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Obama administration launches “tech surge” to improve Healthcare.gov

The Department of Health and Human Services announced on October 20 that the agency has launched a “tech surge” to make improvements to the troubled Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance exchange website , HealthCare.gov. The move comes as President Barack Obama reportedly prepares to speak about the site’s issues at an event today highlighting the ACA, frequently referred to as “Obamacare.” Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius had previously blamed most of the problems experienced by citizens visiting the site on unexpected demand. But as problems have continued, the White House has grown increasingly frustrated with the site’s performance. An administration official told the Washington Post that the president and others in the administration “find [the problems with HealthCare.gov] unacceptable.” While HealthCare.gov is being operated almost entirely by a team of contractors, HHS is now stepping in to take an active role in resolving the site’s problems. In a blog post , an unidentified agency spokesperson wrote “Our team is bringing in some of the best and brightest from both inside and outside government to scrub in with the team and help improve HealthCare.gov.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Obama administration launches “tech surge” to improve Healthcare.gov

Mexican drug lord assassinated by killer clowns

Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix , the eldest of seven brothers of the Tijuana cartel. Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix, aka “El Pelón” (the baldie), eldest brother in Mexico’s once-dominant Tijuana drug cartel, was shot to death by gunmen disguised as clowns at a children’s party on Friday. Arrellano Felix, 63, was assassinated by the clowns during the family event in an upscale tourist residence in Cabo San Lucas, a popular tourist destination on the Baja California peninsula, state special investigations prosecutor Isai Arias told Associated Press on Saturday : An official of the Baja California Sur state prosecutor’s office told the AP that the costumes included a wig and a round red nose. Reuters reports that there was one gunman, with two male accomplices. El Universal de Mexico has a backgrounder on the crime family. They were the most brutal, most bloody, for decades. A portion of the Arrellano Felix crime family, in an undated photograph from the 1980s. Via El Universal.        

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Mexican drug lord assassinated by killer clowns

NSA hacked email of Mexican president and drug-war reformers

A Snowden leak, discussed in detail in Der Spiegel , shows how the NSA broke into the email servers of the Mexican president Felipe Calderon’s public account, and used that access to wiretap the president, cabinet members, and senior diplomats. The NSA described the program, called “Flatliquid” as “lucrative.” A second program, “Whitetamale,” also spied on senior Mexican politicians (including presidential candidate Peña Niet), targeting efforts to change the country’s disastrous War on Drugs. Rousseff believes Washington’s reasons for employing such unfriendly methods are partly economic, an accusation that the NSA and its director, General Keith Alexander, have denied. Yet according to the leaked NSA documents, the US also monitored email and telephone communications at Petrobras, the oil corporation in which the Brazilian government holds a majority stake. Brazil possesses enormous offshore oil reserves. Just how intensively the US spies on its neighbors can be seen in another, previously unknown operation in Mexico, dubbed “Whitetamale” by the NSA. In August 2009, according to internal documents, the agency gained access to the emails of various high-ranking officials in Mexico’s Public Security Secretariat that combats the drug trade and human trafficking. This hacking operation allowed the NSA not only to obtain information on several drug cartels, but also to gain access to “diplomatic talking-points.” In the space of a single year, according to the internal documents, this operation produced 260 classified reports that allowed US politicians to conduct successful talks on political issues and to plan international investments. The tone of the document that lists the NSA’s “tremendous success” in monitoring Mexican targets shows how aggressively the US intelligence agency monitors its southern neighbor. “These TAO accesses into several Mexican government agencies are just the beginning — we intend to go much further against this important target,” the document reads. It goes on to state that the divisions responsible for this surveillance are “poised for future successes.” Fresh Leak on US Spying: NSA Accessed Mexican President’s Email [Jens Glüsing, Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark/Speigel Online]        

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NSA hacked email of Mexican president and drug-war reformers

How an Illegal Streaming Kingpin Makes a Living Off Piracy

If/When you download a torrent full of juicy copyrighted content (shame on you!), you’re not paying anyone; that’s part of the appeal. But there’s money to be made off sharing stuff for free, otherwise why would anyone do it? Torrentfreak sat down with a professional pirate to hear his story . It’s fascinating. Read more…        

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How an Illegal Streaming Kingpin Makes a Living Off Piracy

Report: Twitter Music Is Already on Its Deathbed

Hey remember Twitter Music ? Hadn’t thought about it in a while? Well apparently that’s a common problem, and according to a report by AllThingsD, Twitter is very seriously considering putting the service out of its misery . Read more…        

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Report: Twitter Music Is Already on Its Deathbed

The Megaupload Takedown Killed At Least 10 Million Innocent Files

When Megaupload got taken down two years ago, it took a whole hell of a lot of data with it. And eventually it got obliterated . Some of it was pirate data, sure, but some was legit too. And new research shows that, at the very least, ten million innocent files got the axe . Read more…        

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The Megaupload Takedown Killed At Least 10 Million Innocent Files

The Totally True History of Video Game Graphics

Humans? Usually unappreciative and typically awful. But it wasn’t always like this! When we didn’t have fancy technology with so many features they become useless and couldn’t trap amazingness in a box in our pockets, we enjoyed the little things. Like 8-bit graphics and physical buttons and cords and cartridges. Hell, we even though the graphics were great. Now? It could be real life and we wouldn’t be impressed. Read more…        

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The Totally True History of Video Game Graphics

Amazon’s Elastic Transcoder converts audio files now, too

Amazon set out to makes our lives a tiny bit easier when it launched its cloud-based video transcoder back in January, and now, it’s expanding the service to audio as well. In addition to converting media files into mobile-friendly formats, the platform will also allow users to turn their videos into audio-only streams, which might just come in handy if you plan on turning a video into a podcast. The Elastic Transcoder lets you create output using AAC, MP3 or Vorbis audio codecs, and can attach relevant metadata like track names and album art to your files. In an effort to reel new users in, Amazon is offering a free usage tier capped at 20 hours of converted audio content each month. After that point, you pay for what you use, so each minute of audio will cost the princely sum of $0.0045 to transcode. To see how it all works, check out the video after the break. Filed under: Internet , Amazon Comments Via: Computerworld Source: Amazon

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Amazon’s Elastic Transcoder converts audio files now, too

NVIDIA reveals Gamestream, a game streaming initiative powered by NVIDIA GPUs

NVIDIA announced Gamestream this morning, an initiative aimed at pairing the company’s GPUs with streaming gaming via its Shield handheld game console. Company head Jen-Hsun Huang says the service takes NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience software and pairs it with NVIDIA GPUs and the Shield to push streaming gaming to the living room. Huang said Gamestream’s first stop is a re-branding of the Shield’s streaming tech — sounds like that PC streaming tech on Shield is coming out of beta. But Huang’s not stopping there: he pulled NVIDIA’s Ujesh Desai on-stage, and he showed Shield powering PC game streaming on a nearby LG 4K television. “What makes Gamestream special is the low-latency of it, ” Huang said. Desai used a Nyko wireless controller that he paired via Bluetooth with the Shield, and the Shield’s Android OS ran on the television. Apparently the computer that powered the demo of Batman: Arkham Origins — an unreleased WB game demoed via Steam’s Big Picture Mode on Shield — runs NVIDIA’s $1, 000 Titan GPU. The game sure looked snazzy running on a big 4K television, though we couldn’t help but notice the same hitching issues with streaming that we encounter at home with our review Shield . Of course, the streaming will work on any old TV that has an HDMI-in. The Shield connected to the TV via its HDMI-out port — something that previously made little sense. Huang said the game console mode of Shield will arrive in the coming months, as well as the update to GeForce Experience that enables streaming to televisions via Shield.%Gallery-slideshow101410% Filed under: Gaming , HD , NVIDIA Comments

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NVIDIA reveals Gamestream, a game streaming initiative powered by NVIDIA GPUs

Walking To The South Pole (And Returning Alive)

Endurance athlete, polar explorer, and motivational speaker Ben Saunders is on his way to Antarctica. Recreating Robert Scott’s heroic but ultimately doomed “Terra Nova” expedition from 1910-1912, Saunders has launched his own Scott Expedition to reach the South Pole on foot—and, more importantly, to walk back to the coast alive. If successful, this will make him and his co-traveler, Tarka L’Herpiniere, the first human beings ever to have done so. Read more…        

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Walking To The South Pole (And Returning Alive)