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Submission + - Secrets that Motivate User to "share'' on Social Media (wordpress.com)

Submitted by frankbd
frankbd writes: The power of social media lays in the fast way the information and content is spread and the instant way the user gets and shares content with his circles and communities. So, the effectiveness of social media comes from the facilitation of spread of information, but what are the main factors that push a user to share
certain content and recommend it to his friends.

Submission + - Germany's glut of electricity causing prices to plummet

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Germany is headed for its biggest electricity glut since 2011 as new coal-fired plants start and generation of wind and solar energy increases, weighing on power prices that have already dropped for three years. From December capacity will be at 117% of peak demand. The benchmark German electricity contract has slumped 36% since the end of 2010.

“The new plants will run at current prices, but they won’t cover their costs” said Ricardo Klimaschka, a power trader at Energieunion GmbH. Lower prices “leave a trail of blood in our balance sheet” according to Bernhard Guenther, CFO at RWE, Germany’s biggest power producer. Wind and solar’s share of installed German power capacity will rise to 42% by next year from 30% in 2010. The share of hard coal and lignite plant capacity will drop to 28% from 32%.

Submission + - Jury finds Google guilty of standards-essential patents abuse against MS

Submitted by recoiledsnake
recoiledsnake writes: A federal jury in Seattle ordered Google to pay Microsoft $14.5 million in damages for breach of contract for failing to license at reasonable terms standard essential patents covering wireless and video technology used in the Xbox game console. Motorola had demanded Microsoft pay annual royalties of up to $4 billion for use of patents that are part of the H.264 video and 802.11 wireless standards, which are baked into Windows and the Xbox video game console. Microsoft said it was willing to pay royalties but not at the 2.25 percent of the product price that Motorola sought. We previously covered Motorola's exorbitant demands.

Submission + - Samsung Unveils Galaxy Gear Smartwatch, Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Tab 10.1 (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: The smartwatch race heated up today, as Samsung showed its Galaxy Gear smartwatch at the Samsung Unpacked event in Berlin. Samsung’s take on such a device has been eagerly anticipated. Samsung announced the Galaxy Gear as a companion to the new Galaxy Note 3 and any Galaxy device actually. The Gear lets users make and receive calls hands-free with the built-in speaker, and it notifies you of any incoming texts, emails, and alerts and gives you a preview of whatever is coming through. A Smart Relay feature will display the full content on your Galaxy device. The Galaxy Gear sports an 800MHz processor and 1.63-inch display (320x320) AMOLED display with 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage, a speaker, and two microphones with noise cancellation. There’s a 1.9MP camera with a BSI sensor and autofocus, and it connects via Bluetooth 4.0 + BLE. Sensors include an accelerometer and a gyroscope. Those hoping for a refreshed tablet also have something to peer at, as the Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) has been revealed. The Note 10.1 ships with a 10" display, a WQXGA resolution (an eye-popping 2560x1600 resolution), and a 1.9GHz octa-core processor. Over on the smaller side of things, there's the new Galaxy Note 3. It's Samsung's latest phablet, and it's shipping later this fall with a 5.7" (1080p) display, 3GB of RAM, Android 4.3, and an imitation-leather back that might feel better in the hand than plastic (or not?). It will also be compatible with the Galaxy Gear smartwatch right out of the box, but we're going to have to wait for carriers to announce pricing.

Submission + - Ballmer to Retire Within the Year (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: Reuters is breaking the story that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer intends to retire within the next 12 months. No successor appears to have been selected, yet. Time to polish that resume.

Submission + - Google Raises Campaign Funds for Climate Change Denier

Submitted by HonorPoncaCityDotCom
HonorPoncaCityDotCom writes: Alex Altman reports at Time Magazine that Google recently hosted a fundraiser for Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, one of the Senate’s most conservative Republicans and a staunch opponent of EPA regulations who authored a treatise called “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future," thinks the Bible disproves global warming, and once denounced the “arrogance” of scientists who suggest that “we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate.” What prompted Google to host a fund raiser where attendees shelled out up to $2,500 for lunch with Inhofe? A data center that Google operates in Pryor, Oklahoma. “Google runs a significant operation that provides around 100 jobs,” says Rusty Appleton, Inhofe’s campaign manager. “The Senator had an opportunity to tour the facilities in May of last year, and is committed to ensuring that Oklahoma remains a great place to do business.” A Google spokesperson says the company regularly hosts fundraisers for candidates of all stripes, even when Google disagrees with some of their policies — as it does with Inhofe on climate change. This explanation didn’t wash with the activists outside Google’s D.C. headquarters near K Street. “What’s their slogan? ‘Don’t be evil’?” asked Eric Anderson, a software engineer from Silver Spring, Md. “If they’re doing things to further damage our planet, well, that’s pretty evil in my book.”

Submission + - Kremlin security agency to buy typewriters 'to avoid leaks

Submitted by Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: Russia's agency responsible for the Kremlin security is buying typewriters — a move reportedly prompted by recent leaks by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden.

"After scandals with the distribution of secret documents by WikiLeaks, the exposes by Edward Snowden, reports about Dmitry Medvedev being bugged during his visit to the G20 London summit (in 2009), it has been decided to expand the practice of creating paper documents," the source said.

Snowden's service consists of informing Americans what is being done in our name. If he has panicked the Russians into abandoning their computers that is so much extra goodness.

Submission + - Is Postgres on par with Oracle? 1

Submitted by grahamsaa
grahamsaa writes: I work at medium sized company that offers a number of products that rely fairly heavily on backend databases, some of which are hundreds of gigabytes and deal with hundreds or thousands of queries per second. Currently, we're using a mix of Postgres, Oracle, and MySQL, though we're working hard to move everything to Postgres. The products that are still on MySQL and Oracle were acquisitions, so we didn't get to choose the RDBMS at the time these products were designed.

So far, we've been very happy with Postgres, but I know next to nothing about Oracle. It's expensive and has a long history of use in large enterprises, but I'm curious about what it offers that Postgres might not — I'm not saying this because I think that sticking with Oracle would be a good idea (because in our case, it probably isn't), but I'm curious as to how some companies justify the cost — especially considering that EnterpriseDB makes transitioning from Oracle to Postgres feasible (though not painless) in most cases. For those that use Oracle — is it worth the money? What's keeping you from switching?

Submission + - Digg Reader beta to launch next week, Can import feeds from late Google Reader. (thegeekherald.com)

Submitted by TheGeekHerald
TheGeekHerald writes: Many people have hard time when Google shutdown its feed aggregator service Google Reader. Though many services have terminated Google Reader got a huge disappointment from users.
Digg, social news website responded to Google reader cut off by saying that it is going to build a feed reader through a blog post.
Recently, today Digg wrote a update on developing its alternate to Google Reader. In that the company say http://www.thegeekherald.com/2013/06/digg-reader-beta-to-launch-next-week.html

Submission + - CentOS releases the Xen4CentOS project returning Xen support to CentOS 6. (lwn.net)

Submitted by dustwun
dustwun writes: From the announcement

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability for the Xen4 virtualisation stack for CentOS-6/x86_64 The software is delivered as a dedicated repository under http://mirror.centos.org/centos/6/xen4/ and were developed with the help of the Xen Project, the Citrix Xen open-source team, GoDaddy.com's Cloud Engineering team and Rackspace Hosting.

This should help a large number of hosters more easily migrate their aging systems to a more recent version of CentOS, as well as take advantage of newer features. There have been some rumblings in the CentOS world, and this announcement seems show that they've been busy.
Apple

Submission + - Apple: 75% of our world wide power needs now come from renewable power sources (apple.com)

Submitted by skade88
skade88 writes: Wow! Color me green on this one! I am normally very critical of Apple's business practices, but this one is just perfect all around! Apple now owns and runs enough renewable energy power plants that 75% of their world wide power needs come from renewable sources such as wind, solar, geothermal and hydro.

From the Apple Blog Post: 'Our investments are paying off. We’ve already achieved 100 percent renewable energy at all of our data centers, at our facilities in Austin, Elk Grove, Cork, and Munich, and at our Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino. And for all of Apple’s corporate facilities worldwide, we’re at 75 percent, and we expect that number to grow as the amount of renewable energy available to us increases. We won’t stop working until we achieve 100 percent throughout Apple.'

Any other big power hungry data centers want to step up and join Apple on this one? Im looking at you Google and Rackspace!
Android

Submission + - Critical Samsung Android Phone Vulnerabilities (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: Tired of waiting for Samsung to fix a string of critical flaws in their smartphones running Android, Italian security researcher Roberto Paleari has decided to inform the public about the seriousness of the matter and maybe make the company pick up the pace. Mindful of the danger that the vulnerabilities present to the users if they are exploited by malicious individuals, he decided not to share any technical details, but to just give a broad overview of what their misuse would allow. This includes a silent installation of highly-privileged applications with no user interaction and an app performing almost any action on the victim's phone.

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