Maxim Bange

Twenty-first Century Robot project will bridge the technology gap

Is het mogelijk een ruimtebasis te printen met materialen die van nature op de maan aanwezig zijn? Wie daar meer over wil weten, komt op donderdag 14 november naar het internationale technologiefestival Border Sessions in Den Haag. 

Darwin, the pet monkey that escaped in an Ikea car park in Toronto, Canada, last December, will not be returned to its owner, a judge rules.

Hackers and educators love the Raspberry Pi, and at least a few people at Google do too. For a year, Google has provided funding to a UK program that trains teachers on how to use the small, inexpensive computers in classrooms. This week, Google introduced Coder, a free software download built by a team of Googlers in New York that turns the Raspberry Pi into a tiny server that can host basic web apps for those learning to code in HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Google says setting Coder up on the Raspberry Pi takes just ten minutes.

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When you post certain types of private documents to Dropbox and tell Dropbox to share them with no one, Dropbox itself will still open them up and take a look.

It does this in order to make a "preview" version of the document, the company says.

The fact that Dropbox is opening documents came to light when security expert Daniel McCauley, at WNC InfoSec Blog, was playing with a new service called HoneyDocs. It tags a document and then privately tells you every time someone opens it.

McCauley wanted to see if cloud storage documents were being viewed in ways he didn't know about. So he uploaded a bunch of files to his Dropbox account.

Lo and behold, Honeydocs told him that all of the documents with a ".doc" extension had been opened.

What's going on? Dropbox says it does this to be helpful.

"Dropbox allows people to open and preview files from their browser. This blog post relates to back end processes that automatically create these document previews, making it easier for people to view docs within their Dropbox," a spokesperson told us.

This news comes just two weeks after security researchers published a report showing how Dropbox can be hacked, if hackers could compromise a user's entire PC.

For many people, the convenience of seeing a preview is worth having a Dropbox bot opening files.

But for enterprises who worry that employees are using Dropbox to share sensitive data, this sort of thing is scary. It helps explain why Dropbox is the No. 1 app that enterprises ban, according to research by Fiberlink.

SEE ALSO: The 2013 PR 50: The Best Public Relations People In The Tech Industry

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LinkedIn rolled out a new privacy policy on Friday which lowered the minimum age to join to 14 in the U.S and made the minimum age as low as 13 in other countries.

In other words, LinkedIn wants to be the new social network for teens, except in China where the age limit is 18.

That's not to say that LinkedIn is changing its mission and wants to become the next Facebook. It's just trying to nab students the instant they think about their careers.

As LinkedIn's top privacy exec, Eric Heath, explained in a blog post:

"Smart, ambitious students are already thinking about their futures when they step foot into high school – where they want to go to college, what they want to study, where they want to live and work. We want to encourage these students to leverage the insights and connections of the millions of successful professionals on LinkedIn, so they can make the most informed decisions and start their careers off right."

A kid's profile won't have the same settings as an adult's profile, LinkedIn said, to protect them from "unwanted communications." LinkedIn has, for instance, a notorious prostitution problem which it's trying to eliminate.

The profile won't show things like the kid's birthdate, picture, title, other essentials and the profile won't be searchable in Google, either.

Instead, LinkedIn sees itself as becoming a resource for finding internships and mentors, and, in the process, creating life-long users from a generation raised on social medial.

SEE ALSO: 9 Creativity-Boosting Perks LinkedIn Employees Get That Every Company Should Steal

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At the turn of the last decade almost every Internet user was asking for more bandwidth. As transfers of music and video increased in popularity, having the fattest possible pipe became an almost universal dream.

Over the past few years the situation has improved somewhat and in many regions of the world users now have more available bandwidth than they can consume. But for a minority there is no such thing as enough and maxing out a connection is a daily activity.

BitTorrent users are famously bandwidth hungry and as such they have been regularly targeted by ISPs looking to more effectively manage their capacity. While Comcast’s infamous torrent meddling is now six years ago, some ISPs are still looking to introduce controls to relegate the world’s favorite file-sharing protocol.

This week Aussie ISP Telstra confirmed it would be pressing ahead with ‘trials’ aimed at ensuring that its customers “enjoy the best quality of service.” The ISP says that traffic on its ADSL network has doubled on average every 12 months for the past four years so to cope it’s going to have to better manage its network. It appears they will do this by meddling with file-sharing traffic.

“This latest trial is focused on how our customers respond when network management techniques are applied in order to manage congestion,” explains Telstra director John Chambers. “Some trial participants will be asked to evaluate how speed differences on non-time sensitive applications, like Bit Torrent, impact their overall customer experience.”

While it’s easy to see how BitTorrent could be classified as less time sensitive than HTTP for example, one could imagine the response if Telstra said they would classify Netflix in the same way as torrents. They can’t do that of course, since Netflix isn’t even available Down Under, but if bandwidth is short now, things are probably going to get worse when it is.

So, preparing for this eventuality, Telstra are looking for some volunteers to have their torrent traffic throttled to see how it affects their Internet experience. The big question is this: why on earth would BitTorrent users volunteer to have their traffic meddled with?

It’s a bit like asking if drivers would put themselves forward to have someone else take control of the accelerator in their car. Light users might not object so much but heavier users – the ones who are presumably causing the problems – aren’t going to put themselves forward for this. So what’s the point? Rival ISP iiNet believes that the trials have an ulterior motive.

“I often describe it as boiling the frog – you just do it by gently turning up the heat,” said John Lindsay, CTO at iiNet.

“They are starting to take their customers on a journey. They know what the end point looks like, but they don’t want to describe it too clearly just yet for fear of scaring off the profitable customers. Calling it a trial is a nicer way of introducing the concept and the technology into the business.”

At the moment Telstra are limiting the availability of this trial to just a few hundred keen volunteers, so if you fancy having your torrent traffic temporarily meddled with – perhaps with a view to those changes being implemented long-term – hurry over to Telstra now and get your name down.

“I would reconfirm that this trial does not involve looking at or recording the content of what customers chose to consume on the internet,” Telstra’s John Chambers concludes.

Reassuring.

Source: Hurry! ISP Needs Volunteers to Have Their BitTorrent Traffic Throttled

Finnish firm to get sirius about tablets this year

Quilliam, a London-based think tank that focuses on "counter-extremism," has released "A New Index to Assess the Effectiveness of Al Qaeda."

The report posits that the strength of the group should be judged by six main indicators of effectiveness: size, nature of Organizational design, secrecy, power of representation, interests it protects and cohesion.

Overall, al Qaeda's "regionalization, evolution, and reaction to regional conflict means it remains a threat to global stability and continues to be resilient and fluid."

However, based on the group's 20-year plan, al Qaeda has "made several key strategic failures" that have impeded its growth.

The authors conclude that "al Qaeda has made several critical mistakes that have severely affected its effectiveness, but it is clear that it remains a bigger threat than Obama would have his administration believe."

Underscoring that fact, al Qaeda leader Ayman az-Zawāhirī released a new audio statement calling for “a few disparate attacks” on American soil and to “bleed America economically”

A graphic of al Qaeda's global network includes known affiliates, associates, groups influence by al Qaeda, and instances of terrorism that were influenced by extremism but not necessarily al Qaeda.

Check it out: 

SEE ALSO: Al Qaeda's 22 Tips For Avoiding Drone Detection

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Intel is quickly transforming its dream of perceptual computing into reality: the company will soon ship motion control technology, and it acquired the gesture interface firm Omek back in July. The chip giant may not be done yet, as there are reports from Spain that it has acquired Indisys, a small natural language recognition company. Details of the buyout are scarce, but the move would give Intel its own voice control software; it wouldn’t have to license code from third parties like Nuance. We’ve reached out to Intel to confirm the acquisition. If real, the Indisys takeover might have come at just the right time — Intel is swinging its attention to wearables, and voice control is now more of a necessity than a luxury.

Update: Intel just confirmed to us that it acquired Indisys on May 31st, and that the deal has already closed.

Filed under: Software, Intel

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Via: TechCrunch

Source: ABCdesevilla.es (translated)

The post Intel reportedly acquires Indisys, gets an edge in natural language recognition (update: official) appeared first on AIVAnet.

The reality is that faith of any kind — Judaism, Christianity, Islam — often has a literal price. Houses of worship solicit donations in order to pay the bills.

Charging your phone through an unfamiliar USB port can lead to some nasty surprises on your device, but a new attachment called the USB Condom should be able to keep it safe. Made by int3.cc, the protective layer fits on top of a USB plug and cuts off access to the pins that allow it to transmit and receive data. Only the pins that allow the plug to receive power are left open, so that a device can charge without any possibility of malware being passed between the device and its power source.

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In a swank office building, waiters handed out fried pickles and caviar-covered sushi. Shiny new LCD screens covered several walls. It was opening night for Samsung’s new startup accelerator in midtown Manhattan, and the company had spared no expense. "The future for us is about the thoughtful integration of hardware and software," said David Eun, the head of Samsung’s Open Innovation Center. "And that means startups."

The smartphone market is increasingly made up of vertically integrated companies that create both the hardware and software for their devices. Apple was the pioneer of this model in its modern form. Google got in the game when it purchased Motorola. And Microsoft completed the trifecta when it acquired Nokia. Samsung,...

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At a time when employers are searching for new and better ways to retain their best workers, some consultants marvel at the persistence of a seemingly ancient initiative: tenure reward programs. Is the $46 billion firms spend a year on tenure-rewards programs worth it?

First, let’s look at the tournament format.

Fourteen teams have qualified from around the world; four of those have been gifted an automatic spot in the quarterfinal round of eight thanks to winning their respective regions. The only regional winner to not receive a quarterfinal bye is the European team Fnatic due to Europe's last-place finish at the All-Star tournament held in Shanghai in May.

The remaining ten teams have been divided into two groups. In the first part of the tournament, the groups will play one another in a round-robin format, with each team playing each other team in its group twice. The two teams with the best records at the end of the group stages will move on to the quarterfinals where they will face the...

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Director J.J. Abrams revealed he was "emotionally hurt" by the quality of Star Trek: The Video Game, believing his film Star Trek Into Darkness suffered because of it, GamerHubVideos reports.

Abrams and his team dropped their involvement with the video game spin-off once the direction of the game became clear, he said during a launch party for the film's DVD.

"The last game, which was obviously a big disappointment to me, was something that we were actually involved in from the very beginning and then we sort of realized it was not going in a place where we were going to get what we wanted, so we dropped out and they continued to do it despite... y'know." he said.

"To me the video game could have been something that actually really...

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Door Touch ID op de nieuwe iPhone kan een verdachte geen beroep meer doen op het nemo tenetur-beginsel.

De introductie van de Apple iPhone 5S met ingebouwde vingerafdrukscanner heeft veel stof doen opwaaien. Hoewel de scanner vooral 'gemakkelijk' moet zijn, blijken er veel risico's aan te kleven.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, had a sweet, secret deal worked out with the Pentagon, The Wall Street Journal's Mark Maremont reports.

The deal allowed Google to buy heavily discounted jet fuel purchased by the Pentagon. The arrangement lasted from 2007 until August 31; NASA sponsored the bargain and opted not to renew it this year.

That may be because the billionaires were doing more jetsetting than they initially agreed to. The discount was supposed to be used for government-related and approved flights and for scientific research. 

"Flight records from the Federal Aviation Administration suggest that the vast bulk of the flights by the Google executives' fleet have been for non-NASA purposes," WSJ writes of the terminated deal.

One such flight may have been a wedding Page recently attended for his brother-in-law in Croatia. 

Head over to WSJ to learn how Google was able to snag the deal and why NASA opted not to renew the contract.

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Apple heeft een nieuwe update van OS X 10.8 uitgebracht die de snelheidsproblemen met 802.11ac-wifi oplost. De snelheid van de laatste wifi-versie bleef onder OS X ver achter bij de verwachte doorvoersnelheid, maar is na de update weer op peil.

There’s unlimited possibilities when it comes to making your phone look absolutely awesome. With so many launchers available, coupled with community-created icons, widgets, and themes, you can change your entire setup every day of the week. There’s no better feeling than unlocking your phone and having people around you ask, “How did you do that? That looks amazing! How come my phone doesn’t look like that?” And I’m here to give you a few recommendations if you’ve been stuck on the simple stock experience. Together, let’s make your phone as sleek and sexy as it deserves to be.

First up, we have Cell Android Homescreen by Burro, a dark, very Honeycomb-esque theme. It features switches that allow you to choose between groups of applications, such as social media or productivity. Swiping up reveals a hidden info bar. Popup Widget, the paid version of ssLauncher and Zooper Widget Pro are all required to set this screen up.

Secret Home by empol allows you to have a clean, minimalist setup, without sacrificing the convenience of quick access to apps and important info. Swiping from the left reveals quick controls, missed calls and text messages. There’s a special section for social apps, such as G+ and Twitter. Another app tab is right above a very simple and beautiful music widget. Swiping from the right reveals a much smaller drawer, complete with current temperature and weather conditions, the date, and battery life. Your app drawer access is tucked at the very bottom.

If you’re not wanting a complete screen overhaul, nice looking widgets and well-crafted icons can still give your phone a quick refresh, and completely change the tone of your design. From left to right above, we have Minarch for Zooper, Ico.Pack, and Tendere Icon Pack. Minarch allows you to incorporate upcoming calendar events, while also displaying the current time, date, weather and battery status, all as a free download. I loved the look of it so much, I’ve started using it on my own device, as you can see above. Ico.Pack is available for $.99 for Nova, Apex, GoLauncher, and ADW. Developer Jinesh Shah produced several different colored versions of many of the 444 icons, enabling the ability to match your icons to your wallpaper. Finally, Tendere, for $1.55 on the Play Store, shakes things up with rectangular-shaped icons and excellent shadowing, complete with 9 abstract wallpapers.

Have any recommendations for some nice, mind-blowing themes, widgets, or icons? Throw out your suggestions in the comments below, while you’re waiting for your new homescreen themes to finish downloading.

Sources:

Cell by Burro | Secret Home by empol | Minarch for Zooper | Ico.Pack ($.99) | Tendere ($1.55)

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Geluidspionier Ray Dolby, die audiobedrijf Dolby Laboratories oprichtte, is donderdag overleden. De uitvinder stond aan de basis van meerdere technologieën die het geluid van films verbeterde, zoals een ruisonderdrukker, Dolby Surround en Dolby Digital Surround.

Apple heeft bij zijn nieuwe iPhone 5s en iPhone 5c een grotere accu ingebouwd dan bij de voorganger iPhone 5. Alhoewel het om niet heel grote verschillen gaat, is dit opvallend omdat de iPhone 5s en iPhone 5 hetzelfde formaat behuizing hebben.

JavaRa is een programma om oude versies van Java en de Java Runtime Environment (JRE) op te ruimen. Oracle, na de overname van Sun uitgever van Java, komt regelmatig met nieuwe versies van Java, die nieuwe mogelijkheden toevoegen en bugs en beveiligingsproblemen verhelpen. Tijdens het updaten worden de oude versies echter niet verwijderd en na verloop van tijd kunnen deze bestanden behoorlijk wat plaats innemen. JavaRa verwijdert niet alleen oude bestanden, maar ook het register wordt opgeschoond. Daarnaast kan het programma controleren of de laatste versie van JRE op de computer staat. Versie 2.3 is uitgekomen en hierin zijn de volgende veranderingen en verbeteringen aangebracht:

Clouddienst Dropbox kijkt in sommige geüploade bestanden. Het bedrijf ontkent kwade opzet.

Dell heeft tijdens de IDF een tablet aangekondigd die zal draaien op Windows 8.1. Het gaat om een 8"-model dat in de markt wordt gezet voor zowel zakelijke gebruikers als consumenten. In de behuizing draait Intels nieuwe Bay Trail-processor.

Microsoft heeft aangekondigd dat Outlook.com imap en oauth ondersteunt. De ondersteuning is vooral bedoeld om de compatibiliteit met Mac-gebruikers te verbeteren, aangezien die groep Outlook.com tot nog toe altijd met pop3 moest gebruiken.

Gold is really getting whooped these days.

It was recently around $1400 again, and all the gold bulls thought the good ol' days were back.

But it got shellacked yesterday, and it's lower again too.

It was down even more earlier in the day — perhaps on the report that Obama will nominate Larry Summers to Fed Chair as soon as late next week and the perception that Summers is more hawkish than Yellen. Still it's lower than yesterday, and headed down.

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European stock markets trade mostly lower on Friday, with mining firms driving the charge south as metals prices decline, with investors awaiting retail-sales data and consumer-sentiment numbers from the U.S.

Xbox One consoles will be playable before launch at a number of Microsoft stores across the U.S. and Canada, according to Major Nelson.

Those who live in Massachusetts, Florida and Alberta have the opportunity to play Forza 5 and Killer Instinct before the titles roll out on the new system.

These events will begin Sept. 19 and 20. at Microsoft stores in Burlington and Boston, Massachusetts, respectively, before coming to Orlando, Florida on Oct. 23 nd Edmonton, Alberta after that. An additional event is planned to take place in Scottsdale, Arizona on Dec. 6, while new locations will be added in the coming weeks.

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