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Amazon will reportedly launch a free video streaming service

All signs point to Amazon revealing its set-top box in New York City next week , but that’s just one part of its massive media onslaught. According to a fresh report from the Wall Street Journal , the e-commerce giant will eventually launch a free, ad-supported service that’ll allow its customers to stream television shows and music videos for the low, low price of $0. The caveat? It’s all ad-supported, so be prepared to let your eyes glaze over from time to time. The big question here is how much content will be available gratis . Sources told the Journal that customers can likely access Amazon’s original series (think “Betas”), with other licensed content possibly coming down the road. Don’t expect too much crossover between whatever this is and Amazon’s existing Prime video service, though. It’s in the company’s best interest to save the good stuff for the folks who shell out $99 a year , since they wind up buying more than double what non-Prime customers do. Still, Amazon may have a killer combination on its hands. If it can nab a decent selection of licensed series and flicks and make it available on an aggressively priced streaming gewgaw, the company has a solid shot at taking the country’s living rooms by storm. Filed under: HD Comments Source: Wall Street Journal

Office Mobile is now completely free to use on Android and iPhone

Today’s Office news isn’t all about the iPad . Microsoft now lets you use Office Mobile completely for free on both Android and the iPhone ; if you’re a home customer, you can both edit and read documents without paying for an Office 365 subscription. The gratis apps are ultimately meant to encourage use of the desktop and iPad clients, where you do need to pay for full access. Even so, it’s hard to object to having another free tool for tweaking company reports while on the move. Filed under: Cellphones , Mobile , Microsoft Comments Via: Android Central , Office Mobility Blog Source: Google Play

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Office Mobile is now completely free to use on Android and iPhone

Minnesota Teen Wins Settlement After School Takes Facebook Password

schwit1 (797399) writes “A Minnesota school district has agreed to pay $70, 000 to settle a lawsuit that claimed school officials violated a student’s constitutional rights by viewing her Facebook and email accounts without permission. The lawsuit, filed in 2012 by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, alleged that Riley Stratton, now 15, was given detention after posting disparaging comments about a teacher’s aide on her Facebook page, even though she was at home and not using school computers. After a parent complained about the Facebook chat, the school called her in and demanded her password. With a sheriff deputy looking on, she complied, and they browsed her Facebook page in front of her, according to the report. ‘It was believed the parent had given permission to look at her cellphone, ‘ Minnewaska Superintendent Greg Schmidt said Tuesday. But Schmidt said the district did not have a signed consent from the parent. That is now a policy requirement, he said.'” Asks schwit1, “How is this not a violation of the CFAA?” It sounds like the school was violating Facebook’s Terms of Service, too. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Minnesota Teen Wins Settlement After School Takes Facebook Password

Fuse lets you put your own 3D characters into Steam games

If, like us, you believe that true individuality can never be expressed through four different choices of goatee, then listen up: Fuse, the character creation tool on Steam, now supports fully user-generated imports for the first time, making it possible for artistic souls to create clothing, body parts and “texturing substances” for more memorable designs. The $100 utility then lets you transplant your animated models into compatible Steam titles based on the Source Engine, including Garry’s Mod and Source Filmmaker. Now, if we could just couple this with Project Spark ‘s customized movements and mannerisms, we’d have everything we need to prep our personal avatars for the impending Age of VR . Filed under: Gaming Comments Source: Steam

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Fuse lets you put your own 3D characters into Steam games

Operation Wants To Mine 10% of All New Bitcoins

An anonymous reader writes: “Mining new Bitcoins is computationally expensive — you can’t expect to do much on your standard home computer. Many miners have built custom rigs to mine more efficiently, but it was only a matter of time until somebody went industrial. Dave Carlson’s goal is to mine 10% of all new Bitcoins from now on. He’s built literally thousands of units. They collectively use 1.4 million BitFury mining chips, which are managed by a bunch of Raspberry Pis. ‘The current rigs each contain 16 boards, with each board containing 16 BitFury chips, for a total of 256 mining chips on each rig. Carlson said about 90, 000 processor boards have been deployed, which would put the number of rigs at about 5, 600. A new board [being designed] will have 756 chips on each rig instead of 256.’ Carlson says his company spent $3-5 million to get everything set up. They current generate 7, 000 — 8, 000 Bitcoins per month, which, at current rates, would be worth over $4 million.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Operation Wants To Mine 10% of All New Bitcoins

Homeopathic Remedies Recalled For Containing Real Medicine

ananyo (2519492) writes “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recalled homeopathic remedies made by a company called Terra-Medica because they may contain actual medicine — possibly penicillin or derivatives of the antibiotic.” Diluted enough times with pure water, though, maybe these traces would be even more powerful. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Homeopathic Remedies Recalled For Containing Real Medicine

Apps with millions of Google Play downloads covertly mine cryptocurrency

Michael Mandiberg Researchers said they have uncovered two apps that were downloaded from the official Google Play market more than one million times that use Android devices to mine the Litecoin and Dogecoin cryptocurrencies without explicitly informing end users. According to a blog post published Tuesday by a researcher from antivirus provider Trend Micro, the apps are Songs , installed from one million to five million times, and Prized , which was installed from 10,000 to 50,000 times. Neither the app descriptions nor their terms of service make clear that the apps subject Android devices to the compute-intensive process of mining, Trend Micro Mobile Threats Analyst Veo Zhang wrote. As of Wednesday afternoon, the apps were still available. Mining apps typically consume larger-than-average amounts of electricity and can generate extremely hot temperatures as CPUs, GPUs, or other types of processors strain to perform cryptographic hashing functions required for users to mint new digital coins. The strain can be especially onerous on smartphones, because they’re equipped with hardware that’s much less powerful than that found in traditional computers. The apps discovered by Trend Micro were programmed to mine coins only when devices were recharging. That setting would help prevent batteries from draining quickly, but it would do nothing to prevent devices from overheating or consuming large amounts of bandwidth. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The Futuristic Liquid Nitrogen Machine That Makes Ice Cream To Order

Despite the warm wood and cheery red accents, Smitten Ice Cream can feel a bit like a mad scientist’s shop. There’s the industrial-sized tank of liquid nitrogen that greets you inside the entrance of its new flagship location in Oakland. And there’s the billowing clouds of nitrogen when the stainless steel ice cream machines churn out personalized scoops to order. Read more…

How Engineers Are Moving An Entire Town Two Miles Away

The city of Kiruna, Sweden, is sinking—the iron mines beneath it are making the ground collapse. So, over the next two decades, its 20, 000 residents will be relocated, along with their homes, offices, stores, and schools, to another, brand-new city about two miles to the east. Read more…

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How Engineers Are Moving An Entire Town Two Miles Away

New dwarf planet found sneaking through the inner Oort Cloud

An artist’s depiction of Sedna, the first of the objects from this class of bodies to have been discovered. NASA A new dwarf planet-like body has been found on the outer edges of the Solar System. This object, called 2012VP 113 , is about 450km wide and is the second body of its class found since the identification of the dwarf planet Sedna in 2003, and it joins an exclusive club composed of some of the strangest objects in the Solar System. The observable Solar System can be divided into three regions: the rocky terrestrial planets and asteroids of the inner Solar System, the gas giant planets, and the icy Kuiper Belt objects, which include Pluto. The Kuiper Belt stretches from beyond Neptune, which is at 30 astronomical units (where 1AU is the typical distance between the Earth and the Sun), to about 50AU. Sedna and 2012VP 113 are strange objects because they reside in a region where there should be nothing, according to our theories of the Solar System formation. Their orbit is well beyond that of Neptune, the last recognized planet of the Solar System, and even beyond that of Pluto, which differs from planets because of its size, unusual orbit, and composition. (Pluto, once considered a planet, is now considered the lead object of a group of bodies called plutinos.) Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Ken May

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