Amazon and publishing company Hachette remain in negotiations after a very public brawl over ebook pricing, and Amazon’s pulling out some down and dirty trick to win its battle, including jacking up Hachette book prices . Amazon’s latest gambit is more carrot than stick: Amazon executive David Naggar sent a letter to a number of Hachette authors proposing that they keep 100 percent of their sales while the dispute persists. Read more…
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Amazon Is Baiting Hachette Authors With 100 Percent Profits
itwbennett (1594911) writes “The Social Security numbers of roughly 18, 000 California physicians and health-care providers were inadvertently made public after a slip-up at health insurance provider Blue Shield of California, the organization said Monday. The numbers were included in monthly filings on medical providers that Blue Shield is required to make to the state’s Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC). The provider rosters for February, March and April 2013 included the SSNs and other sensitive information and were available under the state’s public records law.” Ten copies were requested under the public records law. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
If you work in a lab, you’ve probably used lab glass made from quartz. But you probably haven’t realized that the reason those test tubes are so durable is exactly what makes them so hard to mold. These beautiful GIFs, shot at GE’s Global Research in upstate New York, shows exactly what it takes to make those beakers. Read more… 
It sounds weird, but the most abundant mineral on Earth finally got a name last week, thanks to a century-old meteorite. What? How? Why did it take so long? There were a whole confluence of reasons it took bridgmanite so long to get its name. Read more… 
An anonymous reader writes “Peter Sunde was arrested today in a police raid in southern Sweden. The Pirate Bay co-founder was wanted by Interpol as he had yet to serve prison time for his involvement with the site. Sunde’s arrest comes exactly eight years after the police raided the Pirate Bay servers, which marked the start of the criminal prosecution against the site’s founders.” From the article: “While details are scarce at the moment, the Swedish newspaper Expressen reports that the arrest has been confirmed by the Swedish authorities. According to Peter Althin, Sunde’s lawyer, the news means that his client will most likely be sent to prison to serve his 8-month sentence. Sunde’s prison sentence was made final in 2012 after Sweden’s Supreme Court announced its decision not to grant leave to appeal in the long-running criminal case against the founders of The Pirate Bay.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
First time accepted submitter S37Rigor Mortis (1601271) writes “Torrentz.eu, the largest torrent search engine on the Internet, has had its domain name suspended following a request from the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit in the UK. The site continues to operate under two alternative domains, and is hoping to move the .eu domain to a new registrar.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
New submitter freddieb writes: “An individual who had been jamming cellphone traffic on interstate 4 in Florida was located by FCC agents with the assistance of Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Deputies. The individual had reportedly been jamming cellphone traffic on I-4 for two years. The FCC is now proposing a $48, 000 fine for his actions. They say the jamming ‘could and may have had disastrous consequences by precluding the use of cell phones to reach life-saving 9-1-1 services provided by police, ambulance, and fire departments.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
In Compton last year, police began quietly testing a system that allowed them to do something incredible: Watch every car and person in real time as they ebbed and flowed around the city. Every assault, every purse snatched, every car speeding away was on record—all thanks to an Ohio company that monitors cities from the air. Read more… 