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Submission + - Ban on loud TV commercials takes effect today (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by
netbuzz
netbuzz writes: "A new law banning broadcasters from delivering TV commercials at a higher volume takes effect today at the end of a yearlong implementation period. Called the CALM Act, or Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, the law does provide for violators to be fined. TV commercials that crank up the volume have been the No. 1 complaint logged with the FCC over the last 10 years."

Submission + - Slashdot and Hacker News raise $43,200 for the FreeBSD Foundation in three days! (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The FreeBSD Foundation has posted blog article article talking about the remarkable surge in donations they've received in the last three days following a recent Slashdot article reporting on weak fundraising this year. Deb Goodkin reports that the FreeBSD Foundation, as with many non-profits, receives more than 50% of its annual funds at the end of the US tax year, but that the Foundation has never seen this rate of donations before, and will hit a new record for unique donors this year. She comments that it was Slashdot readers that made the difference! She does, however, appeal for further donations noting that they have a long way to go on their full goal.

Submission + - ITU will decide if 911 or 112 becomes official emergency number (yahoo.com)

Submitted by maijc
maijc writes: The International Telecommunication Union will determine the standard emergency phone numbers for new generations of mobile phones and other devices. AP reports that member states have agreed that either 911 or 112 should be designated as emergency phone numbers. 911 is currently used in North America, while 112 is standard across the EU and in many other countries worldwide.
Google

Submission + - Belgian news publishers settle copyright dispute with Google (itworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Belgian French-language news publishers settled a copyright dispute with Google, agreeing to promote each others services while Google will pay all legal fees.

Google will for example drive traffic to news websites via AdWords campaigns and in return, publishers will place ads for Google in their media. "In addition to this partnership, publishers can, on a voluntary basis, re-enter Google News," the parties said.

The publishers sued Google in April 2006 for allegedly violating their copyrights by displaying news snippets in Google News and linking to cached copies of pages in Google search. By republishing part of the articles without paying, Google profited unfairly, the publishers said.

Several Belgian courts ruled in favor of the publishers, and last year, the search giant was ordered to remove all content created by the papers from its websites. Recently, the case was submitted to the Belgian Supreme Court, and now the parties have reached an agreement.
Science

Submission + - Did life on land emerge over 65 million years earlier than was thought? (nature.com)

Submitted by
ananyo
ananyo writes: "A controversial paper published in Nature argues that enigmatic fossils regarded as ancient sea creatures were actually land-dwelling lichen. If true, that would suggest life on land began 65 million years earlier than researchers now estimate.
The nature of fossils from the Ediacaran period, some 635 million–542 million years ago, has been fiercely debated by palaeontologists. But where others envisage Ediacaran sea beds crawling with archaic animals, Gregory Retallack, a geologist at the University of Oregon in Eugene sees these sites in southern Australia as dry, terrestrial landscapes dotted with lichens. He proposes that rock in the Ediacara Member in South Australia — where palaeontologist Reginald Sprigg first discovered Ediacaran fossils in 1947 — represents ancient soils, and presents new geological data. Among other lines of evidence, Retallack argues that the rock’s red colour and weathering pattern indicate that the deposits were formed in terrestrial — not marine — environments (abstract). Others strongly disagree."
Technology

Submission + - GE develops quiet, slim piezoelectric cooler for your next ultraslim tablet. (cnet.com)

Submitted by postermmxvicom
postermmxvicom writes: In just a couple of years, your next ultra portable might be sporting GE's new dual-piezoelectric cooling jets. These new cooling devices, called DCJs, are much slimmer than current coolers and since they lack fans, they are also quieter. Here is a demo of the technology implemented in an Ultrabook.
Google

Submission + - Google Maps finally available on iOS

Submitted by hcs_$reboot
hcs_$reboot writes: After the disastrous Apple Maps replacement over Google Maps in September, Google made a Maps app on iOS approved and released by Apple today. The app includes turn-by-turn directions, vector-based graphics and live traffic data. It's available from the Apple Store for iPhone and iPod touch (and iPad — iPhone format). At least.
Linux

Submission + - Nokia closed application store in China for N9

Submitted by jppiiroinen
jppiiroinen writes: It seems that Nokia is slowly killing existing applications for their Linux based N9 mobile phone which are available thru their store. As a developer who has published paid (and free) apps, it looks like that after their final blow of killing the support for paid applications in China, where the main revenue came from, there is not any means to make money, and no reason to maintain apps anymore. What this means also for the end-users; no premium apps, like Angry Birds.

There was no heads-up or anything, just a single email without any means to make a complain.

Nokia, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
Privacy

Submission + - New 'Sanny' Cyberespionage Attack Targets Russia (darkreading.com)

Submitted by
CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: "A new targeted attack campaign with apparent Korean ties has been stealing email and Facebook credentials and other user-profile information from Russian telecommunications, IT, and space research organizations. The attackers are grabbing email user accounts and passwords from Outlook, as well as information about the victims' email server. "Once you have that information, you have access to employees' emails even from outside, and that means a lot of official information,""
NASA

Submission + - Cassini Discovers First River On Another World (thespacereporter.com)

Submitted by AbsoluteXyro
AbsoluteXyro writes: NASA's Cassini orbiter, which has been dutifully exploring the Saturn system since 2004, has captured images of the first river ever observed on another world — and it's a biggun. 200 miles of flowing hydrocarbons meandering down a valley in the north polar region of Saturn's moon Titan, emptying into the awesomely named Kraken Mare — itself a body of liquid roughly the size of the Mediterranean Sea back on Earth. But don't think of going for an extraterrestrial skinny dip quite yet, temperatures on Titan average a brutally cold 290 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit).
Google

Submission + - Official: Google Maps back on iPhone (afr.com)

Submitted by Techy77
Techy77 writes: Google Maps product manager Nobu Makida has revealed Google Maps has returned to the iPhone three months after Apple booted it off in an operating system upgrade.
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..."

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