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+ - 317 Welcome to Google Island

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "Google fan fiction, anyone? The last thing Wired's Mat Honan remembered before awaking on the self-driving boat that dropped him on the island was sitting through a four-hour Google I/O keynote in Moscone Center and hearing Google CEO Larry Page promote a vision of a utopia where society could be free to innovate and experiment, unencumbered by government regulations or social norms. "Welcome to Google Island," a naked-save-for-a-pair-of-eyeglasses Larry Page tells Honan. "As soon as you hit Google's territorial waters, you came under our jurisdiction, our terms of service. Our laws-or lack thereof-apply here. By boarding our self-driving boat you granted us the right to all feedback you provide during your journey. This includes the chemical composition of your sweat. Remember when I said at I/O that maybe we should set aside some small part of the world where people could experiment freely and examine the effects? I wasn't speaking theoretically. This place exists. We built it.""

+ - 210 UK consumers reporting contactless payment errors->

Submitted by leathered
leathered writes "The BBC reports that some customers of UK retailer Marks and Spencer have reported that the store's contactless payment terminals have debited their cards despite being in their bags or pockets, sometimes paying twice when they have used another payment method. The cards are supposed to work only when the card comes within 4cm of the terminal. Customers of fast-food chain Pret a Manger have been reporting similar problems, and in both cases cited the customers weren't even aware they had been issued with NFC-enabled cards by their bank."
Link to Original Source

+ - 195 Majority of Americans Would Ban 3D-Printing Guns at Home (Fat Chance!)->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "In results that may signal some discomfort with the enormous DIY promise of 3D printing and similar home-manufacturing technologies, a new Reason-Rupe poll finds that an otherwise gun control-weary American public thinks owners of 3D printers ought not be allowed to make their own guns or gun parts. Of course, implementing such a restrictive policy might be tad more difficult than measuring popular preferences."
Link to Original Source

+ - 220 Happy Culture Freedom Day!

Submitted by Blug_fred
Blug_fred writes "For the second edition, today is the time to celebrate Culture Freedom Day. While not as popular as HFD or SFD, celebrating Free Culture involves finding Free Culture artists, inviting them to your place and having them perform, display or talk about what their creation(s). Of course you can always simply project a couple of Free Culture movies and launch a discussion about their business models. Either way you can find all the happening for today here on the map and we sincerely hope there will be something of interest near you."

+ - 255 RPiCluster: Yet Another Raspberry Pi-based Beowulf Cluster 2

Submitted by TheJish
TheJish writes "The RPiCluster is a 33-node Beowulf cluster built using Raspberry Pis (RPis). The RPiCluster is a little side project I worked on over the last couple months as part of my dissertation work at Boise State University. I had need of a cluster to run a distributed simulator I've been developing. The RPiCluster is the result. I've written an informal document on why I built the RPiCluster, how it was built, and how it performs as compared to other platforms. I also put together a YouTube video of it running an MPI parallel program I created to demo the RGB LEDs installed on each node as part of the build.

While there have certainly been larger RPi clusters put together recently, I figured the /. community might be interested in this build as I believe it is a novel approach to the rack mounting and power management of RPis.

Further Information:
Press Release, Report (Technical Details), Demo Video"

+ - 212 Bloomberg to HS Grads: Be a Plumber

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "This being college graduation season, the insights provided by commencement speakers should be familiar by now: find work in a field you're passionate about, don't underestimate your own abilities, aim high, learn to communicate and collaborate with others, give something back to your community. Billionaire Mike Bloomberg, whose current job is Mayor of New York City, evidently decided to break the mold by advising less academically adept youngsters to consider a career in plumbing. High wages, constant demand, no offshore competition. 'Compare a plumber to going to Harvard College — being a plumber, actually for the average person, probably would be a better deal'. Ouch! And hey, like a lawyer, a plumber can always dabble in politics."

+ - 284 FBI Considers CALEA II - Mandatory Wiretapping on End Users' Devices-> 1

Submitted by Techmeology
Techmeology writes "In response to declining utility of CALEA mandated wiretapping backdoors due to more widespread use of cryptography, the FBI is considering a revamped version that would mandate wiretapping facilities in end users' computers and software. Critics have argued that this would be bad for security, as such systems must be more complex and thus harder to secure. CALEA has also enabled criminals to wiretap conversations by hacking the infrastructure used by the authorities. I wonder how this could ever be implemented in FOSS."
Link to Original Source

+ - 152 Google News Sci Tech: Invasive Crazy Ants Are Displacing Fire Ants, Researchers Find - University of T->

From feed by feedfeeder

Science World Report
Invasive Crazy Ants Are Displacing Fire Ants, Researchers Find
University of Texas at Austin News
Invasive “crazy ants” are displacing fire ants in areas across the southeastern United States, according to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin. It's the latest in a history of ant invasions from the southern hemisphere and may prove to have dramatic ...
Alien 'crazy ants' invading southern USLos Angeles Times
'Crazy ants' a threat in southern USCNN International
Crazy ants are invading parts of the US, including HoustonHouston Chronicle
LiveScience.com-Nature World News-Science Recorder
all 22 news articles

Link to Original Source

+ - 184 Nintendo cuts into YouTube revenue. Will other publishers follow suit?->

Submitted by VoyagerRadio
VoyagerRadio writes "With news that Nintendo will now be collecting revenue from YouTube whenever the console developer's intellectual property (IP) appears in videos uploaded to the Google-owned video distributor, will other game publishers want a piece of the pie? Mario and Luigi may be popular characters in fan-generated YouTube videos, but IP from other game publishers are just as popular, including Blizzard's World of Warcraft and LucasArts' Star Wars universe. Will game publishers such as Activision and even Microsoft pressure Google to make the same kind of deal Nintendo now has with YouTube?"
Link to Original Source

+ - 210 Password Strength Testers Work for Important Accounts->

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes "Many popular online services have started to deploy password strength meters, visual gauges that are often color-coded and indicate whether the password you’ve chosen is weak or strong based on the website’s policy. The effectiveness of these meters in influencing users to choose stronger passwords had not been measured until recently.
A paper released this week by researchers at the University of Cal Berkeley, University of British Columbia and Microsoft provides details on the results of a couple of experiments examining how these meters influence computer users when they’re creating passwords for sensitive accounts and for unimportant accounts."
Link to Original Source

+ - 205 Crowdsourced Networking Planning->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Tom’s Hardware reports on the Connectify Switchboard software that “divides the user's traffic between Wi-Fi, 3G/4G and Ethernet-based connections on a packet-by-packet basis. Even a single stream — such as a Netflix movie — can be split between two or three Internet connections for a higher resolution and faster buffering.“ As part of its Kickstarter campaign, Connectify is geolocating their backers to optimize deployment of their servers. This is a clever way for supporters to influence the project beyond pledge levels and stretch goals, and it’s actually kind of fun to watch."
Link to Original Source

+ - 202 Cell Phones As A Radiological 'Dirty Bomb' Detection Network->

Submitted by iinventstuff
iinventstuff writes "The Idaho National Laboratory has built a dirty bomb detection network out of cell phones. Camera phones operate by detecting photons and storing them as a picture. The INL discovered that high energy photons from radiological sources distort the image in ways detectable through image processing. KSL TV reports that the INL's mobile app detects radiation sources and then reports positive 'hits' to a central server. Terrorists deploying a dirty bomb will inevitably pass by people carrying cell phones. By crowdsourcing cell phones, the INL has created a potentially very large, inexpensive, and randomly mobile radiation detection grid."
Link to Original Source

+ - 227 Newspaper Sites Attacked by Hackers->

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes "From the article, "The Web site and several Twitter accounts belonging to The Financial Times were hacked on Friday by the Syrian Electronic Army in a continuing campaign that has aimed at an array of media outlets ranging from The Associated Press to the parody site The Onion, according to a claim by the so-called army.The Syrian Electronic Army said it seized control of several F.T. Twitter accounts and amended a number of the site’s blog posts with the headline “Hacked by Syrian Electronic Army.” Hackers used their access to the F.T.'s Twitter feed to post messages, including one that said, “Syrian Electronic Army Was Here,” and another that linked to a YouTube video of an execution. Both messages were quickly removed.""
Link to Original Source

+ - 138 Linux Mint 15 Olivia Release Candidate is out->

Submitted by Anand Radhakrishnan
Anand Radhakrishnan writes "The most awaited Mint Olivia is released for user testing features many new and features such as Cinnamon Control centre, improvised login manager MDM with HTML 5 support and lot of under-the-hood improvements. I am KDE user but planning to give it a ride as this release with Cinnamon DE looks really tempting."
Link to Original Source

+ - 158 Australian Government Backdoor Internet Filter shuts down 1,000 websites->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "The Australian government has secretly censored over 1,000 web sites through a hitherto-unused internet censorship law. In April the Melbourne Free University was blocked without any explanation. Section 313 of the Telecommunications Act allows the government to close web sites without warning to "uphold laws, protect public revenue and safeguard national security". This is open to abuse as Australians only have limited free speech rights which already make it difficult for the press to report corruption."
Link to Original Source

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