En twittrare har dömts till åtta års fängelse i Saudiarabien. Anledningen är att personen uppges ha uppmanat familjer till de som ”gripits av säkerhetsskäl” att protestera med hjälp av inlägg på Twitter och Youtube.

Georgetown researcher (and executive dean of Georgetown's medical school) Howard Federoff has taken a "systems" approach to diagnostics for certain chronic diseases. By comparing blood samples taken from patients who subsequently developed Alzheimer's to blood samples after the disease has manifested, Federoff has identified markers and created a blood test that is described as "90 percent accurate" (the BBC article does not delve into the ratio of false positives to false negatives) in predicting whether a currently healthy patient is likely to develop Alzheimer's in the following three years. Understandably, this raises some ethical and practical questions. What would you do differently if this test came back positive for yourself? Or for a parent? Here's the (paywalled) paper, at Nature Medicine.

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En kvinna från Frösön har författat ett medborgarförslag till Östersunds kommun där hon föreslår att ordet brukare ska sluta användas inom bland annat äldrevården, eftersom det är ”respektlöst och nedvärderande”. Förslaget har tagit skruv, skriver Länstidningen i Östersund i sin nätupplaga, och kommer att diskuteras när vård- och omsorgsnämnden sammanträder på onsdagen.

NexStarCtl - API to control NexStar compatible telescopes

Thirteen nuns seized from Christian town of Maaloula in December released as part of prisoner exchange.

Proryska styrkor intog i dag ännu en ukrainsk flygbas på Krimhalvön i närheten av byn Saki, enligt en talesperson för Ukrainas försvarsdepartement.

Passagerarna som satt instängda i Pågatåget mellan Lund och Malmö under lördagen hade kunna lämnat tåget mycket tidigare - om Trafikverket inte dröjt med att ringa räddningstjänsten.

An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from an intriguing article at TechDirt about the sometimes very low-tech methods of the East German Stasi. They may have been using more pencils than computers, but they were gathering information on their targets using the same kind of metadata whose significance the U.S. government has lately been downplaying: "They amassed dossiers on about one quarter of the population of the country during the Communist regime. But their spycraft — while incredibly invasive — was also technologically primitive by today's standards. While researching my book Dragnet Nation, I obtained the above hand drawn social network graph and other files from the Stasi Archive in Berlin, where German citizens can see files kept about them and media can access some files, with the names of the people who were monitored removed. The graphic shows forty-six connections, linking a target to various people (an 'aunt,' 'Operational Case Jentzsch,' presumably Bernd Jentzsch, an East German poet who defected to the West in 1976), places ('church'), and meetings ('by post, by phone, meeting in Hungary')."

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Leaked testimonies describe arbitrary arrests, forced confessions, torture and filthy conditions in overcrowded cells.

En grupp nunnor ska ha släppts på söndagen av syriska rebeller efter mer än tre månaders fångenskap, enligt kyrkoledare och en libanesisk säkerhetskälla. Nunnorna uppgavs på söndagskvällen vara på väg till huvudstaden Damaskus.

The Chicago Tribune reports that Yik Yak, a mobile app that can (among other things) be used for anonymous communications, has drawn complaints from several local schools, who are unhappy that students can use it to bully or pester others. "'The problem, as you might imagine, is that the anonymity is empowering certain individuals to post comments about others that are hurtful, harassing and sometimes quite disturbing,' Joseph Ruggiero, head of the Upper School at Francis W. Parker School in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, wrote in an email to parents last week. ... In light of the controversy, Yik Yak's co-founder said the company was disabling the app in the Chicago area and will attempt to specifically prevent it from being used on high school or middle school grounds."

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Voters are obliged to tick "Yes" for the sole candidate on their ballot paper.

IPv4 and IPv6 validation methods