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Roku can now tell you how to get, how to get to Sesame Street with new PBS channels

Big Bird (or “Big Yellah,” as we like to call him) and his Sesame Street cohorts are now available for streaming on your Roku box. Not just that, but his non-avian colleagues from PBS and PBS Kids are also making the trip, arriving today in new PBS and PBS Kids Roku channels. The two new channels offer more than the on-demand access to PBS programming you’d expect; PBS Digital Studios’ work is also available to stream (we’re quite fond of it , if you couldn’t tell). While it’s not 100 percent clear what exactly is available at any given time, PBS’ announcement says “hundreds of videos” can be accessed, which are pulled from the archives, from national and local daily programming, and include biggies like NOVA , Frontline , and American Experience (it stands to reason that heavy hitter Downtown Abbey won’t be available, given its exclusive license with Amazon starting next month). PBS Kids is similarly well-stocked, with “more than 1,000 videos,” which includes everything from Curious George to, yes, Sesame Street . There’s a short teaser video of the service being used just below the break, should you not be able to contain yourself until you get home. Update: According to Roku, not all Roku players support the new PBS channels. “Both PBS and PBS Kids are available immediately for all Roku 3, Roku 2, Roku LT, new Roku HD players and the Roku Streaming Stick in the US,” the company says. Heads up! Filed under: Home Entertainment , Science , HD Comments Source: Roku

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Roku can now tell you how to get, how to get to Sesame Street with new PBS channels

US DOJ Say They Don’t Need Warrants For E-Mail, Chats

gannebraemorr writes “The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI believe they don’t need a search warrant to review Americans’ e-mails, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and other private files, internal documents reveal. Government documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and provided to CNET show a split over electronic privacy rights within the Obama administration, with Justice Department prosecutors and investigators privately insisting they’re not legally required to obtain search warrants for e-mail.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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US DOJ Say They Don’t Need Warrants For E-Mail, Chats

Kwikset introduces Kevo, a smartphone-friendly lock powered by UniKey

It’s not the first time that Kwikset ‘s dabbled in wireless locks , but today the company’s introducing Kēvo, a smartphone- (and tablet-) friendly lock powered by UniKey. The concept is pretty simple: pair a handset (running a special app) with Kēvo via Bluetooth, and simply touch the deadbolt to lock or unlock your door. A keychain fob is also available for those who have not yet joined the smartphone revolution. Kēvo only responds to touch when an authorized device or fob is detected nearby. A triple tap lets anyone lock your door, which is useful if a visitor leaves after you. The deadbolt is battery-powered using four AA cells that last more than a year with normal operation. It features a ring of RGB LEDs for feedback and a standard physical key for backup. Most of the magic is made possible by tech developed by UniKey. The key (natch) to the entire system is the Kēvo app which lets you manage eKeys. Once logged into the app, you can send and delete eKeys, or transfer them to another device (this also deletes the eKeys associated with a lost handset, for example) — you can even create eKeys that only work once. Currently, the app is only available for iOS, which is a major limitation, but it supports push, email and SMS notifications and keeps a detailed log of which eKeys have accessed Kēvo and when. Pricing and availability remain a mystery, but all in all the system looks pretty clever. Stay tuned for more details, and check out the link below. Filed under: Cellphones , Household , Tablets , Wireless , Software , Mobile , Apple Comments Source: Kwikset

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Kwikset introduces Kevo, a smartphone-friendly lock powered by UniKey

Help the OED Find a Lost Book

New submitter imlepid writes “The Oxford English Dictionary is currently undergoing a complete overhaul which includes a reexamination of the 300,000+ entries and citations for those entries. Understandably for a work which is over 150 years old, some of the sources have become hard to find. One such example is a book titled ‘Meanderings of Memory’ by Nightlark, which is cited 49 times in the OED, including for some rare words. The OED’s editorial team has appealed to the public, ‘Have you seen a copy of this book?'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Why Isn’t Gatsby in the Public Domain?

When The Great Gatsby rolls out to theaters across the country this weekend, it will bring to the screen a story familiar to millions from a literary classic that’s often dubbed the proverbial “Great American Novel.” Here’s what many folks don’t know: even though the book was published nearly 90 years ago and is a long-established part of our shared cultural heritage, it has not yet entered the public domain. Read more…

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Why Isn’t Gatsby in the Public Domain?

Former Demonoid Members Receive Email Claiming Resurrection, Get Malware Instead

New submitter giveen1 writes “I recieved this email as a former Demonoid.me user. I tried to go to the website and link is dead. … ‘Dear Demonoid Community Member, We have all read the same news stories: The Demonoid servers shut down and seized in the Ukraine. The Demonoid admin team detained in Mexico. The demonoid.me domain snatched and put up for sale. The Demonoid trackers back online in Hong Kong, but then disappearing. … Now for some good news: The heart and soul of Demonoid lives on! Through an amazing sequence of unlikely events, the data on those Ukrainian servers has made its way into the safe hands of members of our community and has now been re-launched as d2.vu.'” But it turns out that the site was distributing malware, hosted on an American VPS, and quickly shut down after the provider discovered this. No word yet on how the Demonoid user database was acquired, but if you did make the mistake of trying to log in Torrent Freak warns: “New information just in suggests that if you logged into the fake Demonoid and used the same user/password combo on any other site (torrent, email, Steam, PayPal) you should change them immediately.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spoken in the ice age, these words might actually have made sense

The sentences above are special. According to newly published research, they comprise words that have been passed down for millenia, from a language that all but disappeared toward the end of the last ice age. What remains of that tongue are words like the ones above – words that mean the same thing today, and sound almost exactly the same, as they did 15,000 years ago. Read more…

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Spoken in the ice age, these words might actually have made sense

Xerox’s New Grading Copiers Will Finally Make Scantron Obsolete

Not content with having them only print, copy, collate, and staple, Xerox is adding a new trick to its photocopiers that promises to give teachers more time with their students. Custom software will actually let a school’s photocopier not only grade papers , but also keep tabs on which students are struggling in certain subjects. Read more…

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Xerox’s New Grading Copiers Will Finally Make Scantron Obsolete

HOWTO build a working digital computer out of paperclips (and stuff)

Windell at Evil Mad Scientist Labs has dredged up an amazing project book from the Internet Archive: How to Build a Working Digital Computer (1967) (by Edward Alcosser, James P. Phillips, and Allen M. Wolk) contains a full set of instructions for building a working computer out of paperclips and various bits and bobs from the local hardware store. You can even use paperclips for switches (though, as Windell notes, “Arrays of paperclip logic gates can get pretty big, pretty fast.”) The instructions include a read-only drum memory for storing the computer program (much like a player piano roll), made from a juice can, with read heads made from bent paper clips. A separate manually-operated “core” memory (made of paper-clip switches) is used for storing data. So can this “paper clip” computer actually built, and if so, would it work? Apparently yes, on both counts. Cleveland youngsters Mark Rosenstein and Kenny Antonelli built one named “ Emmerack ” in 1972 (albeit substituting Radio Shack slide switches for most of the paper clips), and another was built in 1975 by the Wickenburg High School Math Club in Arizona. And, at least one modern build has been completed, as you can see on YouTube . How to Build a Working Digital Computer… out of paperclips ( via O’Reilly Radar )

India Rolls Out Central Monitoring System To Snoop On All Communications

hypnosec tipped us to news that India is rolling out a new intrusive monitoring system, using the authority of a 2000 telecom law. Quoting The Times of India: “However, Pavan Duggal, a Supreme Court advocate specialising in cyberlaw, said the government has given itself unprecedented powers to monitor private Internet records of citizens. ‘This system is capable of abuse,’ he said. The Central Monitoring System, being set up by the Centre for Development of Telematics, plugs into telecom gear and gives central and state investigative agencies a single point of access to call records, text messages, and emails as well as the geographical location of individuals.” Privacy advocates are worried about abuse, partially because India has no effective privacy legislation, and the “…Indian government under PM Manmohan Singh has taken an increasingly uncompromising stance when it comes to online freedoms, with the stated aim usually to preserve social order and national security or fight ‘harmful’ defamation.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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India Rolls Out Central Monitoring System To Snoop On All Communications

Ken May

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