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The Almighty Buck

Boy Finds £2.5M Gold Locket With Metal Detector 169

Posted by samzenpus from the all-that-glitters dept.
Instead of bottle caps and ridicule from his peers, 3-year-old James Hyatt found a locket worth millions with his metal detector. James and his dad found the gold locket last May in Essex. Since then the 500-year-old treasure has been appraised at around £2.5million. From the article: "James’s father Jason, 34, said: ‘My son is one of the luckiest people ever. If we go to the doctors he’ll put his hand down the side of the sofa and pull out a tenner.’"
Google

Google Admits To Collecting Emails and Passwords 157

Posted by kdawson from the but-we-didn't-inhale dept.
wiredmikey writes "Alan Eustace, Google's Senior VP of Engineering & Research, just put up an interesting blog post on how Google will be creating stronger privacy controls. Right at the end is an interesting admission: that after Streetview WiFi Payload data was analyzed by regulators, their investigations revealed that some incredibly private information was harvested in some cases. Eustace noted that 'It's clear from those inspections that while most of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords.'"
Space

United Nations Names Ambassador To Aliens 306

Posted by CmdrTaco from the sounds-like-a-cushy-job dept.
Shag writes "Although searches for extraterrestrial intelligence have thus far come up empty-handed, the United Nations appears to be preparing for eventual 'first contact.' Many media outlets are carrying the story that Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist who heads the UN's Office for Outer Space Affairs in Vienna — already charged with things like keeping track of satellites to prevent Kessler Syndrome and coordinating the international response to any earth-impacting asteroids — will be the first person to meet with aliens if they do show up." Update: 09/27 16:42 GMT by S : Looks like this one's too good to be true — in an email to The Guardian, Othman said, "It sounds really cool but I have to deny it."

Comment Re:Brultech ECM1240 is about $150 in default confi (Score 1) 172

by marcmerlin (#33696950) Attached to: Real-Time Power Monitoring Options?

This is because most CTs (current transformers) are not calibrated properly by the device they're connected to. I used 3 different CTs on the same load in my setup and made sure they were reading about the same. With the ECM1240, you can adjust offsets to make the CT readings "just right" should they be off a bit when you get them.
I worked with the owner, and he does care about getting as correct values as possible and made his device very tweakable.

Marc

Comment Brultech ECM1240 is about $150 in default config (Score 4, Informative) 172

by marcmerlin (#33692364) Attached to: Real-Time Power Monitoring Options?

See http://www.etherbee.com/products/ECM1240/default.htm
and see what you can output with one of those guys:
http://marc.merlins.org/perso/linuxha/post_2010-08-13_Fine-grained-house-wide-power-monitoring-with-Brultech-ECM1240_-ecmread_py-_with-net-metering-support_-and-graphing-with-cacti.html

There is one caveat: you need windows for the initial setup, although I did it in vmware, maybe it works in wine too, but since then it's been running fine on linux (and it would work just the same on MacOS since it's a python script).

Marc

Comment Re:His website's text (Score 4, Insightful) 1090

by marcmerlin (#33442086) Attached to: Armed Man Takes Hostages At Discovery Channel HQ

well, obviously the guy was deranged, but some of his points are valid.
The problem is that most countries rely on ever increasing population for their economy to strive and the politicians to do well (starting with social security that is not funded by people other than the ones who get the money).

The world clearly could do better with a decreasing population, but most governments encourage exactly the opposite, so indeed right now humans are going to spread until they've taken over all the resources available and at the expense of pretty much all other lifeforms on the planet.

I'll be dead before then, but thinking about it makes me sad.
Google

.Net On Android Is Safe, Says Microsoft 377

Posted by Soulskill from the look-we're-not-as-bad-as-oracle-see dept.
An anonymous reader writes "With Oracle suing Google over 'unofficial' support for Java in Android, Microsoft has come out and said it has no intention of taking action against the Mono implementation of C# on the Linux-based mobile OS. That's good news for Novell, which is in the final stages of preparing MonoDroid for release. Miguel de Icaza is not concerned about legal challenges by Microsoft over .Net implementations, and even recommends that Google switch from using Java. However, Microsoft's Community Promise has been criticized by the Free Software Foundation for not going far enough to protect open source implementations from patent litigation, which is at the heart of the Oracle-Google case."
Linux

Slackware 13.1 Released 155

Posted by kdawson from the taking-up-the-slack dept.
Several readers made sure we are aware that Slackware 13.1 release is out. Here's the list of mirrors. "Slackware 13.1 brings many updates and enhancements, among which you'll find two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.6.1, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy-to-use desktop environment, and KDE 4.4.3, a recent stable release of the new 4.4.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment."
United States

State Senator Caught Looking At Porn On Senate Floor 574

Posted by samzenpus from the let's-vote-on-this-instead dept.
Everyone knows how boring a debate on a controversial abortion bill can get on the Senate floor. So it's no wonder that Florida State Sen. Mike Bennett took the time to look at a little porn and a video of a dog running out of the water and shaking itself off. From the article: "Ironically, as Bennett is viewing the material, you can hear a Senator Dan Gelber's voice in the background debating a controversial abortion bill. 'I'm against this bill,' said Gelber, 'because it disrespects too many women in the state of Florida.' Bennett defended his actions, telling Sunshine State News it was an email sent to him by a woman 'who happens to be a former court administrator.'"

Comment Re:I found the 'defective by design' aspect (Score 2, Informative) 311

by marcmerlin (#31050150) Attached to: Google's Nexus One, a Steal At $49 Unlocked?

since you're not a radio and hardware engineer, I guess it's not obvious to you that putting antennas and electronics for different frequencies does cost board space. It's not impossible but it's hard on a small phone and definitely more money.
Yes, I'd also love a phone that does it all, but they aren't exactly common. It's not just HTC, it's pretty much everyone.
Censorship

Australian AvP Ban Reversed 71

Posted by Soulskill from the people-have-spoken dept.
Earlier this month, we discussed news that Sega's new Aliens vs. Predator video game had been refused classification in Australia, effectively banning it. After a scathing response from the developer saying they wouldn't censor the game, and later news that the classification scheme may be updated to include an R18+ rating, it now seems that the Classification Board has seen fit to give the game a green light after all. Sega's Darren Macbeth told Kotaku, "We are particularly proud that the game will be released in its original entirety, with no content altered or removed whatsoever. This is a big win for Australian gamers. We applaud the Classification Review Board on making a decision that clearly considers the context of the game, and is in line with the modern expectations of reasonable Australians."
Games

Epic Releases Free Version of Unreal Engine 217

Posted by Soulskill from the still-waiting-on-the-one-must-fall-engine dept.
anomnomnomymous writes "Just a week after Unity announced its engine is now available for free to indie users, Epic Games has revealed a free version of its popular Unreal Engine technology. Called the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), it is a free edition of UE3 that allows community, modder and indie users more access to the engine's features and is available for all. Epic said game developers, students, hobbyists, researchers, creators of 3D visualizations and simulations plus digital filmmakers can all take advantage of the UDK for non-commercial use. The UDK site also offers detailed product features, technical documentation, commercial licensing terms and support resources."
Censorship

Church of Scientology Proposes Net Censorship In Australia 464

Posted by timothy from the all-they-want-is-a-little-sanity dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Submitted by the Australian branch of Scientology to the local Human Rights Commission is a proposal to eliminate anonymity on the net and the removal of critical websites (MS Word document). The submission is listed as #1931 at this page at the Australian Human Rights Commission." (Read on below for some of the details of what the Scientologists propose.)

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