Congress Should Pass the Protecting Data at the Border Act

Congress Should Pass the Protecting Data at the Border Act

Under the bipartisan Protecting Data at the Border Act, border officers would be required to get a warrant before searching a traveler’s electronic device. The bill also blocks agents from denying entry or exit from the United States to any U.S. person who refuses to disclose digital account information, the contents of social media accounts, or provide access to electronic equipment. Further, the bill would prevent border agencies from holding any lawful U.S. persons for over four hours in pursuit of consensual access to online accounts or the information on electronic equipment.

Source: www.eff.org

For Clarity’s Sake, Please Don’t Say “Licensed under GNU GPL 2” (2017)

For Clarity’s Sake, Please Don’t Say “Licensed under GNU GPL 2” (2017)

Developers had released a new version of a program under a different license, and maybe they had made new releases of old versions offering use under a different license, but they had never set up a systematic way to offer users the choice of using a future license version for already-released versions of a program. Because we handle license compatibility this way, when people tell you a program is released “under GNU GPL version 2,” they are leaving the licensing of the program unclear. When sites such as GitHub invite developers to choose “GPL 3” or “GPL 2” among other license options, and don’t raise the issue of future versions, this leads thousands of developers to leave their code’s licensing unclear.

Source: www.gnu.org

Life’s a blur, but we don’t see it that way

Life’s a blur, but we don’t see it that way

Since we do not notice our constant saccades, this suggests that the brain specifically suppresses the signals that reach our retina while a saccadic eye movement is in process. In experiments with macaques that were trained to make predictable saccades, brain cells that receive signals from one particular spot in the retina switched from responding to things currently in view there to things that would show up only after the saccade. Wurtz and others believe that this kind of signal nudges brain cells to start responding to things that their part of the retina will see only after the saccade.

Source: www.knowablemagazine.org

I Wrote This on a 30-Year-Old Computer – and It Was Awesome

I Wrote This on a 30-Year-Old Computer – and It Was Awesome

Everything about this computer is loud: The groan of the power supply is loud. This is the experience a computer user would have had every time she booted up her Macintosh SE, a popular all-in-one computer sold by Apple from 1987 to 1990. It’s one of the reasons why computers weren’t as universal three decades ago as they are today, especially at home.

Source: www.theatlantic.com

All Of Argentina, Uruguay Without Electricity After Massive Outage

All Of Argentina, Uruguay Without Electricity After Massive Outage

Power was slowly being restored on Sunday after a massive outage blacked out Argentina and Uruguay, leaving around 48 million people without electricity, power companies said. The outage was caused by “a collapse of the Argentine Interconnection System (SADI) which produced a massive power cut in the whole country and also affected Uruguay,” said Argentina’s energy secretariat in a statement quoted by local press. Argentina and Uruguay have a common power grid centered on the bi-national Salto Grande dam, 450 kilometers (280 miles) north of Buenos Aires.

Source: www.ndtv.com

Researchers discuss the challenges posed by science’s embrace of English

Researchers discuss the challenges posed by science’s embrace of English

In my experience, people who grow up speaking a language other than English are at a real competitive disadvantage when it comes to science. We need to embrace linguistic diversity and to make a concerted effort to dig up scientific knowledge in languages other than English. I suspect that a lot of native English speakers view language barriers as a minor problem.

Source: www.nature.com

Thawing permafrost is destroying Arctic cities

Thawing permafrost is destroying Arctic cities

Yury wasn’t a poor craftsman, and Nadezhda wasn’t crazy: one corner of their five-storey building at 59 Talnakhskaya Street in the northern Russian city of Norilsk was sinking as the permafrost underneath it thawed and the foundation slowly disintegrated. Cracking and collapsing structures are a growing problem in cities like Norilsk – a nickel-producing centre of 177,000 people located 180 miles above the Arctic Circle – as climate change thaws the perennially frozen soil and increases precipitation. Valery Tereshkov, deputy head of the emergencies ministry in the Krasnoyarsk region, wrote in an article this year that almost 60% of all buildings in Norilsk have been deformed as a result of climate change shrinking the permafrost zone.

Source: www.theguardian.com

How thawing permafrost is destroying Arctic cities

How thawing permafrost is destroying Arctic cities

Yury wasn’t a poor craftsman, and Nadezhda wasn’t crazy: one corner of their five-storey building at 59 Talnakhskaya Street in the northern Russian city of Norilsk was sinking as the permafrost underneath it thawed and the foundation slowly disintegrated. Cracking and collapsing structures are a growing problem in cities like Norilsk – a nickel-producing centre of 177,000 people located 180 miles above the Arctic Circle – as climate change thaws the perennially frozen soil and increases precipitation. Valery Tereshkov, deputy head of the emergencies ministry in the Krasnoyarsk region, wrote in an article this year that almost 60% of all buildings in Norilsk have been deformed as a result of climate change shrinking the permafrost zone.

Source: www.theguardian.com

When English is not your mother tongue

When English is not your mother tongue

In my experience, people who grow up speaking a language other than English are at a real competitive disadvantage when it comes to science. We need to embrace linguistic diversity and to make a concerted effort to dig up scientific knowledge in languages other than English. I suspect that a lot of native English speakers view language barriers as a minor problem.

Source: www.nature.com