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Comment If it wasn't such a mess in Europe (Score 2) 298

by jbernardo (#46127881) Attached to: Price of Amazon Prime May Jump To $119 a Year

I have Prime for the German amazon, as it is the closest (less delivery time) to where I live, the prices are in euros, and has the most diversity of the European amazon stores.

However, I have my kindle set to amazon.co.uk because I only understand a few German words, most my reading is in English, my magazine subscriptions (Analog) are available only from there or the US, and I'd rather read some of my favourite authors in the original UK English spelling.

As such, I can't loan kindle titles (only if I had my kindle set to the German amazon), and of course I don't have the streaming. The interesting part here is that I can have prime either with German, French, Italian or UK amazon, without living in any of these countries, but I must pay a Prime subscription in each country, like if it was a different company and not the same one with headquarters in Luxembourg.

Submission + - Microsoft Offering $100 off X-Box One for your old console (pcmag.com)

Submitted by KillaKen187
KillaKen187 writes: All Microsoft Stores nationwide are offering patrons $100 for their old PS3, Xbox 360 S or Xbox 360 E. That's if you can manage to find one in your area, and are willing to give up your old console for one that isn't backwards compatible. Well one thing is sure, it sounds like with all the other things Microsoft is doing to downsize (bye Balmer) this will certainly help people realize who is leading the next-gen console war.

Submission + - Engineers Invent Acoustic Equivalent of One-Way Glass

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Up until now, acoustic waves traveling between two points in space always exhibited a basic symmetry summed up with the phrase, “if you can hear, you can also be heard.” Not anymore as Tia Ghose reports at Live Science that a team at UT Austin has created a “nonreciprocal acoustic circulator," the first step that could lead to the sound equivalent of a one-way mirror.” All waves — whether visible light, sound, radio or otherwise — have a physical property known as time reversal symmetry so a wave sent one way can always be sent back. For radio waves, researchers figured out how to break this rule using magnetic materials that set electrons spinning in one direction. The resulting radio waves detect the difference in the material in one direction versus the other, preventing reverse transmission. To accomplish the feat with sound waves, the team created a cavity loaded with tiny CPU fans that spin the air with a specific velocity. The air is spinning in one direction, so the flow of air "feels" different to the wave in one direction versus the other, preventing backward transmission. As a result, sound waves can go in, but they can't go the other way. The result is one-directional sound. With such a device, people can hear someone talking, but they themselves cannot be heard.The findings will likely lead to many useful applications, says Sebastien Guenneau "I would be surprised if sound industries do not pick up this idea. This could have great applications in sound insulation of motorways, music studios, submarines and airplanes."
Bitcoin

Would Linus Torvalds Please Collect His Bitcoin Tips? 231

Posted by timothy from the just-keeping-them-backed-up-on-the-internet dept.
jfruh writes "Tip4Commit is a new service that allows anyone to link a tip for a developer to GitHub commits for open source projects. The tips are denominated in Bitcoin — and it appears that some developers aren't interested, with almost 40% of the total value tipped going uncollected. One dev who hasn't collected his $136 in tips is Linux inventor Linus Torvalds. It's not clear if the devs who aren't collecting their tips are opposed to the concept of tipping on open source projects or just don't want to deal with Bitcoin."
Google

Google Charging OEMs Licensing Fees For Play Store 225

Posted by timothy from the say-those-were-good-free-pills dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Google has begun charging OEMs for access to its proprietary Play Store applications for Android though the reported amount is as low as 75c per device. Between charging OEMs for Google Play apps, showing ads within these apps (Search, Maps and GMail) and profiling users with the data it collects this does show that Google is willing to leverage their stranglehold on the mobile market to control and monetize wherever it can. Add that these proprietary applications and the proprietary Google Play Services are the primary areas for Android innovation and development and you end up with an operating system that is less and less 'free' in the freedom and cost senses of the word."

Submission + - El Niño tied to melting of Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier (washington.edu)

Submitted by vinces99
vinces99 writes: Pine Island Glacier is one of the biggest routes for ice to flow from Antarctica into the sea. The floating ice shelf at the glacier’s tip has been melting and thinning for the past four decades, causing the glacier to speed up and discharge more ice. Understanding this ice shelf is a key for predicting sea-level rise in a warming world. A paper published Jan. 2 in the advance online version of the journal Science shows that the ice shelf melting depends on the local wind direction, which is tied to tropical changes associated with El Niño. The study, led by author Pierre Dutrieux at the British Antarctic Survey, uses new data to show how winds and topography control how much warm water reaches the ice shelf. University of Washington co-authors provided atmospheric modeling expertise to help interpret the observations and show how they are related to climate conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean. “These new results show that how much melt the Antarctic ice sheet experiences can be highly dependent on climatic conditions occurring elsewhere on the planet,” said co-author Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences. The Pine Island ice shelf has thinned nearly continuously since observations began in the 1970s. Earlier studies have shown that warm deep-ocean water is melting the ice shelf from below, suggesting that warming global oceans are gradually targeting the underside of the ice sheet. But the picture is more complex, say authors of the new study. The deep ocean has been getting warmer but, more importantly, more warm water has been reaching the ice shelf.

Submission + - Illinois Law Grounds PETA Drones Meant to Harass Hunters (breitbart.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Illinois passed a new state law that set back the efforts of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), making the use of drones to interfere with hunters and fishermen prohibited.

The law was created in response to PETA’s plan to employ drones called “air angels” to monitor outdoors enthusiasts engaged in hunting and fishing nationwide. Of course, the motivation for many outdoorsman is to get away from technology and be in harmony with nature.

Submission + - Are High MOOC Failure Rates a Bug or a Feature?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course, NPR's Eric Westervelt reports that 2013 might be dubbed the year that online education fell back to earth. Westervelt joins others in citing the higher failure rate of online students as evidence that MOOCs aren't all they're cracked up to be. But viewed another way, the ability to try and fail without dire debt or academic consequences that's afforded by MOOCs could be viewed as a feature and not a bug. Being able to learn at one's own pace is what Dr. Yung Tae Kim has long argued is something STEM education sorely lacks, and MOOCs make it feasible to allow students to try-try-again if at first they don't succeed. By the way, if you couldn't scrape together $65,000 to take CS50 in-person at Harvard this year, today's the first day of look-Ma-no-tuition CS50x (review), kids!

Submission + - Increased Ski Helmet Use Isn't Reducing Brain Injuries

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: The NYT reports that the life-threatening head injury that Formula One driver Michael Schumacher recently sustained while skiing in the French Alps has focused attention on an unsettling trend — although skiers and snowboarders in the United States are wearing helmets more than ever — 70 percent of all participants, nearly triple the number from 2003 — there has been no reduction in the number of snow-sports-related fatalities or brain injuries in the country. Experts ascribe that seemingly implausible correlation to the inability of helmets to prevent serious head injuries like Schumacher’s and to the fact that more skiers and snowboarders are engaging in risky behaviors: skiing faster, jumping higher and going out of bounds. “The equipment we have now allows us to do things we really couldn’t do before," says Chris Davenport, "and people’s pushing limits has sort of surpassed people’s ability to control themselves." The population most susceptible are men in their late teens to late 30s, the same population that most often engages in high-risk behaviors like driving fast. “There’s this energy drink culture now, a high-level, high-risk culture, that’s being marketed and impacting the way people ski,” says Robb Gaffney. “That’s what people see, and that’s what people think skiing is, but really, that’s the highest level of skiers doing the highest level of tricks.”

Comment Re:Nokia (Score 1) 162

by jbernardo (#45835273) Attached to: The Biggest Tech Mishap of 2013?

Not that many, it seems. I already got that comment modded "troll" and "flamebait".

I just wish those modders would have instead had the honesty to explain how in their views the destruction of Nokia's mobile business, from #1 smartphone and phone builder in the world with over 50% of the market in the beginning of 2011 to the current pitiful state, with a global share in the single digits and forced to sell their mobile division to Microsoft, is anything but a disaster.

I am not writing about Microsoft and Windows Phone, but about Nokia. And for Nokia Elop's "strategy" was a total disaster.

Submission + - Google 'helpout' service: experts in your home, via a webcam (v3.co.uk)

Submitted by DW100
DW100 writes: Google has unveiled a service for self-appointed experts to offer advice on everything from business strategy to plumbing via webcams under a new project called 'Helpouts'. The firm admitted "helpouts may not be suitable for every occasion" but said it hoped the service would ultimately "make people's lives easier". Experts can charge for their help on a per-minute or per session setup.

Submission + - The Patent Problem Is Bigger Than Trolls

Submitted by Bob9113
Bob9113 writes: Ars Technica reports the following: "Canada-based telecom Nortel went bankrupt in 2009 and sold its biggest asset--a portfolio of more than 6,000 patents covering 4G wireless innovations and a range of technologies--at an auction in 2011. Google bid for the patents, but didn't get them. Instead, they went to a group of competitors--Microsoft, Apple, RIM, Ericsson, and Sony--operating under the name "Rockstar Bidco." The companies together bid the shocking sum of $4.5 billion. This afternoon, that stockpile was finally used for what pretty much everyone suspected it would be used for--launching an all-out patent attack on Google and Android. The smartphone patent wars have been underway for a few years now, and the eight lawsuits filed in federal court today by Rockstar Consortium mean that the conflict just hit DEFCON 1."

Submission + - Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned "Rockstar" sues Google (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by GODISNOWHERE
GODISNOWHERE writes: So this is what "thermonuclear war" looks like.
The complaint against Google involves six patents, all from the same patent "family." They're all titled "associative search engine," and list Richard Skillen and Prescott Livermore as inventors. The patents describe "an advertisment machine which provides advertisements to a user searching for desired information within a data network.

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