59503679
submission
colinneagle writes:
The MIT Bitcoin Club is handing out $100 in the cryptocurrenty to MIT undergrads next September. The club’s co-founder Jeremy Rubin gave a pretty convincing reason for the giveaway:
"Giving students access to cryptocurrencies is analogous to providing them with internet access at the dawn of the internet era."
That gets at the main point, which is to encourage the students to test the technology and come up with applications for it. Even with the Mt. Gox debacle and the other issues surrounding Bitcoin's stability and value, its potential as a technological platform remains massive.
59215077
submission
netbuzz writes:
A band called netcat is generating buzz in software circles by releasing its debut album as a Linux kernel module (among other more typical formats.) Why? “Are you ever listening to an album, and thinking ‘man, this sounds good, but I wish it crossed from user-space to kernel-space more often!’ We got you covered,” the band says on its Facebook page. “Our album is now fully playable as a loadable Linux kernel module.”
59210899
submission
colinneagle writes:
After IANA allocated the final IPv4 addresses to the five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) on February 3, 2011, the RIRs have been running out of IPv4 addresses over the past three years. APNIC ran out on April 15, 2011; RIPE NCC ran out on September 14, 2012; and now ARIN has run out on April 23, 2014.
After today’s announcement by ARIN, they have now entered Phase 4 of their IPv4 exhaustion plan. Their Number Resource Policy Manual (NRPM) defines the process that organizations can request IPv4 addresses. At this moment, IPv4 addresses will only be allocated on an emergency basis. This means that an ISP can make one final request for a /22, but after that they will not get any more address space.
This may be concerning for many organizations that intend to continue using IPv4 for decades to come. There are probably no organizations in the ARIN territories that are actively planning to stop using IPv4 at some point in the future. Organizations that are desperate for addresses can purchase them through the address transfer marketplace. ARIN permits address transfers to take place, but you must follow their rules as part of the address transfer process. Over time, the price of an IPv4 address will increase from $15 to $30 today to well over $100 in the not-so-distant future.
59012107
submission
colinneagle writes:
Findings from a recent Pew study on Americans' opinions on future technology and science: 65% think it would be a change for the worse if lifelike robots become the primary caregivers for the elderly and people in poor health. 63% think it would be a change for the worse if personal and commercial drones are given permission to fly through most U.S. airspace. 53% of Americans think it would be a change for the worse if most people wear implants or other devices that constantly show them information about the world around them.
The drone concern is to be expected, from both a privacy and a safety perspective. Last year, a small Colorado town tried to issue permits for residents to shoot down airborne drones, and came pretty close to making it legal. And just last week, a drone fell out of the air at a triathlon in Australia; an ambulance crew had to pick pieces of the drone's propeller out of her head. Compare this problem with Amazon’s vision of constant drone deliveries and you have a recipe for a country full of concerned parents.
The wearable concern is just another sign of privacy concerns going mainstream. Google Glass has seen some serious backlash lately, with even physical violence and theft against those who wear them in public. The study just illustrates how widespread this contempt goes.
One issue I was surprised not to see was concern over the impact of robots and drones on jobs for humans. A 2013 Oxford study estimated that as many as 47% of human jobs in the U.S. can be automated, taken over by robots or drones that don’t require a wage (let alone a minimum wage) and can work round-the-clock.
59012017
submission
llebeel writes:
Malwarebytes has uncovered a way for hackers to steal Steam accounts while bypassing an additional security measure.
When logging in on a PC you haven't used before, Steam Guard will appear as a window asking for a verification code that will have been sent to your email address. Without the code, you can't log in. Malwarebytes claims to have found that scammers have come up with a way to get around this security measure.
58899493
submission
colinneagle writes:
Since Microsoft announced the deadline for Windows XP support, Andy Patrizio has kept track of users he's encountered who didn't seem to have a plan to upgrade. Then, after the deadline passed, he returned and asked why they hadn't upgraded and if/when they planned to.
Few of the holdouts polled in this admittedly unscientific study declined to upgrade out of ignorance or laziness. Rather, it was mostly for business reasons. Multiple doctor's offices reported expensive upgrade costs, sometimes up to $10,000, with little return on the investment. Others had experienced serious downtime for their office during the upgrade process in the past, and are now hesitant to put themselves at risk of the loss of business again.
Perhaps most concerning was the third-party ATM at a gas station. Although most bank ATMs have been proven to run Windows 7, third-party ATMs remain a little bit of a mystery. When asked about whether his ATMs have been or will be upgraded, the owner of the gas station dismissed it all with a wave of his hand.
58896623
submission
annga writes:
As the result of Heartbleed OpenSSL Vulnerability there are recommendations everywhere to change our passwords in many major websites as Google, Yahoo,
Microsoft etc. and it is also appears that Android was exposed to this too. But is it realistic that someone could track my passwords without Trojan on my computer or on the server? As far as I understand my unencrypted data goes directly to the server and the hacker should be able to intercept it afterwards, which seems unlikely. Another issue is that we expected something to be encrypted and it was not, but should I really rush to change my passwords?
58692075
submission
colinneagle writes:
The self-proclaimed "Lemon Law King" in Wisconsin has filed a lawsuit against Tesla that could net his client $200,000 in damages. The entire situation is a bit shady, though.
The suit claims that the vehicle experienced an array of serious and frustrating issues, including but not limited to malfunctioning door handles, poor battery performance, paint defects, trouble starting the car, and more. The suit also claims Tesla ignored the defendant's request for a buy-back for the Model S at hand.
Tesla, however, has fired back, pointing out that this same lawyer filed a lemon law suit on behalf of the exact same client against Volvo just a few months ago. Tesla's engineers also seem convinced that the car's owner had tampered with the fuses of the car, which they only discovered after trying, and failing, to recreate the problems the defendant had claimed he experienced.
58691673
submission
redletterdave writes:
Amazon on Thursday announced it will acquire digital comics agency ComiXology for an undisclosed sum. But why does the world's biggest online retailer care so much about comic books? Well, that's because the deal—and ComiXology, as a whole—isn't just about comics. ComiXology is pioneering the art of digital storytelling, and attempting to bring these tools to the masses. With Amazon, ComiXology gets a big boost towards its goal of adding a third dimension to the two-dimensional world of books, comics and graphic novels.
58364779
submission
smaxp writes:
The iPhone has been a fashion statement for years, but with market share beginning to slide, Apple needs to re-capture consumers' attention,
Tim Cook summed up Apple’s definition of innovation in an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams a little over a year ago:
"Our whole role in life is to give you something you didn’t know you wanted. And then once you get it,
you can’t imagine your life without it"
But Apple has not done this in a long time – not since January 27, 2010, when it first introduced the iPad. Introducing an innovative new product category generates a wave of public attention that lifts sales of other product categories. A fashion-conscious consumer in the market for a new smartphone is more likely to consider paying a premium for an iPhone if the buzz on social media and in the press is propagating Apple’s latest new and innovative product category.
58265115
submission
colinneagle writes:
Apple, Google, and a slew of other high-tech firms are currently embroiled in a class-action lawsuit on allegations that they all adhered to tacit anti-poaching agreements. With that case currently ongoing, we've seen a number of interesting executive emails come to light, including emails showing that Steve Jobs threatened Palm CEO with a full-fledged legal assault if the company kept going after Apple engineers.
The emails include correspondences between Sergey Brin and Marissa Mayer and Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and Google's Jonathan Rosenberg discussing the threat that Google saw in Facebook hiring its engineers.
The discussion elevates, with Sandberg pointing out the hypocrisy that Google grew to prominence by hiring engineers from major Silicon Valley firms. Rosenberg then hints at the potential for a "deeper relationship" that Google would be willing to reach as long as Facebook stops hiring its engineers, going so far as to tell Sandberg to "fix this problem."
58168701
submission
colinneagle writes:
A driverless golf cart-like vehicle has hit the market and is already in use on some college campuses in Europe, including Oxford University. The all-electric Navia looks like a golf cart and, with a maximum speed of 28 miles per hour but a recommended speed of about 12 mph, is typically used as a driverless shuttle service. For those at a location where the shuttles are available, a mobile app allows them to both order a shuttle to pick them up and provide a destination. The Navia reportedly costs $250,000 per unit, which is pretty expensive, especially considering that most organizations that might need it would need to order multiple units.
58163815
submission
colinneagle writes:
Earlier this week, Brandyn White, a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland, and Scott Greenberg, a PhD candidate at MIT, led a workshop at the MIT Media Lab to showcase an open source project called WearScript, a Javascript environment that runs on Google Glass. White demonstrated how Glass's UI extends beyond its touchpad, winks, and head movements by adding a homemade eye tracker to Glass as an input device. The camera and controller were dissected from a $25 PC video camera and attached to the Glass frame with a 3D-printed mount. A few modifications were made, such as replacing the obtrusively bright LEDs with infrared LEDs, and a cable was added with a little soldering. The whole process takes about 15 minutes for someone with component soldering skills. With this eye tracker and a few lines of Wearscript, the researchers demonstrated a new interface by playing Super Mario on Google Glass with just eye movements.
58129761
submission
colinneagle writes:
Probably not. Bryan Lunduke points out that, if the Open Source world were to boycott products with ties to controversial people in the open source world, it would be short on products it could use. Richard Stallman, for example, has infamously claimed that pedophilia might not be harmful to children. Because of this stance, should we completely boycott the GPL and emacs? No. That'd be silly.
Of course, a boycott of Firefox is a potentially effective way to send a message. However, opening a dialogue with Mozilla and its executives should be the first action. Dialogue at least has the potential to enlighten the company to the civil rights issue at hand, whereas a boycott is likely to elicit a phony apology meant to address the company's business concerns.
In this issue, a complete boycott seems premature to me, at least until we know whether Mozilla or Eich will stand by his previous actions.
58129327
submission
astroengine writes:
After a decade of searching, astronomers have found a second dwarf-like planet far beyond Pluto and its Kuiper Belt cousins, a presumed no-man’s land that may turn out to be anything but. How Sedna, which was discovered in 2003, and its newly found neighbor, designated 2012 VP 2113 by the Minor Planet Center, came to settle in orbits so far from the sun is a mystery. Sedna comes no closer than about 76 times as far from the sun as Earth, or 76 astronomical units. The most distant leg of its 11,400-year orbit is about 1,000 astronomical units. Newly found VP 2113’s closest approach to the sun is about 80 astronomical units and its greatest distance is 452 astronomical units. The small world is roughly 280 miles (450 kilometers) wide, less than half the estimated diameter of Sedna.
