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Android

The Tiny Console Killers Taking On the PS4 and Xbox 720 349

Posted by Soulskill from the neverending-console-generation dept.
An anonymous reader writes "As the next generation of consoles looms, we've seen a growing trend towards low price, compact alternatives such as the Ouya and GameStick, many of which run on the Android mobile platform. But this article on the trend raises a very good point: through the use of cloud computing and game streaming technology, it's entirely possible these machines will be able to keep pace with the powerhouse technology inside the Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox 720, and perhaps even overtake them. After all, if these little boxes can simply stream from powerful servers, how can the stalwarts of gaming keep up?"
Android

OLPC To Sell 7-Inch XO Tablet In Wal-Mart 99

Posted by Soulskill from the time-to-consider-a-rename dept.
angry tapir writes "One Laptop Per Child is back in the tablet race, announcing a new 7-inch tablet with the Android OS that will be sold commercially and include its learning software. The XO Tablet was announced at the International CES show in Las Vegas. OLPC will license the design to Sakar International, which will sell the tablet in the U.S. through Wal-Mart."
Encryption

NTLM 100% Broken Using Hashes Derived From Captures 155

Posted by Soulskill from the progress-bar-complete dept.
New submitter uCallHimDrJ0NES writes "Security researcher Mark Gamache has used Moxie Marlinspike's Cloudcracker to derive hashes from captured NTLM handshakes, resulting in successful pass-the-hash attacks. It's been going on for a long time, probably, but this is the first time a 'white hat' has researched and exposed the how-to details for us all to enjoy. 'You might think that with all the papers and presentations, no one would be using NTLM...or, God forbid, LM. NTLMv2 has been around for quite some time. Surely, everyone is using it. Right? Wrong! According to the last data from the W3 Schools, 21% of computers are running XP, while NetMarketShare claims it is 39%. Unless someone has hardened these machines (no MS patches do this), these machines are sending LM and NTLM responses!' Microsoft has posted a little guidance for those who need to turn off NTLM. Have fun explaining your new security project to your management, server admins!"
The Internet

The Problem With Internet Dating's Frictionless Market 453

Posted by Soulskill from the friction-jokes-excluded-for-obviousity dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Peter Ludlow writes in the Atlantic that the internet has turned the dating marketplace into a frictionless market that puts together buyer and seller without transaction costs. And that's a bad thing. 'Finding a partner used to be expensive, and the market was inefficient. If you lived in a large city, there were always people looking for partners, but the problem was how to find them.' But one advantage of inefficient dating markets is that in times of scarcity we sometimes take chances on things we wouldn't otherwise try while in times of plenty, we take the path of least resistance (someone who appears compatible) and we forgo difficult and prima facie implausible pairings. Another problem with frictionless online markets (PDF) is that assume we know what we are looking for. But sometimes we simply don't know what we are looking for until we stumble across it in a search for something else, says Ludlow. 'The result is often unexpected and beautiful. So it is with relationships; compatibility is a terrible idea in selecting a partner,' concludes Ludlow. 'We often make our greatest discoveries and acquire our greatest treasures when local scarcity compels us to be open to new and better things.'"
Handhelds

Tablet Shipments Will Finally Overtake Notebooks In 2013 66

Posted by Soulskill from the get-off-my-lawn dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Nowadays, it's not really a question of whether tablet shipments will surpass notebook shipments, but when. Back in July 2012, NPD forecasted 2016 as the year, but today it's saying this year will be it. More specifically, NPD estimated tablet shipments will reach more than 240 million units worldwide in 2013, compared to the company's projection of 207 million notebook shipments this year. This gap is significant enough that, even if NPD's estimates are out by some margin, tablet numbers will still overtake those of notebooks."
Bug

HP Software Update Cancels Food Stamps 240

Posted by Soulskill from the no-soup-for-you dept.
Spy Handler writes "A software update of the California welfare computer system (CalWIN) caused 37,000 Food Stamp recipients to lose their EBT (a credit card paid for by the government) benefits last weekend. According to the article, Hewlett Packard was responsible for the failed update of CalWIN, but at 8:00 a.m. today Xerox (who administers another state welfare system called CalFresh) issued a patch that reactivated the EBT cards."
IBM

Change the ThinkPad and It Will Die 347

Posted by Soulskill from the don't-go-chasing-iWaterfalls dept.
ErichTheRed writes "Here's an interesting editorial piece about the ThinkPad over at CNN. It mirrors what many ThinkPad devotees have been saying since Lenovo started tweaking the classic IBM design to make the ThinkPad more like a MacBook, Sony or other high-end consumer device. I'm a big fan of these bulletproof, decidedly unsexy business notebooks, and would be unhappy if Lenovo decided to sacrifice build quality for coolness. Quoting: 'Before doing anything drastic, Lenovo would be wise to review the spectacular rise and fall of Blackberry-maker Research in Motion. The mobile handset manufacturer tried to take on Apple by launching a number of products aimed at the retail consumer after the launch of the iPhone. It released the devastatingly bad Blackberry Storm as a response to the iPhone and later the Playbook to take on the iPad. The Storm failed because it was hastily put together in a mad dash and lacked the signature Blackberry QWERTY keyboard ... The Playbook failed because the Blackberry ecosystem had at the point of its launched more or less collapsed, making the Playbook just another iPad clone no one wanted. Meanwhile, the original Blackberry was left to wither away as the company focused on chasing Apple and wasn't updated in a meaningful way, making it look just old and tired.'"
Education

UC's For-Pay Online Course Draws 4 Non-UC Students 177

Posted by Soulskill from the let-the-market-decide dept.
slew writes "In the shadow of Stanford and Harvard offering free on-line courses, The University of California has been attempting to offer pay-courses for credit. UC online took out a $6.9M loan from UC and spent $4.3M to market these courses. For their efforts, they've been able to quadruple their enrollment year over year. The first year results: only one person not already attending UC paid $1,400 for an online pre-calculus class worth four credits. Now four non-UC are signed up. 'UC Online has to pay back the loan in seven years and expected to sell 7,000 classes to non-UC students for $1,400 or $2,400 apiece, depending on each course's duration. China was thought to be a lucrative potential source of students, but few expressed interest. The U.S. military also fell through.' Methinks head will roll on this one..."
Security

Serious Password Reset Hole In Accellion Secure FTP 27

Posted by Soulskill from the how-to-annoy-other-users dept.
chicksdaddy writes "A security researcher who was looking for vulnerabilities in Facebook's platform instead stumbled on a much larger hole that could affect scores of firms who rely on a secure file transfer platform from Accellion. Writing on his blog on Monday, Israeli researcher Nir Goldshlager said he discovered the password reset vulnerability while analyzing a Accellion deployment that is used, internally, by Facebook employees. Goldshlager used public knowledge of the Accellion platform to access a hidden account creation page for the Facebook deployment and create a new Facebook/Accellion account linked to his e-mail address. After analyzing Accellion's password reset feature, he realized that — with that valid account — he could reset the password of any other Facebook/Accellion user with some cutting and pasting and a simple HTTP POST request, provided he knew the user's login e-mail address — effectively hijacking the account. Goldshlager said he informed Facebook and that the hole has been patched by Facebook and Accellion. However, other Accellion customers using private cloud deployments of the product could still be vulnerable."
Portables

Razer Unveils High-End Gaming Tablet 136

Posted by Soulskill from the this-is-now-a-thing-that-exists dept.
adeelarshad82 writes "A year after Razer tantalized us all with a concept device codenamed Project Fiona, the company has unveiled the Razer Edge, the world's first tablet designed exclusively for high-end gaming. With the help of crowdsourcing endeavor of tapping into Razer's fanbase for input on everything from chipset to physical dimensions, 'Project Fiona' has morphed from concept to full-blown reality. The Razer Edge is a 10.1-inch device which weighs a shade under 2 pounds and measures 0.8-inches thick. The device comes in two models: Base and Pro. The Base model sports an Intel Core i5 CPU, 4GB RAM, and a 64GB SSD, whereas the Pro comes configured with a beefier Intel Core i7 CPU, 8GB RAM, and the option for either a 128GB or 256GB SSD. Both models feature a USB 3.0 port, and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, and both run on a full version of Windows 8 with Intel architecture, in turn allowing PC games to run natively on the Edge without the need to be ported or optimized."
Science

Does All of Science Really Move In 'Paradigm Shifts'? 265

Posted by Soulskill from the corporate-science-certainly-does dept.
ATKeiper writes "Thomas Kuhn's landmark book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions just turned fifty years old. In that book, Kuhn coined the expression 'paradigm shift' to describe revolutionary changes in scientific fields — such as the replacement of the geocentric understanding of the universe with the heliocentric model of the solar system. The book was hotly debated for claiming that different scientific paradigms were 'incommensurable,' which implied (for example) that Newton was no more right about gravity than Aristotle. A new essay in The New Atlantis revisits the controversy and asks whether the fact that Kuhn based his argument almost exclusively on physics means that it does not apply as well to major developments in biology or, for that matter, to the social sciences."
Google

Google Wiring New York City's Chelsea For Free Wi-Fi 67

Posted by Soulskill from the now-do-the-rest-of-the-country dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "On the heels of rolling out high-speed broadband to Kansas City, Google is bringing more connectivity to another American municipality: New York City's Chelsea neighborhood, which will receive Wi-Fi in outdoor areas courtesy of the search-engine giant. The free Internet zone will encompass an area between 8th Avenue and the West Side Highway on the East-West access, and 19th Street and Gansevoort Street on the North-South. It will cost $115,000 to build and $45,000 a year to maintain, according to Bloomberg, with costs split between Google and a nonprofit neighborhood development group. Internet access will come free of advertising, aside from a provider message from Google, and not require any sort of password. Under mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City has encouraged the development of a sizable tech sector; in addition to dozens of startups, Google and other behemoths have opened headquarters in Manhattan. In theory, this 'Silicon Alley' will contribute mightily to the city's tax base and diversify the local economy."
Firefox

Firefox 18 Launches With Faster IonMonkey-Enabled JavaScript, Built-In PDF Viewe 220

Posted by Soulskill from the apparently-foxes-get-along-with-monkeys dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla on Tuesday officially launched Firefox 18 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The improvements include a new JavaScript compiler, a built-in PDF viewer, as well as Retina and touch support. The release notes are available, as is a list of changes for devs."
Cellphones

Hands On With Ubuntu For SmartPhones 127

Posted by timothy from the looking-slick dept.
adeelarshad82 writes "Ubuntu for smartphones may be pretty late to the smartphone ecosystem, but as the hands-on video demonstrates, Canonical has been paying attention. The operating system is just called Ubuntu, allowing the company to complete their illusion that this operating system offers everything that desktop Ubuntu runs. If you're a fan of the Unity UI you will find yourself right at home with this interface since every bit of Ubuntu has visual cues that come straight from Unity. As the video shows, the animations looked great, and the phone feels incredibly fast. The top bar of the OS has several icons across it, offering a quick glimpse into things like battery life, messages and others. Settings for every app are available by swiping up from the bottom of the screen, in a gesture that is quite similar to the one used in Windows 8 to access the menu. Given that it's early days for the OS, Ubuntu is far from perfect. For instance, their welcome screen allows for way too many apps to be rapidly accessible without a pin lock of some kind."
Privacy

Disney Wants To Track You With RFID 278

Posted by timothy from the disney-himself-just-relaxes-in-the-nitrogen dept.
Antipater writes "Disney parks and resorts have long had a system that combined your room key, credit card, and park ticket into a single card. Now, they're taking it a step further by turning the card into an RFID wristband (called a 'MagicBand'), tracking you, and personalizing your park experience, targeted-ad style. 'Imagine booking guaranteed ride times for your favorite shows and attractions even before setting foot in the park,' wrote Tom Staggs, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, in a blog posting on Monday. 'With MyMagic+, guests will be able to do that and more, enabling them to spend more time together and creating an experience that's better for everyone.' Disney does go on to talk about all the things you can opt out of if you have privacy concerns, and the whole system seems to be voluntary or even premium." With a theme park, at least, you can also choose to avoid the place entirely; that makes it, however creepy, a bit different from compulsory education settings, or mandatory car tracking.

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