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Submission + - The Mind-Reading Gadget for Dogs that Got Funded, but Didn't Get Built (ieee.org)

Submitted by the_newsbeagle
the_newsbeagle writes: Crowdfunding campaigns that fail to deliver may be all too common, but some flameouts merit examination. Like this brain-scanning gadget for dogs, which promised to translate their barks into human language. It's not quite as goofy as it sounds: The campaigners planned to use standard EEG tech to record the dogs' brainwaves, and said they could correlate those electrical patterns with general states of mind like excitement, hunger, and curiosity.

The campaign got a ton of attention in the press and raised twice the money it aimed for. But then the No More Woof team seemed to vanish, leaving backers furious. This article explains what went wrong with the campaign, and what it says about the state of neurotech gadgets for consumers.

Submission + - Galileo satellites experiencing multiple clock failures (bbc.com)

Submitted by elgatozorbas
elgatozorbas writes: According to a BBC article, the onboard atomic clocks that drive the satellite-navigation signals on Europe's Galileo network have been failing at an alarming rate.

Across the 18 satellites now in orbit, nine clocks have stopped operating. Three are traditional rubidium devices; six are the more precise hydrogen maser instruments that were designed to give Galileo superior performance to the American GPS network.

Submission + - Tech firm Creates Trump Monitor for Stock Markets

Submitted by randomErr
randomErr writes: London-based fintech firm Trading.co.uk is launching an app that will generate trading alerts for shares based on Donald Trump social media comments. Watching the U.S. President-elect's personal Twitter feed has become a regular pastime for the fund managers and traders. Trump knocked several billion off the value of pharmaceutical stocks a week ago by saying they were "getting away with murder" with their prices. Comments earlier this week on China moved the dollar and a pair of December tweets sent the share prices of Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) and Boeing (BA.N) spiraling lower.

Submission + - Server Ransom Attacks Hit CouchDB, Hadoop, and ElasticSearch Servers (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Two weeks after cybercriminal groups started to hijack and hold for ransom MongoDB servers, similar attacks are now taking place against CouchDB, Hadoop, and ElasticSearch servers. According to the latest tallies, the number of hijacked MongoDB servers is 34,000 (out of 69,000 available on Shodan), 4,600 ElasticSearch clusters (out of 33,000), 124 Hadoop datastores (out of 5,400), and 443 CouchDB databases (out of 4,600).

Furthermore, the group that has hijacked the most MongoDB and ElasticSearch servers, is also selling the scripts it used for the attacks.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Should Commercial Software Prices Be Pegged To A Country's GDP?

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Commercial software — as opposed to free open source software — frequently creates the following dilemma: A software X that costs 2,000 Dollars may be perfectly affordable for someone in America, Germany, Switzerland or Japan. The price is "normal" and the software pays for itself after Y weeks or months of use. When the same software X is also sold for 2,000 Dollars in Egypt, Mali, Bangladesh or Sudan, the situation is the opposite — the price is "far too high" and the software will NOT pay for itself after Y weeks or months of use. So here is an interesting idea: Why don't software makers look at the average income level in a given country — per capita GDP for example — and adjust their software prices in these countries accordingly? Most Software makers in the U.S. and EU currently insist on charging the full U.S. or EU price in much poorer countries. "Rampant piracy" and "low sales" is often the result in these countries. Why not change this by charging lower software prices in less wealthy countries?

Submission + - Mozilla Releases The Internet Health Report, An Open-Source Document

Submitted by Krystalo
Krystalo writes: Fresh off its brand redesign, Mozilla has released The Internet Health Report, an open-source initiative to document the state of the internet, combining research and reporting from multiple sources. The report, which will be improved and expanded throughout the year, covers five key topics: decentralization, digital inclusion, open innovation, privacy and security, and web literacy.
The Almighty Buck

Rapidshare Trying To Convert Pirates Into Customers 227

Posted by Soulskill from the arrr-me-hearties dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak: "The file-hosting service Rapidshare is seeking major entertainment industry partners for an online store [to which links containing infringing material will redirect]. The plan is an attempt to bridge the gap between copyright holders and users of the site who distribute infringing material. Similar to many other companies that operate in the file-sharing business, Rapidshare often finds itself caught between two fires. On the one hand it wants to optimize the user experience, but by doing so they have to respect the rights holders to avoid being continuously dragged to court. To ease the minds of some major executives in the entertainment industry, Rapidshare's General Manager Bobby Chang has revealed an ambitious plan through which copyright holders could benefit from the file-hosting service. At the same time, Chang says that his company will target uploaders of copyrighted material — whom he refers to as criminals — more aggressively."
Music

Submission + - RIAA claims ownership of all artists' royalties

Submitted by ISurfTooMuch
ISurfTooMuch writes: With the furor over the impending rate hike for Internet radio stations, wouldn't a good solution be for them to simply not play RIAA-affiliated labels' music and focus on independent artists? Sounds good, except that the RIAA's affiliate organization SoundExchange claims it has the right to collect royalties for any artist, no matter if they have signed with an RIAA label or not. You can read all about it over at Daily Kos, including excerpts from the SoundExchange Web site. It's amazing how the RIAA looks more and more like the Mafia each day.

Feed Microsoft readies colorful QR code competitor (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

While QR codes and their ilk have been big in Japan for years, they haven't exactly been quick to catch on 'round these parts, where we've had to be content with old school bar bodes for our product identification needs. Microsoft looks to be trying to change that situation, however, with the company set to roll out its so-called High Capacity Color Barcode (HCCB) later this year with the assistance of the International Standard Audiovisual Number International Agency (ISAN-IA). While their use will apparently initially be limited to DVD media, Microsoft eventually sees the codes being used on TV, in magazines, and on billboards (among other places), from which you'll be able to scan 'em with your cellphone to get additional information about a product. Of course, good looks are the codes' only selling point, with Microsoft also promising that they'll make anything tagged with them harder to counterfeit.

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