Month: May 2016

(credit: Gage Skidmore)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump hasn’t had to answer many questions about his position on climate change yet. But in a handful of colorful tweets over the last few years, Trump has made it clear that he rejects the conclusions of climate science, opting for descriptors like “hoax” and “bullshit.”

However, that belief is apparently not always reflected in the management of coastal property owned by Trump. A story in Politico reports that the permit request to build a seawall along a golf course and resort in Ireland, which Trump purchased in 2014, cites sea level rise as part of the reason for its construction. Coastal erosion is eating away at the property, and Trump is seeking to armor the beach with rock.

The environmental impact statement prepared for the prospective project explains, “If the predictions of an increase in sea level rise as a result of global warming prove correct, however, it is likely that there will be a corresponding increase in coastal erosion rates not just in Doughmore Bay but around much of the coastline of Ireland.”

This aerial view of Monterey Bay from the south was created by combining computer-generated topographic and bathymetric data. Vertical relief has been exaggerated to better show the Monterey Canyon and mountains on either side of the bay. (credit: Monterey Bay Acquarium Research Institute)

Prosecutors have dropped their lawsuit against a California fisherman who they alleged took a government-owned scientific buoy "hostage" after it nearly struck his fishing vessel earlier this year in Monterey Bay.

Daniel Sherer, the fisherman, had kept the buoy in his possession for at least 10 weeks after the January 15 incident where it came loose and nearly struck his vessel. He demanded that the United States Geological Survey compensate him.

According to Courthouse News Service, the buoy has been returned to authorities, but it is not clear when or how the handover took place.

Convenience store ATMs were hit hard by counterfeiters in Japan this month. (credit: Meredith P.)

On Sunday evening, Japanese newspapers reported that an ATM heist involving around 1,400 machines in convenience stores resulted in the loss of 1.4 billion yen ($12.7 million).

The theft took place on May 15, a Sunday, between the hours of 5am and 8am. ATMs were targeted across Tokyo and 16 other prefectures in the country. Police said they believe up to 100 people were involved in the heist, according to the Kyodo News Agency. The thieves apparently went to ATMs like those found in 7-11s across Japan and swiped counterfeit South African credit cards, created using information from cards issued by South Africa's Standard Bank.

At each of the approximately 1,400 ATMs that were struck, the culprit withdrew 100,000 yen (about $900), which is the maximum withdrawal permitted on the machines.

Oracle Corp. headquarters in Redwood City, California. (credit: Michael Short/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO—Oracle's copyright lawsuit is all about one "very simple rule," the company's attorney told a jury today.

"You don’t take people’s property without permission and use it for your own benefit," said Oracle lawyer Peter Bicks. "Google took a shortcut, and they took a shortcut at Oracle’s expense."

The closing argument Bicks delivered today was his final chance to convince a jury that Google should be held liable for copyright infringement for using 37 Java APIs, which Oracle acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems. An appeals court has ruled that the APIs can be copyrighted. Now, Google's only hope of avoiding a payment to Oracle—which could potentially be in the billions of dollars—is a finding that it was "fair use" to harness the Java APIs.

To get Oculus Dreamdeck running on the HTC Vive, LibreVR is willing to break Oculus' DRM entirely, opening the platform up to potential piracy.

On Friday, an Oculus Runtime update blocked a fan-made workaround that had let HTC Vive owners play previously Rift-exclusive software. At the time, Oculus said the update wasn't targeted at the workaround, and was instead trying "to curb piracy and protect games and apps that developers have worked so hard to make." Now, though, Oculus' move has encouraged the patch's developer to break Oculus' digital rights managements entirely, potentially opening VR software up to piracy as well as hardware freedom.

On Saturday, just one day after Oculus' latest Runtime update, Revive developer LibreVR released Revive version 0.5.2. That update gets around Oculus new hardware checks by completely bypassing the DRM for Oculus Dreamdeck and, in theory, any other Unreal Engine game designed for the Rift (a similar workaround for Unity engine games is being worked on). This circumvents the "entitlement check" that confirms a Rift headset is plugged in, but also gets around the ownership check that confirms the software was legitimately purhased through Oculus' Home platform.

Breaking the DRM entirely is now the now the only way to break Oculus' hardware check, LibreVR writes on Reddit. "The problem is that Oculus added the check for the Rift being attached to your PC to the actual DRM. They now use the same function to check that you own the game and that you have the headset," he said. "I can't disable one check without disabling the other one too. Previously these checks were separate and the DRM would only check whether you owned the game."

The best-ever image of the far side of the Moon. (credit: NASA)

On Tuesday, budget writers in the US House will make changes to a bill that funds federal commerce, justice, and science agencies—which includes NASA—for the coming fiscal year. But a draft of the full bill released Monday contains a blockbuster for the space agency: the House calls for a pivot away from NASA’s direct-to-Mars vision toward a pathway that includes lunar landings first.

Since a space policy speech in 2010 by President Obama, the space agency has been following a loosely defined plan to first send astronauts to visit a fragment of an asteroid near the Moon and then conduct other operations in the vicinity of the Moon before striking off for Mars some time in the 2030s. However a number of independent reports, such as the National Research Council’s Pathways to Exploration, have questioned the viability and sustainability of a direct-to-Mars plan. That panel called for NASA and the White House to reconsider the Moon as an interim destination.

In the new House budget, which provides funding for fiscal year 2017, the committee recognizes there are some useful components of the asteroid mission. These include propulsion research and asteroid deflection, but committee members found that “neither a robotic nor a crewed mission to an asteroid appreciably contribute to the overarching mission to Mars.” The costs of such a mission are also unknown, the committee wrote.