John Markoff | San Francisco | May 25

NYT - A just-completed report from a presidential advisory committee urges President Obama to adopt new computer technologies to make better use of a huge swath of the radio spectrum now controlled by federal agencies.

The shift, which could be accomplished by presidential signature — and without Congressional involvement — would relieve spectrum congestion caused by the popularity of smartphones, and generate far more revenue for the federal government than auctioning spectrum to wireless carriers, according to the authors of the report.

Zach Epstein

BGR - Hackers associated with well known hacker-activist group “Anonymous Operations” have released a massive cache of data they say was obtained when they hacked a website belonging to the United States Department of Justice. “Today we are releasing 1.7GB of data that used to belong to the United States Bureau of Justice, until now,” Anonymous wrote in a statement on its website. The hackers claim the file contains emails as well as “the entire database dump” from the DOJ website.

“We do not stand for any government or parties, we stand for freedom of people, freedom of speech and freedom of information,” the hackers wrote. ”We are releasing data to spread information, to allow the people to be heard and to know the corruption in their government. We are releasing it to end the corruption that exists, and truly make those who are being oppressed free.”

Jonathan Amos | May 22

BBC - ...
Nasa's administrator Charles Bolden said: "Today marks the beginning of a new era in exploration... The significance of this day cannot be overstated; a private company has launched a spacecraft to the International Space Station that will attempt to dock there for the first time..."

a new era, indeed;-)

Tyler Clementi committed suicide last year by jumping off the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson valley. While it has never been definitively established that Clementi's suicide attempt was directly tied to an ugly incident where one of his roomates, Dharun Ravi, broadcast a sexual encounter between Clementi and another student, it's seems to have been the straw that broke Clementi's back.

Ravi has been tried and convicted on multiple counts of bullying and hate crimes, and is scheduled to be sentenced today. He faces up to 10 years in prison and therein lies an interesting tale: many gay advocates and advocacy groups do not want him to be jailed.

May 19

Alzforum - In a slow-mo game of mental Whack-a-Mole, two paralyzed people, using only their thoughts and an implanted brain sensor, manipulated a robotic arm to grasp foam balls. The achievement, reported in the May 17 Nature, is the first instance of a human brain-computer interface controlling such complex, three-dimensional motion.

In a more practical test, one woman was able to grab a thermos of coffee with the robotic arm and bring it to her lips for a drink. While many challenges remain to bring this technology to people who need it, the time will be measured in “years, not decades,” suggested study authors Leigh Hochberg and John Donoghue of Brown University and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

The work is part of the ongoing BrainGate pilot trial by researchers at the Rhode Island institutions
and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Thomas K. Grose | London | May 18

National Geographic News - This summer at the largest urban mall in Europe, visitors may notice something different at their feet. Twenty bright green rubber tiles will adorn one of the outdoor walkways at the Westfield Stratford City Mall, which abuts the new Olympic stadium in east London.

The squares aren't just ornamental. They are designed to collect the kinetic energy created by the estimated 40 million pedestrians who will use that walkway in a year, generating several hundred kilowatt-hours of electricity from their footsteps. That's enough to power half the mall's outdoor lighting.

Andy Gallacher | Cape Canaveral, FL | May 19

Al Jazeera - SpaceX launch from Cape Canaveral ends NASA's decades-long dominance and marks debut for commercial space operators.

For the first time in history, a private company plans to launch an unmanned rocket into orbit.

People working near the Cape Canaveral on Florida's "Space Coast" are keenly awaiting Saturday's scheduled launch of the SpaceX mission.

One might begin to see the seeds of its decline here:

iMore reports that Google may make four times the ad revenue off of their use in iOS than they do from their own Android platform. Apple wants to change that. Apple has already begun intermediating search queries though Siri, effectively cutting Google out of the valuable identity information associated with those searches. Next up is that other large data components on iOS, maps.

Willemien Groot (Vladimir Kazanevsky) | New York | May 15

Radio Netherlands Worldwide - Out of public view, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a UN agency, is working on a proposal to give governments more control over the internet. The effort is supported by a number of countries including Russia, Brazil and China, and if it’s successful it could mean the end of internet freedom.

After the WikiLeaks-affair and the Arab Spring, an increasing number of countries would like to ‘democratise’ the internet. China India, Brazil and South Africa all use the ITU as a platform to advance their plans, says Dieuwertje Kuijpers from the Telders Foundation, a research agency connected with the pro-market VVD party.

“It’s a useful platform for them, enabling them to set rules about what is and is not allowed on the internet.” That includes rules for both acceptable behaviour and internet regulation.

The results of this poll sort of reflect my own feelings and experiences with Facebook:

According to a new AP-CNBC poll, 57 percent of Facebook users say they never click ads or other sponsored content when they use the site, with another 26 percent saying they hardly ever engage in such activity.

While the company makes money, in part, simply by displaying sponsored content, user clicks are a critical part of an advertiser’s calculus when gauging how effective those ads are and how much they’re willing to pay for them. In the first quarter, Facebook generated 82 percent of its $1.06 billion in revenue from advertising sales. In the company’s online IPO pitch to retail investors, CFO David Ebersman says the company is working to make ads “more relevant, more social, and more engaging” as it looks to grow.

Las Vegas, NV | May 8

The Telegraph - Google's autonomous cars have passed their first driving test in Nevada, which included a trip along the famous Las Vegas Strip.

The desert state is the first to grant the vehicles a licence to use public roads. They are controlled by computers processing a combination of mapping data, radar, laser sensors and video feeds.

Officials from the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles rode in the cars "along freeways, state highways and neighborhoods both in Carson City and the busy Las Vegas Strip", they said in a statement.

ENE News, May 1

To: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

An Urgent Request on UN Intervention to Stabilize the Fukushima Unit 4 Spent Nuclear Fuel

Recently, former diplomats and experts both in Japan and abroad stressed the extremely risky condition of the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent nuclear fuel pool and this is being widely reported by world media. Robert Alvarez, Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), who is one of the best-known experts on spent nuclear fuel, stated that in Unit 4 there is spent nuclear fuel which contains Cesium-137 (Cs-137) that is equivalent to 10 times the amount that was released at the time of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Thus, if an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain, this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.

Nearly all of the 10,893 spent fuel assemblies at the Fukushima Daiichi plant sit in pools vulnerable to future earthquakes, with roughly 85 times more long-lived radioactivity than released at Chernobyl.

Stephen C Webster | Apr 30

Raw Story - What if your source of electricity also gave you clean drinking water?

That’s the promise of new technology developed by the French engineering firm Eole Water, first conceived in the late 90s by a man who collected water from his air conditioner. He reasoned that if an air conditioner could help him accumulate water, so could other types of machines, so he set about merging the production of electricity and water.

Today, that dream is alive and well. Eole’s turbines are currently undergoing rigorous tests in Abu Dhabi following months of development and fine tuning in France. The company says that each turbine is capable of producing up to 1,000 liters of clean drinking water per day, or about 62 per hour, simply by filtering moisture out of the air and funneling it to a storage tank below. video at link

David Streitfeld | San Francisco | April 28

NYT - Google’s harvesting of e-mails, passwords and other sensitive personal information from unsuspecting households in the United States and around the world was neither a mistake nor the work of a rogue engineer, as the company long maintained, but a program that supervisors knew about, according to new details from the full text of a regulatory report.

The report, prepared by the Federal Communications Commission after a 17-month investigation of Google’s Street View project, was released, heavily redacted, two weeks ago. Although it found that Google had not violated any laws, the agency said Google had obstructed the inquiry and fined the company $25,000.

On Saturday, Google released a version of the report with only employees’ names redacted.

Ethan Zuckerman throws a cold bucket of reality onto some of the more idealistic notions re: information, interconnectivity, and ye olde series of tubes (aka, the panacea that wasn't):

A central paradox of this connected age is that while it’s easier than ever to share information and perspectives from different parts of the world, we may be encountering a narrower picture of the world than we did in less connected days. During the Vietnam War, television reporting from the frontlines involved transporting exposed film from Southeast Asia by air, then developing and editing it in the United States before broadcasting it days later. Now, an unfolding crisis such as the Japanese tsunami or Haitian earthquake can be reported in real time via satellite. Despite these lowered barriers, today’s American television news features less than half as many international stories as were broadcast in the 1970s.

The pace of print media reporting has accelerated sharply, with newspapers moving to a “digital first” strategy, publishing fresh information online as news breaks. While papers publish many more stories than they did 40 years ago (online and offline), Britain’s four major dailies publish on average 45 percent fewer international stories than they did in 1979.

Why worry about what’s covered in newspapers and television when it’s possible to read firsthand accounts from Syria or Sierra Leone? Research suggests that we rarely read such accounts. My studies of online news consumption show that 95 percent of the news consumed by American Internet users is published in the United States. By this metric, the United States is less parochial than many other nations, which consume even less news published in other countries. This locality effect crosses into social media as well. A recent study of Twitter, a tool used by 400 million people around the world, showed that we’re far more likely to follow people who are physically close to us than to follow someone outside our home country’s borders, or even a few states or provinces away. Thirty-nine percent of the relationships on Twitter involve someone following the tweets of a person in the same metropolitan area. In the Twitter hotbed of São Paulo, Brazil, more than 78 percent of the relationships are local. So much for the death of distance.

Eric Engleman | Washington | April 27

Reuters - The U.S. House of Representatives raised the stakes in a debate with the White House over how best to improve the nation’s cybersecurity, passing a bill President Barack Obama called too weak and threatened to veto.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act passed the House by 248 to 168 yesterday. The measure, introduced by Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who heads the House Intelligence Committee, encourages the government and companies to voluntarily share data on cyber threats and gives businesses legal immunity for such exchanges.

Mark Clayton | Apr 26

CSM - An amateur cybersecurity researcher who bought industrial computer networking equipment on e-Bay for fun has discovered a critical weakness in equipment that helps run railroads, power grids, and even military installations nationwide.

The vulnerability means that hackers or other nations could potentially take control of elements within crucial American infrastructure – from refineries to power plants to missile systems – sabotaging their ability to operate from within.

Analysts say the problem is likely fixable, but the enthusiast says he has gone public only because the company that manufactures the equipment, RuggedCom of Concord, Ontario, has declined to address the issue since he made it known to them a year ago.

"It's clearly a huge risk," says Dale Peterson, CEO of Digital Bond, a control systems security firm in Sunrise, Fla. "Anytime someone can take down your network infrastructure, essentially cause a loss of control of the process – or your ability to monitor it, very dangerous things can happen."

The vulnerability has to do with what is known as a digital “back door.” The back door is a secret login that allows the manufacturer to get into the equipment’s control systems without anyone knowing about it – even the purchaser. In theory, manufacturers could use their back doors to send updates to the equipment, but since they are secret, their use is not well known.

David Edwards | Sacramento, CA | April 24

Raw Story - A California state Senate committee on Monday approved a bill that aims to protect citizens against “reparative” therapies intended to change the sexual orientation of LGBT people.

By a vote of 5-3, the state Senate Committee on Business, Professions and Economic Development advanced SB 1172, which would ban children under 18 from receiving so-called “ex-gay” therapies. Therapists would also have to provide adults receiving treatment with consent forms to warn them of potential dangers.

“An individual’s sexual orientation, whether homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual, is not a disease, disorder, illness, deficiency, or shortcoming,” the bill states. “Under no circumstances shall a patient under 18 years of age undergo sexual orientation change efforts, regardless of the willingness of a patient’s parent, guardian, conservator, or other person to authorize such efforts.”

W.J. Hennigan | Apr 21

LA Times - The results are in from last summer’s attempt to test new technology that would provide the Pentagon with a lightning-fast vehicle, capable of delivering a military strike anywhere in the world in less than an hour.

In August the Pentagon's research arm, known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, carried out a test flight of an experimental aircraft capable of traveling at 20 times the speed of sound.

The arrowhead-shaped unmanned aircraft, dubbed Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2, blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, northwest of Santa Barbara, into the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere aboard an eight-story Minotaur IV rocket made by Orbital Sciences Corp.

After reaching an undisclosed altitude, the aircraft jettisoned from its protective cover atop the rocket, then nose-dived back toward Earth, leveled out and glided above the Pacific at 20 times the speed of sound, or Mach 20.

The plan was for the Falcon to speed westward for about 30 minutes before plunging into the ocean near Kwajalein Atoll, about 4,000 miles from Vandenberg.

But it was ended about nine minutes into flight for unknown reasons. The launch had received worldwide attention and much fanfare, but officials didn’t provide much information on why the launch failed.

On Friday, DARPA said in a statement that the searing high speeds caused portions of the Falcon’s skin to peel from the aerostructure. The resulting gaps created strong shock waves around the vehicle as it traveled nearly 13,000 mph, causing it to roll abruptly.

Renee Schoof | Washington | April 16

McClatchy - The rush to capture natural gas from hydraulic fracturing has led to giant compressor stations alongside backyard swing sets, drilling rigs in sight of front porches, and huge flares at gas wells alongside country roads.

Air pollution from fracking includes the fumes breathed in by people nearby, as well as smog spread over a wide region and emissions of the greenhouse gas methane.

On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to announce the first national rules to reduce air pollution at hydraulically fractured — fracked — wells and some other oil and gas industry operations. The agency estimated that the plan it proposed in July would reduce smog-forming, cancer-causing and climate-altering pollutants from the natural gas industry by about one-fourth.

Miriam Elder | Moscow | April 15

The Guardian - Unlike Vladimir Putin, many Russians have taken to the internet with great enthusiasm. Now liberals and gay rights activists are among those feeling the heat from the Kremlin.

Unlike other media, the internet in Russia, has developed largely untouched by the arm of the state. The protests have prompted many to wonder: is that about to change?

"It's too late to change things," said Anton Nossik, an internet guru. "Kids are now born into the internet and grew up in the internet. Like it or not, you have to embrace it."

That is the view of most internet observers in Russia: that it's too late, and too technologically complicated, to institute a China-style firewall. Yet the government is infamous for its attention to propaganda, and for the power of its suspicious spy services, and there are signs that it is seeking to boost its ability to control the internet.

Pierre Bertrand | San Diego | April 9

IBT - A U.S. Geological Survey team is preparing ready to publish a report that has drawn a link between hydraulic fracturing and an increase in earthquakes in the U.S.

The study's findings will be a topic of discussion later this month when the Seismological Society of America meets in San Diego.

Mark Ward | April 10

BBC - Many medical implants are vulnerable to attacks that could threaten their users' lives, according to studies.

Security researchers have developed attacks that locate and compromise implants used to manage conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.

One attack caught a radio signal that, if re-broadcast, would have switched off a heart defibrillator.

Wired Gadget Lab, By Alexandra Chang, April 9

Rube Goldberg machines make accomplishing a simple task — like putting a stamp on an envelope — an over-engineered marathon of moving parts. This year’s Rube Goldberg Machine Contest held at Purdue University featured one of the most complex contraptions yet: The Purdue Society of Professional Engineers created a machine that blew up and popped a balloon in a winding 300 steps, breaking the team’s own Guinness world record for largest Rube Goldberg machine.

Michael J. De La Merced | April 9

NYT Dealbook - AOL agreed on Monday to sell a portfolio of over 800 patents, and license about 300 more, to Microsoft for $1.056 billion, amid an arms race within the technology industry over intellectual property.

Under the terms of the transaction, AOL will retain a license for the patents it is selling, while Microsoft will receive a nonexclusive license for the technologies AOL is retaining.