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Submission + - Nearly one-third of Americans aren't ready for the next generation of technology (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Thanks to a decade of programs geared toward giving people access to the necessary technology, by 2013 some 85% of Americans were surfing the World Wide Web. But how effectively are they using it? A new survey suggests that the digital divide has been replaced by a gap in digital readiness. It found that nearly 30% of Americans either aren’t digitally literate or don’t trust the Internet. That subgroup tended to be less educated, poorer, and older than the average American.

Submission + - Are the hard-to-exploit bugs in LZO compression algorithm a hype?

Submitted by NotInHere
NotInHere writes: In 1996, Markus F. X. J. Oberhumer wrote an implementation of the Lempel–Ziv compression, which is used in various places like the linux kernel, libav, openVPN, or the Curiosity rover. As security researchers have found out, the code contained integer overflow and buffer overrun vulnerabilities, in the part of the code that was responsible to process not compressed parts of the data. Those vulnerabilities are however very hard to exploit, and their scope is dependent on the actual implementation.
According to Oberhumer, the problem only affects 32 bit systems. "I personally do not know about any client program that actually is affected", Oberhumer sais, calling the news about the possible security issue a media hype.

Submission + - $500k "Energy-Harvesting" Kickstarter scam unfolding right now. (drop-kicker.com)

Submitted by FryingLizard
FryingLizard writes: For a while I've been following the saga of the Kickstarter "iFind" Bluetooth 4.0 tracking tag. Nothing new about such tags (there are many crowdfunded examples; some have delivered, some have disappointed), but this one claims it doesn't require any batteries — it harvests its energy from electromagnetic emissions (wifi, cell towers, TV signals, etc). The creators have posted no evidence other than some slick photoshop work, an obviously faked video, and some easily disproven data and classic bad science.
So far they've picked up half a million in pledges. With six days to go until they walk off with the money, skeptics abound (10min in) including some excellent dissections of their claims. The creators have yet to post even a single photo of the magical device, instead posting empty platitudes and claims that such secrecy is necessary to protect their IP.

Using just their published figures, their claims are readily refuted, yet still backers flock in. Kickstarter appear uninterested in what can only be described as a slow-motion bank robbery, despite their basic requirement to demonstrate a prototype.
It seems self-evident that such scams should not be allowed to propagate on Kickstarter, for the good of other genuine projects and the community at large.
Skeptics are maintaining a google doc with many of the highlights of the action.

Bring your own popcorn and enjoy the show.

Submission + - Science Museum Declines to Show Climate Change Film (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: A premier science museum in North Carolina has sparked controversy by refusing to show an hourlong film about climate change and rising sea levels. The museum may be in a bit of a delicate position. It is part of a state agency, the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The state government has been perceived as hostile to action on climate change; last year, the legislature passed a bill forbidding the state coastal commission from defining rates of sea-level rise for regulation before 2016.

Submission + - Salesforce.com To Review Controversial Hackathon Win (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Adding to the growing sentiment that prizes ruin hackathons, Salesforce.com has come under fire from critics who say the hackathon the company held at its Dreamforce conference was judged unfairly. Not long after the $1 million prize was handed to Upshot for a mobile app that let users to create and edit Salesforce.com reports, other contestants raised allegations of unfairness. Among the complaints: That Upshot's CTO Thomas Kim had demoed a similar-sounding application a couple of weeks before Oct. 25 cutoff; that Kim is a former Salesforce.com employee (although that isn't in violation of the rules); and that their own entries weren't evaluated by judges at all. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is now promising a thorough investigation of the hackathon.

Submission + - Driver Arrested in Ohio for Secret Car Compartment Full of Nothing (reason.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Norman Gurley, 30, is facing drug-related charges in Lorain County, Ohio, despite the fact that state troopers did not actually find any drugs in his possession.

Ohio passed a law in 2012 making it a felony to alter a vehicle to add a secret compartment with the “intent” of using it to conceal drugs for trafficking.

Submission + - Failed software upgrade halts transit service

Submitted by linuxwrangler
linuxwrangler writes: San Francisco Bay Area commuters awoke this morning to the news that BART, the major regional transit system which carries hundreds of thousands of daily riders, was entirely shut down due to a computer failure. Commuters stood stranded at stations and traffic backed up as residents took to the roads. The system has returned to service and BART says the outage resulted from a botched software upgrade.

Submission + - GIMP Abandons SourceForge. Distributes via FTP Instead (gimp.org)

Submitted by Dangerous_Minds
Dangerous_Minds writes: GIMP, a free and open source altenernative to image manipulation software like Photoshop, recently announced that it will no longer be distributing their program through SourceForge. Citing some of the ads as reasons, they say that the tipping point was "the introduction of their own SourceForge Installer software, which bundles third-party offers with Free Software packages. We do not want to support this kind of behavior, and have thus decided to abandon SourceForge." The policy changes were reported back in August by Gluster. GIMP is now distributing their software via their own FTP page instead. Is Sourceforge becoming the next CNET?

Submission + - http://istumblrdown Shuttered by Cease and Desist Order (istumblrdown.com)

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/

Comment Re:Much needed competition? (Score 1) 119

by Ectospheno (#42269263) Attached to: Redbox Set To Compete With Netflix On Video Streaming
I stopped purchasing or renting disc based media. Buying a digital copy from Amazon or Google is easier. Watching it on any device I own is also easier. Physical media is just annoying. And no, I'm not worried about Amazon or Google disappearing any time soon. Certainly not before bluerays are obsolete and everyone is buying their collection over again anyway.

Comment Adblockers are more effective. (Score 3, Informative) 185

by Ectospheno (#42137391) Attached to: Microsoft Security Essentials Loses AV-Test Certificate
A good ad blocker in your browser will be more effective in the long run than any AV software you install. Couple that with the common sense to not download and run every piece of crap you see on the internet and your computer will be fine. Every instance of an infection I've seen involved the person breaking one of those two simple rules.

Comment Re:And people ask me why I don't use Chrome (Score 2) 202

by Ectospheno (#39079343) Attached to: Google Accused of Bypassing Safari's Privacy Controls

I'll ask you the same question I ask everyone else who seems to be highly concerned about companies knowing things about them. Why does it bother you?

I use Google for pretty much everything. I'm a Google Apps for Business customer and have been very pleased with the services they provide. Their products work well and the uptime/cost ratio is excellent. I'm assuming their ads are still nonintrusive but honestly I wouldn't know as I use adblockers with rather strict rulesets so I never see any of them.

Do they know a metric crapton about who I am and what I do? Sure. Why should I care about this? How does Google knowing what videos games I play or what books I read matter to me in my day to day activities? So they know I played Skyrim a lot and which bands I listen to. Who cares? Everyone who matters in my life already knows all of that anyway. Why panic because Google knows it too?

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