Polynesian People Were Using Binary 600 Years Ago

Binary lies at the heart of our technological lives: those strings of ones and zeroes are fundamental to the way all our digital devices function. But while the invention of binary is usually credited to German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz in the 18th Century, it turns out the Polynesians were using it as far back as 600 years ago . Read more…        

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Polynesian People Were Using Binary 600 Years Ago

Saturday Night Live Hilariously Riffs on Obama’s Recent Tech Troubles

Obama hasn’t had a great time with all things technological recently: Healthcare.gov is still struggling , and he was embarrassingly forced into posing for a selfie with Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt last week. This Saturday Night Live video takes an amusing look at it all. Read more…        

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Saturday Night Live Hilariously Riffs on Obama’s Recent Tech Troubles

Why Cloud Infrastructure Pricing Is Absurd

itwbennett writes “Two reports out this week, one a new ‘codex’ released by 451 Research and the other an updated survey into cloud IaaS pricing from Redmonk, show just how insane cloud pricing has become. If your job requires you to read these reports, good luck. For the rest of us, Redmonk’s Stephen O’Grady distilled the pricing trends down to this: ‘HP offers the best compute value and instance sizes for the dollar. Google offers the best value for memory, but to get there it appears to have sacrificed compute. AWS is king in value for disk and it appears no one else is even trying to come close. Microsoft is taking the ‘middle of the road, ‘ never offering the best or worst pricing.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Why Cloud Infrastructure Pricing Is Absurd

Magic Color-Changing Camo Blends In No Matter The Season

Camouflage only works when it’s got the same color and pattern as your surroundings. When the foliage takes on a different hue, you don’t want to be caught wearing last season’s color. This magical new camouflage solves that problem with temperature-sensitive dyes to keep your sporting wear fashionable year-round. Read more…        

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Magic Color-Changing Camo Blends In No Matter The Season

ITU Standardizes 1Gbps Over Copper, But Services Won’t Come Until 2015

alphadogg writes “The ITU has taken a big step in the standardization of G.fast, a broadband technology capable of achieving download speeds of up to 1Gbps over copper telephone wire. The death of copper and the ascent of fiber has long been discussed. However, the cost of rolling out fiber is still too high for many operators that instead want to upgrade their existing copper networks. So there is still a need for technologies that can complement fiber, including VDSL2 and G.fast. Higher speeds are needed for applications such as 4K streaming, IPTV, cloud-based storage, and communication via HD video, ITU said.” Meanwhile, I’m hoping Google Fiber, FIOS, and other fast optical options scare more ISPs into action along both price and speed axes. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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ITU Standardizes 1Gbps Over Copper, But Services Won’t Come Until 2015

Cybercrime Marketplace Mastermind Faces 18 Years In Prison

wiredmikey writes “A Ukrainian national, Roman Vega, who pleaded guilty in 2009 to creating a popular online marketplace for selling stolen financial account data has been sentenced to 18 years in prison. Called one of the world’s ‘most prolific cybercriminals’ by the Department of Justice, Vega, 49, will serve significant time in prison for his role in co-founding the notorious website CarderPlanet. In the early 2000s, Vega co-founded and became a high-ranking administrator of the notorious website, which became one of the first and busiest online marketplaces for the sale of stolen financial information, computer hacking services and money laundering. At its height, CarderPlanet had more than 6, 000 members and had a hierarchical leadership structure that borrowed its leadership titles from La Cosa Nostra, US authorities said.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Cybercrime Marketplace Mastermind Faces 18 Years In Prison

Firefox 26 Arrives With Click-To-Play For Java Plugins

An anonymous reader writes “Mozilla today officially launched Firefox 26 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Additions include Click-to-Play turned on by default for all Java plugins, more seamless updates on Windows, and a new Home design for Android. Firefox 26 has been released over on Firefox.com and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play. Release notes are here: desktop and mobile.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Firefox 26 Arrives With Click-To-Play For Java Plugins

California Man Arrested for Running ‘Revenge Porn’ Website

cold fjord writes “Yahoo reports, ‘A California man was arrested on Tuesday on accusations he ran a ‘revenge porn’ website, one that featured nude pictures of women often posted by jilted or angry ex-lovers … The San Diego arrest, the latest action by the state to crack down on such websites, comes after California Governor Jerry Brown signed a first-in-the-nation law in October specifically targeting revenge porn. The law defines revenge porn as the posting of private, explicit photos of other people on the Internet to humiliate them. But authorities did not charge 27-year-old Kevin Bollaert under that law, because it is geared to those who post the incriminating pictures and not those who run websites that feature them …. Bollaert’s site, which is no longer operational, had featured over 10, 000 sexually explicit photos, and he charged women up to $350 each to remove their photos, officials said. … Bollaert was charged under a California identity theft law that prohibits using identifying information of a person without their permission, and under anti-extortion legislation, according to court documents. Unlike many other revenge porn websites, Bollaert’s site had required users post the photo subject’s full name, location, age and a link to the person’s Facebook profile, the Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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California Man Arrested for Running ‘Revenge Porn’ Website

Twitter Will Track Your Browsing To Sell Ads

jfruh writes “Remember how social networks were going to transform the advertising industry because they’d tailor ads not to context or to your web browsing history, but to the innate preferences you express through interactions and relationships with friends? Well, that didn’t work with Facebook, and it turns out it’s not working with Twitter either. The microblogging site has announced that it’s getting into the ad retargeting game: you’ll soon start seeing promoted tweets that are chosen based on websites you’ve visited in the past. The innovation, if you can call it that, is that the retargeting will work across devices, so you can be looking at a website on your phone and see promoted tweets on your laptop’s browser, or vice versa.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Twitter Will Track Your Browsing To Sell Ads

CyanogenMod Integrates Text Message Encryption

sfcrazy writes “People are now more concerned regarding their privacy after discovering about efforts made by governments to spy on their communications. The most practical solution to keep messages, emails and calls secure is to use a cryptographic encryption mechanism. However, just like the name of the method, the installation process is complex for most users. To solve this, CyanogenMod will come equipped with built in encryption system for text messages.” Whisper System has integrated their TextSecure protocol into the SMS/MMS provider, so even third party sms apps benefit. Better yet, it’s Free Software, licensed under the GPLv3+. Support will debut in Cyanogenmod 11, but you can grab a 10.2 nightly build to try it out now. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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CyanogenMod Integrates Text Message Encryption