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NC School District Recalls Its Amplify Tablets After 10% Break In Under a Month

Nate the greatest writes “Guilford County Schools’ headline grabbing tablet program is back in the news again. The program came to an abrupt end last Friday when the school district announced that they were recalling all of the Amplify tablets. GCS had leased over 15 thousand of the tablets (at a cost of $200 a year) for its middle school students, but decided to recall the tablets just one month into the school year after some 1500 students reported a broken screen. Around two thousand complained of improperly fitting cases, and there were also 175 reports of malfunctioning power supplies. There’s currently no explanation for the cases or power supplies, but GCS has stated that the tablets broke because they lacked a layer of Gorilla Glass. This was listed in the contract, but the school district did not confirm the condition of the tablets before accepting them. This program was the poster child for News Corp.’s entry into the educational market. It was the single largest program to use the Amplify tablet, and its failure represents a serious setback. The Amplify tablet now has a record for poor construction quality and a breakage rate that is 12 times higher than what Squaretrade reported in early 2012 for the iPad 2.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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NC School District Recalls Its Amplify Tablets After 10% Break In Under a Month

New High Tech $100 Bills Start To Circulate Today

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes “New $100 bills made their debut today in the U.S. They include high tech features designed to make it easier for the public to authenticate but more difficult for counterfeiters to replicate. Those measures include a blue, 3-D security ribbon, as well as color-shifting ink that changes from copper to green when the note is tilted (PDF). That ink can be found on a large ‘100’ on the back of the bill, on one of the ‘100’s’ on the front, and on a new image of an ink well that’s also on the front. ‘The $100 is the highest value denomination that we issue, and it circulates broadly around the world, ‘ says Michael Lambert, assistant director for cash at the Federal Reserve Board. ‘Therefore, we took the necessary time to develop advanced security features that are easy for the public to use in everyday transactions, but difficult for counterfeiters to replicate.’ The bill was originally due to reach banks in 2011, but three years ago the Federal Reserve announced that a problem with the currency’s new security measures was causing the bills to crease during printing, which left blank spaces on the bills. This led the Feds to shred more than 30 million of the bills in 2012. The image of Benjamin Franklin will be the same as on the current bill, but like all the other newly designed currencies, it will no longer be surrounded by an dark oval. Except for the $1 and $2 bill, all U.S. paper currency has been redesigned in the last 10 years to combat counterfeiting.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New High Tech $100 Bills Start To Circulate Today

NSA’s New Utah Data Center Suffering Meltdowns

linuxwrangler writes “NSA’s new Utah data-center has been sufferering numerous power-surges that have caused as much as $100, 000 damage per event. The root cause is ‘not yet sufficiently understood’ but is suspected to relate to the site’s ‘inability to simultaneously run computers and keep them cool.’ Frustrating the analysis and repair are ‘incomplete information about the design of the electrical system’ and the fact that “regular quality controls in design and construction were bypassed in an effort to fast track the Utah project.”” Ars Technica has a short article, too, as does ITworld. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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NSA’s New Utah Data Center Suffering Meltdowns

Over 100 Missing Episodes of Doctor Who Located

MajikJon writes “The BBC junking policies of the ’60s and ’70s resulted in the loss of hundreds of episodes of the classic series in its earliest years. Through the work of ardent fans over the succeeding decades, dozens of these lost episodes have been painstaking recovered and added back into the BBC archives. Now, it seems, the searchers have struck the mother lode. According to the Wikipedia, there are currently 106 missing episodes of the serial. If reports are correct, we may finally get to see all the episodes.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Over 100 Missing Episodes of Doctor Who Located

DOJ Hasn’t Actually Found Silk Road Founder’s Bitcoin Yet

Techdirt has an interesting followup on the arrest and indictment of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, in connection to which the FBI seized 26, 000 or so Bitcoins. From the Techdirt piece: “However, in the criminal complaint against Ulbricht, it suggested that his commissions were in the range of $80 million — or about 600, 000 Bitcoins. You might notice the disconnect between the 26, 000 Bitcoins seized and the supposed 600, 000 Ulbright made. It now comes out that those 26, 000 Bitcoins aren’t even Ulbricht’s. Instead, they’re actually from Silk Road’s users. In other words, these were Bitcoins stored with user accounts on Silk Road. Ulbricht’s actual wallet is separate from that, and was apparently encrypted, so it would appear that the FBI does not have them, nor does it have any way of getting at them just yet. And given that some courts have argued you can’t be forced to give up your encryption, as it’s a 5th Amendment violation, those Bitcoins could remain hidden — though, I could see the court ordering him to pay the dollar equivalent in restitution (though still not sure that would force him to decrypt the Bitcoins).” The article also notes that the FBI’s own Bitcoin wallet has been identified, leading to some snarky micropayment messages headed their direction. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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DOJ Hasn’t Actually Found Silk Road Founder’s Bitcoin Yet

Google Is Sneaking Chrome OS Into Windows 8’s "Metro" Mode

It was one thing when Google’s Chrome apps managed to break out of the browser and become real, offline apps, but clearly that is not Google’s real long-term play. A recent update to the developer version of Google Chrome basically runs Chrome OS inside of Windows 8 . Read more…        

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Google Is Sneaking Chrome OS Into Windows 8’s "Metro" Mode

Steam Machine Prototypes Use Intel CPUs, NVIDIA GPUs

An anonymous reader writes “Valve has revealed their first Steam Machines prototype details. The first 300 Steam Machine prototypes to ship will use various high-end Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs while running their custom SteamOS Linux distribution. The Intel Haswell CPU + NVIDIA GPU combination should work well on Linux with the binary drivers. Using a range of CPUs/GPUs in the prototypes will allow them to better gauge the performance and effectiveness. Valve also said they will be releasing the CAD design files to their custom living room console enclosure for those who’d like to reproduce them.” Valve is careful to point out that these specs aren’t intended as a standard: “[T]o be clear, this design is not meant to serve the needs of all of the tens of millions of Steam users. It may, however, be the kind of machine that a significant percentage of Steam users would actually want to purchase — those who want plenty of performance in a high-end living room package. Many others would opt for machines that have been more carefully designed to cost less, or to be tiny, or super quiet, and there will be Steam Machines that fit those descriptions.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Steam Machine Prototypes Use Intel CPUs, NVIDIA GPUs

The U.S. military’s robopocalyptic army is starting to take shape

Everyone, say hello to WildCat, a robotic quadruped that can run 16 mph (26 kph) without tethers. It joins an already impressive cast of conceptual bots, including an updated version of ATLAS — who, as showcased in a must-see new video, may soon appear on an episode of American Ninja . Read more…        

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The U.S. military’s robopocalyptic army is starting to take shape

How Many Android OEMs Cheat Benchmark Scores? Pretty Much All of Them

An anonymous reader writes “After Samsung got caught out cheating on benchmarks (Note 3, Galaxy S4) AnandTech has done a detailed analysis of the state of benchmark cheating amongst Android OEMs. With the exception of Motorola, literally every single OEM they’ve looked at ships (or has shipped) at least one device that does benchmark-specific CPU optimizations. AnandTech also thinks it will get worse before it gets better. ‘The hilarious part of all of this is we’re still talking about small gains in performance. The impact on our CPU tests is 0 – 5%, and somewhere south of 10% on our GPU benchmarks as far as we can tell. I can’t stress enough that it would be far less painful for the OEMs to just stop this nonsense and instead demand better performance/power efficiency from their silicon vendors.’ The article notes that Apple doesn’t do any of the frequency gaming stuff.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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How Many Android OEMs Cheat Benchmark Scores? Pretty Much All of Them