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Submission + - Wikipedia creates new rules, forcing editors to disclose if they're paid (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: The Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit which operates Wikipedia and related projects, explained yesterday that it will establish new rules covering paid editing.

The heart of the change is that anyone who is paid to edit the site must "add your affiliation to your edit summary, user page, or talk page, to fairly disclose your perspective," according to Wikimedia's explanation of the change. The organization has also published an FAQ on paid editing.

The changes come after some high-profile commotions over paid editing. In October, Wikipedia deleted more than 250 accounts believed to be connected to a PR firm that was writing articles on the site. In January, the Wikimedia Foundation fired an employee who was accused of taking paid editing gigs.

Submission + - Are U.S. Hybrid Sales Peaking Already?

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: The Toyota Prius is pretty darn popular, especially in California. One might think that hybrid sales are on the rise as gas prices continue to fluctuate, but it seems hybrid sales in the U.S. might be peaking. Researchers at IHS Automotive found that U.S. hybrid sales haven't kept pace with the rest of the market. In the automotive world, conventional wisdom states that adding a model to a brand or segment will increase sales--but that hasn't happened with hybrids. The number of hybrid offerings has almost doubled from 24 in 2009 to 47 in 2014--but U.S. hybrid sales haven't dramatically increased. In fact, hybrid market share actually declined from 2009 to 2010, and then again from 2013 to 2014. So if consumers aren't buying hybrids, what are they buying? It seems some hybrid early adopters are now switching to plug-in hybrids or electric cars stating that these models are just nicer to drive. Is this already the beginning of the end in some way for hybrids, or is it merely a blip on the sales chart?

Submission + - This Is How Formula 1 Brakes Work

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: For the most part, you probably have a simple understanding of how your car's brakes work. But a race car, that's a whole different beast. Brembo's the biggest name in the brake industry, and it just released a video explaining the technology that goes into the brakes on a Formula 1 race car from pedal to caliper. Obviously it starts with every component being beefed up from a normal braking system, but there's also aluminum monoblock calipers, carbon rotors and pads, a brake-by-wire system with a redundancy in case of an electronic failure, and a kinetic energy recovery system (KERS). Of course, KERS is the most interesting bit as the it allows for smaller rear calipers than before which of course reduces mass. Believe it or not, all of this stuff ends up trickling down to mass-market cars eventually, it's just a matter of time. So the next time you tap your brakes, remember, that technology was likely proven on a race car at some point.

Submission + - Is the instant-gratification disease affecting quality of software?

Submitted by JamesNT
JamesNT writes: We have all heard how today's generation is all about instant-gratification. We have to have everything now, Now, NOW. Since the new crop of business owners and managers coming up are of this instant-gratification generation, how is that affecting software development? Are we as developers running across managers and business owners that simply cannot wait the x months or years a project can take and in their zest to make things happen faster actually make things worse? Are today's new managers and business owners even worse than their parents?

Submission + - Interviews: Ask "The King of Kong" Billy Mitchell About Classic Video Games

Submitted by samzenpus
samzenpus writes: Billy Mitchell owns the Rickey's World Famous Restaurant chain, sells his own line of hot sauces, and was called, "probably the greatest arcade-video-game player of all time". His was the first to achieve a perfect score in Pac-Man, and held many record scores in other arcade games. He is probably most famous for the 2007 documentary,"The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters". The film follows a challenger on his quest to surpass Billy's high score in Donkey Kong, which Mitchell had set in 1982. Since the film was made, the Kong crown has been held by a number people including twice by Mitchell. Billy has agreed to put down the quarters and answer any questions you might have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.

Submission + - Soon You'll Control Your Home From Your Car

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: You know that time you were driving along and suddenly remember that you forgot to shut your garage door, or turn the lights off? Soon that will be a thing of the past because you'll be able to control your home from behind the wheel of your car. New technology is being developed by Japanese firms Toyota and Panasonic that will allow you to contact an existing cloud-based Toyota Smart Center which then links with Panasonic's cloud system. An example scenario would be an application linked to a vehicle's GPS data can remind the user to turn off the air-conditioning before leaving home, and then enable them to turn it on remotely before returning. The two firms began working on the technology a year ago. This is the future, and it's all controlled via the cloud.

Submission + - TweetDeck Has Been Hacked (businessinsider.com) 1

Submitted by redletterdave
redletterdave writes: TweetDeck, Twitter’s tool for real-time tracking and engagement of posts, was found to be vulnerable to cross-site scripting (XSS), a type of computer vulnerability commonly found in web applications that allows hackers to inject script into webpages to access user accounts and important security information. As a result of the hack, a tweet with an emoticon heart is being shared more than 38,000 times — automatically.

Submission + - Local Motors Is Going To 3D Print This Car

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: A while back, Local Motors said it was going to 3D print a car at this year's International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago in the fall. The design of the car was crowdsourced and the contest attracted over 200 entrants. The winning design was just announced and it was submitted by Michele Anoe of Italy. His Strati impressed the judges with its combination of strong character--expressed through complex 3D surfacing--and practical design that would work well with 3D printing. The printed car will use electric power, and it's intended to demonstrate 3D printing's potential as a manufacturing process for lighter, more efficient vehicles. It'll be interesting to see Local Motors take this design and 3D print it later this fall.

Submission + - This Car Can Lean Into Curves, Literally

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: You know how motorcycle riders lean into the corners, sometimes even touching their knee to the ground? Yeah, you can't do that in a car, but Mercedes-Benz has developed new technology that replicates that sensation by leaning the car into bends. It's called Dynamic Curve and it's part of the Active Body control suspension system on the new 2015 Mercedes-Benz S-Class Coupe. In turns, special plunger cylinders raise the suspension struts and lower the opposite side, depending on the direction of the bend. This has the result of tilting the car body slightly towards the inside of the corner, countering centrifugal cornering forces. Mercedes says it's not design for increasing cornering speeds, but increasing pleasure for the driver and passengers. We now live in an era where cars actively lean into corners for driver and passenger pleasure.

Submission + - If Tesla Made Bike Lights, They'd Look Like This; The Story of Sparse (xconomy.com)

Submitted by waderoush
waderoush writes: Hardware is Silicon Valley’s new religion. Bits and atoms aren’t so different after all, the creed goes; just as the cost and complexity of starting a software company has drastically declined over the last decade, it’s now becoming much cheaper and easier to start companies that make physical things. But talk to almost any real hardware company, and you’ll discover that the promised land is still some distance away. Sparse, a San Francisco product design startup, learned that the hard way. The company raised $66,000 on Kickstarter for its uber-cool theft-proof bicycle lights, but it took more than a year to deliver the first units to backers, thanks to a string of unforeseen manufacturing and supply-chain snafus. ‘We had all the t’s crossed and all the i’s dotted and still there was a big daily surprise,’ says industrial designer Colin Owen, Sparse’s co-founder and CEO. Today Sparse is shipping and profitable, with a vision to ‘change the face of mobility’ for urban cyclists, but its story illustrates just how high the bar still is for aspiring hardware entrepreneurs. Says Owen: ‘I wish there was more of a handbook for these things, but the biggest hiccups were very localized and unpredictable.’

Submission + - Parents Mobilize Against States' Student Data Mining

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: To paraphrase Paul Simon, the government would like to know a little bit about your children for their files. But Politico reports that parents have mobilized into an unexpected political force to fight the data mining of their children, catapulting student privacy to prominence in statehouses. Having already torpedoed the $100 million Bill Gates-funded inBloom database project, which could have made it easier for schools to share confidential student records with private companies, the amateur activists are now rallying against another perceived threat: huge state databases being built to track children for more than two decades, from as early as infancy through the start of their careers. "The Education Department," writes Stephanie Simon, "lists hundreds of questions that it urges states to answer about each child in the public school system: Did she make friends easily as a toddler? Was he disciplined for fighting as a teen? Did he take geometry? Does she suffer from mental illness? Did he go to college? Did he graduate? How much does he earn?" Leonie Haimson, a NY mother who is organizing a national Parent Coalition for Student Privacy says, "Every parent I’ve talked to has been horrified. We just don’t want our kids tracked from cradle to grave." For their part, ed tech entrepreneurs and school reformers are both bewildered by and anxious about the backlash — and struggling to craft a response, having assumed parents would support their vision: to mine vast quantities of data for insights into what’s working, and what’s not, for individual students and for the education system as a whole. "People took for granted that parents would understand [the benefits], that it was self-evident," said Michael Horn, a co-founder an education think tank.

Submission + - Tesla Has To Sell 6 Million Electric Cars To Make History

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: Many entrepreneurs have tried to start car companies in the U.S. over the past century, but the last person to do so successfully from the ground up was Walter P. Chrysler in 1924. To say this feat is monumental would clearly be an understatement. That isn't to say many haven't tried. Those who have include Preston Tucker, Henrik Fisker, Malcolm Bricklin, and even John Delorean. Now it's Elon Musk's time with Tesla. But what will it take for Musk and Tesla to be successful? The answer is the sale of at least six million electric cars. That's what it'll take to make history. Henry J. Kaiser's car company Kaiser-Frazer (later Kaiser Motors) produced a staggering 750,000 vehicles in its nine year run. Times have changed, back in 1955 when Kaiser closed up shop, only 11 million vehicles were sold globally, where as last year 83 million vehicles were sold globally. To equal the scale of Kaiser's achievement Tesla will have to sell at least 6 million vehicles. While not impossible, it gives an idea of the challenge facing any automotive entrepreneur.

Submission + - Tesla's Fate In New Jersey To Be Decided Tomorrow

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: There's been a ton of guerilla warfare between auto dealers and Tesla Motors, and it's about to continue. Tomorrow a bill will be heard by the Consumer Affairs Committee of the New Jersey State Assembly regarding electric-car companies like Tesla to sell their cars directly to the public. This bill applies solely to zero-emission vehicles. Auto-dealer associations both at a state and national level are extremely threatened by Tesla's direct-sales model. Dealers in some states have been successful in banning Tesla's direct-sales model, while others have failed. The Federal Trade Commission has already stated it's in favor of Tesla's direct sales model and is against dealer-backed bans. It feels what the dealers are trying to do only hurts the consumer. Is Tesla's direct sales model the future of car sales?

Submission + - EFF Tells Court That The NSA Knowingly And Illegally Destroyed Evidence (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We followed the back and forth situation earlier this year, in which there were some legal questions over whether or not the NSA needed to hang onto surveillance data at issue in various lawsuits, or destroy it as per the laws concerning retention of data. Unfortunately, in the process, it became clear that the DOJ misled FISA court Judge Reggie Walton, withholding key information. In response, the DOJ apologized, insisting that it didn't think the data was relevant — but also very strongly hinting that it used that opportunity to destroy a ton of evidence. However, this appeared to be just the latest in a long history of the NSA/DOJ willfully destroying evidence that was under a preservation order.

The key case where this evidence was destroyed was the EFF's long running Jewel v. NSA case, and the EFF has now told the court about the destruction of evidence, and asked the court to thus assume that the evidence proves, in fact, that EFF's clients were victims of unlawful surveillance. The DOJ/NSA have insisted that they thought that the EFF's lawsuit only covered programs issued under executive authority, rather than programs approved by the FISA Court, but the record in the case shows that the DOJ seems to be making this claim up.

Submission + - U.S. Secret Service wants to identify snark (cbslocal.com)

Submitted by beschra
beschra writes:

The U.S. Secret Service is seeking software that can identify top influencers and trending sets of social media data, allowing the agency to monitor these streams in real-time – and sift through the sarcasm.

“We are not currently aware of any automated technology that could do that (detect sarcasm). No one is considered a leader in that,” Jamie Martin, a data acquisition engineer at Sioux Falls, SD based Bright Planet, told CBS News.

Why not just force Twitter to change TOS to require sarcasm tag?

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