Construction teams around the world rely on bitumen—an incredibly sticky by-product of crude oil production—as the main binding agent for asphalt. But a team of scientists reckon that a compound found within plants could help replace it, making road-building a greener, more sustainable practice. Read more…
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A Compound From Plants Could Replace Bitumen to Make Roads Greener
An anonymous reader writes with news about an impressive renewable energy accomplishment in Costa Rica. Costa Rica has achieved a clean energy milestone by using 100 per cent renewable energy for a record 75 days in a row. The feat was achieved thanks to heavy rainfall, which powered four hydroelectric plants in the first three months of the year, the state-run Costa Rican Electricity Institute said. No fossil fuels have been burnt to generate electricity since December 2014, in the state which is renowned for its clean energy policies.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Costa Rica Goes 75 Days Powering Itself Using Only Renewable Energy
Spotify might have bent over backwards to lift restrictions on its free streaming service a couple of years ago, but at least one music label appears eager to turn back the clock. Financial Times sources understand that Universal is using licensing negotiations to squeeze Spotify and demand more limits for those who don’t pay up, such as restricting the amount of time they can play tunes in a given month. The publisher isn’t confirming anything, but CEO Lucian Grainge has lately been chastising the free, ad-based streaming model — it’s no secret that he would like more paying customers. According to one insider, Universal believes that Spotify is directly hurting sales at stores like iTunes. Whether or not Spotify gives in is another matter. It can’t afford to lose one of the major labels, but it’s also adamant that having an enticing free tier is crucial to getting listeners to pay. Other music companies, such as Beggars Group, would argue that Spotify is much better than alternatives like YouTube, where there are far fewer limits for free users. And simply speaking, Spotify may have the industry over a barrel — when streaming is more popular than CDs in the US, pulling a whole catalog could leave a lot of money on the table. Filed under: Internet , Software Comments Source: Financial Times
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Universal reportedly wants Spotify to scale back its free streaming
Middle East terrorist organization Islamic State (ISIS) has called on its followers take the fight to 100 members of the United States military residing in the US. A group calling itself the “Islamic State Hacking Division” has posted names, addresses, and photographs of soldiers, sailors, and airmen online, asking its “brothers residing in America” to murder them, according to Reuters . Although the posting purports to come from the “Hacking Division,” US Department of Defense officials say that none of their systems appear to have been breached by the group. Instead, the personal data was almost certainly culled from publicly available sources, a DoD official told the New York Times on the condition of anonymity. Those appearing on the list include crew members from the 2d Bomb Wing at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and the 5th Bomb Wing at Minot AFB in North Dakota, even though they have played no part in the US air campaign against ISIS. Other military members doxed have either been identified in media reports on the campaign or were cited by name in official DoD reports, officials told the Times. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Islamic State doxes US soldiers, airmen, calls on supporters to kill them
Earlier this week, we heard billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk describe his vision for the future of self-driving vehicles. Turns out, when Musk said “we’ll be there in a few years, ” what he actually meant was, his company, Tesla, will be there this summer. Slip of the tongue. Read more…
If you thought $10 was highway robbery when it comes to apps, this colorful infographic should help put things in perspective. Read more…
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The Most Obscenely Expensive Apps for iOS
jones_supa writes As is the search engine company’s annual habit, DuckDuckGo has chosen to advance four open source projects by donating to them. The primary focus this year was to support FOSS projects that bring privacy tools to anyone who needs them. $25, 000 goes to The Freedom of the Press Foundation to support SecureDrop, which is a whistleblower submission used to securely accept documents from anonymous sources. The Electronic Frontier Foundation was given $25, 000 to support PrivacyBadger, which is a browser add-on that stops advertisers and other third-party trackers from secretly tracking your surfing habits. Another $25, 000 arrives at GPGTools to support GPG Suite, which is a software package for OS X that encrypts files or messages. Finally, $25, 000 was donated to Riseup to support Tails, which is a live operating system that aims at preserving your privacy and anonymity. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
For anyone using Windows 7 by way of Apple’s Boot Camp utility, beware: support for Windows via Boot Camp remains, but for the newest Apple laptops, it’s only for Windows 8 for now. From Slashgear: This applies to the 2015 MacBook Air, and the 13-inch model of the 2015 MacBook Pro. Windows 8 will remain compatible, as will the forthcoming Windows 10. The 2013 Mac Pro also dropped Boot Camp support for Windows 7, while 2014 iMacs are still compatible, along with 2014 MacBook Airs and 2014 MacBook Pros. For those who still prefer to run Windows 7 on their Macs, there are other options. This change to Boot Camp will not affect using the Microsoft operating system through virtualization software, such as Parallels and VMware Fusion. Also at PC Mag. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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For Boot Camp Users, New Macs Require Windows 8 Or Newer
Etherwalk writes Sources conflict, but it looks like as many as 300 people have been arrested for cheating in the Indian state of Bihar after the Hindustan Times published images of dozens of men climbing the walls of a test center to pass answers inside. 500-700+ students were expelled and police had been bribed to look the other way. Xinhau’s version of the story omits any reference to police bribery, while The ABC’s omits the fact that police fired guns into the air. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Hundreds Expelled, Many Arrested, For Cheating In India’s School Exams
Mark Wilson writes Two minutes is all it takes to completely destroy a computer. In a presentation entitled ‘How many million BIOSes would you like to infect?’ at security conference CanSecWest, security researchers Corey Kallenberg and Xeno Kovah revealed that even an unskilled person could use an implant called LightEater to infect a vulnerable system in mere moments. The attack could be used to render a computer unusable, but it could also be used to steal passwords and intercept encrypted data. The problem affects motherboards from companies including Gigabyte, Acer, MSI, HP and Asus. It is exacerbated by manufactures reusing code across multiple UEFI BIOSes and places home users, businesses and governments at risk. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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LightEater Malware Attack Places Millions of Unpatched BIOSes At Risk