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+ - Was Julian Assange Involved With Wiretapping Iceland's Parliament?->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Wired reports that the chat logs between Bradley Manning and Julian Assange that were used as evidence in Manning's trial have made it onto the web, at least briefly. One of those logs contained something very interesting on page 4, which was picked up on by the News of Iceland, which reports, ""Jesus Christ. I think that we have recordings of all phone calls to and from the Icelandic parliament during the past four months". This text can be found in documents that the US military published on its website and is said to be part of the conversations between Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. According to the documents, Assange claims to have phone call recordings from Althingi, the Icelandic parliament, but this is the first time that the existence of such data is mentioned publicly. ... According to Icelandic laws, it is required to inform the person you are speaking with if the phone call is being recorded. Given that the parliament is not violating laws it is clear that Assange or his associates would have to have installed recording devices or wiretaps in the parliament." — What makes it even more interesting is that Wired also reports in this recent story: Someone’s Been Siphoning Data Through a Huge Security Hole in the Internet. Apparently there is more going on in Iceland than meets the eye."
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Technology

Engineering the Perfect Coffee Mug 11

Posted by timothy
from the wish-it-was-a-perfect-unblemished-cylinder dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "From the annals of Really Important Science comes word that a research assistant who picked up his B.S. just seven months ago has invented a coffee mug designed to keep java at just the right piping-hot temperature for hours. Logan Maxwell, who got his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from North Carolina State University in May, created the "Temperfect" mug as part of his senior design project for the College of Engineering. Most insulated mugs have two walls separated by a soft vacuum that insulates the temperature of a liquid inside from the temperature of the air outside. Maxwell's design has a third layer of insulation in a third wall wrapped around the inner basin of the mug. Inside is a chemical insulator that is solid at room temperature but melts into a liquid at 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The insulator – which Maxwell won't identify but swears is non-toxic – turns to liquid as it absorbs the extra heat of coffee poured into the mug at temperatures higher than 140 F, cooling it to a drinkable temperature quickly. As the heat of the coffee escapes, the insulating material releases heat through the inner wall of the mug to keep it hot as long as possible; a graph mapping the performance of a prototype shows it could keep a cup of coffee at between 128 F and 145 F for as long as 90 minutes. "Phase-change" coffee-mug insulation was patented during the 1960s, but has never been marketed because they are difficult and expensive to manufacture compared to simpler forms of insulation. While working on the Temperfect design, Maxwell met Belgian-born industrial designer Dean Verhoeven, president of consulting form Ancona Research, Inc., who had been working on a similar design and had already worked out how to manufacture a three-walled insulated mug cost effectively. The two co-founded a company called Joevo to manufacture the mugs." According to the Joevo Kickstarter page, you can get one starting at $40. For that much, I'd like a clever lid like this Contigo has.

+ - Confirmed: Cloud Infrastructure Pricing Is Absurd->

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes "Two reports out this week, one a new 'codex' released by 451 Research and the other an updated survey into cloud IaaS pricing from Redmonk, show just how insane cloud pricing has become. If your job requires you to read these reports, good luck. For the rest of us, Redmonk's Stephen O’Grady distilled the pricing trends down to this: 'HP offers the best compute value and instance sizes for the dollar. Google offers the best value for memory, but to get there it appears to have sacrificed compute. AWS is king in value for disk and it appears no one else is even trying to come close. Microsoft is taking the 'middle of the road,' never offering the best or worst pricing.'"
Link to Original Source

+ - YouTube Expands Live Streaming to All Channels

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "YouTube today announced it is expanding its live streaming service to all YouTube channels. The Google-owned company now only has two requirements: your account must be verified and it has to be in good standing. If you have both, but don’t see the feature yet, don’t worry as it’s rolling out “over the next few weeks.” YouTube Live was previously only available to a small number of individuals and YouTube partners whom Google deemed worthy to test it out. The video site then opened up the feature to channels with at least 1,000 subscribers, and then at least 100 subscribers. Now it’s available to all."

Google News Sci Tech: Two US Agencies May Face Off Over Cellphones In-Flight - New York Times->

From feed by feedfeeder

New York Times
Two US Agencies May Face Off Over Cellphones In-Flight
New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Department of Transportation said on Thursday that it would consider banning the use of cellphones for voice calls in-flight. The Federal Communications Commission is considering loosening the rules, a proposal that has prompted...
Future of In-Flight Calls Hit New Regulatory HurdleWall Street Journal
FCC chairman: Calls on planes up to each airlineBusinessweek
Cellphone calls on planes: Government agencies differ on rule changeNBCNews.com
Apple Insider-BBC News-Mashable
all 294 news articles

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Google News Sci Tech: Geminid Meteor Shower Will Light Up Friday Night Sky - OzarksFirst.com->

From feed by feedfeeder

OzarksFirst.com
Geminid Meteor Shower Will Light Up Friday Night Sky
OzarksFirst.com
CBSNews -- More than 100 meteors will rocket across the sky on the night of Dec. 13 and early morning hours of the 14th. Visible from almost any point on Earth, it's the peak of the annual Geminid meteor shower. More than 100 meteors will rocket across the...
Meteor explodes over Arizona; big meteor shower beginsKMOV.com
Geminid meteor shower ramps up Friday nightLaramie Boomerang

all 268 news articles

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Security

Google Fixes Credit Card Security Hole, But Snubs Discoverer 31

Posted by timothy
from the and-that's-the-thanks-I-get dept.
Frequent contributor Bennett Haselton writes: "Google has fixed a vulnerability, first discovered by researcher Gergely Kalman, which let users search for credit card numbers by using hex number ranges. However, Google should have acknowledged or at least responded to the original bug finder (and possibly even paid him a bounty for it), and should have been more transparent about the process in general." Read on for the rest of the story.

+ - Google Maps can now make you connect to Wi-Fi networks->

Submitted by briancox2
briancox2 writes "A change in permissions requires you to approved Google Maps to have the right to disconnect you from and connect you to the Wi-Fi networks of Google's choice. Given that there is no settings change which can disable this "feature" and no description of why this would be needed in the description of what's new with this update, it's unclear how this will benefit users and when it will be used."
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Networking

ITU Standardizes 1Gbps Over Copper, But Services Won't Come Until 2015 60

Posted by timothy
from the if-you-transmit-it-they-will-come dept.
alphadogg writes "The ITU has taken a big step in the standardization of G.fast, a broadband technology capable of achieving download speeds of up to 1Gbps over copper telephone wire. The death of copper and the ascent of fiber has long been discussed. However, the cost of rolling out fiber is still too high for many operators that instead want to upgrade their existing copper networks. So there is still a need for technologies that can complement fiber, including VDSL2 and G.fast. Higher speeds are needed for applications such as 4K streaming, IPTV, cloud-based storage, and communication via HD video, ITU said." Meanwhile, I'm hoping Google Fiber, FIOS, and other fast optical options scare more ISPs into action along both price and speed axes.

+ - ITU standardizes 1Gbps over copper, but services won't come until 2015->

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes "The ITU has taken a big step in the standardization of G.fast, a broadband technology capable of achieving download speeds of up to 1Gbps over copper telephone wire. The death of copper and the ascent of fiber has long been discussed. However, the cost of rolling out fiber is still too high for many operators that instead want to upgrade their existing copper networks. So there is still a need for technologies that can complement fiber, including VDSL2 and G.fast. Higher speeds are needed for applications such as 4K streaming, IPTV, cloud-based storage, and communication via HD video, ITU said."
Link to Original Source
Businesses

Indian Government Lifts Nokia's Asset Freeze, Factory Can Transfer To Microsoft 33

Posted by timothy
from the what-the-market-will-bear dept.
rjmarvin writes "The Delhi High Court approved an appeal by Nokia today to unfreeze the company's Indian assets, including the Chennai mobile phone factory set to be transferred to Microsoft as part of its devices and services acquisition. The decision was contingent on Nokia putting $367 million in escrow to go towards its imposed taxes. Nokia lobbied to lift the freeze to avoid holding up the deal or being forced to stay on as a subcontractor, though they're still on the hook for taxes and penalties to the tune of up to $3.4 billion for a financial period dating back to 2006. Microsoft, though, is in the clear."

Comment: Re:irreplaceable (Score 1) 228

by bluefoxlucid (#45673729) Attached to: Six Electric Cars Can Power an Office Building

I'm still trying to get a second sysadmin here because I have too much critical knowledge I can't adequately pass on. My job security is ridiculous, but the business is in a precarious position: if they lose me, major production revenue streams are in jeopardy immediately. I send out e-mails to managers and coworkers with reference instructions to keep things running and make them run again if they fail, so hopefully they can hold things up and redo it from scratch (they don't have the skill or expertise to do so, but they could hire someone who can apply their own knowledge to this stuff while correcting/improving/reimplementing) if I vanish.

I need another person here who can do my job if I'm not around.

Comment: Re:Why not batteries (Score 2) 228

by bluefoxlucid (#45673695) Attached to: Six Electric Cars Can Power an Office Building

The purpose is for self-generators to not get scammed. Residential customers were producing power at some point whereby they'd draw 150kWh and put back 200kWh, but they'd be charged 150kWh@10c retail and paid 200kWh@6c wholesale. Paid 1200, charged 1500, they now owe the power company 300 for supplying 50kWh.

To fix this, the power companies are now required to credit you at retail price for the power placed on the system. It costs you 10 cents to draw a kWh? Well you get 10 cents to supply a kWh.

Dennis Ritchie is twice as bright as Steve Jobs, and only half wrong. -- Jim Gettys

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