Apple’s record-setting growth has finally come to an end. During the company’s first quarter earnings call on Tuesday, Apple reported its first year-over-year decline since 2003. Apple reported revenues of $50.6 billion, down from about $58 billion during the same period last year. Read more…
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iPhone Sales Slump Leads To Apple’s Worst Quarter in 13 Years
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla is scheduled to install more energy storage capacity in 2016 with SolarCity alone than all of the US installed in 2015. It was revealed in a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that Tesla foresees an almost 10x increase in sales to SolarCity for behind the meter storage. [From the SEC filing: “We recognized approximately $4.9 million in revenue from SolarCity during fiscal year 2015 for sales of energy storage governed by this master supply agreement, and anticipate recognizing approximately $44.0 million in such revenues during fiscal year 2016.”] This revenue projection means Tesla expects to install approximately 116 MWh of behind the meter storage. The U.S. for example installed about 76 MWh of behind the meter storage. SolarCity and Tesla Energy doubled their battery installation volume last year. What’s particularly noteworthy is that the 116 MWh expectation does not include SolarCity’s biggest project — Kauai Island’s coming 52 MWh system. Hawaii is aiming for 100% renewable energy by 2045 and has contracted with SolarCity to balance the two 12MW Solar Power plants with the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC). By 2020, there will be 70 GWh of Tesla battery storage on the road, and Straubel expects there to be 10 GWh of controllable load in those cars. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Tesla Will Install More Energy Storage With SolarCity In 2016 Than The US Installed In 2015
Reader chefmonkey writes: In a report commissioned by Mozilla to explore the next home for Thunderbird, two potential new hosts have been offered: the Software Freedom Conservancy (host to git, boost, QEMU, and a host of other projects) and The Document Foundation (home of LibreOffice). At the same time, the report discusses completely uncoupling Thunderbird from the rest of the Mozilla codebase and bringing in a dedicated technical architect to chart the software’s roadmap. Given that the two named organizations are already on board with taking Thunderbird under their wing, is this a new lease on life for the email program Mozilla put out to pasture four years ago?In December last year, Mozilla Foundation chairperson Mitchell Baker had argued that the organization should disentangle itself from the Thunderbird email client in order to focus on Firefox. It appears the Firefox-maker is all set to part ways with Thunderbird. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader shares an article on Fast Co Design (edited and condensed for clarity): Researchers at University of Washington’s Sensor Lab have created the WISP, or Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform: a combination sensor and computing chip that doesn’t need a battery or a wired power source to operate. Instead, it sucks in radio waves emitted from a standard, off-the-shelf RFID reader — the same technology that retail shops use to deter shoplifters — and converts them into electricity. The WISP isn’t designed to compete with the chips in your smartphone or your laptop. It has about the same clock speed as the processor in a Fitbit and similar functionality, including embedded accelerometers and temperature sensors. It has about the same bandwidth as Bluetooth Low Energy mode, the wireless power-sipping technology which drives most Bluetooth speakers and wireless headphones. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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This Battery-Free Computer Sucks Power Out Of Thin Air
An anonymous reader writes: Dutch police have seized and shut down Ennetcom, an encrypted communications network with 19, 000 users, according to Reuters. The network’s 36-year-old owner, Danny Manupassa, has also been arrested, and faces charges of money laundering and illegal weapons possession, while the information obtained in the seizure may also be used for other criminal prosecutions. “Police and prosecutors believe that they have captured the largest encrypted network used by organized crime in the Netherlands, ” prosecutors said in a statement. “Although using encrypted communications is legal, ” Reuters reports, “many of the network’s users are believed to have been engaged in ‘serious criminal activity, ‘ said spokesman Wim de Bruin of the national prosecutor’s office, which noted that the company’s modified phones have repeatedly turned up in cases involving drugs, criminal motorcycle gangs, and gangland killings. A spokesman for the National Prosecutor’s office “declined to comment on whether and how police would be able to decrypt information kept on the servers.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Dutch Police Seize Encrypted Communication Network With 19,000 Users
An anonymous reader writes: For the first time data may show that a human being has been successfully rejuvenated by gene therapy, claims Bioviva USA. “In September 2015, then 44 year-old CEO of Bioviva USA Inc. Elizabeth Parrish received two of her own company’s experimental gene therapies: one to protect against loss of muscle mass with age, another to battle stem cell depletion responsible for diverse age-related diseases and infirmities.” Bypassing America’s FDA, the controversial therapies were described by the MIT Technology Review as “do-it-yourself medicine, ” saying it “raises ethical questions about how quickly such treatments should be tested in people and whether they ought to be developed outside the scrutiny of regulators.” “The treatment was originally intended to demonstrate the safety of the latest generation of the therapies, ” reports Bioviva’s web site. “But if early data is accurate, it is already the world’s first successful example of telomere lengthening via gene therapy in a human individual.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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First Successful Gene Therapy Against Human Aging?
An anonymous reader cites an article on CSOOnline: A 132 GB database, containing the personal information on 93.4 million Mexican voters has finally been taken offline. The database sat exposed to the public for at least eight days after its discovery by researcher Chris Vickery, but originally went public in September 2015. Vickery, who works as a security researcher at Kromtech, discovered the MongoDB instance on April 14, but had difficulty tracking down the person or company responsible for placing the voter data on Amazon’s AWS. He first reached out to the U.S. State Department, as well as the Mexican Embassy, but had little success. The database contains all of the information that Mexican citizens need for their government-issued photo IDs that enable them to vote. Along with their municipality, and district information, the database records include the voter’s name, address, voter ID number, date of birth, the names of their parents, occupation, and more. Given that the database has been online since September 2015, it isn’t clear how many people have accessed the records. Additionally, the actual owner of the account hosting the data remains unknown. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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MongoDB Config Error Exposed 93M Mexican Voter Records
An anonymous reader quotes a report from US Uncut: A Super PAC headed by a longtime Clinton operative is spending $1 million to hire online trolls to “correct” Bernie Sanders’ supporters on social media. Correct The Record (CTR), which is operated by Clinton attack dog and new owner of Blue Nation Review David Brock, launched a new initiative this week called “Barrier Breakers 2016” for the purpose of debating supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders — or “Bernie Bros, ” as they’re referred to in Correct the Record’s press official release — on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and other social media platforms. The “Barrier Breakers” will also publicly thank Hillary Clinton’s superdelegates and fans for supporting her campaign. The paid trolls are professional communicators, coming from public relations and media backgrounds. “The task force staff’s backgrounds are as diverse as the community they will be engaging with and include former reporters, bloggers, public affairs specialists, designers, Ready for Hillary alumni, and Hillary super fans who have led groups similar to those with which the task force will organize, ” CTR stated. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Pro-Clinton Super PAC Caught Spending $1 Million On Social Media Trolls
MarkWhittington writes: The EmDrive, the so-called “impossible” space drive that uses no propellant, has roiled the aerospace world for the past several years ever since it was proposed by British aerospace engineer Robert Shawyer. In essence, the claim advanced by Shawyer and others is that if you bounced microwaves in a truncated cone, thrust would be produced out the open end. Most scientists have snorted at the idea, noting correctly that such a thing would violate physical laws. However, organizations as prestigious as NASA have replicated the same results, that prototypes of the EmDrive produces thrust. How does one reconcile the experimental results with the apparent scientific impossibility? MIT Technology Review suggested a reason why. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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The ‘Impossible’ EM Drive Being Tested By NASA May Finally Be Explained
An anonymous reader writes: Johan Kanflo has managed to make the already small Tiny328 Arduino clone into an even smaller computing platform about the size of a single AA battery. Not only will it fit in a typical AA battery holder, but it will actually draw power from the batteries beside it as it’s wired in “backwards” (with the + and – poles reversed). The Arduino platform consists of open-source hardware, open-source software, and microcontroller-based kits, making it easy to (re)program the processors, and develop software for hardware applications using a java-clone and an easy-to-learn IDE. For those interested in the AAduino, Johan has made his creation available online on Github with instructions and schematics to build your own. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Scientist Shrinks Arduino To Size Of An AA Battery