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Submission + - Ethiopia criminalises Skype (techcentral.co.za)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Ethiopia’s state-owned Internet service provider, the Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation (Ethio-Telcom), has begun performing deep-packet inspection of all Internet traffic in the country. The country’s government recently ushered in new legislation that criminalises the use of services such as Skype, Google Talk and other forms of Internet phone calling. The new law, which came into effect on 24 May, makes use of Internet voice services punishable by hefty fines and up to 15 years in prison. The official line from the government is that the move is intended to protect national security and protect the national, state-owned telecoms carrier from losing revenue to Skype and similar services; this, despite the fact that Ethiopia’s fixed-line penetration rate is the second worst in Africa (after Sierra Leone) at an estimated 1% of its 85m strong population.

Submission + - Ubuntu Touch container flip announced (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Ubuntu Touch development team has made available pre-release test images of the mobile operating system wherein the Ubuntu system launches directly instead of firing up after Android has booted. Up until now Ubuntu resided in a separate area and the OS was fired up on top of Android using ‘change root (chroot).’ This led many to claim that Ubuntu Touch was just another Android shell. The scenario has changed now and new images boot Ubuntu directly following which Android is initialized inside an LXC Container.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Hosting location recommendations in light of NSA'S PRISM & Co. 1

Submitted by digisus
digisus writes: With more and more information about the extent of NSA wiretapping on the world becoming public, I consider moving away from my US-based ISP to one in Europe (or somewhere else) as one step to exercise my right to be left alone. As I would assume a few others share this interest, I am asking the slashdot community for the benefit of all of us: Which countries/jurisdictions and maybe ISPs would you recommend and why?

Submission + - $20,000 Gada prize for reinventing RepRap won (htxt.co.za)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: South African Quentin Harley has picked up the $20,000 Gada Uplift prize for making the open source RepRap 3D printer design easier to build, cheaper to construct and — most importantly — capable of printing more of its own parts. Lots of background on Harley and his RepRap Morgan here

Submission + - Homo Erectus Was The Original Starting Pitcher (insidescience.org)

Submitted by LalenaAIP
LalenaAIP writes: "It's completely ordinary to see today's athletes throw a javelin hundreds of feet in the air or fire baseballs accurately and in excess of 90 mph dozens of times during a game. However, not every close human relative has that ability to throw, despite the great strength that many possess."

Submission + - London house as an optical illusion (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Kittenman
Kittenman writes: The BBC is carrying footage of a London house that allows members of the public to scale walls, stand on windows, and other superhero stuff, all without any bite from a radioactive spider.

Submission + - MS to Indie Devs: Ya' gotta have a publisher! (forbes.com)

Submitted by Loadmaster
Loadmaster writes: The new Oddworld game New 'n' Tasty is coming to every platform in the current generation and even the next generation but not the Xbox One. It's not that developer Oddworld Inhabitants isn't porting the game. It's not that they hate Microsoft or the Xbox One. No, it's that Microsoft has taken an anti-indie dev stance with the Xbox One. While the game industry is moving to Kickstarter and self-funded shops, Microsoft has decided all developers must have a publisher to grace their console.

It just gets worse for Microsoft's new console. They spy on you, control who you let borrow, restrict how you can sell the game, and now they are forcing indie developers to split profit with a partner in the form of an unnecessary publisher. The adage for Microsoft products is that they get it right on rev. 3, but here it seems they've bombed it. Big time.

Submission + - Can Crowdfunding, Fund An Electric Car Startup? (gofundme.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Crowdfunding has funded many great companies, but never an alternative energy company. GreenStar Motors an electric car startup located in New York City, has just launched their crowdfunding campaign. They hope to raise a startup capital amount of $20k. Will it work?

In the last 5 years we have seen over a dozen electric vehicle (EV) startups fail, miserably. So why would someone who has seen all these failures occur try to startup their on electric car company? Well, its 22-year-old founder Elvin, claims that he found solutions to the two biggest hurdles that electric cars face today. Elvin states, “The two biggest barriers with today’s electric cars are 1. Range anxiety and 2. Charging the in-car battery while living in a city with limited access to public charging stations. We figured out a way to both reduce range anxiety and charge the in-car battery while living in a city with limited to no access to public charging stations. (While some people believe the biggest hurdle with electric cars is the price we believe that once manufacturing scales go up, prices wil drop down dramatically)."

Those are some bold claims, but why a goal of $20k? That surely is not enough to fund such a capital-intensive venture. “We are seeking to raise $20K. While $20K won’t be nearly enough to fund our project, it will be enough to start the process of patenting, copyrighting, and trademarking our first few major innovations. We prefer to go the route of private capital. If possible we would like to avoid going the route of government loans like a few other electric car startups have done. We believe the government has enough to worry about. As far as we know we are the first car company to ever come out of New York. We are also the first EV company trying to raise funds through crowdfunding”

The future is electric. Lets not fight it and instead embrace it. Change is something that most people have trouble with, but change is what powered the revolutions that gave us the amazing, innovative technology we have today. Change will also be the driver behind the awesome, electric, smart, connected cars with 750+ mile range, of tomorrow. We are automotive enthusiast, we are committed to making the best cars on the road, but we need a bit of help from you. We can’t do it with out you!

Check out the crowdfunding campaign at: http://www.gofundme.com/LetsSaveTheWorld

(We understand that some people do not believe in global warming or dont believe its caused by humans, but whats wrong with cleaner air?!)

Submission + - Inside the NSA's secret Utah data center (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: As Americans demand answers about the government's wholesale electronic snooping on its citizens, the primary snooper — the National Security Agency (NSA) — is building a monstrous digital datacenter in a remote corner of Utah capable of sorting through and storing every e-mail, voicemail, and social media communication it can get its hands on. This top-secret data warehouse could hold as many as 1.25 million 4-terabyte hard drives, built into some 5,000 servers to store the trillions upon trillions of ones and zeroes that make up your digital fingerprint. And that's just one way to catalog people, said Charles King, principal analyst at data center consulting firm Pund-IT. "The NSA — like any large organization — is using numerous kinds of storage systems," King told FoxNews.com, including "innovative SSD and in-memory systems for high performance applications like real time analytics."

Submission + - Majority of Americans Say NSA Phone Tracking Is Not OK To Fight Terrorism (rasmussenreports.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to a weekend poll by Rasmussen, a majority of Americans believe that the feds are spying too much on US citizens, and oppose programs which collect Americans' phone records without specific suspicion of wrongdoing. Rasmussen's results appear to contradict those of an earlier, widely reported Pew survey on this issue.

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