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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 + - 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?
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.
Android

Submission + - The Android SDK is longer free software. (fsfe.org) 1

Submitted by
tian2992
tian2992 writes: "The new terms for the Android SDK now include phrases such as "you may not: (a) copy (except for backup purposes), modify, adapt, redistribute, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or create derivative works of the SDK or any part of the SDK" among other non-Free software friendly terms, as noted by FSF Europe's Torsten Grote. Replicant, a free fork of Android announced the release of Replicant SDK 4.0 based on the latest sources of Android SDK without the new terms."
AI

Submission + - Kinect's AI breakthrough explained (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: Microsoft Research has just published a scientific paper and a video showing how the Kinect body tracking algorithm works — it's almost as amazing as some of the uses the Kinect has been put to! This article explains how it does it.
Android

Kongregate App Pulled From Android Market 139

Posted by Soulskill from the gone-in-a-flash dept.
itwbennett writes "Last week Google took a page from Apple's book and pulled the Arcade by Kongregate app from the Android Market for violating its terms of service. In particular, the part that forbids distributing 'any Product whose primary purpose is to facilitate the distribution of Products outside of the Market.' As Kongregate's Jim Greer explained to Joystiq, the app is essentially a custom web browser that loads in a Flash game from the mobile version of Kongregate. Plus, it will cache the game so you can play offline. And this may be the feature that got it yanked, speculates Ryan Kim at GigaOm."
Role Playing (Games)

Final Fantasy XIII-2 Announced 152

Posted by Soulskill from the you're-doing-it-wrong dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Square-Enix has announced Final Fantasy XIII-2 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. According to Gamespot, 'The newly christened Final Fantasy XIII-2 continues the adventures of Lightning and her team of RPG vagabonds in a brand new adventure, utilizing the long-in-development engine (and, probably, some of the art assets) that powered the original game. And because Square doesn't have to spend all of that extra time developing the engine, players won’t have to wait nearly as long to get their hands on this newest iteration of the game. According to Square Enix, Final Fantasy XIII-2 (which, in case you haven't guessed, is a game title that is just as terrible to type out as it is to say with your mouth) is on track for release in Japan this year. [The game] should be available in English-speaking territories by "next winter."'"
Security

ATM Vendors Threaten, Stop Research Presentation 134

Posted by Soulskill from the money-inside-atms-wants-to-be-free dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A presentation about 'The Underground Economy,' by Italian white hat hacker and security expert Raoul Chiesa, was replaced at the last minute during last week's Hack In The Box conference. The reason behind this cancellation was that Chiesa received legal pressure from ATM vendors over the fact that the originally scheduled presentation covers details of various techniques and exploits of vulnerabilities that cyber criminals use to break into ATMs — flaws that have been known for a long time."

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