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Privacy

Why We Should Celebrate Snapchat and Encourage Ephemeral Communication 139

Posted by samzenpus
from the get-off-my-lawn dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Within a few months of launching, Snapchat has made an enormous and lasting impact on the culture of communication on the Internet – and we should all be grateful. They have simplified a security process enough to the point that anybody can use it, while validating the market of the next generation of privacy-preserving ephemeral communication. Most importantly, we may finally get a break from the forced permanence of the Facebook and Google world, where everything you do and share is a data point to be monetized and re-sold to the highest bidder."
Businesses

+ - Are 12-16 Hour Workdays 'A Good Life'?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "'It's important to me,' former Opsware CEO Ben Horowitz recalls saying as he threatened a manager for termination because one of his subordinates failed to conduct 1:1 meetings, 'that the people who spend 12 to 16 hours/day here, which is most of their waking life, have a good life. It’s why I come to work.' Ben seems to be cut from the same management cloth as new Yahoo CEO Marissa "I-Don't-Really-Believe-In-Burnout" Mayer, who boasted how she solved the work-life balance problems of mother-of-three 'Katie' [presumably Twitter's Katie Stanton], who was required to attend nightly 1 a.m. video conference calls with her Google Finance team in Bangalore, by no longer making Katie also stay for late meetings on her Google day shift on those occasions where it'd make her miss her kids' soccer games and recitals."
Medicine

Is There a Hearing Aid Price Bubble? 698

Posted by timothy
from the what's-it-worth-to-ya? dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The price of a pair of hearing aids in the U.S. ranges from $3,000 to $8,000. To the average American household, this is equivalent to 2-3 months of income! While the price itself seems exorbitant, what is even more grotesque is its continuous pace of growth: in the last decade the price of an average Behind the Ear hearing aid has more than doubled. To the present day, price points are not receding — even though most of its digital components have become increasingly commoditized. Is this a hearing aid price bubble?"
NASA

+ - New NASA Data Casts Doubt On Global Warming Models-> 2

Submitted by bonch
bonch writes "Satellite data from NASA covering 2000 through 2011 cast doubt on current computer models predicting global warming, according to a new study. The data shows that much less heat is retained by carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere than is assumed in current models. 'There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans,' said Dr. Roy Spencer, a co-author of the study and research scientist at the University of Alabama."
Link to Original Source
Android

+ - Ask Slashdot: How do you protect data on Android?

Submitted by
Gibbs-Duhem
Gibbs-Duhem writes "Dear Slashdot,

It makes me very nervous that my android phone has access to my email/AIM/gtalk/facebook/... protected only by a presumably fairly easily hacked geometric password protection scheme. Even more because simply attaching the phone to a USB port allows complete access to the internal memory and SD card regardless of whether a password is entered. I have no idea how much of that information ranging from cached emails to passwords stored in plaintext is accessible when mounting the device as a USB drive, and that worries me.

I have a lot of sensitive information in my email, including passwords for websites and confidential business/technical strategy discussions (not to mention personal emails ranging from racy emails from boyfriends to health discussions). My email and messaging client passwords are difficult to type (or even remember), so I would ideally want them saved in the device, although at least having something like a keyring password that needed to be re-entered after a time delay would make me feel better. This leaves me relying on encryption and OS level security to protect me.

I'm okay with this on my real laptop and computers as my hard disks are software encrypted and I make a habit of locking my session whenever I leave my desk. For instance, if I lost my laptop, the odds of the thief getting access to my information is minimal. However, I don't feel that this is at all true for my phone (which is frankly far more likely to be lost).

How is it that the slashdot security pros handle this issue? Do you just not use email or the many other incredibly convenient capabilities of new android smartphones due to the risk? Or are there specific ways in which we can guarantee (or at least greatly augment) the existing security practices?"
Government

+ - Oklahoma Wants To Open Its Skies to Drones->

Submitted by nonprofiteer
nonprofiteer writes ""A new air corridor to be reserved exclusively for unmanned aerial drones could turn Oklahoma into the prime drone development region of the United States.

Oklahoma state officials are currently pushing for the corridor, which would stretch for approximately 80 miles between Fort Sill and the town of Clinton, to be approved by the Federal Aviation Administration.

If approved, the air corridor would be the first civil airspace in the country where unmanned aircraft could be flown without prior FAA permission.""
Link to Original Source
Hardware

NAND Flash Better Than DRAM For PC Performance 205

Posted by Soulskill
from the drams-do-better-for-memory-loss dept.
Lucas123 writes "Adding NAND flash memory to a PC does more for performance than DRAM and costs less, according to a new study. As the price difference between the two memory types widens, NAND flash will become the memory of choice in the PC. The effects of NAND flash adoption are already being felt in the DRAM market, as revenue in 2011 is expected to decline 11.8%."
Science

+ - High-Tech Gas Drilling Is Fouling Drinking Water->

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes "Drilling for natural gas locked deep in a shale formation--a process known as fracking--has seriously contaminated shallow groundwater supplies beneath far northeastern Pennsylvania with flammable methane. That’s the conclusion of a new study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The analysis gives few clues, however, to how pervasive such contamination might be across the wide areas of the Northeast United States, Texas, and other states where drilling for shale gas has taken off in recent years."
Link to Original Source
Hardware

+ - Supercomputers Model Nuclear Future->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "What would a core meltdown look like in reactor x if it happened today? How is it possible to minimize nuclear waste and create more efficient nuclear facilities? These are a few questions being visualized on Oak Ridge National Lab's supercomputer..."
Link to Original Source

If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it will always do it. -- Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin

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