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Google News Sci Tech: As technology marches on; privacy can topple - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel->

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New York Times
As technology marches on; privacy can topple
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
For a product that has yet to officially hit the market, Google Glass has already caused heads to turn. Google Glass is a wearable computer that looks like a pair of eyeglasses, only lens-free, with a small device attached to the right frame. It will allow users to ...
Lawmakers demand answers from Google on Glass privacynatmonitor.com
Lawmakers Show Concerns About Google's New GlassesNew York Times
Google Glass Is Watching—Now What?Wall Street Journal
eWeek-PC Magazine-PCWorld
all 271 news articles

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+ - Yahoo! Japan: 22 million user IDs probably stolen->

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes "Unauthorized access attempt of Yahoo! Japan portal may have led to theft of up to 22 million user IDs, Yahoo has revealed. There has been no information about leaks of such a massive database of user IDs as yet and according to Yahoo, the information that was stolen didn’t have passwords or any other information that would allow unauthorized users to carry out user identity verification. Yahoo hasn’t ruled out the possibility of a leak though considering the volume of traffic it noticed flowing from its servers to external entities."
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Google News Sci Tech: Google H840 media streamer hits the FCC to replace the Nexus Q - Android Communi->

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Android Community
Google H840 media streamer hits the FCC to replace the Nexus Q
Android Community
Google's Nexus Q media streamer was short-lived, and canceled shortly after being revealed at last years Google I/O event. With no word on a replacement at this years show, we're now seeing its successor hit the FCC. A new Google device branded as ...
New Media Streaming Device Made by Google Hits FCC, Please be a New ... Droid Life
Google-built media player hits the FCC, reveals only a Hitchhiker's Guide ... Engadget
[Don't Panic] Google-Branded H840 Media Player Appears In The FCC, Bearing ... Android Police
PhoneDog-SlashGear
all 11 news articles

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+ - The Official Arduino Robot ->

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes "The new Arduino robot looks a bit like a robot vacuum cleaner, but it has a lot more going for it and it certainly doesn't suck — well not unless you add an air pump to it.
As always, the Arduino Robot is completely open source and comes as an easy to assemble kit involving no soldering, just some plugging in of components. It consists of two circular boards, 19cm in diameter, each with its own Arduino controller. They fit together to create a stack about 10cm tall. The bottom board has two wheels and motors which allow it to move in any direction. The top board contains lots of sensors and a central display. The two communicate via a serial connection. There is also a lot of space for expansion. There is a new library which can be downloaded to help write programs for this fairly sophisticated robot.
There is only one big problem with the Arduino robot — you can't buy one at the moment. If you really can't wait, until early July when they should start shipping from the Arduino shop and from distributors, then you will have to get to the Maker Faire San Mateo (May 17-19) where they are being demonstrated and sold."
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+ - Welcome to Google Island

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "Google fan fiction, anyone? The last thing Wired's Mat Honan remembered before awaking on the self-driving boat that dropped him on the island was sitting through a four-hour Google I/O keynote in Moscone Center and hearing Google CEO Larry Page promote a vision of a utopia where society could be free to innovate and experiment, unencumbered by government regulations or social norms. "Welcome to Google Island," a naked-save-for-a-pair-of-eyeglasses Larry Page tells Honan. "As soon as you hit Google's territorial waters, you came under our jurisdiction, our terms of service. Our laws-or lack thereof-apply here. By boarding our self-driving boat you granted us the right to all feedback you provide during your journey. This includes the chemical composition of your sweat. Remember when I said at I/O that maybe we should set aside some small part of the world where people could experiment freely and examine the effects? I wasn't speaking theoretically. This place exists. We built it.""

+ - Northern Canadian court raps phantom cellphone 911 charges->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "For years, Bell Mobility customers in northern Canada were charged 75 cents a month for 911 emergency service. The problem is that cellphone users outside Whitehorse, Yukon, don't have access to 911 service.

The Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories ruled against Bell this week, following a class action lawsuit which challenged the phantom cellphone 911 billings. Subject to a possible final appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, Bell will likely owe 30,000 northern cellphone subscribers some bucks."
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+ - UK consumers reporting contactless payment errors->

Submitted by leathered
leathered writes "The BBC reports that some customers of UK retailer Marks and Spencer have reported that the store's contactless payment terminals have debited their cards despite being in their bags or pockets, sometimes paying twice when they have used another payment method. The cards are supposed to work only when the card comes within 4cm of the terminal. Customers of fast-food chain Pret a Manger have been reporting similar problems, and in both cases cited the customers weren't even aware they had been issued with NFC-enabled cards by their bank."
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+ - Majority of Americans Would Ban 3D-Printing Guns at Home (Fat Chance!)->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "In results that may signal some discomfort with the enormous DIY promise of 3D printing and similar home-manufacturing technologies, a new Reason-Rupe poll finds that an otherwise gun control-weary American public thinks owners of 3D printers ought not be allowed to make their own guns or gun parts. Of course, implementing such a restrictive policy might be tad more difficult than measuring popular preferences."
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+ - Happy Culture Freedom Day!

Submitted by Blug_fred
Blug_fred writes "For the second edition, today is the time to celebrate Culture Freedom Day. While not as popular as HFD or SFD, celebrating Free Culture involves finding Free Culture artists, inviting them to your place and having them perform, display or talk about what their creation(s). Of course you can always simply project a couple of Free Culture movies and launch a discussion about their business models. Either way you can find all the happening for today here on the map and we sincerely hope there will be something of interest near you."

+ - RPiCluster: Yet Another Raspberry Pi-based Beowulf Cluster 2

Submitted by TheJish
TheJish writes "The RPiCluster is a 33-node Beowulf cluster built using Raspberry Pis (RPis). The RPiCluster is a little side project I worked on over the last couple months as part of my dissertation work at Boise State University. I had need of a cluster to run a distributed simulator I've been developing. The RPiCluster is the result. I've written an informal document on why I built the RPiCluster, how it was built, and how it performs as compared to other platforms. I also put together a YouTube video of it running an MPI parallel program I created to demo the RGB LEDs installed on each node as part of the build.

While there have certainly been larger RPi clusters put together recently, I figured the /. community might be interested in this build as I believe it is a novel approach to the rack mounting and power management of RPis.

Further Information:
Press Release, Report (Technical Details), Demo Video"

+ - Bloomberg to HS Grads: Be a Plumber

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "This being college graduation season, the insights provided by commencement speakers should be familiar by now: find work in a field you're passionate about, don't underestimate your own abilities, aim high, learn to communicate and collaborate with others, give something back to your community. Billionaire Mike Bloomberg, whose current job is Mayor of New York City, evidently decided to break the mold by advising less academically adept youngsters to consider a career in plumbing. High wages, constant demand, no offshore competition. 'Compare a plumber to going to Harvard College — being a plumber, actually for the average person, probably would be a better deal'. Ouch! And hey, like a lawyer, a plumber can always dabble in politics."

+ - FBI Considers CALEA II - Mandatory Wiretapping on End Users' Devices-> 1

Submitted by Techmeology
Techmeology writes "In response to declining utility of CALEA mandated wiretapping backdoors due to more widespread use of cryptography, the FBI is considering a revamped version that would mandate wiretapping facilities in end users' computers and software. Critics have argued that this would be bad for security, as such systems must be more complex and thus harder to secure. CALEA has also enabled criminals to wiretap conversations by hacking the infrastructure used by the authorities. I wonder how this could ever be implemented in FOSS."
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+ - Password Strength Testers Work for Important Accounts->

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes "Many popular online services have started to deploy password strength meters, visual gauges that are often color-coded and indicate whether the password you’ve chosen is weak or strong based on the website’s policy. The effectiveness of these meters in influencing users to choose stronger passwords had not been measured until recently.
A paper released this week by researchers at the University of Cal Berkeley, University of British Columbia and Microsoft provides details on the results of a couple of experiments examining how these meters influence computer users when they’re creating passwords for sensitive accounts and for unimportant accounts."
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+ - Crowdsourced Networking Planning->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Tom’s Hardware reports on the Connectify Switchboard software that “divides the user's traffic between Wi-Fi, 3G/4G and Ethernet-based connections on a packet-by-packet basis. Even a single stream — such as a Netflix movie — can be split between two or three Internet connections for a higher resolution and faster buffering.“ As part of its Kickstarter campaign, Connectify is geolocating their backers to optimize deployment of their servers. This is a clever way for supporters to influence the project beyond pledge levels and stretch goals, and it’s actually kind of fun to watch."
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+ - Cell Phones As A Radiological 'Dirty Bomb' Detection Network->

Submitted by iinventstuff
iinventstuff writes "The Idaho National Laboratory has built a dirty bomb detection network out of cell phones. Camera phones operate by detecting photons and storing them as a picture. The INL discovered that high energy photons from radiological sources distort the image in ways detectable through image processing. KSL TV reports that the INL's mobile app detects radiation sources and then reports positive 'hits' to a central server. Terrorists deploying a dirty bomb will inevitably pass by people carrying cell phones. By crowdsourcing cell phones, the INL has created a potentially very large, inexpensive, and randomly mobile radiation detection grid."
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