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Iphone

Submission + - Cops use Taser on woman buying too many iPhones (wcvb.com) 1

Submitted by turbosaab
turbosaab writes: A woman who said she was asked to leave New Hampshire's Pheasant Lane Mall because she wanted to buy too many iPhones was pinned down by Nashua police and zapped by a Taser as she shrieked in front of crowds of shoppers Tuesday. The Chinese woman from Newton, Mass blamed a language barrier for the confrontation outside the Apple Store in the Pheasant Lane Mall Tuesday afternoon. Police say Li knew exactly what they were telling her and simply refused to comply. Police said Li had $16,000 in cash in her purse at the time of her arrest and may have been purchasing the phones for unauthorized export resale.

Submission + - What Do I Tell Non-Tech Savvy Family About Malware? 1

Submitted by
veganboyjosh
veganboyjosh writes: "I got an instant message from an uncle the other day, asking me what was in the link I sent him. I hadn't sent him a link so I figured that his account had been hacked and he'd received a malicious link from some bot address with my name in the "From" box. This was confirmed when he told me the address the link had come from.
When I tried explaining what the link was, that his account had been hacked, and that he should change the password to his @aol.com email account, his response was "No, I think YOUR account was hacked, since the email came from you."
I went over it again, with a real-life analog of someone calling him on the phone and pretending to be me, but I'm not sure if that sunk in or not.
This uncle is far from tech savvy. He's in his 60's, and uses facebook several times a week. He knows I'm online much more and kind of know my way around. After his initial response, I didn't have it in me to get into the whole "NEVER click a link from an unfamiliar email address" bit; to him, this wasn't an unfamiliar email address, it was mine.
How do I explain this to him, and what else should I feel responsible for telling him?"
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Is Technology Eroding Employment? (andrewmcafee.org)

Submitted by Idontpostmuch
Idontpostmuch writes: The idea that technology cannot cause unemployment has long been taken as a simple fact of economics. Lately, some economists have been changing their tune. "MIT research scientist Andrew Mcaffee writes, "As computers and robots get more and more powerful while simultaneously getting cheaper and more widespread this phenomenon spreads, to the point where economically rational employers prefer buying more technology over hiring more workers. In other words, they prefer capital over labor. This preference affects both wages and job volumes. And the situation will only accelerate as robots and computers learn to do more and more, and to take over jobs that we currently think of not as ‘routine,’ but as requiring a lot of skill and/or education."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Interviewing your boss? 1

Submitted by Uzuri
Uzuri writes: I'm soon going to have the experience of interviewing an individual to be my direct supervisor. I have in mind several things to ask already, especially since I also have the strange position of working as a technical person in a non-technical office and want to be able to be certain that the interviewee understands exactly what that means without coming off as hostile or condescending.

What sort of questions would you ask/have you asked the person who was to be your boss? What sort of tells would you look for? What's out of bounds?
Google

Submission + - Google Adjusts Image Search To Avoid Accidental Porn Hits (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "No more nudge, nudge, wink, wink for finding porn on Google. Now, you've got to be a lot more explicit about what you're looking for. The search giant this week took a turn for the conservative, changing the way it handles image searches such that 'ambiguous' search terms will now return a tamer set of results. 'We want to show users exactly what they are looking for — but we aim not to show sexually-explicit results unless a user is specifically searching for them,' Google said in a statement."
Australia

Submission + - Julian Assange Runs For Office in Australia (theage.com.au)

Submitted by
mpawlo
mpawlo writes: "Mr Julian Assange of Wikileaks fame, has, according to The Age, confirmed his intention to run for the Australian Senate in 2013. He will also form a Wikileaks political party. I had to check, but yes, Mr Assange is still in political asylum at the embassy of Ecuador in London. I also had to the check the date, but it's not April Fools' Day, or perhaps it is according to the new Mayan Calendar..."

Submission + - North Korea's Satellite Is Out of Control (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Koreantoast
Koreantoast writes:

After failing miserably on numerous occasions, North Korea has finally put a satellite in orbit. But according to US officials, it is now "tumbling out of control." This is bad news, and more bad news, covered in a double layer of extra bad news.

According to US officials, it appears that North Korea's new satellite has failed to achieve a stable orbit and is now "tumbling out of control." The greatest danger is the threat of it colliding with another satellite, adding to the growing debris field around the earth. A separate Gizmodo article provides links for tracking the current location of the satellite.

Submission + - Jammie Thomas takes constitutional argument to SCOTUS (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Native American Minnesotan found by a jury to have downloaded 24 mp3 files of RIAA singles, has filed a petition for certioriari to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that the award of $220,000 in statutory damages is excessive, in violation of the Due Process Clause. Her petition (PDF) argued that the RIAA's litigation campaign was "extortion, not law", and pointed out that "[a]rbitrary statutory damages made the RIAA’s litigation campaign possible; in turn,that campaign has inspired copycats like the so-called Copyright Enforcement Group; the U.S. Copyright Group, which has already sued more than 20,000 individual movie downloaders; and Righthaven, which sued bloggers. This Court should grant certiorari to review this use of the federal courts as a scourge"."
Science

Submission + - Alan Alda Challenges Scientists to Explain: What Is Time? (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: What is time? And how would you explain it to an 11-year-old? That's the question actor Alan Alda has posed to scientists in the second Flame Challenge—so named because the question in last year's competition was, "What is a flame?" The challenge aims to spur scientists to think about how they can better communicate with the public. Scientists have until 1 March to submit their answers, which will be judged by 11-year-olds around the world. Organizers will announce the winner at the World Science Festival in New York City on 1 June.
Google

Submission + - Google boss says tax avoidance IS capitalism (independent.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: Eric Schmidt said £2.5 billion tax avoidance 'is called capitalism': is totally unrepentant. One must admit to being impressed by his honesty, unlike Starbucks who are gratuitously giving the British government money. So the question is — how can British geeks ensure their displeasure is demonstrated — apart from making sure that ALL their friends have Adblocker software installed
Education

Submission + - Learning rocket science with videogames. (wired.com)

Submitted by GNUman
GNUman writes: Wired writes an article about using videogames to get kids into engineering, starting with Kerbal Space Program, a indie physics driven sandbox where you build your own spaceship and explore space. I have had much fun with this game the past year and I have actually learned a bit of rocket engineering and orbital mechanics while at it. The article also mentions Minecraft, World of Goo, Amazing Alex, Patterns, Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, Fantastic Contraption and SpaceChem. I really like the idea of games that are great fun while fostering creativity and even learning in the process and would like to know what other games would you add to this list.
Security

Submission + - Islamic hacker group resumes attacks on banks (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
tsamsoniw
tsamsoniw writes: "PNC, Bank of America, SunTrust, and other major financial institutions have experienced a wave of DDoS attacks and site outages over the past couple of days, and Islamic extremist hacker group Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters is claiming responsibility. The group, which launched similar attacks earlier this year, reiterated its demands: that a controversial YouTube video mocking the prophet Mohammed "be eliminated from the Internet.""
Google

Submission + - "Whitney Houston" beats out "iPad 3" as most Googled term for 2012 (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
tsamsoniw
tsamsoniw writes: "#SOPA was the top hashtagged term on Google+ this past year, according to Google's Zeitgeist 2012, beating out such terms as #Sandy, #Discovery, #Olympics, and #Debates. Apple, meanwhile, can claim having the most-searched products on Google in 2012: iPad 3 was the fourth most-Googled term for the year. The fact that SOPA ranked at the top as the top hashtag is rather interesting, considering all the major events that went down this past year (Olympic, Discovery, elections). But then, we are talking about the most hashtagged terms specifically on Google+ and not, say, Twitter, so the sample likely isn't all too representative of the average social networker. Apple, meanwhile, proved to be the purveyor of the most Google-searched products for 2012. iPad 3 ranked fourth on the list of overall top 10 Google searches for 2012. Topping that list was "Whitney Houston," followed by "Gangam Style" in the second spot, and "Hurricane Sandy" in the third."
Biotech

Submission + - New mouth wash effectively combats tooth decay (ucla.edu)

Submitted by
thinkingintermsof
thinkingintermsof writes: "For nearly a decade Wenyuan Shi, a researcher at UCLA School of Dentistry, has been developing a revolutionary new mouthwash aimed at effectively eliminating tooth decay. The technology is a partnership with Colgate-Palmolive and from C3-Jian Inc.

"The best analogy I've been using is a 'weeds vs. grass' with this technology that we call STAMPS (specifically targeted anti-microbial peptides). What it does is it acts like a smart bomb, it only kills the weeds not the grass." — Wenyuan Shi"
Space

Submission + - X-rays Reveal New Black Hole in Andromeda (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: On 15 January, the XMM-Newton satellite detected a bright source of x-rays in the Andromeda galaxy, 2.5 million light-years from Earth. As astronomers report online today in Nature, the x-rays arise from hot gas swirling around a black hole that tears the material from an orbiting star. The object is roughly 10 times as massive as our sun and gobbles matter at nearly the maximum possible rate. Four similarly ravenous black holes are known in the Milky Way, but dust in the galaxy's disk obscures observations; so studying the newfound beast in Andromeda may offer fresh insight into how black holes accrete material, a process that feeds the supermassive black holes powering quasars billions of light-years away.
Censorship

Submission + - Google.com now 'censors' explicit content from image searches (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google search users now have to be a little more specific before receiving goods of an explicit nature. For example, if one were to type in a particular sexual act, Google.com will no longer dish up what one was expecting. If users are more specific in what they are after, then it will return what one expected in the first place.
Space

Submission + - Hubble sees tribe of baby galaxies 13+ billion light years away

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "Using Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have spotted seven galaxies that are all over 13 billion light years away... including one that appears to be a record breaker at a staggering 13.3+ billion light years distant. That one is seen as it was only 380 million years after the Big Bang. This observation reaches into the era of the young cosmos when stars were first forming, and allows astronomers to better understand what the Universe was like back then — a time we know very little about."

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