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Enlarge / The arrow points to the very faint moon near Makemake. (credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Parker)

Today, NASA announced that images it has been sitting on for a year show a moon orbiting a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt. The moon, formally known as S/2015 (136472) and going informally as MK 2, is in orbit around Makemake, a dwarf planet two-thirds the size of Pluto that spends most of its time more than 40 Astronomical Units away from the Sun (1 AU is the typical Earth-Sun distance).

MK 2 is more than 1,300 times fainter than the planet it orbits, largely because it has a very dark surface compared to Makemake's icy white color. It also appears to orbit within the plane of the Solar System, which means it's indistinguishable from Makemake for much of its orbit—Hubble managed to catch it when it was more than 20,000km from the dwarf planet. Estimates are that MK 2 is about 160km across compared to Makemake's 1,400km.

Early observations show that the orbit takes at least 12 days, and the shape of the orbit is roughly circular. This data suggests that MK 2 formed from debris liberated from Makemake by an impact; passing objects that are captured by planets typically have eccentric orbits. Detailed observations of MK 2's orbit will allow us to determine the density of Makemake, which will then tell us something about its composition, so NASA will continue observing the new body.

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Enlarge / Slide the button and remove the watchband. Simple! (credit: Google)

One of the things the Apple Watch has been able hold over its Android Wear competitors is the ability to easily swap watchbands. Today Google hopes to catch up with a new line of easily changeable watchbands called "Mode." The design is pretty simple. Lugs on the watch body hold a permanent bar, and the band has a trapdoor for the bar that opens and closes via a little switch.

The bands are made in partnership with watchband company "b&nd by Hadley Roma." They come in four different widths, so they should fit most of the existing Android Wear devices out there. The Android Wear website has a sizing chart for existing devices. For what Google calls the "first collection," there are ten leather bands and six silicone bands in a rainbow of colors, but no options for a metal version.

In the past, Android Wear OEMs have recommended going to a jeweler to have watchbands swapped out, so easily removable bands are a big improvement. Google says it's sharing the Mode mechanism design, instructions, and specs with other brands in the hope that a whole ecosystem springs up. The bands are available at the Google Store (US), Amazon, and Best Buy. Leather goes for $60, silicone for $50.

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For millions of cable TV viewers around the world, the only way to access the content provided by broadcasters is through a set-top box. In many cases these boxes are provided exclusively by broadcasters, forcing out competition.

This consumer-unfriendly situation has attracted the attention of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States who report that 99% of pay-TV subscribers are chained to set-top boxes provided by suppliers at inflated rates.

“Lack of competition has meant few choices and high prices for consumers – on average, $231 in rental fees annually for the average American household. Altogether, U.S. consumers spend $20 billion a year to lease these devices,” the FCC announced in January.

According to the FCC, since 1994 the cost of computers, TVs and mobile phones has dropped by 90%. However, due to a lack of competition in the same period cable set-top box costs have risen by 185%.

“Congress recognized the importance of a competitive marketplace and directed the Commission to adopt rules that will ensure consumers will be able to use the device they prefer for accessing programming they’ve paid for,” the FCC said.

In February the FCC approved a proposal that would allow consumers to swap expensive cable boxes for other devices and apps, a change set to boost competition but deliver a blow to companies such as Comcast who would suddenly be open to competition from companies such as Alphabet/Google.

The proposal triggered a 60-day period in which cable providers and other stakeholders were invited to provide input and comment. Earlier this month President Barack Obama came out in favor of the plan but now the MPAA has weighed in with an unsurprisingly hostile opinion.

In a piece titled “It’s About Creators”, Neil Fried, MPAA Senior Vice President, Government and Regulatory Affairs, accuses FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and even the President of “gloss[ing] over the harm the proposal will cause the creative community.”

Noting that the MPAA’s members are not in the set-top box market, Fried says that they’re in the vital content creation business, content which gets licensed to cable, satellite and other platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon and AppleTV.

“These distributors then profit from the content through equipment sales, subscription fees, advertising, and the monetization of viewers’ online profiles,” the MPAA says.

According to the MPAA, the FCC proposals will ‘take’ the intellectual property of its members and “give” it to the technology industry, effectively ignoring copyright law.

“[T]he FCC proposal requires pay-TV providers to transmit to third-party device manufacturers and internet application developers all the content that pay-TV providers license from programmers, without requiring those third parties to seek consent from the programmers or to compensate them,” the MPAA writes.

Interestingly, not only is the MPAA concerned about competition from third-parties such as Google, but is also suggesting that pirate sites could take advantage of the situation to begin offering new unauthorized services.

“No matter what you think about the pay-TV set-top box market, the FCC may not promote alternatives by taking the intellectual property of the content industry and giving it to some members of the technology industry, or by making it easier for pirate site operators to build a black market business by stealing that content. Unfortunately, that’s what the proposal would do,” the MPAA warns.

Indeed, as one delves deeper into the MPAA’s statement, the scale of their concerns really becomes apparent.

The currently locked-down set-top box environment ensures that via strict licensing arrangements, entertainment industry companies have complete control over which content is offered to the subscriber. However, third-party set-top boxes are expected to provide content from both Pay-TV providers and also content being offered on the Internet. And according to the MPAA that can mean only one thing.

“We anticipate that video navigation device and application providers will rely on the proposed rules to offer ‘cross-platform searches’ and ‘recommendation engines’ that mingle pay-TV content with internet content,” the MPAA says.

“We are not contesting cross-platform searches of authorized content — but we must oppose any regulation that would import the piracy problem from the internet search world into the pay-TV world by mixing pirated content with authorized content, causing further harm to content creators and the creative economy.”

Of course, even if not referenced by name, no MPAA piece of late would be complete without a negative reference to Google. Hollywood blames Google for falling to curtail Internet piracy, a situation that could bleed into the living room with the FCC’s set-top box proposals.

“[O]n the Internet, search engines frequently prioritize search results for sites offering stolen content over those offering authorized content, and searches for film and TV programming almost always yield results that mingle the two types of sites,” the movie industry group complains.

Noting that some have suggested that if the content providers don’t like the situation they’ll just have to litigate under existing copyright law, the MPAA says that is “cold comfort” to content creators.

“[T]he regulation would fundamentally undermine copyright law, create a piracy problem that does not exist today, and place new burdens on content owners to police the app and device market for stolen copies of their works, forcing them to undertake time-consuming, costly litigation, and sustain additional lost revenue to piracy,” the MPAA concludes.

The FCC’s proposals certainly have the potential to open up a huge can of worms. That being said, it’s inevitable that the Internet will eventually dominate the living room, it’s only a question of how controlled – if at all – its pipe will be.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Facebook and Microsoft seem to believe that chatbots are the future… and that if you teach them well, you can let them lead the way. Or something like that.

Microsoft recently released a set of developer tools called the Microsoft Bot Framework that helps developers create chatbots for news, retail, weather, or other services. And Facebook has released its own Facebook Messenger Platform for creating chatbots that work on the company’s instant messaging service.

Continue reading Chatting about chatbots on the LPX Show podcast at Liliputing.

The Y chromosome (right) is pretty minimalist compared to the X, but it holds much more history. (credit: MIT)

The history of humanity, as we've read it through DNA, has been written largely by females. Mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only from our mothers, is short and easy to sequence, so researchers have frequently relied on it to study human DNA, both in present populations and in old bones.

But as DNA sequencing technology has improved, it has become progressively easier to sequence all the DNA that an individual carries. If said individual is a male, the resulting sequence will include the Y chromosome, which is inherited only from fathers. With more data in hand, researchers have been able to perform an analysis of the Y chromosome's history, and they've found that its sequence retains the imprint of both the migrations and technological innovations that have featured in humanity's past.

How to read a Y

Most chromosomes in the cell are present as two copies, which allows them to swap genetic material. Over time, this swapping will mix up the mutations that occur on the chromosome, making their history difficult to untangle.

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(credit: Artondra Hall)

A Baltimore judge has tossed crucial evidence obtained via a stingray in a murder case—the trial was set to begin this week.

According to the Baltimore Sun, local police used the device, also known as a cell-site simulator, to locate the murder suspect in an apartment near his victim’s. In 2014, investigators used the stingray to locate the suspect, Robert Copes, who allowed them into his apartment. There, amid cleaning supplies including bleach and the phone they were looking for, police found the blood of Ina Jenkins, 34, in Copes' apartment. Jenkins' body was found “dumped across the street.”

The Baltimore police had a court-approved pen register, a legal authorization, to use the stingray. However that is not the same as a search warrant that requires probable cause.

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(credit: Renzo Stanley)

Jurors who don't obey a judge's admonition to refrain from researching the Internet about a case or using social media during trial could be dinged up to $1,500 under proposed California legislation.

The first-of-its-kind measure, now before the California Assembly, would give a new weapon to judges in the Golden State, who can already hold misbehaving jurors in contempt. But under the new law, designed to combat mistrials, a judge would have an easier time issuing a rank-and-file citation under the proposed law instead of having to go through all of the legal fuss to charge somebody with contempt.

Judges routinely warn jurors not to research their case or discuss it on social media. Normally, errant jurors are dismissed without any penalty, and sometimes a mistrial ensues. Under the new law, levying a fine would be as easy as issuing a traffic ticket.

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The Google Store is currently selling Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P smartphones for $50 off the list price. But several retailers are one-upping Google by offering the same prices… but also throwing in gift cards.

Buy a Nexus 6P for $449 and up from Newegg, for example, and you can get a $50 gift card that can be used toward other purchases from the retailer.

Here are some of the day’s best deals.

Continue reading Deals of the Day (4-26-2016) at Liliputing.