Calif. to fine app developers over privacy
SACRAMENTO, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- California officials say they've contacted some mobile app developers to inform them they're breaking state law covering privacy policies.
Under the California Online Privacy Protection Act, mobile app developers who don't post conspicuous online and in-app privacy policies can face a $2,500 fine per app download, InformationWeek reported.
California officials say they are ready to start fining developers who release apps that lack such clear and easily accessible privacy policies.
California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris this week began notifying numerous businesses that collectively develop as many as 100 different mobile apps they have "30 days to conspicuously post a privacy policy within their app that informs users of what personally identifiable information about them is being collected and what will be done with that private information."
"Protecting the privacy of online consumers is a serious law enforcement matter," Harris said in a statement. "We have worked hard to ensure that app developers are aware of their legal obligations to respect the privacy of Californians, but it is critical that we take all necessary steps to enforce California's privacy laws."
Harris started warning businesses about required compliance with the state's privacy law in February, when she announced the six businesses with the largest mobile app distribution platforms -- Amazon, Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Research In Motion -- had agreed to a set of privacy principles.
Sandy a harbinger of things to come?
NEW YORK, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- The destruction caused by superstorm Sandy in the U.S. Northeast shouldn't have been a surprise and may be a sign of things to come, climate scientists say.
The combination of melting arctic ice, rising sea levels, the warming atmosphere and changes to weather patterns could lead to a future in which the world experiences storms and tidal surges of unprecedented intensity, they said.
Climate change means eastern seaboard cities like New York and others are "highly vulnerable," geoscience Professor Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University told CNN.
"[Superstorm] Sandy is a foretaste of things to come," he predicted, "from the combination of bigger storms and higher sea levels, both of which contribute equally to the growing threat."
Ben Orlove, director of the master's program in Climate and Society at Columbia University, agreed.
"Storms and tides are natural, but sea level rise is not. As it continues, New York grows more vulnerable."
Oppenheimer recently modeled the effect of climate change on storm surges for the New York area.
In a paper published in the journal Nature in February, he and his three research colleagues said the "storm of the century" could become the storm of "every twenty years or less."
Fossils of flying fish found in China
GUIYANG, China, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- Paleontologists say new flying fish fossils found in China provide the earliest evidence of vertebrates who could glide over water.
The "exceptionally well-preserved fossils" have been dated to the Middle Triassic period of 235 million to 242 million years ago, the BBC reported Wednesday.
Scientists from Peking University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Zhejiang Museum of Natural History, writing in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, said the fish, named Potanichthys xingyiensis, was 6 inches long and possessed the "unusual combination of morphological features" associated with gliding strategy in fish.
The fossils show a forked tail fin, a pair of enlarged pectoral fins forming "primary wings" and a smaller pair of pelvic fins acting as "auxiliary wings," the researchers reported.
Gliding behavior has "evolved only twice among fishes," they wrote; once in the Triassic fishes and again in the modern-day Exocoetidae flying fish family.
Scientists say they believe both families of flying fishes evolved a gliding behavior so they could escape marine predators by "flying" to safety.
In-flight magazine to go digital, wireless
OSLO, Norway, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- A Norwegian airline and an in-flight magazine publisher say they will use WiFi to bring airline passengers new options in in-flight entertainment.
Norwegian Air Shuttle and Ink, which provides magazines for about 30 airlines around the world, said they would debut the new system next year, The New York Times reported.
Using Norwegian Air Shuttle's free WiFi service, passengers will be able to access content including music, video and travel articles from the carrier's in-flight magazine on their smartphones, tablets or laptops.
"We wanted to rethink the whole way we organize travel content, from the beginning to the end of a customer journey," Stine Steffensen Borke, marketing director at Norwegian, said.
Norwegian says its free WiFi service is available on 80 percent of its fleet of 68 planes.
However, there are no plans at the moment to phase out the airline's paper version of its magazine, Steffenson Borke said.
"I'm still surprised by how many people read the magazine," she said. "At the moment, it's still a useful channel for us."
