The upcoming new release of Windows will add your Start screen to the list of items that can be synced across multiple devices, says Supersite for Windows’ Paul Thurrott. [Read more]
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Windows Blue to let you sync your Start screen across devices
Unique in the Crowd: The privacy bounds of human mobility , a Nature Scientific Reports paper by MIT researchers and colleagues at Belgium’s Universite Catholique de Louvain, documents that 95% of “anonymous” location data from cellphone towers can be de-anonymized to the individual level. That is, given data from a region’s cellular towers, the researchers can ascribe individuals to 95% of the data-points. “We show that the uniqueness of human mobility traces is high, thereby emphasizing the importance of the idiosyncrasy of human movements for individual privacy,” they explain. “Indeed, this uniqueness means that little outside information is needed to re-identify the trace of a targeted individual even in a sparse, large-scale, and coarse mobility dataset. Given the amount of information that can be inferred from mobility data, as well as the potentially large number of simply anonymized mobility datasets available, this is a growing concern.” The data they studied involved users in an unidentified European country, possibly Belgium, and involved anonymized data collected by their carriers between 2006 and 2007. Anonymized Phone Location Data Not So Anonymous, Researchers Find [Wired/Kim Zetter]
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Researchers show method for de-anonymizing 95% of “anonymous” cellular location data
iOS ( Jailbroken ): If you want to enable the passcode on your iPhone you usually need to jump into the settings, hit the toggle, and enter your passcode. It’s a bit tedious, but if you want to speed up the process TapTapPass makes it possible to enable your passcode from pretty much anywhere. More »
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TapTapPass Quickly Enables Your iPhone’s Passcode from Anywhere
Aurich Lawson Apple’s iCloud is marketed to us end users as a convenient and centralized way to manage data on all of our Macs and iOS devices: sync contacts and bookmarks, re-download music and apps, back up iOS devices, and sync documents and data for third-party apps as MobileMe did. The last item, syncing of documents and data, is one of the least glossy features of iCloud, but it is one of the most important, and it should be among the most straightforward. Right? Perhaps not. Almost a year after Apple shut down MobileMe for good in favor of iCloud , third-party developers have begun to speak out about the difficulty involved in working with Apple’s cloud service. A piece published at The Verge this week highlights many of those complaints, with quotes coming from well-known developers and anonymous sources alike about the challenges faced by the developer community. From data loss and corruption to unexpected Apple ID use cases, developers have seen it all—but are stymied by the persistence of problems that prevent them from shipping products with working iCloud support. What’s the big problem, exactly? According to Bare Bones Software’s Rich Siegel, there are a number of moving parts to iCloud that all affect how things come out on the other end. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Frustrated with iCloud, Apple’s developer community speaks up en masse
Egypt’s Naval forces claim they have captured three scuba divers who were trying to cut an undersea Internet cable in the Mediterranean. Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said in a statement that the divers were caught while “cutting the undersea cable” of Telecom Egypt. Internet services have been disrupted since March 22 in Egypt. From the article: “The statement was accompanied by a photo showing three young men, apparently Egyptian, staring up at the camera in what looks like an inflatable launch. It did not have further details on who they were or why they would have wanted to cut a cable.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Egyptian Forces Capture 3 Divers Trying To Cut Undersea Internet Cable
While ZigBee hasn’t become as ubiquitous in wireless as the likes of Bluetooth or WiFi, it has carved out niches in home automation and low-power gear. The format is about to expand its world a little further now that a more network-savvy spec, ZigBee IP, is officially available for everyone. The upgrade adds IPv6 and tougher security to the open mesh networking formula, letting it more easily join an internet of things where there’s potentially billions of connected devices. The ZigBee Alliance isn’t naming customers at this stage, although it’s quick to note that ZigBee IP was built for smart grid use: don’t be surprised if you first see it behind the scenes, keeping energy use in check. Filed under: Household , Networking Comments Source: ZigBee Alliance
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ZigBee IP spec goes public, offers open IPv6 mesh networking
No, this isn’t something out of an Octavia Butler novel. It’s Tetrahymena thermophila — a single-celled organism that goes way beyond male and female. It has seven different sexes to choose from. Now a new study published in PLOS has finally made sense of its bizarrely complex and seemingly random sex life. Read more…
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Think your sex life is complicated? Imagine having 7 sexes.
iOS ( Jailbroken ): It doesn’t take all that many taps to go in and update your apps on your iPhone or iPad, but if you’d prefer it just happened automatically in the background, Auto App Updater is a jailbreak app that does just that. More »
The new E6 Series Super Komachi has a sleek design and a top speed of nearly 200 mph. Operators hope it will help the quake-ravaged north. [Read more]
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200-mph red bullet trains thrill rail-mad Japan
Continuing its quest to sate subscribers’ appetites with a flow of original content, Netflix has announced a new original series, Sense8 . Due in late 2014, it’s being developed by the Wachowskis of The Matrix , V for Vendetta , Cloud Atlas and Speed Racer fame, as well as J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5 . Details are thin, but the press release promises a gripping global tale of minds linked and souls hunted with a ten episode run for its first season. As it did with House of Cards , Arrested Development and other productions, Netflix is relying heavily on data from viewers to decide which programs to support. According to chief content officer Ted Sarandos, ” Andy and Lana Wachowski and Joe Straczynski are among the most imaginative writers and gifted visual storytellers of our time,” whose creations are very frequently viewed on the service. According to the creators themselves, they’ve sought to work together for a decade, and this idea started from a late night conversation about “the ways technology simultaneously unites and divides us.” If that’s not enough for now, then t here are a few more details and quotes in the press release, which is included after the break. Filed under: Home Entertainment , HD Comments
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Netflix signs up The Matrix, Babylon 5 creators to develop a new sci-fi series: Sense8