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Submission + - NSA Shuts down critics under guise of copyright violations (infowars.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: “Can a government agency block criticism by claiming copyright infringement? Sounds a bit ridiculous but it is happening. The NSA is effectively stopping one small business owner from criticism, claiming that by using its name he has infringed on their copyright,” according to a report by Infowars guest and investigative journalist Ben Swann.

Submission + - Boyfriend tracker app pulled from Google App store on privacy concerns (ibtimes.com) 1

Submitted by twitnutttt
twitnutttt writes: The NSA may be monitoring your phone and email, and retailers may be striving to automatically recognize you in their stores, but your girlfriend may be your biggest privacy threat right now. After 50,000 downloads since launch, the Brazilian "Boyfriend Tracker" app has been pulled from Google Play. It allows suspicious girlfriends to "obtain a call history, receive any incoming or outgoing text messages, identify a partner’s location on a map using GPS, and can [sic] turn on the phone to listen in to the surrounding environment. The app also lets users know when a phone is turned off or set to Airplane Mode." The various options are controlled via text message codes. If you have to track him, you probably should dump him.

Submission + - What's Causing the Rise In Obesity? Everything. (thesocietypages.org)

Submitted by Mr_Blank
Mr_Blank writes: We all know — because we are being constantly reminded — that we are getting fat. Americans are at the forefront of the trend, but it is a transnational one. Apparently, it is also trans-species: Over the past 20 years, as the American people were getting fatter, so were America’s laboratory macaques, chimpanzees, vervet monkeys and mice, as well as domestic dogs, domestic cats, and domestic and feral rats from both rural and urban areas. Researchers examined records on those eight species and found that average weight for every one had increased. The marmosets gained an average of 9% per decade. Lab mice gained about 11% per decade. Chimps are doing especially badly: their average body weight had risen 35% per decade. What is causing the obesity era? Everything.

Submission + - Magma can survive in upper crust for hundreds of millennia (washington.edu)

Submitted by vinces99
vinces99 writes: Reservoirs of silica-rich magma – the kind that causes the most explosive volcanic eruptions – can persist in Earth’s upper crust for hundreds of thousands of years without triggering an eruption, according to new University of Washington modeling research. That means an area known to have experienced a massive volcanic eruption in the past, such as Yellowstone National Park, could have a large pool of magma festering beneath it and still not be close to going off as it did 600,000 years ago. Recent research models have suggested that reservoirs of silica-rich magma, or molten rock, form on and survive for geologically short time scales – in the tens of thousands of years – in the Earth’s cold upper crust before they solidify. They also suggested that the magma had to be injected into the Earth’s crust at a high rate to reach a large enough volume and pressure to cause an eruption. But new research by UW doctoral student Sarah Gelman and colleagues took the models further and found that the magma could accumulate more slowly and remain molten for a much longer period than the models previously suggested.

Submission + - Private investigators using license plate scanners to make their own databases

Submitted by scorp1us
scorp1us writes: I've noticed these cars driving around in Maryland. I've seen the same green Elantra in White Marsh many times. Today I saw one in Cockeysville. I trapped the guy in a private parking lot and asked him a few questions. He would not say who he was or who he was working for other than for a private investigator firm, and that they had 9(!) cars.
He was just driving around all the parking lots he could and the public ones. To me, that is trespassing, but they get to build their database anyway, unrestricted by any law on where or retention time. And who knows for what purpose?

Submission + - Colorado Teen Designs Robotic Arm With 3D Printing (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by coolnumbr12
coolnumbr12 writes: A Colorado teenager has used 3D printing to create a robotic prosthetic arm that is fully functional and costs less than $500 to make. At TedxMileHigh in Denver, Colo., 17-year-old Easton LaChappelle demonstrated his robotic arm, and how he constructed the arm to keep costs low.

“So in the end, I built this robotic arm up to the shoulder which was extremely strong,” LaChapelle said. “It could toss balls to you, it could shake your hand, it could pretty much do anything a human could if you program it correctly."

Submission + - Self-Healing Solar Cells Mimic Plant Leaves to Repair Themselves (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Over time, solar cells wear down — just like plant leaves — due to degradation caused by ultraviolet light. A team of researchers from North Carolina State University revealed this week that they have created a new type of solar cell that can repair and reinvigorate itself by mimicking the functioning of organic vascular systems found in leaves.

Submission + - First Footage Of Isolated Kawahiva Tribe In Brazil's Amazon Jungle (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by minty3
minty3 writes: Video footage taken in 2011 of the remote Kawahiva tribe was released on Wednesday. The 90-second clip shows naked men donning bow and arrows, and one woman holding a child, walking through the jungle’s foliage. The cameraman, who was hiding from view, was spotted by the woman who cries out and runs away.

Submission + - New Method Of Factoring Semiprimes May Lead To Possible Break Of RSA (newsvine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: DeepThought at Newsvine has produced an interesting formula that appears to accurately factor the primes in any given semiprime. He has updated the comments to his article to demonstrate a break against RSA-17, RSA-21 and RSA-40 with proof from Wolfram Alpha. The formula appears to hold for any prime number but DeepThought has noted that the time required to break RSA-2048 is unknown at this point. Wolfram Alpha throws a time exceeded error when attempting to calculate the integer solutions for RSA-56, but manages to break RSA-40 in seconds.

Submission + - Could Sirius XM be a Telematics Insurance Partner? (insurancetech.com)

Submitted by Cara_Latham
Cara_Latham writes: Sirius XM (New York) announced a big-time telematics acquisition today: The company bought the connected vehicle services business of Agero (Medford, Mass.) for $530 million in cash.

Agero says it made the sale to focus on its roadside assistance, consumer affairs and claims management services. (The latter is provided to insurance companies.)

"While telematics has been an important and growing part of our business, this divestiture allows us to focus our resources in our roadside vehicle assistance, claims management and information services which will allow us to best serve our clients and their customers in a fast-changing marketplace," Dave Ferrick, CEO of Agero, says in a statement.

SiriusXM says it made the buy because it wants to leverage its customer acquisition and servicing infrastructure, as well as its satellite network, to provide more services than simply satellite radio.

Submission + - Russian bank signs contract without reading it. (rt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Russian man alters fine prints to credit card contract, then returns contract to bank with amendments, bank signs whole contract without reading.
He then uses about 600$ worth of credit and does not pay. After two years the bank has had enough and they end up in court. Judge rules in his favor.

Submission + - Microsoft abusing DMCA to take down competing office solutions? (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Microsoft, in a bid to take down pirate version of its Office products, has been sending out DMCA notices to Google containing links to competing legitimate office solutions like Apache’s OpenOffice. If we look at the URLs included in the takedown notice, most of them do point to infringing content – links to pirated Office 2010. But, after digging deeper into the list we found that there were instances wherein there were references to links which were hosting OpenOffice. The instances mentioned herein is not an isolated instance and there have been cases (here, here, here and here) where Microsoft has requested takedown of links (torrent links to be specific) that were hosting OpenOffice.

Submission + - Google's privacy rollercoaster

Submitted by geek
geek writes: Google has announced server-side disk encryption for it's cloud storage, a positive step in securing their users privacy but this is alongside a troubling revelation that Google's lawyers believe you have No Legitimate Expectation Of Privacy. The mixed messages at Google are rather confusing. Does server side encryption actually matter in light of the recent NSA scandals?

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