John Gruber believes that iOS 7.1 should ship any day now–because the app required to stream Apple’

John Gruber believes that iOS 7.1 should ship any day now—because the app required to stream Apple’s SXSW iTunes Festival, which starts in a week, requires the new OS. Let’s see! Read more…        

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John Gruber believes that iOS 7.1 should ship any day now–because the app required to stream Apple’

F-Secure: Android Accounted For 97% of All Mobile Malware In 2013

An anonymous reader writes “Back in 2012, Android accounted for 79 percent of all mobile malware. Last year, that number ballooned even further to 97 percent. Both those data points come from security firm F-Secure, which today released its 40-page Threat Report for the second half of 2013. More specifically, Android malware rose from 238 threats in 2012 to 804 new families and variants in 2013. Apart from Symbian, F-Secure found no new threats for other mobile platforms last year.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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F-Secure: Android Accounted For 97% of All Mobile Malware In 2013

When to Buy Your Plane Ticket, Based on Data from Four Million Trips

When you’re booking a flight, you don’t want to buy too far in advance—and be the guy who lost out on a price drop; nor do you want to book too late—and pay hundreds more for the convenience. When’s the best time to buy? CheapAir crunched the numbers from over four million tickets bought last year to offer some advice. Read more…        

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When to Buy Your Plane Ticket, Based on Data from Four Million Trips

World’s Tiniest Tweezers Grab Nanoparticles Using Nothing But Light

When you’re working with tiny nanoparticles, you need extremely delicate tools. Like, say, tweezers that can manipulate particles 1, 000 times thinner than a human hair without physically touching them. That’s exactly what researchers at the Institute of Photonic Sciences have come up with: optical nanotweezers that use light to move tiny particles in three dimensions . It’s not sci-fi anymore. Read more…        

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World’s Tiniest Tweezers Grab Nanoparticles Using Nothing But Light

TV Streaming Head-to-Head: Netflix vs Hulu vs Amazon Prime

One of the more annoying things about Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon’s television streaming libraries is the vast difference between the selection available. It would be almost impossible to get a thorough idea of who has the better library without searching for hundreds of TV shows on each service and comparing them manually. So we did just that. Read more…        

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TV Streaming Head-to-Head: Netflix vs Hulu vs Amazon Prime

The Quantum D-Wave 2 Is 3,600 Times Faster than a Super Computer

Quantum computing is being hailed as the future of data processing, with promises of performing calculations thousands of times faster than modern supercomputers while consuming magnitudes less electricity. And in the span of just two years the only commercially available quantum computer, the D-Wave One , has already doubled its computational power. Kiss your law goodbye, Mr. Moore. Read more…        

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The Quantum D-Wave 2 Is 3,600 Times Faster than a Super Computer

AirPnP Connects Mardi Gras Partiers With Places to Pee

Today is Mardi Gras , and like any booze-fueled street celebration, that means tons of full-bladdered revelers seeking out a place to relieve themselves. Thankfully, technology’s here to save New Orleans from becoming a literal Urinetown . Meet AirPnP , the web app that lets you do your business in the privacy of a stranger’s home. Read more…        

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AirPnP Connects Mardi Gras Partiers With Places to Pee

In Ukraine, Cyber War With Russia Heating Up

concertina226 writes “If you think the crisis in the Ukraine is limited just to being just on the ground, think again. A cyberwar is flaring up between Ukraine and Russia and it looks like just the beginning. On Friday, communication centers were hijacked by unknown men to install wireless equipment for monitoring the mobile phones of Ukraine parliament members. Since then, Ukrainian hackers have been defacing Russian news websites, while Russia’s Roskomnadzor is blocking any IP addresses or groups on social media from showing pro-Ukraine ‘extremist’ content.” Adds reader Daniel_Stuckey: “On the other side of the border, RT — the news channel formerly known as Russia Today and funded by the state — had its website hacked on Sunday morning, with the word ‘Nazi’ not-so-stealthily slipped into headlines. Highlights included ‘Russian senators vote to use stabilizing Nazi forces on Ukrainian territory, ‘ and ‘Putin: Nazi citizens, troops threatened in Ukraine, need armed forces’ protection.’ RT was quick to notice the hack, and the wordplay only lasted about 20 minutes.” Finally, as noted by judgecorp, “The Ukrainian security service has claimed that Russian forces in Crimea are attacking Ukraine’s mobile networks and politicians’ phones in particular. Meanwhile, pro-Russian hackers have defaced Ukrainian news sites, posting a list of forty web destinations where content has been replaced. The pro-Russians have demonstrated Godwin’s Rule — their animated GIF equates the rest of Ukraine to Nazis.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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In Ukraine, Cyber War With Russia Heating Up

Critical crypto bug leaves Linux, hundreds of apps open to eavesdropping

A. Strakey Hundreds of open source packages, including the Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Debian distributions of Linux, are susceptible to attacks that circumvent the most widely used technology to prevent eavesdropping on the Internet, thanks to an extremely critical vulnerability in a widely used cryptographic code library. The bug in the GnuTLS library makes it trivial for attackers to bypass secure sockets layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protections available on websites that depend on the open source package. Initial estimates included in Internet discussions such as this one indicate that more than 200 different operating systems or applications rely on GnuTLS to implement crucial SSL and TLS operations, but it wouldn’t be surprising if the actual number is much higher. Web applications, e-mail programs, and other code that use the library are vulnerable to exploits that allow attackers monitoring connections to silently decode encrypted traffic passing between end users and servers. The bug is the result of commands in a section of the GnuTLS code that verify the authenticity of TLS certificates, which are often known simply as X509 certificates . The coding error, which may have been present in the code since 2005 , causes critical verification checks to be terminated, drawing ironic parallels to the extremely critical “goto fail” flaw that for months put users of Apple’s iOS and OS X operating systems at risk of surreptitious eavesdropping attacks. Apple developers have since patched the bug . Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Critical crypto bug leaves Linux, hundreds of apps open to eavesdropping

Roku’s new Streaming Stick works with most TVs, drops price to $50

When Roku released its first Streaming Stick in late 2012, it was a tough sell. It cost $99 (as much as the highest-end Roku box), only worked with TVs that were certified as ” Roku Ready , ” and it didn’t even ship with a remote. So the god-father of set-top streaming boxes went back to the drawing board for the 2014 version of the Roku Streaming Stick, which abandons its reliance on MHL (Mobile High-Definition Link) for standard issue HDMI. It also comes prepackaged with a remote, though it lacks the motion control and headphone jack you get on more expensive models. For the internals, the company essentially crammed the Roku 1 into a dongle format — and that includes its wallet-friendly $50 price point. While it’s not quite as cheap as the Google’s streaming stick, it does play host to a plenty more content sources. Whether or not PBS , Showtime and over 1, 000 niche channels of video programming is worth the extra $15 is depends on you. Other than form factor, the only difference between the Roku 1 and the Stick is that the latter ships with the latest versions of Roku’s apps, though, those will be coming to the full sized box in the near future. That means you’ll be able to cast photos and videos directly from your phone. Alongside the 2014 edition of the Streaming Stick, the company is launching a revamped mobile app. The most immediately obvious different is the UI, which puts stark purple line drawings on black background. More importantly though, it puts the platform’s universal search at your fingertips. So, rather than having to look at your TV to browse through the results, you can pick out the best place to watch Sherlock for free with just the tap of your touchscreen. The new Roku Streaming Stick will be available in April either direct from the company’s site or through the usual retailers (like Best Buy) for $50. Filed under: Home Entertainment , HD Comments

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Roku’s new Streaming Stick works with most TVs, drops price to $50