A new privacy fuss is kicking off around Google’s Android mobile OS, with security boffins claiming that the software’s backup tools mean that a copy of everyone’s Wi-Fi password history is now saved to Google’s servers. Which may mean it could be legally compelled to hand them out, should a government come calling. Read more…
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Google Knows the Wi-Fi Passwords of All Android Users
An anonymous reader writes “A suburban Los Angeles school district is taking a novel approach to tackling the problem of cyber-bullying. It’s paying a company to snoop on students’ social media pages. ‘The district in Glendale, California, is paying $40, 500 to a firm to monitor and report on 14, 000 middle and high school students’ posts on Twitter, Facebook and other social media for one year. Though critics liken the monitoring to government stalking, school officials and their contractor say the purpose is student safety. As classes began this fall, the district awarded the contract after it earlier paid the firm, Geo Listening, $5, 000 last spring to conduct a pilot project monitoring 9, 000 students at three high schools and a middle school. Among the results was a successful intervention with a student “who was speaking of ending his life” on his social media, said Chris Frydrych, CEO of the firm.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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California School District Hires Firm To Monitor Students’ Social Media
SpaceGhost writes “Sky News reports that the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) has launched an orbital telescope on a new generation rocket from the Uchinoura Space Centre in Kagoshima, in southwestern Japan. The Epsilon rocket uses an onboard AI for autonomous launch checks by the rocket itself (launch video). A product of renewed focus on reducing costs, the new vehicle required two laptops and a launch team of eight, compared to the 150 people needed to launch the previous platform, the M-5. Because of the reduced launch team and ease of construction, production and launch costs of the Epsilon are roughly half that of the M-5. The payload, a SPRINT-A telescope, is designed for planetary observation.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Japan Controls Rocket Launch With Just 8 People and 2 Laptops
MojoKid writes “Kirk Skaugen, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the PC Client Group at Intel, while on stage, at IDF this week snuck in some additional information about Broadwell, the 14nm follow up to Haswell that was mentioned during Brian Krzanich’s opening day keynote. In a quick demo, Kirk showed a couple of systems running the Cinebench multi-threaded benchmark side-by-side. One of the systems featured a Haswell-Y processor, the other a Broadwell-Y. The benchmark results weren’t revealed, but during the Cinebench run, power was being monitored on both systems and it showed the Broadwell-Y rig consuming roughly 30% less power than Haswell-Y and running fully loaded at under 5 watts. Without knowing clocks and performance levels, we can’t draw many conclusion from the power numbers shown, but they do hint at Broadwell-Y’s relative health, even at this early stage of the game.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Intel Shows 14nm Broadwell Consuming 30% Less Power Than 22nm Haswell
The hardest part of beating piracy is finding a way to compete with free. Netflix does it by making things dumb easy, that and purposefully picking up shows that are popular with pirates . Read more…
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Netflix Checks With Pirates to Decide Which Shows to Buy
New submitter TinTops writes “Speaking in a keynote at Intel’s Developer Forum, Microsoft’s vice president of marketing, Tami Reller, said the firm has ‘now seen about three quarters of Windows enterprises moving to modern desktops’ from Windows XP, with the last leg of Windows XP migrations being spurred by the imminent availability of Windows 8.1. However, Reller did not offer a breakdown of the enterprise uptake of Windows 8 compared to Windows 7, both of which are counted by Microsoft as modern desktops.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Majority of Enterprise Customers Finally ‘Migrating Away From Windows XP’
E-ZPass is probably the best thing that’s ever happened to paying tolls. Those plastic funnels you toss coins into are a close second. But E-ZPass has a bonus feature. It can be used to track you everywhere you go . Read more…
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E-ZPass Is the Best Tracking Device That’s Already in Your Car
Even if you’re unsure if you want more Star Wars movies, Disney is going to start shoving them down your eyeballs come 2015. Along with the upcoming trilogy, Disney had previously confirmed that there would be spin off Star Wars movies as well. Now Disney says those spin off films will be ‘origin stories’ for its Star Wars characters. Which character do you want to see? Read more…
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Those Standalone Star Wars Movies Will Be Origin Stories
Fifth Element director Luc Besson doesn’t exactly want to make a sequel to his famous space opera — but another film, in the same vein and with the same ideas. Which he would direct. Read more…
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Luc Besson still wants to make another Fifth Element
After the enormous map for Grand Theft Auto V leaked online , the Internet has had a ball geeking out on the render of Los Santos and Blaine Counties. The geography is based on the sprawling metropolis of Los Angeles, but to give you an idea for how big the city really is in real life , Reddit user fakeitlikeyoumakeit took the Google Maps of other major cities and scaled them to GTA 5 proportions. Read more…
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GTA 5 Map Compared to the Google Maps of Major Cities