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Submission + - Portable Fuel Cell Battery Charger (mashable.com) 1

Submitted by wbr1
wbr1 writes: Mashable reports on a device being debuted at CES this year that is a portable fuel cell to recharge your devices. According to the article and the company's website, the device has a fuel cartridge and also uses a small amount of water.

Per the website: "PowerTrekk uses eco-friendly fuel cell technology which cleanly and efficiently converts hydrogen into electricity. The ability to simply insert a PowerPukk fuel pack and add water provides users instant and limitless power on the go."

This seems to not match up to my understanding of fuel cells, which use hydrogen and atmospheric oxygen to produce electricity and water. My guess is that the water is used to somehow activate the fuel which is stored as 'flexible stickers' not hydrogen gas.

This would be a nice thing if the fuel is cheap enough over time and it doesn't turn out to be vaporware.

Submission + - 'Badges' Earned Online Pose Challenge to Tradition (chronicle.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Educational badges, which seem like a playful riff on Boy Scout skill patches, pose an existential crisis for colleges and universities. If students can collect credentials from MITx and Khan Academy and other free Web sites, why go to a campus?
Android

Submission + - The Internet Strikes Back - Anti-SOPA app develope (android.com) 1

Submitted by
Safarijacksa
Safarijacksa writes: "It appears that some enterprising individuals have gathered together and developed an android app (appropriately called BoycottSOPA) that scans the bar code of products and references them against companies that are SOPA supporters. The app even tracks subsidiary companies. If users have instance access to the ethics of their actions could this then restore balance to the force?"

Submission + - Israeli to be treated as terrorist for stolen cred (haaretz.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday Israel declared it would respond to the recent credit card breach as if it was terrorism. Now that at least one Israeli have been identified as profiting from the stolen credit cards, it is now time to see how Israel's terrorism laws will come into play.

Submission + - Red Hat HQ Moving to Downtown Raleigh 19 Story Tow (wral.com)

Submitted by josmar52789
josmar52789 writes: Red Hat is moving their world head quarters to a 19 story office tower once occupied by Progress Energy. With the move, they have committed to two more decades of operations in Raleigh, NC and hiring more than 1000 employees globally. In addition, the city of Raleigh is committing to Open Source calling itself an "Open Source city".
Google

Submission + - Google TV reborn: ARM support, new OEMs, and more

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For some time the future of Google TV was looking pretty grim. Logitech's Revue failed miserably, and Sony seemed like the only supporter of Google TV when the 3.1 update came out in October. With competitors like Roku making waves everywhere, the ever louder drum of rumors surrounding an Apple TV, and every TV manufacturer out there trying to figure out how Smart TVs will keep them relevant, Google needed to make a big play to keep their service in the game. More hardware, less expensive, and faster distribution are necessary in order for the platform to survive.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Scientists leave out data to produce bogus finding (naturalnews.com)

Submitted by
hessian
hessian writes: "Clinical trials of drugs and other medical therapies are carefully carried out and are the very gold standard of scientific proof, right? According to an in-depth review of this question just published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ,) the answer is no. In fact, the BMJ is sounding the alarm that data reported by scientists is too often not the truth — because the researchers leave out inconvenient evidence. The result of facts-gone-missing could well be harming patients, spiking up healthcare costs by the selling of medical treatments based on bogus findings, and threatening the very integrity of medicine.

These warnings come from multiple papers released by the BMJ. The whistle-blowing authors of these articles examined the extent, causes, consequences of hidden facts, figures, and other data scientists discover as they do human trials. It turns out this is no "once in a while" kind of problem, either. The BMJ claims a "large proportion of evidence from human trials is unreported, and much of what is reported is done so inadequately.""
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Patents 'Avoid Ghetto' Feature For GPS D (cbslocal.com)

Submitted by
hessian
hessian writes: "Microsoft has been granted a patent for its “avoid ghetto” feature for GPS devices.

A GPS device is used to find shortcuts and avoid traffic, but Microsoft’s patent states that a route can be plotted for pedestrians to avoid an “unsafe neighborhood or being in an open area that is subject to harsh temperatures.”"
Chrome

Submission + - Web Browser Grand Prix VIII: Chrome 16, Firefox 9, (tomshardware.com) 1

Submitted by
CortezCarza
CortezCarza writes: "This article, the latest in a recurring browser benchmarking series, is a follow-up to last August's Mac vs. PC browser showdown which tested the top 5 web browsers in Windows 7 and Mac OS X Lion on a Core i5 Hackintosh PC. This time they used a genuine Core i7 MacBook Air.
Areas of testing include: JavaScript, DOM, CSS, Flash, Java, Silverlight, HTML5, hardware acceleration, WebGL, memory efficiency, proper page loads, and standards conformance, plus a new differentiation between cold and hot startup times, as well as cached and uncached page loads.
Due to its old school release schedule IE9 finally winds up back where it belongs, at the bottom. Meanwhile Firefox makes a serious comeback, and Safari is only worth a damn on OS X. But the kicker is that the OS X browsers performed significantly better in relation to the Windows browsers on the Hackintosh versus the real deal MacBook."
Space

Submission + - DARPA Chooses Leader for 100-Year Starship Project

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "With Nasa scaling back its manned space programs, the idea of a manned trip to the stars may sound audacious, but the 100 Year Starship (100YSS) study is an effort seeded by DARPA to develop a viable and sustainable model for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad of disciplines needed to make long-distance space travel practicable and feasible. The goal is not to have the government fund the actual building of spacecraft destined for the stars, but rather to create a foundation that can last 100 years in order to help foster the research needed for interstellar travel. Now DARPA has provided $500,000 in seed money to help jumpstart the effort and chosen Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to go into space, to lead 100YSS. Jemison, who is also a physician and engineer, left NASA in 1993 after a six-year stint in which she served as science mission specialist aboard space shuttle Endeavour, becoming the first black woman to fly in space. Since leaving the space agency, she has been involved in education and outreach efforts and technology development. Rounding out her resume, Jemison also served as a medical aofficer for the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone and Liberia, is a professionally trained dancer, speaks Russian, Swahili and Japanese, and was the first real astronaut to make a cameo in an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Jemison won the contract with her proposal titled "An Inclusive Audacious Journey Transforms Life Here on Earth & Beyond.""
IT

Submission + - IT salaries edge up back to 2008 levels (infoworld.com) 1

Submitted by
tsamsoniw
tsamsoniw writes: "A soon-to-be released salary survey finds that the average salary for IT professionals in the U.S. is $78,299, putting overall compensation back at January 2008 levels. More heartening: Midsize and large companies are both aiming to hire more IT pros. The midsize are seeking IT executives (such as VPs of information services and technical services), as well as programmers, database specialists, systems analysts, and voice/wireless communication pros. Enterprises are moving IT and data center operations back in-house, which means greater demand for data center managers and supervisors."
IT

Submission + - Company Intranet moving from IT to HR... Arguments

Submitted by No Such Net
No Such Net writes: Our 2000+ employee organization (healthcare) has been using an intranet that has evolved from the development efforts of our IT staff over the past two years. As a secondary project with no dedicated personnel for content wrangling or weeding through design decisions, it has grown very slowly and organically but has always been under used for anything other than a repository for newsletters and archived communications from administration.

Now, Human Resources has decided that they would like to take a crack at it — citing the lack of use and uniformity in the intranet's design as reasons for taking ownership. Their involvement in finding contributors for content would be welcome by IT, but taking the site over completely would not. I don't have details on how they imagine that they would manage this without IT involvement, but my guess is that they would pay for some sort of monthly service.

As a member of the IT staff that implemented intranet 1.0, what arguments would you make to administration against HR claiming control of the design and implementation of intranet 2.0? Given that we like to play with web design and this site gives IT that opportunity, is this battle worth fighting?
Cloud

Submission + - FTC Asked To Probe Facebook Over Timeline Privacy

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is unhappy with the way Facebook launched its new Timeline profile. Last month, the privacy organization complained Facebook went too far because it started rolling out the redesign without asking users first. EPIC then followed up with a four-page letter (PDF) to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking it to investigate the new feature to insure that it meets with the terms of a November 29th FTC-Facebook settlement. Facebook denies these claims, saying that the Timeline launch has nothing to do with its users' privacy.
Politics

Submission + - Pirate Party UK - Looking forward to 2012. (pirateparty.org.uk)

Submitted by
Ajehals
Ajehals writes: "The UK Pirate Party new years message suggests a new sense of direction for the party, with a focus on policy and politics beyond what was seen as the party's norm, single issue position of copyright reform. Hoping to learn from and emulate the German Pirate Party's success in Berlin, Partly Leader Loz Kay is looking back over 2011 and to the future."
Google

Submission + - French court frowns on Google autocomplete, issues (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Lexx Greatrex
Lexx Greatrex writes: Google had been sued by insurance company Lyonnaise de Garantie, which was offended by search results including the word "escroc," meaning crook, according to a story posted Tuesday by the Courthouse News Service. "Google had argued that it was not liable since the word, added under Google Suggest, was the result of an automatic algorithm and did not come from human thought," the article states. "A Paris court ruled against Google, however, pointing out that the search engine ignored requests to remove the offending word... In addition to the fine, Google must also remove the term from searches associated with Lyonnaise de Garantie."

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