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Android

Submission + - Microsoft invests $300 million in B&N Nook (cnn.com)

Submitted by
kriston
kriston writes: "CNNMoney is reporting that Microsoft has invested a 17.6% stake in Barnes & Noble's Nook business unit, valuing the e-book business at $1.7 billion which is twice the value of the entire Barnes & Noble company itself."
Hardware

Submission + - Physicist explains Moore's Law collapse in 10years (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Moore’s Law won’t be true forever, and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku has explained how it will collapse. And that collapse isn’t going to happen in some distant future, it is going to happen within the next decade.

The problem is one of finding a replacement for silicon coupled with the exponential nature of Moore’s Law. Quite simply, computing power cannot go on doubling every two years indefinitely.

The other issue is we are about to reach the limits of silicon. According to Kaku, once we get done to 5nm processes for chip production, silicon is finished. Any smaller and processors will just overheat.

Comment Get rid of scummy developer's first... (Score 1) 2

by DanseDeMorte (#39825915) Attached to: Android fans: pay for your apps, please
The kind like Gameloft.com that likes to profit from getting underage children to click and purchase their premium items. Just like the "smurf berries" http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107662-Eight-Year-Old-Girl-Blows-1400-on-Smurfberries It will never happen though. Since these companies would be much less profitable if the android market forced a code entry for each an every purchase activated through an e-mail to the linked account. And I'm sure the "android market" makes a nice percentage of each "upgrade" sold.
Patents

Fark Founder Drew Curtis Explains How Fark Beat a Patent Troll 59

Posted by timothy from the righteous-chip-on-his-shoulder dept.
Velcroman1 links to this coverage of Drew Curtis's explanation of how his company, Fark, managed to beat a patent troll's lawsuit alleging infringement of a patent on distribution of news releases by email. From the article: "It boils down to one thing: don't negotiate with terrorists," Curtis said during a talk at the TED 2012 conference in Long Beach, Calif."
Medicine

In Calif. Study, Most Kids With Whooping Cough Were Fully Vaccinated 293

Posted by timothy from the conventional-wisdom-isn't-always dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this extract from a Reuters article: "In early 2010, a spike in cases appeared at Kaiser Permanente in San Rafael, and it was soon determined to be an outbreak of whooping cough — the largest seen in California in more than 50 years. Witt had expected to see the illnesses center around unvaccinated kids, knowing they are more vulnerable to the disease. 'We started dissecting the data. What was very surprising was the majority of cases were in fully vaccinated children. That's what started catching our attention,' said Witt."
Education

Submission + - Coursera Raises $16M and Plans Lots of Courses (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: After months of maintaining a low profile, Coursera, the online course site, has been awarded $16M in funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and New Enterprise Associates (NEA).
Coursera is led by Stanford Professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller but now its revamped website prominently displays the logos of Princeton University, Stanford University, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and University of Pennsylvania, the small print adds University of California, Berkeley.
Koller and Ng are currently on leave from Stanford to establish Coursera, which suggests that they will resume teaching there in due course. This has to be contrasted with the actions of Sebastian Thrun who after the same experience declared that never again would he be content to teach students in a conventional classroom setting.
Whereas Thrun's new venture, Udacity, is "standalone", developing new course materials that don't have a campus pedigree, Coursera is relying on established course content from world-class universities, repackaged for online presentation and delivered free of charge.
Given that it now has secure funding, Coursera is on course to make good on Andrew Ng's vision:
"Our mission is to teach the world and make higher education available for everyone"
Look out for exams administered at local testing centres in the near future.
Government

Submission + - 'Big brother' black boxes to soon be mandatory in all new cars (bgr.com)

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: Beginning in 2015, all new cars in the United States will likely need to be fitted with data-recording “black boxes” very similar to the devices currently used in aircraft. The U.S. Senate has already passed a bill that will make the devices a requirement, and the House is expected to approve the bill as well. Section 31406 of Senate Bill 1813 states that mandatory event data recorders must in installed in all cars starting in 2015, and it outlines civil penalties that will be levied against violators...
Hardware

Submission + - Future smartphone cameras to see through walls (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A team at the University of Texas in Dallas have managed to create a terahertz band imaging chip manufactured using CMOS. It's a major breakthrough as it means we could all one day be carrying around smartphones with cameras that can see through walls. It also means doctors could use their phones as portable X-ray units, as well as for a range of other medical tests. We can check out what's in a wall before drilling into it, and manufacturers can test products for faults by taking a picture of their insides.
Government

Submission + - Who's Buying Your Congressman? (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "A new site called SopaTrack, created by ex-Googler Randy Meech, 'shines the light on whose votes are for sale, and for how much'. Blogger Dan Tynan spent some time poking around SopaTrack and found 'four US Congressfolk have perfect 100 percent records, which means they favor the bills that put more greenbacks in their campaign coffers every single time.'"
Privacy

Submission + - Europe agrees to send airline passenger data to US (computerworlduk.com) 1

Submitted by Qedward
Qedward writes: The European Parliament has approved the controversial data transfer agreement, the bilateral PNR (passenger name register), with the US which requires European airlines to pass on passenger information, including name, contact details, payment data, itinerary, email and phone numbers to the Department of Homeland Security.

Under the new agreement, PNR data will be "depersonalised" after six months and would be moved into a "dormant database" after five years. However the information would still be held for a further 15 years before being fully "anonymised".

The PNR data will be stored in the US's Automated Targeting System (ATS). ATS is used to improve the collection, use, analysis, and dissemination of information that is gathered for the primary purpose of targeting, identifying, and preventing potential terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the US...

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