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Submission + - Tor usage more than doubles in August (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: The Tor (The Onion Router) network has witnessed over 100 per cent rise in the number of users connecting to it for the month of August and has reached record levels for the first time since the project has been collecting usage statistics. The privacy-enhancing network is known for providing anonymous browsing experience through the use of a series of encrypted relays and had as many has 500k users throughout this year so far. But if we check the latest statistics available through Tor Metrics Portal there has been a whopping 100 per cent increase in number of Tor clients and as many as 1,200,000 users are connecting to the network. The previous peak for the network was in January 2012 when it saw as many as 950,000 users.

Submission + - Carbyne: A Form of Carbon Even Stronger Than Graphene 1

Submitted by Dialecticus
Dialecticus writes: Sebastian Anthony at ExtremeTech has written an article about research into the physical properties of carbyne, an elusive form of carbon. A new mathematical analysis by Mingjie Liu and others at Rice University suggests that carbyne may achieve double the strength of graphene, stealing its crown and becoming the strongest material known to man.

Submission + - Moto X's Moto Maker: Designing the next two years of your life (bgr.com)

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: There’s no question about it — we have reached a point where smartphones are as much a part of our lives as any device can be. One need only scroll down to the comments section on any tech news site or blog to see how passionate people can be when it comes to their smartphone of choice. But when buying such an important device, why should vendors have all the say when it comes to design? Unless you plan to swallow a penalty or pay a premium tied to a crafty new accelerated upgrade scheme, your smartphone is going to be a huge part of your life for the next two years. Giving users the ability to customize their handsets to speak to their individual styles seems like a big advantage, albeit a complicated and pricey endeavor — but that’s exactly what Motorola and Google have done with the Moto X...

Submission + - Amazon Selects Their Favorite Fake Customer Reviews (beyond-black-friday.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Amazon's just created a new web page where they're officially acknowledging fake reviews posted by their customers — and they've even selected their own favorites. ("I was very disappointed to have my uranium confiscated at the airport. It was a gift for my son for his birthday. Also, I’m in prison now, so that’s not good either...") On the front page of Amazon, in big orange letters, Amazon posted "You guys are really funny." And then — next to a funny picture of a rubber horse head mask — Amazon's linked to a list of some of the very best satirical reviews their customers have submitted over the years, noting fondly that "occasionally customer creativity goes off the charts in the best possible way..."

Submission + - US Horse Registry Forced to Accept Cloned Horses by Judge (reuters.com)

Submitted by kdryer39
kdryer39 writes: U.S. District Court Judge Mary Lou Robinson said she will sign an order requiring the American Quarter Horse Association to begin allowing cloned animals to be placed on its registry, according to the organization. A jury last month ruled that the horse association violated anti-monopoly laws by banning cloned animals. The quarter horse association issues and maintains a pedigree registry of American quarter horses, a popular breed associated with cowboys riding on the range in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Submission + - EFF Slams Google Fiber for Banning Servers On Its Network (hothardware.com) 3

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Anyone who has tried to host their own website from home likely knows all-too-well the hassles that ISPs can cause. Simply put, ISPs generally don't want you to do that, preferring you to move up to a business package (aka: more expensive). Not surprisingly, the EFF doesn't like these rules, which seem to exist only to upsell you a product. The problem, though, is that all ISPs are deliberately vague about what qualifies as a "server". Admittedly, when I hear the word "server", I think of a Web server, one that delivers a webpage when accessed. The issue is that servers exist in many different forms, so to target specific servers "just because" is ridiculous (and really, it is). Torrent clients, for example, act as servers (and clients), sometimes resulting in a hundred or more connections being established between you and available peers. With a large number of connections like that being allowed, why would a Web server be classified any different? Those who torrent a lot are very likely to be using more ISP resources than those running websites from their home — yet for some reason, ISPs force you into a bigger package when that's the kind of server you want to run. We'll have to wait and see if EFF's movement will cause any ISP to change. Of all of them, you'd think it would have been Google to finally shake things up.

Submission + - The First "Practical" Jetpack May Be on Sale in Two Years (vice.com) 1

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: This week, New Zealand-based company Martin Aircraft became certified to take what it calls "the world's first practical jetpack" out for a series of manned test flights. If all goes well, the company plans to start selling a consumer version of the jetpack in 2015, starting at $150,000 to $200,000 and eventually dropping to $100,000. "For us it's a very important step because it moves it out of what I call a dream into something which I believe we're now in a position to commercialize and take forward very quickly," CEO Peter Coker told Agence France Presse .

Submission + - Behind the story of the iPhone's default text tone (tuaw.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a fascinating post from Kelly Jacklin, the long time Apple software engineer details how he helped create the default text alert sound on the iPhone — a sound otherwise known as "Tri-tone".

The history of the the pleasant text alert sound that we've all come to know and love stretches all the way back to 1998, nearly 10 years before the iPhone ever hit store shelves.

Submission + - Deutsche Telekom Moves Email Traffic In-Country in Wake of PRISM (reuters.com)

Submitted by kdryer39
kdryer39 writes: Germany's leading telecom provider has announced on Friday that it will only being using German servers to handle any email traffic over it's systems, citing privacy concerns arising from the recent PRISM leak and it's 'public outrage over U.S. spy programs accessing citizens' private messages.' In a related move, DT has also announced that they will be providing email services over SSL to further secure their customers' communications.

Sandro Gaycken, a professor of cyber security at Berlin's Free University, said 'This will make a big difference...Of course the NSA could still break in if they wanted to, but the mass encryption of emails would make it harder and more expensive for them to do so.'

Submission + - How much can the NSA's new Utah Data Center actually hold? (dailydot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Since its groundbreaking in 2011, analysts have estimated that the data center will have a data storage capacity of anywhere from exabytes to yottabytes.

Thomas Drake, a former NSA senior executive who revealed the agency’s invasive surveillance and reckless spending in 2006, believes the data center is almost certainly not focused on metadata. “I can put the metadata of the world in one room,” he said.

Submission + - IBM Builds Programming Model For Brain-Like Computing (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: IBM is working on a programming model for cognitive applications, which it hopes will provide something like a high-level language for producing brain-like programs, enabling "anyone" to make cognitive applications, just as FORTRAN did for conventional computing. IBM plans to build a brain with 10 billion neurons (about one tenth the number in the human brain.The project surely wins Acronym of the Week: it's called SyNAPSE (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics).

Submission + - Paypal Rolls Out Photo Verification Trial in UK (sky.com)

Submitted by kdryer39
kdryer39 writes: Retailers in Richmond upon Thames are among the first to allow shoppers to leave their wallets at home and pay for items using just the PayPal app and their profile picture. The app for iOS, Windows OS and Android phones highlights nearby shops and restaurants that accept PayPal before the customer checks in by clicking on the required retailer and sliding an animated pin down on their screen. At present, only 12 merchants are using the system but it expects more than 2,000 locations will have the ability to use the app by the end of 2013.

Submission + - Omni Magazine to Reboot

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Adi Robertson reports in The Verge that classic science fiction magazine Omni, created in 1978 by Penthouse mogul Bob Guccione and partner Kathy Keeton, is coming back — and with it, questions about how our vision of science and science fiction has changed since Omni closed up shop in 1996. "There’s a heavy dose of nostalgia in the proceedings, and it’s not just about bringing back an old name," writes Robertson. "Longtime editor Ben Bova has described Omni as 'a magazine about the future,' but since his time as editor, our vision of the future has been tarnished — or, at the very least, we’ve started looking at the predictions of the past with rose-tinted glasses." Omni’s resurrection comes courtesy of Jeremy Frommer, a collector and businessman who acquired Guccione’s archives earlier this year. Like the original magazine, now available at the internet archive, the new Omni will publish a mixture of new fiction and nonfiction publishing the old illustrations that helped define Omni alongside the stories. Longtime science writer Claire Evans will edit the new online project described as an “Omni reboot" but plans to jettison one of the magazine’s most dated elements — a fondness for extraterrestrials and conspiracy theories. "Omni always had a distressing new agey tinge to it," says Bruce Sterling. "There was a lot of ‘aircraft of the pharaohs’ rubbish going on, which I didn't have very much tolerance for."

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