58520065
submission
jfruh writes:
The idea of an Internet-enabled refrigerator that orders milk for you when you run out has been a staple of futuristic "Internet of things" pitches for years, and for years nobody has had any real interest in owning such a thing. Now Amazon has a variant that it hopes will pique the interest of users of its AmazonFresh grocery delivery service: the Dash, a handheld gadget that you can keep in your kitchen and use to add items to your next order, either by scanning their barcode or just saying the product name.
58519667
submission
jfruh writes:
Earlier this year, 5-year-old Kristoffer Von Hasssel's parents noticed he was logged in to his father's Xbox Live account and playing games he wasn't supposed to have access to. It turns out that he hadn't stolen his dad's password; rather, he had discovered a bug where a series of trivial keypresses allowed him to bypass the password verification screen. His father — himself a security researcher — notified Microsoft, who not only fixed the bug but put Kristoffer on its monthly list of security researchers who discovered important bugs.
58390879
submission
jfruh writes:
Are you eager for a subscription to a print newspaper but unwilling to use fiat currency to pay for it? Well, good news, in the wake of a successful one-day trial this past Februray, the Chicago Sun-Times is now accepting bitcoin as a means of payment. It's part of what the paper dubs its "digital first" strategy.
58366573
submission
itwbennett writes:
Hackathons have stirred up their share of controversy — mostly around too-big prizes and the inevitable cheating that follows. But for some developers they also can be the ultimate job interview — not just a coding test, but an opportunity to show off your people skills. Take the case of the January 2014 GlobalHack contest in St. Louis that was initially attended by several hundred programmers. The story of the contest isn't who took away the top $50,000 prize but about the other participants who didn't finish in the money but came away with something else that is arguably more important.
58358647
submission
itwbennett writes:
In a new white paper based on an Internet survey of 'thousands of Americans', the consulting firm Endeavor Partners has concluded that wearables (at least in their current incarnation) may already be on their way out. The survey found that one-third of American consumers who have owned a wearable product stopped using it within six months. Meanwhile, eBay is rapidly filling with second-hand smartwatches: At the time of this writing, an eBay search turned up 2,465 results for 'Samsung Galaxy Gear'.
58352831
submission
jfruh writes:
Bitcoin has made many governments and regulators uncomfortable, and the Chinese government is responding to the challenge it poses with its usual lack of subtlety. Two Chinese bitcoin exchanges have found themselves cut off from the money economy, as Chinese banks, under pressure from the government, refuse to do business with them.
58321727
submission
jfruh writes:
One of the storylines of the rise of smartphones and tablets has been the collapse of Intel's near-monopolistic dominance of the chips that power everyday computing devices. The chipmaking giant isn't taking this all lying down, though, as it tries to fight its way into the mobile market using any means available, and the company's software chief Doug Fishe hinted at one troubling-sounding method: creating exclusive content that only works on Intel-powered gadgets. Fisher gave the example of more detailed backgrounds on games, but otherwise was short on details of what sort of content might be used in this program and how artists would be coaxed into providing it and locking it down.
58321407
submission
jfruh writes:
One of the things Tesla owners love about their cars is that you can connect your teslamotors.com account to a smartphone app that can remotely unlock the car's doors, locate it, close and open its roof, flash its lights or honk its horn. But considering how much control your account gives you, that account is far too easy to hack, says security researcher Nitesh Dhanjani. Among other problems, Tesla doesn't impose adequate complexity requirements on passwords, and doesn't lock the account after a certain number of failed attempts.
58293439
submission
jfruh writes:
PayScale has recently released a survey of various U.S. colleges and majors, and determined, perhaps unsurprisingly, that computer science graduates of elite colleges make the most money in post-graduate life. However, blogger Phil Johnson approached the problem in a different way, taking into account the amount students and their families need to pay in tuition, that the best return on investment in comp sci degree often comes from top-tier public universities, which cost significantly less for in-state students but still offer great rewards in terms of salaries for grads.
58264179
submission
itwbennett writes:
U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh on Sunday overruled Samsung Electronics' objections to showing jurors a recent instructional video on how patents work, ahead of a trial in a patent dispute between Apple and Samsung. The new video, called "The Patent Process: An Overview for Jurors," was developed by the Federal Judicial Center to provide jurors with an introduction to the patent system. Samsung's objection is to several scenes in which Apple products are depicted and used (and, by extension, seen as patentable and innovative).
58263121
submission
itwbennett writes:
Creighton University professor William Duckworth has released a report finding that kill-switch technology that remotely makes a stolen smartphone useless could save American consumers up to $2.6 billion per year — mostly from reduced insurance premiums. Duckworth estimated that Americans currently spend around $580 million replacing stolen phones each year and $4.8 billion paying for handset insurance. If a kill-switch led to a sharp reduction in theft of phones, most of the $580 million spent on replacing stolen phones would be saved. And a further $2 billion in savings could be realized by switching to cheaper insurance plans that don't cover theft.
58262663
submission
jfruh writes:
Facebook and Google only make money from people when they can access the Internet, so it stands to reason that they're working to make sure everyone can access the Internet. While Google's Project Loon seeks to use balloon-borne equipment, Mark Zuckerberg envisions a system of drones and laser beams.
58262539
submission
jfruh writes:
In Japan, everything from escalators to trucks issue automated voice warnings to users or people nearby, and so humans need to be able to grasp which robotic speech is most urgent to listen to. Fujitsu is working on technology that will autmatically add emotional tones to auto-generated voice messaging — for instance, a warning system could inform factory workers about a mechanical failure in an increasingly urgent tone of voice.
58193861
submission
itwbennett writes:
A little-known U.S. space plane quietly broke its own space endurance record this week as its current unmanned mission surpassed 469 days in space. What it was doing up there for so long is a secret closely held by the Air Force, but Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and an authority on satellites and launches, thinks it's serving a similar role as the space shuttle by carrying a science or intelligence payload. 'I believe it's testing some kind of experimental sensor for the National Reconnaissance Office; for example, a hyperspectral imager, or some new kind of signals intelligence package,' said McDowell. 'The sensor was more successful than expected, so the payload customer asked the X-37 folks to keep the spacecraft in orbit longer.'
58192457
submission
jfruh writes:
The functionality that allows users to share data from one Android app to another is incredibly powerful, with many more options than its iOS equivalent. But it's also overwhelming, confusing, and hard to customize. Blogger Kevin Purdy has some suggestions on how to tweak Android sharing so that users can get the most out of it, by allowing user customization and giving more scope for app devs to guide users to show them what they're missing.
