Unlocking a cellphone is now illegal in the US

As of Saturday, unlocking a cellphone is against US law.

The process, which allows you to use your handset with a network other than the one you bought it from, has just become illegal again as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Unlocking was formerly allowed under an exemption to the act, ABC News explains, but in October 2012 the the US Copyright Office and Library of Congress decided not to renew the clause and it expired on Jan. 26.

Now, you must obtain your carrier’s permission to unlock your phone or face a potential fine of up to $2,500. Anyone found unlocking handsets for profit could be forced to pay up to $500,000 and may even go to jail, according to ABC — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Colour-Blind Cyborg Now Hears colour

When Neil Harbisson was a kid, he could only see in black and white.

In fact, he wasn’t totally convinced that colours actually existed.

But now, Harbisson can sense colour.

He still can’t see colours. But now he can hear them with a device he helped create in 2004 called the Eyeborg.

The device can detect 360 colours the human eye can normally perceive. It also detects infrared light.

Hearing colours changes the way you see everything, Harbisson says in a Cyborg Foundation video — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Lottie’s Octopus / Miniminipop

Lottie's Octopus / Miniminipop

Lottie is the most adorable little girl with a passion for all things aquatic. So it only seemed fitting she should have an octopus for her 1st birthday cake. The main body is plain madeira, but the tentacles are chocolate, lemon and carrot cake. A secret that was welcomed when the cake was cut — via Cake Central

Private health contractor’s staff told to cut 999 calls to meet targets

Call handlers staffing an out-of-hours GP service run by the private contractor Serco have been told to make new checks before calling 999 when they receive what appear to be emergency cases in order to cut down the number of referrals they make to the ambulance service.

The Guardian has also seen a management email to staff describing how they should manipulate their computer system in order to meet targets set down in the company’s contract on 999 responses.

Serco introduced a new cost-saving NHS IT system to the out-of-hours service it runs in Cornwall last summer as required by the local commissioners, enabling it to replace skilled clinicians with call-handlers without medical training who follow a computer-generated script to assess patients. The move triggered a fourfold increase in ambulance call-outs.

An email from Serco managers to staff this month, leaked by a whistle-blower to the Guardian, instructed call-handlers to “stop the clock” if the IT system reaches a screen telling the operator to make a 999 call while they check it. Staff have expressed concern that this might delay an ambulance in a real emergency and that the new system is not sophisticated enough to distinguish between urgent and less serious cases — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Child sex abuse link to celibacy

Many Catholic priests take a flexible approach to celibacy, tolerated by church leaders, and some believe sex with children or men does not count, a former Melbourne priest said on Wednesday.

An enormous number of priests struggle with celibacy, Philip O’Donnell told the state inquiry into how the churches handle child sex abuse.

There’s a tolerance for imperfection in celibacy, and that may have led to a lessening of outrage at sex with children.

He said he had no training about celibacy in the seminary and that many priests were ill-equipped. Chosen celibacy is a gift, but mandatory celibacy is for many priests a millstone, he said.
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Mr O’Donnell declined to speculate on what percentage of Catholic priests, who must vow to be celibate, were sexually active, but another Melbourne priest has separately suggested it is about half — via redwolf.newsvine.com

25 Years From Today: A Time for Bugs

25 years from today, 19 January 2038, at 03:14:08 UTC, an odd thing will happen to some of the no doubt very large number of computing devices in our world: an old, well-known and well-understood bug will cause their calculation of time to fail.

The problem springs from the use of a 32-bit signed integer to store a time value, as a number of seconds since 00:00:00 UTC on Thursday, 1 January 1970, a practice begun in early UNIX systems with the standard C library data structure time_t. On 19 January 2038, at 03:14:08 UTC that integer will overflow, as demonstrated in this animated GIF:

25 Years From Today: A Time for Bugs

For more detail on the problem, see the Wikipedia article on it. Wikipedia also has an article with an interesting collection of important time formatting and storage bugs, including Year 2038, Y2K, Days 32,768 and 65,536 and Year 10,000 — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Watermelon used as weapon in bus assault

Northern Territory police have arrested a 40-year-old man for smashing a watermelon over a bus driver’s head in Darwin’s northern suburbs.

Police say the attack began when the driver asked the man to pay his bus fare.

Watch Commander Debbie Gabolinscy says the man got off the bus after the watermelon attack but then got back on and continued the assault — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Indian Rhinoceros, Bys / Warsaw Zoo

Indian Rhinoceros, Bys / Warsaw Zoo

On Christmas day, Warsaw Zoo welcomed this newborn Indian Rhinoceros with great excitement, because he is the first ever rhinoceros born in a Polish zoo. At birth he weighed in at 55 kilos and was named By?. His parents are Shikari (born in 2006 in Stuttgart) and Kuba (born in 2004 in Berlin) — via ZooBorns

Family protests suspension of child over toy gun talk

The family of a Pennsylvania kindergartner suspended from school for talking about a soap bubble toy gun is protesting her punishment and wants her record cleared, an attorney for the family said on Monday.

The unidentified 5-year-old child from Mount Carmel in eastern Pennsylvania was suspended after she talked on January 10 about a Hello Kitty Bubble Gun while waiting for a bus after school, said attorney Robin Ficker.

According to the attorney, the little girl said to a friend: I’m going to shoot you and I will shoot myself, and we’ll all play together.

Her comments were overheard by an adult who reported them to the school, he said.

But the toy shoots only soap bubbles, and the girl did not even have one, he said — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Long-term aspirin blindness link

People who regularly take aspirin for many years, such as those with heart problems, are more likely to develop a form of blindness, researchers say.

A study on 2,389 people, in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, showed aspirin takers had twice the risk of wet age-related macular degeneration.

The disease damages the sweet spot in the retina, obscuring details in the centre of a patient’s field of vision.

The researchers said there was not yet enough evidence to change aspirin use — via redwolf.newsvine.com

PayPal Gets A Slice Of £25m DWP Universal Credit Identity Contract

PayPal has been awarded a place in the Government’s framework for Identity Assurance, so citizens may be allowed to use their PayPal credentials to prove their identity to access government services — particularly the new universal credit system.

TechWeekEurope learned of the deal back in November, but it has only now been made public.

PayPal is the eighth name on a £25 million contract with the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) published last week, which will allow citizens to use their credentials with commercial organisations, when they register for government services. At this stage, it is not clear what share of the contract PayPal will get, as it depends on which agencies choose to offer PayPal identification — via redwolf.newsvine.com

PayPal: Aggressive changes coming to frozen funds policy

PayPal’s overzealous fraud filters have frustrated customers for years, with an inscrutable verification process that leaves some battling for months to get access to their money.

The eBay-owned payments processor, like other financial companies, has policies in place to ensure that fraudsters aren’t using its system to transfer ill-gotten gains. But PayPal also traps legitimate businesses and charities in its filters, and proving you’re no scam involves a ton of paperwork and time.

PayPal says it’s finally ready to deal with the problem. It’s promising to roll out a massive overhaul of its system within the next several months — but details are scant for now — via redwolf.newsvine.com