helix2301 writes: Google’s grip on the Internet search market loosened in December, as the search engine saw its largest drop since 2009. That loss was Yahoo’s gain, as the Marissa Mayer-helmed company added almost 2% from November to December to bring its market share back into double digits. Google’s lead remains overwhelming, with just more than three-quarters of search, according to SatCounter Global Stats. Microsoft’s Bing gained some momentum to take 12.5% of the market. Yahoo now has 10.4%. All other search engines combined to take 1.9%. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Google Sees Biggest Search Traffic Drop Since 2009 As Yahoo Gains Ground
An anonymous reader writes: Have you enjoyed reading the constant flow of news about how red light cameras are failing? They’ve been installed under the shadow of corruption, they don’t increase safety, and major cities are dropping them. Well, the good news is that red-light cameras are on the decline in the U.S. The bad news is that speeding cameras are on the rise. From the article: “The number of U.S. communities using red-light cameras has fallen 13 percent, to 469, since the end of 2012, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit scientific and educational organization funded by the insurance industry. That includes the 24 towns in New Jersey that participated in a pilot program that ended this month with no pending legislation to revive it. Meanwhile, the institute estimates that 137 communities use speed cameras, up from 115 at the end of 2011.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader writes: The Hungarian government has announced a new tax on internet traffic: 150 HUF ($0.62 USD) per gigabyte. In Hungary, a monthly internet subscription costs around 4, 000-10, 000 HUF ($17-$41), so it could really put a constraint on different service providers, especially for streaming media. This kind of tax could set back the country’s technological development by some 20 years — to the pre-internet age. As a side note, the Hungarian government’s budget is running at a serious deficit. The internet tax is officially expected to bring in about 20 billion HUF in income, though a quick look at the BIX (Budapest Internet Exchange) and a bit of math suggests a better estimate of the income would probably be an order of magnitude higher. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Passenger rail has never been known for punctuality (at least in this century), but over the past year, Amtrak’s long distance passenger trains have reportedly gone from being late 35 percent of the time to being late 60 percent of the time. But don’t blame Amtrak—it’s being forced to make way for the thousands of trains carrying oil from the Midwest. Read more… 
It’s no secret that everybody’s thinking about privacy and cyber security more since the world was pummeled with the unsettling, spy-novel truths of the Snowden revelations . Now, companies are starting to seize onto the zeitgeist by building more secure tools for the internet. And it sounds like Tor will be at the front of that line. Read more… 
The latest figures: Between January 1 and August 29 of this year, nearly 600 confirmed measles cases were reported to the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. The resurgence is the greatest the U.S. has seen since the disease was eliminated from the country in 2000. Read more… 
Planes are giving passengers less and less leg room so it’s no surprise that quarrels break out between passengers over space. Yesterday, one such altercation got so heated that a plane was diverted to Chicago. And at the heart of the conflict? A nifty little device called the Knee Defender , which prevents seats from reclining. Read more… 
New submitter onproton writes: Citizen Lab released new research today on a targeted exploitation technique used by state actors involving “network injection appliances” installed at ISPs. These devices can target and intercept unencrypted YouTube traffic and replace it with malicious code that gives the operator control over the system or installs a surveillance backdoor. One of the researchers writes, “many otherwise well-informed people think they have to do something wrong, or stupid, or insecure to get hacked—like clicking on the wrong attachments, or browsing malicious websites…many of these commonly held beliefs are not necessarily true.” This technique is largely designed for targeted attacks, so it’s likely most of us will be safe for now — but just one more reminder to use https. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
yyzmcleod (1534129) writes The technology to 3D print a single part from multiple materials has been around for years, but only for polymer-based additive manufacturing processes. For metals, jobs are typically confined to a single powdered base metal or alloy per object. However, researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory say they have developed a 3D printing technique that allows for print jobs to transition from one metal to another in a single object. From the article: In JPL’s technique, the build material’s composition is gradually transitioned as the print progresses. For example, the powdered build material might contain 97 percent titanium alloy and 3 percent stainless steel at the beginning of the transition. Then, in 1 percent increments between layers, the gradient progresses to 97 percent stainless steel and 3 percent Ti alloy by some defined point in the overall 3D printing process. Read more of this story at Slashdot.