Video Sigsense is Making Interchangeable, Modular Sensors (Video) 21
Submission + - Google patches Android against OpenSSL MITM vulnerability
93 Escort Wagon writes: Google is releasing Android 4.4.4 for certain Nexus phones and tablets. While some users hoping for a new Android release at I/O may be disappointed by the timing of this new KitKat release, it is important update since it is primarily addressing CVE-2014-0224, a significant OpenSSL man in the middle vulnerability discovered recently.
Submission + - New Permission System Potentially Makes Android Much Less Secure 1
capedgirardeau writes: An update to the Google Play store now groups app permissions into collections of related permissions making them much less fine grained and potentially misleading for users. For example the SMS permissions group would allow an app access to both reading and sending SMS messages. The problem is that once an app has access to the group of permissions, it can make use of any of the allowed actions at anytime without ever informing the user. As Google explains: "It’s a good idea to review permissions groups before downloading an app. Once you’ve allowed an app to access a permissions group, the app may use any of the individual permissions that are part of that group. You won’t need to manually approve individual permissions updates that belong to a permissions group you’ve already accepted."
Submission + - Amazon Dispute Now Making Movies Harder To Order (cnn.com)
trazom28 writes: Hachette books aren't the only products that are now harder to order on Amazon — the online retailer is going after movies, too. Amazon has turned off the preorder function for DVDs of prominent Warner Bros. films as it seeks to raise pressure on the company during negotiations.
"The Lego Movie," for example, is listed as "currently unavailable" on Amazon. Set for release in the home video marketplace on June 17, there is no option to place a preorder.
"The Lego Movie," for example, is listed as "currently unavailable" on Amazon. Set for release in the home video marketplace on June 17, there is no option to place a preorder.
Ohio Prison Shows Pirated Movies To Inmates
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An anonymous reader writes "Richard Humphrey was sentenced to 29 months in prison for selling pirated copies of movies through the subscription-based USAWAREZ.com. He was later sent to the Lorain County prison in February for a parole violation and while he was a prisoner, he says guards showed inmates Ride Along and The Wolf of Wall Street before they were released on DVD. A spokesperson for Lorain County Correctional Institution Warden Kimberly Clipper said prison officials are aware that pirated movies are being shown to prisoners and the issue is being investigated. But she said she couldn't comment further because the investigation is ongoing."
Submission + - Pedophile Asks To Be Deleted From Google Search After European Court Ruling
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Jane Wakefield reports at BBC that a man convicted of possessing child abuse images is among the first to request Google remove links links to pages about his conviction after a European court ruled that an individual could force it to remove "irrelevant and outdated" search results. Other takedown requests since the ruling include an ex-politician seeking re-election who has asked to have links to an article about his behaviour in office removed and a doctor who wants negative reviews from patients removed from google search results. Google itself has not commented on the so-called right-to-be-forgotten ruling since it described the European Court of Justice judgement as being "disappointing". Marc Dautlich, a lawyer at Pinsent Masons, says that search engines might find the new rules hard to implement. "If they get an appreciable volume of requests what are they going to do? Set up an entire industry sifting through the paperwork?" says Dautlich. "I can't say what they will do but if I was them I would say no and tell the individual to contact the Information Commissioner's Office." The court said in its ruling that people could request the removal of data related to them that seem to be "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed."
Comment OS on a stick is not novel (Score 5, Insightful) 201
We have other OS distributions that that live just fine on SD cards or sticks, already. If you want to bring computing to slums as a useful resource, the big problems are probably really:
1) actual hardware, shared or not, to run whatever open source OS you pick;
2) electricity to run the hardware and shelter for the hardware;
3) people to train those who have never used computers before, may have other literacy issues besides, and quite possibly speak dialects you will have difficulty getting localization for; and
4) affordable/free network access if these people want to use the internet.
I'll bet these are not the only issues, but if you don't address these, I suspect your money and time will be mostly wasted.
Comment Seems a bit of a setup. (Score 2) 127
They only have one option that mentions immediately practical applications in its supporting information. That's the Technology skin, with the applications being easier crew identification, etc. Precisely the only reason why you would think they would invest the resources to play with pretty lights on the surface of a prototype, right now. The others are designs that might be nice to have someday, if there are large populations in these environments that might want to express individuality and creativity.
Submission + - U.S. Cedes Control of DNS to ICANN (doc.gov)
Midnight_Falcon writes: Sixteen years after Jon Postel's famed attempt to bring the DNS system under IANA control, the U.S has agreed to cede control of the root DNS servers of the internet to ICANN. With NSA spying (some of which utilizing the U.S's privileged access to the internet system) a hot button issue, this may indicate a step in the right direction for internationalizing the internet.
Submission + - Mozilla Scraps Firefox For Windows 8 Citing Low Adoption of Metro
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today announced it is abandoning the Metro version of its Firefox browser, before the first release for Windows 8 even sees the light of day. Firefox Vice President Johnathan Nightingale ordered the company’s engineering leads and release managers to halt development earlier this week, saying that shipping a 1.0 version "would be a mistake." Mozilla says it simply does not have the resources nor the scale of its competitors, and it has to pick its battles. The Metro platform (which has since been renamed to Modern UI, but many prefer the older name) simply doesn’t help the organization achieve its mission as well as other platforms Firefox is available for: Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android.
Submission + - Mars Rover Opportunity Faces New Threat: Budget Ax (discovery.com)
astroengine writes: NASA’s baseline budget for the year beginning Oct. 1 pulls the plug on the 10-year-old Mars rover Opportunity, newly released details of the agency’s fiscal 2015 spending plan show. The plan, which requires Congressional approval, also anticipates ending the orbiting Mars Odyssey mission on Sept. 30, 2016. “There are pressures all over the place,” NASA’s planetary science division director Jim Green said during an advisory council committee teleconference call on Wednesday.
Submission + - Monster Rare Yellow Hypergiant Star Discovered (discovery.com) 2
astroengine writes: A gargantuan star, measuring 1,300 times the size of our sun, has been uncovered 12,000 light-years from Earth — it is one of the ten biggest stars known to exist in our galaxy. The yellow hypergiant even dwarfs the famous stellar heavyweight Betelgeuse by 50 percent. While its hulking mass may be impressive, astronomers have also realized that HR 5171 is a double star with a smaller stellar sibling physically touching the surface of the larger star as they orbit one another. “The new observations also showed that this star has a very close binary partner, which was a real surprise,” said Olivier Chesneau, of the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, France. “The two stars are so close that they touch and the whole system resembles a gigantic peanut.
Submission + - Bitcoin, Meet Darwin: Crypto Currency's Future (informationweek.com)
kierny writes: Today, Bitcoin, tomorrow, the dollar? Former Central Intelligence Agency CTO Gus Hunt says governments will learn from today's crypto currencies and use them to fashion future government-protected monetary systems. But along the way, expect first-movers such as Bitcoin to fall, in a repeat of the fate of AltaVista, Napster, and other early innovators. But the prospect of fashioning a better, more stable crypto currency system — and the likelihood that Bitcoin may one day burn — is good news for anyone who cares about crypto currencies, as well as the future and reliability of our monetary systems.
Submission + - Jewish school removes evolution questions from exams
Alain Williams writes: Religious sponsored ignorance is not just in the USA, a school in Hackney, England is trying to hide the idea of evolution from its pupils. Maybe they fear that their creation story will be seen for what it is if pupils get to learn ideas supported evidence. The girls are also disadvantaged since they can't answer the redacted questions, thus making it harder to get good marks.
Submission + - Deadly Avian Flu Strain Penetrates Biossecurity Defenses in Seuol (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: A new, deadly H5N8 strain of avian influenza penetrated the biosecurity defenses of a National Institute of Animal Science (NIAS) campus near Seoul, prompting authorities to cull all of the facility's 11,000 hens and 5000 ducks. The incident highlights the difficulty of protecting poultry farms from circulating avian influenza viruses. “We are taking this situation very seriously," said Lee Jun-Won, deputy agriculture minister, at a press conference yesterday in Seoul. He noted that NIAS has the country’s most secure facilities and most vigilant staff. Lee said they were looking at three possible routes the virus could have taken onto campus: wild birds, NIAS vehicles, and supply deliveries. "We will determine the reason for the infection, and we are going to hold those responsible accountable," he said.
