Nerval's Lobster writes "Wikipedia, which features nearly 4 million articles in English alone, is widely considered a godsend for high school students on a tight paper deadline. But for University of Illinois researcher Kalev Leetaru, Wikipedia's volumes of crowd-sourced articles are also an enormous dataset, one he mined for insights into the history of globalization. He made use of Wikipedia's 37GB of English-language data — in particular, the evolving connections between various locations across the globe over a period of years. 'I put every coordinate on a map with a date stamp,' Leetaru told The New York Times. 'It gave me a map of how the world is connected.' You can view the time lapse/data visualization on YouTube."
OverTheGeicoE writes "Over a month after Sen. Rand Paul announced his desire to pull the plug on TSA, he has finally released his legislation that he tweets will 'abolish the #TSA & establish a passengers "Bill of Rights."' Although the tweet sounds radical, the press release describing his proposed legislation is much less so. 'Abolition' really means privatization; one of Paul's proposals would simply force all screenings to be conducted by private screeners. The proposed changes in the 'passenger Bill of Rights' appear to involve slight modifications to existing screening methods at best. Many of his 'rights' are already guaranteed under current law, like the right to opt-out of body scanning. Others can only vaguely be described as rights, like 'expansion of canine screening.' Here's to the new boss..."
MojoKid writes "Did you know that the FCC hasn't updated its guidelines regarding maximum radiation levels in mobile devices since 1996? FCC chairman Julius Genachowski is apparently aware of this, because he's looking to launch a formal inquiry into the matter. In a statement that was recently circulated, the FCC isn't exactly concerned that current standards are too lax, but it makes sense to periodically review standards for an industry that changes and evolves so rapidly and dramatically. There has been much debate in recent years about the potential danger of radiation from cell phones, and although there has been some study on the subject, there is not yet a general consensus on whether there is a real danger from mobile device radiation, and if there is, what the acceptable levels might be."
Sparrowvsrevolution writes "In the wake of confirmation that the U.S. government was involved in the creation of Stuxnet and likely Flame, a look over job listings on defense contractor sites shows just how explicitly the Pentagon and the firms that service it are recruiting offense-oriented hackers. Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, and Booz Allen have all posted job ads that require skills like 'exploit development,' have titles like 'Windows Attack Developer,' or asks them to 'plan, execute, and assess an Offensive Cyberspace Operation.'"
alphadogg writes "Linux developers will soon have a chance to compete for prizes of laptops and smartphones, thanks to Canonical's announcement this week of the Ubuntu App Showdown contest. Developers will have from June 18 until July 9 — a total of three weeks — to create an app using Canonical's Quickly development tool, which combines Python and GTK into a single Ubuntu-centric package. The resulting apps will be judged by a five-member panel, with the developers of the top three receiving new Nokia N9 smartphones."
An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian government is expected to pass copyright reform next week. The bill's anti-circumvention rules are a mirror image of the DMCA, leading many to conclude that the government simply caved to U.S. led lobbying pressure. Now Michael Geist provides the evidence — a secret series of unreported meetings between MPAA head Christopher Dodd and Canada's foreign minister, heritage minister, and a senior industry official, just weeks after the bill was introduced and days before SOPA landed in the U.S."
scibri writes "Biotech giant Monsanto is one step closer to losing billions of dollars in revenues from its genetically-modified Roundup Ready soya beans, after the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled the company must repay royalties collected over the past decade. Since GM crops were legalized in 2005, Monsanto has charged Brazilian farmers royalties of 2% on their sales of Roundup Ready soya beans. The company also tests Brazilian soya beans that are sold as non-GM — if they turn out to be Roundup Ready, the company charges the farmers 3%. Farmers challenged this as an unjust tax on their business. In April a regional court ruled against Monsanto, though that ruling has been put on hold pending an appeal. The Supreme Court, meanwhile has said that whatever the final ruling is, it will apply throughout the whole country."
MrSeb writes "Researchers from Texas A&M University claim to have pioneered unbreakable cryptography based on the laws of thermodynamics; classical physics, rather than quantum. In theory, quantum crypto (based on the laws of quantum mechanics) can guarantee the complete secrecy of transmitted messages: To spy upon a quantum-encrypted message would irrevocably change the content of the message, thus making the messages unbreakable. In practice, though, while the communication of the quantum-encrypted messages is secure, the machines on either end of the link can never be guaranteed to be flawless. According to Laszlo Kish and his team from Texas A&M, however, there is a way to build a completely secure end-to-end system — but instead of using quantum mechanics, you have to use classical physics: the second law of thermodynamics, to be exact. Kish's system is made up of a wire (the communication channel), and two resistors on each end (one representing binary 0, the other binary 1). Attached to the wire is a power source that has been treated with Johnson-Nyquist noise (thermal noise). Johnson noise is often the basis for creating random numbers with computer hardware."
Barence writes "U.S. government officials could be working under cover at Microsoft to help the country's cyber-espionage programme, according to one leading security expert. According to Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at security firm F-Secure, the claim is a logical conclusion to a series of recent discoveries and disclosures linking the U.S. government to 2010's Stuxnet attack on Iran and ties between Stuxnet and the recent Flame attack. 'It's plausible that if there is an operation under way and being run by a U.S. intelligence agency it would make perfect sense for them to plant moles inside Microsoft to assist in pulling it off, just as they would in any other undercover operation,' he said. 'It's not certain, but it would be common sense to expect they would do that.'"
beaverdownunder writes "In an effort to combat fraudulent claims lodged within its Centrelink welfare-payment agency, the Australian Government has asked auction-site eBay to name all Aussies who sold more than $20,000 worth of goods in the last year. Should someone be found to have been doing such a high-volume of business on eBay while claiming Centrelink benefits but not declaring that income, they could potentially face prosecution. However, the president of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, Terry O'Gorman, says this action is a gross invasion of privacy. 'What we say should happen is that if police have probable cause for investigating someone, they go to a magistrate, they get a warrant and they access that person's eBay records that way,' he said."
An anonymous reader writes "The Ethiopian government has passed legislation criminalizing the use of VoIP services like Skype and Google Talk. Anyone using these services within the country now faces up to 15 years in prison. 'Ethiopian authorities argue that they imposed these bans because of "national security concerns" and to protect the state's telecommunications monopoly. The country only has one ISP, the state-owned Ethio Telecom, and has been filtering its citizen's Internet access for quite some time now to suppress opposition blogs and other news outlets. ... Reporters Without Borders also reports that Ethio Telecom installed a system to block access to the Tor network, which allows users to surf the Web anonymously. The organization notes that the ISP must be using relatively sophisticated Deep Packet Inspection to filter out this traffic.'"
FeatherBoa writes "A Manitoba man who was one of the first entrepreneurs in the cross-border online pharmacy industry has been arrested in Florida and is facing charges related to the sale of foreign and counterfeit medicines. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration claimed many of the drugs promoted as Canadian actually came from other countries. An FDA spokesperson commented, 'Many of these websites are operating outside of the United States. However, the internet's broad reach allows these websites to reach U.S. consumers.'"
JamieKitson writes "British primary school (elementary to those of you in the U.S.) pupil Martha/'Veg' has been taking photographs of her school dinners and writing about them at her blog Never Seconds since April. The blog has become popular, and Martha decided to do something with the popularity: namely, raising money for an international school dinners charity. Unfortunately, the local council, Argyll and Bute, having apparently not heard of the Streisand effect, didn't like the publicity that her blog was generating and have shut her down. They said the blog made the catering staff fear for their jobs. There is a happy ending though: donations have gone through the roof and she has already passed her target."
Why get off of the couch when you don't have to? Today's remotes are cooler, savvier, and more high-tech than ever.
ARM has developed a new, entry-level version of its Mali graphics processor that could help expand the market for low-cost Android tablets.
With market forecasts looking dour and companies including Nokia and Texas Instruments trimming expectations this week, concerns for the tech sector are...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is challenging a Washington State law that criminalizes advertising for underage prostitution, claiming it runs afoul of...
Salesforce.com is rolling out a number of upgrades to its Force.com platform in conjunction with the Summer '12 update to the vendor's cloud CRM (customer...
Now an iOS 6 jailbreak is established, other developers are enabling all kinds of features, like 3D mapping on an iPhone 4.
Will new device, if real, compete with iPad or Kindle Fire?
This free Android app provides information-rich contact management, letting you keep much closer tabs on your clients, co-workers, and businesses.
Virtualization software vendor VMware has released security patches for its Workstation, Player, Fusion, ESXi and ESX products in order to address two...
The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC), well known for its computer system benchmarks, is planning to extend its testing methodology to measure...
The purported next-generation 13-inch MacBook would have a screen resolution of 2560 pixels by 1600 pixels, and feature MacBook Air-like qualities.
Vizio's combination of low prices, high-end materials, and solid specs on these Ultrabooks will likely make a big splash in the Windows PC market,
The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration will step up work on an effort to develop mobile privacy standards on July 12, when the...
In This week's roundup of free games we've got a low-rez puzzle game and a platformer about breaking out of an insane asylum.
Motorola Solutions on Friday acquired mobile computer maker Psion for US$200 million, as the company moves ahead to distinguish itself following the Motorola...
Here are a few features Apple breezed by at Monday's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote.
The Retina MacBook Pro is not only a groundbreaking release, combining stunning performance and portability in a 15-inch Mac laptop.
The Barnes &Noble Nook tablet's Web traffic overtook that of the Kindle Fire for the first time in early June.
Cloud storage utility Dropbox updated its iPhone app with automatic uploads of photos and videos from the iPhone's camera roll.
On Monday Microsoft tries again to crack the tablet market with its own slate, according to reports. Can it succeed?
Hybrid drives, which combine NAND flash with spinning disk, are selling like molasses compared to SSDs and SSDs with cache, according to IHS iSuppli.
If Microsoft buys Yammer, as unconfirmed press reports indicate, Susan Gautsch hopes the Yammer team won't lose the qualities she has appreciates.
Amazon on Thursday released updates to the Kindle app for iOS, along with the Kindle Cloud Reader Web app. The updates add in support for children's books.
Apple's new Retina MacBook Pro is a harbinger of future changes to the company's laptop line, analysts said today.
China's Internet censors freely allow users in the country to criticize the government, but are quick to delete social media posts with the potential to start...
Samsung is restoring production at a flat-panel display factory that briefly lost power Thursday evening, but is still unsure of what effects the outage will...
Japanese game and toy maker Tomy is showing a host of innovative controls for its new products on display at the International Tokyo Toy Show.
A U.S. Judge has scheduled an injunction hearing in a patent dispute between Apple and Motorola Mobility, after raising the possibility last week that the case...
A grand jury indictment unsealed on Thursday against a 23-year-old American man highlights the extent to which U.S. government computer networks are under siege...
Fast food franchises have a larger presence in many communities than next generation, high-speed gigabit networks, a fact the White House says it's attempting to address.
Vizio, known for its TVs, entered the PC business Thursday, announcing new laptops and all-in-ones that all start at the same price, $898.
Russian mobile operator Yota bravely stepped out with one of the world's first large-scale WiMax networks in 2008. Making the switch to LTE four years later...
After last week's breach of the LinkedIn site, analysts are debating whether the attack will cause long-term damage to the social network.
Facebook started promoting security tips at the top of each user's home page, with a link to information about scams, passwords and how to stay safe.
Plaster you wall in the pixelated world of Mario with this very long poster that displays a whole level from the original Super Mario Bros. game.
Japanese electronics maker Sony has announced two new smartphones - the Xperia Miro and Xperia Tipo - both running on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
Commencement address by Eric Schmidt, Google Chairman, to the Boston University Class of 2012 (May 20, 2012).
Reddit, a popular link-sharing and discussion site, announced this week that it has begun blocking content from entire domains.
By the time back-to-school shopping begins, we should have our pick of budget Ivy Bridge laptops and desktops.
Thunderbolt ports have reached Windows PCs with Acer's Aspire S5 ultrabook, expanding the availability of the technology beyond Macs.
New legislation in the U.S. Senate would outlaw most third-party charges on wireline telephone bills in an effort to combat unauthorized billing.
A shift is afoot in the global tablet market, IDG Connect's survey data suggests.
SAP technology chief Vishal Sikka has reaffirmed that the company will have its core ERP (enterprise resource planning) software running on the HANA in-memory...
Microsoft will host media events in Los Angeles on June 18 and in San Francisco on June 20. Best guesses so far focus on Windows 8 RT tablets and/or Windows Phone 8 announcements.
MIT engineers develop an implantable fuel cell that pulls electricity from glucose to power neural implants.
Although taking a few months longer than expected, Automattic and the volunteer developers have finally released version 3.4 of the widely used WordPress...
The SD Association has informed Eye-Fi CEO Yuval Koren that his company's intellectual-property claims on the iSDIO standard have been reviewed, but Eye-Fi is waiting for the results of the review.
Love the game Portal? Then you really need to watch the gun in action around a typical home.
Oracle has issued an "urgent bulletin" asking desktop administrators to immediately turn off the Java Runtime Environment auto-update option "for all Windows...