davidshenba writes: Facebook has revealed that government requests for user data has increased by 24% to nearly 35, 000 during the first six months of the year. Also content restrictions due to local laws increased by 19% in the same period. According to Facebook, they scrutinize every government request for legal sufficiency and “push back hard when we find deficiencies or are served with overly broad requests.” Already Facebook is fighting its largest ever legal battle against a U.S. court order to handover 400 users’ data. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Tag: linkedin
Study Shows Direct Brain Interface Between Humans
vinces99 writes University of Washington researchers have successfully replicated a direct brain-to-brain connection between pairs of people as part of a scientific study following the team’s initial demonstration a year ago. In the newly published study, which involved six people, researchers were able to transmit the signals from one person’s brain over the Internet and use these signals to control the hand motions of another person within a split second of sending that signal. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
LibraryBox is an Open Source Server That Runs on Low-Cost Hardware (Video)
The world is full of wireless servers — or at least some of it is. There are still many places, including parts of the United States, where you can have all the laptops, smart phones, and other wireless-capable devices you want, but there’s no server that caters to them. Enter LibraryBox. It’s open source and it runs on a variety of low-cost, low-power hardware. The project’s website calls it “portable private digital distribution.” A lot of people obviously like this project and wish it well. LibraryBox ran a Kickstarter campaign in 2013, hoping for $3000, and raised $33, 119. But today’s interviewee, Jason Griffey, can explain his project better than we can, so please watch the video (or read the transcript) if you want to learn more about LibraryBox — including the story behind the project’s name. (Alternate Video Link) Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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LibraryBox is an Open Source Server That Runs on Low-Cost Hardware (Video)
Why the Time Is Always Set To 9:41 In Apple Ads
jones_supa writes If you have looked carefully, the clock has traditionally been always set to 9:42 in Apple advertisements. You could see it across various commercials, print ads, and even on Apple’s website. The explanation is simple: That’s the time in the morning that Steve Jobs announced the very first iPhone in 2007. Around 42 minutes into his keynote address he said “Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone.” The picture of the phone was carefully scheduled to pop up at that moment. “We design the keynotes so that the big reveal of the product happens around 40 minutes into the presentation”, Apple’s Scott Forstall confirms. The time was even slightly tweaked in 2010, when the very first iPad was released, so that when it was revealed, it displayed a different time: 9:41. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Why the Time Is Always Set To 9:41 In Apple Ads
Android 5.0 Makes SD Cards Great Again
An anonymous reader writes: Over the past couple of years, Google has implemented some changes to how Android handles SD cards that aren’t very beneficial to users or developers. After listening to many rounds of complaints, this seems to have changed in Android 5.0 Lollipop. Google’s Jeff Sharkey wrote, “[I]n Lollipop we added the new ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT_TREE intent. Apps can launch this intent to pick and return a directory from any supported DocumentProvider, including any of the shared storage supported by the device. Apps can then create, update, and delete files and directories anywhere under the picked tree without any additional user interaction. Just like the other document intents, apps can persist this access across reboots.” Android Police adds, “All put together, this should be enough to alleviate most of the stress related to SD cards after the release of KitKat. Power users will no longer have to deal with crippled file managers, media apps will have convenient access to everything they should regardless of storage location, and developers won’t have to rely on messy hacks to work around the restrictions.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Android 5.0 Makes SD Cards Great Again
Rhode Island Comic Con Oversold, Overcrowded
New submitter RobertJ1729 writes The Rhode Island Comic Con (RICC) is in the middle of a complete meltdown as hundreds are turned away at the door or denied reentry due to the event organizers selling far more tickets than the venue can accomodate. The Providence Journal reports that “According to Providence Fire Chief David Soscia, too many people were being let in at a time and the organizers were not correctly counting them. That led to over-congested areas in the building which has a maximum capacity of 17, 000 people.” Meanwhile the Rhode Island Comic Con Facebook page is being flooded with comments from angry attendees describing chaos both inside and out of the convention center. RICC initially posted, “Hello RICC fans! WE ARE NOT OVERSOLD!, ” and promised to honor tomorrow tickets sold for today. That post generated several hundred angry comments before eventually being deleted (though it survives in part on RICC’s twitter feed). Commenters are alleging that RICC is deleting negative Facebook comments. Users are tweeting at #ricomicconfail2014 to vent their frustration. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Integrated Circuit Amplifier Breaches Terahertz Barrier
jenningsthecat writes: DARPA’s Terahertz Electronics program has created “the fastest solid-state amplifier integrated circuit ever measured.” The Terahertz Monolithic Integrated Circuit (TMIC), boasts a gain of 9dB — previously unheard of for a monolithic device in this frequency range. Plus, the status of “fastest” has been certified by Guinness — seriously! (‘Cause you might not trust DARPA, but you gotta trust Guinness — right?). In related news, DARPA has also created a micro-machined vacuum power amplifier operating at 850 GHz, or 0.85 THz. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Integrated Circuit Amplifier Breaches Terahertz Barrier
Denmark Plans To Be Coal-Free In 10 Years
merbs writes “Earlier this year, Denmark’s leadership announced that the nation would run entirely on renewable power by 2050. Wind, solar, and biomass would be ramped up while coal and gas are phased out. Now Denmark has gone even further, and plans to end coal by 2025. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Denmark Plans To Be Coal-Free In 10 Years
Getting ‘Showdown’ To 90 FPS In UE4 On Oculus Rift
An anonymous reader writes Oculus has repeatedly tapped Epic Games to whip up demos to show off new iterations of Oculus Rift VR headset hardware. The latest demo, built in UE4, is ‘Showdown’, an action-packed scene of slow motion explosions, bullets, and debris. The challenge? Oculus asked Epic to make it run at 90 FPS to match the 90 Hz refresh rate of the latest Oculus Rift ‘Crescent Bay’ prototype. At the Oculus Connect conference, two of the developers from the team that created the demo share the tricks and tools they used to hit that target on a single GPU. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Getting ‘Showdown’ To 90 FPS In UE4 On Oculus Rift
Signed-In Maps Mean More Location Data For Google
mikejuk writes The announcement on the Google Geo Developers blog has the catchy title No map is an island. It points out that while there are now around 2 million active sites that have Google Maps embedded, they store data independently, The new feature, called attributed save, aims to overcome this problem by creating an integrated experience between the apps you use that have map content and Google Maps, and all it requires is that users sign in. So if you use a map in a specific app you will be able to see locations you entered in other apps.This all sounds great and it makes sense to allow users to take all of the locations that have previously been stored in app silos and put them all together into one big map data pool. The only down side is that the pool is owned by Google and some users might not like the idea of letting Google have access to so much personal geo information. It seems you can have convenience or you can have privacy.It might just be that many users prefer their maps to be islands. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Signed-In Maps Mean More Location Data For Google