The YouTube app is now available on Roku 3 , and it features full HD streaming and a send to TV feature from your phone. Might we suggest this Beyonce video as a candidate for the first thing you watch? Read more…
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The YouTube app is now available on Roku 3, and it features full HD streaming and a send to TV featu
News stories that are really big unfold over months or years, and tackling them can take almost constant media coverage. But all of that distilled information can start to feel overwhelming in itself, and that’s where the infographic recap comes in really handy. Read more…
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A Quick and Complete History of Bitcoin So You’re Not Totally Lost
A real sign language interpreter translates the gestures of the fake sign language interpreter from Nelson Mandela’s memorial. [ Jimmy Kimmel Live ]
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Real sign language interpreter translates fake one
Scientists at the Institute for Integrative Nanosciences in Dresden, Germany, have created “the first sperm-based biobots” —a cybernetic microorganism made of metal and a bull’s sperm cell that can be remote controlled and used to impregnate an egg or deliver a drug to a target anywhere inside your body. Read more…
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Scientists create a cyborg sperm that can swim inside your body
A law in Norway has their National Library scanning all literature and then making it publicly available to anyone to anyone coming in under a Norwegian IP address. Pretty cool, if you’re in Norway now or in the near-ish future. But it’s also pretty awesome for the much more distant future. Read more…
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In Norway, all library books must be digitized — by law
Microsoft were forced to make some come compromises to their original vision for Windows 8 come the recent update , reinstating the Start Button due to popular demand. Now, rumors suggest that the 8.2 update could take that one step further. Read more…
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Rumor: The Full Start Menu Might Be Coming Back to Windows 8, Too
Back in May, our friend and ex-NASA JPL engineer Mark Rober , figured out a way to shoot “bullet time” videos on the cheap , with a ceiling fan, a pair of flashlights, and a GoPro. Pretty damn creative, but the rig had its limitations. So Mark set out to find a way to create a similar set-up, this time using a high-end Phantom camera. Thank goodness. Read more…
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NASA Engineers Built an Insanely Complex Bullet-Time Rig For Fun
Earlier this month, mathematics vlogger Vi Hart posted a ringing denunciation of the new integration of Youtube comments with Google Plus, arguing that the ham-fisted change had brought Youtube comments to an even lower low. Hart said that the new system gave precedence to people who were able to provoke lots of replies with trollish and insulting behavior, crowding out good commenters. Now, Youtube has officially recognized that the new system has led to an increase in spam, flaming, and the posting of ASCII art pornography . It’s part of a wider program through which Google is attempting to drive all its users into Google Plus (largely because advertisers are willing to pay higher rates for “social” ads, this being the latest industry mania). Googlers’ annual bonuses are being paid out based on Google Plus’s success, meaning that across the business, Google Plus is being crammed into every possible corner . The latest Android system, KitKat, tries to force users into Google Plus accounts for sending and receiving SMSes, and makes you opt out of Google Plus about six times during setup. When Google Plus came in, its company proponents insisted that forcing people to use their real names would improve civility. As is often the case when doctrine fails to line up with reality, they have now doubled down on their folly. If Google Plus hasn’t made the Internet “civil,” the problem can’t be that Real Names don’t work — the problem must be that Google Plus hasn’t been wedged into enough corners of the Internet. It’s hard to believe that Google managed to make Youtube comments worse, but there you have it. It turns out that if you provide Google engineers and product designers with sufficient motivation, there’s no limit to how bad things can get. Update : Thanks to David Otaguro for clarifying that the Google bonuses for Google Plus success was a one-year only affair to coincide with the service’s launch, and that the bonus was only partially based on Google Plus’s success. The Google+ integration has also proven unpopular in a broader sense for a couple of reasons. The change constitutes a) meddling with a well-understood, if broken, system in the interest of creating engagement and more data affiliated with real people, thus creating more business for Google, and b) doing so using Google’s social network, which sits somewhere on a spectrum between reviled and ignored. Google seems to be counting on the outcry against Google+ itself to eventually settle down. The company’s response to the newly bad YouTube comments has been to finally introduce better content moderation at a high level. The update to the system will have “better recognition of bad links,” according to the YouTube blog post, as well as “improved ASCII art detection” and altering the display of long comments. The next step will be to add bulk comment moderation, a long-requested feature that YouTube has avoided until now. The post also mentions briefly that the team is “working on improving comment ranking.” However, no details are provided on how the system will overcome YouTube’s ability to co-opt the definition of “engaged” and turn it into, specifically, “controversial.” The Google+ integration, though, appears to be here to stay. That’s despite the fact that the strongest user-based case for its use—that accountability will prevent trolls from trolling—has been killed, drowned in a sea of ASCII penises. YouTube hilariously impotent against ASCII comment pornographers [Casey Johnston/Ars Technica]
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Google admits that Youtube/Google Plus integration increased ASCII porn, spam and trolling – UPDATED
Google turned in a man who copied child pornography to his cellphone using Picasa. Raul Gonzales, 40, was charged with possessing more than 3,000 pornographic pictures of children on the phone. The FBI says the investigation began in March when Google’s hashing technology found two child porn pictures in his Picasa library. Picasa is a cloud-sharing platform for images owned by Google. From there, the company notified the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which says it found more images on a Tumblr account owned by Gonzalez. That’s when the feds took over. Agents say they also found pictures of a 9-year-old who is close to the family, and that Gonzales admitted to sexually assaulting the child. “When an image is found,” Google assured CBS, “an employee will inspect it to make sure it’s actual abuse and not just a picture of a child at bathtime.” It’s good to know that an alleged sexual predator was identified and dealt with, and it’s good to know that Google assigns individual humans to inspect our naked children for the authorities’ consideration.
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Google turns in child porn owner who used its cloud services
“Five defendants are depicted in this courtroom sketch of a U.S. district court in Manhattan on Nov. 20, 2013. The men allegedly conspired to smuggle North Korean meth into the U.S.” Jane Rosenburg, for Reuters Five men have been extradited to the US from Thailand to face charges of trafficking crystal methamphetamine cooked in North Korea. The highly militarized nation is hard for humans to get out of, but court documents indicate that meth seems to escape more easily. In September, the men were arrested by US federal agents after promising North Korean meth to undercover DEA agents. From Al Jazeera : Two of the men, who officials say were members of a Hong Kong-based criminal organization, allegedly sold more than 66 pounds of meth produced in North Korea in 2012. That crystal meth was later seized by law enforcement and tested to be more than 99 percent pure, even purer than the meth cooked by Walter White, the fictional teacher-turned-drug lord in the popular TV series, “Breaking Bad.” The other three men – two of whom were from Great Britain and one from Thailand – had allegedly agreed to transfer the meth from Thailand and store it in the Philippines. The Al Jazeera piece points to earlier investigative reporting on meth in North Korea by Foreign Policy contributor Isaac Stone Fish . No, he wasn’t reporting for Vice. From his recent FP blog post : Crystal meth is everywhere, but there are few locations better suited for the drug than North Korea. Produced from chemicals accessible even in a country as isolated as North Korea, it also suppresses appetite; that makes it ideal for a nation scarred by hunger. And there are many underemployed scientists — North Korea has a surprisingly educated populace — with the ability and desire to toil away at perfecting the formula in remote labs scattered across the country’s mountainous interior. Perhaps the scientists chose factories hidden among North Korea’s mountainous countryside, or perhaps North Korean authorities did not know or care about the notoriously pungent smell that ‘cooking’ crystal meth throws off. More likely, North Korean authorities participated in the trade; they had been smugglers of other contraband, including bootleg cigarettes and heroin. Three North Koreans I spoke with said the drug started appearing on the domestic market in the late 1990s — a period also cursed by devastating rains, which damaged the opium poppy crop. As thousands of North Koreans began moving across the country’s porous border with China during the famine, looking for food and work, they discovered a market for crystal meth on the Chinese side. And that, my friends, is why you want to keep scientists employed as scientists. Read the whole Al Jazeera piece , which points to some relevant studies indicating that this case isn’t isolated, and that if Walter Whit e were alive and real, Madrigal Electromotive might consider Pyongyang as a future hub. PDF of indictment : “US vs. Scott Stammers, Philip Shackelss, Ye Tiong Tan Lim, Alan Kelly Reyes Peralta, and Alexander LNU.” In court documents, “LNU” generally stands for Last Name Unknown. Defendant Alexander “LNU” (Last Name Unknown), via US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Detail of the indictment against 5 men charged with trafficking meth from North Korea into the United States.
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Five charged in US with smuggling ‘more than 99% pure’ meth from North Korea. Heisenberg weeps.