Maxim Bange

Social scientists think they've discovered a formula for happiness, writes Arthur C. Brooks in the New York Times, and making lots of money is not a part of it.

Decades of research have boiled human happiness down to just three factors: genes, events, and values. About half of how happy you feel is hardwired into your genetic make up, according to the article. Meanwhile, one-off events like getting married or landing a big promotion can contribute up to 40% of your happiness, but tend to offer just a temporary boost that lasts a few months.

Brooks says the remaining 12% of factors that govern how happy you feel are faith, family, community, and work. Because of the social connection and meaning they tend to create, the first three are likely not too shocking. However, the idea that working may be a significant contributor to your happiness and wellbeing is more surprising. After all, it's something that many people spend their entire lives aspiring to retire from. 

Interestingly, money is not a big part of the equation, since meaningful work that helps us feel successful seems to be the reward itself. Moving beyond the poverty level will make you happier and less stressed, but earning more money than you need to comfortably live does not make much of a difference. Not having good work, on the other hand, can be devastating. As Brooks writes:

So relieving poverty brings big happiness, but income, per se, does not. Even after accounting for government transfers that support personal finances, unemployment proves catastrophic for happiness. Abstracted from money, joblessness seems to increase the rates of divorce and suicide, and the severity of disease....

Assemble these clues and your brain will conclude what your heart already knew: Work can bring happiness by marrying our passions to our skills, empowering us to create value in our lives and in the lives of others. Franklin D. Roosevelt had it right: “Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”

For those who dread the daily slog, perhaps this insight could put working into perspective. It seems that money really can't buy happiness, but working towards something meaningful just might.

SEE ALSO: 6 Things To Do Every Day To Be Consistently Happy

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Security concerns grow as Microsoft end of support draws ever closer

Rightsholder would have charged that for a licence

Attackers are compromising Linux and Windows systems to install a new malware program designed for launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, according to researchers from the Polish Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT Polska).

The Mountain View giveth and the Mountain View taketh away

Church architecture often reflects the grandiosity of the higher power people gather to worship. In recent years, architects have sought out the most eye-catching designs possible.

But it's not just about having a steeple and pews. Some houses of worship mimick shapes in nature, like the Leaf Chapel in Hokuto, Japan. And the the Neue Synagogue in Mainz, Germany, is shaped like the Hebrew word Kedushah, meaning blessing.

Experts at the international building database Emporis.com rounded up a selection of the world's most spectacular churches based on modern architecture and design.

Catedral Metropolitana Nossa Senhora Aparecida is a Roman Catholic church in Brasilia, Brazil. Designed by famed architect Oscar Niemeyer, it consists of 16 concrete pillars.

Cathédrale de la Résurrection, a Roman Catholic cathedral in Évry, France, is unique for its rotund main sanctuary. Designed by Mario Botta Architetto, it is finished with brick and topped with 24 linden trees, meant to symbolize life.

The Chapel of the Holy Cross is a Roman Catholic church built into the buttes of Sedona, Arizona. Designed by Anshen + Allen, it's nicknamed "Beverly Hills of the Rocks."

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

In 2008, Mark Zuckerberg laid out his theory about people sharing content on Facebook.

"I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before," he said. 

The New York Times called it "Zuckerberg's Law,"a playful homage to Moore's Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who said, "The number of transistors incorporated in a chip will approximately double every 24 months."

In 2011, Zuckerberg reiterated his theory on sharing, saying that it was still growing at an exponential rate. 

That growth is now starting to turn into a problem for Facebook, argues freelance analyst Benedict Evans. We spoke with Evans last week about mobile messaging apps and Facebook. 

In August, Facebook revealed that "every time someone visits News Feed there are on average 1,500 potential stories from friends, people they follow and Pages for them to see, and most people don’t have enough time to see them all. These stories include everything from wedding photos posted by a best friend, to an acquaintance checking in to a restaurant."

Let's say the average Facebook user is awake for 17 hours a day. To consume all that stuff, they would take in 88 new items per hour, or 1.5 things per minute. That's just not possible. 

Facebook knows it has a problem. It planned a major redesign that gave users more control over the News Feed. But, it was scrapped when the first batch of users showed low engagement with the new design. 

It's also talking about trying to tweak what stories show up in your News Feed to cut back on what it considers to be low-quality content. 

To Evans, this is evidence that Facebook's core product, News Feed, is "broken."

"The problem they’ve run into, the problem of sharing, of Zuckerberg's law," says Evans, "Is that the News Feed has turned into a black hole and collapsed under it’s own weight."

Facebook started off as a place to keep track of what your friends are up to, but because there's so much stuff flowing through the News Feed, you could easily miss what your friends are doing. He points out that today, you could post that you're getting married. Only half of your friends might see that posting because of the News Feeds' algorithms. 

"That’s a product problem," says Evans. "There's so much noise in the News Feed, they broke the product." Facebook can come up with algorithms to surface the best material, but Evans says it's just "a hack." The deeper problem is that the "underlying product is broken."

Evans presents an analogy to explain Facebook's New Feed problem: "If you have 1,500 emails coming in every day, you wouldn't say, 'I need better algorithms.'"

But, Zuckerberg's Law suggests we're not getting rid of anything on Facebook, instead, we'll have more stuff. By this time next year we could have 3,000 posts, links, videos, status updates, etc all flowing through the News Feed. It's struggling to sort through 1,500, how will Facebook deal with sorting through 3,000?

This News Feed issue becomes particularly problematic for Facebook in mobile. 

On the mobile phone, it's easy to have an "unbundled" experience that could hurt Facebook, says Evans. 

On the desktop, Facebook is one big, monopolistic application. The inclination is to stay within Facebook for a lot of stuff.

On the phone, it's easy to hit the home button, then open a new app, like Whatsapp, Snapchat, or Instagram. 

 

Because the News Feed is broken, argues Evans, these targeted applications pose a problem for Facebook.  

Want to just see photos from friends? Go to Instagram, or Snapchat. Want to just exchange messages with friends? Whatsapp, or Snapchat work. Want to play games? Candy Crush, Angry Birds, QuizUp, or whatever you want are available. 

Just a few years ago, photos, messaging, and gaming, all resided in Facebook.

Now it's all on your phone, which has developed into the real social platform. Apps can tap into your phone's photos, address book, and deliver push notifications. Those were things that Facebook controlled on the desktop. Now, on mobile, "All the friction that protects Facebook isn’t there," says Evans. 

And, it all gets back to the News Feed. With so much stuff running through the News Feed, what should a mobile feed do? Should it be more about personal updates? Should it be a best of all those other apps? Facebook is still working through it. 

Facebook isn't going anywhere. It's going to remain a permanent force in our lives. And with mobile growing, Evans says Facebook will still be a winner. He just doesn't think it will be the only winner in social mobile world, unlike in the desktop where it has a monopoly in social. 

That said, Evans cautions, "There's a bear case for Facebook: It turns into Yahoo. Billions of people use the product, but no one really thinks about it." 

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"Iedere missie is uniek, de valkuil is 'm vergelijken met voorgaande missies", zegt Commandant der Strijdkrachten Tom Middendorp. Volgens Middendorp, de hoogste Nederlandse militair, loopt Nederland in Mali niet het gevaar in dramatische oorlogssituaties te belanden zoals in Bosnië in de jaren 90.

"Nederland heeft geen gebiedsverantwoordelijkheid en er rijdt in Mali geen Mladic rond met duizend tanks," zegt hij. Ook een vergelijking met Afghanistan gaat volgens hem mank. "De Taliban zaten al diepgeworteld in alle gemeenten en dat is hier gelukkig niet aan de orde".

Volgens Middendorp is het door de VN-missie mogelijk om te voorkomen dat het terrorisme zich daar definitief gaat vestigen en Mali afglijdt naar een falende staat.

Geen buurtwerkers

De Nederlanders gaan in Mali niet het directe gevecht aan met moslimextremisten en terroristen, maar ze gaan informatie verzamelen over hun activiteiten. Daarvoor gaan zij wel in gesprek met de inwoners. "Als je wilt weten waarom die terroristen voet aan de grond krijgen in een dorp, waarom er onvrede is bij de bevolking, dan moet je in contact komen met de mensen zelf."

Dat werk wordt gedaan door commando's, die zowel in staat moeten zijn het vertrouwen van de bevolking te winnen, als zichzelf te beschermen tegen aanvallen. Zij worden geholpen door reservisten die zijn gespecialiseerd in culturele informatie van het gebied.

Maar dat maakt ze volgens Middendorp nog geen 'buurtwerkers': "Als ik terrorist was zou ik daar geen ruzie mee maken."

Heet

Het moeilijkst van deze missie is volgens de Commandant der Strijdkrachten het verkrijgen van een goed beeld van de lokale bevolking, de activiteiten van terroristen en andere strijdende groepen, en waarom die groepen soms samenwerken.

Tweede moeilijkheid is het klimaat. Daarom gaan de Nederlanders vrij snel naar Mali, zodat zij op tijd zijn voor het opbouwen van beschermingsmateriaal voor militairen en helicopters tegen de zon en de wind. "Het wordt echt heel heet", zegt Middendorp.

An Orbital Science Corporation Antares rocket is seen on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2013 as it is rolled out to launch Pad-0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, VA. The Antares is scheduled to launch a Cygnus spacecraft on a cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station on Thursday, Dec. 19 at 9:19 p.m. EST. The Orbital-1 mission is Orbital Sciences' first contracted cargo delivery flight to the space station for NASA. Among the cargo aboard Cygnus set to launch to the space station are science experiments, crew provisions, spare parts and other hardware. Weather permitting, it may be widely visible along the east coast of the United States. > Map of Orbital-1 Launch Viewing Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Retired astronaut Chris Hadfield has predicted that humans will have a colony on the moon within the next 30 to 40 years and establish a base on Mars within the next 70, Sarah Knapton from The Telegraph reports.

Hadfield, who gained fame for tweeting pictures of space and performing his own version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" during his command of the International Space Station (ISS) this year, discussed the future of human space exploration in a public appearance at the Science Museum in London on Monday.

"It's a pattern we have been following for the last 70,000 years," the astronaut said. "We gradually made our way around the world. In the last 100 years we have got to Antarctica and now there are people who live there for months at a time."

"I think within my lifetime we will see a permanent lunar base. Setting up a permanent habitation on the Moon will help make space exploration better," he added.

Hadfield believes that humans will begin building a lunar base once the aging ISS is decommissioned, something that will happen in around 15 years, he said. This will be made possible with the help of countries like India and China, which both have ambitious space plans.

China successfully carried out the first soft-landing on the moon in nearly 40 years on Saturday. In November, India launched its first mission to Mars.

Hadfield, 54, retired from the Canadian Space Agency in June. He is currently on tour promoting his new book "An Astronaut's Guide To Life on Earth."

SEE ALSO: The Most Amazing Satellite Images Of The Year

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What's that? Why, it's a new name! Yes, Polygon Live has evolved into it's mega state, Friends List.

According to Beijing Youth Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Youth League committee in Beijing, 97.8% of respondents to a recent survey felt that Chinese officials were wasting public funds.

This percentage, charted by Erik Crouch of Shanghaiist, is terrifying.

Yep, the percentage who said officials weren't wasting public funds is so tiny (2.2%) that it may just be a rounding error, or people who didn't understand the question. For context, 69% of a recent Huffington Post/YouGov poll felt that the U.S. needed to eliminate waste and fraud to cut the deficit.

What's really notable about the Beijing Youth Daily poll is that the blame is being laid at the door of the officials personally, and not just inefficient systemic waste. Among the biggest examples of waste, the respondents said, were Communist Party use of "official receptions" (33.8%), "official cars" (20.7%), and "travel" (16.7%).

This anger is reflected in the recurring use of the Chinese Internet's "human flesh engine" to find and expose officials living beyond their means. For recent examples, see Yang Dacai, the expensive watch-loving official who was pictured smirking at a car crash, or Liang Wenyong, the official who was secretly filmed eating a lavish banquet of lobster while calling the "common people" shameless.

This nearly universal derision of the extravagance of Chinese officials explains why, quite rightly, President Xi Jinping is worried. Xi's much-lauded anti-corruption drive has pledged to tackle both "tigers" and "flies," ordering officials to carpool to work and limit official banquets to four courses. Even the biggest tigers, such as Zhou Yongkang, China's former security chief, have not been safe from scrutiny.

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Satoshi Nakamoto, the person who created the digital currency Bitcoin, is our person of the year.  

Don't laugh. 

Although to this day no one knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is (or are — for the latest theories check out Chart Girl's running chart) Bitcoin evangelists make the case that his true identity doesn't matter: what he's created is changing the world.

It's an assertion you hear a lot in the arts world too: you should know the man (or men, or woman — there's nothing to suggest Satoshi couldn't be one) by their works, not their biography.

This is a convincing argument.

Bitcoin wasn't the first digital currency (think World of Warcraft), and, as we've documented, wasn't the last.

But Satoshi managed to come up with something that is simply more farsighted and bulletproof than anything else, combining the best features of existing digital coins while adding his own perfections.

In particular, he addressed one of the biggest problems in online transactions: fraud. In the real world, it's the job of a centralized authority to prevent that from happening. But Satoshi figured out a workaround by cutting out that middleman: just make all transactions public, and have the entire community confirm a transaction is legit. "We have proposed a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust," Satoshi wrote in his 2008 spec paper laying out the currency — a line which, it now seems, will echo through generations.

Perhaps his most brilliant idea was making sure you couldn't hack the ability to create excess Bitcoins. Bitcoins are "mined" by computers unscrambling blocks of "hashes" or complex strings of numbers and letters. Satoshi's solution was to continuously increase the difficulty of unscrambling the hashes as more Bitcoins were created. As he wrote, "To compensate for increasing hardware speed ... the proof-of-work difficulty [the unscrambling] is determined by a moving average targeting an average number of blocks per hour. If they're generated too fast, the difficulty increases."

Even the folks behind hashcash, an early digital currency which Satoshi admits he was inspired by, had to admit Bitcoin was "an extremely clever innovation and invention," and "a first."

But why is Bitcoin such a big deal? Bank of America analyst David Woo's recent note best boiled down Bitcoin's three main uses: as a store of value, like gold; as a way to buy stuff online, and as a means for remitting money. And in most instances it's cheaper, easier, and more secure to do all these things with Bitcoin. The first two have been occurring since Bitcoin's birth, and the advent of the last one is imminent. In absolute dollar terms, Bitcoin has already surpassed Western Union for transaction volume, and is nipping at the heels of PayPal. 

Of course this is all entirely subjective, and even Bitcoin's most passionate evangelists don't rule out that some technological or regulatory catastrophe could cause its value to plunge to zero.

When we decided to name Satoshi "Person of the Year," we considered who and what else has changed society in the past 12 months. We respect the actual choice made by Time — Pope Francis has a clear set of goals, is hyper aware of the issues of the day, and really lives his religion.

Obviously, though, we have a business bias. We were not about to give the title to Paul Volcker, whose rule, while extremely meaningful, does not possess the same kind of worldwide reach as Bitcoin. Ben Bernanke could have gotten it (and possibly the Nobel Peace Prize) every year since 2009, but consecutive years of basically doing the same great stuff rules him out for 2013. Carl Icahn made an extremely impressive case for putting the fear of god into companies, but he is not quite a household name.

Neither, of course, is Satoshi. But what were you talking more about over cranberry and stuffing a few weeks ago: Carl Icahn's Tweets? Or regrets about having not gotten in on Bitcoin sooner?

One final use of Bitcoin that is often under-discussed: its use as a solution for the "unbanked," or people without access to financial instruments. As with everything Bitcoin, this may seem far-fetched at first blush. How could people who may lack access to the Internet use Bitcoin? But investors have made the case that these communities would use their cell phones — which are widespread in the developing world — as the primary medium through which these people would interact with the currency. Possessing the ability to securely send and receive funds from your pocket is a big deal for someone without access to a bank account. 

If that takes hold, Bitcoin could even begin nibbling at inequality — something Pope Francis could respect.  

SEE ALSO: 927 People Own Half Of All Bitcoins

SEE THE WHOLE LIST: The 20 Most Impressive People Of 2013

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Before queuing up "Auld Lang Syne," let's reflect on 2013.

The Year of the Selfie brought us a government shutdown, a new pope, intelligence leaks of unparalleled proportions, and the Hyperloop. Physics' greatest mystery — the theory of how particles acquire mass — was resolved. Some "leaned in," others twerked.

We collectively named "Satoshi Nakamoto," the anonymous inventor of Bitcoin, Business Insider's Person of the Year.

From politics to sports, entertainment, finance, and more, people have done extraordinary things this year. These are the people who impressed us the most (listed in alphabetical order).

"Satoshi Nakamoto," Bitcoin inventor

Most Impressive Person of the Year

Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym used by the anonymous inventor of Bitcoin, the electronic currency that seemingly came out of nowhere and has been taking over financial market headlines since.

Bitcoin is a form of digital currency that doesn't actually exist in the physical world, only as cryptic code in computers. Unlike the U.S. dollar, it's controlled privately, keeps no record of the identity of its owner, and can be transacted without the government's knowledge.

There have since been numerous attempts — comprehensively tracked by Hilary Sargent, AKA Chart Girl — to determine Nakamoto's identity, but nothing conclusive has yet emerged.

Click to get to know Satoshi Nakamoto, our Most Impressive Person of the Year »

Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pioneered a three-tier approach — nicknamed "Abenomics" — to get the Japanese economy humming again. The plan buoyed the Japanese stock market up more than 51% year to date.

Abe was elected in 2012 on the promise that he would pursue extremely aggressive stimulative policies, which included weakening the yen. The currency's plunge effectively makes the country's exports cheaper and stoked some moderate inflation.

It seems to be working. The Japanese stock market is at its highest level in almost six years and data shows the country is breaking out of its deflationary slump.

Click to see how Shinzo Abe radically transformed Japan's monetary policy »

Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke steered the U.S. out of the worst financial crisis and ensuing recession in the last 80 years.

The methods that Bernanke used to keep the economy going were untested — a highly accommodative monetary policy and near-zero interest-rate policy that's expected to outlast the man himself. His tenure as head of the U.S. central bank ends in January.

Bernanke made transparency and independence hallmarks of his leadership. He shocked market participants earlier this year with the decision not to taper despite pressure from more conservative economic thinkers.

Click for the 16 times when Ben Bernanke was a total badass »

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Everyone's familiar with the mind-blowing numbers describing Facebook's huge user population.

We're less used to seeing different social media compared side-by-side, according to how many users or visitors they have.

When all of the planet's social networks are compared in a simple list, some surprising facts emerge.

• First, global messaging apps like LINE and WhatsApp already have achieved significant scale, and so have social video platforms like YouTube, and China-based Youku.
• Meanwhile, social networks that get a lot of attention, like Twitter and Pinterest, are relatively small.
• Finally, we also see the eye-opening size of some China- and Russia-centric social media. 

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we compiled a list of the world's largest social networks. Here is the ranking as of Oct. 30, 2013 (Ranked in terms of reported or estimated global Monthly Active Users or MAUs, unless noted):

1. Facebook (1.15 billion MAUs)
2. YouTube (1 billion MAUs)
3. Qzone (712 million total users), China
4. Sina Weibo (500 million total users), China
5. WhatsApp (350 million MAUs)
6. Google+ (327 million MAUs)
7. Tumblr (300 million monthly unique visitors)
8. LINE (275 million total active users), Japan
9. Twitter (240 million MAUs)
10. WeChat (236 million MAUs), China
11. Tencent Weibo, (220 million MAUs), China
12. LinkedIn, (184 million MAUs)
13. Youku, (175 million MAUs)
14. Instagram, (150 million MAUs)
15. Tudou, (114 million MAUs), China
16. RenRen, (54 million MAUs), China
17. Pinterest, (50 million MAUs)
18. Badoo, (45 million MAUs), Cyprus
19. Orkut, (44 million MAUs)
20. Foursquare, (40 million MAUs)
21. Vine, (40 million MAUs)
22. vkontakte, (31 million MAUs), Russia
23. Myspace, (30 million MAUs)
24. Snapchat (20 million MAUs in the U.S.*)

*Business Insider's Alyson Shontell has recently reported Snapchat's global user base at 30 million globally. 

Here's a chart showing the same data: 

Access The Full Report And All Our Social Media Data By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today>>

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TOKIO - Japan gaat de komende vijf jaar zijn defensie-uitgaven flink opschroeven en vooral investeren in nieuwe vliegtuigen en drones. Dit heeft de regering van premier Shinzo Abe dinsdag bekendgemaakt. Abe heeft tot 2019 een bedrag van omgerekend 175 miljard euro ter beschikking gesteld voor militaire doeleinden, zeven miljard meer dan de afgelopen vijf jaar. Japan breekt daarmee ook een trend: de afgelopen tien jaar daalde het defensiebudget juist.

This morning, Cloudflare announced some surprising news: last December, the optimization and DDos protection service raised $50 million in Series C funding from Union Square Ventures, a funding round that's been kept secret until now. Even more surprising is what they plan on doing with the money. The company has announced plans to offer its customers free SSL protections, shifting millions of sites into encrypted traffic protocols. According to CEO Matthew Prince, the goal is to double SSL usage on the internet in 2014, from 2 million to roughly 4 million sites worldwide. Cloudflare currently hosts 1.5 million sites, and company statistics suggest they route roughly five percent of global web requests.

Continue reading…

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The ratings system in app stores, whereby users rate apps between one and five stars, needs fixing.

Many high-level developers are up in arms about many apps' pop-up review prompts, claiming they are no better than a spammy Web browser pop-up ad. They are calling for Apple to ban these intrusive "Rate This App" dialogs. 

As a developer, it is natural to want to present users with the cleanest, most streamlined user experience possible. But the catch-22 behind the sentiment is that too many developers are dependent on these prompts to generate more ratings.

High app ratings drive higher download rates, which in turn lead to greater revenue potential for all developers. And there isn't really a more effective review-generating alternative to these pop-up dialogs. 

Once a user downloads an app, the reality is that there are fewer opportunities to get more income from that user.

Because of this, a review becomes essential to the developer. It acts as a form of marketing that will be seen by the next potential customer. So what's the solution?

Ideally, developers themselves will come up with a more effective ratings vehicle, one that would be less intrusive, perhaps by being better integrated with the app experience. Or, platform operators such as Google and Apple could make changes to the structure of their app stores or the app review system, in order to make developers less focused on getting stars. For example, they might develop an algorithm that scrapes and analyzes text-based reviews to give an app a score, which would remove developers' incentives to collected five-star reviews at all costs. 

The "Rate This App" controversy was taken up by iOS-focused writer and developer John Gruber, and was further commented upon in the Apple developer community by developer Marco Arment and blogger Chris Gonzalez.  

In other news...

Apple is building a proprietary real-time ad bidding exchange that will help automate the sale of in-app ads, so that the rest of its iAds team can focus on iTunes Radio. (AdWeek)

Amazon has acquired mobile payments company Gopago, which specializes in apps for iOS and Android that allow for customers to purchase a good from their phone before picking it up in the store. (TechCrunch)

Samsung has come out saying it wants to sell 330 million smartphone units during 2014. To do so, it will debut a brand new low-cost handset, the Galaxy Core Advance. (The Next Web)

Promoted accounts ads on Twitter will now be appearing on all mobile devices. (All Things Digital)

In order to sell more units of the Kindle Fire HDX, Amazon is offering potential new customers a 9-month payment plan for the tablet. The main goal of Kindle Fire products is that they be used as a platform for customers to purchase Amazon products, content and more. (All Things Digital)

Tech writer Tim Bajarin thinks Google will spin off its Motorola division and that the PC market may actually grow in 2014. Here are some of his other predictions for the new year. (Tech Opinions)

What you may have missed this week on BI Intelligence…

A Social Engagement Primer: A Portrait Of Time-Spend And Activity On The Top Social Networks

LINE Provides A Great Example Of How Mobile Messaging Apps Can Make Money

This Startup Wants To Help Big Bricks-And-Mortar Retail Chains Become Just As Data-Savvy As Amazon

Join the conversation about this story »

Supermarktketen Aldi gaat vanaf woensdag 18 december stunten met een quad-core smartphone. Met de complete Wolfgang AT-AS45QHD duikt de Aldi met een quad-core smartphone onder de grens van 200 euro.

If ever a product needed to work harder to justify its price tag, it’d be Samsung’s new $299 HomeSync box. Fortunately, the manufacturer seems to be self-aware enough to make some changes: the Android-powered storage, streaming and mirroring hub will soon offer full support for Jelly Bean phones and tablets even if they’re outside of the Galaxy stable. This should allow an average household with numerous, diversely-branded devices to store and share their photos, music and videos using the HomeSync’s 1TB “personal cloud,” while also using their handsets as remote controls and as sources for mirroring via the box’s HDMI input. As things stand, however, only a handful of non-Samsung phones, like the Sony Xperia Z and HTC One, are listed as compatible over at the Google Play store, and it could be a while before the HomeSync becomes truly brand-agnostic. In the meantime, there are plenty of other mobile-friendly NAS solutions around that are worth a look.

Filed under: Cellphones, Storage, Mobile, Samsung

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Source: Samsung

The post Samsung’s HomeSync media hub will play nice with non-Samsung Android devices appeared first on AIVAnet.

RIJSWIJK - Voormalig Transavia-piloot Julio Poch eist dat de Nederlandse overheid hem financieel te hulp schiet in zijn verdediging tegen de beschuldiging dat hij heeft deelgenomen aan dodenvluchten tijdens de Argentijnse dictatuur. Zijn advocaat Geert-Jan Knoops spant op 21 januari een kort geding aan tegen de Staat der Nederlanden, zo bevestigt de organisatie Foundation Justice for Julio Poch dinsdag op haar Facebook-pagina.

Edward Snowden reportedly wrote an open letter to Brazil and said would be willing to help the country investigate NSA spying on its soil if granted political asylum.

"Until a country grants permanent political asylum, the US government will continue to interfere with my ability to speak," the letter says.

There's one obvious problem with the request: Currently, the 30-year-old American cannot leave Russia.

As Snowden's Moscow lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, who is employed by the Kremlin's security service (FSB), said when Snowden made the same offer to Germany: "Snowden will not go to Germany. This is not possible because he has no right to cross Russian borders."

The U.S. revoked Snowden's passport on June 22, a day before he traveled from Hong Kong to Moscow. WikiLeaks obtained an Ecuadorian travel document for Snowden so that he could leave Hong Kong, but the unsigned document became void when Snowden landed in Russia.

Since then he has been living under the supervision of the FSB. On August 1, the Kremlin granted him one year of temporary asylum, which can be renewed indefinitely.

So it seems Snowden can't leave Russia unless the U.S. reinstates his passport, offers him amnesty (both highly unlikely), or the Kremlin allows an NSA-trained hacker who stole an enormous cache of classified NSA files and knows his way around NSA interviews to travel to Brazil after rejecting the notion that he could go to Germany for similar reasons.

On July 2, Brazil chose not to respond to an asylum plea from Snowden.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has acknowledges that Snowden reached out to the Kremlin in Hong Kong, claims that the U.S. "blocked him on our territory" — even though Snowden never had the requisite paperwork to leave Russia.

Nevertheless, Putin added: "Such a present for us for Christmas.”

SEE ALSO: One Paragraph Sums Up What Edward Snowden Can Expect From His Life In Russia

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Last week, Goldman Sachs published its 100 favorite charts.

Included was a section titled "The Globalisation Of Labour."

And that section included this chart of countries with large immigrant populations.

For what it's worth, Singapore has a reputation for consistently ranking highly in education.

SEE ALSO: DEUTSCHE BANK: Here Are The 30 Best Big Stocks To Buy Right Now

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iWorks apps seem to be the culprits

​While analyzing a malicious Chrome browser extension we recently came across a Virtool that tries to redirect the Chrome Extension page.

We detect it as VirTool:JS/Redichrextor.A.

VirTool:JS/Redichrextor.A won’t let you view, change, remove or uninstall Chrome browser extensions. It does this by stopping you from viewing the Chrome Extension page.

It uses this technique so an affected user won’t be able to remove or uninstall the malicious extension without help from their antimalware software. This makes VirTool:JS/Redichrextor.A a useful piece of code for any malicious Chrome browser extension that wants to avoid manual detection or removal.

When an affected user does try to view the Chrome browser extension page they are redirected. We have seen it open a new tab, or go to the Chrome web store or Google.com:

• Chrome://newtab

• Chrome.google.com/webstore

• http://google.com

We have also seen similar behaviour used by the following known malicious Chrome browser extensions:

• Trojan:JS/Kilim

• Trojan:JS/Reksner

Once VirTool:JS/Redichrextor.A is detected and removed, you should be able to go to the Chrome extension page.

We recommend you then check and uninstall any suspicious browser extension that might be linked to VirTool:JS/Redichrex.A or other malware. We also recommend keeping your security products up-to-date to avoid infection. 

While this new trick makes it harder to remove the Virtool manually, it is still easily detected and removed by Microsoft Security software.

SHA1s:

5a72d55f6b6c467565a2a53fe7ecb08beb996947
59131b62bb58bf80ab83e7f6522689ed38553cfb
0b516d26316c889a3468b92b4e376573567a822c

Jonathan San Jose

MMPC

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As we develop new and interesting technologies, ostensibly to make our lives better, it puts pressure on our legal system to make sure that we 

1. Bitcoin

The government cares a lot about its money, especially when it can be converted into Bitcoin, the digital anonymous currency, and taken off the radar to be sent anywhere without anyone's identity attached to it.

The Feds are still figuring out how to address Bitcoin. In the meantime, many marketplaces legitimate and illegitimate alike will gladly take the currency as payment for everything from socks to drugs.

2. Commercial drones

Commercial drone use was catapulted to the public's attention with Amazon's surprising announcement that it's been experimenting with package delivery by unmanned aerial vehicle.

But here's the thing – there's no legal framework in the United States for businesses to make use of drones with the government's blessing. The FAA is on record as saying that it will be drawing up rules for such use cases, and when that happens, it'll shake up a number of industries. Obviously the aforementioned package deliveries can be handled much more swiftly and cheaply when there's not a human responsible for getting it to your door, but farmers can use them to dust crops, and companies in Australia are even using them to put out bush fires.

Commercial drone use faces two major hurdles before it becomes part of our lives – winning the public's favor as a safe and easy way to get business done, and figuring out where it fits within FAA regulations.

3. 3D printing

Many were raising a stink late last year (I was one of them) about Defense Distributed, a nonprofit organization committed to designing a functioning gun that one could hypothetically make at home with a 3D printer. It presents something of a problem to lawmakers – how do you make sure guns are being used safely when they can be manufactured in someone's garage without serial numbers or accountability? The city of Philadelphia has already issued a ban on 3D printed weapons, so look for this ban to become a trend.

But that's not the only legal implication of 3D printing. Given the ability to manifest pretty much any object you can conceive of, 3D printers also have copyright zealots up in arms about potential infringement. The famous example here is found in Warhammer 40K, a tabletop wargame played with small figures that are most certainly protected under intellectual property laws. But with a 3D scanner and printer, it becomes a cinch to clone your figures at a fraction of the price you'd pay to buy them at a store. Is this legal or illegal?

These are just three examples of how technology is outpacing the law, and given the current rate at which people are churning out newer and better gadgets to expand our capabilities, lawmakers will continue to have to play catchup.

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