This week marks the rollout of the long delayed “Copyright Alert System” aka the six strike anti-piracy program. It’s a bit confusing at a glance, but it’s not nearly as powerful as you’d think. Here’s how the system works, how it’ll affect you, and everything else you need to know. More »
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The Copyright Alert System: How the New “Six Strikes” Anti-Piracy Program Works
With visions of Minority Report , many a user’s wildly waved at a Kinect in the hopes of controlling gadgets like a symphony conductor. Now there’s another way to make your friends laugh at you thanks to the Thalmic Labs’ MYO armband, which senses motion and electrical activity in your muscles to let you control your computer or other device via Bluetooth 4.0. The company says its proprietary sensor can detect signals right down to individual fingers before you even move them, which — coupled with an extremely sensitive 6-axis motion detector — makes for a highly responsive experience. Feedback to the user is given through haptics in the device, which also packs an ARM processor and onboard Lithium-Ion batteries. MYO is now up for a limited pre-order with Thalmic saying you won’t be charged until it ships near year’s end, while developers can also grab the API. If you’re willing to risk some ridicule to be first on the block to grab one, hit the source. Filed under: Wearables Comments Via: Macrumors Source: Myo
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MYO senses your muscles, brings yet another way to control devices (video)
StickNFind managed to raise a grand total of $931,970 through IndieGoGo since we first caught up with it , and now it’s set to start shipping next week. In case your memory requires a bit of jogging, the quarter-sized disc can help you hunt down whatever it’s attached to thanks to a smartphone app that keeps tabs on its distance via Bluetooth. Mobile World Congress also brings news that the miniature homing tags have gotten a redesigned companion application, an extended range of up to 150 feet (ratcheted up by 50) and a tracking accuracy of within two inches. StickNFind is being geared up for an arrival on retail shelves this April, but there’s still no word regarding which shops will carry it. Comments
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StickNFind Bluetooth tracking stickers to ship next week, get extended range
Billy the Mountain writes “A small UK company is bringing new technology online that could reduce the prices of tantalum and titanium ten-fold. According to this piece in The Economist: A tantalising prospect, the key is a technique similar to smelting aluminum with a new twist: The metallic oxides are not melted as with aluminum but blended in powder form with a molten salt that serves as a medium and electrolyte. This technology is known as the FFC Cambridge Process. Other metals include Neodymium, Tungsten, and Vanadium.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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New Technology Produces Cheaper Tantalum and Titanium
The Swedish Pirate Party has stopped hosting the notorious website The Pirate Bay, according to TorrentFreak. While no one knows where the site is actually run from, Web-hosting services have been provided through the Swedish Pirate Party for a few years now. Now, the site’s hosting will be taken care of by the Pirate Parties in Norway and Sweden. TPB is being forced to move because the Swedish Pirate Party is under pressure from Rights Alliance, a Swedish anti-piracy group representing large music and movie interests. Rights Alliance threatened legal action against the Pirate Party if the group didn’t stop hosting the site by tomorrow. Spain in particular could turn out to be a safe haven for the piracy-driven website, since judges in that country have found simply linking to other infringing sites is not a basis for copyright liability. The sports-streaming site Rojadirecta, for example, was exonerated after legal action against it was initiated in Spain. (That didn’t stop it from having its domain name grabbed by a US agency, before being given back last summer.) Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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The Pirate Bay leaves Sweden for friendlier waters
Yes, this library has a Cisco 3945 router. Marmet, West Virginia is a town of 1,500 people living in a thin ribbon along the banks of the Kanawha River just below Charleston. The town’s public library is only open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. It’s housed in a small building the size of a trailer, which the state of West Virginia describes as an “extremely small facility with only one Internet connection.” Which is why it’s such a surprise to learn the Marmet Public Library runs this connection through a $15,000 to $20,000 Cisco 3945 router intended for “mid-size to large deployments,” according to Cisco. In an absolutely scathing report (PDF) just released by the state’s Legislative Auditor, West Virginia officials are accused of overspending at least $5 million of federal money on such routers, installed indiscriminately in both large institutions and one-room libraries across the state. The routers were purchased without ever asking the state’s libraries, cops, and schools what they needed. And when distributed, the expensive routers were passed out without much apparent care. The small town of Clay received seven of them to serve a total population of 491 people… and all seven routers were installed within only .44 miles of each other at a total cost of more than $100,000. In total, $24 million was spent on the routers through a not-very-open bidding process under which non-Cisco router manufacturers such as Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent were not “given notice or any opportunity to bid.” As for Cisco, which helped put the massive package together, the Legislative Auditor concluded that the company “had a moral responsibility to propose a plan which reasonably complied with Cisco’s own engineering standards” but that instead “Cisco representatives showed a wanton indifference to the interests of the public in recommending using $24 million of public funds to purchase 1,164 Cisco model 3945 branch routers.” Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router
Grammar can be a tough nut to crack, and there are times when a few mistakes here and there can determine whether or not you get a job or an A on your paper. Grammarly is a web app that scrutinizes your sentence structure to find errors and help you correct them. More »
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Grammarly Checks the Grammar and Spelling of Any Document and Helps You Fix It
Sony seems prepared to unleash a new tool in its never-ending battle against game pirates, using measured load times, of all things, to detect certain illegitimate copies of its games. Sony’s patent for “Benchmark measurement for legitimate duplication validation” was filed way back in August 2011, but it was only published by the US patent office late last week. The patent describes a method for a system that would measure load times for games loaded into a system against a previously measured threshold for what those load times ought to be on a standard, unmodified game and system: For example, if an authentic game title is distributed exclusively on [Blu-ray discs] having a total benchmark load time of 45 seconds on a game console BD drive, the acceptable range of load times could be from 40 to 50 seconds. Thus, a total measured title load time of four seconds would be outside of the acceptable range of total load times for a legitimate media type. Even if the pirated media results in similar overall load times to the original media (if a hacker added an intentional delay, for instance, or if a pirated game on a hard drive loaded similarly to an authentic game on a flash drive), the method described in the patent also measures load times for individual segments of the game code to detect fraudulent copies. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Sony patent application measures load times to detect pirated games
First, the good news. It appears that Visa and Samsung’s Olympics trial went over so well, that it’s expanding those mobile payment dreams to a global audience. Now, the rough news — Visa has convinced Samsung to pre-load the payWave app onto every future Samsung smartphone with an NFC module. Granted, you’d be using that anyway for contactless payments… but only if you had a Visa card. At this point, it’s practically a given that the impending Galaxy S IV will boast not only an NFC chip, but payWave integration from the factory. The deal also gives banks the ability to load payment account information over-the-air to a secure chip embedded in Samsung devices (thanks, Mobile Provisioning Service), but neither company is coming clean on what devices in particular will be taking advantage. Unfortunately, this news may be even gloomier for non-Visa users — it’s unlikely Samsung’s contract will allow it to announce similar deals with competing mobile payment services, but we suppose we’ll see in time. Filed under: Cellphones , Mobile , Samsung Comments Via: TechCrunch Source: Visa
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Visa and Samsung ink worldwide NFC deal, practically guarantees payWave on your Galaxy S IV
iOS ( Jailbroken ): Siri is a fine assistant if you’re using all of Apple’s default software, but it doesn’t support third-party apps. AssistantEnhancer is a jailbreak tweak that adds a bunch of new commands to Siri, including the ability to control third-party music apps like Spotify and Pandora. More »
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AssistantEnhancer Adds a Ton of New Commands to Siri