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Submission + - Doctor Who Legos On Shelves This Christmas (dailymail.co.uk) 2

Submitted by WillgasM
WillgasM writes: "Lego has signed a deal with the BBC to create a Dr Who set with mini-figures, the Tardis and representations of many of the enemies he has taken on and defeated." It hasn't yet been decided exactly which characters will be released, but potential characters include "various doctors, including David Tennant and Tom Baker, alongside Billie Piper, K9 the robot dog, and versions of the Daleks, Cybermen and Weeping Angels." So...how exactly are they going to make the Tardis bigger on the inside?

Submission + - Kickstarted Firefox OS Streaming HDMI Dongle Delayed, DRM Being Added (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: You may recall last September when Mozilla and a new company named Matchstick announced a Kickstarter project for a new device that would compete with Google's Chromecast. It was an HDMI dongle that runs on Firefox OS. They easily quadrupled their $100,000 funding goal, and estimated a ship date of February, 2015. Well, they emailed backers today to say that the Matchstick's release is being pushed back to August. They list a few reasons for the delay. For one, they want to upgrade some of the hardware: they're swapping the dual-core CPU for a quad-core model, and working on the Wi-Fi antenna to boost reception. But on the software side, the biggest change they mention is that they're adding support for DRM. This is a bit of a surprise, since all they said on the Kickstarter about DRM was that they hoped it would be handled "either via the playback app itself or the OS." Apparently this wasn't possible, so they're implementing Microsoft PlayReady tech on the Matchstick.

Submission + - The New Ubuntu Phone Won't Rely On Apps, And That's Brilliant

Submitted by tedlistens
tedlistens writes: To tackle the chicken-and-egg problem faced by the Windows Phone or Blackberry—you need an app ecosystem to gain market share, but you need market share in order to entice developers to your platform—Canonical, the creators of the free, open-source Linux-based OS Ubuntu, have taken a novel approach with their new phone, which will be launched in Europe next week: The phone—the Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition, made with Spanish manufacturers BQ—won't feature apps. Instead, it will have a new user experience paradigm called Scopes. These are "essentially contextual home-screen dashboards that will be much simpler and less time-consuming to develop than full-on native apps." For instance, the music Scope will pull songs from Grooveshark alongside music stored locally on your device, without strong differentiation between the two. The user experience, writes Jay Cassano at Fast Company, seems a lot more intuitive than the "app grids" that dominate most devices.

Submission + - TurboTax halts e-filing of state tax returns due to potential fraud (marketwatch.com) 2

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: Intuit the parent company of TurboTax, has stopped e-filing all state tax returns due to increased suspicion of fraud.

The company says it is investigating criminal attempts to use stolen data to file fraudulent returns and claim refunds, after hearing concerns from a handful of states, Intuit spokeswoman Diane Carlini told MarketWatch. After a preliminary examination with security experts, Intuit believes its systems weren’t breached, but crooks may have used TurboTax software to file fraudulent returns after stealing identities, she said.

Intuit said in a release that “the information used to file fraudulent returns was obtained from other sources outside the tax preparation process.” The company called pausing e-filings to states a “precautionary step.”

Utah, the first state to reach out to Intuit, issued a notice Thursday saying the state tax commission has discovered 28 fraud attempts that “originate from data compromised through a third-party commercial tax preparation software process,” as well as 8,000 returns flagged as potentially fraudulent.

Submission + - Funeral for an Internet Friend?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "Somebody I didn’t know died last week," begins Nicky Woolf in How do you grieve when you lose an internet friend? "I’d never met her in real life – or, I think I never met her, but I suppose I could have. We shared some of the same friends and acquaintances, some of whom I knew in person and some of whom I didn’t. The two worlds we both inhabited – virtual and real – blended so seamlessly that I didn’t really notice until she’d departed the latter that I was only really acquainted with her in the former. How do you mourn someone you only knew as an idea?" Woolf reflexively direct-messaged the deceased's boyfriend on Twitter, but wasn’t sure if he’d made a mistake. "There was no way to deal with it," Woolf concludes, "no set of mores or traditions, no roadmap to closure, or even a sense of what closure it is even valid to need. Those traditions, too, will develop organically, over time. But for now, all we are doing is feeling our way through." So, aside from signing a Legacy.com guest book, any thoughts on ways to mark the passing of an Internet friend?

Submission + - Homemade RC Millennium Falcon Is The Drone You've Always Dreamed Of Flying (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: Here's a dose of Rebel goodness to tide you over while you wait for the next Star Wars trailer. A drone enthusiast in France recently graced the web with a few videos of a self-built quadcopter with a shell designed to look like the Millennium Falcon. It's enough to make a Star Wars fan tear up. The drone features a blue thruster light, just like the real Millennium Falcon, and has bright front lights as well. Its creator, who goes by "Oliver C", has some serious modding skills. The shape of the Millennium Falcon presented Oliver with some challenges, but he has the balance more or less handled by the time the spaceship (or quadcopter) takes its first flight outside.

Submission + - The one guy responsible for GPG is running out of money

Submitted by jasonridesabike
jasonridesabike writes: ProPublica reports that Werner Koch, the man behind GPG is in financial straits. Link to article Link to GPG donate page

The man who built the free email encryption software used by whistleblower Edward Snowden, as well as hundreds of thousands of journalists, dissidents and security-minded people around the world, is running out of money to keep his project alive. Werner Koch wrote the software, known as Gnu Privacy Guard, in 1997, and since then has been almost single-handedly keeping it alive with patches and updates from his home in Erkrath, Germany. Now 53, he is running out of money and patience with being underfunded.

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