Silk Road Reloaded Ditches Tor for a More Anonymous Network

Trying to shut down Silk Road, and any of its many-headed hydra reiterations, seems to be the ultimate lesson in futility. According to Motherboard , a new version of the online black market, called Silk Road Reloaded, launched today on the I2p anonymous network, dealing with several altcoin currencies. Read more…

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Silk Road Reloaded Ditches Tor for a More Anonymous Network

Google Translate Is Getting Upgraded To Take on Skype

According to The New York Times , Google isn’t going to let Skype runaway with all the high-tech, language barrier-smashing fun . An upcoming update will allow the app to auto-recognize popular languages and translate them into text in real time. Read more…

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Google Translate Is Getting Upgraded To Take on Skype

Chilling Effects DMCA Archive Censors Itself

An anonymous reader sends this report from TorrentFreak: The much-praised Chilling Effects DMCA archive has taken an unprecedented step by censoring its own website. Facing criticism from copyright holders, the organization decided to wipe its presence from all popular search engines. A telling example of how pressure from rightsholders causes a chilling effect on free speech. … “After much internal discussion the Chilling Effects project recently made the decision to remove the site’s notice pages from search engines, ” Berkman Center project coordinator Adam Holland informs TF. “Our recent relaunch of the site has brought it a lot more attention, and as a result, we’re currently thinking through ways to better balance making this information available for valuable study, research, and journalism, while still addressing the concerns of people whose information appears in the database.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Chilling Effects DMCA Archive Censors Itself

3D Cameras Are About To Go Mainstream

An anonymous reader writes: Vox’s Timothy B. Lee reports that everyday imaging is about to take a big step forward as 3D photography finally makes it to prime time. Technological advances in 3D processing algorithms have accelerated at the same time the equipment for taking these shots has become significantly cheaper. Those facts combined mean that we’re going to be seeing 3D cameras become much more prevalent very quickly. “If things go according to Intel’s plan, within a few years all of our tablets and laptops, and perhaps even our smartphones, will have fancy 3D cameras instead of boring old 2D ones.” Throw in the fledgling industries of commercial camera drones and autonomous vehicles, and you have a lot of major companies throwing huge amounts of research money into making cheap 3D cameras work. “The result will be a proliferation of devices, from tablets to self-driving cars, that understand and interact with the world around them.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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3D Cameras Are About To Go Mainstream

The Chevrolet Bolt Will Be A 200-Mile Electric Tesla Fighter For $30,000

It seems that General Motors has a couple electric surprises in store for next week’s Detroit Auto Show. In addition to the all-new 2016 Chevrolet Volt extended range plug-in hybrid, they’re also cooking up a pure electric crossover aimed right at Tesla Motors for a fraction of the price — and it’s called the Chevrolet Bolt. Read more…

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The Chevrolet Bolt Will Be A 200-Mile Electric Tesla Fighter For $30,000

NYPD ordered to disclose records of secret X-ray vans

After three years’ worth of court battles, Propublica has won a court order forcing the NYPD to release details of its X-ray surveillance vans, whose radiation risk has never been independently studied or verified (much like the notorious pornoscanners, which were supposedly harmless, but which turned out to be sources of dangerous radiation). Read the rest

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NYPD ordered to disclose records of secret X-ray vans

Google Sees Biggest Search Traffic Drop Since 2009 As Yahoo Gains Ground

helix2301 writes: Google’s grip on the Internet search market loosened in December, as the search engine saw its largest drop since 2009. That loss was Yahoo’s gain, as the Marissa Mayer-helmed company added almost 2% from November to December to bring its market share back into double digits. Google’s lead remains overwhelming, with just more than three-quarters of search, according to SatCounter Global Stats. Microsoft’s Bing gained some momentum to take 12.5% of the market. Yahoo now has 10.4%. All other search engines combined to take 1.9%. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Sees Biggest Search Traffic Drop Since 2009 As Yahoo Gains Ground

Intel 5th Gen Core Series Performance Preview With 2015 Dell XPS 13

MojoKid writes: Intel’s strategically timed CES 2015 launch of their new 5th Gen Core Series processors for notebooks was met with a reasonably warm reception, though it’s always difficult to rise above the noise of CES chatter. Performance claims for Intel’s new chip promise major gains in graphics and more modest increases in standard compute applications. However, the biggest bet Intel placed on the new Broadwell-U architecture is performance-per-watt throughput and battery life in premium notebook products that are now in production with major OEM partners. A few manufacturers were early out of the gate with new Core i5 5XXX series-based machines, however, none of the major players caught the same kind of buzz that Dell received, with the introduction of their new XPS 13 Ultrabook with its near bezel-less 13-inch WQHD (3200X1800) display. As expected, the Core i5-5200U in this machine offered performance gains of anywhere from 10 to 20 percent, in round numbers, depending on the benchmark. In gaming and graphics testing is where the new 5200U chip took the largest lead over the previous gen Core i5-4200U CPU, which is one of the most common processors found in typical ultrabook style 13-inch machines. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Intel 5th Gen Core Series Performance Preview With 2015 Dell XPS 13

Samsung Unveils First PCIe 3.0 x4-Based M.2 SSD, Delivering Speeds of Over 2GB/s

Deathspawner writes: Samsung’s SM951 is an unassuming gumstick SSD — it has no skulls or other bling — but it’s what’s underneath that counts: PCIe 3.0 x4 support. With that support, Samsung is able to boast speeds of 2, 150MB/s read and 1, 550MB/s write. But with such speeds comes an all-too-common caveat: you’ll probably have to upgrade your computer to take true advantage of it. For comparison, Samsung says a Gen 2 PCIe x4 slot will limit the SM951 to just 1, 600MB/s and 1, 350MB/s (or 130K/100K IOPS), respectively. Perhaps now is a bad time to point out a typical Z97 motherboard only has a PCIe 2nd Gen x2 (yes, x2) connection to its M.2 slot, meaning one would need to halve those figures again. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Samsung Unveils First PCIe 3.0 x4-Based M.2 SSD, Delivering Speeds of Over 2GB/s

USB 3.1 and Type-C: The only stuff at CES that everyone is going to use

I have a USB Type-C cable—yeah, the reversible one . I can’t connect it to anything I own yet, but it’s a real thing that’s in production and shipping to companies. Most of CES amounts to so much smoke and mirrors and vague hand-waving about the Future, but I can say with confidence that this little port is a thing that everyone reading this will start using in the next couple of years. I got the cable from the USB Implementers Forum as part of a general update on the state of both USB 3.1 and the new reversible Type-C connector. There wasn’t much information about either spec that we haven’t already heard, but the difference is that the connector and spec update are very close to being in our hands. Early adopters, and where we’ll see Type-C connectors Products using either the Type-C connector, the USB 3.1 spec, or both are already floating around CES—there’s the Nokia N1 Android tablet on the mobile side, and MSI’s new USB 3.1 laptop and motherboard on the PC side. By the end of the year, we expect to see more mainstream products taking up the standard as well. Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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USB 3.1 and Type-C: The only stuff at CES that everyone is going to use