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Google

Submission + - Google Touts Worker Tracking as Own CEO Goes MIA

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: On Thursday, Google announced a product that enables a business to see where all its workers are at all times. Called Maps Coordinate, it combines a paid-for business version of Google’s standard maps product with an application downloaded to a worker's smartphone, creating a real-time record of worker locations. Ironically, Google touted its worker tracking solution on the very same day that CEO Larry Page was a surprise no-show at Google's Annual Shareholder Meeting, leaving Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt to explain his absence. Schmidt explained that Page had lost his voice and, as a result, would likely also miss next week's I/O conference and possibly next month's quarterly earnings call. While a Google spokeswoman declined to comment further on Page’s condition, Schmidt added that Page will continue as CEO while he recovers. So, why not reassure those worried about the situation by publicly tracking Page's location via Maps Coordinate? After all, Google's a true believer in eating its own dog food, right?
Spam

Submission + - Minecraft troll calls SWAT on mod, cries murder (playerattack.com)

Submitted by dotarray
dotarray writes: A disgruntled gamer sent the cops around to a moderator's house after being kicked out of an online chat. Law enforcement personnel from four different agencies arrived at the Washington state home late Saturday night, after receiving reports that a man had shot his 14 year-old daughter who had just told him she was pregnant.

The problem? There was no pregnancy, and there was no daughter. The handcuffed man lying on the ground, Dave Neumann, only had sons — one of whom, Jake, was a moderator in a Minecraft serve
Security

Submission + - PayPal Starts Bug Bounty Program For Security Research (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: PayPal is the latest company to join the ranks of software vendors and Web properties that offer bounties to security researchers who privately disclose new bugs to them. The company isn't saying how much it will pay for each bug, just that its security team will determine the severity of each flaw as well as the ultimate payout.

PayPal's decision to offer financial incentives to researchers follows the establishment of similar programs by companies including Google, Mozilla, Facebook, Barracuda and others. Google's bug bounty program may be the most well-known and comprehensive, as it includes bugs not just in its software products such as Chrome, but also its Web properties. The company has paid out more than $400,000 in rewards to researchers since the program began and researchers who consistently find bugs in Google's products can make a nice side income off the program.

Now PayPal is entering the fray at a time when financial fraud and attacks against high-profile Web sites are at a fever pitch. The company's top security official said that he believes PayPal is the first financial services company to start such a program.
Games

Submission + - Custom Snes With Built in Screens In Controllers Released (dcemu.co.uk)

Submitted by YokimaSun
YokimaSun writes: The 16 Bit days are for most the golden era of gaming with the Snes taking its place as the greatest gaming console ever with so many awesome games released for it, the likes of Super Mario Kart, Mario World, Zelda 3, Donkey Kong Country and Secret of Mana. Cndowning has created a custom version of the console with controllers that have screens built into them. So you can watch the action without even connecting to a TV. Whats your favourite Snes game Slashdotters ?
Government

Submission + - Goths First Victim of Dystopian Filtering? (gothic.org)

Submitted by
Amelia G
Amelia G writes: "Gothic.Org details how Trend Micro has classified the gothic beauty and fashion site as adult and refused repeated requests for reclassification. Nobody has the bandwidth to sort through every media thing thrown at them today, but the problem is that mega-corps are being given the explicit power to determine what we can and cannot learn about, what ideas we may be exposed to, what the delineations of common human knowledge will be. Maybe whether or not one can easily view pictures of black couture and heavy eyeliner is not terribly important. But who gets to decide where the line is where the issue becomes too important to permit censorship of it? If you look at it just right, it is kinda funny that the dystopian, groupthink, panopticon future once feared will come about, not via jackboots on the ground, but for the sake of convenience. Is quasi-voluntary censorship by private companies better or worse than government censorship? Could filtering technology be personalized enough to avoid the biases of individuals working for companies or governments?"
Medicine

Submission + - Details of the Second Controversial Mutant Bird Flu Study Finally Published (medicaldaily.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The second of the two controversial bird flu studies once considered too risky to publish in fears that they would trigger a potentially devastating global influenza epidemic was published Thursday.

The study describes how scientists created H5N1 virus strains that could become capable of airborne transmission between mammals. Scientists said that the findings, which had been censored for half a year, could help them detect dangerous virus strains in nature.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6088/1534.full
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's Surface Could Kill HP, Dell, Other PC OEMs (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Microsoft's Surface isn't just an attempt to take on the iPad or an articulation of MS's independent design philosophy — it's a fundamental threat against the OEMs who've spent decades as Microsoft's partners and collectively destroyed the industry's perception of the PC as a high-value product. The adversarial roots run deep. Microsoft didn't tell its partners about Surface until three days before the event and gave only the most minimal details on the product. Only the largest vendors even got a phone call; Asus and Acer, the 4th and 5th largest PC manufacturers worldwide, have stated that they had no idea anything was coming. For OEMs who have spent decades working in lock-step with Redmond, that's deeply unsettling. If Surface heats up, other OEMs have two stark options. They can continue their race-to-bottom, devouring each other in consolidations and acquisitions until only the brand names are left and every PC component and system has been outsourced to Malaysia — or they can start building names for themselves as innovators."
Privacy

Submission + - Track the trackers with Collusion: Interview with Mozilla's Ryan Merkley (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: Among the eye-opening statements in his recent TED talk, Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs said, "Privacy is not an option, and it shouldn't be the price we accept for just getting on the Internet. Our voices matter and our actions matter even more." After you download and install Collusion in Firefox, you can "see who is tracking you across the Web and following you through the digital woods," Kovacs stated. "Going forward, all of our voices need to be heard. Because what we don't know can actually hurt us. Because the memory of the Internet is forever. We are being watched. It's now time for us to watch the watchers."

I've been using Collusion for some time now and it is jaw-dropping to watch all the sites that still stalk us across the web even with DNT and privacy add-ons.

The Collusion page states: "The Ford Foundation is supporting Mozilla to develop the Collusion add-on so it will enable users to not only see who is tracking them across the Web, but also to turn that tracking off when they want to." Recently I had an opportunity to ask Matt Thompson, Chief Storyteller & Communications Director for the Mozilla Foundation, and Ryan Merkley, Chief Operating Officer for the Mozilla Foundation, some questions.
Piracy

Submission + - RIAA Goes After CNET

Submitted by moj0joj0
moj0joj0 writes: Two days after YouTube-MP3.org, a site that converts songs from music videos into MP3 files, was blocked from accessing YouTube, the RIAA has asked CNET to remove software from Download.com that performs a similar function.

The RIAA focused its criticism on software found at Download.com called YouTubeDownloader. The organization also pointed out that there are many other similar applications available at the site, "which can be used to steal content from CBS, which owns Download.com."

CNET's policy is that Download.com is not in any position to determine whether a piece of software is legal or not or whether it can be used for illegal activity.
China

Submission + - US' Fastest Growing Exports to China: Education (forbes.com) 1

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: While we are importing billions of "cheap" products labeled "Made in China", the fastest growing exports from US to China does not even need a label. Chinese parents are acutely aware that the Chinese educational system focuses too much on rote memorization, so Chinese students have flocked to overseas universities and now even secondary schools, despite the high cost of attending programs in America. Chinese enrollment in U.S. universities rose 23% to 157,558 students during the 2010-2011 academic year, making China by far the biggest foreign presence. Even the daughter of Xi Jinping, the presumed next president of China, studies as an undergraduate at Harvard. This creates opportunities for universities to bring American education directly to China. Both Duke and New York University are building campuses in the Shanghai area to offer full-time programs to students there. Maybe one day, our education export can save our own education system or even the economy.
Android

Submission + - Microsoft Exec Talks Windows Phone 8 Native Code, Acquisitions (slashdot.org)

Submitted by
Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: "A day after Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 8, a company executive explained why the company never implemented native code in Windows Phone 7, declined to say whether Windows Phone 7.x would be upgraded beyond version 7.8, and said Microsoft has no plans to acquire an OEM to manufacture smartphones in-house.

Of course, in theory that wouldn't stop Microsoft from building its own hardware in-house, similar to what Google did with the Nexus One. In any case, Microsoft's decision to construct its hardware and software in-house for the Surface tablet project has led to some chatter that it could do the same for smartphones."
Communications

Submission + - Google Launches Endangered Languages Project (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "About half of all of the languages in the world — more than 3,000 of them — are currently on the verge of extinction. Google hopes to stem the tide with its latest effort that launched Thursday, called The Endangered Languages Project. Google teamed up with the Alliance for Linguistic Diversity, a newly formed coalition of global language groups and associations, to give endangered-language speakers and their supporters a place to upload and share their research and collaborations. The site currently features posts submitted by the Endangered Languages community, including linguistic fieldwork, projects, audio interviews, and transcriptions."
Data Storage

Submission + - SSD prices down 46% since 2011 (techreport.com)

Submitted by
crookedvulture
crookedvulture writes: "Hard drive prices have yet to return to normal after last year's Thailand flooding. There's good news on the solid-state front, though. The current generation of SSDs has steadily become much cheaper over the last year or so. SSD prices have dropped an average of 46% since early 2011. Intel has largely shied away from discounting its drives, but the aggressive competition between other players in the market seems to have forced its hand. There's no indication that competition is waning, suggesting the downward trend will continue. Right now, an impressive number of drives are available for less than a doller per gigabyte."

Submission + - The NTP Pool needs more servers (ntppool.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The NTP Pool project is turning 10 soon, and needs more servers to continue serving reasonably accurate time to anyone in the world.
Space

Submission + - Kepler-36's 'Odd Couple' Defy Planet Formation Theories (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "The two planets circling Kepler-36, a sun-like star in its senior years, are as different as Earth and Neptune. But unlike the hundreds of millions of miles that separate our solar system's rocky worlds from its gas giants, Kepler-36's brood come as close as 1.2 million miles (1.9 million kilometers, or 0.01 AU) from one another — about five times the distance between Earth and the moon. This is yet another weird exoplanetary star system that defies conventional wisdom when it comes to planetary formation theories. "The weirder they are, the more scientifically interesting they are," Steve Howell, deputy project scientist with NASA's Kepler space telescope, told Discovery News."
Social Networks

Submission + - Reddit Was Built By A Horde of Fake Accounts (vice.com)

Submitted by derekmead
derekmead writes: How, exactly, did Reddit get so big? Well, according to Reddit cofounder Steve Huffman, in the early days the Reddit crew just faked it ‘til they made it. In a video for Udacity, an online source for education and lectures, Huffman describes how the first Redditors populated the site’s content with tons of fake accounts.

These days, with the site’s users wary of people using expendable accounts to try to seed their own content, it seems nuts that an army of fakers would be seeding content all over the site. But early on, Huffman said that using fake accounts driven by the founders was key to building the tone they wanted to the site. Basically, by populating the site with accounts whose strings they pulled, the Reddit crew could shape the discourse and sharing of the site in the direction they wanted, and as the real user base grew, those standards held, allowing the fake accounts to fade away.
Government

Submission + - Kaspersky Says Lack of Digital Voting Will Be Democracy's Downfall (internetevolution.com)

Submitted by hapworth
hapworth writes: Eugene Kaspersky, founder and CEO of cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab, has warned that one of the greatest cyber threats facing the world is the lack of effective online voting systems, claiming that unless young people can vote online they won't bother at all and the whole democratic system will collapse. Not everyone is buying that theory, however (and there's reason to suspect Kaspersky has a vested interest in online voting, which may need his firm's cybersecurity products). As producer James Lambie writes, "Ultimately, the digital native’s disenchantment with voting is based less on a lack of suitable technology and more on disillusionment with the craven and anemic political choices they are presented with."
Apple

Submission + - US Judge Has Outbreak of Common Sense in Apple/Motorola Patent War (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by sl4shd0rk
sl4shd0rk writes: Federal Judge Richard Posner seems to be a man who "gets" the screwed up patent system in the US. As Apple pressed for more injunctions against Motorola regarding alleged patent infringement, Judge Posner has stressed the two companies should just "get along" and pay each other royalties. A jury trial set to start last week was cancelled when Posner ruled that neither side could prove damages, and grilled Apple's legal team saying an injunction against Motorola would be "contrary to the public interest,". Furthermore, as Apple tried to plead its injunction case concerning four patents, Posner called the U.S. patent system "chaos" and said an order barring the sale of Motorola phones could have "catastrophic effects.".
Security

Submission + - Good low cost free software for protecting kids online. 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I have two kids, one 7 and one 8, I would love to allow them internet access on a regular basis. The problem is whats out there, I really don't want them to deal with porn ads and such, but making either a blacklist, or a whitelist myself would take months. So I figured I would ask you, what free software would you use with preferably prebuilt lists to protect your kids online? What is out there with fairly easy configuration ability (to allow for game servers, they love minecraft), but secure enough they can't just bypass it using a google search?

Submission + - Bev Harris of Black Box Voting has released a dowload to Accenture's software (bbvforums.org)

Submitted by
Gottesser
Gottesser writes: "Permission to republish granted

I have found and posted the actual voter list software used widely throughout the USA (TN, WI, PA, CO, KS...) for Accenture voter registration and voter histories. I located the files on a magnetic backup tape of the hard drive of a county elections IT employee, part of a 120-gig set of discovery files.

The Accenture voter registration / voter history software is highly problematic, and has been reported switching voter parties in Colorado, and losing voter histories in Tennessee. Although it is now widely known that Accenture voter list software gets it wrong, just WHY the program misreports voter information so often has never been explained. I am hoping that by releasing this software to the public, it may shed light on what's really going on with our voter registration systems.

I also posted a Tennessee file with work orders and release notes which shows the Accenture software has a history of tripling votes in certain ("random") voter histories, going back to 2004. Except it is not random: Other files I discovered prove it is with primarily suburban Republican precincts that votes are somehow being recorded twice and sometimes three times for certain voters in the voter history report, and this didn't just happen in 2004; it also happened in the 2008 presidential primary and in May and August 2010, and according to election commission notes in Shelby County, also in the 2012 presidential primary.

Computer buffs, have at it. Much source code exists within the structure because it is built on MS Access. I do not read source code, though I can see some structural problems with the software (for example, it allows political party ID to be set differently from one precinct to another).

Here's the download link — http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/7659/82111.html

As a followup on our last story: The issue of 11,000 disappearing voter histories in Tennessee has now been assigned to a special master for investigation, and the state of Tennessee has officially announced that it has halted further voter purges.

To support the absolutely unique and highly effective investigative reporting by Black Box Voting, please consider making a generous donation, or (even better!) a monthly sponsorship:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html
Or mail to:
Black Box Voting
330 SW 43rd St Suite K
PMB 543
Renton WA 98057

Black Box Voting, Inc. | 330 SW 43rd St Suite K — PMB 547 | Renton, WA 98057

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