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Submission + - HP To Launch smartphone Next Week? (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: According to reports HP is set to launch a smartphone next week. You don't need a huge memory to know that the company's already tried this a few times; if not, the words iPaq and Palm may ring some bells, and TechWeek has a gallery. This time round HP is going for a low-cost Android device, so all it's got to do now is succeed where others are failing and compete with Samsung....

Submission + - Microsoft's own technology could have stopped hack of Twitter accounts (citeworld.com)

Submitted by Copy that 2
Copy that 2 writes: With Microsoft's standing in the technology world, it is astounding that it could not prevent a hack on its own Twitter account. But that is just what happened. But with social engineering, hackers find their way past employees. You can educate your employees until the cows come home but at times some messages get the better of people.

Submission + - Why CES Is a Bad Scene for Startups (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: If you're a small-to-midsize tech company, CES isn't exactly the best place to get noticed. Every January, thousands of developers and startup executives flood Vegas with dreams of a big score. But they’re not headed to the poker and blackjack tables in pursuit of that filthy lucre—instead, many of them have dropped thousands of dollars on a booth at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), arguably the highest-profile technology conference of the year. (In addition to the tens of thousands of dollars it costs to reserve a space on the convention-hall floor, that money goes to demo units, flying employees to Vegas, and much, much more.) If they haven’t managed to secure a spot in one of the Convention Center’s massive halls, they’ve set up a demonstration area in a suite at some hotel on the Strip. And if they’re too under-capitalized or unprepared for a hotel, they’re lurking in the Convention Center parking lot. Seriously. It’s a little insane. But in a certain way, you can’t blame the startups: at some point, someone told them that CES is the best way to get their company noticed, even if it means blowing the equivalent of three employees’ yearly salaries. On paper, the get-a-booth strategy makes sense—aside from SXSW, CES hosts possibly the greatest concentration of tech journalists in a relatively small space. What many first-timers don’t realize (until it’s too late) is that startups have a hard time standing out amidst the chaos: there are too many companies at too many booths attempting to sell (at top volume) too many variations of the same core ideas. If that wasn’t bad enough, a fair portion of those companies are trying to draw attention with flashing screens, giveaways, music pumping at top volume, and other gimmicks. (Hey, it’s Vegas.) So not only does your Nike FuelBand knockoff need to compete against a hundred other “smart bracelets” on display, but you somehow need to make yourself visible despite the plus-size Elvis impersonator belting out “Don’t Be Cruel” in front of that chip-vendor’s booth a few steps away. That’s just the sort of quixotic endeavor that would drive even the most stalwart startup founder to drinking before 9 A.M.

Submission + - Experiments Reveal That Deformed Rubber Sheet Is Not Like Spacetime (medium.com) 1

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: General relativity is mathematically challenging and yet widely appreciated by the public. This state of affairs is almost entirely the result of one the most famous analogies in science: that the warping of spacetime to produce gravity is like the deformation of a rubber sheet by a central mass. Now physicists have tested this idea theoretically and experimentally and say it doesn't hold water. It turns out that a marble rolling on deformed rubber sheet does not follow the same trajectory as a planet orbiting a star and that the marble's equations of motion lead to a strangely twisted version of Kepler's third law of planetary motion. And experiments with a real marble rolling on a spandex sheet show that the mass of the sheet itself creates a distortion that further complicates matters. Indeed, the physicists say that a rubber sheet deformed by a central mass can never produce the same motion of planet orbiting a star in spacetime. So the analogy is fundamentally flawed. Shame!

Submission + - Frankenstein's Simulated Worm is Alive? (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: The OpenWorm project is aimed at creating the first artificial lifeform – a bottom-up computer model of a millimeter-sized nemotode, one of the simplest known multicellular organisms. In an important step forward, OpenWorm researchers have completed the simulation of the nematode's 302 neurons and 95 muscle cells and their worm is wriggling around in fine form.

Submission + - Australian team working on engines without piston rings

Submitted by JabrTheHut
JabrTheHut writes: An Australian team is seeking funding for bringing an interesting idea to market: cylinder engines without piston rings. The idea is to use small groves that create a pressure wave that acts as a seal for the piston, eliminating the piston ring and the associated friction. Engines will then run cooler, can be more energy efficient and may even burn fuel more efficiently, at least according to the story at http://www.motoring.com.au/news/2013/aussie-invention-eliminates-piston-rings-40773. Mind you, they haven't even built a working prototype yet. If it works I'd love to fit this into an older car...

Submission + - Relapse of 'cured' HIV patients spurs AIDS science on (orlandosentinel.com)

Submitted by spineas
spineas writes: Though the two 'Boston patients' have relapsed and have had to resume antiretroviral drug treatments to keep the HIV virus at bay, researchers have a wealth of new information from the temporary remission in the two patients which can be applied towards finding a more permanent cure for the disease.

Submission + - China: The Next Space Superpower (ieee.org)

Submitted by the_newsbeagle
the_newsbeagle writes: "As 2014 dawns, China has the most active and ambitious space program in the world," says this article. While it's true that the Chinese space agency is just now reaching milestones that the U.S. and Russia reached 40 years ago (its first lunar rover landed in December), the Chinese government's strong support for space exploration means that it's catching up fast. On the agenda for the next decade: A space station to rival the ISS, a new spaceport, new heavy-lift rockets, a global satellite navigation system to rival GPS, and China's first space science satellites.

Submission + - Unhappy with your government? Start a new one. 11

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Stories like the NSA revelations (among many others) suggest that modern governments may be getting the sense that they exist of their own right and independent of the people who allegedly democratically control them. When faced with trying to "fix" this situation, individuals are daunted by the scope of the task. The institutions of government are huge and difficult to imagine changing. However, apart from changing from the inside or revolting against the system, there is a very different alternative: just set up a new government. Of course current governments frown on that, but there are ways around it. Seasteading advocates creating new nations in newly-created lands (i.e., on the seas). Open source governance advocates setting up new, internet-based communities with their own governance system and allowing those communities to gradually push out the antiquated systems. What's your plan for living in democracy in the coming year?

Submission + - The Shadowy Darknet will be the Only Truly World-wide Web (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: “The shadowy Darknet then will be the only truly world-wide web” — this is the view of Alexander Gostev, chief security expert at Kaspersky Lab who believes the fallout from Edward Snowden's leaks may lead at some point to the "collapse of the current Internet, which will break into dozens of national networks."

Submission + - Increasing Number of Books Banned in the USA (npr.org)

Submitted by vikingpower
vikingpower writes: Isabel Allende's The House of The Spirits. Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man.

What do all these titles have in common with each other ? Exactly, they are banned somewhere, on some school, in the USA. . Yes, in 2013. A project named The Kids' Right to Read ( by the National Coalition Against Censorship ) investigated three times the average number of incidents, adding to an overall rise in cases for the entire year, according to KRRP coordinator Acacia O'Connor. To date, KRRP has confronted 49 incidents in 29 states this year, a 53% increase in activity from 2012. During the second half of 2013, the project battled 31 new incidents, compared to only 14 in the same period last year.

"It has been a sprint since the beginning of the school year," O'Connor said. "We would settle one issue and wake up the next morning to find out another book was on the chopping block."

The NCAC also offers a Book Censorship Toolkit on its website. If such a toolkit is needed at all, does this indicate that intellectual freedom and free speech are ( slowly ) eroding in the USA ?

Submission + - You Are Your Metadata (theguardian.com)

Submitted by sidemouse
sidemouse writes: We are asked to accept invasions of privacy based on a distinction between information we deem personal and private and the cyber-techno term metadata. I'm not sure this distinction exists. Imagine the pre-internet world again: what is your metadata? The pub you frequent, the friends you talk to, the duration of your conversation with an attractive stranger, where you go afterwards and for how long. I think the metadata of my life *is* my life.

Comment A device means nothing without relevant content. (Score 1) 234

by pillageplunder (#45817795) Attached to: Is a Super-Sized iPad the Future of Education?

No one device is the future of education. In today's classroom, with the various programs the Feds have put in place (No Child left Behind, etc.) what a device like this will do is make it so very easy to define each student on how well/poorly they do in "learning" mandated curriculum by how well they do on "standardized" testing. One size does NOT fit all when it comes to being able to learn, and, as importantly, being able to apply that learned knowledge in a productive manner. Simply being able to regurgitate what you have been taught doesn't give a student the skill-set and tools needed needed to make it in the world we live in today. Take a look at the current problems with College "educated" folks who have graduated and are upset because their perfect 4.0 GPA doesn't translate to a well-paying tech job. A 4.0 GPA means you've learned how to excel in the environment known as college. That ain't what the real world is all about.

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