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Android

Submission + - Accountability - Not Code Quality- Makes iOS Safer Than Android (threatpost.com) 1

Submitted by
chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: "Threatpost is reporting on a new study of mobile malware that finds accountability, not superior technology, has kept Apple's iOS ecosystem free of viruses, even as the competing Android platform strains under the wait of repeated malicious code outbreaks.
Dan Guido of the firm Trail of Bits and Michael Arpaia of iSEC Partners told attendees at the SOURCE Boston Conference on Thursday about an empirical analysis of existing malicious programs for the Android and iOS platforms shows that Google is losing the mobile security contest badly — every piece of malicious code the two identified was for the company's Android OS, while Apple's iOS remained free of malware, despite owning 30% of the mobile smart phone market in the U.S. Apple's special sauce? Policies that demand accountability from iOS developers, and stricter controls on what applications can do once they are installed on Apple devices."
Science

Submission + - 'Huge' water resource exists under Africa (bbc.co.uk) 2

Submitted by gambit3
gambit3 writes: Scientists say the notoriously dry continent of Africa is sitting on a vast reservoir of groundwater. They argue that the total volume of water in aquifers underground is 100 times the amount found on the surface.
Across Africa more than 300 million people are said not to have access to safe drinking water.
Freshwater rivers and lakes are subject to seasonal floods and droughts that can limit their availability for people and for agriculture. At present only 5% of arable land is irrigated.
News

Submission + - Hacked Frogger Arcade Lets Users Dodge NYC Traffic In Real-Time (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "'5th Ave Frogger,' created and developed by Tyler DeAngelo, tracks real-time cars and traffic on 5th Avenue in New York City, and by hacking into the old arcade game, players on the massive avenue can navigate their virtual frogs across the road right in front of them.To make the game work, DeAngelo needed to find a way to transmit traffic into a virtual game in real-time. In the end, DeAngelo installed a web camera with a bird's eye view of 5th Avenue and wrote code that could track the real-time positions of the cars, but he also found a way to segment the foreground so the computer could tell the difference between stationary objects in the picture (ex: street, buildings) from the moving objects (cars). By transmitting the car information into pixel data and live streaming it in real-time, the positions of the cars could be mapped into car graphics in the virtual arcade game, driving down the road in real-time."
Science

Submission + - Eating meat helped early humans reproduce (latimes.com) 1

Submitted by PolygamousRanchKid
PolygamousRanchKid writes: If early humans had been vegans we might all still be living in caves, Swedish researchers suggested in an article Thursday. When a mother eats meat, her breast-fed child's brain grows faster and she is able to wean the child at an earlier age, allowing her to have more children faster, the article explains. "Eating meat enabled the breast-feeding periods and thereby the time between births to be shortened," said psychologist Elia Psouni of Lund University in Sweden. "This must have had a crucial impact on human evolution."

She notes, however, that the results say nothing about what humans today should or should not eat.

Submission + - World's sixth launch of nuclear ICBM led by a woman (rediff.com)

Submitted by
TeriMaKiChooth
TeriMaKiChooth writes: "Yesterday, India became the sixth country after the five nuclear powers to successfully launch a 5000 km nuclear capable Intercontinental ballistic missile.
It made major news headline. However few people outside India noticed that it was headed by a woman. Very few women in the world have been successful in the field of ballistic missile technology.
Here is her wikipedia entry — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessy_Thomas"
Science

Submission + - Studies Suggest Massive Increase in Scientific Fraud (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus writes: Scientific fraud has always been with us. But as stated or suggested by some scientists, journal editors, and a few studies, the amount of scientific “cheating” has far outpaced the expansion of science itself. According to some, the financial incentives to “cut corners” have never been greater, resulting in record numbers of retractions from prestigious journals.

From the article: “For example, the journal Nature reported that published retractions had increased tenfold over the past decade, while the number of published papers had increased by just 44 percent.”

Submission + - Survey finds no hint of dark matter near Solar System--no hint of a clue, either (nature.com)

Submitted by Eponymous Hero
Eponymous Hero writes: Does dark matter exist or doesn't it? It seems these results don't shed as much light as we'd hoped.

"Moni Bidin says he’s not sure whether dark matter exists or not. But he says that his team’s survey is the most comprehensive of its type ever done, and the puzzling results must be reckoned with. 'We don’t have a good comprehension of what is going on,' he says."

This has the smell of a Neutrinogate scandal, but at least we've been warned about the shoulder shrugging.

"As an example, Newberg notes that the researchers assumed that the group of stars they examined were smoothly distributed above and below the plane of the Milky Way. But if the distribution turns out to be lumpier, as is the case for stars in the outer parts of the galaxy, then the resulting calculations of dark matter density could be incorrect.

Flynn agrees that there are a number of ways that the method employed by Moni Bidin and his co-authors 'could get it wrong.'"
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Technology Makes It Harder to Save Money

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "LiveScience reports that a survey conducted for the American Institute of CPAs reveals that while more than half of US adults believe technology has made it easier to spend money, just 3 percent think it has made it easier to save. The research found that Americans who subscribe to digital services spend an average of $166 each month for cable TV, home Internet access, mobile phone service and digital subscriptions, such as satellite radio and streaming video — the equivalent of 17 percent of their monthly rent or mortgage payment. and those who download songs, apps and other products spend an additional $38 per month. "Our gadgets and connections can bring benefits like mobility and efficiency,” says Jordan Amin. “But they can also bring financial challenges, like taking money that could go to savings, for instance, or contributing to credit card debt." If facing a financial crunch, Americans would rather change what they eat than give up their cell phones, downloads or digital TV services. Asked to choose the one action they would most likely take in tight time, 41 percent said they would cut back on eating out, 20 percent said they would cut off cable TV, 8 percent said they would end cell phone service and 8 percent said they would stop downloading songs and digital products."

Submission + - Slingshot drone fleet targets US heartland (foxnews.com)

Submitted by
KDN
KDN writes: "UAV's in the US: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/20/slingshot-drone-fleet-targets-us-heartland/

When I read this I couldn't help thinking of Wild E Coyote chasing the Road Runner: The UAVs are launched like a slingshot using a 100-foot bungee cord: The pilot ties the bungee to a stake in the ground, gets the proper tension and hooks the bungee to the aircraft before lofting it into the skies "

Submission + - Computer game designed to treat depression as effective as traditional treatment (news24.com)

Submitted by sirlark
sirlark writes: Researchers at the University of Auckland tested an interactive 3D fantasy game called Sparx on a 94 youngsters diagnosed with depression whose average age was 15 and a half. Sparx invites a user to take on a series of seven challenges over four to seven weeks in which an avatar has to learn to deal with anger and hurt feelings and swap negative thoughts for helpful ones. Used for three months, Sparx was at least as effective as face-to-face conventional counselling, according to several depression rating scales. In addition, 44% of the Sparx group who carried out at least four of the seven challenges recovered completely. In the conventional treatment group, only 26% recovered fully.

One has to wonder if it Sparx specifically, or gaming in general that provides the most benefit. Given that most of the symptoms of depression relate to a feeling of being unable to influence one's environment (powerlessness, helplessness, ennui, etc) and games are specifically designed to make one feel powerful but challenged (if they hit the sweet spot).
Games

Submission + - Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet Announce 13th Age RPG (prweb.com)

Submitted by Quizro
Quizro writes: Rob Heinsoo, lead designer on Dungeons & Dragons fourth edition, and Jonathan Tweet, lead designer on D&D's third edition, are collaborating on a new tabletop roleplaying game that mixes an old school approach with indie design. 13th Age is currently in early playtest and will be published August 2012 by Pelgrane Press, which is giving them complete freedom as designers to make the game.
Facebook

Submission + - How Fortune 500 Companies Profit From Scammers (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "Privacy blogger Dan Tynan has gone where angels fear to tread, friending an obvious scammer on Facebook and finding out where the links "she" tries to get you to post on your wall go. They go to an array of websites that set off every alarm in Dan's anti-virus software, but it's worth noting that the conduit that gets you there is a Web survey about Taco Bell hosted by Q Interactive, a "respectable" lead generation firm that does business with a lot of huge American companies."
The Internet

Submission + - Chrome Flags arstechnica as Infected Site 2

Submitted by bs0d3
bs0d3 writes: If you tried to visit arstechnica today with google's Chrome browser, you were greeted with a warning. arstechnica has commented on twitter saying, "Many users are reporting that you're receiving malware warnings on Ars. We are trying to get these removed. You may ignore it.". Although no one knows what happened, as of now the site appears to be clear and google is still flagging it as malicious. Google scans may have produced a false positive or perhaps a hacker had compromised arstechnica earlier. No other warnings appear from any other browsers at this time.
Science

Submission + - FedEx Invests in Carbon-Nuetral Shipping (fedex.com)

Submitted by
rootlicker
rootlicker writes: "The iconic FedEx Envelope, which is already made from 100% recycled content and is 100% recyclable, is getting another environmentally-friendly boost today.. launching a new carbon-neutral shipping program for its most widely-used packaging solution for document shipping.
FedEx Express will make an investment in global projects that displace or sequester greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere, neutralizing the impacts of the carbon emissions emitted during the shipment of all FedEx Envelopes around the world..."
Google

Submission + - Federal Appeals Court Revives Rosetta Stone Suit vs Google (reuters.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: A federal appeals court on Monday revived the bulk of language-software maker Rosetta Stone's trademark infringement lawsuit against Google. In a lawsuit filed in 2009, Rosetta Stone accused Google of committing trademark infringement by selling the language-software maker's trademarks to third-party advertisers for use as search keywords. "A reasonable trier of fact could find that Google intended to cause confusion in that it acted with the knowledge that confusion was very likely to result from its use of the marks," Chief Judge William Traxler wrote for the three-judge panel. The opinion is the first appellate decision to address whether Google's sale of other companies' trademarks for sponsored links could give rise to liability for trademark infringement. The appeals court also reinstated Rosetta Stone's trademark dilution claims.

Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/09/net-us-rosetta-stone-google-idUSBRE8380ND20120409

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