Bcstevieb

Michael from Muckrock sez, "The problems with various government watch lists, particularly the TSA's, are well known, but a new release of documents shows just how problematic large-scale government tracking can be: A recent FOIA request to the FBI for the files on late Irving Adler, activist, turned up plenty of reading material, but it was about the wrong Irving: An examination of documents showed that the files another Irving Adler, an Army veteran, found himself on the wrong end of intense questioning despite universal assertions that he was a 'loyal and patriotic American."

The investigations hounded the second Irving for four years until the FBI realized it was watching the wrong man, and the boring Irving ultimately only cleared himself when it was shown he was serving abroad during the time the FBI thought he was in Long Island.

Surely these kinds of mistakes won't happen with modern databases.

Even in the 40s, FBI struggled to keep its watch list straight (Thanks, Michael!)

An "expert" quoted in the Independent predicts that thieves will amputate their victims' fingertips in order to bypass the biometric locks on the new Iphones. I'm not particularly worried about this vulnerability (if you're willing to cut off someone's fingertip to unlock his phone, you're probably also willing to torture him into giving up his PIN), though I remember reading stories of carjackers who amputated their victims' fingertips in order to make off with their biometrically protected cars.

More interesting is the prediction that phone thieves will lift their victims' fingerprints and use them to bypass the readers. As German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble discovered, you leak your fingerprints all the time, and once your fingerprint has been compromised, you can't change it. (Schauble was pushing for biometric identity cards; playful Chaos Computer Club hackers lifted his fingerprints off a water-glass after a debate and published 10,000 copies of them on acetate as a magazine insert).

This is the paradox of biometric authentication. The biometric characteristics of your retinas, fingerprints, hand geometry, gait, and DNA are actually pretty easy to come by without your knowledge or consent. Unless you never venture into public without a clean-room bunny-suit, mirrorshades, and sharp gravel in your shoes, you're not going to be able to stop dedicate strangers from capturing these measurements. And as with Schauble's fingerprints, you can't revoke your DNA and replace it with new DNA once a ripoff artist has used it to clean out your bank-account or break into your workplace.

That's why cops use them, after all: it's nearly impossible to keep them to yourself, and once they're in the wild, they can be used against you.

Fraudsters have also succeeded in lifting and duplicating prints with technology that “is only going to improve with time”, he added.

“Thieves in some regions have worked out that you can force a victim to unlock a secured device, and in some extreme cases have also mutilated victims in order to steal their fingerprint.”

The hi-tech scanners are said to work best when combined with a pin code or another security feature.

“Fingerprints can be a useful addition to security but their value depends highly on the type of fingerprint reader and how it is being used - for example, the best use of a fingerprint is to provide a convenient way to unlock something in a medium to low security scenario,” Mr Rogers said.

iPhone 5S: Thieves may mutilate owners in bid to gain access to fingerprint-reading handsets, expert warns [Katie Hodge/The Independent]

(Image: fingerprint closeup, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from gcfairch's photostream)

De Niro Vs. Stallone: punch-fest!

While the second image from Sylvester Stallone/Robert De Niro pugilism pic Grudge Match arrived earlier (that can be found, along with the first, in a gallery lower down the page), the trailer has now stepped into the ring. Take a look. 

Grudge Match follows what happens when two old school boxers, whose careers peaked in the 1980s, are brought back together for one final, grand slam fit of fisticuffs.

It’s all the idea of boxing promoter Dante (Kevin Hart), who spots an opportunity to reunite bitter old rivals Billy “The Kid” McDonnen (De Niro) and Henry “Razor” Sharp (Stallone), who traded blows and championship belts before Razor announced his retirement before a big deciding match.

Before they get back in the ring, though, the pair meet while filming motion capture scenes for a new boxing game, and the old conflict comes bubbling back to the surface. Soon, the HBO bout is a hot ticket, but can the two old timers make it through training?

While the trailer show the film is frontloading the laughs, it does appear there's a fair chunk of emotion running through this one too as the veteran fighters consider their lives and confront old demons, including Billy's discovery that he has a son (The Walking Dead's Jon Bernthal). {Grudge Match Stills}

With Peter Segal calling the shots (and the punches), Grudge Match is out on January 17. And aren't you impressed? We got through that whole story without mentioning Rocky or Raging Bull!

Will Yoda be the first?

Disney's chief financial officer Jay Rasulo gave a presentation to an investor conference at the Bank Of America yesterday. While much of it - as you'd expect given the context - is dispiriting marketing speak about branding, merchandising and licensing opportunities, there was also one small but significant piece of intel about the new Star Wars films. We've known for some time that standalone films about famous suporting characters are in development alongside the trilogy beginning with Star Wars Episode VII. Now Rasulo reveals that those standalone films will be origin stories.

Reaffirming that we can expect a Star Wars every year from 2015 on, Rasulo's wording (only paraphrased by Variety) was that Disney will be alternating a trilogy film and "an origin story" annually. If you were an investor, you'd be reassured that that strategy sits alongside two Marvels, a Disney animation, and one or two Pixars.

Following The Lone Ranger debacle he says that budgets for each year's "one or two, maybe three" tentpole Disney live-action originals will likely be capped in future. But "of all our worries," he promises, "Star Wars is not one of them".

"The sky's the limit," says Rasulo of Star Wars. "There's incredible flexibility. It's an unbelievable palette to create from." And while he's talking there about licensing programmes that will "broker deals around the world" and encompass toys, "housewares" and huge new undertakings in Disney's theme parks, he does take a moment to insist that "the overall strategy is to put out a great film first".

Fox's attempt at its own Origins franchise with Marvel's X-Men collapsed at the first hurdle with the 2009 Wolverine movie. But with Star Wars veteran Lawrence Kasdan and producer Simon Kinberg developing their spin-off, Disney clearly have confidence in the plan.

Back in February, AICN's Harry Knowles believed he had a reliable source telling him the first Star Wars standalone would center on Yoda. If that were true, it would mean we can expect Star Wars Origins: Yoda in 2016. So we'll see...

[[Poll1077]]

This week marks the 178th anniversary of Darwin’s first exploration of the Galapagos Islands. This volcanic archipelago is one of the most biodiverse and unique places on the planet, with species that have remarkably adapted to their environment. Through observing the animals, Darwin made key insights that informed his theory of evolution. Here’s a short documentary that captures the 10-day expedition:

Today, in partnership with the Directorate of the Galapagos National Park and Charles Darwin Foundation, we’re launching the 360-degree images from the Galapagos Islands that we collected in May with the Street View Trekker. Now, you can visit the islands from anywhere you may be, and see many of the animals that Darwin experienced on his historic and groundbreaking journey in 1835.

Darwin may have first sighted San Cristobal Island from the water, perhaps near where we sailed with the Trekker strapped to a boat in order to observe the craggy shoreline and the Magnificent Frigatebirds that the rocky landscape shelters. After landing on San Cristobal, we made our way to Galapaguera Cerro Colorado, a breeding center that helps to restore the population of the island tortoises, seriously threatened by invasive species. Wearing the Trekker, we walked by giant tortoises munching on leafy stalks and recently hatched baby tortoises.


Darwin visited Floreana Island, but he didn’t have the scuba gear needed to properly explore the marine life just off the island’s coast. Thanks to our partner, Catlin Seaview Survey and their SVII underwater camera, we were able to collect underwater imagery of some especially energetic and inquisitive sea lions that came out to see whether the divers wanted to play!

Life is hard for famous people. You’re trying to @ reply with your celebrity friends on Twitter, but the conversation gets drowned out by rabid fans and spammers mentioning you. So Twitter’s begun rolling out to people with verified profiles two new filters for the Connect tab. Filtered, which attempts to cut down spam, and Verified, which only shows interactions with other verified profiles.

Twitter noted the rollout earlier today and you can see them below in this screenshot, though.

Keeping celebrities active and happy on Twitter is a big business for the company, which just filed its S-1 to go public today. Celebrities and their tweets are a big draw for users, who visit Twitter to absorb the latest updates from the actors, athletes, musicians, and other famous folk they love. Twitter capitalizes on that engagement with ad views, so the more celebs enjoy Twitter, the more money it makes.

[Image Credit: Jimmy Kimmel]

PayPal has accepted that it needs a big rethink to deal with the rising popularity of crowdfunding. The payments company has come under fire recently for freezing the funds of high-profile crowdfunding campaigns, and has pledged to rework its policies to better cater to such projects.

In a post announcing the decision, the company somewhat defends its recent actions, noting that, as a new model, crowdfunding "is open to abuse" and PayPal "has a responsibility to ensure the system remains secure." It says it's working in conjunction with major crowdfunding organizations to find a permanent solution "that avoids unnecessary account limitations," but highlights the complexity of "making this work" for "contributors, entrepreneurs,...

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Twitter announced today — on Twitter, of course — that it has filed with the SEC to go public. The move marks a significant milestone in the history of the 7-year-old company, which began as a side project at a failed podcasting startup and has since become a premier global source of news and entertainment. Twitter, which is valued at more than $10 billion dollars, can use the cash generated from its initial public offering to build products, ramp up its advertising efforts, and acquire the talent needed to keep pushing its growing social network into the mainstream.

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Another month, another incredible showing of new apps in the Play Store. It's taken us a while to narrow down the selections this time, but we promise they're worth the wait. Out of all the new apps we saw last month, we've compiled a short list of just five of our favorites, plus some runners up that didn't quite make the cut but are still worth checking out.

Without further ado, let's get started.

• [Hands-On] CheapCast Enters The Play Store, Succeeds In Turning Any Android Device Into A Chromecast
• CheapCast Aims To Turn Any Android Device Into A Chromecast, Early Version Demoed On Video
• Google Releases Official Chromecast Android App, Gets Your New Media Streaming Device Up And Running
• [New App] Notifications Off Gives You A Handy Way To Selectively Banish Apps From Your Notification Bar

Roundup: Our Top Five Favorite New Apps From August 2013 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Of course, along with a new shortlist of apps, we've got a condensed list of last month's very best new games. And as usual, there were plenty to choose from. Out of the dizzying array of new games, we've selected only the very best in the list below. We'll take a brief look at the five best, and then a list of runners up that, while worth looking at, didn't quite make it onto our main list.

• [New Game] Contra: Evolution Bursts Into Google Play, Guns Blazing
• Contra: Evolution Updated With Support For 'High-Resolution Devices' And Fewer Permissions
• Contra: Evolution Review: Just As Frustrating As The Original, But For Different Reasons
• [New Game] Dots Is Wildly Popular And Immensely Addicting, Now Available On Google Play

Roundup: Our Top Five Picks For Best New Games From August 2013 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Prepare for "new" music from the Fab Four. On November 11th, The Beatles will release a followup to their 1994 album Live at The BBC. On Air – Live at the BBC Volume 2 will include 63 tracks that hit the BBC airwaves between 1963 and 1964. None of the content here overlaps with the prior BBC compilation, according to a newly issued press release. Performances include 37 songs that are previously unreleased commercially, and fans will also hear 23 unreleased recordings of in-studio chatter between John, Paul, George, Ringo, and various radio hosts.

“There’s a lot of energy and spirit. We are going for it, not holding back at all, trying to put in the best performance of our lifetimes," said Paul McCartney of the compilation. The e...

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Over the last few months, Google has added plenty of stunning tours of world-famous locales and buildings to Street View. But today the company is offering up one of its best yet. Coinciding with the 178th anniversary of Darwin’s discovery of the Galapagos Islands, Google has added 360-degree images of the islands that let users retrace his historic trip. The imagery was captured back in May by Google's Street View Trekker, but only today are we getting to see the fruits of that visit. Google strapped the Trekker to a boat so it could capture this beautiful shoreline panorama. And a partnership with Catlin Seaview Survey allowed the company to place viewers right in the middle of a swimming pack of sea lions.

Along the...

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Android: Call Filter Alarm gives you precise control over which calls push through silent mode and ring, regardless of your phone's settings. It's ideal if you want to get a good night's sleep, set your phone to silent, but a family member or close friend calls with an emergency you know you'll want to answer.

Before you go to sleep, just enable sleep mode in the app. You get all of the alarm clock options you would expect, like the ability to customize the alarm volume, sound, snooze duration, and so on—if you use it in conjunction with another app, just set the built-in alarm later than your normal one so they won't conflict. Then tell Call Filter which people in your contact list should be allowed to get through to you whenever they call, even in the middle of the night. You can also set the app to let their SMS messages through too if you don't want to miss a text from them either. Then, if they call in the middle of the night with an emergency, you'll hear it.

Also, Call Filter can automatically activate or deactivate based on whether there's Wi-Fi present, set repeating alarms, configure alarms with incremental volume, and even give your "always available" contacts specific ring tones or notification sounds.

Setting your phone to silent mode at night is a good way to make sure you don't wake up every time you get an email, or someone pokes you on Twitter or Facebook while you're trying to sleep. However, setting your phone to silent and going to sleep means you miss everything—including a family member calling to tell you a loved one is in the hospital, for example. Call Filter makes sure that never happens. Hit the link below to grab it, or read more about it at the XDA Developer Forums.

Call Filter Alarm (Free) | Google Play via XDA Developers Forum

Following the introduction last month of a brand new law to hit online piracy, already authorities in Russia are looking to toughen up the legislation.

At the moment, copyright complaints against a site can lead to that domain being added to a national blocklist if its operator fails to render copyright movies and TV shows inaccessible. As reported earlier this month, moves are now underway to expand the law to cover music and other digital content.

Yesterday on the first day of the fall session the State Duma adopted the first reading of amendments that will see “information intermediaries” fined for failing to remove content or links to content reported as infringing by copyright holders. On the back of this success, rightsholders are now hoping to take things to a whole new level.

According to information obtained by Vedomosti, publishers of music, books and software have put forward amendments which will place a huge burden of responsibility not just on regular websites but also on search engines such as Google and local outfit Yandex.

The proposed amendments center around the creation of a national registry listing all music, software and books. This database will then be made available to search engines and site owners who will be required to consult it before servicing their users with links or content.

For example, if a user searches for a particular song using Google, in the background the search engine would be required to carry out a search on the national database to see if the song is listed. If the track is present then Google would be obliged to list official sources for the content in the first pages of results while automatically relegating other sites.

In addition, rightsholders are asking that when sites are placed on the current national blacklist for non-compliance with copyright takedowns, search engines should remove them completely from search results sent to users.

Commenting on the proposals, a Google spokesperson said that “pre-moderation” of content would be damaging to the Internet industry.

“The company can not take on the role of the courts to determine whether someone’s rights have been violated. A proposal to artificially rank links in search results does not take into account the technical characteristics of search engines and would lower the quality of the search,” he said.

Yandex are equally unimpressed, noting that the amendments are a blunt instrument that do not take into consideration the nuances of search engine operation or copyright law.

“It is impossible to rank sites with an eye on a register of legal resources,” a spokesperson told Vedomosti.

“First, in itself the assignment of resources to legal or illegal is extremely controversial. Secondly, items affected by copyright and related rights can be used in some circumstances without gaining permission from copyright holders, there is a wide range of exceptions. For example, if you thoroughly follow the amendments, a search engine will not be able to provide links to works containing the quotes that users type into the query string.”

Taken to conclusion, the proposals could have a seriously chilling effect on the real-time nature of the Internet.

“[If the amendments go through], rightsholders will switch the entire Internet into pre-moderation mode, because sites can not accommodate any comment without full verification of all the materials located on the link in this comment. For the bulk of services, this task is impossible,” Yandex concludes.

Rightsholders in the United States and Europe have been pushing Google to downgrade pirate sites in search results while promoting sites offering legitimate content. Google has responded to a certain degree and is now offering its advice to rightsholders so that they can SEO their way to the front page. In Russia, rightsholders appear to want the law to do that for them.

Source: Copyright Holders Propose Unprecedented Search Engine Manipulation

Getting better results with easier to read item listings no matter how you search. 

The official eBay app for Android has just received an update with a few user-facing changes that should improve the overall experience. Version 2.4 improves search results by showing items relevant to your location, and gives a bit of foreshadowing indicating that in-store pickup is coming. Additionally, search results when scanning barcodes have been improved.

The item view layout once you do get those search results has improved to focus on the most relevant information first, and if you want to share a listing to a friend you can now do so with Android Beam over NFC assuming you've both installed the latest update. Under your profile settings, you now have the ability to edit or add a shipping address as well — something many of us don't want to wait to do on the desktop.

These handful of improvements are useful to pretty much anyone with the eBay app, so go grab a download of the latest version from the link above.

Edit your Google+ photos with everything from simple tweaks to complete transformations

It seems that Google's acquisition of Snapseed is paying off again, as Google+ has just added a variety of photo editing tools based on its technology. The new tools can be found by viewing one of your photos in a lightbox and hitting the new "Edit" button above the image, where you'll then be given a sidebar with tons of new options. The tools are very clearly lifted directly from Snapseed (that isn't at all a bad thing), and give you options to tune and adjust, crop, rotate, add borders, selectively adjust, tilt-shift, apply several filters and more.

The tweaks go on and on, and can be mixed and matched as you see fit. When you're done editing an image you can choose to save it and have it replace the original, or you can always revert the changes if you're not happy with how things turned out. 

The new editing tools are rolling out gradually to users now, so don't be surprised if you don't see it show up on your own account for a little while. If you're anxious to try them out, make sure you're using Chrome, as the advanced editing features are restricted to just Google's browser at the moment.

Via: +Josh Haftel

We like a good game, and if you've frequented Wallpaper Wednesday you know we like showcasing the great video game art inspired from the classics. It never stops, and so here's another great collection.

Hostile Environment

Download This Wallpaper by Orioto (1920x1200)

Tree Shroom

Download This Wallpaper on WallpaperTube (2560x1440)

Farewell

Download this wallpaper by Orioto (1920x1200)

Lava Boss

Download this wallpaper by Orioto via Best Home Decor (1920x1200)

Paper Mario

Download this wallpaper on Best Home Decor (1920x1080)

8-Bit Heroes

Download this wallpaper on Wallpaper Vortex (1920x1200)

Angry Birds

Download this wallpaper on SMSCS (1920x1200)

Samus

Download this wallpaper on Wallpaper Abyss (1920x1200)

Pixel Pipe

Download this wallpaper on WallpapersWa (2560x1920)

Everything Mega Man Style

Download this wallpaper on the Paper Wall (1737x1008)

For more great wallpapers, check out our previous Wallpaper Wednesdays. Got any great wallpapers you'd like to share? Email me a link with "Wallpaper Wednesday" in the subject line. Submitting your own work is highly encouraged!

Earlier this week, Samsung announced that it was bringing Heterogeneous Multi-Processing (HMP) to Exynos 5 Octa chips. Samsung didn't clarify if HMP would require new hardware, but that was the implication. Now Meizu has unexpectedly announced the Exynos 5 Octa chip in its recently unveiled MX3 will be getting HMP through a software update.

All Exynos 5 Octa processors until now have used cluster migration to manage the ARM big.LITTLE cores.

• Samsung Makes New Exynos 5 Octa 5420 Official With Double The GPU Performance
• [CES 2013] Samsung Announces The Exynos 5 Octa, A Screaming 28nm 8-Core Processor
• Samsung Announces Improved Multi-Processing Technology For Exynos 5 Octa, Can Run Up To 8 Cores Like A Boss
• Samsung Announces 1.4GHz Exynos 4 Quad: A Quad-Core Processor Destined To Power The "Next Galaxy Smartphone"

Meizu Says Existing Samsung Exynos Chips Can Be Upgraded To HMP 'True 8-Core' Via Software, New Hardware Not Needed After All was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) clearly leads the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) market and by some distance. But whether developers should follow AWS largely depends on where they want to go, according to new research from Forrester. Not only does this require a choice between Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings and IaaS, but there's also real IaaS competition brewing for AWS from Microsoft and Google.

The easy choice of "AWS or more AWS?" may be about to disappear.

Why Amazon Wins In Cloud

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. For now, AWS offers five times the utilized compute capacity of each of its other 14 top competitors—combined. That's a big lead, and stems from AWS' quasi-religious focus on its customers' needs, as Gartner's Lydia Leong offers. Couple this with a "willing[ness] to invest massively in engineering" and "iterate at shocking speed," and you get a sense both for why Amazon has been so successful, and why it's so hard to catch up.

Small wonder, then, that Forrester's developer survey finds that AWS has a clear lead, with 62% of developers surveyed indicated that they've implemented AWS already, with another 23% planning to do so. The numbers for Microsoft and Google are not nearly so good:

Amazon has been looking to extend this lead by making its IaaS offerings more enterprise friendly. Importantly, Amazon isn't building out a separate enterprise cloud, but instead is meshing enterprise features with its public cloud, a strategy that jibes with Leong's belief that "customers actively do not want two different clouds, since nobody really wants to shift between different clouds as you go through an application’s lifecycle, or for different tiers of an app, some of which might need greater infrastructure resilience and guaranteed performance."

And lest anyone think AWS simply serves the rinky-dink individual developer with a dev/test workload, Leong stresses that its customers are decidedly "traditional enterprises of the Global 2000 variety (including some of the largest companies in the world)," in addition to the mid-market, "projected spend levels... increasing dramatically... use cases [that] are extremely broad,...[with] workloads [that] increasingly have sensitive data and regulatory compliance concerns."

So, game over, Amazon wins?

Cloud Competitors Rising

Not so fast. If ever there were a market with deep-pocketed competitors who can financially afford to catch up and compete, this is it. And, as Forrester's Jeffrey Hammond argues, "We’re moving away from distinct leaders in a single market segment, like IaaS or PaaS, and toward a model that mirrors a traditional buying pattern, where app development professionals choose between best of breed services (e.g., compute, storage, RDBMS, messaging, CRM) or integrated data-centers of services (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Salesforce/Heroku/Database.com)."

In this world where buyers focus on best-of-breed, AWS doesn't necessarily always have the upper hand.

For example, Microsoft already competes quite well with AWS when it comes to developers using a cloud relational database (RDBMS), as Forrester's survey finds:

This could be a function of enterprises turning to a trusted database provider for their RDBMS needs. It could just be a short-term blip as enterprises explore other cloud database offerings, an area in which AWS excels and Google is growing. 

Or it could just be, as Hammond suggests, that one-cloud-size-does-not-fit-all.

In such a world, according to Leong, different cloud vendors bring different strengths, and each of the two primary challengers has pockets as deep or deeper than Amazon. Take Microsoft, for example. "Microsoft has brand, deep customer relationships, deep technology entrenchment, and a useful story about how all of those pieces are going to fit together, along with a huge army of engineers, and a ton of money and the willingness to spend wherever it gains them a competitive advantage." And what about Google? "Google has brand, an outstanding engineering team, and unrivaled expertise at operating at scale."

Lots To Play For In Cloud

In short, we're a long way from deciding an absolute winner in cloud computing. In part this is because we're still in the early days of adoption, and in part it's because, as Hammond insists, developers are increasingly buying the best tool for a particular job. Amazon has established a clear leadership position, but it isn't the only cloud vendor with a strong cloud story. Microsoft still needs to overcome its Microsoft-centric approach to the cloud (and everything else), and Google still needs to figure out how to operate like a business that enterprises can understand and buy from, but these are solvable problems.

One thing is clear: as these problems are solved, an interesting but not particularly competitive cloud market will become even more interesting, and much more competitive.

Image courtesy REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton.

Google Now styled theme for Notification Weather Pro beta

Yesterday we unveiled a new feature here at AC, where we're going to have a look and test beta programs for some of the great apps Android developers are making. It's a curated list, which means only the best of the best will make the cut. The best part about having such a list is that developers will let us know when they have cool stuff going on so we can take a look. 

That leads me to the new addition I'll be adding to our list — Notification Weather Pro. You may have seen the wee weather icon in the status bar of some of my pictures, and that's what this app does. It puts a persistent notification that tells you the weather (and a forecast if you expand it) in your notifications so you have quick access without having it on your home screen all the time. If you're fan of the minimal look, it's a great app that I highly recommend.

The new beta, which is for the "Pro" version only, adds theme support. Out of the box the app looks good, but this is Android — THEME ALL THE THINGS. It's pretty straight forward, with themes on Google Play you can install and make available to the app. But it also comes with another little perk that often gets overlooked — a ready-to-use theme template kit.

Very often the best artists aren't the best programmers, and having everything someone needs to build a theme that's ready to upload to Google Play is awesome. It's a sure-fire way to get the community involved, and it lets artists and tinkerers alike have a lot of fun.

The beta seems to be stable and does everything it's supposed to do, and I'm adding it to our list. I just wanted to give all you themers and would-be themers a heads-up.

More: Notification Weather Pro beta community; Theme resources at GitHub

 

Kleiner Perkins has invested in a startup that partner John Doerr says will improve battery power by 300% compared to the usual 1-2% improvements that we normally see in the industry.

Doerr declined to name the startup, saying it was “still in stealth”, but he said that he has “seen it work in a lab,” and that the company points to “the biggest, the single most disruptive thing, the game changer” in the industry.

“If you can find a way to double or triple the energy density, then you need less stuff to make it and it weighs less,” he explained. If Doerr is correct and the company succeeds, the technology will have bigger ramifications for how devices, from phones to computers to much bigger machines, can operate. “My dream is that we can make electric vehicles cheaper than those powered by internal combustion,” Doerr noted.

Doerr’s comments point to a bigger idea the investor has about the progress of Moore’s Law as we continue to move into the future. Moore’s Law — the idea that in computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles every two years — is tightly tied to the speed of innovation in many consumer electronics, particularly relating to the processing speed and memory capacity in devices. He thinks Moore’s Law “is going to run out of steam here in the next four to six years.” Moore’s Law, presenting VCs like his an area of opportunity, along with healthcare and education, for investment.

Doerr also discussed Moore’s second law, which states that the cost of R&D and manufacturing to develop these new chips rises exponentially over time as the chips get faster and better. Doerr mentioned the enormous expenses of new facilities being build by companies like Intel, and brought up a Kleiner initiative called Low Power Everywhere.

“At some point, you don’t have enough atoms,” Doerr said. The price of the next-gen facility is increasing at a rate more than Moore’s Law.”

He said the company has invested in another stealth company called Luxvue that he claims has a technical breakthrough in displays. He explained that displays waste a lot of energy and a more efficient display would waste far less battery power.

Moore’s Law is an area that Kleiner Perkins has been interested in for at least the past few years. In 2010, Kleiner partner Bing Gordon wrote a post titled, “The End of Moore’s Law: A Love Story,”  in which he discussed the end of Moore’s Law and how it applied to Hollywood and the gaming industry.

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington also prodded Doerr about the NSA, his investment in Zynga, and more lighthearted topics, like Yahoo’s new logo. Doerr jested that he thinks Yahoo should have gone with green for their new logo, but that he isn’t qualified to comment on the font choice.

---

Backstage Interview

It started with an almost throwaway line in the in The Guardian's bombshell NSA cryptography story. After pages of shocking revelations, the article revealed one secret document showed that the NSA had "worked covertly to get its own version of a draft security standard issued by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology approved for worldwide use in 2006. 'Eventually, NSA became the sole editor,' the document states."

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Sure, Android users don't have fingerprint scanners (well, maybe one), but that doesn't mean you're stuck when it comes to security. Here are some of the best apps you can download to boost security on your phone without buying all-new hardware.

Of course, it's worth pointing out that any lock screen security is only a stumbling block. Securing your data on your phone should be done with a complete remote wipe solution (Google even has its own already associated with your account). At best, any lock screen security will keep curious eyes or clumsy thieves out.

Picture Password Obscures Your Pattern Unlock

On Android, you have the option to create a pattern unlock, in addition to a PIN or password. However, there are only so many possible combinations and figuring out your pattern is only a smudge away. Picture Password Lockscreen makes this a bit more difficult by allowing you to create any arbitrary pattern on your choice of picture.

The feature is actually very similar to Windows 8's picture password lock screen. The advantage, of course, is that someone with your phone in hand won't immediately be able to tell what pattern you used to unlock your phone. While technically it may be possible to figure it out from the smudges, using the entire screen makes it difficult to discern what's a security pattern and what's normal phone usage.

Hidden Lock Hides the Lock Screen Altogether

You know what's even better than a lock screen? No lock screen. This is Hidden Lock's approach, anyway. This lock screen replacement shows you a snapshot of what your phone looked like before you turned it off. It doesn't function, though. It's simply a background. It will only unlock once you input your unlock pattern.

If a person with malicious intent gets access to your phone with this method, they'll find themselves frustrated when your phone doesn't seem to work. Obviously, this won't necessarily stop a clever person, but on its face, it should deter plenty of people from venturing further into your phone.

Lockscreen Policy Closes Several Pesky Security Holes

While it's technically not a lockscreen replacement, if you're concerned about your phone's security, Lockscreen Policy is probably something you should be taking a look at. In Android 4.2, lock screen widgets were introduced. While these are neat features, they also allow people to access potentially critical functions (like your Gmail) without any security. Android 4.2 also allows you to swipe to the right to access the camera.

Lockscreen Policy kills both of these abilities. The lock screen widgets may not be quite as necessary (if you don't want people reading your emails, don't add an email lock screen widget), but there's no reason to allow a thief or mischievous friend to have access to your camera without permission.

A Word on Password Managers

While it would be quite impossible for most Android phones to duplicate the Touch ID technology Apple announced for the new iPhone 5S, there is still some demand for entering passwords to be simpler. To that end, some of our favorite password managers have Android support. Additionally, there are dedicated Android solutions like Dashlane and mSecure that not only store your passwords on your mobile device, but can hold other important information like credit card numbers or bank account information. None are complete replacements for tapping your finger once to enter a password, but they can certainly help make things a little easier.

Steam users will soon be able to share and borrow games with the new Steam Family Sharing program. Up to ten authorized computers will be able to share a library of games, but you might need to be patient: only a limited beta will soon have access. Read more here.

Securing your phone's lockscreen has never been so painless

Smartphone manufacturers are paying more and more attention to how you unlock your device — and as such, so are we. That brings us to another installment of "What do I miss?" when moving from one smartphone to another. Previously we touched on Motorola's Active Display versus LG's Knock-On. Today, we turn to Bluetooth. And, specifically, trusted Bluetooth devices. 

This is a feature that Motorola's baked into its recent line of phones — Verizon's new Droids as well as the Moto X. And, quite simply, it's a feature that needs to be baked into every smartphone going forward at the operating system level.

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There really isn't much mystery remaining as Amazon prepares to unveil its second-generation Kindle Fire HD tablets and its third-generation Kindle Fire slate in the coming weeks. First we published exclusive details about Amazon's entire 2013 tablet lineup and then we followed up by revealing all of the key specs for the upcoming new Kindle Fire HD tablets as well as the new entry-level Kindle Fire. Amazon's new high-definition slates are shaping up to be two of the most impressive tablets in the world when they debut, and anticipation is certainly building. Now, BGR has obtained exclusive photos of the unannounced next-generation Kindle Fire HD that Amazon is preparing to unveil as soon as later this month, giving the world its first-ever look at Amazon's new hardware for 2013.

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Program launching Sept. 17 for certain devices with one-time fee as low as £49

Phone payment plans and trade-in schemes seem to be all the rage in the US, and now the UK's largest LTE network EE is getting in on the game with its new "Swap" program. As the first carrier with a system like this in the UK, EE's Swap differs slightly from the way we've seen AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile set things up here in the states.

Under Swap, you will be offered the option to trade-in your phone for a new one assuming you're at least 6 months into your 18 or 24-month contract. If you do choose to trade your device in for a new one, you'll simply pay a one-time fee based on the cost of your monthly service plan. The fee ranges from £49 to £249, with a higher fee if you have a cheaper plan, naturally.

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According to the most recent statistics from the Kaiser Family Foundation, blue collar workers make up roughly 60% of the workforce in each U.S. state.  However, you’d never know that browsing the Internet.

While there are dozens of job boards that specialize in white collar jobs, if you’re looking for a skilled labor job, your best bet is to check your local Craigslist listings. The staff of WorkHands, is hoping to change that. A LinkedIn-like service for blue collar workers in the U.S., a new social network that launched Tuesday. 

Putting The Internet To Work

A software engineer, WorkHands CEO Patrick Cushing is the black sheep of his blue collar family. His dad fixed oil burners for a living, and his brother is a professional welder. He realized first hand that blue collar workers are always online, even if their jobs are not. 

“My brother has had Facebook since the beginning,” he said. “I looked at someone like my brother and realized he had all these online tools for his social life and none for his work career."

Perhaps because of the white collar backgrounds of most Silicon Valley types, most job networks are designed with similar job hunters in mind. There are thousands of blue collar professionals connected on LinkedIn, but Cushing argues that network doesn’t cater to them as specifically as WorkHands does. 

“Linkedin makes it really hard to demonstrate what you’re great at in the trades,” he said. “If you’re a great welder, one of the best ways to demonstrate that is to show your welds.”

In the same vein, the most prominent part of any WorkHands profile is a photo gallery. In this early adopter’s profile, photos of the student’s metalwork are placed more prominently than his experience or education history. Just like skillful code can be a ready calling card for a tech job, a well-welded piece of metal may be all a trades employer needs to see. 

WorkHands profiles also include sections you’d never see on LinkedIn, such as a place for workers to list the types of power tools they own and can use or a list of the workers’ licenses and certifications, used for operating heavy machinery or driving utility vehicles. But through testers, the WorkHands crew has met with the most enthusiasm with the photo gallery feature. 

“So many of the workers we talk to, we ask about their work and they pull out their phone and have pages and pages of photos of it,” said Cushing.  “They’re inherently proud of the work they do with their hands.”

Keeping Social Going

For this reason, the WorkHands crew believes that it can keep workers using the network even after they’ve already found a job. They can upload photos and approve of connections’ handiwork by clicking the “solid” button, a straight-talking version of Facebook’s “like.” 

Other features are on the way, too. This quarter, Cushing hopes to launch private networks for technical schools, employers, and other organizations, a mobile app, and a job board. Right now WorkHands is free for workers and employers alike, but eventually the network will make money by charging companies for their job listings. 

Already, WorkHands has helped a handful of students at Laney College in Oakland, CA find jobs at a local ironworking company. The network has worked well for students, who are already constantly online, and for companies, which before have never had a network to find welders, woodworkers, and other skilled laborers all in one place. 

The blue collar Internet already existed, said Cushing. They just needed the right tools.

“The assumption that this workforce isn’t already online is something we’re really trying to challenge,” said Cushing.

 

Image of WorkHands team courtesy of WorkHands.

The NSA is designed to protect us from terrorism, so even if it oversteps its bounds, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin says we shouldn’t hate it. That’s diametrically opposed to the sentiment of many in the tech industry, including Michael Arrington who thinks the NSA’s spying doesn’t stop terrorism — it is terrorism.

Levchin lays out his views on the NSA, spying, and why we need to take a deep breath in the video below. An excerpt:

There are several things going on in the NSA controversy and since the conversation I had with Charlie [Rose where he said what the NSA is doing is a good thing], more information has come to light, some of which is definitely distasteful.The thing that I disagreed with vs the popular media is that the NSA is broadly classified as evil. I think it’s ridiculous for a citizen of a country that view his government’s duty to protect me, protect all of us from evil, from harm, from terrorists, from foreign powers meaning ill — to classify a body of government that is designed to figure out what might hit us next and prevent it, throwing them into an evil bucket is just thoughtless.

He has a point. What the NSA is doing may be evil, but the organization as a whole isn’t, necessarily. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question why this snooping is necessary, and it doesn’t mean we should protest and demand change, but we shouldn’t blindly hate the NSA.

Levchin went on to try to explain that the government spy agency is made up of hard-working people trying to help their country. He explains from his own experience,

“These people are making $40,000 a year. Not because it’s a path to wealth, it’s not a way to get recognized.

In college I applied to the NSA. I couldn’t get accepted because I wasn’t a citizen yet. I was a crypto-nerd. I was very excited about applying crypto-technology for the good of the country I just came to. The one the recruiter was clear about was ‘even though you’ll get paid peanuts, you’ll never achieve fame as a mathematician because you are not allowed to publish anything.’

So fortunately ( or unfortunately depending on how you look at it) I did not go down that road. I built companies for fun and profit. But people who do go down that road — many of them very talented, smart people  – they do it basically out of a sense of duty to make sure nothing blows up in this very room. I think affording them some respect is a good thing. The fact that they want to break my secure sockets layer bothers me. I don’t like that. I don’t think that’s a good thing. I just think that the debate around the NSA has gotten emotional, frequently information-free, and at times, just belligerent for no reason.”

It may be tough to stow our anger. I’ve never felt more distrust in my government than I do now. Dammit I’m mad and something must be done! But taking a more thoughtful, discerning stance on the issue is critical to us fixing things. Indiscriminate hate doesn’t help. We should consider focusing our rage on exorcising the devil practices, rather than demonizing the whole organization that carries them out.

For more on Levchin’s leadership advice, lessons learned from PayPal, and his new startup Glow, which wants to get you pregnant, check out the whole video of his Disrupt talk below:

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Backstage Interview

Apple today introduced the iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S, and though the iPhone 5C is the less expensive of the two, it’s nonetheless very impressive hardware. I got some hands-on time with the 5C immediately following the presentation, and the plastic-backed beauty leaves a very good impression thanks to its single-piece case design and lightness in the hand.

The iPhone 5C comes in five different colors, including blue, green, pink, yellow and white. It’s packing an A6 chip, and the Retina display we came to know and love with the iPhone 5. Another big plus from the iPhone 5C vs. the 5 is that it packs more LTE bands than any other iPhone ever, and gets better battery life than its predecessor.

All of that is made more impressive by the fact that the iPhone performs terrifically, and looks fantastic. The colors really pop, and the case fits solidly in the hand and thanks to a slightly rubberized feel it should be easier to hold onto than any previous iPhone as well. The color-match wallpapers add to the charm of the overall package, and that’s likely to appeal to customers who just want a device that looks great out of the box and doesn’t require any laborious customization.
Click to view slideshow.

The attendant cases that Apple has designed are more substantial than you might initially believe from just looking at them from a distance. They feel very solid, and could likely shield your device from considerable impact. They’re lined with microfiber and soft to the touch, and they come in a variety of colors which contrast pleasingly with the iPhone 5C itself. The cut-outs in the iPhone 5C case also help the new colors really pop.

I’m maybe most impressed by how light and yet solid the iPhone 5C feels. While it may not quite live up to the ultra-luxe metal and glass feel of the iPhone 5 and now 5C, it doesn’t feel like a cheap device; this is a premium phone, despite the price tag and somewhat older internals. Based on my first impressions, I imagine the iPhone 5C will have plenty of fans when it goes up for pre-order on September 13 – this is a phone that offers a lot of value at its price point, and improves upon the iPhone 5, which is a first for Apple’s smartphone lineup mid-tier device.