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Submission + - What Does Google Do With All The Information It Collects? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: About two thirds of websites run Google code (mostly Analytics, AdSense, and +1) that tells Google what you do there and where you came from. (Also Analytics is used by 63% of Fortune 500 companies and 71% of the top 10k websites.) 800 million Android phones are in use (that's 11% of all humans), telling Google pretty much everywhere they go, everything they do, and everyone they talk to. Hundreds of millions of people use Google Maps. Over 400 million people use Gmail, telling Google everything they write and receive by email. Plus untold millions use Google Toolbar. Does Google do anything with this data? And even if they "don't be evil" with it today, is there anything stopping them from "being evil" with it tomorrow? What about 20 years from now when they are a second-rate company and some investment group buys out their assets? Do you block Google code in your browsing habits? Do you run Google code on your websites?

Submission + - The Taliban Is Running Low on Foreign Fighters (medium.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: War is Boring reports, "Just a few years ago, the Taliban was one of the two prime Islamist militant groups—the other being Al Qaida-aligned insurgents in Iraq—for foreign fighters around the world to enlist with. But with the self-proclaimed Islamic State on the warpath and new conflicts in North Africa, the Taliban has become less attractive. Specifically, the Pakistani Taliban. That’s the subject of a new report in CTC Sentinel, West Point’s counter-terrorism newsletter. As of July 2008, the Pakistani Taliban included around 8,000 foreign fighters, notes Raza Khan, a political analyst who authored the report. These fighters came from western Europe, the Middle East, China, Russia, India, and central Asian countries, particularly Uzbekistan. But today, only a few hundred remain. There are several reasons for the decline."

Submission + - Drone Developers Consider Obstacles That Cannot Be Flown Around - NYTimes.com (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A few days ago we talked over some of the difficulties faced by makers of autonomous car software, like dealing with weather, construction, and parking garages. Today, the NY Times has a similar article about delivery drones, examining the safety and regulatory problems that must be solved in addition to getting the basic technology ready. [R]researchers at NASA are working on ways to manage that menagerie of low-flying aircraft. At NASA’s Moffett Field, about four miles from Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., the agency has been developing a drone traffic management program that would in effect be a separate air traffic control system for things that fly low to the ground — around 400 to 500 feet for most drones. Much like the air traffic control system for conventional aircraft, the program would monitor the skies for weather and traffic. Wind is a particular hazard, because drones weigh so little compared with regular planes." Beyond that, the sheer scale of infrastructure necessary to get drone delivery up and running in cities across the U.S. is staggering. Commercial drones aren't going to have much range, particularly when carrying something heavy. They'll be noisy, and the products they're transporting will still need to be relatively close by. What other issues do Amazon, DHL, Google, and other need to solve?

Submission + - Researchers Say Neanderthals created cave art

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Belying their reputation as the dumb cousins of early modern humans, Neanderthals created cave art, an activity regarded as a major cognitive step in the evolution of humankind, scientists reported on Monday in a paper describing the first discovery of artwork by this extinct species. The discovery is "a major contribution to the redefinition of our perception of Neanderthal culture," said prehistorian William Rendu of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, who was not involved in the work. "It is a new and even stronger evidence of the Neanderthal capacity for developing complex symbolic thought" and "abstract expression," abilities long believed exclusive to early modern humans.

Submission + - Are there any Linux-friendly DESKTOP x86 motherboard manufacturers? (phoronix.com) 1

Submitted by storkus
storkus writes: The release of Haswell-E and a price drop on Devil's Canyon has made me itch for a PC upgrade. However, looking around I discovered a pair of horror stories on Phoronix (2nd story link at the bottom of the first), and plenty more Googling around.

My question: if MSI, Gigabyte, Asus (and by extension Asrock) are out, who's left and are they any good? Note that I want to build a (probably dual-boot, but don't know for sure) gaming and "other" high-end machine with one of the above chips so we're talking Z97 or X99; however, these stories seem to point to the problems being M$-isms in the BIOS/UEFI structures rather than actual hardware incompatibility, combined with a real lousy attitude (despite the Steam distro being real soon now).

Submission + - Akamai reissues all SSL certificates after admitting Heartbleed patch fail (techworld.com.au)

Submitted by SpacemanukBEJY.53u
SpacemanukBEJY.53u writes: It took security researcher Willem Pinckaers all of 15 minutes to spot a flaw in code created by Akamai that the company thought shielded most of its users from one of the pernicious aspects of the Heartbleed flaw in OpenSSL. More than a decade ago, Akamai modified parts of OpenSSL it felt were weak related to key storage. Akamai CTO Andy Ellis wrote last week that the modification protected most customers from having their private SSL stolen despite the Heartbleed bug. But on Sunday Ellis wrote Akamai was wrong after Pinckaers found several flaws in the code. Akamai is now reissuing all SSL certificates and keys to its customers.

Submission + - Macs Plus iOS Devices Outnumber Windows PC Sales Worldwide 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For a very long time, Windows has had supreme dominance of the desktop market: over 90% for decades. Thats still true. But computing has in many ways moved beyond the desktop. As of last quarter, combined worldwide sales of Macs, iPads, and iPhones outnumber those of Windows PCs. If you add Windows phone, then Microsoft can still claim dominance. Also, if you subtract the iPhones (just keeping iPads), Microsoft is still ahead... but for how much longer? Internet Explorer moved from the ubiquitous browser to a continuously shrinking player solely in the desktop market. How much longer can Microsoft keep its reputation as the OS of choice for computing?

Submission + - Federal smartphone kill-switch legislation proposed (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Pressure on the cellphone industry to introduce technology that could disable stolen smartphones has intensified with the introduction of proposed federal legislation that would mandate such a system. Senate bill 2032, "The Smartphone Prevention Act," was introduced to the U.S. Senate this week by Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat. The bill promises technology that allows consumers to remotely wipe personal data from their smartphones and render them inoperable. But how that will be accomplished is currently unclear. The full text of the bill was not immediately available and the offices of Klobuchar and the bill's co-sponsors were all shut down Thursday due to snow in Washington, D.C.

Submission + - South Carolina Education Committee Removes Evolution from Standards

Submitted by Toe, The
Toe, The writes: The South Carolina Education Oversight Committee approved new science standards for students except for one clause: the one that involves the use of the phrase 'natural selection.' Sen. Mike Fair, R-Greenville, argued against teaching natural selection as fact, when he believes there are other theories students deserve to learn. Fair argued South Carolina's students are learning the philosophy of natural selection but teachers are not calling it such. He said the best way for students to learn is for the schools to teach the controversy. Hopefully they're going to teach the controversy of gravity and valence bonds too. After all, they're just theories.

Submission + - South Carolina Education Oversight Committee Removes Evolution from Standards

Submitted by Toe, The
Toe, The writes: The South Carolina Education Oversight Committee approved new science standards for students except for one clause: the one that involves the use of the phrase 'natural selection.' Sen. Mike Fair, R-Greenville, argued against teaching natural selection as fact, when he believes there are other theories students deserve to learn. Fair argued South Carolina's students are learning the philosophy of natural selection but teachers are not calling it such. He said the best way for students to learn is for the schools to teach the controversy. Hopefully they're going to teach the controversy of gravity and valence bonds too. After all, they're just theories.

Submission + - Is Device 6 2013's Journey?

Submitted by SlappingOysters
SlappingOysters writes: In 2012, one indie title took the video game award season by storm — thatgamecompany's Journey knocked over big console blockbusters like Borderlands II, XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Far Cry 3 to get the top gong at a host of respected ceremonies. But it was still, itself, a console game. In 2013, another indie has emerged on an even less fancied format as the game to beat — iOS title Device 6 is up for multiple awards, with developer Simogo even included as one of three developers in Edge Magazine's studio of the year category (alongside Rockstar North and Naughty Dog). Grab It Magazine included Device 6 in its 50 Best Indie iOS Games of 2013 awards, and has put together this article discussing what Device 6's success says about the growth of indie gaming.

Submission + - Surveillance Cameras, Hazmat Squads, Bomb-sniffing Dogs, etc. for the Super Bowl 1

Submitted by Toe, The
Toe, The writes: The New York Police Department has quietly installed about 200 temporary surveillance cameras in midtown Manhattan to help spot trouble along 'Super Bowl Boulevard,' a 13-block street fair on Broadway that's expected to draw large crowds during the windup to the game. The temporary cameras for the Super Bowl festivities will supplement a system of thousands of permanent cameras covering midtown and Wall Street that the NYPD monitors from a command center in lower Manhattan. The department has pioneered analytical software that allows it to program the cameras to detect suspicious activity, such as a bag or other objects left in one place for a long time. Hazmat and bomb squads will be on standby. Others officers will patrol with bomb-sniffing dogs. Still more will watch from rooftops and from police helicopters. At a recent security briefing at the stadium, police chiefs and other officials said success will be measured in part by how well authorities conceal all the concern over potential threats.

Submission + - 16GB Smartphones Have Between 12.6GB and 8.6GB of Available Memory

Submitted by Toe, The
Toe, The writes: All smartphones use a notable chunk of their advertised memory for operating system and uninstallable apps/resources. In a comparison of 16GB phones, it was shown that that available memory ranges from 12.6GB for the iPhone 5c (79% of advertised) to 8.56GB for the Samsung Galaxy S4 (54% of advertised). Two mitigating factors are that some phones (including the Galaxy S4) have slot-expandable RAM (though Android restricts what that can be used for) and that phones larger than 16GB have a larger percentage of advertised memory. Regardless; is it really fair to sell a 16GB phone that has half as much available memory?

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