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Comment Re:This is Linux ! (Score 1) 3

by Andy Prough (#45809785) Attached to: Chromebooks' Success in 2013 is a Gut Punch to Microsoft
I don't know about a Core i3 Windows notebook. But I do have a Chromebook and a Core i5 (Haswell) Windows notebook with 4 GB ram and an SSD drive, and there is no real comparison. The Windows notebook absolutely runs laps around the Chromebook. I love the little Chromebook - it's so lightweight and requires zero maintenance. But this Windows notebook is only 4 pounds and has an 11 hour battery life (mostly due to Haswell chip), and it's definitely the one I grab most of the time now.

Submission + - Julian Assange Video DMCA'ed Offline During Aussie Election

Submitted by Pav
Pav writes: On the verge of going viral (600,000 views in a week) this video was taken offline during the Australian election. It's a humourous spoof of the various contenders, plus a guest appearance by the real Julian Assange, who breaks into a few bars of "The Voice" by John Farnham, jarringly and an octave too low — apparently this was the cause of the DMCA concern.

Submission + - Building Snow Dens for the Saimaa Seals

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: A project to construct man-made dens for the endangered Saimaa seal will continue after recently receiving EU funding for the next five years. The Saimaa ringed seal is among the most endangered seals in the world, having a current total population of only about 310 in the Saimaa area of Finland. The population is descended from ringed seals that were separated from the rest of their species after the last ice age. This seal, along with the Ladoga seal and the Baikal seal, is one of the few living freshwater seals in the world and Finland is working hard to preserve its tiny population. The University of Eastern Finland and Finland’s Forest Government Organization are leading a group of volunteers to build the right size snow drifts near the water. Finding volunteers has not been a problem as dozens of volunteers participate in den counts each spring, covering the entire Saimaa area. Last winter, a full one-half of the man-made dens were housed by the seals, so the project is considered to be successful.

Submission + - IA State AIDS Researcher Admits to Falsifying Findings

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "With countless lives depending on their work," writes Brett Smith, "it seems unthinkable that AIDS researchers might falsify their work. However, that's just what Iowa State University assistant professor Dong-Pyou Han has admitted to, according to federal documents." Han resigned from the project in October after admitting to tampering with samples to give the appearance that an experimental vaccine was causing lab animals to build up protections against HIV. According to the NIH, Han apparently spiked rabbit blood with human blood components from people whose bodies had produced antibodies to HIV. 'This positive result was striking, and it caught everybody’s attention,' said the NIH. However, researchers at other institutions became suspicious after they were unsuccessful in duplicating the ISU results. The Iowa State AIDS research project had been awarded $19 million in federal grants over the past several years. Han has agreed to be banned from participating in any federally-financed research for three years.

Submission + - Iowa ISP is charging cellular prices for DSL home internet service (change.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The East Buchanan Telephone Cooperative is planning to charge cellular prices for home DSL internet service starting on January 1st, 2014. A 5GB plan costs $24.95 a month while a 25 GB plan will run $99.95 per month. 100 GB is the most data you can get in a package for $299.95 per month. Each additional GB is $5. They argue that the price increase is justified because their costs have increased by 900% since 2009. About half of their customers use less than 5 GB a month while their largest users use a whopping 100 GB a month. They argue that the switch to measured internet will appropriately place the cost on their heaviest users. If small ISP's are able to get away with changes like these what will stop the large ISP's from trying the same things.

Submission + - Nvidia's GameWorks program usurps power from developers, prevents optimization (extremetech.com)

Submitted by Dputiger
Dputiger writes: Nvidia's GameWorks program has been marketed as an extension of The Way It's Meant To Be Played that gives developers access to Nvidia-created libraries for implementing advanced DX11 functions. Unfortunately, those libraries are closed — which means neither the developer, AMD, or Intel can optimize their own drivers for running a GameWorks game. GameWorks is already used in titles like Arkham Origins and Assassin's Creed IV — which means Nvidia now controls how its competitors' perform in those titles.

Submission + - 'Military-Style' Raid on California Power Station Spooks U.S. (foreignpolicy.com) 1

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Interesting piece about April's physical attack on a power station near San Jose, California, that now looks like a dress rehearsal for future attacks: Quote: "When U.S. officials warn about "attacks" on electric power facilities these days, the first thing that comes to mind is probably a computer hacker trying to shut the lights off in a city with malware. But a more traditional attack on a power station in California has U.S. officials puzzled and worried about the physical security of the the electrical grid--from attackers who come in with guns blazing."

Submission + - Convicted Spammer Jeffrey Killbride Flees Prison (ksby.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to the article "Officials at the Federal Bureau of Prisons say an inmate escaped from a minimum security area of the federal prison in Lompoc. Prison officials say Jeffrey Kilbride, 48, was discovered missing at around 1:30 p.m. on Friday."..."A search is reportedly underway. Prison officials say Kilbride was serving a 78-month sentence for conspiracy and fraud. He was due to be released on December 11, 2015."

Submission + - Any concerted effort to revive Usenet? 4

Submitted by taxman_10m
taxman_10m writes: I've felt for a long time that Usenet as a repository for technical knowledge was better than Stack Exchanges, Reddits, Google+ Communities and various assorted blogs and message boards. Particularly Google+ Communities. Recently info on modifying an Acer Chromebook to run full Ubuntu was moved to such a community. I can't be the only one that finds the layout to be an utter abortion, can I? I'm curious if there is any effort underway to bring back Usenet. One of the big downfalls of Usenet mentioned is spam, but certainly there are ways to deal with that now. If such a movement to bring back Usenet doesn't exist, I'd like to get the discussion started here.

Submission + - NSA's Legal Win Introduces a Lot of Online Insecurity (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: The decision of a New York judge that the wholesale collection of cell-phone metadata by the National Security Agency is constitutional ties the score between pro- and anti-NSA forces at one victory apiece. The contradictory decisions use similar reasoning and criteria to come to opposite conclusions, leaving both individuals and corporations uncertain of whether their phone calls, online activity or even data stored in the cloud will ultimately be shielded by U.S. laws protecting property, privacy or search and seizure by law-enforcement agencies. On Dec. 27, Judge William H. Pauley threw out a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that sought to stop the NSA PRISM cell-phone metadata-collection program on the grounds it violated Fourth Amendment provisions protecting individual privacy and limits on search and seizure of personal property by the federal government. Pauley threw out the lawsuit largely due to his conclusion that Fourth Amendment protections do not apply to records held by third parties. That eliminates the criteria for most legal challenges, but throws into question the privacy of any data held by phone companies, cloud providers or external hosting companies – all of which could qualify as unprotected third parties.

Submission + - How Does One Compel an Uncooperative Website to Delete One's Account? 2

Submitted by trentfoley
trentfoley writes: I've been trying to clean up my digital life (insert joke about having a life) and have run in to a situation I fear is too common. Many social websites, nextdoor.com in particular, do not allow a user to delete the account they created. In the case of nextdoor.com, their privacy policy makes it clear that the user owns all of their data. If this is true, I should have the right to destroy that data. These lines of thought brought to mind the recent privacy defeat in Europe. Does the defeat of the EU's Right-to-be-Forgotten legislation bring a practical end to this debate?

Submission + - Stretch or Splat? Physicists debate death by black hole (npr.org) 1

Submitted by gbrumfiel
gbrumfiel writes: For decades, researchers have thought they understood how black holes kill. Once you slip beyond the event horizon, the theory goes, gravity grows so strong that it spaghettifies you. But that version of events seems to violate Quantum Mechanics, which says that information must be conserved. NPR reports on the debate surrounding a new theory. The theory suggests that to conserve information, space itself must end at a black hole's edge. Anyone who falls "in" the black hole actually goes splat instead. Their information is carried away in quantum-entangled radiation from the edge of the hole. But is it really a hole if it doesn't have an inside? Discuss.

Submission + - The STEM Crisis Is a Myth 2

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Forget the dire predictions of a looming shortfall of scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians, advises IEEE Spectrum contributing editor Robert Charette — the STEM crisis is a myth. In investigating the simultaneous claims of both a shortage and a surplus of STEM workers, Charette was surprised by "the apparent mismatch between earning a STEM degree and having a STEM job. Of the 7.6 million STEM workers counted by the Commerce Department, only 3.3 million possess STEM degrees. Viewed another way, about 15 million U.S. residents hold at least a bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline, but three-fourths of them—11.4 million—work outside of STEM." So, why would universities, government, and tech companies like Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft cry STEM-worker-shortage-wolf? "Clearly, powerful forces must be at work to perpetuate the cycle," Charette writes. "One is obvious: the bottom line. Companies would rather not pay STEM professionals high salaries with lavish benefits, offer them training on the job, or guarantee them decades of stable employment. So having an oversupply of workers, whether domestically educated or imported, is to their benefit...Governments also push the STEM myth because an abundance of scientists and engineers is widely viewed as an important engine for innovation and also for national defense. And the perception of a STEM crisis benefits higher education, says Ron Hira, because as 'taxpayers subsidize more STEM education, that works in the interest of the universities' by allowing them to expand their enrollments. An oversupply of STEM workers may also have a beneficial effect on the economy, says Georgetown's Nicole Smith, one of the coauthors of the 2011 STEM study. If STEM graduates can’t find traditional STEM jobs, she says, 'they will end up in other sectors of the economy and be productive.'"

Submission + - US mounted 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011 and runs worldwide botnet 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: U.S. intelligence services carried out 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011 according to a classified intelligence budget provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden. Additionally, under an extensive effort code-named GENIE, U.S. computer specialists break into foreign networks so that they can be put under surreptitious U.S. control. Budget documents say the $652 million project has placed “covert implants,” sophisticated malware in computers, routers and firewalls on tens of thousands of machines every year, with plans to expand those numbers into the millions. The "implants" are intended to persist through software and equipment upgrades, to copy stored data, “harvest” communications and tunnel into other connected networks.

Comment I use Yahoo sports pages a lot (Score 4, Informative) 172

by Andy Prough (#44686845) Attached to: Yahoo! Sports Redesign Sparks Controversy, Disdain From Users
This is one of the worst design decisions I've seen in a long time. The whole key to a sports page is you've got to quickly digest a wide range of information. The old page design worked perfectly at giving you over 100 scores for up to 4 different sports at the same time, all the headlines, and the highlights of the blogs. This kind of busy, goofy blinding crap is what have killed AOL's and MSN's portals (in my opinion). Either one of them could have grabbed tens of millions of users from Google News, but they just aren't capable of delivering content without trying to overwhelm the user's eyeballs.

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