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Comment Re: Sony Xperia Z3 (Score 2) 208

by Mof-Tan (#50312203) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Big Battery Phone?

Yes, the Sonys have great battery life nowadays. In fact I would argue that they offer the best Android phones these days. But for some mysterious reason U.S. operators are effectively blocking them from the market. When was the last time you saw a high-end Sony at a Verizon or AT&T stand?

Comment Re:Killer features? (Score 2) 88

by Mof-Tan (#48460305) Attached to: Revisiting Open Source Social Networking Alternatives

I think you are wrong about this. I do think people actually want something like circles from Google+. Google+ failed for other reasons, mainly the fact that everyone is on Facebook and before they get to G+ things will be very quiet there.
 
You need to get past the first hurdle of getting people onto the new social media platform. Then you can improve it.
 
The Facebook lists have failed because it is such a pain to use. Instead people simply don't post stuff other than very banal and general "for-everyone" posts.
Iphone

Consumer Reports: New iPhones Not As Bendy As Believed 304

Posted by Soulskill from the but-mah-hashtags dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Over the past several days, we've been hearing reports about some amount of users noticing that their brand new iPhone 6 Plus is bending in their pockets. The pictures and videos shown so far have kicked off an investigation, and Consumer Reports has done one of the more scientific tests so far. They found that the iPhone 6 Plus takes 90 pounds of pressure before it permanently deforms. The normal iPhone 6 took even less: 70 lbs. They tested other phones as well: HTC One (M8): 70 lbs, LG G3: 130 lbs, iPhone 5: 130 lbs, Samsung Galaxy Note 3: 150 lbs. The Verge also did a report on how Apple torture-tests its devices before shipping them. Apple's standard is about 55 lbs of pressure, though it does so thousands of times before looking for bends. One analysis suggests that Apple's testing procedure only puts pressure on the middle of the phone, which doesn't sufficiently evaluate the weakened area where holes have been created for volume buttons. Consumer Reports' test presses on the middle of the device as well.
Security

Tinba Trojan Targets Major US Banks 61

Posted by samzenpus from the protect-ya-neck dept.
An anonymous reader writes Tinba, the tiny (20 KB) banking malware with man-in-the-browser and network traffic sniffing capabilities, is back. After initially being made to target users of a small number of banks, that list has been amplified and now includes 26 financial institutions mostly in the US and Canada, but some in Australia and Europe as well. Tinba has been modified over the years, in an attempt to bypass new security protections set up by banks, and its source code has been leaked on underground forums a few months ago. In this new campaign, the Trojan gets delivered to users via the Rig exploit kit, which uses Flash and Silverlight exploits. The victims get saddled with the malware when they unknowingly visit a website hosting the exploit kit."
Crime

Private Police Intelligence Network Shares Data and Targets Cash 142

Posted by samzenpus from the mine-now-I-take-it dept.
Advocatus Diaboli writes Operating in collaboration with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal entities, Black Asphalt members exchanged tens of thousands of reports about American motorists, many of whom had not been charged with any crimes, according to a company official and hundreds of internal documents obtained by The Post. For years, it received no oversight by government, even though its reports contained law enforcement sensitive information about traffic stops and seizures, along with hunches and personal data about drivers, including Social Security numbers and identifying tattoos. Black Asphalt also has served as a social hub for a new brand of highway interdictors, a group that one Desert Snow official has called 'a brotherhood.' Among other things, the site hosts an annual competition to honor police who seize the most contraband and cash on the highways. As part of the contest, Desert Snow encouraged state and local patrol officers to post seizure data along with photos of themselves with stacks of currency and drugs. Some of the photos appear in a rousing hard-rock video that the Guthrie, Okla.-based Desert Snow uses to promote its training courses.
Security

Mozilla 1024-Bit Cert Deprecation Leaves 107,000 Sites Untrusted 67

Posted by Soulskill from the 2048-bits-ought-to-be-enough-for-anyone dept.
msm1267 writes: Mozilla has deprecated 1024-bit RSA certificate authority certificates in Firefox 32 and Thunderbird. While there are pluses to the move such as a requirement for longer, stronger keys, at least 107,000 websites will no longer be trusted by Mozilla. Data from HD Moore's Project Sonar, which indexes more than 20 million websites, found 107,535 sites using a cert signed by what will soon be an untrusted CA certificate. Grouping those 107,000-plus sites by certificate expiration date, the results show that 76,185 certificates had expired as of Aug. 25; of the 65 million certificates in the total scan, 845,599 had expired but were still in use as of Aug. 25, Moore said.
ISS

Space Station's 'Cubesat Cannon' Has Gone Rogue 143

Posted by Soulskill from the Look-Dave,-I-can-see-you're-really-upset-about-this. dept.
astroengine writes: Last night (Thursday), two more of Planet Lab's shoebox-sized Earth imaging satellites launched themselves from aboard the International Space Station, the latest in a series of technical mysteries involving a commercially owned CubeSat deployer located outside Japan's Kibo laboratory module. Station commander Steve Swanson was storing some blood samples in one of the station's freezers Friday morning when he noticed that the doors on NanoRack's cubesat deployer were open, said NASA mission commentator Pat Ryan. Flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston determined that two CubeSats had been inadvertently released. "No crew members or ground controllers saw the deployment. They reviewed all the camera footage and there was no views of it there either," Ryan said.

Comment Why is Slashdot & tech media behind on this st (Score 1) 334

As a European living in a country with a fairly well working public health system (Sweden), and a tech background, I am amazed that Slashdot and other tech media is behind the curve on this story. Why is NYTimes and other mainstream media the ones running with this and finding the background etc? Damn common sense tech people in the U.S.! Get on top of this to fix it!
Space

Diamond Rain In Saturn 177

Posted by Soulskill from the diamonds-are-a-leviathan's-best-friend dept.
Taco Cowboy writes "Back in 1999, it was postulated that diamonds may rain from the sky in the atmospheres of our solar system's gas giants. Now, research has shown that diamond rains on Saturn are more than probable. '"We don't want to give people the impression that we have a Titanic-sized diamondberg floating around," said researcher Mona Delitsky, of California Specialty Engineering, "We're thinking they're more like something you can hold in your hand." Recent data compiled by planetary scientists ... has been combined with newly published pressure temperature diagrams of Jupiter and Saturn. These diagrams, known as adiabats, allow researchers to decipher at what interior level that diamond would become stable. They also allow for calculations at lower levels – regions where both temperature and pressure are so concentrated that diamond becomes a liquid. Imagine diamond rain or rivulets of pure gemstone.' 'At even greater depths, the scientists say the diamond will eventually melt to form liquid diamond, which may then form a stable ocean layer.'
Cellphones

Sony Pondering Game/Phone Hybrid 80

Posted by Soulskill from the too-little-too-late dept.
A report from a Japanese business publication says Sony is currently making plans to develop a cell phone with gaming capabilities in order to compete with the iPhone. "Sony plans to set up a project team as early as July to develop a new product that combines functions of its portable game player and Sony Ericsson's mobile phones, the Nikkei said." This comes shortly after news that the new PSP Go will be open to "non-gaming applications."
Software

Cost-Conscious Companies Turn To Open Source 249

Posted by CmdrTaco from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.
Martyr4BK writes "BusinessWeek has a slew of special reports today on open source software discussing the benefits for buyers who are cost conscious and open source being the silver lining for the economic slump. They even have a slideshow of 'OSS alternatives' like Linux, Apache, MySQL, Firefox, Xen, Pentaho, OpenOffice.org, Drupal, Alfresco, SugarCRM, and Asterisk. These are all good examples (we use a bunch of them already); what other open source software can I use to drop my company's IT costs, and maybe get a decent bonus for the year?"

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