Author: kenmay

NSA Admits Searching "3 Hops" From Suspects

New submitter cpitman writes “In a house hearing Wednesday the NSA admitted that it could query not only a suspect’s records, but also perform up to a ‘three hop query’. Considering that most people in the world are separated by under 6 degrees of separation, the NSA essentially claims that any single suspect gives them rights to investigate a large chunk of the world’s population. With the terror watch list having over 700, 000 names, just how many times has Kevin Bacon been investigated?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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NSA Admits Searching "3 Hops" From Suspects

VLC media player returns to the iOS App Store after 30-month hiatus

A selection of videos on VLC 2.0 running on an iPad. VLC After disappearing the better part of three years ago, the VLC media player app for iOS has made its triumphant return to Apple’s App Store. Its version number has been bumped to 2.0, and the app now includes features like Wi-Fi and Dropbox syncing as well as the ability to download files from the Web. A version of VLC created by the company Applidium first made its debut on the App Store back in November 2010, but it was pulled in January 2011 due to a licensing dispute . All versions of VLC were then open-source and licensed under GPLv2; the App Store imposes its own licensing and DRM restrictions on apps. One of VLC’s original developers, Rémi Denis-Courmont, claimed that the licensing policies did not mesh and filed a complaint against the app. It was shortly removed. VLC 2.0 for iOS is licensed under both the Mozilla Public License v2 as well as the GNU General Public License v2 (or later). “The MPLv2 is applicable for distribution on the App Store, ” Felix Paul Kühne of VideoLAN told Ars. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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VLC media player returns to the iOS App Store after 30-month hiatus

Wine 1.6 Released With 10,000 Changes

An anonymous reader writes “Wine 1.6 has been released for running Windows applications on Linux and OS X. Wine 1.6 ships with 10, 000 changes in the past year and has many new user features like a Mac graphics driver, Direct3D improvements, and 64-bit ARM support.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Wine 1.6 Released With 10,000 Changes

Scientists May Have Found a Genomic Off Switch for Down Syndrome

One in every thousand or so babies born today will suffer from Down Syndrome, a genetic disorder caused by the presence of a third copy of chromosome 21 that results in learning disabilities, a heightened risk of bowel and blood diseases, and a severely heightened risk of dementia later in life. But a radical new genome treatment method could hold the key to turning off that extra chromosome 21 like a light. Read more…        

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Scientists May Have Found a Genomic Off Switch for Down Syndrome

Samsung announces 3,000MB/s enterprise SSD, shames competition

The ink has barely dried on Samsung’s last SSD announcement and the South Korean manufacturer has already made it obsolete by orders of magnitude. This 2.5-inch enterprise-class SSD isn’t for us regular Joes, but if you thought the company’s EVO 840’s 540MB/s was zippy, hold on to your desk chair . The newly announced NVMe SSD XS1715 reads data at a mind-numbing 3, 000MB/s . Hitting these absurd numbers isn’t without a caveat, though, as this SSD won’t run on a SATA-6 port — it requires a PCIe hook-up. When these speed demons do arrive, they’ll be available in 400GB, 800GB and 1.6TB sizes. Oh, and we want one. For business. Filed under: Desktops , Samsung Comments

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Samsung announces 3,000MB/s enterprise SSD, shames competition

The Secret Powers Hidden in Your iPhone’s Accessibility Options

Unless you’re constantly messing around with your iPhone’s settings, most people don’t dig into the Accessibility features in iOS unless they need to solve a specific problem. That said, there’s actually a few great features hidden in those options that everyone can make use of, even if you don’t need them. Read more…        

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The Secret Powers Hidden in Your iPhone’s Accessibility Options

New Office 365 subscriptions get 12 months of free Xbox Live Gold (but not in the US)

Sweetening the deal of its cloud-based Office 365 suite , Microsoft will start bundling a year of Xbox Live Gold with any purchases of Office 365 Home Premium or Office 365 University made before September 28. You can then pick up an Xbox Live code as you’ve signed in during the initial Office setup. Unfortunately, the US isn’t included on the deal, but the majority of Europe, plus regions of Asia, as well as Australia and Canada are all involved. Alongside the recent promise of two free games a month , Microsoft’s made this bundled subscription a pretty tempting proposition. Filed under: Gaming , Internet , Software , Microsoft Comments Via: TNW Source: Microsoft Office , Microsoft (German)

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New Office 365 subscriptions get 12 months of free Xbox Live Gold (but not in the US)

First batch of new generic top-level domains born, Amazon looking unlikely to snag .amazon

After spending over a year thumbing through applications, ICANN has inked agreements for establishing the first new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). Those that made the cut this round were the Arabic word for web or network (. شبكة ) , game in Chinese (. 游 戏) , and the Russian for online (. онлайн) , as well as website (. сайт) — as ICANN notes, these gTLDs will be the first to use non-Latin characters. Also coming out of the ICANN47 meeting for internet overlords is a bit of bad news for Amazon. A committee recommended that the retailer should not be given control of the .amazon domain, likely due to confusion the suffix could create with the Amazon region in South America. ICANN may see fit to go against the recommendation, but if Amazon’s history with objectionable applications is anything to go by, it’s looking like yet another $185, 000 down the drain. Filed under: Internet , Amazon Comments Via: The Verge Source: ICANN , Wall Street Journal

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First batch of new generic top-level domains born, Amazon looking unlikely to snag .amazon