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Submission + - SXSW: How Mobile Devices Are Changing Africa (slashdot.org)

Submitted by
Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: "Mobile phones are kicking off a revolution in Africa, with everyone from farmers to villagers relying on apps to make electronic payments, check on expiration dates for medicine, and predict future storms or the best prices for produce. In a SXSW session titled “The $100bn Mobile Bullet Train Called Africa” (which would also be a pretty good name for one of the indie films playing at this massive convention), Tech4Africa founder Gareth Knight explained the contours of this revolution. According to Shapshak, more kids in Africa have access to the Internet than consistent electricity. Nobody owns a PC or can access a fixed-line telephone, so mobile phones are a conduit for everything from email to news to making payments via SMS. Many people on the continent also own phones equipped with flashlights and radios—“Radios are the killer app in Africa,” Shapshak said—and the percentage of the population equipped with mobile devices is primed to explode over the next few years. Many of the mobile devices used in Africa aren’t cutting-edge, and SMS-based platforms are a necessity when it comes to sharing information. “SMS is so fantastic because it gets to every device everywhere,” Shapshak said. “SMS has a 100 percent read rate; you read every SMS you get.” Here’s how a typical SMS platform might work: someone purchasing a box of malaria medicine could send the barcode information to a text number, which would send back an SMS message identifying the drug as real or counterfeit. Famers and other food-producers can receive SMS messages about the best ways to handle pests, for example, or take care of their cows."
Intel

Submission + - Thunderbolt on Windows: Hardware and Performance Explored (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Intel's Light Peak technology eventually matured into what now is known in the market as Thunderbolt, which debuted initially as an Apple I/O exclusive last year. Light Peak was being developed by Intel in collaboration with Apple. It wasn't a huge surprise that Apple got an early exclusivity agreement, but there were actually a number of other partners on board as well, including Aja, Apogee, Avid, Blackmagic, LaCie, Promise and Western Digital. On the Windows front, Thunderbolt is still in its infancy and though there are still a few bugs to work out of systems and solutions, Thunderbolt capable motherboards and devices for Windows are starting to come to market. Performance-wise in Windows, the Promise RAID DAS system tested here offers near 1GB/s of peak read throughput and 500MB/s for writes, which certainly does leave even USB 3.0 SuperSpeed throughput in the dust."
Open Source

Submission + - The Best Unknown Open Source Projects (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Carla Schroder points to an interesting trend in open source: 'The growth of large distributed projects.' OpenTox, which uses computer modeling instead of animal testing for chemical toxicity testing, and AMEE (Avoiding Mass Extinctions Engine), which leverages open source software and methodologies to collect, map, measure and analyze carbon dioxide data, are two such projects. 'FOSS presents a natural platform for building large distributed projects because of the low barrier to entry — open code, open standards, and freely-available robust, high-quality high-performance software,' says Schroder."

Submission + - American Airlines tests streaming in-flight movies (aviationnewsdaily.com) 1

Submitted by wolog
wolog writes: "American began testing a wifi in-flight entertainment system last month on two wide-body jets and will expand the testing among customers this summer. If all goes well, American said, it will be the first domestic (US) airline to provide streaming service on all Wi-Fi-enabled planes, starting this fall. Of course, the airline industry offers in-flight entertainment not solely to keep passengers amused but also to generate revenue."

I'm wondering if some people here have already used this wifi streaming system, and get some feedback.. I'm curious how such system work in real life. Having 250+ wifi client connected inside a long metallic cylinder and doing some video streaming seems a really big challenge..
Earth

Submission + - Google Founders' Jets Caught on WSJ's Radar

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Via an FOIA request, the Wall Street Journal acquired records of every private aircraft flight recorded in the FAA's air-traffic management system for 2007 through 2010, using them to build a private jet tracker database (currently experiencing technical difficulties). Among the high fliers who found their records unblocked were Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, whose 767 and Gulfstream reportedly burned an estimated 52,000 gallons of aviation fuel and $430,000 on two round-trips from the U.S. mainland to Tahiti to catch last summer's total eclipse of the sun. A Google spokeswoman confirmed the pair's jaunt, but added that Page and Brin mitigated the greenhouse gas emissions from their aircraft usage by purchasing an even greater amount of carbon offsets. Tech-boom billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban seemed unfazed by the prospect of his past plane movements becoming public: 'I have a plane,' Cuban quipped. 'I bought it so I could use it. Shocking, isn't it?'
Desktops (Apple)

Submission + - Don't Panic Over the Latest Mac Malware Stories (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Many recent stories are suggesting a large increase in customers who are complaining about malware in Apple support forums. All of these posts are meant to persuade readers that, indeed, the Mac is becoming just like Windows: malware-laden and dangerous.

As with most stories Mac-related, recent malware-is-finally-coming stories attracted a lot of press. It made the rounds across the tech world, started a huge flame war on Slashdot, and set Twitter afire.

It has taken the Windows malware supply chain twenty years to evolve to its current level of stratification and sophistication. It stands to reason that supply chain won’t be replicated overnight for the Mac.

Here is why Mac OS might not be as attractive to attackers as you might think and how the Mac is relatively low-risk computing platform this month, and will continue to be one next month, too.

Submission + - Twitter sued by British Soccer Player (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by norriefc
norriefc writes: Here in the UK super injunctions are all the rage. These are injunctions that bar the press from even mentioning that the injunction exist. Recently a twitter account exposed several of these super injunctions and named several people involved and what their alleged indiscretions were. Now one "famous" soccer player is trying to sue Twitter and the the yet to be named tweeters for invasion of privacy, apparently in ignorance of the Streisand effect. I'm doubtful of an American company paying much attention to UK anti free speech laws
Apple

Submission + - AppleCare tells users "you're on your own" (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Dominare
Dominare writes: TFA: "A confidential internal Apple document tells the company's front-line support people how to handle customers who call about malware infections: Don't confirm or deny that an infection exists, and whatever you do, don't try to remove it."

So basically, now that Macs have their own equivalent of XP Antivirus the best you can hope for is to be pointed at the store where you can buy something that may or may not fix your problem.... nice.
Chrome

Submission + - Google Is Serious, Chrome 13 Without URL Bar (conceivablytech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A few months ago, we heard about Google playing with the idea of killing the URL bar in its Chrome browser. Chrome 13 provides a first view how this feature will work. There is a new flag and a context menu option that effectively kill the traditionally URL bar and move shortened version into each tab.
The Internet

Submission + - 23,000 file sharers targeted in the latest suit (wired.com)

Submitted by wiedzmin
wiedzmin writes: Subpoenas are expected to go out this week to ISP's in what could be a biggest BitTorrent downloading case in U.S. history. At least 23,000 file sharers are being targeted by the U.S. Copyright Group for downloading "Expendables". Company appears to have adopted Righthaven's strategy in blanket-suing large numbers of defendants and offering an option to quickly settle online for a moderate payment. The IP addresses of defendants have allegedly been collected by paid snoops capturing IP addresses of all peers who were downloading or seeding Sylvester Stallone's flick last year. I am curious to see how this will tie into the the BitTorrent case ruling made earlier this year, indicating that an IP address does not uniquely identify the person behind it.
Chrome

Submission + - New Chrome Bugs Bypass Sandbox, ASLR and DEP (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Researchers at the French security firm VUPEN say that they have discovered several new vulnerabilities in Google Chrome that enable them to bypass the browser's sandbox, as well as ASLR and DEP and run arbitrary code on a vulnerable machine.

The company said that they are not going to disclose the details of the bugs right now, but that they have shared information on them with some of their government customers through its customer program. The vulnerabilities are present in the latest version of Chrome running on Windows 7, VUPEN said.
Science

Submission + - High-Tech Gas Drilling Is Fouling Drinking Water (sciencemag.org)

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.

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