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Submission + - First Footage Of Isolated Kawahiva Tribe In Brazil's Amazon Jungle (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by minty3
minty3 writes: Video footage taken in 2011 of the remote Kawahiva tribe was released on Wednesday. The 90-second clip shows naked men donning bow and arrows, and one woman holding a child, walking through the jungle’s foliage. The cameraman, who was hiding from view, was spotted by the woman who cries out and runs away.

Submission + - New Method Of Factoring Semiprimes May Lead To Possible Break Of RSA (newsvine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: DeepThought at Newsvine has produced an interesting formula that appears to accurately factor the primes in any given semiprime. He has updated the comments to his article to demonstrate a break against RSA-17, RSA-21 and RSA-40 with proof from Wolfram Alpha. The formula appears to hold for any prime number but DeepThought has noted that the time required to break RSA-2048 is unknown at this point. Wolfram Alpha throws a time exceeded error when attempting to calculate the integer solutions for RSA-56, but manages to break RSA-40 in seconds.

Submission + - Could Sirius XM be a Telematics Insurance Partner? (insurancetech.com)

Submitted by Cara_Latham
Cara_Latham writes: Sirius XM (New York) announced a big-time telematics acquisition today: The company bought the connected vehicle services business of Agero (Medford, Mass.) for $530 million in cash.

Agero says it made the sale to focus on its roadside assistance, consumer affairs and claims management services. (The latter is provided to insurance companies.)

"While telematics has been an important and growing part of our business, this divestiture allows us to focus our resources in our roadside vehicle assistance, claims management and information services which will allow us to best serve our clients and their customers in a fast-changing marketplace," Dave Ferrick, CEO of Agero, says in a statement.

SiriusXM says it made the buy because it wants to leverage its customer acquisition and servicing infrastructure, as well as its satellite network, to provide more services than simply satellite radio.

Submission + - Russian bank signs contract without reading it. (rt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Russian man alters fine prints to credit card contract, then returns contract to bank with amendments, bank signs whole contract without reading.
He then uses about 600$ worth of credit and does not pay. After two years the bank has had enough and they end up in court. Judge rules in his favor.

Submission + - Microsoft abusing DMCA to take down competing office solutions? (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Microsoft, in a bid to take down pirate version of its Office products, has been sending out DMCA notices to Google containing links to competing legitimate office solutions like Apache’s OpenOffice. If we look at the URLs included in the takedown notice, most of them do point to infringing content – links to pirated Office 2010. But, after digging deeper into the list we found that there were instances wherein there were references to links which were hosting OpenOffice. The instances mentioned herein is not an isolated instance and there have been cases (here, here, here and here) where Microsoft has requested takedown of links (torrent links to be specific) that were hosting OpenOffice.

Submission + - Google's privacy rollercoaster

Submitted by geek
geek writes: Google has announced server-side disk encryption for it's cloud storage, a positive step in securing their users privacy but this is alongside a troubling revelation that Google's lawyers believe you have No Legitimate Expectation Of Privacy. The mixed messages at Google are rather confusing. Does server side encryption actually matter in light of the recent NSA scandals?

Submission + - Forrester: NSA Spying Could Cost Cloud $180B, But Won't (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Forrester's James Staten argues in a blog post that the U.S. cloud computing industry stands to lose more like $180 billion, using the reasoning put forth by a well-circulated report from The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation that pegged potential losses closer to $35 billion. But Staten's real point is that when it comes down to it the cloud industry will likely not take much of a hit at all. Because as much as they voice their displeasure, turning back isn't really an option for businesses using the cloud. What are their alternatives? Staffing up and building potentially huge data centers?

Submission + - Google Admits Problem with Android Security but it will Probably Never be Fixed (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: Google has admitted there is a problem with Android security. It has told developers affected to fix their apps. It has produced for them a suggested implementation for the fix. It has even sent out a patch to manufacturers which solves the issue. Problem solved you would have thought. Not according to David Gilbert at the IBTimes UK who says that despite all these steps, the vast majority of Android users (and there's over 100 million of them) will never get the update. The problem? Fragmentation of Android.

Submission + - When is it ok to not give notice? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Here in the U.S., "being professional" means giving at least two week's notice when leaving a job. Is this an outmoded notion? We've all heard stories about (or perhaps experienced) a quick escort to the parking lot upon giving the normal notice, and I've never heard of a company giving a two week notice to an employee that's being laid off or fired.
A generation ago, providing a lengthy notice was required to get a glowing reference, but these days does a reference hold water any more?
Once you're reached the point where you know it's time to leave, under what circumstances would you just up and walk out or give only a short notice?

Submission + - Ancient Eel-Like Creatures Were First Vertebrates With 'Teeth' (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Conodonts, some of the most primitive vertebrates in the fossil record, are often known only from the tapering, toothlike structures that lend the group its name. But just how these eel-like sea creatures, which died out sometime before 200 million years ago, used these structures has been a mystery, because the “teeth” are often found individually and it’s not clear how they were anchored in the conodont’s soft tissues. (They had no jawbones.) Now, using the same sorts of techniques that structural engineers use to analyze steel I-beams that form the skeletons of high rises, researchers have found that some of the structures had a nearly circular cross section and would have been particularly good at resisting bending and twisting forces—and therefore were probably used to capture and restrain prey, likely soft-bodied animals such as worms. Other elements had a narrow, bladelike shape or sharp cusps and may have been used to pierce or cut prey into smaller pieces.

Submission + - Microsoft Hires Former Steam Boss Holtman to Make Windows Great for Gaming

Submitted by SmartAboutThings
SmartAboutThings writes: Jason Holtman has spent the last eight years transforming Steam into a veritable cornucopia of PC games and a real success. Starting this month he'll be working at Microsoft to improve Windows' gaming strategy. He said: "Yes, I have joined Microsoft where I will be focusing on making Windows a great platform for gaming and interactive entertainment. I think there is a lot of opportunity for Microsoft to deliver the games and entertainment customers want and to work with developers to make that happen, so I'm excited to be here." The main job that Holtman was doing at Valve consisted in convincing developers and major game publishers to choose Steam and entrust it with its digital sales. More than that, he was excited with what he was doing and was a driving force over at Steam. Microsoft has focused solely on the Xbox One launch lately, somehow neglecting the potential that Windows and overall, the PC gaming industry still have. With Holtman’s hiring, maybe Microsoft is going to revamp its Games for Windows initiative.

Submission + - The Humble Origin Bundle: Geek vs Gamer.

Submitted by westlake
westlake writes: In its first day and with four hours and thirteen days to go The Humble Origin Bundle has seen 760,000 sales and raised $3.6 million for charities like the American Red Cross, with all proceeds going to your charities of choice.

The games are mainstream AAA list titles:

Dead Island 1&3, Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box, Crysis 2, Mirror's Edge, Medal of Honor, Battlefield 3 and The Sims 3 Starter Pack. Distribution is through Origin and Steam. Steam keys are available for most, but not all games. The Sims 3 is available for the Mac. It's quite possible that one or two games could be added later.

It's been a tortuous day for the geek — gamer. It's EA and it is Origin. The promotion has totally eclipsed this week's hard-core, multi-platform, DRM free, indie Introversion Humble Bundle (Defcon, Uplink, Darwinia) which sold a respectable 55,000 units, with a return of $320 thousand.

Submission + - New third layer approach to virus detection promises 100% malware detection (sciencespot.co.uk)

Submitted by trendspotter
trendspotter writes: Researchers at the Australian National University, in Acton, ACT, and the Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE jointly with Victorian Institute of Technology, in Melbourne Victoria have devised an approach to virus detection that acts as a third layer on top of scanning for known viruses and heuristic scanning (...) Writing in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics (...) their new approach employs a data mining algorithm to identify malicious code (...) their initial tests show an almost 100% detection rate and a false positive rate of just 2.5% for spotting embedded malicious code that is in "stealth mode" prior to being activated for particular malicious purposes.

More information: Alazab M. & Venkatraman S. (2013). Detecting malicious behaviour using supervised learning algorithms of the function calls, International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, 5 (2) 90. DOI: 10.1504/IJESDF.2013.055047

Submission + - Smartphone Batteries Used to Determine Outdoor Temperatures (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Smartphone batteries contain tiny temperature sensors, designed to keep the phone from overheating. While those sensors do measure the heat generated within the phone, their readings are also affected by the temperature of the phone’s external environment. With that in mind, British app developer OpenSignal has created a system that allows multiple users’ phones to provide real-time, location-specific weather reports.

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