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Comment How about SuperSu? (Score 1) 234

by TropicalCoder (#48476163) Attached to: Uber's Android App Caught Reporting Data Back Without Permission
This app just popped up on my wife's phone, wanting to update itself. I had no idea what it is, so Googled it... "SuperSU is a Superuser management tool for rooted devices". "SuperSU Brings Better SuperUser Root Permission Management to Android" I still don't have a clue as what I would actually do with such an app. Everything I read about it just leaves me more confused. I have two questions - what is it doing on my wife's phone, that I recently did a factory reset on, and 2.) Would this app somehow allow one to control permissions of apps after installation? http://www.addictivetips.com/m... https://plus.google.com/+Chain...

Comment Re:Hydrogen atoms (Score 1) 50

by TropicalCoder (#48467561) Attached to: LHC's 'Heart' Starts Pumping Protons Before Restart
Oops. That was me. It appears that clicking on the "You are posting as" check box works backwards to what is intuitive. In fact, that is a funny UI, where there is what appears to be a check box to post by your account name, and a little gear symbol to post as Anon. I would expect standard radio buttons instead of this original invention. Maybe Web UI has different conventions then software? Can't be. This UI makes no sense and is unintuitive.

Comment Hydrogen atoms (Score 1) 50

by TropicalCoder (#48467127) Attached to: LHC's 'Heart' Starts Pumping Protons Before Restart
From the FA: "hydrogen atoms are stripped of their electrons, leaving the positively-charged protons behind". So I wonder where they get the hydrogen atoms? Hydrogen doesn't like to exist in atomic form. It much prefers company, in the form of H2. I don't think you can have a bottle of hydrogen atoms, as opposed to hydrogen molecules. Ionizing hydrogen molecules does not break apart the molecules, I wouldn't think. Maybe the article misspoke?

Submission + - BT Starts Blocking Private Torrent Sites (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This weekend both BT and Sky implemented the new changes, making it harder for their subscribers to reach these sites. Interestingly, however, BT appears to have gone above and beyond the court order, limiting access to various other sites as well.

Over the past several days TorrentFreak has received reports from several users of private torrent sites who get an “error blocked” message instead of their favorite sites. These include the popular IPTorrents.com and TorrentDay.com trackers, as well as scene release site Scnsrc.me.

IPTorrents and Torrentday are significant targets. Although both sites require prospective users to obtain an invite from a current member (or from the site itself in exchange for cash), they have over a hundred thousand active users.

The error displayed when BT subscribers try to access the above URLs is similar to that returned when users to try access sites covered by High Court injunctions.

Submission + - Why We Love to Hate Click Bait

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Ben Smith of Buzzfeed recently wrote that his site doesn’t traffic in “click bait” because the term applies to “tempting, vacuous ‘curiosity gap’ headlines” that mislead readers. But in an industry riddled with plagiarism, civil insensitivities and “hot takes,” “click bait” is still the worst insult you can hurl at a publication. Looking at the history of journalism, sensationalist teases have always been with us. In the past, the city newspaper version of click bait was the "extra" issued every hour or two. "Click bait takes it farther, or rather, faster," says Mark Bauerlein. "It’s not that all the content has degenerated. It’s that the delivery has sped up and the content can be blasted widely on the Internet." Gloria Mark, a professor specializing in human-computer interactions at the University of California, Irvine, says that click bait as a design element is a natural evolution, and consequence, of the way the Internet affects our flow of attention. "Many argue that click bait is not new, as newspapers have used enticing headlines to lure readers since the 19th century. What is new, however, is the combination of click bait with the design of hypermedia that leads us down cognitive paths that make it hard to find our way back to the original, intended task," says Mark. "It is part of the larger grand challenge we face in managing our focus of attention amid the sheer volume of digital information available."

Baratunde Thurston says that one good thing about click bait is that it has inspired a new arena for humor. "Over a year ago, my company hosted a “Comedy Hack Day" built around humor, and one team created a satirical site called Clickstrbait to lampoon this silly practice. Since then The Onion has gone further, successfully launching ClickHole.com, which parodies (and monetizes) the click bait phenomenon with articles like '6 Sunsets That Would Be More Peaceful If It Weren't For Your Loudly Growling Stomach.'" If Thurston is right then the only thing that will defeat click bait overuse is time. "Until then, at least we have jokes."

Submission + - Was Microsoft Forced to Pay $136M in Back Taxes in China? (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: China's state-controlled Xinhua News Agency said on Sunday that an unnamed international company was forced to pay 840 million yuan ($136 million) in back taxes, as part of a Chinese government crackdown on tax evasion. The Xinhua article simply referred to it as the "M company," describing it as a top 500 global firm headquartered in the U.S. that in 1995 set up a wholly owned foreign subsidiary in Beijing. The details match Microsoft's own background, and no other company obviously fits the bill. Xinhua added, that despite the company's strengths, its subsidiary in China had not been not making a profit, and posted a loss of over $2 billion during a six-year period.

Submission + - Hacker Threatened With 44 Felony Charges Escapes With Misdemeanor (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It's no secret that prosecutors usually throw every charge they can at an alleged criminal, but the case of Aaron Swartz brought to light how poorly-written computer abuse laws lend themselves to this practice. Now, another perfect example has resolved itself: a hacker with ties to Anonymous was recently threatened with 44 felony counts of computer fraud and cyberstalking, each with its own 10-year maximum sentence. If the charges stuck, the man was facing multiple lifetimes worth of imprisonment. But, of course, it wasn't. Prosecutors struck a deal to get him to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge, which carried only a $10,000 fine. The man's attorney, Tor Eklund, said, "The more I looked at this, the more it seemed like an archetypal example of the Department of Justice’s prosecutorial abuse when it comes to computer crime. It shows how aggressive they are, and how they seek to destroy your reputation in the press even when the charges are complete, fricking garbage."

Submission + - WaveNET – the Floating, Flexible Wave Energy Generator (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Scotland's Albatern is putting a new, modular spin on renewable energy generation. WaveNET is a scalable array of floating "Squid" generator units that harvest wave energy as their buoyant arms rise and fall with the motion of the waves. Each Squid can link up to as many as three others, effectively creating a large, floating grid that's flexible in every direction. The bigger this grid gets, the more efficient it becomes at harvesting energy, and the more different wave movements it can extract energy from. Albatern's 10-year target is to have 1.25 kilometer-long floating energy farms pumping out as much as 100 megawatts by 2024.

Submission + - Auto industry teams up with military to stop car hacking (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A team of hackers is collaborating with military and industry groups to develop cyber security defences for commercially available cars, in response to a growing threat from criminals and terrorists. In the UK, hackers are now responsible for a third of car thefts in London and there are fears that while technology is progressing, older models will remain vulnerable to attack.

Although there have been no reported instances of a car being completely commandeered outside of controlled conditions, during tests hackers come out on top every time – unlocking car boots, setting off windscreen wipers, locking brakes, and cutting the engine.

“As security has not been a prime objective for vehicle manufacturers in the past these systems have been tightly integrated, leading to a situation where the security of an in-car media player can affect the car's brakes,” explained senior information security consultant at MWR InfoSecurity, Jacques Louw.

Submission + - HP earnings show continued struggle (wfsb.com)

Submitted by Tombawhite
Tombawhite writes: CEO Meg Whitman has decided to split the pioneering Silicon Valley company in two. But she has said it will take a year to disengage the sluggish printer-and-PC division from units that sell commercial tech hardware, software and services, where Whitman believes there are more opportunities for growth. Meanwhile, the company reported Tuesday that its sales fell 2 percent in the most recent three-month period, marking its 12th revenue decline in the last 13 quarters.

Submission + - Australia elaborates a new Drift model to find MH370

Submitted by hcs_$reboot
hcs_$reboot writes: Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared on Saturday, 8 March 2014, while flying from Malaysia to Beijing with 239 people on board. And 8 months later, after millions of dollars invested in a gigantic search operation, there is still no sign of the aircraft. Now, Australia is developing a new model to predict where the debris of the missing MH370 could wash up. Authorities had initially predicted that the plane’s wreckage could drift and come ashore on Indonesia’s West Sumatra island after about 4 months of Flight MH370’s disappearance. “We are currently working... to see if we can get an updated drift model for a much wider area where there might be possibilities of debris washing ashore,” search co-ordinator Peter Foley told reporters in Perth.
The teams initially agreed an area about 600 kilometres long by 90km wide west of Perth was most likely. A new report released last month specified two high-priority areas further to the south. All five groups (Boeing, France's Thales, US investigator, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Australian Defence Science and Technology Organisation) agree that MH370's final resting place is near the “7th arc” — a curve that stretches from about 1 000km off Exmouth, Western Australia, to a point about 2 000km south-west of Perth.

Comment Opening a software shop is not how to go about it (Score 1) 176

Especially when you lack experience, that is a setup for disaster. Instead, just start developing a marketable product out of your home. If you need help, contract someone over the internet. Grow organically from there, one step at a time. When you finally have a marketable product, then maybe you need to start worrying about sales and lawyers and all the overhead that goes with a business. By that time, your thinking will have matured.

Comment Re:One solution (Score 1) 137

by TropicalCoder (#48439087) Attached to: Aereo Files For Bankruptcy
"Do not feed their useless parasitism on our culture and public domain." That is exactly it - the copyright maximalists have hijacked our culture. While I entirely agree with your sentiment, this statement reveals exactly why your proposal is impractical. Refusing to participate in our own culture is something we cannot do any more than we can voluntarily stop breathing. Here's the thing... The moment a "work" is publicly performed, it becomes a part of our culture. I hear a tune on the radio and I can't stop it from going around in my head, or maybe even singing it in the shower. Once that tune entered my consciousness, it became a part of me. Not only that, but it has become a part of our language. I may find myself employing a phase from the lyrics that succinctly expresses a feeling for which I didn't have words before. Now we are in a serious conundrum. While we do want to incentivize our artists and performers and give them a reasonable return on their efforts, at the same time, they need to understand and be sensitive to this paradox. This is where all the friction is coming from. This is why we need a major overhaul of the copyright system - a whole new fresh, out-of-the-box reform. Because what we have now is not serving us.

Comment Re:Inspections? (Score 1) 169

by TropicalCoder (#48417377) Attached to: City of Toronto Files Court Injunction Against Uber
"Uber is a bootleg taxi service, and the laws being applied have applied to all commercial car services for a very long time." Ahh... but Uber is NOT a taxi service. Uber facilitates a connection between people needing a ride and a driver. We could say Uber is like Facebook or Google+, or perhaps Craig's List in that they provide a platform for people to connect. Just like Aereo operated community antennas for people, rather than acting as a cable television provider. Unfortunately, in the case of Aereo, the powers that be arbitrarily declared that Aereo was something other than a community antenna. Next they will want to legislate a more rational value for Pi to simplify calculations for us.

Comment Re:Where will Uber dig? (Score 1) 169

by TropicalCoder (#48415761) Attached to: City of Toronto Files Court Injunction Against Uber
Good one! I have heard Rob Ford accused of a lot of things, but not being THE Robert Ford who killed Jesse James (aka Mr. Howard). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J... "Robert Ford, who killed Jesse, was James' gang member. Mr. Howard was the alias that James lived under in Saint Joseph, Missouri at the time of his killing." Of course I never knew anything about this until I Googled it just now.

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