certain, as no one would be able to find nutritive food substitutes appetizing with that name! When we think in terms of scale...yes, in a few hundred years, the population of the planet will be too large to be fed entirely on "natural" or minimally processed foods. Arable land is disappearing, climate is rapidly changing, and that's going to force us in two directions: genetic modification of crops and animals to be able to raise more of them on less land, and engineering food products that are more densely nutritious than, say, a tomato, in order to meet the body's minimum requirements. Pondering this type of future isn't inspiring for me. I don't eat "just to survive" and I never want to. Part of what separates us from the animal kingdom is our palates...we live to eat. Food is at the core of how we celebrate with loved ones, and how we share our love and passion with new friends. And as our current food supply becomes more and more engineered, we're seeing an ever-more-popular upwelling of resistance, with millions searching out foods that are closer to the earth, from small family farms, or growing their own. There's no reason to think this movement won't reach revolutionary proportions by the time Soylent is the primary source of calories on the planet. While Soylent may have been pioneered by someone who finds cooking and eating to be a burden, this is most definitely NOT the common sentiment on the planet. Virtually all people love to eat well. Many, if not most people love to cook. Soylent will not become common until it is the only affordable option.



Local gardens and farms?
by mlts

What do you think of replacing the stereotypical front yard with some type of garden and some home raising of animals (chickens come to mind)? I'm nowhere near a farmer, but having the ability to have food available a few feet away seems like a wise idea, especially with food prices skyrocketing.

Ben: This is already happening all over the US. People in Manhattan have chicken coops on their balconies. People are digging up backyards and front yards to plant tomatoes, and apartment dwellers are joining community gardens. I live in a 1300 square foot house on a tiny, suburban lot...but I have 11 chickens, a huge garden, fruit trees and bushes, and I produce enough food not only for my household and neighbors, but to supply my small, ephemeral restaurant. Not only is self-sufficiency (or at least partial self-sufficiency) a smart idea, it is ENORMOUSLY fulfilling to eat and share foods that you've raised yourself. However, it's important to realize that food production at home IS NOT CHEAPER than the grocery store. Mass-produced, industrial ingredients are far cheaper than the costs involved in having a garden and animals. My water bill in the summer is over $300 a month, just because of my garden...and I live in an area with very cheap water. Building a pen and coop for a few chickens will run into the hundreds, and feeding them even the cheapest available food is going to cost more per month than buying eggs from the grocery store. Feeding them organic? You don't even wanna know. Raising your own food isn't about saving money. But it is endlessly fulfilling, healthy, fun, and sets a strong example for those around you to begin reconnecting with the food chain.



scalability
by globaljustin

Mr. Starr, thanks for taking questions.

My question: When will we see a scalable local/organic logistics solution for delivering food to a large metro area? Ex: The size of Denver...we see stories of "innovative tech solutions" all the time here on /., but usually they are limited to one "green" building, one research team's "urban farm" concept, one restaurant chef applying these in one restaurant in Brooklyn... I'm asking when will we see one of those solutions applied at scale? I ask because in my mind that is the threshold or 'tipping point' in the industrial food situation.

Ben: I tend to be an excessively optimistic person, but I'm not sure I can be when this question is asked. Right now these innovative projects are far too expensive to be applied on a large scale. In this way (and in many other ways), our food supply mimics our energy supply. It won't be until we literally run out of petroleum sources that electric cars will become commonplace. It won't be until our coal and natural gas reserves are tapped out that you'll see solar panels and windows on many homes. As long as factory farms CAN produce meat and vegetables cheaply, they will be the primary suppliers of food on the planet. As long as the average person can buy 2 dozen conventional eggs for the same price as a dozen organic eggs, the majority of them will choose conventional. As technology advances and genetic engineering makes it cheaper for industrial farms to produce more food at less cost on less land, organics and urban farming will never be more than a curiosity for most, and fully embraced by only a few. But there is power in visibility and education. When a young person sees skyscrapers topped with vegetable gardens, or a college student takes note of a local chef who's supporting a local farmer and notices a change in the quality of the food, we're planting the seeds of change for that moment when it becomes NECESSARY for us to produce food for our cities inside our cities, and for people to be partially responsible for producing their own food.

But "Scalability" is the enemy of slow food. If skyscraper walls and roofs become farms, that becomes the business of corporations. And when the individual care and stewardship of the farmer is taken out of the picture, we end up with the same problems we have now. Large-scale "organic" farms are nothing of the sort, they still rely on chemicals and methods that are, in fact, not organic, to produce on the scale necessary to supply retailers. (The number of dangerous and non-organic compounds and methods now allowed by the USDA in farming practices and still have the "Certified Organic" label is appalling. Responsible, sustainable, organic farming cannot be accomplished on a large scale.) The only time we'll see sustainable, organic ingredients as the norm is when a fourth of our population is back in small-scale, diverse family farming. And our country's size, comparatively light population density, government, and economy do not encourage that.



Butchers
by Onuma

Current society focuses more and more on technology to make cooking easier, quicker, make prepared foods more readily accessible, etc. One area we have not really changed is butchering, except to say that there are far fewer butchers today than a generation ago. There could be no quality cuts of meat without them. Do you think butchers are a dying breed, or will we see a resurgence within that profession?

Ben: Butchering has most certainly changed with the advent of industrialized animal husbandry. Most butchering happens at centralized locations now, with steaks, chicken breasts, and the like being cut, packaged and delivered to the grocery store, rather than an in-store butcher doing the breaking down and packaging. Butchers are a rapidly vanishing phenomenon...you have to really search to find one in most places. The other day, I was at an upscale gourmet market and asked the person behind the meat counter if they could cut some flat iron steaks for me out of the chuck, and they looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language and said, "Everything comes already cut and packaged to us. We can't really cut anything for you." Luckily, as more and more folks are taking a closer look at their food, more artisan butcher shops are popping up in urban areas, and as long as some of us are willing to pay a little more to have our meat cut the way we like, and to know the name of the farm where that meat was raised, there will always be a butcher who will capitalize on that...as long as the law permits him to.



Fat Sick and Nearly Dead
by labnet

I've been watching some documentaries lately, along the lines of Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead & Food Matters (both worth watching).The common theme (which I have heard for many years now) is to eat raw and stay away from processed foods: the reason being; most chronic disease is caused by the lack of available micronutients. You may be getting energy from processed foods, but all the complex biomechanics for healthy cell life is being starved, causing heart disease, diabetes, weight gain, etc etc.From your experience with food around the world, what do you think is the optimum daily diet.

Ben: You've asked two very separate questions here. In terms of processed foods, I don't think any rational person thinks that a lifetime diet heavy in processed foods isn't going to cause significant health problems. (Whether or not they are willing and/or able to change their diet is a different issue.) In terms of converting to a raw diet, I think that's comparable to the question about Soylent. Are we eating simply to stay alive and keep at the top of our health? Or are we eating to celebrate and enjoy life? Perhaps when I'm 70 I'll have a different perspective on this, but I can guarantee you that I won't regret my life of enjoying whatever foods I want to. Now, I'm not overweight or diabetic, but I live an indulgent life. I don't deny myself a good beer or some fried chicken...when I want it, I enjoy it. Eating is one of the things that make life truly rich and enjoyable. And while I've had some lovely and interesting creations by raw chefs, heat transforms ingredients in a complex and interesting way. It makes ingredients BETTER (though in some cases it makes them less nutritious, and in other cases it makes them MORE nutritious). I admire those who staunchly live the raw lifestyle, because it's not easy. In the same vein as our hunter-gatherer ancestors, a much larger portion of their time and energy goes into acquiring their food than it does for you and me. And they obviously find it fulfilling enough to continue it. But I could NEVER do the exclusively raw thing. There's not enough diversity. My entire life is about food. I take incredible joy from both eating and cooking. But if your goal is exclusively to maximize your years on this planet...yes, you should be eating raw...and raising all your own food...and living as far away from urban centers and their pollution as possible...and following a carefully planned exercise and sleep routine...and then, are you truly LIVING? For me, the optimum daily diet is whatever I feel like eating, eating until I'm satisfied but not stuffed, being active in whatever way I ENJOY being active (ie...hiking and foraging and canoeing and playing with my chickens and my dog as time flies by, rather than languishing on a treadmill, counting the seconds until I'm done), and focusing on truly enjoying and appreciating my food, so that it enriches my life, and makes me happier and more fulfilled. Life is already too short to allow food to become a burden and a chore. Food should make life richer and more fun.

mask.of.sanity (1228908) writes "4chan's founder Moot has launched a bug bounty for the site after it was hacked, but is offering a meager $20 in 'self-serve ad spend' for all bugs. The bounty program was launched after the website and Moot's Amazon accounts were hacked. The intrusion spelled the end for DrawQuest which was closed after Moot decided it was not worth spending money to ensure the unprofitable but popular drawing platform was secure."

An anonymous reader writes "Level 3, an internet transit provider, claimed in a recent blog post that six ISPs that it regularly does business with have refused to de-congest most of their interconnect ports. 'Congestion that is permanent, has been in place for well over a year and where our peer refuses to augment capacity.' Five of the six ISPs that Level 3 refers to are in the U.S., and one is in Europe. Not surprisingly, 'the companies with the congested peering interconnects also happen to rank dead last in customer satisfaction across all industries in the U.S. Not only dead last, but by a massive statistical margin of almost three standard deviations.' Ars Technica reports that ISPs have also demanded that transit providers like Level 3 pay for access to their networks in the same manner as fringe service providers like Netflix."

Sockatume (732728) writes "The latest episode of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Mediawatch program addresses GeoResonance's claims to have found the lost Malasia Airlines MH370 in the Bay of Bengal. They attribute the company's sudden prominence to increasing desperation amongst the press. Meanwhile, the Metabunk web site has been digging into the people and technology behind GeoResonance and its international siblings, finding noted pseudoscientist Vitaly Gokh and a dubious variation on Kirlian photography."

SonicSpike (242293) writes with news that the ACLU and Rand Paul both think every Senator should read David Barron's legal memos justifying the use of drones against an American citizen before he is confirmed to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals. From the article: "Paul, the junior Republican senator from Kentucky, has informed Reid he will object to David Barron's nomination to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals unless the Justice Department makes public the memos he authored justifying the killing of an American citizen in Yemen. The American Civil Liberties Union supports Paul's objection, giving some Democratic lawmakers extra incentive to support a delay to Barron's nomination, which could come to the floor in the next two weeks. Barron, formerly a lawyer in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, penned at least one secret legal memo approving the Sept. 2011 drone strike that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric whom intelligence officials accused of planning terrorist attacks against the United States."

Lucas123 (935744) writes "Sony has warned investors that it expects to take a hit on expected earnings (PDF), due in part to the fact that demand for Blu-ray Disc media is contracting faster than anticipated. In two weeks, Sony will announce its financial results. The company expects to post a net loss. Sony's warning is in line with other industry indicators, such as a report released earlier this year by Generator Research showed revenue from DVD and Blu-ray sales will likely decrease by 38% over the next four years. By comparison, online movie revenue is expected to grow 260% from $3.5 billion this year to $12.7 billion in 2018, the report states. Paul Gray, director of TV Electronics & Europe TV Research at market research firm DisplaySearch, said consumers are now accustomed to the instant availability of online media, and 'the idea of buying a physical copy seems quaint if you're under 25.'" Especially when those copies come with awful DRM.

samzenpus (5) writes "Stewart Brand trained as a biologist at Stanford, was associated with Ken Kesey and the "Merry Pranksters", and served as an Infantry officer in the U.S. Army. His books include Whole Earth Discipline: The Rise of Ecopragmatism, The Clock of the Long Now, How Buildings Learn, and The Media Lab. He is the founder/editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, the co-founder of The Long Now Foundation, The WELL, and the Global Business Network. His latest project, Revive & Restore, may be his most ambitious yet. Revive and Restore aims to bring back extinct species and provide genetic rescue for endangered species that are spiraling down with inbreeding problems. Mr. Brand has agreed to answer any questions you may have but please limit yourself to one question per post."

samzenpus (5) writes "Stewart Brand trained as a biologist at Stanford, was associated with Ken Kesey and the "Merry Pranksters", and served as an Infantry officer in the U.S. Army. His books include Whole Earth Discipline: The Rise of Ecopragmatism, The Clock of the Long Now, How Buildings Learn, and The Media Lab. He is the founder/editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, the co-founder of The Long Now Foundation, The WELL, and the Global Business Network. His latest project, Revive & Restore, may be his most ambitious yet. Revive and Restore aims to bring back extinct species and provide genetic rescue for endangered species that are spiraling down with inbreeding problems. Mr. Brand has agreed to answer any questions you may have but please limit yourself to one question per post."

samzenpus (5) writes "Stewart Brand trained as a biologist at Stanford, was associated with Ken Kesey and the "Merry Pranksters", and served as an Infantry officer in the U.S. Army. His books include Whole Earth Discipline: The Rise of Ecopragmatism, The Clock of the Long Now, How Buildings Learn, and The Media Lab. He is the founder/editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, the co-founder of The Long Now Foundation, The WELL, and the Global Business Network. His latest project, Revive & Restore, may be his most ambitious yet. Revive and Restore aims to bring back extinct species and provide genetic rescue for endangered species that are spiraling down with inbreeding problems. Mr. Brand has agreed to answer any questions you may have but please limit yourself to one question per post."

samzenpus (5) writes "Stewart Brand trained as a biologist at Stanford, was associated with Ken Kesey and the "Merry Pranksters", and served as an Infantry officer in the U.S. Army. His books include Whole Earth Discipline: The Rise of Ecopragmatism, The Clock of the Long Now, How Buildings Learn, and The Media Lab. He is the founder/editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, the co-founder of The Long Now Foundation, The WELL, and the Global Business Network. His latest project, Revive & Restore, may be his most ambitious yet. Revive and Restore aims to bring back extinct species and provide genetic rescue for endangered species that are spiraling down with inbreeding problems. Mr. Brand has agreed to answer any questions you may have but please limit yourself to one question per post."

theodp (442580) writes "Thankfully, no one's gone full-Charles-Bronson yet, but the NY Times reports that victims of smartphone theft are using GPS to take the law into their own hands, paying visits to thieves' homes and demanding the return of their stolen phones. "The emergence of this kind of do-it-yourself justice," writes Ian Lovett, "has stirred worries among law enforcement officials that people are putting themselves in danger, taking disproportionate risks for the sake of an easily replaced item." And while hitting "Find My iPhone" can take you to a thief's doorstep, LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith urges resisting the impulse to do so. "It's just a phone," he said. "it's not worth losing your life over. Let police officers take care of it. We have backup, guns, radio, jackets — all that stuff civilians don't have.""

Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Reuters reports that last week's computer glitch at a California air traffic control center that led officials to halt takeoffs at Los Angeles International Airport was caused by a U-2 spy plane still in use by the US military, passing through air space monitored by the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center that appears to have overloaded ERAM, a computer system at the center. According to NBC News, computers at the center began operations to prevent the U-2 from colliding with other aircraft, even though the U-2 was flying at an altitude of 60,000 feet and other airplanes passing through the region's air space were miles below. FAA technical specialists resolved the specific issue that triggered the problem on Wednesday, and the FAA has put in place mitigation measures as engineers complete development of software changes," said the agency in a statement. "The FAA will fully analyze the event to resolve any underlying issues that contributed to the incident and prevent a reoccurrence." The U.S. Air Force is still flying U-2s, but plans to retire them within the next few years. The U-2 was slated for retirement in 2006 in favor of the unmanned Global Hawk Block 30 system, before the Air Force pulled an about-face two years ago and declared the Global Hawk too expensive and insufficient for the needs of combatant commanders."

StartsWithABang (3485481) writes "For normal matter — things like protons, neutrons and electrons — there's a fundamental limit to the number of particles you can fit into a given region of space thanks to the Pauli exclusion principle. But photons aren't subject to that limit; in theory, you could cram an infinite number of them into the same exact state. In principle, then, couldn't you create a laser (or lasing cavity) with an infinite amount of energy inside? Perhaps, but there are some big challenges to be overcome!"

StartsWithABang (3485481) writes "For those of us living in or around large cities — and that's most of us — we're completely divorced from dark, clear night skies as part of our routine experience. But even though our skies may typically rate a seven or higher on the Bortle Dark Sky Scale, that doesn't mean that significantly darker skies aren't accessible. Here's how to install an interactive light pollution map for yourself, and find the darkest skies near you no matter where you are! (North American-centric, but resources are provided for those elsewhere in the world.)"

Celarent Darii (1561999) writes "The probability of winning at Rock-Paper-Scissors is about 1 in 3. However, people do not play entirely randomly, a study has revealed. People tend to follow hidden patterns that can be used to win more games. A short article on the BBC gives hints on the strategies to be used to get a competitive advantage with your Rock-Scissors-Paper nemesis." Remember, these strategies are for use against people, not robots.

KentuckyFC writes: "One of the main goals of the space program is to spot an Earth-like planet orbiting another star. And by Earth-like, astronomers mean a planet with liquid water, gaseous oxygen and even chlorophyll, or a light-harvesting molecule like it. The biosignatures of these molecules were all observed during the first Earth fly-by in 1990 when the Galileo spacecraft measured the light reflected off Earth as it flew past on its way to Jupiter. But if these biosignatures exist on more distant exoplanets, could we spot them today? Now astronomers have calculated how good the next generation of space telescopes will have to be to pick up these biosignatures of life. They say that gaseous water should be relatively straightforward to pick out and that oxygen will be more challenging. But the spectral signature of chlorophyll-like molecules will be much harder to spot, requiring significantly more sensitivity than is possible today (either that or a great deal of luck). That suggests a plan, they say. The next generation of space telescopes should look for water and oxygen on exoplanets orbiting nearby stars and only then begin the time-consuming and expensive task of looking for chlorophyll on the most promising targets. One spacecraft that might do this is the Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope or ATLAST that is currently scheduled for launch in the 2025-2035 time frame."

William Robinson writes: "According to a new report, a globular cluster of several thousand stars (compressed into a space just a few dozen light-years apart) is being thrown out of galaxy M87. The cluster, named HVGC-1, is traveling at a rate of 2 million miles per hour. The discovery was made by Nelson Caldwell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and his team while studying the space around the supergiant elliptical galaxy M87. Caldwell and colleagues think M87 might have two supermassive black holes at its center. The star cluster wandered too close to the pair, which picked off many of the cluster's outer stars while the inner core remained intact. The black holes then acted like a slingshot, flinging the cluster away at a tremendous speed."

StartsWithABang (3485481) writes "From a true dark-sky site, the kind that was available to all of humanity for the first 200,000 years or so of our species' existence, the human eye can discern tens of thousands of stars, detailed features of the Milky Way and a handful of deep-sky nebulae. With the advent of the telescope, our reach into the Universe was greatly enhanced, as the increase in light-gathering power opened up orders of magnitude more stars and nebulae, and even allowed us to see a spiral structure to some nebulae beginning in the 1840s. But in all the time since then, the largest telescope ever developed is not even six times bigger than the largest from nearly 200 years ago. Yet the details we can observe in the Universe today aren't limited by what our eyes can perceive looking through our telescopes at all. The combination of astronomy and photography has changed our understanding of the Universe forever, and we owe the greatest advances to an 'amateur' you've probably never heard of: Isaac Roberts."

AthanasiusKircher (1333179) writes "Deborah Fitzgerald, a historian of science and dean of MIT's School of the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, speaks out in a Boston Globe column about the importance of the humanities, even as STEM fields increasingly dominate public discussion surrounding higher education. '[T]he world's problems are never tidily confined to the laboratory or spreadsheet. From climate change to poverty to disease, the challenges of our age are unwaveringly human in nature and scale, and engineering and science issues are always embedded in broader human realities, from deeply felt cultural traditions to building codes to political tensions. So our students also need an in-depth understanding of human complexities — the political, cultural, and economic realities that shape our existence — as well as fluency in the powerful forms of thinking and creativity cultivated by the humanities, arts, and social sciences.' Fitzgerald goes on to quote a variety of STEM MIT graduates who have described the essential role the humanities played in their education, and she concludes with a striking juxtaposition of important skills perhaps reminscent of Robert Heinlein's famous description of an ideal human being: 'Whatever our calling, whether we are scientists, engineers, poets, public servants, or parents, we all live in a complex, and ever-changing world, and all of us deserve what's in this toolbox: critical thinking skills; knowledge of the past and other cultures; an ability to work with and interpret numbers and statistics; access to the insights of great writers and artists; a willingness to experiment, to open up to change; and the ability to navigate ambiguity.' What other essential knowledge or skills should we add to this imaginary 'toolbox'?"

KentuckyFC (1144503) writes "In June 1972, nuclear scientists at the Pierrelatte uranium enrichment plant in south-east France noticed a strange deficit in the amount of uranium-235 they were processing. That's a serious problem in a uranium enrichment plant where every gram of fissionable material has to be carefully accounted for. The ensuing investigation found that the anomaly originated in the ore from the Oklo uranium mine in Gabon, which contained only 0.600% uranium-235 compared to 0.7202% for all other ore on the planet. It turned out that this ore was depleted because it had gone critical some 2 billion years earlier, creating a self-sustaining nuclear reaction that lasted for 300,000 years and using up the missing uranium-235 in the process. Since then, scientists have studied this natural reactor to better understand how buried nuclear waste spreads through the environment and also to discover whether the laws of physics that govern nuclear reactions may have changed in the 1.5 billion years since the reactor switched off. Now a review of the science that has come out of Oklo shows how important this work has become but also reveals that there is limited potential to gather more data. After an initial flurry of interest in Oklo, mining continued and the natural reactors--surely among the most extraordinary natural phenomena on the planet-- have all been mined out."

Go to Stop the Secrecy.net and you'll see that this is something that requires action now, not someday, It's about the TPP, or Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that could place major restrictions on how we use the Internet. This is far from the only attack on Internet freedom we need to fight against, just one the EFF (and others) feel is one of the worst ones in play right now. Mild-mannered Steve Anderson, founder and Executive Director of OpenMedia.ca, is today's interview guest. He's Canadian, but OpenMedia.ca doesn't stop at Canada's southern border. Steve and the rest of the group want U.S. citizens to have the same Internet freedoms they want Canadians to have -- as well as people all over the world, because Internet balkanization hurts all Internet users. Including you. And worse, this is not the only problem with the TPP. Did you notice, in the TPP link above (to Wikipedia), that parts of this trade agreement are secret? So even if you want to protest against it, you might end up holding a sign that's mostly blank. This is a "Call your Congressional representatives" situation. Unless you're in Canada, in which case it's a "Call your Member of Parliament" situation. Ditto if you're in another TPP country. In any case, it's going to take a lot of calls, letters, emails, and faxes from people like us to overcome some of the heavy money that wants the TPP to go through. (Alternate video link.)

Go to Stop the Secrecy.net and you'll see that this is something that requires action now, not someday, It's about the TPP, or Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that could place major restrictions on how we use the Internet. This is far from the only attack on Internet freedom we need to fight against, just one the EFF (and others) feel is one of the worst ones in play right now. Mild-mannered Steve Anderson, founder and Executive Director of OpenMedia.ca, is today's interview guest. He's Canadian, but OpenMedia.ca doesn't stop at Canada's southern border. Steve and the rest of the group want U.S. citizens to have the same Internet freedoms they want Canadians to have -- as well as people all over the world, because Internet balkanization hurts all Internet users. Including you. And worse, this is not the only problem with the TPP. Did you notice, in the TPP link above (to Wikipedia), that parts of this trade agreement are secret? So even if you want to protest against it, you might end up holding a sign that's mostly blank. This is a "Call your Congressional representatives" situation. Unless you're in Canada, in which case it's a "Call your Member of Parliament" situation. Ditto if you're in another TPP country. In any case, it's going to take a lot of calls, letters, emails, and faxes from people like us to overcome some of the heavy money that wants the TPP to go through. (Alternate video link.)

Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of Dreamworks Animation, speaking at the Milken Global Conference in California, opined that the future pricing model for movie downloads will revolve around screen size. In his view, larger screens will incur larger download prices. As he says, 'It will reinvent the enterprise of movies.' Unclear is how physical dimensions, rather than just resolution matrix, will be determined. Will we soon be saying 'hello' to screen spoofing?" Can you fake the physical dimensions reported in the EDID block when the connection is using HDCP? Aside from the implication that this would mean more DRM (and seems pretty unworkable, but with the rise of locked bootloaders on even x86 hardware...), the prices he predicts seem alright: "A movie screen will be $15. A 75-inch TV will be $4. A smartphone will be $1.99."