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United States

Dial 00000000 To Blow Up the World 305

Posted by timothy
from the your-public-servants dept.
Charliemopps writes "For 20 years the password for the U.S. nuclear arsenal was '00000000.' Kennedy instituted a security system on all nuclear warheads to prevent them from being armed by someone unauthorized. It was called PAL, and promised to secure the entire US arsenal around the world. Unfortunately for Kennedy (and I guess, the whole world) U.S. military leadership was more concerned about delaying a launch than securing Armageddon. They technically obeyed the order but then set the password to 8 Zeros, or '00000000'."

+ - Feedly Forces its Users to Create Google+ Profiles

Submitted by somegeekynick
somegeekynick writes "Feedly users, a lot of whom migrated from the now-defunct Google Reader, are now finding out that they will not be able to login to the service without a Google+ Profile. In a blog post from Edwin Khodabakchian, which was posted almost at the same time the change rolled out, the reason for the change is stated as following Google's own move from using OAuth to Google+ for authentication. What has riled up a lot of users, as can be read in the comments, is that this change has come without warning and a lot of feeds are now being "held hostage" by Feedly, especially for users who are reluctant to create Google+ Profiles."

+ - Apple Issues First Transparency Report

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes "In a new report detailing the number and kind of requests for user information it’s gotten from various governments, Apple said it has never received a request for information under Section 215 of the USA PATROT Act and would likely fight one if it ever came. The company also disclosed that it has received between 1,000 and 2,000 requests for user data from the United States government since January, but it’s not clear how many of those requests it complied with because of the restrictions the U.S. government places on how companies can report this data.

Right now, companies such as Apple, Google and others that issue so-called transparency reports only are allowed to report the volume of requests they get in increments of 1,000. So Apple’s report shows that although it received 1,000-2,000 requests for user data so far in 2013, the number that it complied with is listed as 0-1,000. Apple, along with a number of other companies, including Google and Microsoft, have asked the government in recent months for permission to disclose more specific numbers of requests, including specific numbers of National Security Letters."

+ - Why is India Sending a Probe to Mars when it Has so Many Poor People?->

Submitted by MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes "The recent launch of India's first mission to Mars has ignited a debate in that country that has parallels of a debate that was once raging in the United States. The question arises, why does a country with a severe poverty problem have a space program?

The Economist points out that India's space program, of which the Mars mission is a small part, costs about $1 billion a year. It claims that spending on things like public health in that country is "abysmally low."

On the other hand, most of India's space program is directed toward communications and other satellites that have a direct benefit to its people.

The BBC adds that the inspirational and national prestige aspects of the Mars mission are not to be sneezed at. India has a growing middle class, technically trained, and a good space program is part of a mix of policies that encouraged that development."
Link to Original Source

+ - http://istumblrdown Shuttered by Cease and Desist Order->

Submitted by TrueSatan
TrueSatan writes "Blogging platform Tumblr has issued a Cease and desist notice to http://istumblrdown.com/ a rather trivial and harmless site that simply offered status updates for Tumblr. The site owner claims this to be symptomatic of Tumblr's disregard for users needs quoting http://zachinglis.com/posts/why-tumblr-sucks and their fixation on banning users rather than any more positive improvements they might make to their platform. http://www.dailydot.com/news/missing-e-banned-tumblr/"
Link to Original Source
Displays

All-in-Ones Finally Grow Up, With Fast Graphics, SSDs, and CPUs 211

Posted by timothy
from the ok-now-switch-graphics-cards dept.
MojoKid writes "Historically, all-in-one desktop systems like the iMac, HP's TouchSmart and similar designs that incorporate a full system on the backside of a monitor, haven't offered performance that was competitive to their full-sized desktop counterparts. Part of the reason is that many of these systems are comprised of low power notebook platform PC components inside thin chassis designs with minimal airflow. However, as mobile platforms have become more powerful, so has the all-in-one PC. Dell's recently launched XPS 27 Touch, with Intel's Haswell mobile processor and an NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M on board, is an example of a new breed of AIO hitting the market now. The system is based on a 27-inch panel with 2TB of storage, a 32GB SSD cache drive, 8GB of RAM and performance in the benchmarks that keeps pace with average midrange full-sized desktops. You can even game on the machine with frame rates at the panel's 1080p native resolution with medium to high image quality. It's almost like the all-in-one finally grew up."

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